touring spoonflower
June 20, 2011
Lachlan and I had a great time touring Spoonflower last Thursday. How lucky am I to have such a wealth of fabric inspiration practically on my back porch! Thanks to my friends who came out for the little tour and book signing - Charlotte, Amber, Miss Charlotte, Ashley, Jeanne, Rebecca and Eric - and their delightful shorter sidekicks.
(And isn't Lachaln's carrier awesome? We still love it the second time around - you can purchase the pattern here. The center panel of the Sweet Pod carrier would look great with a custom-made design from Spoonflower - this would be cute printed on cotton twill!)
Spoonflower prints custom designs on fabric. You can make your own fabric by following the tutorials here, or you can purchase designs by other artists who put their fabric up for sale. You don't need to know how to use Adobe Illustrator to create a design - you can just scan in a drawing or painting! A wonderful way for a novice to use Spoonflower is to scan in children's drawings. Spoonflower is currently having a contest for the under 12 set - details here.
Each printer has a name.
Spoonflower owner Stephen Fraser is explaining how, after a roll of fabric is printed, the pigments are set with heat.
The shipping table.
It's a great idea to order a swatch book, since designs can be printed on many different fabric substrates: quilting cotton, organic cotton interlock, and silk crepe de chine are just a few of the available options. Once I have a moment in the upcoming weeks, I'll be showing you a few projects that I've made with the same illustration on three different substrates.
One of the things I enjoyed the most about our behind-the-scenes tour was all of the fabric inspiration literally "floating" around the warehouse, like these fabric origami birds ...
these umbrellas ...
and these globes.
The use of fabric in no-sew projects was refreshing for me to see - it's a great reminder that you don't need to know how to sew to make art with fabric.
But if you do know how to sew ... boy oh boy.
Endless possibilities. Thank you so much to the folks at Spoonflower for their hospitality!
Oh! I just read this on the Spoonflower blog: For 24 hours -- from 8am ET on Monday, June 20th, to 8am ET the following day -- we're going to make shipping completely free on all Spoonflower orders. Free to those of you in the US and free to those of you elsewhere (shout out, Australia!).
Wow! So ... happy frantic fabric shopping before 8 a.m. EST Tuesday morning! ;)