My own designs on fabric!

I started this blog to write about my creations, be it sewing, cooking, baking etc. and now I have discovered a new and exciting thing to be creative with:

Fabric designs!

I have been sewing quite a bit lately, even though I don’t blog about it. Recently I was on the hunt for a fabric with crabs on it for my crab-loving toddler, but I didn’t find any so I wondered if I could make a design myself, and after some googling I had stumbled into the wonderful world of pattern making!

I will share with you some links to some of the resources and tutorials that I have found to be useful at the end of this blog post, but first I’ll show you some photos of the first fabrics with my very own designs and the t-shirt that I have sewn with two of the designs. 🙂

Tshirt_w_crab_pattern

And here’s a close-up. 🙂

I have drawn the artwork on my Samsung tablet using some art apps . These are the three apps that I’ve been using so far. The one that says Design is actually called Infinite Design and is quite good. The full version cost a reasonable on time amount.

art_apps_on_tablet

And here’s a look at the drawings that I made for the fabric design:

sealife_art_on_tablet

crab_art_on_tablet

After drawing the pictures for my design, I used either the open office programs GIMP or Inkscape to clean up the edges and make the background invisible.

For creating the actual repeating pattern design, I have two methods that are free. One is the program Patternshop and the other is using Inkscape. I will link to tutorials for both methods below. For those who are willing to pay for an Adobe Illustrator subscription, I will also link to a tutorial for how to make repeat patterns with that.

When my repeat pattern is done, I upload it to spoonflower.com where I am slowly building up a nice collection of designs that can be printed on a wide selection of fabrics. I plan to make my favorite designs available for sale in case others would like to buy them too. If you want to see public collections on spoonflower you click here:

Made by Nefermiw

Yesterday I received the fabrics that I bought with my first attempt at designing fabrics. I had also ordered some colour on fabric samples. Spoonflower also gives you the option to order several designs on a yard of fabric.

parcel_from_spoonflower