Most of my patterns start with three somewhat dark base colors and a fourth color which is used to lighten and brighten the other three. This fourth color is usually White, but I sometimes also use Tan, Yellow or Gray for other interesting effects. The finished product is called a "cane" and can be compared to a roll of slice-and-bake cookie dough where the pattern is visible in any cross-section.

For CALICO, we use the base colors and two lightened versions of each of them, arranged into nine different flowers. The stack of flowers is reduced and recombined to make a square cane with 144 flowers on its face.

The Summer Calico pattern was used in a tutorial we wrote some time ago. Click here to see how it was made.

This pattern was first developed in 1998

See everything I have in this design