Becoming Fabric
Before we had our own fabric line I used to flip casually through bolts of fabric at the quilt shop unaware of who designed it, how many inks were on the selvedge or how elegantly the repeat looked spread over a couple of yards. But yesterday when the sample cuts of our fifth line of fabrics arrived from FreeSpirit I realized that I look at fabric differently now, so I thought I’d share the perspective of the fabric designer.
The fabric company generally suggests how many colorways of how many patterns they are interested in having you design. Much like the way a singer approaches music, a designer chooses a strategy for a line of fabrics. There are singers who do covers of songs written by someone else just as there are fabric designers who have a particular interest in recoloring existing designs. These designers can’t use any designs under copyright but generally anything that is considered to be historic, vintage or looks like some wallpaper you’ve seen before either never had a copyright on it or the copyright has expired. In any case the design is now considered to be in the public domain and is up for grabs. In this case, neither the the original designer of the artwork nor his/her heirs receives any compensation. When designing a line of recolrings, the designer gives a swatch of the fabric to the mill and indicates which colors are to be changed. No original hand drawings or digital files are needed, just swatches of the colors to be swapped out. Because the fabric has already been printed, the repeats are already done and the production is more predictable.
The other species of designer is the singer-songwriter type of designer who designs everything from scratch. All of the artwork is original and the production process is far more time-consuming, unpredicatble and complicated from a technical perspective. Some of the designers who work in this manner start from line drawings, digital files, gouache paintings or hand-dyeing. Some give this art directly to the mill to convert to a repeat while others painstakingly create the repeat themselves using graphic design software. They generally deliver a digital file to the mill. Although most designers are paid royalties on the amount of yardage sold, not on the amount of time spent on the design process, some designers opt for controlling as much of the process as they can, even though it is not financially in their interests to do so. As we are this latter type of designer, we try not to think about just how much time we spend getting from scratch to the digital file with repeats.
Although the US grows a tremendous amount of cotton, quilting fabric companies report that the minimum yardage required to print something at a US fabric mill is not economically feasible for the “new is better, new gets them into the shop” mindset that pervades the quilting world. So US companies often have their fabrics printed in Korea, Japan or China. After the designs are sent to the mills, repeats are designed if this hasn’t been done by the designer, and engravings of the designs are done. Rough prints, called “strike-offs,” are done by hand with different screens for each ink used. Those are the little dots you see along the selvedge of the fabric. The mill that FreeSpirit uses can accomodate 18 different inks in a pattern and repeats of up to 30.” More sophisticated machinery is required for larger repeats and more inks. Amazingly, the room full of computers at the mill operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, churning out new engravings.
It is usually months before the designer sees the strike-offs and it is a nerve-wracking wait. Quilting fabrics are launched at either the annual International Quilt Market in Houston, Texas in October or at the Spring Market which changes locations annually in the US. Designers work with fabric companies to make corrections to the strike-offs, sometimes they turn out the way you envisioned and sometimes they don’t.
Sample quilts are made, sometimes by the designer, sometimes by a contract sewer and they are taken to Market. These “free” patterns are given away by the fabric companies to promote the line to shop owners and many find their way online into the blog community. As a designer at Market we explain the line and how it can be best used by quilters but there are so many fabric companies at Market and the buyers are so bombarded with sales pitches from all of the fabric companies that they don’t necessarily want to see everything.
A couple of years ago when we were launching our Prism Watercolors line, a lovely (we thought) line of medium and lighter-toned fabrics that later appeared in a very successful quilt in American Patchwork & Quilting, a distributor in Europe flat out told me that they weren’t interested in seeing anything with lighter tones because pastels wouldn’t sell in Europe. A whole continent of sales gone because the distributor wouldn’t even look at the line.
Despite the long process it takes for a design to become fabric, it is a thrill to see bolts in shops. On a trip last year to Tokyo my heart skipped a beat when I saw our fabrics on the shelves in a quilting store there. So in a month I’ll go to Houston, hope for a good reception to our new line, come home and start the process all over again.
September 25th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
hi weeks
what a really wonderful explanation of the design process. designing fabrics seems like such a romantic thing to do and I have often wondered how on earth you get started. who to approach, how developed a design do you need when first starting out?
September 25th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Wow! Sounds positively epic!
September 25th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
This is such a great post and really brings the entire process to light. Thank you!
September 25th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
It must be really satisfying to work with color that way. I love the yellows in the new series.
September 25th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
thank you so much for this incredibly interesting post — those of us who love fabric treat it somewhat like a mystery and dream about where it comes from and where it’s been. and, really beautiful fabric — i can’t wait to see it in my local shop!
September 25th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Thanks for sharing, this has been something I’ve been doing research on, with not much luck. Great prints.
September 25th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
Thank you for sharing this great explanation of the process, Weeks! I am so in love with fabric and have also often wondered about what it takes to get from a doodle to the final glorious product. I flirt with the idea of going into textile design on a regular basis.
September 25th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
what a great post. i love the ‘how it’s done’ segments of this program…
weeks, you always have wonderful, thoughtful contributions to this site, thank you for the time it must take you to consider and write them as they are greatly appreciated.
September 25th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Have you shown your fabric line to eQuilter? Luana is always looking for beautiful fabrics and the fabrics shown in your article are beautiful.
September 26th, 2006 at 1:39 am
That was a wonderful description of the process you go through and I found it extremley interesting. Thank you for taking the time to type it out and include pictures. I am an artist who is fascinated with pattern and color in many forms and enjoyed the photos. Good Luck!
September 26th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
so this is WHY I had to buy the prisms online.
Thank you, very interesting. I love to know how things are done. There should be a University of Textile somewhere. I would love to study there.
September 26th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
What a shame (for local workers) the fabrics have to be produced overseas. How interesting the whole process is!
September 27th, 2006 at 4:27 am
Wow! What a great explanation of the process. Thank you!
I now know of two new Free Spirit collections I *must* have.
September 27th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Thank you for taking the trouble to share the processes with us. A really fascinating post. I guessed it was a very involved job but didn’t have a clue about how it all worked and hung together – now I am more aware. Also, I have always loved looking at the selvedge and am always amazed how many colours are used.
September 28th, 2006 at 5:07 am
Ditto to all of the above, and I also have to say that I love love love the new fabric! Will it be out at Quilt Market?
(Also, to whoever was wishing for University of Textile, I think that someplace in North Carolina there’s a program, or at least there used to be.)
September 29th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
Great overview — thanks Weeks! I’ll definitely be sending people over here to read more about the process.
December 7th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
[...] Whipup — had a really cool article written by Weeks Ringle of Funquilts about how fabric becomes fabric. Really interesting. [...]