Spoonflowering

So, who else out there has tried out Spoonflower? I've been dabbling in it for over a year now, and every time I get something printed with them, I love it a little more. The first time I heard about it, I got positively giddy: You mean you can get anything you want printed as a repeating pattern on fabric? With no yardage minimums? Anything? The possibilities seemed endless.

This is probably old news for some people, but if you're not familiar with it, Spoonflower is a digital, on-demand fabric printing service. Basically, if you can design a repeating pattern, you can be a fabric designer. Right up my alley!

I made these tote bags as a class gift for my daughter's preschool teachers last year. Another mom and I had each child draw themselves, and I scanned the drawings, assembled them into a repeating pattern, and had it printed on Spoonflower's canvas-linen blend (which is nice and heavy and perfect for tote bags).

I also made throw pillows for the class volunteers and a rag quilt for my daughter using the print, as a memento of her first year in school. I had labels printed for each item, which made me think that this would be a great way to make all my quilt labels. And a print made up entirely of my daughter's own artwork is definitely on my to-do list! See what I mean about possibilities?

More recently, my mom was lamenting the lack of cute tennis-themed fabric. She's quite the bag-maker, and some of the ladies on her tennis team had requested tennis totes, but the few tennis-related prints she could find out there were tacky, tacky, tacky.

And so, my debut fabric line was born. : ) I finally got the printed samples a few days ago. I tried to make it recognizably tennis-themed without being too literal. (Okay, the double-racquet print is pretty literal, but other than that.) I even got a little crazy and put it in two color ways: Yellow and black, or the green and blue shown above. They should make some good totes for my mom's "tennis ladies," and anybody else out there who happens to want a tennis bag. I may tweak the blue a bit (it's looking a little too royal for my taste), but otherwise it turned out just as I envisioned. Click here to see the full collection on Spoonflower's website.

If you've made something cool from Spoonflower fabric, I'd love to hear about it! And if there's any interest, I'd be happy to post some tips on designing for Spoonflower, based on lessons I've learned.