The Pattern Post: Register It Before the Price Goes Up

The Pattern Post · Tuesday, November 10, 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 10, 2026.

The gist: Okay, so the whole quilting world is packing for Houston, it is about to cost more to copyright your artwork, and the fashion runways counted their prints and came up with more than ever. Make something this week, friends, and then go register it!

From Bonnie's Desk

Home to the mountains

Home Sweet Home

Hi friend, and happy Tuesday! I'm writing to you from home this week, back in the Smoky Mountains after our few days in New York. Monday was a meeting at a long table with the most wonderful people, Tuesday was museums and shop windows, and by the weekend the grocery list on my counter read cookie dough ice cream and dino nuggets for the kids. That is the whiplash of this life, and I love it so much. The city was so fun, truly, but I'm glad to be back home falling asleep to the sound of the wind in the trees. 🍃

While it is chilly outside, my head and my heart are in spring. I spent the end of the week writing my articles for Volume 8 of Pattern Magazine. I want the writing to feel approachable and enjoyable, like a conversation across the table. I can't wait for you to read it!

I also spent part of the week in my inbox from 2014. Yes, 2014! Next Tuesday I'm on a panel at Kajabi's Now Open summit, and to get ready I went back and reread the emails that arrived after my very first online class aired on CreativeLive in August of that year. A big company had asked me to teach a class. I had never taught anyone anything. I said yes, it was the most nerve-wracking day of my life, and I went home thrilled to get back to designing fabric and never do that again. Then the emails started. Jamey wrote, "I know your passion is designing but you may want to rethink your overall place in the world – as a teacher you could help and inspire so many others." The thing I was most relieved to be done with turned out to be the most meaningful work of my life.

So if you know how to do something that somebody else is wishing they could learn, come sit with us next Tuesday, November 17. Now Open is free and live, noon to 4 PM ET, and my panel, The 7-Figure Launch Blueprint, is at 2:45 PM ET with Natalie Ellis, Ashley Brock, and Danielle Leslie. Emma Grede opens the day and Brendon Burchard closes it. Save your seat right here.

And a note from my studio! Pattern Week: The Gift Wrap Edition starts next Monday, November 16, and it is completely free. You'll get beginner-friendly pattern design lessons Monday through Friday, and by Friday you'll have you'll have a pattern, ready to become gift wrap in time for Christmas. No experience needed. Save your free seat, and bring your most creative friend!

Out in the wider world, the quilting companies are shipping their spring fabrics and packing for Houston, the Copyright Office is about to raise the price of registering your work, and the fashion runways counted their prints and found more of them than ever.

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

In this issue

• The International Quilt Festival opens in Houston this Thursday with more than 1,400 quilts, and Riley Blake grew its family by a whole fabric company. A whole company!
• The U.S. Copyright Office plans to raise its registration fees this fall, and the group option most of us use for a collection goes from $85 to $130. Register before it does!
• Fashion's spring 2027 runways were counted look by look, and nearly a third of them carried embroidery, ruffles, florals, or beading.

We've got this! 💪

Making Headlines

Houston opens Thursday, and fabric got there early!

Image: Quilts, Inc., the show floor at International Quilt Festival Houston

The International Quilt Festival opens in Houston this Thursday, November 12, with "over 1,400 quilts, 500+ vendor booths, and more than 275 classes, lectures, and events," and it runs through Sunday. Classes start today, daily admission is $18 (kids ten and under are free), and the Viewers' Choice winner is announced Sunday at 1 PM in Houston. The judged show winners are already posted, with Moda sponsoring two of the five Master Awards, and the lecture list includes Susie Monday on using an iPad for design and Linda J. Hahn on "Passion to Profit." Since Quilts, Inc. retired Quilt Market last year, Festival is now the room where the whole quilting world meets at once, which is why the houses spent the past week tidying their desks.

Riley Blake had the biggest week of all. Last Monday it announced the 2027 RBD Block Challenge, "our largest annual sew along," kicking off January 5 with a Confetti Cottons version and a Batiks version ("you can use ANY fabrics you want"). And on Thursday, Wilmington Prints posted that it "has joined the Riley Blake Designs family," so Wilmington's releases now come through Riley Blake's sales reps. That is a lot of bolts.

Image: Riley Blake Designs, the 2027 RBD Block Challenge in Confetti Cottons

The other fabric houses showed up with new names (which is my favorite kind of news!). FreeSpirit's Tula Pink Legendary is landing in shops now in cotton lawn, and Sarah Fielke's debut collections Memory Lane and Old Quilts, New Life are coming next July. Art Gallery Fabrics is shipping Katarina Roccella's sixteen-print Sgraffito, Ruby Star Society is shipping Sarah Watts's tattoo-inspired Ink Shop on canvas, and Windham's Artisan Classics put twelve woven plaids and checks in stores. If you can get to Houston, walk the vendor floor with a notebook and write down which booths have the longest lines. If you can't, do what I do and study the houses' Instagram feeds this week like they're a trade show, because this week they are. 🧵

The Copyright Office is raising its prices, so register your collection this month.

