The Pattern Post: Fifty Artists, the Same Contract

The Pattern Post · Tuesday, November 3, 2026

The people, patterns & possibilities shaping the creative industry.

If you're new here, The Pattern Post is my free weekly read on surface pattern design, art licensing, and illustration news, every Tuesday. This issue is from Tuesday, November 3, 2026.

The gist: Okay, so the agencies are growing, Target just gave its whole home line new prints, and the greeting card world made room for the block printers among us. It was a good week for us, friends!

From Bonnie's Desk

Hello from New York

Hi friend, and happy Tuesday! I'm writing to you from New York City this week, my first time back since 2019, and I have loved soaking in every bit of it. The weather has been idyllic, the trees have gone gold, and yesterday we walked into the Cooper Hewitt to see the Frederic Church show. It was stunning. He signed his Jamaica sketches "'65," for 1865, and he could not have known that a hundred and sixty years later a roomful of us would be leaning in close and loving every leaf.

I'm here on business, which this week means sitting across the table from some wonderful people and diving further into my own licensing plans, where the brand grows next, and a few opportunities I can't say much about yet. The meetings have been amazing! Today we have a full day set aside to see some of the most exquisite retail displays in the city, and I'll be taking notes for all of us. Then it's back home to the Smoky Mountains tomorrow.

A studio note before we dive in. Surface Design Immersion On Demand is open through this Thursday, November 5, at 11:59 PM PT. If you have been wanting to get started in this industry, it is the best way I know to do it: all six modules and more than 150 lessons open up the moment you join, Illustrator is taught from zero, you keep lifetime access, and there is a six-month plan at checkout and a fourteen-day guarantee. After Thursday, the next chance is the live course in March, at $500 more. Head on over and take a look!

Out in the wider world, the licensing agencies spent last week hiring and signing, Target rebuilt its biggest home brand with new prints on the bedding, and the greeting card world rewrote its awards and its trade show in the same two weeks.

☕️ Pour something warm, and let's dive in. We have news!

In this issue

• Jewel Branding signed five new artists last Tuesday and explained, in writing, how retail buys art now. The same week, MHS Licensing hired a Chief Licensing Officer. The agencies are growing.
• Target reinvented Threshold, its nearly three billion dollar home brand, with more than 800 new items and "refreshed colors and prints" on the bedding. Eight hundred!
• The Louie Awards added a Pet Cards category and a home for block printers, and Noted, the greeting card show, moved its order-taking onto Faire.

The paperwork is done, friends. Make the picture!

Making Headlines

The agencies told us how retail buys art now

Jewel Branding signed five new artists last Tuesday and, the same day, published how its Artist Series works. Julie Newman's agency now licenses its roster of more than fifty artists under a shared Master Agreement, gives partners a website where they "search and select artwork directly," steers artists on trend through an in-house creative team, and has added an early-access tier called The Diamond List for its highest-volume licensees. Her reason, in her words: "The purchase cycle has never moved faster with consumers wanting new, trend-forward product on shelves constantly." The five newcomers are Christy Bergerson of Itsy Belle Studio, Cora Vickers, whose work is "fun colors, folk motifs, and vintage flair," Elena O'Neill, who "started by selling designs on Society6, then opened an Etsy shop," Julep and Trubbs, fourteen years in animation, and Void to Light, a lettering artist in Singapore.

MHS Licensing is growing too. The Minneapolis agency behind the Hautman Brothers and Amylee Weeks hired Johanna Sullivan last Monday as Executive Vice President and Chief Licensing Officer, after licensing roles at Newell Brands, Serta Simmons, Kimberly-Clark, and Coca-Cola. President Marty Segelbaum called it "an exciting step forward for MHS and, more importantly, for our business partners." And a Scandinavian agency you know by its clients, Rights & Brands (Moomin, Tove Jansson, Carl Larsson), opened a Los Angeles office last Tuesday.

Fifty artists, the same contract.

