Shipping your fabric!

We thought you might enjoy a short (crudely edited) video that shows a bit of the fabulous fabric we shipped out Friday .

NOTE: If you are planning to order custom fabric this week, do it today if you can. We're printing this week's orders tomorrow (Monday) for shipping on Thursday or Friday. If you put in an order after Monday morning it won't print until next week.

Working!

I've just gotta say here how excited I am about my new Spoonflower job.  I had a half-formed mental picture of what it might look like, but I don't think I was prepared for how incredibly cool it is to see people's fabric designs printed up and in a big stack in my own house.  It's like going to a new fabric store with designs you've never seen before!  Really, that almost NO ONE has seen before.  So cool. One thing I wasn't expecting was how much being printed on fabric really warms up a design.  It might look digital on the Flickr site, but in real life, on cotton, all the designs looked warm and organic. 

Stephen's working on a little video to be posted soon of some of these fabrics before we wrap 'em up and ship 'em out to their rightful owners.  I can't wait for the next round!

How does Spoonflower work?

I'm no Ryan Seacrest, but here's a short explanation of how to use Spoonflower to print your design on fabric once you're able to create an account.

| View | Upload your own

[6-02-2008: Please note that due to bandwidth issues that were causing problems with the audio in this presentation, I've posted a new version to SlideShare.]

Still here, still sewing

Another busy weekend, but this time it was because of sickish kids.  There's been a whole lotta boogie-wiping going on here lately, and everyone three and under is cranky and sleepless.  Isn't it amazing how sick kids can bring everything to a near standstill?  As it should be, I suppose.

I did manage to get a simple sewing project done, though. Soulemama reminded me in a recent post that I, too, have these Japanese sewing books with tons of little girl clothing projects I've been meaning to get around to.  I put them on hold awhile back because the weather was too cool to make them urgent.  Today though?  90 degrees outside and this little tie shoulder top is perfect for my middle girl to stay cool in.

Bug update

Updates for any of the testers who have tried to purchase fabric this week:

• The Paypal checkout option is now working for those of you using Internet Explorer as your browser.
• International orders are NOT working at the moment but we hope to fix that soon.  Fixed!

Thanks again for all the help!

Not bad, eh?

We're shipping the first round of real orders this week and the batch we printed included Kim's first computer design using the (free) ArtRage download suggested by Meggiecat. It came out well, don't  you think?

For ourselves, we also printed a big bunch of Spoonflower tags as well as a swatch of my fish fabric, which you may have spotted at some point in the Spoonflower Flickr pool:

 

Updated file preparation instructions

Just want to make everyone aware that we've updated the instructions for preparing your image for fabric printing.

The important change is that you should expect that size your image for 150 dpi (dots per inch). If you increase the resolution by making it larger, we will end up printing the image at a larger size than you intended.

How much does custom fabric cost?

Updated 07-29-2009

Spoonflower prints on the highest quality fabric we can source using eco-friendly, non-toxic pigment inks.

Quilting-weight. Our base fabric is white 100% cotton, 60-square, and just slightly over 4 ounces per yard. It is lightweight combed cotton broadcloth with a soft hand -- perfect for quilting and sewing. The printable width of the fabric is 42 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Fat quarter (21" x 18") $11.00
Per yard (42" x 36") $18.00

Upholstery-weight. We also offer an upholstery-weight 100% cotton sateen (warp sateen) that is just over 10oz per yard, with a lustrous surface well-suited to digital printing. It's great fabric for bags, pants, home dec projects, and the like. The fabric has a printable width of 55 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Quarter-yard (27" x 18") $17.00
Per yard (55" x 36") $32.00

Linen-Cotton blend (For a limited time only). This is a special fabric that we'll only offer while our supply lasts during June. It's an antique yellow (tea-stained) 55% linen, 45% cotton blend that is around 5 ounces per yard and would be great for skirts and blouses, especially historical reconstructions. It has a printable width of 40 inches (1-2 inches of unprinted selvage) and has 51 x 49 threads per inch.

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Fat quarter (20" x 18") $12.00
Per yard (40" x 36") $24.00

Organic Cotton Sateen.  Spoonflower's organic sateen is a creamy cotton fabric perfect for making baby items, blouses, dresses, and pillows. It is certified organic by GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard).  It has a printable width of 58 inches (147 cm), weighs 4.5 oz per yard, and has an extremely soft hand and glossy, cream-colored finish.      

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Quarter-yard (29" x 18") $14.00
Per yard (58" x 36") $27.00

--Shipping rates--

Notes:

• The maximum length of a single piece in an order is 5 yards (180 inches or 457 cm), but you can order multiple 5-yard pieces.

How do I create an image?

There's no single answer to this question, but I can offer a few suggestions.

Professional textile designers frequently use Photoshop to create or prepare their designs. They might start with a scan of a painting or drawing or they might compose the image in Photoshop. The pros also sometimes use special plugins for Photoshop. But Spoonflower is not just for pros, so...

