Where I stem from…
I'm Katey Lam, a surface pattern and interior designer living in the mountains of southwestern Colorado. Wood Lily Designs is named for a wildflower that hides in the quiet nooks of fallen trees across our high meadows. You have to slow down to find one, and that is where all of my work begins.
My corner of the world is high desert and alpine meadow, and everything scrubby and beautiful in between. My patterns come from what is actually underfoot here: barbed wire fences overtaken by weeds, the cracked texture of old adobe walls, muddy trails left by elk after the rain, and wildflowers gathered on long walks with no destination.
Before I drew patterns, I studied living things as a biologist and taught high school science. Today I work as an interior designer, so I think about how a pattern will feel in a room, not just how it looks on a screen. Scale, color, light, and the people who live there all shape the design.
I have also been sewing my whole life. I know how fabric drapes, gathers, and wears, and I design with that in mind.
How every pattern comes to life…
Every collection starts outside. Plants are foraged, textures photographed, and shapes sketched and painted by hand long before anything opens on a screen. Only then does the work move into Adobe Illustrator, where I build it into a finished, repeating pattern. Every line is drawn by my own hand.
The result is a pattern rooted in a real place, not styled to look like one.
If something here speaks to you, I would love to create a pattern that is customized just for you.