Seems like everyone is getting into fabric design – and companies like Spoonflower mean that anyway can create their own fabric designs. But how do you do it – what methods should you employ – is there a standard way of designing fabric? lets explore the possibilities…
- Tula pink hand draws her designs in pencil on paper, then painstakingly traces them out in illustrator before digitally colouring them. You can catch a glimpse of her process on her blog. Sketches, colour palette, building a design. (pictured)
- Betz White also starts off with hand drawn sketches or doodles, she then scans them and retraces them in illustrator and colours them online.
- Jay McCarroll, uses paint chip cards to choose his colour palette and rough sketches and paintings which he scans in and fiddles with.
- Jackie - sketches, scans and tweaks.
- Nest studio – its a hands on process of sketch, cut out, print. (pictured)
- Liesl starts out with sketches which are then scanned and worked on in photoshop (pictured)
- Heather Ross likes to sketch her designs into photoshop
- Little acorns uses scans of vintage fabrics as the basis of her collection
- Marimekko designer - draws and paints then scans her finished artworks which are then digitised
- Also pictured top right – test design that my 10 year old daughter made and had printed on spoonflower.
Resources and inspiration:
- Nancy Straughan – fabric designs and made into fashion
- Print and pattern website
- Colour lovers website :: tartan maker
- Bonbonkakku :: fabric on demand :: Karma craft :: spoonflower
- Lizzy house - Article on getting into the fashion/textile industry
- Its a good idea to create a mood board
- Design*sponge list of fabric resources
- Ellen has a great roundup of fabric printing ideas and resources
- True up has a great comparison post between the various print on demand online resources – here and here
- True up also has a great roundup of ideas to make and design your fabric (and she wrote a book too)
- how to create a digital pattern illustrator
- Learn how to use illustrator
- How to create a repeat pattern on paper
- How to design a fabric texture
- Portabellopixie explains the design process
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for all the information. Very interesting.
This is fantastic information. Thank you so much. It is one of those things I am so interested in, but haven’t had the time to really research it. Now you’ve done the hard part for me. Gold star for you! Thanks.
great post Kathreen! Looks like a completely awesome list of links to visit! :) Thank you.
Great post. Loving all the great information you have shared. Thanks!
What a tremendous resource this post is! I DO dream of designing a fabric line some day and you can be sure I’ll be poring over every one of these resources. Thanks!
Oh I’ve always wanted to design fabric… I’ve eyed off the spoonflower site numerous times but never been game enough to give it a go. How would I ever choose which design to use?? But these links have got me all excited again… thanks for sharing!
Thank you! I just had some samples made with Spoonflower but your gathered resources will be inspiring and helpful to look through before I make the leap into printed yardage.
The internet is opening up services for everyone, allowing them to create and design just about anything! great links!
This looks very helpful. Thanks a lot.
Thank you SO MUCH for these wonderful resources! I have spent ages looking for such information and am so glad to have finally found help. I can’t wait to start designing my own fabric…
Thanks do much! These resources are fantastic! Does anyone know of a site like spoon flower that will print gift paper or paper products?