I have been under a little stress lately so I decided to completely ignore my problems and get a little creative. Not trusting myself with scissors, I finally tried out Spoonflower. What is it you ask? Well, Spoonflower is a site where you can design your own fabric, save it and then, if you love it, order it! In addition, you can make your design public, and/or let Spoonflower sell it and even receive 10% of any of those sales!
The process is very intuitive even for a computer illiterate like me. It helps if you have a decent photo editing program (check out
my post on Picmonkey). You can download files or pictures in these approved formats
TIF, JPG, PNG, GIF, AI, EPS, SVG and then play around with them as far as arrangement, color and size goes. Talk about fun.....
Above is an example of a fabric I designed using some images from the web. I have been on an I Love Lucy kick lately.....she is so funny! No copy written images can be used of course! And once you have made your fabric design, Spoonflower puts a watermark on it to protect it.
It takes them about 10 days to manufacture the fabric in your design and then a few days for you to receive it once they ship. Shipping was cheap, around 6 dollars for about 6 yards of different weight fabrics. So it sounds like a two week design to door process. Once I proof the fabrics I designed and ordered they will be available
for sale (you must order proofs before you can let Spoonflower put them on the market). Fabrics cost a little more than you would pay at a fabric store but you
are getting something unique. Prices start at about $16.00 per yard but you can order less expensive swatches and fat quarters (swatches are good for proofing). If you design and then order your
own design you get a discount and if you order more than 20 yards of any fabric you get a 20% discount! So give it a try, you might surprise yourself.....and if you don't want to design your own, check out the hundreds of fabrics that others have designed. Some are truly amazing!
Diana
