Fat Quarter Projects

DIY Kid’s Canvas Art for Less Than $25

June 21, 2016

Looking for a creative, inexpensive way to showcase your little artist’s masterpieces or planning gifts for grandparents and friends? Try using Spoonflower’s Linen Cotton Canvas Ultra, Lightweight Cotton Twill or Eco Canvas to make canvas wall art for less than half of what it costs elsewhere online! And if you’re looking for a fun kid’s art table like the one featured in this post, check out Step2’s art desks, which are designed and made in Streetsboro, Ohio.

PART 1: How to Upload Kid’s Artwork for a Linen Cotton Canvas Wall Art
Skip to PART 2: Wrapping your Linen Cotton Canvas Wall Art

If you’re looking for a beginner-friendly Photoshop project, then this is perfect for you! First thing to do is scan your artwork at a very high resolution (300 dpi and above) and save to your computer. [Read more…] about DIY Kid’s Canvas Art for Less Than $25

Turn your Photos into Canvas Wall Art with Spoonflower

June 7, 2016

Are you looking for a quick, fun way to add some new art to your house or create a one-of-a-kind gift for someone special? Whether it’s pictures of a favorite vacation spot, a furry loved one or a family photo, the possibilities for DIY canvas wall art are endless with Spoonflower’s custom digital printing process. Spoonflower staffer Alex is here to walk you through the process, from teaching you how to stretch canvas to finishing the edges of your piece so they don’t snag. Follow along below!

This project can be completed in less than 20 minutes, for less than $30. We suggest using our Linen Cotton Canvas Ultra but you can also use our Eco Canvas. These sturdy fabrics provide a more natural and interesting texture, and help keep the image from warping as you stretch it.

If you like this tutorial, subscribe to our Youtube channel. Have an idea you’d like to see made into a tutorial? Let us know in the comments section below!

For this project you’ll need:

– a craft staple gun

– fabric scissors

– your fabric (I used a Fat Quarter of Linen Cotton Canvas Ultra but you can also use our Eco Canvas)

– canvas stretcher bars (I used a 16″ x 24″ frame)

As mentioned above, I used a fat quarter of Spoonflower’s Linen Cotton Canvas Ultra for this tutorial, but you could use our Eco Canvas, as well. Fat Quarters of both fabrics measure 18″x 27″, so the image I printed fit with room to spare. You want something sturdy that will hold up to being stretched without warping the design. I suggest sizing your photo to be a couple inches larger than the dimensions of your stretcher bars to prevent white space from showing around the edges when your canvas wall art is hanging.

Step 1: Assemble the Frame

We’ll start out by assembling the stretcher bars. Sand down any jagged edges to get the joints to slide together. Now, lay the frame onto your face down fabric. Position the bars centrally on your design and pull the fabric over the top edge and staple. Make sure to keep an even amount of surface area around all four sides of the canvas.

Use the leverage from the top staple to make sure that the fabric is pulled tight, tight, tight across the bottom. Repeat this process for the left and right sides, as well.

The first four staples on each of the sides are the most important part of the project to ensure even tension on your finished project!

Step 2: Stapling the sides

Start stapling around the sides, alternating one staple per side in a clockwise pattern. The number of staples needed depends on the size of your frame. Generally, one staple every 2-3 inches works fine.

Step 3: Finishing the Corners

Once you’ve made your way around the entire frame, it’s time to do the corners. You want the fold of the fabric to lie along the bottom edge of the frame. This is more attractive and keeps things from getting caught on your canvas. Fold the outside edge over towards the inside of the frame and staple. Repeat this for All 4 corners and trim away any excess fabric on the back when you’re finished flip it over and admire your handiwork.

Thanks for checking out this tutorial. For other ideas of fun DIY photo to fabric projects, check out this DIY photo pillow and this awesome canvas gallery wall.

Have a tip or suggestion that we left out? Let us know in the comments below!

