Live Spoonflower Chat Tonight on PatternReview.com

PatternReview will be hosting a live chat with yours truly this evening at 9pm EST, so if you have any topics you'd like to see discussed feel free to join in. If you've never heard of PatternReview.com, it's a terrific  community for sharing and discussing your sewing projects. If you're not a member, you'll have to create an account to participate (which is free).

Despite my abysmal ignorance of all things sewing-related, I'm looking forward to the conversation!

Spoonflower Appears on Today Show Segment With Bobbie Thomas

How exciting! Spoonflower appeared this morning in a segment on DIY fabric design on  NBC's Today show. Bobbie Thomas, the Style editor, did the segment, which you can view on her site, Bobbie Thomas Buzz.

To help her put together a dress using digitally printed organic cotton sateen ($24.30 pr/yd), we took a photo of Darci's shoe and turned it into a large, mirrored repeat:

Mirroring photos is a very simple way to create unique fabric and it looked great on the dress Bobbie showed on the program. We're hoping to get photos of that dress that we can show you soon!

[Keep in mind that next week's contest theme will be shoes.]

Digital Fabric Design on Project Runway tonight

Fans of the television program Project Runway take note: tonight's episode apparently has the contestants designing and printing their own fabrics using a digital textile printer. Exciting!

Kim and I actually had to upgrade our cable package yesterday so we'll be able to watch the show, which airs on Lifetime. Maybe we'll see some of these designs on Spoonflower soon.

Check out Spoonflower on Daily Grommet

The nice folks over at Daily Grommet are running a video feature and discussion today about Spoonflower starting at noon EST. One of the fun things they're planning to do is to feature photos of the past five Fabric Of the Week contest winners and to ask people to choose their favorite.

Head over and check it out!

Spoonflower Profile by North Carolina Arts Council (video)

Nifty! The folks at the North Carolina Arts Council are doing some very nice work promoting our state's creative economy. On their web site you can read more about some amazing artisan businesses that call North Carolina home:

Creative Economy: The Arts Industry in NC

Spoonflower in black and white

We posted about this on Twitter & Facebook last week, but failed to take note on our blog - Tina Firesheets of The Greensboro News & Record recently penned a very nice account of the Spoonflower story: Spoonflower: A Blossoming Business. It's been republished once or twice in other places. Most impressive -- to us, at any rate -- were the very large photos that appeared on the front page of the paper. [A shot of Danielle showed up on p. 2]

Spoonflower Appears In House Beautiful and BUST Magazine

What's a good sign that you're onto a pretty cool business idea? When you get mentioned in magazines as diverse as House Beautiful and BUST in the same month (not to mention a blurb last week in World Magazine: Today's News, Christian Views). Thanks to all of you who continue to help spread the word about Spoonflower!

[articles here and here]

The Spoonflower story on American Public Media's "The Story"

The National Public Radio American Public Media program The Story airs an interview today with yours truly about how we came to create Spoonflower. The host, Dick Gordon (pictured left), pieces together the tale of my improbable transformation from marketing geek to textile entrepreneur, a journey prompted by Kim's longing for a particular set of curtains and fortified by the steely nerves of my business partner, friend and former boss, Gart. If the show is not carried on your local station, you can still catch the podcast version on the web.

Spoonflower in the BBC

We were woken up at 6:00 am this morning for a quote from Stephen--who I'm pretty sure didn't say "mums" exactly--but being mentioned by the BBC was worth it!  This little story articulates in part what I've been thinking about the crafting community lately--that making and selling handmade is a great way to be making money right now, whether it's your only source of income or a supplement to a "regular" job.  It may seem counterintuitive because hand-produced goods can often cost a bit more than their mass-produced counterparts.  But I'm personally trying hard to seek out locally-made and hand-made choices for my purchases lately.  I'm no economist but it seems like funneling the money I spend directly towards the individuals producing things is pretty sound recession-busting economic strategy.  I don't think I'm alone in thinking this.

And isn't it lovely that creating things is such a great stress reliever, too?  There are all kinds of good reasons to be a hand-maker these days!

Spoonflower in the NYT + a brief overview

NYTimes HOME & GARDEN   | January 08, 2009
Currents | Fabric:  You Design It, They Print It
By JULIE SCELFO
Spoonflower.com is a Web site that allows anyone to design and print custom fabric.

We are very pleased that Spoonflower has been featured in a short piece in Thursday's New York Times, where the photo editors made two wise decisions:

1. Don't use a photo that includes Gart or Stephen, and
2. Choose three great fabric designs.

The designs pictured in the story are:

• spirals by Jinjer Markley of Oakland, CA, asarumdesign.com/, www.flickr.com/photos/wildjinjer/
• Red Spiky Flowers by Jessica Gonacha of Atlanta, GA www.jessgonacha.com, www.jessgonacha.etsy.com
• girls by Susan Mentrak of Ohio, www.joybucket.com

Congratulations to all three!
_____________
In other news, and in anticipation of new folks showing up at the site over the next couple of days, we've thrown together a new overview of how Spoonflower works. The old version has needed updating for some time, although the new one is a bit rough, too.

Spoonflower in the news

For the last few months, you readers have been the ones spreading the word about Spoonflower. From crafter to crafter and blog to blog, we've been lucky enough to attract the attention of a whole lot of talented, creative and enthusiastic people (if you're new to our site read the recap in the email I sent out to beta-testers a couple of weeks ago). Now we're starting to see word of Spoonflower's amazing fabric-design community spread elsewhere, and we couldn't be more pleased and proud.

You can read about Spoonflower in the latest issues of Craft magazine (in a story written by Erin McKean of Dressaday, in an issue that includes a very cool cover story on the talented Betz White), as well as in a terrific new magazine called Stitch (published by the same folks who publish Quilting Arts).

 

You might also have spotted Spoonflower in the amazing DIY-photography newsletter Photojojo this week, or on the blogs of the magazines Real Simple, Chatelaine, and MAKE.