One Week before Quilting by the Lake and what am I doing??  PACKING!  Its always such a job and there is always a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you are forgetting that all important item.

Alphadreams, Clair Higgin

I did get a nice surprise last week.  Spoonflower, an on-demand digital printing company, was having a BOGO fat quarter sale.  Now, I've been meaning to try Spoonflower since it opened in 2010 but have been put off by the price of the process. But with this kind of sale, I thought I would give it a try!!

First of all, I decided not to design my own fabric but browse the thousands and thousands patterns of other designers.   Among the many, many, cutsy modern prints, I did find some amazing surface design type patterns.  I finally settled on ones that used letters and numbers in their designs and made an order.  Here are my findings!

Pro's

Soft City, Jay Trolinger

1.  You can easily design your own fabric exactly the way you want it.  The site shows you how with
plenty of information.

2.  Ordering is easy and the lead time for fabric is less than 2 weeks.  I paid a little extra and got it in 1 week so I could take it with me to QBL.

3.  The print looked closed to what was depicted on my computer screen, with the lines nice and crisp.  I did notice on one of the darkest of the designs the colors were more muted then shown in the online picture.  (I like the muted version anyways)   The site shows you exactly how the print will come out on a fat quarter which is great so you can see the scale of it.

4.  The range of designs on the site is incredible.  Plus you can print them on a big array of fabrics which even includes knits.

5.  They're printed in the US.

Con's

1.  The process is still pretty costly.  The cheapest fabric still $17/ yd with a fat quarter being  $10.50.  I got the "Ultra Cotton" which I found pretty thin and next time I would spent the extra  $$ to have Kona cotton.  I can tell you, if I saw a print on that thin of cotton in JoAnn's fabric, I wouldn't buy it.

2.  Since these are digitally printed, the hand of the finish product is totally different than commercially made fabric.  It has a rough kind of feel.  Spoonflower recommends to wash the fabric with a non-phosphorous  detergent, which I did, and that helped a lot.  It was still a bit rough but MUCH better.  Still, I don't normally pre-wash my fabrics so this add an extra step.

Alpha Dreams,  Clair Higgins

3.  I found the site's browse features pretty cumbersome to use and I had a hard time finding exactly what I was looking for.  There is so much there and it seems like there is gotta be an easier way to categorize it better.

4.  (This is pretty petty - but its a pet-peeve of mine)  My package did not come with an invoice inside.  It only had an inventory packing slip.  I like to have an actual invoice for my records rather than having to print it out myself off my emails.

So, as for this purchase, I LOVE the prints I bought and am glad that the royalties are paid to the actual designers.  I would have bought a lot more of their work if I could actually afford it.


In the future, I probably will order from Spoonflower again when I find something interesting OR I get brave enough to actually design something myself.  It definitely would have to be for a special purpose and not a "Just because" kind of thing.  I also, for sure would buy a thicker fabric!!