When a buyer can browse fifty portfolios under the same agreement, the artist who gets picked is the one whose work the buyer can place on a product in about four seconds. So this week I'd open your portfolio the way a TK Maxx buyer would, on a phone, scrolling fast, and ask whether every collection answers "what is this for" before anyone reads a word. Put the mockup first, keep the hero at full strength, and let the coordinates sit beside it like family.

Target rebuilt its biggest home brand, and the bedding got new prints

Image: Target, the new Threshold space

Target announced last Tuesday that it has reimagined Threshold, its nearly $3 billion owned home brand, with more than 800 new items and dedicated Threshold spaces in more than 200 stores. The release says the range runs from traditional to contemporary, that the bedding comes in gauze and textured cotton with "refreshed colors and prints," and that stores now merchandise pillows, throws, and tabletop together "to help guests pair colors, patterns, and textures." Target's own research says its guests mix three or more design styles at home, and throws, decorative accessories, and candles are growing by double digits. Mara Sirhal, who runs home merchandising, put it simply: "Homes are an extension of our guests' personalities and sense of style."

Three weeks earlier, Crate & Barrel started selling wallpaper. Crate & Barrel, Crate & Barrel Kids, and CB2 opened a wallcoverings category with York Wallcoverings, "the oldest and largest wallpaper mill in the United States," and CB2 alone lists "more than 45 exclusive designer prints and colourways." A national retailer opening a brand-new pattern category is my favorite kind of sentence.

The greeting card world rewrote its awards and its trade show

The Greeting Card Association named Faire the official order-taking platform for Noted, its greeting card expo, last Wednesday. At the show (January 31 through February 2 at the Javits Center, inside NY NOW Winter), the 80 to 100 exhibiting brands will write retail orders in the Faire app, pay no commission on orders written during the show and for a period after it, and get a featured page on Faire for fourteen days afterward. Executive director Carlos Llansó's line in the announcement is "Noted was created to give greeting card and stationery makers a show built around their work."

The Louie Awards changed too, and the early-bird rate ended yesterday. Two weeks ago the GCA posted what's new for the 38th Louies: a brand-new Pet Cards category (with the warning that "Simply featuring an animal illustration doesn't automatically make something a Pet Card"), the old Letterpress category widened into Specialty Print Techniques, which now welcomes risograph, silkscreen, block printing, linocut, and woodcut, the two boxed-set categories merged together, and the price line between categories moved from $5.50 to $6. Entries stay open through Thursday, January 14, at the regular rate of $75 for members and $105 for everyone else through December 31 (a little more in January), with physical samples due Tuesday, January 19. The GCA also announced that its 2027 conference and the Louie ceremony move to Albuquerque, September 20 through 22.

Image: The Letter Keeper, our keepsake card collection at Flowerie

If you've ever carved a lino block and wondered where it belonged, it now belongs in the Louies. And if you draw dogs, well, I have a very new opinion about pet cards. 😆 This week I'd pull your best hand-printed card and your best animal card and read the two new category descriptions with them side by side. A category built for your technique is the closest thing this industry has to an invitation!

Pattern POV

The paperwork is already done

Everything this week points the same way. Jewel Branding put more than fifty artists under the same master agreement so a buyer can search and select artwork without a new negotiation. Target rebuilt a three billion dollar home brand around colors, patterns, and textures that pair, and merchandised the pillows next to the throws so shoppers can see it. The Louies built a category for block printers and another for pet cards. All of it rewards the same thing, a print a buyer can picture on a product in about four seconds. So this week, put the mockup first, keep the hero at full strength, give it two coordinates that pair, and let it be seen. The contract is signed and the shelf is waiting. Make the picture!

More news in brief

✏️ Procreate rebuilt its iPhone app, and the brushes came along. Procreate Pocket 5 shipped as a free update with more than 150 new brushes by Kyle T. Webster, brush search, brush libraries you can sort by project, stroke stabilization, and brush files you can back up in the Files app. Procreate's own opening line is "Great things come to those who wait."

