As 2011 approaches, we've decided to take a little time to look back at the year drawing to a close. The relative quiet of the last week of December offers us a rare opportunity to sift through mountains of data for fun tidbits that, if not useful, might at least prove to be entertaining to those of you who follow the adventures of the intrepid, fabric-loving Internet start-up we call Spoonflower.
What do robots, woodland creatures, kawaii and Christmas have in common?
The Spoonflower marketplace contains thousands and thousands of unique fabrics created by independent designers. The multiplicity of fabrics on our site is organized in part by tags, which function as designer-generated categories.
Our first end-of-year top ten list shows the top ten Spoonflower fabric design tags as seen through the volume of searches on our web site over the course of 2010. The top ten fabric tags are:
1. Birds [this can't come as a surprise to anyone who quilts]
2. Calendar [tea-towel calendars were a big hit again this year]
3. Owl [because 'birds' wasn't specific enough]
4. Woodland [an up and coming expansion on popularity of bird fabrics and owl fabrics]
5. Christmas
6. Kawaii [our kawaii fabric design contest helped this as a tag, but this is a big one regardless]
7. Robot [my personal favorite]
8. Doll [mostly kits to make dolls, but includes some doll clothes]
9. Cat [did you know that cats are popular house pets as well as finely-honed killing machines?]
10. Dog [a good subject for fabric designs as well as a popular alternative to mini-vacs for families with small children]
Chad's Fabric Tag Top Ten
Because man cannot live by data alone, just for fun Spoonflower team member Chad added a top ten list of his own favorite fabric design tags that didn't make the list based on searches.
These fabric tags are also worth a browse:
1. Afrocentric
2. Damask
3. Geek
4. Regretsy
5. Alphabet
6. Tessellation
7. Map
8. Bacon
9. Mustache
10. Steampunk