All of our patterns start with three somewhat dark base colors and a fourth color which is used to lighten and brighten the other three. This fourth color is usually White, but we sometimes also use Tan, Yellow or Gray for other interesting effects. The finished product is called a "cane" and can be compared to a roll of slice-and-bake cookie dough where the pattern is visible in any cross-section.

For CALICO, we use the base colors and two lightened versions of each of them, arranged into nine different flowers. The stack of flowers is reduced and recombined to make a square cane with 144 flowers on its face.

The Summer Calico pattern was used in a tutorial we wrote some time ago. Click here to see how it was made.

This pattern was first developed in 1998