Heleen van den Thillart
Hello, Thank you for visiting!
I am Heleen a Dutch pattern designer and illustrator for postcards, fabrics, wallpaper and gift wrappings. I have always loved to draw and now I can earn a living with doing what I love most. I work from home. I have two young children who I take care of during the day, so I work when they are a sleep or in the evening. All my designs start with hand drawings. I scan those drawings and edit them in the computer. I know the computer can do these things automatically, but I allways end up editing the computer traced scans myself. I am really focused on the details and sometimes computers miss those. My designs have the look and feel of hand drawn images with the benefits of digital artwork. This means a lot of my designs I can scale down or up without loosing the quality and sharpness of the design. Most of my designs are designed for children, because mine are my biggest fan. But I do make some abstract and floral designs too. I love making designs for my kids or our home, like curtains, pillows or children’s wear.
Here is some background information about me. I have a bachelor degree in Science and in Design: a unique combination, but I love both! When I was 18 I started at the Technical University of Delft with Design Engineering. I like drawing and working with my hands, but further on in my studies I did less and less of this. So after I got my Bachelor degree I applied for the Royal Art Academy in The Hague. I studied Graphic Design there and got totally in love with typography and type design. I like the mathematics and scientific approache to designing with type. After graduating I worked as a teacher for a couple of years. I have taught science classes and design classes to children from 4 up to 16 years old. I love teaching, but I missed drawing and designing myself. The kids did all the fun work! So when I became pregnant of my son I decided to become a stay at home mom and try to do some drawing and design work in between his naps. At the end of 2014 I discoverd Spoonflower, where you could upload your pattern designs and earn money if people buy fabric with your designs. I decided to give this at least a year, but allready made my first sale in the first month. My Spoonflower shop is still growing and I make new designs every week. I had never designed patterns before, but I love it so much! It’s just like type design, very mathematical and precise because of the repeat and yet playful and loose because of my use of hand drawings. I love this combination.
my workspace at home
me working on some drawings
me behind the sewing machine, working on some baby bibs and teethers for my Etsy shop