One of my favorite things about Barbel's classes is the mini history lesson. This one did not disappoint. I really enjoyed doing the exercises as we worked through the evolution of Paisley. For my project I decided to do something with the reflected motif, I want to play around with some fun less structured types of Paisleys and Paisloids but I wanted to get this one completed first as it seemed the most challenging. 

I started off with a sketch, though I didn't have a nice fine liner pen so I traced it in ball-point, which did not digitize very well as it was a bit of a smudgy mess, so I had to retrace my design in Illustrator. 

I mirrored it vertically and horizontally and colored with the live paint tool, keeping my black outlines. 

I added some additional motifs and fillers to complete the center. 

Once I began working on the repeat I added in some other pines from my sketches as well as some motifs I drew in Illustrator to fit the empty spaces. 

My computer does not enjoy these heavy documents, and I think I broke my brain a little trying to figure out where to put my bounding box. But it finally all came together. I'm planning to play around some more with color themes as well as some other Paisley styles. Thank you for the wonderful instruction.

My pattern tile:

More repeats: 

 

My sketches:

Some lighter colorways, I think I prefer these to the very dark colors. I might have some curtains made for my living room.