🖌️ And Affinity just released its new iPad app, and it's free. Affinity for iPad puts vector, pixel, and page layout in the same app, with a Sketch Studio of "over 350 editable brushes that respond to Apple Pencil pressure, tilt, and barrel roll," and it's a free download on the App Store (a few desktop features, Books and Data Merge among them, aren't on iPad at launch). Illustrator is still home base for us, but everyone is already talking about this one, and a free vector app on the iPad is worth an afternoon.

💻 Adobe MAX is next week, and the online pass is free. The opening keynote is Tuesday, November 10, at 9 AM ET, the Inspiration keynote is Wednesday at 10 AM ET, Sneaks is hosted by Terry Crews, and Adobe says the replays stay free for a year. Illustrator news usually lands there first, so I'll have the full report for you on the 17th.

Image: Loloi, the new Jeremiah Brent collections

🏡 The High Point rugs are online now, and the designers' names are on them. Jeremiah Brent for Loloi launched last Tuesday with eight collections and more than thirty-five rugs built on tile patterns and carved lines, Nate Berkus added twelve designs at Rugs USA that he says were "conceived to live together," and Vern Yip's eleven rugs for Jaipur Living carry pagodas, dragons, and fretwork. On the wall, Thibaut's Fairhaven put out ten botanicals, several as fabric and wallcovering at once. The rug world wants a name and a story. Yours has both.

Image: Hanna Andersson, the second Dusen Dusen collection

🎈 Hanna Andersson brought Dusen Dusen back for a second year, and traded stripes for dots. The new collection landed the week before last with polka-dot pajamas, Ellen Van Dusen's "Everybody Face," and clouds, and a selection is also at the MoMA Design Store and SFMOMA. Hanna's chief product officer, Kara Carter, said "we've always embraced bold color and playful prints, so there's a natural connection." A second collection is the prize in licensing, friends. The first is an introduction, the second is a relationship.

🪡 Chasing Paper turned vintage linens into wallpaper, and Liberty built a workshop. Jenni Yolo's Keepsake Collection for Chasing Paper launched last Wednesday, drawn from "the cross-stitched flowers on a napkin to the patterns found in handmade quilts." In London, Liberty opened a new Haberdashery on its third floor last Thursday, "home to a World of Quilting and Liberty Craft," with a Liberty Workshop that will host hands-on Maker Sessions. A department store teaching people to sew with its own prints is a very good sign for the people who draw them.

🧵 The fabric houses are already into March. Riley Blake's March 2027 page is live with sixteen collections, among them Charley Harper's Western Birds for its tenth anniversary, a licensed Cath Kidston collection called From London, With Love in twenty-two colorways, and a Barbie collection by Jennifer Long. FreeSpirit's Morden cotton lawn from Morris & Co. is arriving in shops now, Strawberry Thief on a fabric you can make a blouse from, and Ruby Star Society is teasing a border print called And Old Lace in Rashida Coleman-Hale's upcoming line, Sybil. Houston, meanwhile, posted its 2027 dates: October 28 through 31, with Preview Night back on the 27th.

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fijian artists, Panel (Masi Kesa), detail, Gift of Adelaide and Edmund Carpenter, 1990

🏛️ The museums have a busy two weeks. The Met opened "Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia" yesterday, hand-painted barkcloth with "dynamic geometric designs" from "a complex visual vocabulary that is passed between generations of women," including two Fijian panels that "have never been exhibited together." Cooper Hewitt opened "Frederic Church in Jamaica" on Friday, drawn from its more than 2,000 Church sketches (I can confirm it is worth the trip), and the Society of Illustrators hung "The Original Art" on Saturday, nearly 200 works from the year's best children's books, with the Gold Medal to Micha Archer. The V&A's "Constantinople to Istanbul" opens this Saturday with more than 200 objects, silks and tiles among them, and the Renwick Gallery reopens on Friday the 13th with a free open house. Pattern passed between generations of women. We know a little something about that.