Image: Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, the James Madison Building, home of the U.S. Copyright Office

The U.S. Copyright Office sent Congress a new fee schedule in July, and the Register wrote that the Office "seeks to implement these new fees in the fall of 2026." Congress had 120 days to object, that window runs out in mid-November, and the Office says it "will announce the effective date in a final rule to be published in the Federal Register." The proposed schedule moves the Standard Application from $65 to $85, the Single Application (for registering a work by its sole author) from $45 to $55, and the two group options most of us use for collections, a group of unpublished works (up to ten) and a group of two-dimensional artwork (up to twenty published works), from $85 to $130 each.

Here is the part I'd underline: a group registration is still the best deal: the Office itself points out that at the maximum number of works, applicants "will pay no more than $13 per" work. But $85 is less than $130, so if you have a finished collection sitting on your desk, this is the month to open it and file it as a group. I promise you, future licensing conversations go so much easier when the registration number is already in the folder. :)

Fashion counted its runway looks

FashionUnited published a tally of the Paris spring 2027 shows on Thursday: of 997 looks across sixteen houses, 31 percent carried "ruffles, fringe, sequins, beading, embroidery, 3-D flowers, feathers or appliqué," and at Dior, Chloé, and Isabel Marant it was more than 60 percent. The piece calls it "A turn towards prints, charms, embellishment and colour," names "graphic and floral print" as Dries Van Noten's two biggest trends, and says buyers expect the decoration to carry into fall/winter 2027 with "deep purples, bordeaux and mineral neutrals in place of this summer's brights." A number for your pitch deck: 81 percent of luxury customers under 35 say they buy first for design and creativity.

Fashion is the corner of our industry most of us forget to pitch, and this is the year to remember it. Gorman's current roster reads like an illustration agency, with Monika Forsberg, Cornelia O'Donovan, and Rosie Harbottle all on the rack, and last month Boden licensed a wildflower print from its own archive to Stripe & Stare for a nine-piece capsule.

Pattern POV

Finished.

Every bit of good news this week happened to finished work. The quilts hanging in Houston are bound. The looks in Paris were sewn, pressed, and walked. The Copyright Office registers the work you have done, and buyers license the art you have finished.

I know the pull of the folder marked “WIP”, my friends. A collection that isn't done yet can still be perfect. Actually finishing it is the whole trick, and it is the part most of us put off. Growth favors those who begin, and this industry rewards those who finish. So pick the collection closest to done, give it a date this week, and let it out the door, imperfect in the most useful ways. Let's make room for our work to be seen. Everything else in this issue starts after that.

More news in brief

🏷️ Licensing Expo has a new name, and 2027 is on the calendar. Last Tuesday Informa's licensing group became Brand Licensing by Informa, so the Las Vegas show is now Brand Licensing Expo, May 25 to 27, 2027, at Mandalay Bay, with early-bird pricing through January 31, and Brand Licensing Europe is set for September 28 to 30, 2027, in London. Anna Clarke, the group's SVP, described the business as "a dynamic ecosystem of brand collaborations, partnerships, extensions, and activations." Same show floor, longer badge. If you've ever wondered what that floor is like, we exhibited there for the very first time and filmed the whole thing, booth build to last handshake. Our Licensing Expo documentary is right here.

🀄 Mahjong tiles are the newest canvas for licensed art. Licensing International's report last Monday counted 1,327 mahjong club listings in the U.S. and walked through the licensed sets arriving for the holidays: Hallmark's uses "painted and engraved tiles drawn from its archives, including pansies from a classic greeting card design," and Jonathan Adler's artwork is on a set for Michaels. On Tuesday, Bridgewater Candle Co. added a Sweet Grace tile set to the pile. A game board that needs 144 tiny illustrations is a brief, friends.

Image: Miss Mahjong x Hallmark, the Miss Heirloom set and its archive pansy tiles

💌 Spring Fair wrote a love letter to first-time card publishers. On Thursday the UK trade show interviewed Adriana Lovesy of Greetings Lab, whose Launch Pad stand gives first-time publishers a place on the floor and whose members "have secured their first licensing deals, including designs picked up by John Lewis." Her advice to buyers works for us too: "Be curious, and don't just stick to the brands you already know!" Spring Fair runs February 7 to 10 at the NEC Birmingham and is free for trade. The show said Friday that more than 200 brand-new exhibitors are already booked, Hallmark Cards among them for the first time, alongside a wave of illustration-led card and print studios.

