At FIT, I was awful at making repeats. When I was starting out in the industry, if I found this really great motif for a pillow, instead of having to put it into a repeat, I’d blow up the image to the size of the pillow. I became known for that. If you’re just focusing on one icon—a bird, an animal, a flower—it becomes much more important, almost like a portrait. When it’s in a repeat, you lose it a little bit.
It got crazier when I expanded to duvet covers and shower curtains. Still no repeats. But sometimes I don’t have a choice. I have a license for upholstery and drapery fabrics with Duralee, and the designers there take my raw art and make a workable repeat. Of course, when they lay everything out for me, they know exactly what I’m going to say: “Can we make the image 25 percent bigger?”