Custom designed fabric, at last!
Make • October 13th, 2008You may remember some time ago I was dreaming of decoration plans for my home, and I considered crafting certain fabric designs, or painting them, and using them to reupholster some of our furniture, but none of those handmade options sounded like they would produce a good quality product. And then, months later, when I was looking for fabric to make our baby’s bedding, I looked and looked for nice contemporary designs and couldn’t find anything, not even in already made products like bedsheets. And the list of my frustrations with the lack of choices in fabric goes on…
So as soon as I learned about Spoonflower, a new company that prints your custom designs on fabric, I couldn’t wait to get on that wagon. Now, Spoonflower does not print on upholstery fabric yet. They don’t do knits either, or silk, or canvas. At this point, it’s only cotton. But man, the promise of printing my own designs, art, or whatever on fabric, and then making something with it is pretty darn close to Nirvana for a geeky crafter (”artisan” sounds better) like me. Not to mention, I expect them to grow BIG (please, God!) and then offer all other fabric choices, and oh dear, I’ll go crazy and won’t be able to sleep ever again doing all the projects I want to do with the glorious power of custom fabric at my fingertips.
However, before all of that, I must learn to crawl. So I signed up to receive an invitation to test the Beta service, and I completely forgot about it thinking that it would be light years before I’d be admitted. But three business days later I got it. Oh, the joy!… Immediately followed by the overwhelming decision of what to print…
First I tried all designs in my playground, thinking that I could try printing one of them in big scale and then stretch it and hang it like art. However, most of them are in a small resolution, and the ones that aren’t don’t convert well to LAB color, what Spoonflower uses.
Then I thought I would print my fabric designs for the breakfast room chairs, except I already reupholstered those chairs. The list of quick and dirty ideas ended, and I realized that I would have to design something new! ARRG!!!… The endless possibilities overwhelmed me… So much power in my hands! Spoonflower, where were you when I was about to make my baby’s bedding???… And 11 days went by without me submitting a design.
See, I think that before designing the fabric, I need to know what I will use it for. And the list of projects is pretty large. Also, the price of the fabric including shipping is not insignificant. Reasonable for custom fabric, yes, though not good for certain projects, — for instance, selling the fabric may be tough. If I didn’t want to waste money, I needed a good plan.
And the plan ended up being beaten by the unbearable itch to have that delicious custom fabric in my hands. So last night I decided that I would submit at least one design, and I would print it only as a swatch (8×8 inches) before going full blown with my textile designer wannabe dreams. I have great plans for this service, but first I need to see and feel the actual fabric, see how it handles the custom colors, understand the challenges, and how to make it work.
To make the story short (too late!), I submitted three designs to experiment how the printing deals with them:
- A composition of shapes in solid colors. I plan to use this design in a product, so color shifting will be interesting to observe.
- An illustration with a limited color palette. This may tell me if transferring art is even an option.
- An illustration with more colors and detail, and use of Photoshop filters. We’ll see what comes out of it.
Can’t wait to see those swatches!… And yes, I’ll be showing them here as soon as I get them, and drool all over them, and go MUAH HA HA HA!, The world is mine!