The Perfect DIY Gift for Valentine’s Day

February 1, 2016

Tips For Making Your Own Bralettes and Briefs

January 27, 2016

2016 may just be “The Year of the Handmade Undies” and we’re totally embracing it. Handmade intimates? File under: Things we love. Today, we are so excited to have Spoonflower’s Aussie friend and maker, Sophie, of Ada Spragg stop by the blog to share some pro-tips for making your own under-garments using Spoonflower’s new undie-friendly Cotton Spandex Jersey. Are you ready to get intimate with your sewing projects? If yes, prepare to be inspired!

Sophie: Have you ever considered sewing your own intimates? If not, today’s project will open your eyes! I like to think of sewing underwear as the ultimate quickie project. It’s so easy. And fun. And we all love satisfying sews. Did I mention it uses hardly any fabric at all? Less than a fat quarter per separate piece. I don’t know about you, but I always feel a sense of smug satisfaction at making something with as little fabric as possible…kind of like using up every cut of meat. And when sewing with such a small quantity of fabric there’s a sense that, well, if things don’t work out then you haven’t wasted 3.5 yards of Silk Crepe de Chine. And if you’re already sewing most of your own clothes or a good portion of them, sewing underwear feels like next level self-sufficiency.

Travel Tissue Cover with French Seams

January 19, 2016

What happens when you combine Spoonflower’s Cotton Spandex Jersey, the brilliant mind of SammyK, and the winter cold and flu season? An adorable tissue-cozy swatch project, that’s what! Spoonflower friend and designer Samarra Khaja (SammyK) stops by the blog to bring you a swatch project that’s adorable, practical, and you can finish it up in just a few quick seams. Enjoy!

5 Underwear Patterns That’ll Make Your Day

January 15, 2016

DIY lingerie is our latest obsession. With little more than a fat quarter or half a yard, you can have a new pair of underwear cut specifically to your dimensions for the most flattering fit possible. Next time you feel the urge to run out and buy new store bought underwear, take a look at your stretch fabric stash and consider making your own with your sewing machine or serger at home. Need a little fabric inspo? Now that we offer Cotton Spandex Jersey, the perfect stretch cotton for undies can now be ordered with any fabric you want from the marketplace, or one you’ve created yourself. So why not give it a try? Here are five of our fave patterns to get you started.

High Waist Panties | Ohh Lulu Sews

Madeleine Victorian Bloomers | Colette Patterns

Panties Pattern | So, Zo…What Do You Know?

Pro Tip: This tutorial is really simple. I think it took about 30 minutes total to sew up these undies – and that’s including some messing up. My mess up was this was the first time I’d ever used Fold Over Elastic – and I didn’t practice like the tutorial suggested (OOPS!). So I would definitely practice with a scrap first. Another tip: use a walking foot (I don’t know how I lived without one for so long)! The walking foot helped keep the elastic from sliding off of the edge of the fabric and helped feed it through nice and evenly. Once I switched from a regular presser foot to a walking foot they looked super nice and like something you would buy at a store.

How to Make Your Own Softie With PicMonkey – Just In Time for the Softies for Mirabel Handmade Toy Drive

November 14, 2015

What a festive November it’s been for the Spoonflower team! While we’re busy prepping for the end of the year holiday party in the Greenhouse, we’re also in the final weeks of our Softies for Mirabel handmade toy drive. If you’re just learning about this wonderful drive today, don’t worry, there’s still time for you to sew, knit, or crochet a softie for the drive! Please mail or drop-off all softies to the Spoonflower headquarters by Saturday, December 5th. For more donation drop-off details, please click here.

The Hand Strap Clutch: Sewing Pattern + Tutorial

November 10, 2015

Today’s tutorial comes from our creative friend and textile designer Ceri Gwen. She shares how to stitch up the sweetest hand strap clutch using an engineered design she created that fits perfected on a fat quarter of fabric. Whip one up for an upcoming holiday party or make a few as gifts for friends!

Ceri: Recently I’ve been seeing more and more clutch bags with hand straps and think they look so good–what a neat and practical idea it is! I wanted to try and make my own version and came up with this quick and easy pattern. It’s a compact clutch but easily accommodates all of your essentials.

