The Blog
Notes from the garden, the studio, and a creative life in the Smoky Mountains.
Your weekly coffee date with the creative industry.
The week’s news from the creative industry, with Bonnie’s spin on it. Read it here, or get it in your inbox every Tuesday.
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In the garden now
From the studio
Slow mornings
Volume 6, Marking the Moment, is on the shelves at Barnes & Noble.
A love letter to creative living, printed four times a year.
Old things, brought home
Notes on a creative life
every Tuesday at eleven
The Pattern Post
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Everything
Every story since 2022, newest first.
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 3
Pattern Magazine is Bonnie Christine's quarterly print and digital publication for surface pattern designers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs who believe that how you live shapes what you make. This story first appeared in Volume 3, Begin Again, the winter 2026 issue.
A signature style distinguishes you from the crowd.
You walk into an art mu...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 2
Pattern Magazine is Bonnie Christine's quarterly print and digital publication for surface pattern designers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs who believe that how you live shapes what you make. This story first appeared in Volume 2, Rooted Rhythms, the autumn 2025 issue.
A surface designer’s guide to licensing deals.
Licensing your artwork is...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 2
Pattern Magazine is Bonnie Christine's quarterly print and digital publication for surface pattern designers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs who believe that how you live shapes what you make. This story first appeared in Volume 2, Rooted Rhythms, the autumn 2025 issue.
Lessons in presence, possibility, and planting seeds for the future.
We ...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 6
Pattern Magazine is Bonnie Christine's quarterly print and digital publication for surface pattern designers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs who believe that how you live shapes what you make. This story first appeared in Volume 6, Marking the Moment, the autumn 2026 issue.
Ash, raven, crocus, lavender, wren, hazel, poppy, beaver, clover, ivy, w...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 5
Pattern Magazine is Bonnie Christine's quarterly print and digital publication for surface pattern designers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs who believe that how you live shapes what you make. This story first appeared in Volume 5, Gathering Sunshine, the summer 2026 issue.
“Her entire yard was a garden.”
My grandmother, Marrell, was sophist...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 5
Pattern Magazine is Bonnie Christine's quarterly print and digital publication for surface pattern designers, artists, and creative entrepreneurs who believe that how you live shapes what you make. This story first appeared in Volume 5, Gathering Sunshine, the summer 2026 issue.
The joy of keeping your own flock.
There is a particular kind of sum...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 5
What Makes a Pattern Collection Stand Out?
Over the past several months, we have coordinated licensing challenges with incredible companies like Loomwell, TWOPAGES Curtains, Illustrated Faith, and Carriage House Printery for the creatives inside our membership, Pattern+. We have received over a thousand submissions, watched collections get chosen,...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 5
Summer holds an unmistakable warmth.Â
The sky becomes a palette of bright blues, inviting us to step outside and soak in the sunlight. We spend our days at the lakehouse, water glittering and lapping against the dock.Â
It’s puzzles and paintbrushes outside on the lawn. Ollie and Bear squealing with laughter as they skid across the boat's wake on ...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 5
In summertime, my backyard becomes my creative playground, a blank canvas for gatherings with family and friends. Â
 The weather warms and the days lengthen, inviting me to create patterns of a different kind: patterns of hospitality, layered amidst dripping candlesticks, lace tablecloths, and a delicious scoop of Jeni’s ice cream. Brambleberry Cr...
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 4
Spring has a way of opening the world, and our work, just a bit wider. Expansion is the making: learning one new thing, adding one new step, letting a simple idea grow. Exposure is the sharing: giving that work a bit of sunlight so it can be found. Paired together, they turn small efforts into momentum.
For me, this looks like beginning with something honest and humble...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 4
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I've always wanted a greenhouse. Years before there was a frame or a pane, there was a promise I'd made to myself: "When I finish building the Surface Design Immersion course, I will give myself a place to grow."
I started hunting on Facebook Marketplace, and I found a jumble of century-old bricks, the kind with softened edges and stories baked...
By: Bonnie Christine
Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 4
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In our Smoky Mountains, the hills wake slowly. Redbuds feather the edges, dogwoods lift their white lanterns, and the garden soil gives beneath the spade.
As the ground softens, so do I, ready to learn something new, to expand with the season.Â
I clear out cupboards and make space for the new. It’s a good kind of restless. Taking inventory of ...