Kathleen Gretz – Artist, Pattern and Interior Designer
La Selva Studio designs can be found on Spoonflower. Customs options are available upon request.
It’s often commented on among our friends that when you leave Silicon Valley and head over “the hill” to the coast, you can feel the release. Just as you start your descent down the mountains and then catch that first glimpse of the ocean you can breathe, your shoulders relax and your heart gets lighter. This is the feeling I hope to share with you through classic, thoughtful, pattern collections and designs for creating relaxing and peaceful spaces.
The Inspiration
Welcome to my world of design. I truly believe that pattern and color elevate our lives and inspire us to layer-up our homes for warm and inviting spaces. My inspiration comes from all over, nature, architecture, you name it. But when I sit down to design, I’m not thinking of the fabric but of the room it will go in. The people that will use it. And the timelessness and comfort of a well-loved home.
I love to sketch vignettes. Small snapshots of pattern and color arranged with favorite furnishings, accessories and art. Putting wallpaper up, then adding fabric, rugs and art, help me decide on scale, color and most of all, the feeling a room may have. This process (part of my interior design training) really gets the ideas flowing and is usually how I end up forming my collections.
My Experience
My first career was in the graphic arts. I loved it! The logo design, page layout, typography, plus using all the design apps was right up my art alley. Learning how to produce both printed and digital products was a great foundation for my artistic adventures to come.
I then fell into designing interiors. Finding a love for creating beautiful spaces, I studied and spent the next 15 years designing rooms and entire homes for my San Francisco Bay Area clients. Searching for fabrics and pulling complementing patterns together inspired me to create my own designs, landing on the perfect marriage between the graphic and interior arts. My passion for line, scale, color, contrast and texture, gleaned from both careers, has found its home in the wonderful world of textile and surface pattern design.
I love interpreting what I see into beautiful and useful patterns, that in the end, create beautiful and useful products but design can also be collaborative. I’ve worked with many interior designers over the years to create custom fabrics just for them and their clients. Shoot me an email if you’d like to chat about that.
About the Fabrics
Creating unique patterns is a joy and knowing that they are printed with the environment in mind is a gift. Spoonflower fabrics are printed in the US using water-based inks and are printed to order so there is no waste with unused fabrics. The fabrics vary in origin, content, weight and texture so be sure to order a swatch before you place your larger order for yardage or products. Colors will vary on the different substrates. For a review of my favorites for home decor click HERE.
La Selva Studio
Named for La Selva Beach, California. A little slice of heaven along the Northern California coast and a home away from home.