🕯️ Illustrators are on the holiday table this year. Business of Home's roundup last Tuesday included Hudson Grace's holiday collaboration with New York artist Rob Wilson, "exclusive illustrations on tabletop and glassware, cocktail and paper napkins, and oversize matchboxes," a line that first launched in 2023 and keeps growing, plus Hill House Home's second holiday collection with Williams Sonoma, "with layered patterns and playful details."

📚 Two notes for anyone who writes patterns or books. The Craft Industry Alliance reported last Monday that shops using the Replic platform sell "about $350 of PDF patterns per month on average," with wholesale at "about 60% of suggested retail," which means indie pattern designers now have a wholesale channel into fabric shops. And C&T Publishing has a new owner, Globe Pequot, whose CEO says "we plan to keep investing in new C&T books for years to come." Good news if your book proposal is half written.

💻 Adobe MAX opened this morning. The keynote started at 9 AM ET, free online, with Illustrator's "Design Better in Illustrator" session from Kladi Vergine on the MAX Online schedule, Adam J. Kurtz on personal work today at 1:30 PM ET, and Sneaks tomorrow at 5:30 PM ET, hosted by Terry Crews. I'll have the Illustrator release notes for you next week.

🛍️ Spoonflower posted the Added Texture winners on Thursday, with first place going to a first-time winner, osasere, for a cream dandelion on sage, and Cozy Cabincore voting is open through next Tuesday, November 17, at 3 PM EST.

🗞️ In other news, Rifle Paper Co. opened a second store on Saturday, taking over a former Paper Source storefront in Tampa's Hyde Park Village, its first boutique outside Winter Park, with hand-painted details, custom wallpaper, a children's reading nook, and an opening collection of Florida-only prints with pirate ships, alligators, and seashells.

🗞️ And Spoonflower posted December's themes on Friday: Vintage Stripes for wallpaper closes Tuesday, November 17, at 3 PM EST, and Sweet Motifs for fabric, tiny repeats with motifs an inch or smaller in a set palette of nine soft colors, closes Tuesday, November 24. Sweet Motifs was made for the quilters among us, so go dig out your smallest florals!

Open Doors

Opportunities open right now

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

• Thu, Nov 12: the Booooooom Illustration Awards. Free for 1 image in 1 category, $30 for up to ten, five $1,000 prizes including Product & Merchandise, judged by Jean Jullien, Claudia Rubín, Hassan Rahim, and Naomi Otsu. 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, any 2D or 3D medium including textiles, worldwide, fee on the entry portal. The Hopper Prize closes the same day at 11:59 PM Pacific, $40 for up to ten images, with two $4,500 grants and four $1,000 grants, any medium including textile art, worldwide.
• 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, and every design keeps earning up to $20 per unit.
• Wed, Nov 25, 5 PM Mountain, or the first sixty applications: the Estelle Center 2028 winter residency in La Veta, Colorado. $35 to apply, a private room, studio access, and a $500 stipend.
• 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.
• Tue, Dec 1: the Cheltenham Illustration Awards, £10 per submission, up to three, an annual publication and a touring show.
• Dec 7–13: Folktale Week, free and on Instagram. The prompts: Glimpse, Wings, Hollow, Mischief, Thorn, Shapeshifter, and Golden.
• 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, and close early at 1,000.

Further out: Thu, Dec 31: QuiltCon 2028 faculty applications, with a travel stipend, for design workshops where students use pencil and paper, or technology, to design quilts. Mon, Jan 4, 2027, 5:30 PM GMT: the Post Wave Prize for Illustration, free, £3,000, a funded trip to China, and a wall at Bologna, for illustrators not yet published in children's books. Fri, Jan 8, 2027, midnight PT: Communication Arts 2027 Illustration, with a "For Sale" category for prints, cards, and licensing, no AI. Thu, Jan 14, 2027: the 38th Louie Awards, $75 for members and $105 for non-members through December 31. Rolling: Minted's Fine Art, Photography Fine Art, and Pairs & Sets challenges, with a West Elm round picking fifty pieces and ten exclusives; the Awesome Foundation gives $1,000 every month, no strings; and Arrowmont's eleven-month residency in Gatlinburg opens for applications in mid-November.

Pattern Forecast

The shops want plaid.

