Design Resources

Fabrics Made From Paper Collages: Vote For the Next Fabric Of the Week

July 22, 2010

This week's Fabric Of the Week contest theme is about process. Using a collage created from paper as the source, we asked designers to create a fabric by scanning the collage. The idea was to showcase examples of fabric designs that have relied on a minimum of digital manipulation. The entries are terrific, as usual. After you finish voting, you might enjoy watching a short video about the collage process used by childrens' illustrator Eric Carle to create the art for his books, which include The Very Hungry Caterpillar (and many of the other titles that line our little girls' bookshelves).

Vote For Your Favorite Paper Collage Fabrics

The participants this week are:

How to Prepare Your File For Fabric Printing

May 16, 2008

Updated on 07-13-2016

Wondering how to prepare your file before uploading it to Spoonflower? Here’s our quick and dirty guide.

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

FILE SIZE: Your file must be smaller than 40MB.

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 using the lower left corner as the point of origin.

FORMAT & COLOR NOTES: When printing a design onto fabric using Spoonflower you’ll have the best experience when you upload a file in JPG format that consists of colors that fall within the RGB color space. You can also upload PNG or TIF. When you check image size, try to make sure the fields show the physical output size you want with the a digital resolution set at 150 pixels per inch.

CONFUSED?
If you don’t have Photoshop and talking about JPGs and RGB color make you anxious, don’t worry. JPG is the most common image format for digital designs and most images will print nicely. It’s important to keep in mind that there may be colors in your image that can’t be reproduced on fabric by the pigments in our printer (very bright colors, absolute blacks, and very saturated colors, for example). If that is the case you will sometimes observe colors in a printed image appear somewhat different from what you expected.

If you’re curious, read more about preparing files in the Spoonflower Help Section.

Repeating pattern tutorial

May 13, 2008

Thanks, Rebecca, for the link to a great tutorial on how to make repeat patterns. Written by guest blogger Julia Rothman for design sponge, this could be the perfect one-stop lesson on how to tile a design so that you don’t end up with bizarre, empty seam lines on your custom printed fabric.

Now, if only I could draw like Julia Rothman…

Your first print!

April 16, 2008

Last week we had our first chance to mess about with a printer and one of the designs uploaded to our Spoonflower Flickr pool (an Indian maid created by okiegirl97). I’ve photographed the swatches we printed and added those photos to the pool as well, although it’s hard to tell much from a photo like this one. As soon as we can, we’ll print more swatches and send them out.

How do I repeat an image to make a pattern?

March 21, 2008

Sometimes, a design looks better when there’s more of it. But if you have the perfect design, is it possible to repeat the image to make a pattern? You’re in luck. It’s definitely possible, and we’ll show you the way. Here’s a relatively simple technique for using Photoshop to create a repeat without requiring a textile design plugin. The steps are taken from an online column by Frederick Chipkin, the author of Adobe Photoshop for Textile Design. Note: This is to create a pattern with a tiled effect. Unless you’re using an image with a borderless white background (like mine), the image won’t necessarily match up along the edges (a seamless repeat). If you’re looking to create a seamless repeat, check out this tutorial for making seamless repeats using Photoshop Elements, or this tutorial for repeats with Picmonkey.

1. Starting in Photoshop, open the image you want to be the basis of your repeat, then modify the canvas (in the top bar, click ‘image’ then ‘Canvas Size’ to reflect the size of the fabric you want to print (35″x35″ for example). This should create a white area around your image.

2. Using the rectangular Marquee tool, select the area for your pattern repeat.

3. In the Edit menu, drag down to choose “Define pattern.” In the dialog box, name your pattern and click ‘OK.’

4. Deselect the Marquee (‘Select menu’ -> ‘Deselect’ or on a Mac, hold ‘control’ and click the area).

5. Go to the Edit menu and drag down to ‘Fill.’ In the Fill dialog box, next to ‘Use” choose “Pattern.” You can now choose your selected image as a custom pattern. Click OK.

6. The area of your canvas around the original image should now be filled with your pattern. Congratulations! You have successfully repeated an image to make a pattern. Now, head to Spoonflower, upload your design, and create something beautiful!

As noted above, the new image might not ‘match up’ on the right/left and top/bottom, so there is a tiling effect. If you’re looking for how create a seamless repeat, check out this tutorial using Photoshop Elements, or this tutorial using Picmonkey.

How do I prepare a fabric design for printing?

March 21, 2008

Meggiecat wrote the other day to ask the most obvious question about printing fabric on Spoonflower, which is "what do we need to do to prepare designs?"

I've delayed my response in the hope of being able to offer a bit more technical detail, but in the absence of a perfect response I'd like to go ahead and post a few suggestions. Please forgive me if I end up needing to revise any of this [likely].

File Resolution:
Updated info on preparing images is here.

Image Size:
Make sure your design is at least 150 DPI. You could create the pattern repeat on your own computer and then upload a large file equal in size to the amount of fabric you wish to order. For example, the fabric we will be using is 44" wide (112 cm), so if you wanted to order a yard you could create an image that is 42" (the printable area) x 36" (or close to that). The file size limit is 25 MB, so if your design is large you will almost certainly have to use the JPG rather than the RIF format.

Fabric Size:
You can order a swatch (8"x8"), a fat quarter (18"x21") or any multiple of a linear yard (up to 8 yards continuous). We will always recommend that you order a swatch of your design before ordering a larger quantity. That will give you a chance to examine the colors firsthand to make sure they printed as intended.

Retropattern Creating Repeats:
When you upload a design to your Spoonflower account, you will be able to create a pattern by tiling the image, using a half-step or half-brick repeat (which staggers the tiles), or by mirroring your image. In the case of tiling, in order for the pattern not to appear to be composed of a lot of individual rectangles, the design you upload will need to be composed so that the left side of the design 'joins' to the right side, and the top of the design 'joins' to the bottom. If you have a textile design program or Photoshop expertise, you can probably do this pretty easily. For the rest of us, however, we plan to post tutorials to help you through the process of creating patterns on your own.

File Types / Color Profile:
You will want to set up your files in RGB profile with 8 Bits/Channel (rather than 16), and to save (and upload) them as .JPG, or .PNG files with flattened layers. RGB standard is the ideal profile for printing.