This week’s winning Spoonflower fabric is by Rachel of MammaMade fame.
© Mamma Made Designs. Photo used by permission.
Rachel has been posting extremely detailed tutorials on designing fabric using vector art created in free software tools like Inkscape, a new SVG authoring program (shameless plug for SVG, a web technology I worked on years ago). In fact, she details her complete design process for making the Lion Fabric pictured here.
Many of the principles she discusses like choosing a color palette, considerations about your design before you begin drawing, rotating images to make tiles, etc. are useful regardless of the software design tools you like to use.
Personally, I’m not so big on trying to calibrate your monitor, or attempting to get a color managed workflow when printing on textiles. Without ICC profiles, you are kind of stuck. Even with ICC profiles on common printers, it’s complicated. Rachel’s experiments sort of prove my point. Though she does end up with the makings of a great color swatch book.
I’m more inclined to stick with using colors specified in the Spoonflower color palettes for Photoshop, and swatching my designs before printing yardage. I’ve had very good results so far.
