Spoonflower

Yesterday, I tweaked and uploaded a design to Spoonflower.  This is terribly exciting.  In about a week or so, I will have a fat quarter of self-designed fabric in my mailbox.  It was insanely simple.  

The impetus behind designing and printing my own fabric was necessity.  I use remnants, swatches, one-of-a-kind finds for some of my pillows. When I found out one of my favorite fabrics was going the way of the buffalo, and, my jobber wasn't giving up his source, I had to take matters into my own hands.  I had a design in mind, something basic, traditional, with a few of my personal flourishes.  (I am partial to arrows and circles).  DIY Magazine had a post on The Facebook about Spoonflower.  Perfect!  I drew up my design, scanned it in, futzed with it in Photoshop a bit and uploaded it to spoonflower.com.

I knew I wanted a mirrored repeat, so I only uploaded a quarter of the actual drawing to make sure the repeat was truly mirrored.  Spoonflower gives you multiple repeat options and converts it for you.  I could have done this in Photoshop, but, eh.  

Next I wanted to see what kind of fabrics these guys had.  I had a quick email volley with Gart at Spoonflower, and less than a week later, there were three fabric samples in my mailbox.  Even better, the samples were printed with the Spoonflower color chart so I could see how the printing came out on each fabric, the colors they used and how each fabric finish impacted the final color of my design.  For the record, I went with a cotton-linen blend (it was a heavier weight than I expected - good - and has a great natural tone - even better as my design will be printed without background and rely on the fabric's natural color), in T28/Y2.  Don't be afraid, that is just the color designation - which I downloaded from the Spoonflower site.  And that, my friends, was that.

I ordered a fat quarter swatch for something like $5 bucks.  I want to see how the design is represented, what the bleed is, and how the full color prints in earnest.  I will keep one and all posted - hope to get the fabric late next week.

Ultimately, Spoonflower may not offer the quality I really want for my pillows.  I have fantasies about beginning my own micro-lending woman-powered community in India to foot weave my designs.  But, I figure, may as well use Spoonflower, test the look of my designs for an incredibly cheap price, before I take that leap...xx A