What is place-based design?
Our Process
Our Values
Meet Our Team
Katie Hayes
Lindsay McKelvey
Shirley
By Katie Hayes
Hillsborough, North Carolina
Whether it's one of Katie's original block prints, a wallpaper roll, or a pack of stationery, every piece of artwork at New South Pattern House tells the story of the Southeastern United States.
A floral textile print, but let’s make it using only native wildflowers from the appalachian mountains.
A hand-carved Great Blue Heron, like the one that visits your neighborhood pond.
A William Morris-inspired wallpaper – but one that celebrates the convergence of the Carolina piedmont and coastal plain.
Every design begins in Katie's hands, as an original sketch or a hand-carved block. From there, it either gets hand-inked with North Carolina-made inks and run through Shirley (our large format Conrad Monotype press), or digitized into repeating patterns for wallpaper, stationery and fabric.
Katie spends up to three weeks carving each limited edition block, and sells fewer than 100 imprints from each of these carvings. If you miss out on one of these originals, never fear-- many of the motifs from these pieces find new life in Katie's patterns.
New South Pattern House is a living wage employer. Our packaging is 100% recyclable or compostable, and every New South product is either made-to-order or produced in small batches with trusted partners— because we don't believe in making things the land has to pay for later.
We raise thousands of dollars each year for conservation and arts initiatives across the Southeastern United States. Some of that happens through direct giving. Some of it happens through editions, like our Red Wolf print, numbered to seventeen, one for each red wolf remaining in the wild at the time of printing.
Our goal has always been the same: if you love something enough to hang it on your wall, you should love it enough to protect it.
Finalist - Our State Magazine Made in NC Awards, 2021
Best in Show - Enofest, Durham NC - 2024, 2025
Best in Show - Jerry Miller Award for Printmaking, Lazy Daze, Cary NC, 2023
Best 2-D Art - Enofest, Durham NC, 2022
Third Place - Art in the Arboretum, Greensboro NC - 2021, 2025
Piedmont Craftsmen Guild
Orange County Artist Guild
Durham Craft Market
Katie is an award-winning printmaker and pattern designer with a lifelong obsession with native ecosystems, regional species, and the tangled undergrowth of the Southeastern United States. Every piece of artwork you see here began as one of her sketches or hand-carvings.
Katie is our resident plant ID expert, the source of all our Southern Naturalist fan-girl vibes, and the reason we know the difference between a Prothonotary Warbler and a Yellow Warbler. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, founded New South Pattern House in 2019, and spends her days upstairs in the studio, covered in ink.
She also has strong opinions about late-80s country music and makes a very good margarita.
Lindsay joined the New South team in 2024 with twenty years of interior design experience and a degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She brings a designer's eye to everything — from fabric colorway approvals to trade client inquiries.
Lindsay keeps the studio running with calm creative energy, impeccable Spotify instincts, and what we can only describe as flawless graphic tee taste. She also makes stunning stained glass work.
Shirley is the undisputed matriarch of the NSPH team. Her 27 x 48 inch press bed can accommodate some truly massive linocuts, and allows Katie to dream and carve up designs at a life-sized scale.
Shirley is named after Katie's grandmother, who was a wonderful watercolorist and (like our beloved press) had quite the bold personality.
Note: Shirley also has the most job security of any of us on the team, because frankly — she's just too heavy to move.