How To Design Your Own Fabric Easily!
Hi Everyone!
We don’t know about you but it always seems like there are too many things to do in the day and not enough hours to do them! With that in mind we are checking off one of the many things that has been on our to do list and that is to write this guide on how to design your own fabric and be fabulous!
We don’t know why we added “and be fabulous” on the end but hey, if you are going to do something you might as well be fabulous right? We like to think that if you are feeling fabulous than your fabric will be that much more fabulous!
And for the record, because we haven’t said it enough already, can we just say it one more time…fabulous!
Alright, enough of the pleasantries, let’s get right into it shall we?
Come Up With Your Theme
The first step in designing your own fabric is deciding on your theme. Are you looking to make a spring floral fabric, ballet themed fabric or spring bunny fabric to name a few? It sounds obvious, but having a theme will help you in either making your own art or finding artwork by illustrators that is all related to your theme.
Take a minute and think about it!
Make/Get Your Art
Once you have your theme nailed down you are now ready to start getting the art together that you will use to make your seamless pattern. We won’t go into how to create your own artwork here. If you are new to creating your own art then there are many courses and tutorials out there that you can find to help you with that.
An easier and just as fun way to get your art is to use someone else’s! Ahhh yes, it is great to let someone else make the art, especially, well, if they can just flat out do a better job than you can! The good news is that there are lots of places to buy art for commercial use or just personal use to make your seamless pattern for your fabric.
In fact, there is lots of lovely art for all sorts of themes on Pretty Little Lines you can check out here!
A word of advice is that if you are going to create fabric that you are going to sell and you are using someone else’s artwork than you must purchase it with the right license. Usually a standard commercial license will have you covered for under 500 sales so read over the licenses and choose the right one for you.
Make a Seamless Pattern
All of the clipart collections you will find on this site include premade seamless patterns. However, there are many individual elements you can use in the collections to create your own seamless patterns if you want something more custom.
If you don’t know how to make a seamless pattern already check out this very helpful video by Kris Lauren on how to make a seamless pattern in Adobe. (Check back! It will be out soon)
Send Your Pattern To Your Fabric Print On Demand Site
After you have your seamless pattern completed you will be ready to head over to one of the many print on demand sites, like Designyourownfabric.com or Spoonflower.com, to have the fabric made.
Some sites may ask you to create a profile first. You will need an account so you can save your design and so you can enter your billing and shipping information. After that is out of the way, you will start by uploading your seamless patterns file. Most sites accept .jpg, .png or .tiff files however, designyourownfabric.com does not accept .png files so if you are using them make sure you save your seamless pattern as a jpeg file.
You will want to make sure the seamless file you have created is at least 150dpi but we recommend 300dpi and 4000px x 4000px so you get the best results.
Here is a great little guide for sizing your image on Spoonflower.
Order A Test Yard of Fabric
Once you have uploaded your pattern you will want to select what kind of fabric you want and make sure to select that you want a test swatch. You can play around with the size of your image on Spoonflower by selecting bigger or smaller to manipulate how often you want the pattern to repeat. The setup on Designyourownfabric.com is very similar.
Once you are happy with the results go ahead and order that test swatch and wait for it to be delivered to your doorstep so you can see it with your own eyes!
Order Your Fabric
If you are not happy with the test swatch then make the necessary adjustments and order another test swatch. If you are happy with the test swatch then go ahead and order your custom fabric and wait in anticipation for your beautiful fabric to be delivered to you!
We hope that helps you in designing your own fabric. Of course, there are other tips and tricks but this really gives you the gist of it so you can get started and cross designing your own fabric off your to do list.
Happy Creating
