Prints Charming

A while back, I designed this print on Spoonflower:

Today, I saw this skirt for Topshop Tall:

Yeah baby! Totes ahead of my time. Definitely like mine more, though.

Further Adventures in Fabric

I am continuing to love the time sink that is Spoonflower, and have yet to stop tinkering with various designs. In a slight change of pace, I have moved on from the more painterly themes I started out with, and am currently exploring scientific imagery. Medical scans, fractals, and images obtained using electron microscopes can make for some surprising pretty textiles designs. The three prints below, for example, are all based around microscopic photographs.

The middle one is my favourite. It has a kind of woven, almost folky feel to it. My only concern is that the pattern might be a wee bit small. The design might lose some of its impact when viewed from a distance. Here's what a yard of the fabric would look like:

Still cute to my eye - it could potentially work nicely as a kind of contemporary kilting fabric - but it undoubtedly loses something of its delicacy and nuance. I'm still playing, anyway, so I'll let you know how I progress.

Adventures in Fabric

So, I've been watching episodes of the US version of Project Runway recently, and they have this thing where the contestants get to design their own textiles. Most of the stuff they come up with is a bit lame, but the process itself always looks really fascinating - I mean, the chance to determine your own raw materials! Very cool. So, I thought I'd give it a go.

Obviously I'm not fortunate enough to have the fancy, intuitive, user-friendly technology suites used on Project Runway, so I scoured the internet for options. I figured there would be loads of websites offering a 'Design Your Own' kind of service, but I actually only managed to find one or two. My favourite so far is the American site Spoonflower, which allows users to upload their own designs, select from a range of materials, and even to put their work up for sale. It's an amateur's dream, and I have quickly come to find it wholly addictive! Below are some of the digital prints that I've come up with in the past few days.







They aren't much, but I feel quite proud of myself! I really like the last one (based on a photograph of a marigold that I took with my iPhone), and the way that the repeated lines of the image form something like a plaid. The first one is definitely at the top of my wish list, though! It reminds me of some of my favourite Basso and Brooke prints; I'd love to make a pencil skirt or something out of it. And if even I can come up with these after a couple of hours of playing (and without any knowledge of Photoshop), just imagine what somebody with real design chops could achieve... If this kind of thing takes off, the streets will be singing with print and colour. Amazing! I certainly plan to continue experimenting.

Images from the Basso and Brooke website