There are a number of free programs available for creating and manipulating images, a few of which were sent to me recently by Meggiecat, a terrific craft blogger:

• Inkscape : Vector drawing
• Paint.NET: Photoshop type of program
• Art Rage : Realistic art painting, oils, chalk, etc. (earlier version is offered for free). Here's an image Kim put together using Art Rage without any prior experience.
• LineTracer: Converts scanned sketches to .eps.
• Wintopo: Raster to vector converter newer, more robust than LineTracer

Note (6-23-2008): Do NOT try to upload TIF files created using Microsoft Image Composer. If that is the only program you have for preparing designs, save and upload a JPG instead of a TIF.

Other ideas:

• Find a high-resolution public domain image from one of the amazing galleries available online. Be aware that you may only be able to employ an image of this sort for private, rather than commercial, use. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, for example, offers incredible galleries online, including this one: Art of the NOAA Photo Library.
• You could also print a photo or image of your own on fabric, although you should be aware that color shifting is likely to occur in a photographic image. The cleanest looking images printed on textiles have a relatively small palette of colors (under 30 or so), whereas if you examined photos and scans at the pixel-level of detail you would see thousands of colors.
• Scan something -- a kid's drawing, a leaf, a swatch of vintage fabric. In order to have it print at its best you would probably need to clean up an image like this in Photoshop, but even without that level of attention you can get some rewarding results.

Tell me what you come up with and I'll add it to the list!

Phew!

What a weekend!  If it wasn't apparent from his many posts about the site, Stephen spent  pretty much the whole weekend sitting in front of a computer.  For my part, I'm helping with idiot-proofing.  I'm positive that I'm the most tech-UNsavvy person helping start an internet company there is. 

That said, though, I'm a fast learner.  I'm getting the hang of trying to "draw" on a computer and managed to produce a little floral design that Stephen says got printed today.  It ain't fabulous, but it's mine!  I'm looking forward to seeing a fat quarter of my design when Stephen gets home this evening.  I forgot to set my resolution to 150 dsi and have no idea how pixels translate into inches--though I told Stephen a conversion chart might be a handy feature for us non-techy types--so it should be interesting...

Getting there

The site is back up this morning but there are still a few bugs to troubleshoot, including one involving purchases using Paypal. Credit card purchases seem to be fine. This afternoon I'll:
a) do my best to post something more interesting than site development news,
b) begin to beautify the new blog a bit...

More invites out this afternoon and tomorrow.

The joys of launch...

As of 10pm Eastern Time, the Spoonflower home page appears to be down...

Never fear! We'll get there.

Talk to us

This may be a bit maddening for all the folks who haven't yet received an invite (which is almost everyone), but I just want to ask the very few who have created accounts on Spoonflower so far to be sure to let us know when you encounter problems. We discovered one error today that was creating difficulties for people trying to upload designs using Internet Explorer, but it has now been fixed. Send a description of any bugs you encounter to help at spoonflower.com. Thanks!

A real web site at last...

I am positively thrilled to announce that we now have a real web site that works and is live at www.Spoonflower.com. A couple of caveats, however:

-- You cannot register for the site, you can only add your name to the waiting list

-- The waiting list (as of this writing) is actually down over the weekend because of maintenance issues at MailChimp, the list host

-- You cannot login to the site until we send you a password and invitation by email, which we'll be doing in batches over the next few weeks

-- Lots of stuff is still missing, links are broken, but we'll be working on that over the next few days.

Will you put my image into repeat?

For now we will take any image you upload and either tile it to fill the area of your fabric order or crop it to fit within the area of your fabric order as necessary.

We will not "step" the design repeats and we will not alter the size or dimensions of the design you upload.

If you want to print a single large image you should set up the image at the actual size you plan to print. You could set up a single image to be a linear yard, for example (which in our case would actually be 36"x44"), then order a yard.

If you wanted a smaller image on a yard of fabrc but do NOT want us to tile it to fill the area, set up your image with white space around it to fit the area of fabric you plan to order.

How much does shipping cost?

For the time being we ship exclusively through the US Postal Service or, if you are an International customer, through the USPS and your national service.

Shipping rates as of July 22, 2009 are as follows:

These shipping rates will go up incrementally as you add items to your cart that increase the total weight of the package.

How long will it take to receive my fabric order?

Updated 10-02-09

Our current turnaround time is about 8 days from the time that you place your order. We'll bring it down again to 4 as soon as we can get all these durn swatches shipped.

During the beta we will be fulfilling orders very slowly. You should expect it to take up to three weeks to receive your fabric if you live in the domestic US. International orders will take even longer.

This is not the way we want it to be. Eventually we aim to print and ship every order within a day. But before you run you have to learn to crawl. We appreciate your patience.

How do I prepare a file for printing on fabric?

Updated on 7-30-2009

Acceptable file formats: JPG, PNG or TIF (8-bit, uncompressed).

FILE SIZE: Your image must be smaller than 30MB.

RESOLUTION: Set up your image at 150 dpi (dots per inch). If you want to design an 8"x8" swatch, for example, you need to upload an image that  is 1200 pixels x 1200 pixels. The print size of your image in pixel dimensions will be 150x the number of inches.

