How to Spring Clean Your Portfolio

By: Bonnie Christine

Story Adapted From Pattern Magazine – Volume 4

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 4, Expansion & Exposure, the spring 2026 issue.

Refreshing your early work.

Each line, color palette, and detail of your art has something to teach you: the patterns you create as you stand at the starting line of your career, the ones filled with exploration and learning. Cherish your early work.

It all stems from a beautiful season of creative discovery. What you may be tempted to see as unpolished or imperfect is exploratory and wildly true to you. This alone makes your very first designs invaluable.

But there is another reason you should cherish your early work, an idea that may surprise you.

Your early work can become the perfect frame for a brand new collection.

With each passing season, as you create more and more, you’ll gather folders filled with your work: digitized motifs, color palettes, and pattern designs.

These folders filled with your early work are your personal resource, the perfect place to begin.

All you need is a bit of spring cleaning.

Let your very first designs re-inspire you. Return to them with new expertise, a sharpened eye, and a fuller understanding of your personal style. Open and refine them in a way that resonates with your current season.

A simple refresh of a color palette or a quick rearrangement of a motif can change the entire feel of a pattern.

In my fabric collection Roots of Nature, I began with prints from collections I had designed over the last decade. I refreshed each one to create an entirely new collection.

Here are a few ways to refresh your early work and to breathe new life into an existing portfolio:

1. Recolor it.

Consider how your pattern would look in a new colorway. If it currently boasts a warm colorway, try something with cool tones. Think about opposites: summer and winter, day and night, bright and mellow.

2. Change the scale.

Within a collection, you will have a variety of scales to accommodate your hero prints, coordinate prints, and blender prints. As you refresh a pattern, play around with the scale. A hero print for one collection could be the perfect blender in another.

3. Look for contrast.

Is there enough contrast between your colors, or do they bleed? One simple way to test this is to convert your pattern to grayscale and adjust it from there. A few simple edits can make a pattern pop.

4. Consider the complexity.

With fresh eyes, you can bring a new perspective to your work. Evaluate areas that feel sloppy and refine them so everything flows cohesively across your pattern. Is an area of your pattern feeling empty? Consider adding a motif or two.

5. Check for dynamism.

Incorporate more layers to add movement to your work. Consider how easily you can spot the repeat, and try to build a more dynamic approach. To do this, increase the size of your repeating bounding box without increasing the size of your motifs, and then work to fill in the empty space.

6. Evaluate line quality.

Look at each line in your pattern and consider the weight and quality. Refine any linework that feels sloppy or inconsistent to elevate the professionalism of your pattern.

7. Align with your signature style.

Your signature style is continually changing as you grow as an artist. Rework your pattern to align with this style, paying special attention to the details you are drawn to and why. Your patterns tell your story. Is this pattern faithful to the story you want to tell?

8. Soften the black and white.

Many new designers use pure white or black in their early work, which can feel glaring. Soften your designs with dark grays and off-whites to add more approachability to your work.

Want a few tips to help you look at your patterns with fresh eyes?

1. Turn your work upside down.
2. Pretend it’s someone else’s.
3. Squint your eyes tight.
4. Print it out.
5. Test it on mockups.

Wanting More?

This story comes from Volume 4 of Pattern Magazine, Expansion & Exposure. The whole spring issue, with every story and photograph, is at bonniechristine.com/patternmagazine.