Care Instructions for Spoonflower Fabric

In this post I share my free PDF on care instructions. This document is updated every six months as fabric availability can change. I also include repeated information from a previous post.

What is Spoonflower?

Spoonflower is an on-demand, digital printing company that prints custom designs on fabric, wallpaper, and home decor. It is based in Durham, North Carolina and owned by Shutterfly. (Yay, Made in USA!) The Spoonflower community has hundreds of thousands of independent designers and artists from all over the world. We earn a commission from each sale from our shop, usually around 10% of the sale before taxes and shipping. So, when you buy from one of us, you are directly helping us with our creative businesses. Pretty cool, right?

For sewists and their projects, there are numerous kinds of fabrics that you can choose by the yard, fat quarter, or swatch. For those non-sewist, the home decor items are sewn in-house by Spoonflower employees. I have heard that some think Spoonflower’s prices are too high. I absolutely disagree. The quality of the fabrics and the labor time it takes to print and make your items is giving someone a decent living wage, right here in America. I am all about that. They are skilled at their work and deserve every penny they earn. If you want cheaper items and fabric somewhere else, be my guest. But, be warned. There is a lot of design theft and cheap, fly-by-night shops popping up all over the internet. They steal someone’s design they have no copyright to, offer it on products or fabrics, take your money, then disappear. And you just got robbed. Design theft is rampant right now and I will be doing a blog post about that soon so you know what to look out for. So, feel confident when you shop Spoonflower. Know it is a safe platform where you won’t be taken advantage of. I’m there, what more do you need? 🙂

I have found the quality of their fabrics, printing, and craftmanship to be exceptional and have always been very happy with my swatch proofs and purchased items. Another interesting thing to know is that digital printing has very little waste, unlike conventional textile manufacturing. There is less use of electricity, waste of fabric, and they inks they use are water-based.

One of the things I love so much about Spoonflower is that it gives me the ability to share my creativity with the world in a pattern that can then be available to all of you. That was always a Dream and I am making that dream come true by having my own shop on Spoonflower! I started it back in 2010 and I didn’t do much with it until two years ago. Some of my first designs were atrocious, but I have learned so much and absolutely love making fabric patterns with my art. So, if you are ready to dive in, here is my tutorial for finding my designs on Spoonflower for your projects and home. My shop is here: Angela’s Spoonflower Shop. Read my blog tutorial on shopping the platform. Let me know if I can adapt anything: Tips for Shopping Spoonflower

Save and Print this document for ease of use. Please feel free to pass it along, too. I am happy to share it.

Click here: Spoonflower Fabric Care Instructions Download

Lil’ Lit

Small book. Tiny handwriting. What does it say?

Haiku and small poems about my daily bus ride to Olympia. Over the last 4 years I’ve logged thousands of miles up and down I-5 and hundreds and hundreds of trips.

Here are some in process photos of the making of “The Commute-Tacoma, Olympia”:

I took photos on the bus and had to make some design decisions.
Inspired by an artist book made with a clam shell, I decided to use this shape.
I cut up the most current schedule for my pages and box.

As I am making, all the while I’m thinking about the smells, sounds, rhythmic rocking, and views out the window that I see over and over again. How can I capture it within such a small work, and one I want to fit into a small box?

Things I want to highlight in words. I love words. I love to pepper my work with them.
How can I put this thing together? Do I want to make it permanent?
Now it is a flower, not a starfish. Still organic, not quite sure how it fits with the bus, yet.

 

This book was created for the 2017 Puget Sound Book Artists Exhibit, Northwest Musings. Come see this book and many other beauties through through July at the Collins Library, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma. <3

Carving Again

I fell in love with printmaking at The Evergreen State College. The ink smell, cleaning “green” using cooking oil, the sound of the presses, hand-cranking them across damp paper, the inspiration of antiquated art-forms… Thanks, Colleen!

Rubber and Speed Ball.

Upclose and personal.
Custom card for someone very special.
Yes, insects appear. Everywhere.
Signature
hand carved clovers, positive and negative

 

Making Small Books

I did something that I have wanted to do for two years; I finally joined the Puget Sound Book Artists, PSBA. The annual meeting was yesterday and I met some folks I have known about and watched their art careers forever, it seems. It was a very gratifying day. There were a lot of nice people, good food, and amazingly beautiful items for auction and show-and-tell. Handmade books, boxes, papers…<3 My art has been wanting to go this direction for a long time. This is the yearl

My welcome letter had instructions and cut circles to create a book. Below are some pictures of the project as I put it together. It was really easy and came out so cute. My intentions for the year are written inside and I can read them to remind myself any time I want. What intentions do you have for 2017?

yellowstone

art space

retail

sewing

loving my family