Spoonflower Swatches and Felt Figures

I love my felt boards! We use these occasionally for play and school, and I realize now I haven't shared half the stuff we use them for. I'll try to remember to share more!

For Christmas, I thought I'd take advantage of Spoonflower to make some My Little Pony felt figures. Because, we need some Twilight Sparkle in our grassy meadow, folks.

Here's a super easy way to turn your custom prints (or any print you find at the store) into felt figures.

1. Print an 8" spoonflower swatch filled with figures. 

2. Cut a piece of sticky felt down to 8" square. Peel the back off and stick your swatch on. 

3. Cut out your figures!

4. If you cut figures from fabric larger than an 8"swatch, cut them out loosely first and try to fit them as closely together on the sticky felt as you can so you waste less.

The cutting takes time, but the custom figures are a hit!

A Litte More Spoonflower, Wall Paper, and a Whole Lot of Wood

I've been playing on spoonflower again. Oh, I love it there. I just discovered the wall paper feature, and just fell in love with my cheater print as a wall paper design.

Of course, my walls are all made of wooden planks (not to mention I don't know how to put up wall paper, and that's a lot of color for a wall, yo) - but I've been enjoying looking anyway. I thought maybe I could just do wall paper on one side of my kitchen island? Hmm... something to think about.

Or okay, something to design a print for... How's this?

I put this together using some of my favorite fiesta colors. With my woodsy house, I like folk-y designs. I could print matching fabric to use for the curtain in my pantry, too! Or is that too matchy-matchy?

My designs for my house are here, and my cheater prints are here. I saw that one of their upcoming contests is for cheater quilt blocks with a floral design and a limited palette. I edited my flower garden cheater to use their palette, because I just can't resist a contest. 

And I've been meaning to beg for help from all of you clever crafty folks about my interior design. We have beautiful wood walls... and wood ceilings, and wood floors. It's a lot of wood, folks. I need some color, and some light. But I'm afraid to paint anything - because its beautiful wood. So to recap: its beautiful, but there's too much. 

Here's the one wall I've painted:

before

after

 I was disappointed that my pretty staircase had a big ugly vent. I felt pretty confident that if I painted this bit of wall white, the vent wouldn't stand out so much, and the white would make the wood around it prettier. It also reflects some light from the windows to brighten up the kitchen a bit. I feel good about this.

The rest of the walls in the main room are super tall. And even in the smaller rooms, once you paint it you can never go back. So basically, I'm chicken.

What do you think friends? Paint a smaller room or two? Put some giant white paintings on the wall? Help a girl out. 

More Spoonflower Swatches: libraries, cats, upholstery and more!

I just received a whole bunch of new swatches from spoonflower! It's happiness in a soft paper package.

First, is a Library Collection I made, complete with John at his desk, bookshelves, chewed on pencils and a library cat. I don't like the house plant fabric very much, but that sure is a nice yellow.

six prints

the complete library scene

library cat

I don't have any plans for these, they were just fun to make. Some of these are much nicer when you can see the repeat. Like this one.

This set was meant to be some simple designs for upholstery in our new house.

I haven't made any changes to my Sea Creatures Collection, but I got some swatches for a little swatch - stocking stuffer - project I have in mind. More about that coming up in a few days. In the meantime, you can check out this collection from a few years ago here.

And this was supposed to be a whole fairy tale collection for my sister, the storyteller - but I got distracted and never finished it. I did put together a little Baba Yaga House in the Woods, which I think is kinda cute. It's begging to be developed into a collection. We'll see.

I also made these two sort of random prints that are now in my Uncollected Collection. I think this nature walk print might be one of my strongest ever. We're really into nature collections around here, so I had a shelf full of things to draw from. When I received the swatch I noticed a fine white line on one side of the repeat. I was able to quick fix the image and upload the revision. Thank goodness for swatches!

A lot of the detail in this one is lost when you look at the pattern on the fat quarter scale. I think that's my only complaint with Spoonflower - prints on a smaller scale don't look as good on the website as the larger prints. So I'm more drawn to the easy to see large prints, but practically I rarely sew with large prints. I wish they had a zoomed in small scale print option!

The other uncollected design was a pretty little fall print just for fun. There were two visible white lines in this one. They're much harder to see on the computer, but obvious in print. Now I'm stretching my background color beyond the edges of the art board to ensure that doesn't happen again.

More fun with Spoonflower! Check out the rest of my designs here. 

Spoonflower swatches: Girls and Dinosaurs, and Cheater quilts

A few spoonflower posts coming up...

I made this collection of prints of girls with dinosaurs sometime a year or two ago, when my girls were really into dinosaurs. Somehow I never got around to sharing them here - or using the prints in a quilt as I intended. I still really enjoy them, so maybe they'll come back around.

I also printed a few versions of my flower garden cheater print.

I have since edited the colors of the multi-color print to match some of my fiesta and house colors. I still really really really really love these. I was disappointed when I realized I couldn't make a twin blanket without a giant seam in the middle, and so I gave up. But maybe I'll have to make a throw for myself, eh? Dang, why am I not doing that right now? [wandering off...]

