Spoonflower

Spoonflower Fabric Development Series 5: Color Calibration Part C

Rachel — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:24:22 GMT

I received my yard of colors! Here is Esther showing them off.

She couldn’t resist dancing with the colors in the yard.

Each color block has the corresponding number to it. So the idea is to work directly from this color “swatch” because we know that Spoonflower is able to print these colors. By doing this you shouldn’t have any surprises when you open your fabric package.

I also received my bird swatch and I was very pleased. The colors were exactly as I projected. For those of you just tuning in, please check out my Spoonflower Fabric Development Series to see where we are at right now.

Here is a small swatch of the color image:

Here is the corresponding swatch of the printed colors:

Instead of working off your colors from your computer, we are now going to work backwards and start with the colors on the fabric.

Let’s work through a sample together.

I’m using the free art program Inkscape to develop my images. I’m going to work on my roaring lion image. I think it would be really fun to make some fabric out of this one. This is what I want my printed fabric to look like:

Here is the close-up tile:

I’m going to start with the single lion.

I’m going to “ungroup” the lion so that I can change the colors individually. To “ungroup” you select your image and go to Object-Ungroup.

Looking at my fabric, I’m going to try and match the colors the best I can. I’m going to start with the yellow body of the lion first. I found my color on my fabric swatch and I’m changing the color on my computer lion.

I’m working my way down through the mane.

Here is my final lion with all the color changes.

Just to let you know, the background will not be as dark as the original image. On my huge swatch, browns are pretty tricky and a lot of them fade with a grayish tone to them which I don’t really care for. I picked the darkest brown on my swatch without the gray tone. So, we’ll see what happens from here.

ORIGINAL LION COLORS

CHANGED LION COLORS

Now I need to put the lions back together, get my tile, and upload it to Spoonflower. If you need a refresher course on how to do this, visit Part 4 in my Spoonflower Series on Creating the Perfect Tile. There are so many cool things I could make from this fabric. I just love it. Thank you Lilly!

I’m getting the tile from my lions.

And here it is, my final tile! Now remember that Inkscape exports to .png format so you will need to convert this image before you upload it to Spoonflower. I am supposed to write a post on that, but I haven’t yet. I’ve been plowing through this Color Calibration very slowly! Ahhh!!!

I’m uploading my final .png lion tile to GIMP (visit Part 2 on Computer Art Programs). In this program, I re-save it as a .jpg. Done!

Nothing looks different, but it’s a .jpg now, believe me. I’m going to upload it right now to Spoonflower and get this fabric printing! I’m still waiting for my latest order of my happy lions. I changed all the colors on that image and I’m trying again! I can’t wait to make a dress out of that fabric, but I just wasn’t happy with the previous colors for what I wanted to do.

Here is the image I uploaded to Spoonflower to get my color swatches.

I ordered a yard. Feel free to upload it yourself and get yourself a color swatch to work from. (Thank you pagetutor.com!) Be warned, however, that Spoonflower will be changing their printers within the next couple weeks or so. You may want to wait until they do that.

When you upload it, make sure you upload the original size. That’s it for now! I’m very excited to see how my “ferocious lion fabric” turns out. Hmmm…what to make, what to make…

Love, Rachel

Thank you to Melissa Madison of Crab Apple Designs who has been following this series and wanted to share her amazing design! If anyone else would like to share what they are creating along with us, send your image to: info@mammamadedesigns.com.

Lion Fabric With Modified Color

Rachel — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:46:10 GMT

Hi everyone! I’m not giving up on my lion fabric quite yet. I re-worked the colors on my lion fabric because I really want to use it for my upcoming Fall line. Here is what I want the fabric to look like:

As those of you who are following this series already know, I received my initial fabric that looks like this:

These are the changes I needed to make to my image to have it (hopefully!) printed out the way I want:

And this is the dress (maybe!) that could come out of it:

For those of you who are just coming in on this quick post, I’m working on a fabric design that I will upload and have printed out with Spoonflower. If you are confused about the changes in color and why I am making them, refer to Part A and Part B from my Spoonflower Fabric Development Series regarding color calibration. More to come when I get back my samples!

Love, Rachel

Spoonflower Fabric Development Series 5: Color Calibration Part B

Rachel — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:04:15 GMT

Welcome back everyone to our fabric development series! Today we are going to continue to address the issue of color in regards to Spoonflower uploads. I’ve been hesitant to order more fabric because I want to be at least semi-confident that what I’m receiving is pretty close to what I am designing color-wise in my head. Just to recap quickly-- here is my initial upload and first fabric printing attempt:

Color is extremely important to me. I designed this fabric to be used in my upcoming Fall 08 Mamma Made collection. As you can see, the result is still cute, but the colors exude Spring/Summer and I simply can’t use it. How can I be more confident in my design uploads in regards to the final product? I decided to order a swatch of colors and then calibrate my monitor according to the results. Here is the swatch I uploaded:

Here is the swatch I received:

Now take into account that this is a photo so the colors are not accurately portrayed. The colors on the fabric are a bit brighter than shown in the picture, but besides that pretty accurate. Just comparing the top line between the two images show that solid red really is printed as orange and real blue becomes a purple. After seeing the huge difference between the two, I changed my mind as to how I want to continue. Originally I wanted to calibrate my monitor to the colors on the fabric. Now I’m not so sure that this is the best idea.