Image: Rust-Oleum, Mauve Classic, the 2027 Wall Paint Color of the Year

Rust-Oleum named a smoky mauve its 2027 Wall Paint Color of the Year last Monday, and with that the paint houses are done picking. Mauve Classic is "a modern take on mauve, with a sophisticated, smoky quality that feels both fresh and familiar," and Kendra Cardin of Rust-Oleum says "We're seeing color move in a warmer, more grounded direction." Design Milk's scorecard of twelve brands, published Wednesday, is mostly greens and browns, so a dusty pink is a welcome guest at the table.

📌 Pantone's reveal event is set for Thursday, December 3, in Miami, and Pinterest Predicts usually follows a week later.

In the shops, the word is nostalgia. Faire's holiday report says 78 percent of Gen Z shoppers want "nostalgic, screen-free gifts," orders for crafts and hobbies are up 58 percent, tartan and plaid are up 93 percent, and "grannycore" is "the fastest-growing holiday decor style on Faire." At High Point, two of the five Style Spotters picked hand-painted furniture, and Isabel Ladd put it plainly: "Hand painted furnishings, where you can really see the artist's hand, is what makes it for me." Grandma's plaid, your handwriting. 🍂

Image: my pressed flowers, a year in the making

What buyers put on the table this week:

• Illustrations on napkins, glassware, and matchboxes, from Hudson Grace with Rob Wilson.
• Layered patterns on holiday bedding, from Hill House Home with Williams Sonoma.
• An archive wildflower on Tencel underthings, from Boden with Stripe & Stare.
• Tattoo motifs on canvas, from Sarah Watts for Ruby Star Society.
• Sgraffito florals on quilting cotton, from Katarina Roccella for Art Gallery Fabrics.
• Twelve woven plaids and checks, from Windham's Artisan Classics.
• Matisse-style peonies on midi skirts, from Gorman.
• Archive pansies on mahjong tiles, from Hallmark.

Worth your time

Image: Craft in America, Ato Ribeiro working on a wooden quilt sculpture, Mark Markley photograph

• Watch: Craft in America's two new episodes, NORTH and SOUTH, stream free on the PBS app from this Friday, November 13, five weeks before they air. Tia Keobounpheng "weaves complex geometric patterns with thread on wooden canvas," Ato Ribeiro builds wooden quilts from kente and adinkra, and the Osceola-Zepeda family sews Seminole patchwork in the Everglades.
• Learn: the American Folk Art Museum's free Zoom conversation The Subversive Stitch Revisited, Wednesday, December 2, at 1 PM ET, on embroidery as "a meaningful medium that reflects stories of both women's oppression and liberation." Recorded if you can't make it live.
• Listen: The Illustration Department Podcast with Giuseppe Castellano, whose November 3 episode with Lauren Paige Conrad is about what "productive" really means and why small wins deserve a party, and Business of Home's October 29 conversation with Mark Masiello on how Form Portfolios runs its licensing business.
• Read: Business of Home's profile of Pittsburgh painter Cara George, whose Otea Textiles patterns start as pencil and watercolor ("I want the finished pattern to feel well-designed, but I also want you to be able to see the hand behind it"), and Deena Beverley's Playful Stitch (Batsford, out Thursday in the UK and November 17 in the US), which she calls "messy play for grownups."
• Browse: the Textile Museum of Canada's online collection, more than 15,000 objects from 200 regions, open all night, and the American Folk Art Museum's free Locating Girlhood in New York, about 100 samplers, needlework pictures, and embroidered maps, through February 28.
• Save a seat: Cooper Hewitt's Director's Talk with textile artist Josh Tafoya, Thursday, November 19, at 6 PM ET in New York ($25); the Piedmont Craftsmen's Fair in Winston-Salem, Saturday and Sunday, November 21 and 22, with more than 100 artisans and live demonstrations; and Knit & Stitch Harrogate, November 19 to 22, from £19.

Repeat After Me

Word of the week

Lawn. A fine, lightweight, tightly woven cotton with a smooth, almost silky hand, said to take its name from Laon, the French town that first made it. Liberty's Tana Lawn is the famous one, and this week FreeSpirit put Tula Pink's Legendary on lawn and called it "light, drapey and beautifully soft," a few weeks after it did the same with the Morris prints. The practical bit is that lawn is an apparel substrate. When a house asks for lawn, it is asking for blouses, dresses, and scarves, so your motif needs to hold up at garment scale and in a smaller repeat than a quilt would ever need. A buyer who says "lawn" is telling you where your print is going to live.

Until next Tuesday

Thank you for reading, friends. We're staying home for Thanksgiving this year, and I cannot wait. Go register your collection before the price goes up, save your seat for Pattern Week and Open Now, and I'll be back right here next Tuesday. 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. Keep an eye on my Instagram this Friday. I've been shooting b-roll all week for something I have wanted to tell you about for months, and I can't say a word until then. 😆

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