Ever since I got the sewing bug while I was pregnant with Brenna and in my last days of art school I’ve thought it would be fun to design fabric.  Then I became a quilter, discovered designers like Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner (who also has 6 kids) and have thought over and over, “I could do that….. if I could just figure out how to do that.”

Well, I decided this is the year that I will learn to be a fabric designer.  I got myself some books

which have helped me immensely.  I learn by reading.  If I can read about how to do something in a book, then I can do it, but reading directions on the computer, experimenting by trial and error– they just don’t do it for me.  Kim Kight’s Field Guide to Fabric Design is fantastic.  All the tutorials for digital design are for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but since those aren’t quite in the budget I’m having to translate things into GIMP and Inkscape, which are free.  I also got a vector drawing app for my iPad call iDraw and a stylus so I can draw right on my iPad.  It’s like a glorified sketchbook, though I have been using my real sketchbook a lot too.

And then there’s Spoonflower.  I’ve known about it since it first started in 2008 or 2009 and signed up as soon as it wasn’t just by invitation only, but have never figured out how to make designs until now.  And look!

My first test swatches came in the mail!!!  My designs are printed on real fabric!!!

Anyone remember the story I told about Ian coming downstairs one morning and telling me, “Mom, we’re going to get a girl baby and her name is going to be Eva and she is going to be zero and she will have a pink shirt that is a dress”?  Well, he further described that pink shirt that is a dress as having blue butterflies on it and a skirt that is blue with pink butterflies.  I’ve been on the look out for pink shirts with blue butterflies, pink fabric with blue butterflies, blue fabric with pink butterflies.  None.  I guess I’ll have to make some.

And I can!!  How fun is that?