Thursday, October 2, 2014

beginnings of a personal fabric collection


I love the idea of making a quilt entirely out of fabrics I designed, so I was playing with Spoonflower again, and ordered up some samples of five fabrics. They were designed over the last year, and were not really intended as a collection, but I can begin to see some possibilities for using these fabrics to make a quilt.


Oranges is the one I previewed yesterday. It is a large-scale orange polka dot made with images of an orange. This one could be challenging, but fun. I can see fussycutting (yes, I still call it fussycutting) individual oranges or rows.


Terrarita is a light, leafy green print, I think of it as a medium neutral because I love green. This fabric and several of the others were not necessarily designed with quilts in mind. I was mostly designing for fun.


Salsa was generated from a photo of some fresh salsa I blended up one day in a food processor. The design is made of bits of tomato, jalapeƱo pepper, green onion and cilantro. I hope the fabric is as delicious as the salsa was. Orange continues to be hot, so this fabric could be great.


Manyanakin is a unique design created in Photoshop using the paintbrush tool and a variety of rich colors. It is one of the first fabrics I designed, and it is now being printed for the first time. This fabric and some of the others have a kaleidoscopic appearance after applying the mirror repeat, one of Spoonflower's design tools.


Of course, I had to include a gray! Boiling point was designed using an image of boiling water in a pan on my stovetop. I liked how silvery the bubbles looked, and thought it could be interesting as a neutral fabric.


So, what will I do with these fabrics? I guess we will have to wait and see. As soon as they are printed, I can offer them for sale, just like the Green Alien Space Baby fabric -- but only if the fabrics meet my standards. Although not many people would really buy the fabrics, that's part of the reason why I like them. You won't see a lot of these fabrics in other people's work.  

6 comments:

  1. the oranges are great and go well with green alien space baby. unsurprisingly those are the ones I like best. so what, fussycutting isn't a word anymore? kind of like sewers have become sewists?

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  2. Great idea! I would love to see a quilt made from these fabrics - so fun!

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  3. I feel like an experienced quilter should tell you this: "Stop! Go back! There's still time before you become completely addicted and overrun by fabric!"

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  4. I love the green alien baby fabric!!

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  5. I love the "Boiling Point". Hint....think Snowflakes ;)

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