Have you ever had an idea for a dress or tote bag but couldn’t find the right fabric to satisfy your creativity? In the fashion industry, have you ever wanted to test a print before ordering hundreds of yards of fabric? Well I’ma show you how to gitter DONE and bring your designs to life!!!
This will be the first of a two part series. Part one will focus on small run printing. In a nutshell, printing small quantities on almost any kind of fabric. Part two will be geared towards those in the fashion industry. You’ll learn how to get large quantities of fabric printed for production. Rollstock screen printing is the standard for any aspiring designer. Stay tuned for that one!
I’ve been a professional designer for a long time! One of my secret weapons is Spoonflower. Outside of personal sewing or arts and crafts projects, one of the main reasons you may want to use spoonflower, is for something called sample yardages. In the fashion industry, you do all of your sales based off of samples. When using your own fabric designs, it is very difficult to find a manufacturer who is willing to print small runs of fabric for you to make your samples out of, so Spoonflower is a lifesaver in this department!
Let’s get started! First you will need to head over to Spoonflower and sign up for a free account. If you’re a full-time designer, I recommend signing up for a professional account. Your turnaround times will be shorter and you’ll have dedicated customer service.
Next, you’ll need to come up with a design to print. This could be something as simple as a photo, clipart image or scan of a leaf. If you’re a professional, use a full repeat design. I’ll talk more about graphic design in a future post.
Once uploaded, you’ll have to confirm that you own the copyright to your image:
It will take a few minutes to upload, especially if you have a larger file, but once the process is complete, your image will pop up in your design library:
From here you can play around with the fabric lengths, repeat, and size of your print to see just how it will look on your fabric. You can even print wall paper!! Watch the above video to see these options in action!
Here is my final product. I went with a beautiful chiffon, and it looks just beauteous!
Welp! That’s it! You now have a tool to help you print whatever the heck you want on the fabric of your choice. I hope you enjoyed this mini tutorial, and hope to see you next week for part 2: Rotary Screen Printing for the Fashion Industry.
If you have a question about the fashion industry you’d like answered, leave it in the comments section, and I’ll answer in a future blog/video!
Thanks for reading/watching everybody! Until next time, stay happy my happy people!!! (And if you’re sad, here’s a cat video for you :)