🛍️ Two shop notes, and then I'll stop. Spoonflower's shop template deadline is this Thursday, November 5, and a shop that isn't updated "may be considered inactive and could be subject to delisting," so please go finish it today. And Etsy is refunding the full 6.5 percent transaction fee on orders that come through your Share & Save links through January 4, "the offer applies automatically," with a free content workshop today at 1 PM ET. If you post your work anywhere, use the link.

Open Doors

Opportunities open right now

Everything here is open right now, closest deadline first. Times are the organizers' own.

• Tue, Nov 3, 3 PM EST (that's today!): Spoonflower's Cozy Cabincore. Free, with $200, $100, and $50 in Spoonflower credit for the top three, $20 for 4th through 10th, and the top 100 featured. Voting runs November 5 to 17.
• Sat, Nov 7, midnight: Illustration West 65, extended from October 31. $35 per entry, $20 for members, worldwide, no AI.
• Thu, Nov 12: the Booooooom Illustration Awards. Free to enter an image, with a Product & Merchandise category, $5,000 in cash prizes, no AI.
• Fri, Nov 13, 11:59 PM EST: Arch Enemy Arts 2027 group show in Philadelphia. $18 for up to three works, physical pieces only (fiber art and hand-pulled prints count), fifty percent consignment.
• Mon, Nov 16: Penland School of Craft summer 2027 scholarships, first round. Full scholarships and partial awards of $500 to $2,000, need based.
• Tue, Nov 17, 5 PM GMT: the John Ruskin Prize, "Not for Present Delight." £9,500 in prizes with a £3,000 first prize, textiles welcome, worldwide. The Hopper Prize is listed for the same day on third-party calendars; its own page prints no date, so check before you pay the $40.
• Thu, Nov 19: AQS QuiltWeek Paducah 2027, $25 for AQS members and $40 for non-members.
• Fri, Nov 20, 11:59 PM: Threadless's Secret Societies. Free; $1,250 and a $250 gift code for first place; "Keep your conspiracies fictional and your organizations original."
• Wed, Nov 25, 5 PM Mountain: the Estelle Center 2028 winter residency in La Veta, Colorado. $35 to apply, a private room, studio access, and a $500 stipend; it closes early once sixty applications arrive.
• Mon, Nov 30, 7 PM Eastern: SAQA's Color in Context: Green ($40 for up to three entries by November 15, $50 after) and its free Money, Money, Money virtual gallery, members only.
• Fri, Dec 4: priority deadline for the American Craft Council's new Craft Objects & Design Atlanta show (November 2027). $45 to apply, a $450 Early Career booth, US residents, and a free info session Tuesday, November 10, at 5 PM CT. Final deadline January 8.
• Dec 7–13: Folktale Week, free and on Instagram. The prompts are out: Glimpse, Wings, Hollow, Mischief, Thorn, Shapeshifter, and Golden.

Further out: Wed, Dec 9, 11:59 PM ET: Haystack's Open Studio Residency, two free weeks in Maine next May 23 to June 4, room and board included, fiber studio included; applications open Monday, November 16. · Thu, Dec 31: QuiltCon 2028 faculty applications. The guild still says "we have very few surface design based classes." Hint, hint. · Thu, Jan 14, 2027: the 38th Louie Awards, $75 for members and $105 for non-members through December 31, with Pet Cards and Specialty Print Techniques new this year. · Fri, Jan 15, 2027: Arrowmont's eleven-month Artists-in-Residence program in Gatlinburg, just over the mountains from me, with a private studio, a room, and a stipend; applications open November 15. · Rolling: Minted's November rounds are Baby Shower, 2027 Disney Stationery & Art, and Samsung Art, with Nursery Art and the Winter Holiday Greeting Card in December, and the Awesome Foundation gives $1,000 micro-grants every month, no strings.

