As you've no doubt noticed, the site is looking mighty spiffy now but the changes haven't just been cosmetic. The engineering crew has also been making a fair number of tweaks to how you can search for fabrics lately, too. One of my favorite of these recent changes is the ability to filter fabric searches by location. Want to find other designers who are active on Spoonflower and living in your hometown? Now you can! Currently, you can only access this filter by first clicking on the shop tab, then clicking on a design category or a tag search, and then scrolling down a bit to find the "local" search below the colors in the left sidebar. If you want to see everything that designers in a particular area are doing, just unclick the category or tag filter at the top of the page, and the "for sale" filter that is automatically applied, too.
Just for fun, I checked out Stephen's hometown of Atlanta, GA and as it turns out, a couple of my favorite Spoonflower designers are based there. ThirdHalfStudios, a prolific deisgn duo, is my favorite source for meat-y, skull-y, and generally darkly funny fabrics. And how did I not know that the author of one of my favorite craft books, I Love Patchwork, is there, too? Rashida Coleman-Hale, aka Iheartlinen on Spoonflower and with a lovely blog of that name, lives and works in my dear spouse's hometown. I love every single one of the designs Rashida has up in her Spoonflower shop. That's her sweet "Notes" design linked above.
I'm kind of curious as to whether designers in the same city might share any design sensibilities (though they probably don't if the difference between the two designers above is any indication). Still, maybe a regular series focusing on designers in specific areas of the globe is in order? Where are you all from?