Organizing patterns and designs with DigiKam

Organizing patterns and designs with DigiKam

A sign of 2020: a tag search for “Christmas” and “design” and “pandemic” nets me more than one result.

What with all the product photography, I regularly get messages from iCloud and Google telling me I’ve filled up my free storage. But I really like being able to ask Google for all the photographs of “cat” to find that one picture of Ramses (and to learn how many of my plush dragons the AI thinks are cats…). But I didn’t like looking for pictures from a given month and trying to remember whether I used the iPad or the Android phone to take them.

So I’ve been downloading them all and assigning them tags in DigiKam. And partway through, I thought, “what if I tag all my designs”? And you guys, it’s been amazing.

I have tagged them by size, including tags like “NWT3” and “NTT4″ so I can find all the designs that are no wider than 3″ and no taller than 4” (and therefore fit on mini composition books or valet trays). I also have tended to forget that I own designs outside of the Urban Threads/Embroidery Library stash, and now I can select designs tagged “dragon” and remember that I have quite a few from other designers (including my own.)

The “Christmask” ornament is from Designs by Little Bee, and the “Safety First” gingerbread ornament is from Urban Threads. Neither one does referrals, alas.