Most graphic artists use some sort of color calibration book as they are designing. This gives them a standard from which to work from and they don’t need to rely on their monitor. The color is right in front of them and they can just punch the numbers in and know what they are going to get. I decided that this process might be the best for me as well. The swatch I have really doesn’t cover many colors at all, but I’m going to use it as a starting point to get a feel for where I need to go. While I’m working with what I have, I’m also going to order a more in-depth color swatch. All of these colors have the corresponding color numbers.

Using my printed fabric like my “swatch book” I changed the color scheme on my birds. They won’t be exactly like my initial vision because like I said I have a limited amount of colors to go by. Here are the three colors that I chose to change my birds into:

The birds on the left are my original design and vision. The birds on the right are what I needed to change them into to have them print out the way I want. Does this make sense?

I looked at the printed fabric swatch to choose the color I wanted.
I then went back to the original swatch image and found the RGB numbers that corresponded with the colors I chose. I wrote them on the fabric swatch.
I went to my artwork (in Inkscape) and changed the RGB numbers accordingly.

So now I need to go ahead and change my entire block of artwork to this new color scheme. I will then upload it to Spoonflower and order a swatch.

Let’s see how this turns out! I have very high hopes! To be continued…..!!!!

Love, Rachel

Spoonflower Fabric Development Series 5: Color Calibration Part A

Rachel — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:00:17 GMT

Well, I can’t believe we’ve made it to Part 5 already! What a long haul! I really hope that this series has been helpful to you. Here is a quick recap:

Part One: Thinking About And Beginning Your Design
Part Two: Available Computer Art Programs And What They Do
Part Three: Digging Into Inkscape, A Vector Art Program
Part Four: Continuing Our Fabric Design And Making The Perfect Tile

First I’m going to share some artwork from Mary that she sent in to me to share with you. Isn’t it just gorgeous? I love it! I do hope that Spoonflower eventually enables people to buy fabric designed by others. I would grab these up in a heartbeat! If anyone else would like to share their creations, send them to: info@mammamadedesigns.com.

It’s time to enter the world of COLOR CALIBRATION! YAY!!!!

Let’s talk about a couple of things and try to learn some important things about color. There is a lot to know! I’m just going to brush though some information because we aren’t going to use any of it anyway.

Every Monitor Is Different

This seems really basic and elementary, but it’s true. What you see on your monitor could differ from every other monitor out there when you are talking about color choice and precision. So what do people do about this and in particular what do graphic design artists do about this?

High Tech Equipment

Some buy some high tech equipment. It’s really amazing the hardware/software they have out there for your computer. It really is a whole new realm to dive into. You could spend a couple thousand on this equipment, although if this was your livelihood, it’s probably a good idea. If you have the time and so desire, you should google “monitor color calibration” and you’ll come up with all sorts of goodies to get your brain working.

Color Calibration Books

Some people buy pantone books to design from as they are working. This is simply a book filled with a million trillion colors and their corresponding numbers so as you are designing you can count on the color in front of you in the book, and not the one on your screen. This can help you establish a “standard” that the industry uses for printing. There are tons of books out there, but I thought this one was kind of cool. It’s called tintbook. You can buy one for $80 and shipping is $10.

HOWEVER….

Color Calibration In Regards To Spoonflower Fabric Printing

Since the point of this series is to work directly with Spoonflower, it doesn’t make sense to go through all the hoops of perfectly calibrating your monitors to a set standard that professional graphic artists use around the world.

“Why not?!”

We are not graphic designers working directly with a bunch of print companies. Our end result is a beautiful piece of fabric printed by one particular company--Spoonflower. So, what we need to do is calibrate our monitors according to Spoonflower’s printing standards, not the books. I have been in contact with Stephen about this issue and he has been most helpful keeping me up to date with where they are at at the moment. Remember that they are still in Beta Testing Mode so they are still figuring out a lot of things on their side. It’s possible they will change the way in which they print the fabrics in the future…we just don’t know right now. So, in order to work with them AT THIS VERY MOMENT IN TIME, I have ordered a color swatch from them. It looks like this:

I anxiously await my precious swatch so that I can finish this very important post (thus Part A/Part B). In the next post we will correctly calibrate my monitor to current Spoonflower printing specs. Very exciting.

If you don’t feel like making up your own color swatch, feel free to copy and download the swatch on this post and order it. We can go through the monitor color calibration together once we get our swatches.

Until then, keep designing!

