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About Me

 Hey there everyone!


Manic Pop started in October 2011 as a journey to document and showcase my fashion design work as well as try new techniques out, make some sewing friends across the world to also discuss design and art. I am highly influenced by vintage 60s and 70s looks - my favorite style being mod. I also love pop art, public art, and major metro cities like NYC.

I am a pattern designer and surface designer.

 My work has been featured on Bustle and I've been incorporated in art shows in Chicago.  I have also had my own solo exhibition in August 2013 at Lomography in Chicago.

If you haven't checked it out already, I have a variety of clothing and accessory items up on my Kin Custom shop with my own original prints on them! There are also fabrics available for purchase in my Spoonflower shop. New things being added all the time to both!


I got my BFA in Fashion Design from the Illinois Institute of Art -- Chicago in 2007.



To be considered to be a pattern tester in upcoming PDF pattern releases, email me at Nicole@manicpop.com! Please also let me know what size you would make based on the standard size table for our PDF patterns.



Popular posts from this blog

Latch Hook Rug Update

A little under a month ago I received all of my supplies to take on one of the biggest long-term projects I have ever taken on - a self-designed latch hook rug. I don't know why, but I am clearly nuts. So beginning today I am posting photos each month, (preferably on the 1st of each month) progress of this gigantic shag rug. See how I started it here (scroll down past posting of my $10 dress).  This is a photo of it today:  Yes, I used the candelabra for scale. Haha.   This rug is really soft and is fun to run your fingers through.  It doesn't look like much was accomplished, but though the number of packages we have gone through of pre-cut latch hook rug yarn already I have calculated that  we've used over 2500 strands for this ie.) 8 packages. I also just ordered 10 more packages of lime green since that's what I ran out of first and 6 more packages of straw yellow. There is still quite a bit to go, but you see the blue row squares? Each of th
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DIY Trapeze Dress

I'm a pretty big fan of tent dresses (or trapeze dresses - call it what you want). They're simple, easy-to-make and you can have many variations of them. These are a fun style to wear for spring and summer!  See this DIY from a Good Housekeeping Crafts book from 1971 - photos at the end of my own trapeze top from a while ago! (Bear with me on the photos here - this book is quite cumbersome and hard to scan.)  Applique patterns, in case you wanted the dress to look EXACTLY like the photo. (But why?)  How to cut the fabric efficiently. (This is actually pretty important cost-wise for you - especially with something this big.)  Using pattern instructions from my patternmaking book from college, I created this swingy trapeze top a bit ago. I used sweater fabric from a thrift store find for the collar of this top.   I also opened up the back on the pattern to have a diamond shape.   It can easily be belted like in this photo fo
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How Print on Demand Sites Helped Me! And Pros and Cons

I don't know about you, but I don't always have a ton of time.  Well, ok -- maybe that was before the pandemic hit. But one of the things I have learned over time being a designer of sorts and loving fashion design was that it seemed I never had enough time to do/make everything I wanted to have available within a product line to sell. Especially not when I was working a full-time job either!  Bags! Shoes! And yeah, duh -- clothing! It seemed most of my friends who are designers made all of their own items from scratch on their machines and I just didn't want to sit at my machine after working 40+ hours a week. Maybe for myself only but not as a side hustle. But I always had requests from people - "Can you make me something? I want something designed by you!"  I really appreciated the sentiment, but often times it was just as confusing/hard for me as it was for them.  I would sit there and go "How should I adjust this for them? Am I even gonna find that fabri
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