Abroad!

I'm in Japan right now, visiting family. No working on prints or patterns for me, while on vacation in Tokyo, but I do get to enjoy picking up a few pretty things and omiyage (souvenirs). Couldn't resist a few small bits of cloth: the Japanese equivalent of fat quarters, some tenugui (non-terry cloth towels), and a few small hand towels.

I'm not deliberately choosing traditional or modern fabrics, just what catches my eye in terms of texture, color, and pattern. Laying them out together like this and taking a picture makes for some fun "photo quilting", if I can call it that.

Spoonflower

You can now find me at Spoonflower, under the profile name ododo! It's exciting to put things up there and notice that even this quickly, a few people are seeing and even liking some of what I've uploaded!



There are a few new patterns there, and no doubt more to come. Whether or not to make the patterns up as (paper) prints for sale on the Etsy shop is something I'm still debating. They'd work well enough as cards, but I haven't yet scouted out a place that prints greeting cards up at the quality I would want -- and at a price that wouldn't have potential customers running away.

As for the fabric prints, I'm going to have to go back and make sure that the patterns are sized correctly. I may have a few of them at a scale that spreads over too many inches.

Fabric

I've longed to print out some of the patterns I've created onto fabric. A good while back I read about Spoonflower, an online site where you can upload designs and have custom fabric printed up. They're still in beta, but I hope they do well.

Right now it costs about $18 to have a yard of quilting-weight cotton fabric printed up, with an added $3 for shipping; a reasonable price, compared to other places I've looked at. Still, that's $21 just in costs to me, and I'd have to pad that price to even begin to pay myself for designing anything. I'm not sure how much someone would be willing to pay for designed fabric, and the usual question of 'how much do I charge' comes up yet again.

On the other hand, once the site leaves beta, someone would be able to order their desired fabric to be printed up and sent to them. (Right now, you can only order your own fabrics.) That means a marketplace in which I don't have to order and keep inventory -- and that's the appealing thing about the service.



I think I will have to order a few patterns up, just for myself -- like maybe this pattern I use on my business cards. I'll post here, if and when I do!