Love, Rachel

Spoonflower Fabric Development Series 4: Finishing Your Design And Creating The Perfect Tile

Rachel — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:03:59 GMT

Hello everyone! I’m excited about this post. We are going to continue along with our fabric development with the end goal of our “swatch” being uploaded to Spoonflower, a new fabric printing company. If you have missed Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, please check them out! This is all about creative FUN! For those of you who have been following this series and have designed something along-side of us, I’d love to see your art! Email me at: info@mammamadedesigns.com and I’d be glad to share your creations with everyone!

To pick up where we left off—I had a sketch I was pretty pleased with. Here is a reminder of what that sketch looked like:

At this point the color I used was simply to show the separation of the front and back bird. Let’s be reminded of our color scheme:

Somehow I wanted to incorporate these colors and maybe a stripe somewhere into my bird sketch. Here was the stripe I was playing with:

Or something like that.

So, my next step was actually to take apart my sketch and get it down to the original “basic” design before I added copies and flipped copies to it. For those of you needing to review some of the basic techniques in Inkscape, please refer to Post 3.

In this form, I can play with colors and textures. Once I arrive at a color scheme and pattern I really like, I can put it all back together.

[PLAY PLAY PLAY!]

Okay, that was me playing around for a couple hours. Time really does fly by when you do this stuff, but I feel really good about how it came together. And here it it:

I’m going to stick with the white background for now. You’ll probably notice that I did stray slightly from my original color scheme and the brown has a slightly more orange tone in it. The stripe could make it a bit busy, but I’m eager to see what it’s going to look like when we make our block of birds. It’s amazing how easy this is to do. You will select your entire image (make sure that all the shapes are grouped together) and right click on it and press “duplicate.” Drag the duplicate art to the side.

Play around with these buttons on the top of your bar. One little click and your image is backwards, sideways, upside-down! It’s miraculous!

Et voila! Doubled and flipped! Now I’ve grouped this together and I’m going to duplicate and flip this to give us our opposite bottom birds.

Oops! Except it didn’t work. Do you see what I did? I need to ungroup the bottom two and switch them around.

When I put them together I actually found that I liked making the birds less even than they are in the original sketch. I like how the colors play off of one another. It will be interesting to see how this “tiles.” To do this, select your image, go to EDIT/CLONE/CREATE TILED CLONES.

The Cloning feature on Inkscape is really quite cool. There are a lot of different things you can do with it. This is something else you are just going to have to play with and mess around. This was just a straightforward tiled clone for me to get an idea of what my print would look like as a whole on the fabric. I LIKE IT!

I’m going to stick with this but here is something my hubby Jon put together. He loves the randomizing mode:

Did anyone say coordinating garments? Hmmm…………I need to hire him.

Okay, we have our design, we have our colors and we have plotted out the way we want things to look. Is that it? Nope!

We need to review some technical details to make sure that you are ordering what you want.

What size (or scale) do you want your pattern to be? Remember that fabric is 45” wide and there is a huge range of options size-wise for any pattern you create.
How do you block off your image so that it tiles correctly? (perfect size and perfectly fits together in the tile)
How do you save out your file to upload it properly to Spoonflower?

Once again, these are some amazing questions! You guys are so good! Let’s address them one at a time.

The Perfect Tile

Let’s get your artwork to tile perfectly. With some art, you really don’t have to do much if anything to it at all. I think I fall into that category with my bird art. I don’t really need to do anything with it. When it tiles, it looks really nice. So in this section, I’m going to use the “Ferocious Lion” art from Part 2.

Say I just loaded up this piece of art the way it is and Spoonflower tiled it to the fabric. Let’s see what would happen.

Ouch. Yuck. Let’s see this closer.

Okay! We are all agreed that this looks horrible. What is the trick to get this tile to perfectly align? I’d like to know! Well, I do know and I’m going to tell you! Yay!

The trick is to pick one point. I’m going to pick the point of the lion’s big tooth.

Click on your “square maker” on the left-hand tool maker. We are going to select the area we need.

Make sure that your “Fill” paint is selected to the X so that your box is clear when you are making it. I would recommend having your “Stroke” turned on for your initial drawing of the box. I tried to draw it here with both turned off and it kept disappearing on me. After you zoom in and correct your box you can turn the “Stroke” off as well to see your box as accurately as possible.

Close-up of tooth. Not quite on the point. Need to adjust that.

Top corner of tooth. Now you only need one more corner and that’s the bottom diagonal corner. You have those two and you have your perfect tile.

In this picture I have the “Stroke” turned on to help me draw the box. I actually found it a bit difficult to work with this thick of a line. Things would shift when I turned it off and on so I ended up making the line .001 thick and that worked just great for me. Now we have our perfect selection and you can set your “Stroke” paint off.

Looks kind of strange, doesn’t it? It works, I promise you that! We’ll test it out in a bit.

