16 August, 2019

Mini Spoonflower Tutorial: Two ways to see your designs as finished goods

2019-08-17T10:16:15-05:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design, Tutorials, Videos|2 Comments

Spoonflower recently rolled out some cool new changes to their website and the ways you can look at designs. Instead of only seeing a swatch or a fat quarter, you can now see your designs mocked up as sheets, curtains, pillows, tablecloths and more. And it’s now built in to the site; you just have to know where to click. I made this mini video tutorial (10 min) to show you two ways you can look at these new mockups, both as a shopper and as a designer. I think they are both great ways to help you visualize the scale and impact of your designs. If you don’t see the video thumbnail here, click Read More > below.

Want to learn more about designing fabrics for Spoonflower? Try out my online intro class! It’s free and will walk you through a design from idea to upload.

23 August, 2017

Try it: Spoonflower’s Fill-a-Yard tool and 8-bit Art

2017-08-23T12:39:33-05:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design, Tutorials|Comments Off on Try it: Spoonflower’s Fill-a-Yard tool and 8-bit Art

Spoonflower has a new Fill-A-Yard tool. It’s very simple to use.

  • Create a collection of fabrics.
  • Choose a template (this is 1 yard with 6 inch squares).
  • Click the fabric you want from the thumbnails on the right, then click the square you want to fill with the fabric design.
  • It will print as a “cheater quilt” as one piece of fabric with this design of squares filled with other designs.

As I was demonstrating this for a class a few days ago I suddenly had a brainstorm: I wondered if I could make a picture. It would have to be something ultra simple like 8-bit art (think PacMan or Space Invaders) because there aren’t very many squares to work with. So this morning, I collected a bunch of fabrics to try making a rubber ducky. Here’s my rubber ducky quilt. I think it’s pretty charming and it would make a sweet baby gift.

Want to see how it works? You can try this out with the Just Duckie collection of fabrics I put together. From that collection, just click where it says “Want to use this collection for a Fill-A-Yard project? Start Designing”.

What else can you “draw” using just 42 squares? I’d love to hear about it!

19 April, 2017

A Taste of Digital Fabric Design

2017-04-19T10:02:03-05:00|Comments Off on A Taste of Digital Fabric Design

Designing  and printing your own custom fabrics is a new innovation in the craft world.  Services like Spoonflower.com allow you to design and digitally print small amounts of yardage with your own custom designs. Learn the basics to set up a file and manage color; get tips for file resolution and formatting and see samples of fabrics you can create. Students will create a collaborative design in class and get a sample to keep.
20 July, 2016

Fabric Design Tutorial: Photo Collage Bonus Mashup

2016-07-19T22:56:06-05:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design, Tutorials|Comments Off on Fabric Design Tutorial: Photo Collage Bonus Mashup

I posted a tutorial just a few days ago showing how to create a “scrapbook style” fabric design from a collection of photos. You can think of this post a variation on that theme. It’s a different way of using the same tutorial.

Screen Shot 2016-07-19 at 10.11.07 PM

In my last artist newsletter, the free download I sent to subscribers was a photo of a sunflower on a transparent background. It went along with the Prospect Park utility boxes project that I did recently; in fact, you can see that sunflower in the cafe scene and on the bicycle headlight on one of the boxes.

Maybe a fabric design with photos of your dogs or friends and family isn’t something you are interested in. What about flowers? This fabric design is a mashup; it uses that sunflower photo (and several other flowers) plus exactly the technique I described in the scrapbook style tutorial to make something totally new. I used the “color cell” option in the Background tool set (paint palette icon) to add the blocks of solid color to this design.

Screen Shot 2016-07-19 at 10.40.04 PM

What other variations on this theme can you come up with?

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