Laptop Messenger Bag

I'm in too much of a rush to say much here today. This seems to be my new normal relationship with the blogosphere. I can't say I'm unhappy about that.

Yet, briefly, I wanted to share this new pattern. I needed a bag to carry my laptop that was professional, but not one of those black ones with a million pockets and zippers that's all boring and busy looking (you know the one).

I put together this bag. It's very simple but uber-functional. I prefer the messenger-style, and this is padded to protect my computer on the go. It has large pockets inside and a pretty lining from Ann Tuck on Spoonflower. I meant to use this fabric for something else ages ago, but life got busy and it seemed a shame not to use it. 

So here it is. I'm very pleased with it, and I think I'll make a few in more colors. I think it will be just right for carrying art supplies also, for painting outside. It makes a nice guy-bag too, since it has no frills. The pattern is available in the shop.

Floating, Cheaters, and Tea Towels

I posted last year about the tea towels I was printing at Spoonflower. I only thought to snap a picture of them today, after a year of use. I also gave away some, so I only have two of the colors. But here they are, stains and wrinkles and all. I'm not usually a navy person, but I love how this blue has aged with much much use. I'm thinking of printing some new ones in gray...

I've been jamming our boxes in my studio so that our house doesn't get too crazy before the move. So I can't paint or sew now, which has lead me to fiddling around with Illustrator, imagining muted color schemes for my new house that I can only now see on Spoonflower.

I meant to make a cheater quilt for the girls using a flower garden pattern. I love flower garden quilts, but I would never have the patience to make one (much less two). So I put this cheater print together and my mom graciously offered to sew the girls' blankets. Unfortunately, I realized the fabric width won't work for a twin size blanket, and so my lovely cheater design is just floating around in digital land.

That is very much how I feel these days.

Floating.

My book is in the editing phase (!) - which is wonderful. My house is so close to being done, also wonderful. All of my sewing projects are on hold, as is our homeschooling, until we get settled in the move. We are suspended, waiting for our feet to hit the ground again.

In the meantime, I'm keeping myself entertained with A Google A Day (come play with me!), and google image searches to try to figure out what this flower is. My flower books are packed away, and I can't find a match for this pretty yellow flower growing in our driveway. Any ideas?

Dressing Up

We're all costumes around here.  Last time I rearranged the living room (it's a small house, so I'm always rearranging to meet our changing needs), I put a basket of dress up things in the kids corner.  There are tutus, aprons, bandannas, hats, cat ears, and crocheted pinafores.  Having them accessible has made us dig in and put them on almost daily.  Today, I'm adding a few new things.

First, Spoonflower is having another themed fabric contest for Halloween masks (go vote for me!).  I couldn't resist, so I joined the fun.  My fat quarter has four masks: bunny, cat, dog and owl.  L has been begging me to make the cat and dog, so I finally did today.  They were pretty easy to whip together.  I put an elastic around the head, but the girls felt a little trapped like that - so I think for the next two, I'm going to leave out the elastic and just sew on some strings so it can be tied on or just held in place.

And Second, I had a good idea for a Halloween costume, and L is pretty excited about it, so we made a trip to Goodwill and got started.  Yes, my little girls are going to be trees.  It's taking everything I have to wait until I finish the costume to tell you all about it, but there will be a full tutorial when I'm done.  Which is good, because I need a good excuse for making their costumes a month early.  This is L holding her branches up sans leaves.

L may be a little confused by all the costumes.  She told me she's going to be a tree for Halloween and she's going to wear cat ears and say meow.

Crayons

We wilsons have been fluey all week, which is kind of a bummer since John is still on vacation, But I have to admit, life is a little easier when the girls ask to go to bed and sleep extra long.

I've been doing a little playing with crayons for an upcoming spoonflower design challenge. This one requires you to use only crayons and not edit it digitally - I know it's hard to resist, but I made it work. This is on my desktop now. Check it out in repeat here or grab it and put it on your desktop. ;)

Sea Creatures

This is my latest set of Spoonflower designs. Spoonflower has been adding a lot of new features lately as they prepare to open the marketplace. My favorite new feature is this collection sampler. You can print up to 12 swatches in a sampler for only $15. This makes proofing your designs so simple, and way more cost effective (previously 12 swatches would have cost $60).

Update: Stephen of Spoonflower commented to clarify that samplers are still only available to the beta testers. Sorry for the misinformation - just one of many good things to come from Spoonflower!

Here is the same set of designs but with the color scheme required for the Spoonflowers "fish and colors" design challenge. I wasn't crazy about these colors, until I made black the background, and then it seemed to come together. (oops, there's a little coloring mistake in the sea horse's tail - good thing I proofed it first!) Go vote for my octopus!

When I began these sea creatures I tried about 20 color ways before I was happy. Ultimately, I think I had pink and orange in mind when I drew them. Here are a few others I tried - John liked these best.