We will tile your design to fill the space of the fabric you order. If you upload an image larger than the area of fabric you order, then we will crop it from the lower left corner.

FORMAT & COLOR NOTES (for advanced users): When printing a design onto fabric using Spoonflower you'll get the best results when you upload a file in TIF format that consists of colors that fall within the LAB color space. You can create a design in the LAB space or convert it. You can also upload a JPG or PNG, which we will convert to a TIF before printing.

Tip: In Photoshop you can switch to LAB format by going to the Image menu and pulling down to Mode, then checking LAB color. You'll also want to make sure that in the same menu 8 bits/channel is checked rather than 16.

Converting to LAB is not enough, however. After changing to the LAB color profile under the Mode option in Photoshop, in CS3 you can can then go to the 'View' menu and see any of the colors in your design that are 'out-of-gamut,' which means colors that do not fall within the LAB color space that our printer is capable of reproducing. Using the Color Replace option, it is possible to shift out-of-gamut colors to in-gamut colors.

UPDATED 1/22/09: If you use Photoshop or Illustrator, we have two files -- created by our fabulous intern Danielle -- that may be useful to you. They offer a Photoshop color library and palette of colors that fall within the gamut of our printer. Note that these are a representative palette of colors and are not the only colors available. In the updated files, we've removed some of the reds that have tended to shift to orange in the printed fabric.

• Download SpoonflowerColors ACO file (photoshop)

• Download SpoonflowerColors ASE file (Adobe)

• Download ColorChart   You can upload the color chart to your own Spoonflower account and order it as a swatch for color testing.

CONFUSED?

If you don't have Photoshop and talking about TIF and LAB color make you anxious, don't worry. You can upload a JPG or other common image format and it will still print nicely. There may be colors in your image that can't be reproduced by pigments on fabric in our printer (very bright colors, absolute blacks, and very saturated colors, for example). If that is the case you will sometimes see all of the colors in an image shift and the colors may end up appearing different from what you expected.

Uploading an image that you know uses only LAB colors offers some protection against all of the colors shifting. In LAB color, if the printer encounters a color it can't reproduce it will shift only that color rather than all the colors.

If you're curious (and technically inclined) you can read more about TIFs here, and more about LAB color here.

What kind of fabric can I print on?

Updated 7-29-2009

Spoonflower is working to expand the range of fabric it offers.

We currently offer:

Quilting-weight. Our base fabric is white 100% cotton, 60-square, and just slightly over 4 ounces per yard. It is lightweight combed cotton broadcloth with an extremely soft hand -- perfect for quilting and sewing. The printable width of the fabric is 42 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Upholstery-weight. We also offer an upholstery-weight 100% cotton sateen (warp sateen) that is just over 10oz per yard, with a lustrous surface well-suited to digital printing. It's great fabric for bags, pants, home dec projects, and the like. The fabric has a printable width of 55 inches (with 1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Linen-Cotton blend (Limited-time only). This is a special fabric that we'll only offer while our supply lasts during June. It's an antique yelloow (tea-stained) 55% linen, 45% cotton blend that is around 5 ounces per yard and would be great for skirts and blouses, especially historical reconstructions. It has a printable width of 40 inches (1-2 inches of unprinted selvage).

Organic Cotton Sateen.  Spoonflower's organic sateen is a creamy cotton fabric perfect for making baby items, blouses, dresses, and pillows. It is certified organic by GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard).  It has a printable width of 58 inches (147 cm), weighs 4.5 oz per yard, and has an extremely soft hand and glossy, cream-colored finish.     

It is our intention to offer additional fabric choices in the near future, including organic cotton. If you'd like to weigh in on what kinds of fabric you would most like to see, please drop Kim a line.

Quickies

These days it seems like the only free crating time I have left is late in the evenings, when we've (finally!) gotten all the girls settled quietly into bed.  This time also happens to be the only kid-free time I have in the day to talk to my dear spouse, and I don't want to just disappear into the room that passes for my studio but which is in fact our fireplace-Christmas tree-family dance party-other living room.  (After 2 years in this house, I still haven't settled on a name for this room, though I do so wish it could just be a family crafting studio...)

So given that I don't want to completely ignore Stephen, I like small projects that I can do from the sofa while we chat and watch the news and just unwind together.  Brushing up on my rusty drawing skills lately is an activity that works, as is cutting out fabric printing stencils for the girls and I to play around  with.  I've also run across a couple other small projects that look coffee table-sized, cute, and fun.  By way of Craftzine, verybigjen has an eyeball pincushion tutorial on Flickr.   (Do I need to explain how psyched my two bigger girls will be when I finish one?)

The Purl Bee is always good for lovely little projects, and I've been thinking about making up some sweet hankies ever since I saw their tutorial.

Meggiecat's going to think I'm stalking her, but I've gotta give her credit for finding mollychicken's adorable fabric house tutorial.   Another project my girls are going to go crazy for, I'm sure.  I should be set for the weekend, I think!