Decide The Size Of Your Art

Now is the time to decide how big or how small you want your artwork to print out on your fabric. Whatever you upload to Spoonflower, they will tile it according to the size you give them. So, if you receive your fabric and the print is super small or way too big, guess what? It’s YOUR FAULT! Well, how can we figure this out? Let’s try together. Here are the specs from Spoonflower:

RESOLUTION: Set up your image at 150 dpi (dots per inch). If you want to design an 8"x8" swatch, for example, you need to upload an image that is 1200 pixels x 1200 pixels. We will maintain each image uploaded at the size supported by 150 dpi, then tile it to fill the space of the fabric you order. If you upload an image larger than the area of fabric you order, then we will crop it from the lower left corner.

I got out my handy ruler and decided that I want my tile to be 4” across. So what I need to do is multiply 150 dpi X 4 inches which is 600 pixels. I’m going to export this selection to my desktop with this dimension.

Go to FILE/EXPORT BITMAP

So I set my Bitmap size width to 600 pixels. It adjusted to 599, but I’m sure that’s just fine. When you export this file, it will export as a .png file. Inkscape ONLY exports to .png files. We’ll discuss this in a bit.

Here is my finished tile. Crazy, eh? Just to show you it works, I’m going to tile it on my desktop. I need to make believers out of you all.

Here is is zoomed way out on my desktop. Yay, it worked!

Now that we have our “Perfect Tile” saved to our desktop (or wherever you like to save your files) we need to briefly talk about a couple things before I close. I know you are very anxious to get your artwork uploaded and printed asap! but I need to let you know that I still have a post or two left of important information to share.

Color Accuracy:

How can we be sure that the colors we see on our screen will be the colors that will be printed out?

This is an issue that some of you may have encountered already. I have. Here is my initial lion art tile:

This is what my fabric actually looks like:

Still cute, but not what I was wanting or expecting. I was designing this fabric for my Fall 08 line. The fabric I received is more spring/summer. Now, I’m not sharing this with you because I’m displeased in anyway with Spoonflower. I am extremely happy with the quality of the printing. If anything, this shows me that I erred on my end and there is a lot more to know in regards to color. We’ll discuss all these things.

I am writing these tutorials to help us work through the process of our designs to get to the end point where we are more than pleased with the outcome. Color Accuracy and color calibration will be another post.

File Uploading:

So now that my file has been exported as a .png file, how do I upload it to Spoonflower as they only accept .TIF files or .jpg?

Before uploading your file, you will need to convert it to the correct file format. Here are the instructions that Spoonflower gives:

FORMAT: When printing a design onto fabric using Spoonflower you'll get the best results when you upload a file in TIF format that has been created in (or converted to) LAB color space. You can also upload a JPG
~~or a PNG~~.
Tip: In Photoshop you can switch to LAB format by going to the Image menu and pulling down to Mode, then checking LAB color. You'll also want to make sure that in the same menu 8 bits/channel is checked rather than 16.

CONFUSED?

If you don't have Photoshop and talking about TIF and LAB color make you anxious, don't worry. You can upload a JPG or other common image format and it will still print nicely. There may be colors in your image that can't be reproduced by pigments on fabric in our printer (very bright colors, absolute blacks, and very saturated colors, for example). If that is the case you will sometimes see all of the colors in an image shift and the colors may end up appearing different from what you expected.

Uploading an image in LAB color offers some protection against all of the colors shifting. In LAB color, if the printer encounters a color it can't reproduce it will shift only that color rather than all the colors.

We will talk about these things as well in another post. As of now, congratulations! You should feel proud that you have created and completed a finished tile!

Love, Rachel

Spoonflower Fabric Development Series 3: Getting To Know Inkscape, A Vector Art Program

Rachel — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:54:38 GMT

Well, folks! Hope you are all ready to get moving on our project! For those of you who are just joining us, you may want to read Part 1 and Part 2 in this fabric development series first.

Today is the day that we transfer our “sketch” to our vector art program, Inkscape. First you will want to take a picture of your sketch with your digital camera and upload it to your computer. Don’t worry if it isn’t perfect, it will only be a guide for you anyway. This time I’m going to use this inspiration lion sketch from my niece Lilly Hannah. I just love this lion.

Open your program and the first thing you will want to do is to maximize your space and on the top bar there is a button that says “zoom to fit page in window.” Do that. Now you have your fresh canvas before you.

Here is a view of your bar you will see. Your artwork will be a bit to the right of that. You are now going to import your image. (If you choose to simply sketch right into the art program, you can ignore all of these steps.)

Click on FILE then IMPORT and find your digital print on your computer. It will probably be very large and you’ll need to shrink it down to fit your page. There is another awesome button on the top bar that says “zoom to fit selection in window” when you mouse over it. Click on that and your art will fill your page.

Click directly on your art and you will see arrows on the four corners. You want to shrink your art so it will fit on your page. Do not simply grab the corner arrow and make it smaller—it will get smaller but you will mess up the aspect ratio. Hold down the CTRL (control) button while you shrink your image from the corner. This keeps everything in place. Get your image situated on the page.