If your collection is all one colorway, it seems it is just asking to be made into a simple swatch quilt. I'm thinking of making a little one with my pink and orange swatches. (adding it to the list, the tucking it away.)

Spoonflower Doll Panels

I designed this doll panel a few weeks ago for Spoonflower's Design Challenge. The voting is up now. You don't have to have a spoonflower account to vote, so go vote! (please, please vote for me!)

These are hand drawn, and then digitally colored. The dolls measure about 12" tall and are intended to be cut out (with a generous seam allowance) and sewn to a backing fabric. One yard makes 12 dolls. I'm thinking I might get some in Spoonflower's organic knit - which would just be oh so huggable.

I'm trying to stick to my do-one-thing-at-a-time-rule, but I've got Halloween costumes, John's birthday tomorrow, and some bible school stuff I volunteered to make. These things sort of happened all at once. So my purse pattern is ALMOST finished, but I probably won't get it up here until next week. Trying to cross off some other things first.

Spoonflower Swatches and Purchases

I'm digging the new Spoonflower Marketplace, which is still in beta - but it's coming soon to all, I hear. I bought these two lovely prints Retro Pattern by susiewe and Apples by snork from other individual designers. I know I said I was looking for small prints - and I didn't choose small prints. There were so many lovelies to choose from, and some I'm regretting not getting. I just had to make a choice - and look at these! Great. I haven't made plans for them yet - I'll need to find just the right fat quarter project...

Here are my two flying pig prints:


The pink was a little darker than expected - which will be a simple fix with my updated spoonflower swatch. But I still love it anyway. I think I might like the pink print to be even smaller - so I may update that, too.

Plus, a few weeks back, Spoonflower had free swatch day, and I took the opportunity to print a couple of designs I hadn't tried yet, on some of their new fabrics. The sheep are on organic cotton knit, which has a surprisingly strong feel, and the fitonia leaves are on the bamboo/cotton/rayon blend which feels so nice and would be great for a blouse.
(In case you're wondering - I'm planning on using the sheep swatch for a couple of bath mitts for two little girls for Christmas - just stitch it to a washcloth in mitten shape and cut it out.)

Spoonflower Marketplace!

I'm so excited! Spoonflower has finally launched their marketplace. It's still in beta - but I think it will be open for everyone in two weeks. I'm thrilled to be one of the beta merchants, and I've been spending a little time here and there to get my prints listed for sale. Tonight I hope to browse around and see what other have for sale, and maybe buy some. You can see my patterns for sale here, but I'll update here when you can browse everyone's designs.

Here's what I'm looking for: single dominant color, multi-directional print, small pattern, and an intriguing design of most any kind.

What will you look for?

Chintzy Turtle Bandanna and Flying Pig Wall Paper?

I'm sure you know, since I've gone on and on about Spoonflower, that I loved designing my last set of prints. Whoa, fun.

But the learning curve is steep. One big thing I learned is that, even though I like my fabric, it isn't the kind of print I usually work with. Usually, when I'm doing patchwork, quilting, or making a stuffed animal, I like a print - but I want a single dominant color with an overall design. I grabbed a couple of examples. Here you can see some of my favorite vintage prints that I've used in my little animals:

I love the teeny red flower print - any tiny flower print usually makes me happy. And this pink (okay, that picture is hardly readable, but I had to give it a try!), is a little bigger print, but one dominant color and simple geometric design.

Also, I was thinking about the different kinds of repeats. I never use the mirror repeat, and usually I hate the way it looks. I like an all over pattern, so I think the mirror repeat spoils the all over balance. But I started thinking about what kinds of prints would work with the mirror repeat - and as I started to doodle, something really cool started to happen: my irregular doodles became geometric designs. It reminded me of a bandanna, or those neat old fuzzy wallpapers.

So here' s what I've been working on. I'm still in the tweaking phase. To see them in repeat, you'll have to click on the image, then below the image select "view in repeat." Be sure to choose mirror repeat - although these look nice in some of the other repeats as well.

What do you think? Do you like the mirrored repeat, or an all over pattern?

Swatch Frog

My Leap Frog print is in the Spoonflower contest of the week! (Head on over and vote if you haven't already.) So I thought I should make something from the swatch I have. Maybe its a little obvious to make a frog, but there it is. I think this would be a cute project for some little flowery prints too (of course, I would think that).

I think it's a fun challenge to make a pattern from a specific cut of fabric, like the Fat Quarter Purse. This pattern uses every square inch of your swatch - although it requires two swatches and a little scrap for the mouth. So if your Spoonflower swatches have been pinned to the wall for awhile and need a place to go - give this a try.


Here's the pattern, you can see how I fit the shapes into the square and wasted nothing:

I haven't written out step by step directions. It's kind of self-explanatory, but also because I really can't stand to sit at the computer long these days - but these two pictures show the two tricky parts: how you assemble the pieces after you cut them out, and how to attach the mouth piece. More directions are included with the pattern.