Another Spoonflower Adventure: Crayon Monsters

by Kathy Garvey

It's no secret that I love Spoonflower, a company based here in the good old USA that will print an artist's designs to fabric. I've been printing with them for several years and while the cost is a little high, the results are always great and they respond immediately to any issues.

Spoonflower also offers frequent design challenges to artists with their almost weekly contests and I have entered several times. The competition is amazing. I cannot believe how many beautiful entries there are for challenges like creating a fabric with fishing lures or sewing notions as the theme.(To see what I mean, click on this link: Spoonflower Contests.)

Several months ago, this was the challenge: Crayon-drawn monsters

It's time to dust off the crayons, we're going 'old school' (kindergarten, that is!) for this week's contest. Create a monster design by hand, using only crayons (the kind you'd doodle with as a kid). Previews will be sized as quarter yards (21" x 18"). Deadline for entry is Tuesday, May 13th, 2014.

I love little monsters so this was a contest for me! I doodled a tiny idea in my sketchbook of little monsters trying to catch stars. The crayon drawings themselves went pretty quick. The really time consuming part is making a design that repeats well and for this I brought my three different drawings into Photoshop to combine them and experiment. (The trick for creating a repeating pattern in Photoshop is to build your initial design at the size and resolution you want. Then use the Offset filter to offset in both directions by exactly half of the original size. Then fill in any empty spaces on the new offset result. Then test, redo, test, redo, etc. until it works! Challenging but fun!) Click on any image to enlarge it.)

The little sketch in my sketchbook, the three designs that I composited in Photoshop
against the printed fabric back from Spoonflower. Don't they do an excellent job!

After submitting the design, I put out a plea on Facebook for any friends and family to go online and vote for any of the wonderful designs they liked. You are not limited in how many you can vote for - I voted for more than ten myself. I was surprised to make it into the Top Ten!

Getting in the Top 10 in a Spoonflower Contest was Awesome!

  The fabric made a coordinating pillowcase for the children's guest bed.

This shows the original design on a pillowcase of Spoonflower Kona Cotton and
resized smaller and printed to their cotton knit for baby clothes.

I'm having a lot of fun with the fabric. I'll probably be making something tiny and soft for a new baby with the little print soon. Thank you to any friends who voted! And keep Spoonflower in mind if you are looking to print your own fabrics or interested in finding unique custom made fabrics.