There are a lot of ways that people use art programs to make their shapes and I’m in no way saying that mine is best. In this post I am focusing on the raw tools on the left hand side of the bar for a beginner to begin.

NOTE: There is a cool feature that traces bitmaps and cleans them up in this program, but it’s a bit more complicated so I’m just going to start with the basics.

With this sketch I want to get a raw feeling then clean it up a bit, so with that in mind I am going to use the pencil. Think of the sketch like your template and remember that everything can get cleaned up. Click on the pencil on the left side. Trace your first shape with your pencil. It is important to start and finish your shape in one stroke. Otherwise, you will have a bunch of separate “line shapes” that will come apart on you. When you finish the shape, the little starting box will turn red. Don’t worry if you mess up. You can always click on it and delete it.

This program is about SHAPES not lines
Once you get the hang of that, you’ll be fine.

Looks kind of funny, doesn’t it? I filled in my tracing with a color so that you could see it better. I’ll show you how to fill shapes in later.

Now, each shape that you draw can be moved around at this point of time. Before I clean anything up, I’m going to make all my shapes then put them together. Click on the one you just drew and move it out of the way. Finish all of your shapes by drawing them just like the first one. To switch from drawing with your pencil to moving your shape you will need to click on the top arrow on the left-hand side bar.

Look pretty bad? I know! It does. To help with this demonstration I have colored in all my shapes. This is very easy to do and you can do this as well. Simply click on the shape that you would like to fill with your arrow (top arrow button) then click on the color you want. Done.

You should fiddle with the shapes on the left-hand tool bar—especially if your design has a more structured shape. The circle and the square buttons are fun. I’m going to use the circle to make the nose and the eye shape. (Don’t forget to use the CONTROL button if you want your circle to stay a circle. Otherwise it will turn into an oval!)

Here I am working on the eye and I wanted the center to become an oval. The problem is that I want to twist it around a bit so it’s more side-ways. To move your objects around click on it and the arrows will change to this:

Now you can turn it by the corner “turning arrow.”

I’m going to duplicate this eye and make the duplicate smaller to fit inside my first eye. To do this, right click and scroll down to “duplicate.” You’ll need to grab your “moving arrow” once more and move the newly duplicated eye off of the first one. Here we have two ovals--a blue one on the bottom and a rotated black one on top.

I know, I know. Freaky looking. Please bear with me, we will get somewhere good, I promise!!!

Cleaning Up Your Shapes

Finally! Time to clean up and see if we came up with anything decent. Let’s put all your shapes together on top of your sketch.

If your shapes aren’t falling in the layer you would like them to, get to know your “layer buttons.”

Think of each of your shapes as a separate layer. It can be moved up and down according to your design needs. For me, it wouldn’t make sense to have the yellow lion layer on top because it would cover my beautiful lion mane!

When you click on any of your shapes you may notice this second row of options pop up underneath our top layer. The arrows are pretty self-explanatory, but click on one of your layers (or shapes) and it will move up or down according to the picture on the button. Play around with them and see what I mean.

I know that the very important detail work to this lion is currently missing, but I’m going to clean up my existing shapes first. I’m going to click on my sketch and move it to the side.

Wow. Now that’s raw talent right here. Hee hee. I have some work ahead of me!

First I’m going to bring my main yellow shape to the top and work on that. To smooth out this shape click in the toolbox on the arrow pointing at the nodes right under the main arrow you’ve been using up to this point.

This is what your shape will look like:

Believe it or not, each of these nodes can be moved and shaped. The reason my image looks so jerky is because IT IS! I want to get rid of all except the necessary nodes to make my shape. To do this, go to PATH then SIMPLIFY. As this removes nodes, your shape will get smoother and smoother. You can continue to do this until you get to a point you are happy with. An easier way to do the same thing is: [CTRL+L].

Now it’s time to play. Move your nodes, change your shapes so they look like how you would like them to be. Delete more nodes and if you get to the point where you feel like you messed up and shouldn’t have deleted that last one, just click on [EDIT then UNDO] or CTRL+Z. They do the same thing. Right now I’m happy with this shape. The cool thing is, I can always change it later if I change my mind.

Do each of your shapes and bring them together. Let’s see how they look:

It’s slowly coming together! Are you having fun yet? I’m going to mess around and add some details to this ferocious lion.

Well, like anything, you could tweak it forever. These aren’t necessarily the colors I would pick either, but you get the idea. One more thing I’d like to let you know is how to outline your shapes. Click on your shape and go to: [OBJECT] then [FILL AND STROKE]. This is what you will see:

Mess around with this tool, it’s really cool. If you want a solid line make sure that the “FILL” is solid and the “STROKE STYLE” is set to a solid line. You can make your line as thin or thick as you like. Mess around with all sorts of features here. It’s pretty fun.

PUTTING YOUR PIECES TOGETHER!

