How I Create My Spoonflower Fabric Designs- Part 3

It’s been too many weeks since I talked about my post series about how I create my Spoonflower fabric designs, but I thought I’d finish writing them before I forget what I wanted to talk about.

In my previous posts in this series, which can be seen here and here, I talked about how I drew and colored the illustrations I used for fabric designs. In this final post, I’ll be talking about how I upload the designs into Spoonflower and edit it before I buy a test swatch before releasing it for sale. Since this post is about what you want the designs to look like and how to change the layout in Spoonflower and there are links on how to do this on Spoonflower, it’s not going to be a walk through like my other posts.

All of the information in this post is current as of June 29, 2017. And no, I did not get sponsored for this post.

In order to create fabric designs and have them printed by Spoonflower, you will need an account. When you have an account, you can not only have Spoonflower print your design on fabric, wallpaper, and wrapping paper, you can also sell your designs publicly, but it’s not required. (If you are interested in selling your designs on Spoonflower, please read this page on Spoonflower’s website to help you get started.) Since it’s hard to for me to explain how to upload designs to Spoonflower and the website’s layout could change long after I wrote this post, I suggest looking at the help center on the website for further information on how to do it.

After the designs is uploaded onto Spoonflower, it looks something like this…

This is a screen capture of one of my designs called Cinderella’s Coach- Coloring Version in the editing mode. There are more things on the edit design screen, but I cropped them out so I can focus on the actual design process instead of explaining how to edit the information about the design. 🙂

On the left side of the screen capture, there is a preview of what the design will look at. On the top right side, there are tabs for editing the design layout for fabric, wallpaper, and wrapping paper. Underneath the tabs is five ways of changing the repeat of the design, buttons to scale the design bigger or smaller depending on how large the original file, and a “save layout” button. Underneath them is a choose fabric drop down menu and chose size and amount drop down menu.

When editing the layout of the design, you’ll need to decide the amount of times the design repeats. There are five ways of doing this, basic, half drop, half block, center, and mirror. In the screen capture above, I have it set at the “basic” layout. As an example, here are the other repeat settings using the same designs.

Half Drop…

Half Block…

Center…

Mirror…

Deciding what repeat setting is best for the layout of the design is completely up to the artist and what they want the layout of the design to be. When I decide on the layout of the design, I look at what the subject matter is of and try the different repeats before I settle on a layout. In the example, I liked the half-block repeat the best so I saved it.

Although I liked the way the half-block repeat looked, I don’t always like it for my designs. In this example, I used basic repeat to make a continuous, repeated pattern. I created the design to do this by making the middle of the Christmas tree and middle of the middle package on the edges of the artwork.

I also like to change the size of the preview. There are three preview settings, a sampler, fat quarter, and yard length. The yard width changes depending on what kind of fabric the example screen is set for. For further information about the width of fabrics, along with widths of wall paper and wrapping paper, please look on Spoonflower’s website here.

Once you like the way the design layout looks, you can order a swatch. If you intend on selling the design publicly on Spoonflower, then you must order a swatch before it can be sold. This way you can check the scale of the design, the way the colors print, and how the layout actually looks on fabric instead of on screen. Ordering individual fabric swatches cost $5 USD and you can order them in any fabric Spoonflower sells. All swatches are 8 inches by 8 inches.

If you have many designs that you plan on selling publicly and need to order swatches, I suggest ordering a sampler. Samplers are a large piece of fabric with all the designs you select printed on them. Spoonflower allows the designer to choose the fabric you want the designs printed on and will allow up to 30 designs per sampler. Although samplers are great and cost efficient ways of ordering swatches, the designs must be in the same collection before a sampler can be ordered. Also, only the designer can order a sampler. You cannot order someone else’s design to be printed on a sampler. All designs printed on the samplers are 8 inches by 8 inches.

If you are very serious about designing on Spoonflower or plan on ordering a lot of fabric from Spoonflower for any project you have planned, I suggest looking at the Design Tools section of Spoonflower. There they have color guides, color maps, and swatches of their fabric for sale. This can help you choose the fabric best for your project and what colors will print best on that fabric.

Well, I think I covered everything! I know this post isn’t a walk through like the other two, but as I did research on this post, I realized that there are already walk through or helpful tools already in place for anyone that wants to make their own Spoonflower fabric designs. I do hope this post helped someone and gives anyone curious about how I create my designs some insight into my design process on Spoonflower!

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!