© 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.

Have you checked out Spoonflower, a site where you can upload your own fabric designs and have them digitally printed onto fabric?

I made this small quilt using one of my beta tester swatches of Spoonflower’s first printed fabrics on Kona cotton.  Spoonflower has subsequently switched their print stock to Moda cotton (Bleach White from the Bella Series) which has a softer hand and a smoother surface, and have plans to support other fabrics as well.  I know I’m interested in printing on both home/dec. weight fabrics, maybe a cotton linen blend, and onto silk.  I’m sure many other crafters/artists are too. 

I’m very pleased with the quality of the Spoonflower fabric for quilting.  Using standard quilting techniques I torture tested the Kona printed swatches to the best of my ability.  I washed and ironed them.  I put them in the sunshine for actual cats to lie upon.  I sewed them with denim needles and free-motion quilted them heavily with cotton and rayon threads.  Short of burning the stuff, I worked it over pretty well. Basically this fabric performed just like Kona.

Here’s a picture of the back of a quilt…so you can see I REALLY quilted the stuff.  No problems.

Channeling my inner Harriet Hargrave,  I even took specific notes on my experiments:

• Machine wash – wool cycle with synthrapol
• Machine dry – low/gentle heat to damp dry
• Ironed – hottest Cotton/Linen setting
• Original samples: 20cm x 20.3cm
• Washed samples: 19.1cm x 20.1 cm
• Shrinkage: 4.5% width (weftwise), 1% length (warpwise)
• Hand:  Before washing the hand was waxy, the fabric smooth with a spacious threadcount.  After washing the hand softened, it wrinkled a bit, the weave structure tightened and there was minimal fraying.

Most impressive is the color.  The colors on my swatches are very saturated.  Nice saturated colors on 100% cotton fabric that is reasonably lightfast and washfast, has a soft, non-waxy hand and can been ironed, sewn and quilted with good results.  I have been studying digitally printed textiles for over a decade and I have seen many failed experiments in the color department.  The ink-jet printing process inherently makes it difficult to get good color without sacrificing some other desired characteristic for quilt fabrics.

I’d say the Spoonflower fabrics are a winner.  Much nicer color results than I have been able to obtain shoving fabric sheets through my desktop inkjet printer to date, and the resulting fabric is wash and light fast.  Since I’m more of a Pimatex than a Kona person in general, I’m excited about the switch to Moda cotton, which I suspect will perform even better for my quilting needs.