Last but not least, you can put your pieces together. They don’t need to be floating out there separate all the time. In fact you can do this at any time with just a couple pieces or a whole group. It makes things easier to move around and duplicate. Take your main arrow and click down and drag a box around all the pieces you would like to join. I’m going to join all of my pieces so it looks like this:

Once your image is selected go to OBJECT then GROUP and your image is one solid piece. If you ever want to take it apart, you select your image then go to OBJECT / UNGROUP.

We have now officially taken a sketch and made it into a .svg image using our basic tools on Inkscape. I want you to know that we’ve barely touched the surface of this amazing program, but I wanted to give you a starting point from which to work. I would encourage you to watch some tutorials and just PLAY PLAY PLAY! That’s the fun part and soon you’ll be putting things together and making things that are difficult to put onto paper.

What Comes Next?

The next part in this series will continue along the lines of design development. Now that we have some basic tools with which to work, we will continue with our design and explore color options. I’m going to return to my “Lilly Bird” design that I started working on in Part 1.

And now, I’ll leave you with “The ferocious lion teaser!”

Love, Rachel

Spoonflower Fabric Development Series 2: Computer Art Programs And What They Do

Rachel — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:54:17 GMT

Welcome back for Part 2 of my series in fabric development! Back for more, eh?

Today I’m going to talk about Computer Art Programs available for people just like you and me.

There are so many things to think about and cover for something like this; the only way I can really even begin to touch on it, is to just bring you through the process the way that I go about it. That of course is not to say that other ways are wrong…(smile)…I’m just remembering how my sister Megan always says that I design backwards. So, there. I do things backwards. But, somehow they get done.

“I don’t have Photoshop or Illustrator”

For those of you who have Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator installed and being used, that is awesome! This post will not really pertain to you. I assume that you most likely have some sort of artistic computer presence in your house being yourself or your spouse. Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator are amazing programs to use. They also cost a bit of money to get them legally installed which is what I would recommend if you decide to go that route. Be wary of pirated computer programs. Being married to a computer nerd myself (love you Jon!) I have been more than warned about downloading anything. But then again, things are a bit strict around here in that regard. The newest version of Photoshop is $649+ and Illustrator is $599. You can download a trial version for free and try it out if you like. There is a cheaper version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements, so if you’re familiar with Photoshop, that could be a more practical option.

I have not had formal training regarding computer art programs. I did have an opportunity to use Photoshop and Illustrator in college when I worked as an intern for the Creative Department at MBNA America Bank. I’m telling you this because like anything, you will need to practice and learn the program—but it’s completely doable. You don’t need to get fancy…you can just stick to the basics and create a wonderful piece of work from your sketches.

That being said, I do not use Photoshop or Illustrator. For those of you out there who aren’t sure they want to invest in the programs before they know what they are getting into, there is another amazing option out there for you. Both of these programs are FREE Open Source Programs. Yes, I did say FREE. The first program is called GIMP, which is like Photoshop and the second is called Inkscape, which is like Illustrator. In this household my husband Jon has a motto that I will share with you, “Free is good!” To be honest, it took me awhile to believe him that anything out there for “free” could possibly be good. In my world, you get what you pay for and if it’s free, well, it’s pretty much crap. Things are a lot different in the computer world and I’m so glad to be married to someone who could educate me in that department. Both of these programs are incredible.

“What is the difference between these two programs?”

Who asked that? That is an excellent question.

Bitmaps vs. Vectors? We all win!

There are two main kinds of computer art programs: those that edit bitmaps (like Photoshop and GIMP), and those that edit vectors (like Illustrator and Inkscape). Here’s the difference between them:

Understand that (Inkscape) creates vector graphics and vector text. Vector graphics consist of lines and curves that contain mathematical objects called vectors.

Know that (GIMP) creates bitmapped graphics. Bitmaps consist of tiny dots of color. The eye fills in the spaces between the dots so the color appears to be solid. Bitmapped graphics are measured by the number of dots per unit - usually called dpi (dots per inch).

Realize that bitmap graphics are much larger in file size than vector graphics. Therefore, vector images take up much less storage space and can be downloaded faster.

Understand that you can scale a vector graphic to any size without losing quality. A bitmap will change quality if you enlarge it or reduce it.

Know that some filters can be applied to bitmap images but cannot be applied to vector images.

“HUH?”

Okay, basically there are two kinds of images you can work with. The first type of image is called a Bitmap. A bitmap is a pixel-based image with one bit of color information per pixel. These are the types of images when you blow them up really big you see all those squares and it doesn’t look so great anymore.

Picture of my daughter Eleanor.

Part of the photo blown up so you can see the “pixels.”

Common types of bitmap graphics are GIF, JPEG, Photoshop, PCX, TIFF, Macintosh Paint, Microsoft Paint, PNG, FAX formats, and TGA.

The second type of image is called a Vector.

Vector graphics are made up of many individual objects. Each of these objects has individual properties assigned to it such as color, fill, and outline. Vector graphics are resolution independent because they can be output to the highest quality at any scale.