Pattern Forecast

The forecasters say weathered, the shops say checked

WGSN and Coloro finished naming their A/W 28/29 key colours, and the last three are Elemental Verdigris, Healing Turmeric, and Smoky Amethyst. Verdigris is "a weathered blue-green tied to interest in restoration and calm," Turmeric is a yellow-orange built for "confidence and optimism," and Smoky Amethyst is a dusky purple for "spirituality" and "sanctuary." WGSN's Gemma Riberti told FashionUnited that "Consumers will be navigating the threshold of a new decade, and this sense of liminality informs the palette." Closer to home, Minwax named a pale, warm wood stain called Pickled Oak its 2027 Color of the Year, and Business of Home's High Point recap named the mood "folk nouveau" and "dark cottage," in mossy greens, rich browns, terracotta, and burgundy. Pantone's pick usually arrives the first week of December, and Pinterest has booked a Predicts 2027 preview for December 10.

What buyers put on the table this week:

• Polka dots, a smiling face, and clouds on kids' pajamas (Hanna Andersson with Dusen Dusen).
• Tile patterns and carved lines on rugs (Jeremiah Brent for Loloi), and pagodas, dragons, and fretwork (Vern Yip for Jaipur Living).
• Ten botanicals as fabric and wallcovering at once (Thibaut's Fairhaven).
• Refreshed prints on gauze and textured-cotton bedding (Target's Threshold).
• Cross-stitched napkin flowers and quilt patterns on wallpaper (Jenni Yolo for Chasing Paper).
• Redouté's 1827 fritillaria on journals (Paperblanks with the New York Botanical Garden).
• Charley Harper birds and Cath Kidston florals for March (Riley Blake), and Morris prints on cotton lawn (FreeSpirit).
• Small-scale checks and quilting on holiday home (H&M Home's Christmas collection).

Worth your time

Image: Frederic Church, Jamaica, July '65, oil sketch, Cooper Hewitt, photographed on my visit this week

• Watch: the V&A Academy's free taster lecture, "Paintings of Women and the Garden," with Christine Lalumia, released two weeks ago and free to stream through February 22. An hour of flowers, paint, and the women who kept the gardens.
• Learn: Threadless's holiday marketing checklist, twelve plain steps for anyone with a shop of any kind, and its new checkout, which now takes dollars, euros, and pounds.
• Listen: Haptic & Hue, "The Fabric of the First Refugees," on the Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfields. A textile history podcast with a storyteller's pace, and a new episode lands the first Thursday of most months.
• Read: Stories in the Seams by Dr. Sharbreon Plummer (Chronicle Books), a people's history of Black quilts and their makers. "Black quilts remind us that healing, connection, and creativity are still possible."
• Browse: Cooper Hewitt's more than 2,000 Frederic Church sketches, free to download in the public domain, starting with "In the Jungle, Jamaica" from August 1865. Oil and graphite botanical color studies, and nobody will mind if you trace. I stood in front of the palms yesterday, and the leaves are drawn leaf by leaf.
• Save a seat: the Renwick Gallery's reopening open house in Washington, Friday, November 13, 11 AM to 2 PM ET, free with registration; the Original Art awards ceremony at the Society of Illustrators the same evening, free with an RSVP; and the William Morris Gallery's first talk in its rehung rooms, Thursday, November 12, in London, with a private view of Earthly Paradise after.

Repeat After Me

Word of the week

Master agreement. The contract an agency signs once with a retailer or manufacturer so that every artist on its roster can be licensed under the same terms, without a new negotiation each time. Jewel Branding told us last week that its more than fifty artists now sit under the same agreement, and that partners can "search and select artwork directly" from a website. The practical bit is that when the paperwork is already done, the only thing standing between your print and the shelf is whether the buyer can picture it on the product. Make that picture for them. Mockup first, every time.

Until next Tuesday

Thank you for reading, friends. I'm headed home to the Smoky Mountains tomorrow with a camera roll full of New York and a notebook full of ideas. Go finish your Spoonflower shop before Thursday, put a mockup at the front of your portfolio, and I'll be back right here next Tuesday with the next round of news. Same time, same place. :)

If you have a friend who'd love a weekly date with the creative industry, send this along, and they can sign up right here.

Grateful for you!

P.S. Surface Design Immersion On Demand closes this Thursday, November 5, at 11:59 PM PT, and the next door opens in March at $500 more. If this is your year to begin in this breathtaking industry, come on in.

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