A Typical Day As A Fabric Print Designer And One Woman Business

Since giving up my job as a pharmacist, I’ve been asked what my daily life now looks like as fabric print designer and product business owner. So, I’m going to share with you a behind-the-scenes peek at a typical day in my world – where I wear all the hats!

I use to have a studio a short walk away from my home when I was working as a pharmacist, but now I have taken over my son’s large bedroom (yes, he’s left home) as my home studio. It’s a large light filled room with a big table for painting my patterns, a separate table for product photography and packing orders and lots of storage space for my paints and pens, papers, and brushes. It’s also large enough for a big bookcase for all my art, design, and botanical books and lots of sketchbooks. I love creating in here, with the radio on or one of my favourite podcasts playing in the background.

A typical working day

I try to start working by 9.30 am. My day depends on whether I’m in the design phase of new fabrics and products or launching new product ranges. But my day always starts with a cup of coffee whilst I put into my planner what 3 most important things, I need to do that day.

I usually start working by reading and replying to emails from customers, and potential or current retailers. If I have any online orders to fulfil, I try to pack them up before midday and take them to the Post Office.

Painting and designing

If I’m in the design phase, I’ll spend time researching and looking for inspiration for new patterns. This involves looking through my large book collection, magazines, looking online and photos that I’ve taken either on holidays or out and about. From this I will put together a mood board of images and colour palettes and start to make initial sketches of ideas before then committing to painting them out onto pieces of paper and starting to put them into repeat by hand. This is the most enjoyable part of the day. I love being able to take ideas from inspirational sources and create something new from scratch using my hands. All my designs start out hand painted because I love the act of mixing paints to produce luscious colours and the feel of putting them onto paper. I find painting very therapeutic and calming.

Once I’m happy with the pattern, I’ll tidy it up digitally ready as a print file for my fabric printers.

If I’m producing new products such as my tote bags or cosmetic bags, I’ll be researching and ordering samples of fabrics and trims such as webbing for handles and communicating with my fabric printer and manufacturer about quantities and lead times.

I spend a lot of time sitting down so if the weather is good, I’ll usually go out for a 30-minute walk at lunchtime since I’m surrounded by beautiful countryside and walks. This also helps to clear my head for afternoon work.

Balancing the designing with all the business tasks

The biggest challenge for me is finding the right balance between finding time to design and create new products with the business tasks such as marketing, admin, and finance. When I started my business, I hoped that I would be spending a lot of time designing fabrics and products but most of my time is spent on business tasks in order for my business to grow and be profitable.

Some days most of my time is spent on marketing; writing email newsletters to my subscribers, writing blog posts for my website, and creating content for social media and Pinterest, as well as working on my website to attract new traffic. I’m constantly researching appropriate offline markets and pop ups to sell my products at. I’m also spending more time contacting journalists and bloggers to promote and write about my colourful tote bags, small makeup bags and toiletry bags and printed fabrics for home decor.

Some of my days are very long, sometimes not finishing until 7pm now that I’m working for myself, but that’s fine as I love what I do especially the painting of designs, but I do try to finish once my husband gets home from work so we can enjoy dinner together.

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