This is really cool because no matter how big you blow it up or how small you shrink it, your image looks absolutely perfect. Your lines and shapes are beautifully smooth.

Here is part of the image I worked on in my last post. I’m going to blow it up so you can see the cluster of birds in the upper left corner.

You could continue to blow this image up forever and the lines would stay smooth and never get the boxy “pixel” look. Like I said, really cool.

“Do you use both programs? If so, what do you use them for?”

I do use both programs. I use Inkscape to make my initial drawings. After some practice, it becomes easier to mess around with your shapes and colors and you’ll find that you can create things you may not have thought of. After they are finished, I export the image and load it into GIMP where I crop and re-size to the exact specifications needed. (We’ll talk more about Spoonflower specs later!)

“Well, Rachel. This is all fine and good, but when I download these programs, I’ll just be staring at them and won’t have the slightest idea where to start!”

This will most likely be true. However, there are some great tutorials you could look through and just play around with it. ALSO IN PART 3 OF THIS SERIES, I will take you from start to finish through this process. We will start with a hand-drawn sketch and turn it into a Vector Art Image. To do this, you will need Inkscape.

Get ready!

Love, Rachel

Spoonflower Fabric Development Series 1: Thinking About And Creating Your Design

Rachel — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:08:21 GMT

So, I know everyone probably knows how excited I am about Spoonflower, a new company that will print out YOUR fabric design on high quality 100% Kona cotton. The question at hand for people like us is, “How on earth do I get to the end result of receiving my lovely creation and being extremely happy with the outcome?”

What a great question! Let’s go through this designing/creating/editing/uploading process together to get to our FINAL swatch to upload to the amazing creators of Spoonflower. There are a lot of steps to go through and to think about.

Step 1 Think About Your Design

I know this may seem silly since that is the point of a fabric design, but stay with me a moment and let’s think about what exactly what you want to do:

An image print? (ie. flower/animal/object design)
A background print? (stripes/dots/ethereal feeling)
Both?
One image only? (One large cat)
What colors do you want to us?
Will you use another fabric with this design?
If so, will your fabrics go together (colors/shapes/etc.)

This is just a short list I wanted to throw out there to get you to start thinking. For me personally, I need to start with a sketch and a color scheme.

When I get started I usually have an inspiration that comes from somewhere. Ever notice how the latest fashion designers have their show and the very next week every store from Nordstrom all the way through Target have the same exact styles? Interesting. Anyway, in the place that I’m at TODAY, I’m designing with a goal in mind and my goal is Spring 2009. I have a theme in mind: BIRDS. I have colors in mind: white, pink, green, yellow, and brown. This comes from the fabric inspiration of Alexander Henry’s “Aviary.”

This is an older fabric and I have still seen two other color-ways of it available to buy on the web (Sew Mama Sew), but I think it’s getting kind of scarce. For Summer 2008, I released a Mamma Made design using this fabric and it’s been pretty popular, so I may even re-release it next season. Usually that doesn’t happen, but we’ll see. Here is that design:

Another inspiration that I want to use in my new fabric comes from my “Lilly Bird Dress.” I may want to take this design in a new direction. This is also from my Summer 2008 collection:

This bird image was inspired by a drawing my niece Lilly Hannah drew me, thus the name, “Lilly Bird.”

So for me, I have a couple things to think about. Do I want a print of birds? Do I want a print that could BE a nice bird? There are so many avenues to think about and explore when it comes to fabric design. It’s kind of overwhelming a bit. But EXCITING!!!

Color Palette:

I’m going to start working on a stripe pattern first. I’m letting you look into my creative process so please don’t be too critical. You really need to mess around with a bunch of stuff and play before you come to something that really seems to fit with where you are going. You can sit down with some paper and some colored pencils and mess around. I’m going to do it on my art program (which I’ll talk about later) just so it comes across easier on the screen.

Ouch. This one really hurts my eyes! I’m pulling this apart.

You can see how I’m playing with the color and tweaking the width of the stripes just a bit. I kind of like the chunk with the green/pink/brown/pink/green with the bits of white interspersed. I like the concept of the yellow, but maybe I need to tweak the shade a bit. I feel like my eyes hurt when I look at it. Maybe a bit too cheery. Plus, there aren’t any rules that say you HAVE to use all the colors. This is a general color palette for my entire line so I can mix and match as much or little as I want.

I kind of like this buttery yellow better. Need to think on that a bit.

This is kind of a cool stripe.

You know what? I’m going to take a break from the stripe because my brain is really hurting right now. I can come back to that at a later time. The point is that you get what’s going on. Mess around and have fun!

Here is my original “Lilly Bird” drawing that I made on my art program from a hand-drawn drawing my niece Lilly Hannah made. Here is her drawing:

I promise I will talk about the art programs available in Part 2 of this series!

I’m going to mess around with this sketch and see if I like anything. Fun is the name of the game here!

