"Shaggy Lava Lamp by Luke" on six different Spoonflower fabric swatches

One of my grandchildren spent four days with us recently.  He created a surface design using my desktop computer using Crayola Art Studio Draw & Paint with Digital Paint.  I worked with the design, creating a basic repeat from the design.  I showed him how to upload it to Spoonflower and he got to see what it would look like if printed on fabric, wallpaper or gift wrap.  He really enjoy seeing the virtual displays on Spoonflower. We ordered 6 swatches of  different Spoonflower fabrics so that he could see how each fabric surface accepted the colors in his design.  See all of my grandchildren's artwork here.

It has been interesting to watch the progression of my grandchildren's artwork.  What struck me about this design is that this grandson is moving from the literal to the abstract -- at least on this visit. :-)

Going down on the left are:

1. Faux Suede
2. Linen Cotton Canvas
3. Performance Knit

Going down on the right are:

1. Eco Canvas
2. Minky
3. Cotton Poplin

This photo was taken indoors on a cloudy day, no flash.
 

"Ode to the Spatula"

That ever present kitchen utensil . . . one that we cannot live without  . . . certainly deserves its own surface designs, don't you think?  This video clip features Spoonflower faux suede swatches printed with spatulas and coordinating designs.  "Ode to the Spatula"  Check it out on Spoonflower.

"Willow Blue" on Spoonflower

"Willow Blue" printed on Spoonflower cotton poplin

My newest collection on Spoonflower is "Willow Blue."  It's a small collection based on my stylized drawing of a willow tree.  I converted this drawing into a digital brush and stayed with a palette of three colors: white and two shades of blue.  The above picture shows Spoonflower 8x8 fabric swatches printed on cotton poplin.  This design is also available on gift wrap and wallpaper.

En Garde!

When my son was small, he was interested in knights and castles.  One Christmas we bought him miniature knights as a gift.  Now his sons have the collection.  I made a playmat for the knights by stitching together 8x8 swatches of Spoonflower basic cotton Ultra from my "Castle Gray" collection on Spoonflower.

The back side of the playmat is "Jacob's Ladders on Black"  printed on Spoonflower faux suede.

En garde!

Keweenawchris's Pouch for Magnifying Glass

Lori Christensen (Keweenawchris on Spoonflower) made this wonderful little pouch from two 8x8 swatches of Spoonflower fabric. The outer swatch is Spoonflower's Eco Canvas printed with "Crazy for Cosmos!"

The photo of the pouch opened shows a fabric design, "berry_orbits2" by Spoonflower designer nerdlypainter.  

Lori's shop on Spoonflower is an eclectic array of abstract, concrete and geometrical designs with lots of surprises.  Her inspiration for designs is found in the natural surroundings of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  You can visit her shop here.

Spoonflower has surface designers from all over the world.  Visit some of the shops and you will see how many designers are influenced by where they live, what they see everyday.  Spoonflower is a tour of the world in fabric design.  It's well worth your time to check it out.

So the swatches have started coming in . . .

Below are swatches of some of my designs printed with the new Spoonflower color map.  I am  pleased. 

"Unexpected Full Moon"   

"Basket Weave"

"Beautiful Garden"

"Bee Cheater Quilt"

"Chainlink Coyote Flower"

"Cinnamon Swirl"

"Tiled Swirls"

"Vintage Triangles"

Spoonflower patches to the rescue again.

My daughter is a busy mother of three children, the oldest being 7 and the youngest an ornery 2, with a 5 year old in between.  She was in a rush the other morning cleaning, and as she later said, "I don't know why I was using bleach while wearing a good skirt."  The bleach splashed onto her black skirt.  She asked me if I could think of something to do and I thought about what I'd done with my Fossil bag.

I looked through my Spoonflower test swatches and found "Seems Like Old Times."  Since it's a pattern in repeatable squares, I clipped out one square with the pretty lady.  I used one of those squares that Spoonflower sends out with the printed fabric and used that as a backing.  Between, I put in a bit of quilt batting and sewed it up, using a top stitch across the small square.  I had an antique button just looking for a home and that was sewn in the corner.

You might have guessed by now that the buttons scattered across the skirt are where tinier drops of bleach landed.  Of course, looking at the photograph of my handiwork through the eyes of the camera, I could have done a better job of stitching.  To the naked eye, though, the skirt looks really cute.  I hope she likes it.

The lady in the design is from a scan of old sheet music that was purchased at an estate sale in the 1980s in Miami, Oklahoma.  The sheet music is from before 1920.  I included the lady in a collage I did a few years ago.  I chose the name for the fabric design. The sheet music the image was scanned from was not the same song as the title of  my design.  The look of the sheet music lady just reminded me of the song's performance by Diane Keaton in Woody Allen's "Annie Hall."

Cinnamon Swirl

Bamboo blinds with morning sun shining.

Bamboo blinds manipulated with photo editing

Some designs I'm not too sure about until someone makes a comment.  In fact, you can tell this by looking at the name of the collection -- "Regrets, I've had a Few!"   Cinnamon Swirl is one of those designs.  One morning the sunlight was filtering through the lowered bamboo shade in the dining room and I took a picture. It was really quite lovely and I wondered what a fabric design would look like using that photo.  I uploaded the photo to Sumo Paint and fiddled with it until something showed up that I liked.  With Spoonflower's mirror imaging, the resulting design was something I liked. (Regarding Sumo Paint, for about the past week or so, there have been issues with that site.  It's an easy to use site and I read about it on the Spoonflower Fabric Design group on Flickr.  I'm not sure if the Sumo site has been revamped or what.)

8 x 8 Test Swatches from Spoonflower

If you create with Spoonflower, you eventually collect a load of 8 x 8 test swatches of fabric designs.  An 8x8 test swatch of any design uploaded to Spoonflower must be ordered so that the designer can actually hold the swatch in his or her hands and decide if that design is what was desired, i.e., does it look okay on fabric, not just on a computer screen.

What to do with the 8x8 test swatches?  I found a pattern in "Simply Sublime Bags" by Jodi Kahn.  She calls her purse design the Barney Bag.  She used place mats to make her bag.  I sewed 4 8x8 test swatches together to get the desired size of the bag, then I ordered two bamboo purse handles from Etsy.  After the test swatches were sewn together, I ironed on  fusable interfacing to stiffen the Kona cotton -- I wanted it flexible, but sturdy.  For the lining of the bag, I used a square cotton napkin.

My Collage Collection can be seen at my shop Summersgaze on Spoonflower.

Here's a picture of my Barney Bag:

My version of the Barney Bag.