I just have to rave about Spoonflower, a website where you can design your own fabric, and get it printed! (for a price of course, but it’s not too bad) When QM Executive Editor June Dudley found Spoonflower and asked if someone on staff would like to try her hand at fabric design, I quickly volunteered to be the guinea pig. I started with a couple of quilting motifs I had designed for Quiltmaker patterns.
These were Adobe Illustrator drawings, which I adapted to create shapes that could be filled with color. I chose one of my favorite color combinations: lime green and aqua green, and started playing with different effects: layering shapes on top of background colors, blending backgrounds, adding stripes, repeating motifs of different sizes–basically just having fun with shape and color. Almost too easily, I had five different “prints” that I liked. I went to Spoonflower’s FAQ section and watched the very-user-friendly videos about how to save my files for their printing process.
I uploaded my designs and ordered yardage.
Within a very short time, I received a package in the mail, containing my first-ever fabrics, beautifully wrapped in tissue with a personal note from a Spoonflower tech. They arrived in time to be included in “Fabricadabra”, an article in our Quiltmaker July/August ’09 issue.
Here’s a block I designed and made with them.
This was a great experience. Give Spoonflower a try!
How cool is that! Great fabrics and great block too! :0)
Thanks so much for this info! I had no idea that site existed. What fun this will be!!
Thanks so much for the kind words! Your quilt block is beautiful!
I want to make a baby blanket using the attic window block but couldn’t find the right fabric for the “window”. I’ll try my hand at designing a fabric. I second the “how cool is that” comment.
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I tried it. The quality of print and fabric is excellent, a soft hand, it could also be hand quilted. Earning money in this way may be difficult. Customers have to order 3 yds of one design to make it pay. So it is more for the fun. But it opens up a new world of recreating all the designs I cannot find in the market elsewhere — like vintage design. This goes far beyond printing one’s own ideas.