I kind of like the feel of a more random placement like in the Alexander Henry fabric.

A couple twists and turns and by changing sizes and rotation I have this little piece going on:

Let’s see what this would look like tiled—and remember we are just working on a drawing concept. We haven’t even begun to implement color yet.

Kind of boring if you ask me.

Flipping them around adds some extra interest and the smaller birds are making cool flower-like patterns.

Not sure if I like it because the legs seem to stick out like sore thumbs. That could change when you get the color going. I love the smaller birds though.

Okay! This is it! My wonderful husband, Jon Galloway, steered me in this direction of flipping the bottom two mamma birds. Yay! That’s why I married him! I really do love it. Here is my sketch!

I thought I would get to plug in some color, but that’s going to have to wait for the next installment. Next time I will talk about different art programs out there for you to use on your computer. I want to encourage you and let you know that I have never taken a class on computer art programs. This is something that anyone with an interest can learn. Like anything (sewing for example!) it just takes a bit of practice. The hard part is actually coming up with the concepts. But you are all artists out there! You can do it!

I know that you absolutely can upload hand-drawn drawings onto Spoonflower, but even a hand-drawn drawing should probably be cleaned up a bit on an art program to get rid of lines and dark shadows. All of these things can and will be transferred onto your final fabric. It isn’t Spoonflower’s job to clean up your work—it’s your job!

More later on this awesome series!

Love, Rachel

What Do I Do With My Spoonflower Fabric When I Get It?

Rachel — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:30:03 GMT

THIS IS A BRIEF POST WITH IDEAS OF HOW TO USE MY FABRIC. FOR THOSE OF YOU INTERESTED, VISIT MY IN-DEPTH SERIES ON SPOONFLOWER FABRIC DEVELOPMENT.

I've made my choice and ordered a yard of my newly designed lion fabric from Spoonflower. Here it is, inspired by Lilly Hannah:

Now the question at hand is, what am I going to do with it? Well, obviously it's going to become some part of a child's garment, but what? I just don't know. It's a bit tough because for me, there definitely is too much of a good thing. I don't want to overuse the lions because they could sink away to a place where you barely even notice them because there are so many. My challenge is to create something where the lion fabric is showcased to it's fullest without overwhelming the garment or underwhelming the fabric. Hmmm...I'm just going to play around on the computer and try a couple of things. Bear with me--I'm just playing!

Tent jumper with the lions as a central focal point.

Lion dress with center skirt front panel in solid green and thin maroon piping to break up the green a bit.

Opposite skirt panels.

Lion extravaganza! Hee hee!

Empire waist jumper with maroon piping to break up the fabrics.

Bubbly Lion Dress.

Empire waist jumper with lion bodice and maroon skirt.

Well, so far I'm learning that I really want to put just a little taste of the maroon accent in there somewhere. I like how it breaks up all the green. Fun Fun!

<Yawn!> Goin' to bed!

Love, Rachel

Want To Design Your Own Fabric?

Rachel — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:47:45 GMT

Well, now you can!!! I was so very excited when I read a post from Dress A Day about a new company called Spoonflower.

"Y'all have heard about Spoonflower, right? The web site of my (fabric) dreams, which lets you upload your own design for printing? (It's in beta right now, but you can sign up for an invite at that link.)"

This is really exciting to open this door of creative possibilities for us wanna-be fabric designers! Spoonflower is still in Beta Testing, but you can sign up on their waiting list to receive a personal invitation to participate. At the moment, fabric max is 5 yards, but I believe that is only during Beta. Check out their site for fabulous videos on How Does Spoonflower Work? and Shipping Your Fabric! They also have a quickly growing flickr pool of custom made fabrics by people just like you and me!

Here's an excerpt from Kim (Spoonflower Owner):

"I've just gotta say here how excited I am about my new Spoonflower job. I had a half-formed mental picture of what it might look like, but I don't think I was prepared for how incredibly cool it is to see people's fabric designs printed up and in a big stack in my own house. It's like going to a new fabric store with designs you've never seen before! Really, that almost NO ONE has seen before. So cool. One thing I wasn't expecting was how much being printed on fabric really warms up a design. It might look digital on the Flickr site, but in real life, on cotton, all the designs looked warm and organic."

"How much does it cost?"

"This is of course the MOST-asked question. Below is the pricing for fabric during the beta period, and it applies only to the Kona® cotton from Robert Kaufman. We may adjust these numbers at a later date and pricing will certainly vary between products as we endeavor to introduce additional fabric options."

Swatch (8" x 8") $5.00
Fat quarter (21" x 18") $11.00
1 yard (42" x 36") $18.00
2 yards (42" x 72") $36.00
3 yards (42" x 108") $54.00
4 yards (42" x 144") $72.00
5 yards (42" x 180") $90.00

Now all I have to do is WAIT for my invite! I'm not so good with that....especially when I'm so excited!

Update: Yay! I just got my invite! Keep you posted.

Love, Rachel