How to Make A Pillow From Your Favorite Photos

October 20, 2015

We are in the era of camera phones, and almost everyone has the opportunity to snap photos at moments when it may have been impossible or inconvenient in the past. The result? Lots and lots of photos, and more sentimental memories captured than ever. If you're like me, then you want to put those extra special photos on display in some creative way. Well, pillows are one of the easiest things to sew, and they can sit in just about any room in the house (plus they make awesome gifts). Okay, let's get started!

In this design tutorial, I'll take you step-by-step through designing a pillow using your own photography.

For this project, all you'll need is a high resolution, digital version of a special photo, a photo editing program like Photoshop, and a few minutes to size it properly for uploading to Spoonflower to print.

I wanted to make a series of square pillows from some black and white photography by Damon Lapas, so I'm going to use the cropping to make this rooster photo into a square. If you want to size your pillow to a rectangle or an odd shape, that's perfectly fine!

I want this pillow to be a 15" square, so I'm going to size the image to print at that size by clicking "Image" –> "Image Size" and selecting "inches" from the drop down menus associated with height and width of the image. If the image isn't exactly 15" by 15", that's okay, but if it's off by more than 1/2", try cropping it on the longer side a bit more.

Next, make sure your image is set to 150 DPI because that's the resolution Spoonflower prints files. Then save the image as a JPEG.

Screen Shot 2015-10-13 at 10.27.28 AM

Next, you'll want to have a plan for the back of your pillow, too. Do you want to print a design in the Spoonflower Marketplace for the back of the pillow, use the same photo for the back, or create your own complimentary design? Since I want to stay with the greyscale theme, I'm going to pick a nice, solid grey color.

I'd like to sew an envelope-back pillow cover, so I multiplied the length by 2 to allow for the overlap on the back plus seam allowances and finished edges. Next, adjust the file resolution to 150 DPI. No matter how you'd like to enclose your pillow, it's a good idea for the pillow insert (or pillow form) to be slightly larger than the cover so that it fills out the corners better and the pillow looks fluffier. For example, I'm sewing the pillow cover to be 15"x15", so I got a 16" pillow form. If you want to do a zipper enclosure instead, try this tutorial.

I added some photo credit text and detail at the bottom of the pillow back design, along with some seam allowance so that the text is not puckered or accidentally sewn into the seam. You may choose to write the location or year that the photo was taken, as it may provide a helpful reminder many years from now.

Once you've saved your file as a JPEG, we're going to place the two files into a new file since both the front and back of the pillow will fit on one yard, then we'll upload them together as one file. Open a new Photoshop file, name it, and set the width to 54", the height to 36", and the DPI to 150.

Next, click "File" > "Place embedded" and select one of your files.

Move the first file to one side of the canvas and click Return or Enter place it.

Repeat this step for the second file.

Now, save the new file as a JPEG and upload your new pillow design to Spoonflower. Make sure you size the design to 1 yard and center it. We would recommend printing on Eco Canvas for the most vibrant black and grey colors. We also recommend Linen-Cotton Canvas, Minky, Organic Cotton Sateen, Heavy Cotton Twill and Faux Suede for making pillows.

Once you get your Spoonflower fabric in the mail, sew the pillow cover and stuff it with the pillow form! (This tutorial in The Spoonflower Handbook called "Portrait Pillows" beginning on p100 is pretty handy.)

Show us the pillows that you create with your own photos and post your "in-progress" or finished projects on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook using the hashtag #spoonflower and we may repost them to show off your handiwork!

Have fun and let me know how it goes!

Jenny

Simple DIY Cloth Dinner Napkins

October 6, 2015

Ready to set the table with stylish and sustainable dinner napkins? Here at Spoonflower HQ, we make every effort to be an eco-friendly company with sustainability as a top priority. In order to live that “reduce, reuse, recycle” life, we try to cut down on waste and limit what goes into our landfills. We compost and recycle everything possible–perhaps the most beautiful sustainability effort–we use cloth napkins! Want to embrace a more sustainable lifestyle? Spoonflower crew member Crystal shares two easy ways to create your own finished cloth napkins–mitered corners and pillow case style–for a quick and easy DIY way to start reducing your carbon footprint.

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Fat Quarter Projects