Drawing and fabric

I am part of several Facebook groups that deal with sewing and fabric.  On one of the fabric groups, there are ladies that order fabric from manufacturers in China.  I thought I would give it a shot, since Spoonflower cannot print a true black on their knit fabrics.  It will probably end up being about the same cost as Spoonflower once I get them mailed to me.  Plus, there is a 5 yard minimum.   Plus, it is cotton lycra, which is hard to find.

As an aside, I had no idea that custom printed fabric was a thing until a few months ago.  I knew about Spoonflower and all that, but there are groups that do large pre-orders and order from manufacturers in Asia.  It is a longer lead time, of course.

We’ll see if I get my fabric before Christmas!

These are the designs and coordinates that I am getting strikeoffs (samples) printed.  The designs below are scaled for 12″ x 12″.

I can’t wait to see how they look.  The Girl liked my Phoenix in Flight print.

I think this one (I call it a tribal damask) will be great to make myself some clothes.

Everything is hand-drawn before I start working on it in Photoshop.  I have a lot of sports to sit through, so I take my drawing pads with me and doodle while the kids are playing/practicing/waiting for games to start.

I have a hard time just sitting still and doing *nothing*.

Once I have everything drawn, I scan or take a photo of it and start cleaning up the lines in Photoshop.  Once it looks good, then I make it into a Photoshop Brush (Edit -> Define Brush).  It has to be around 2500 pixels wide and no larger to make it into a brush.

In making it into a brush, I can then make it whatever color and size I want.  Then, I start making the design so that it can tile.  You have to make sure the edges blend together seamlessly.

I enjoy sitting down at my computer and creating designs.  I have a lot of my drawings, and they each look a little different, though the style is pretty similar.

Now that I got that out of the way, I need to get back in the sewing room.  It has been very busy with sports, and I am trying to work out, as well.  It is hard to find time when you work full time, and your kids are in other activities at night.  Oh yeah, and they want to eat.

I try to work out in between dropping one or the other off for practice.  It can get to be quite the time crunch.  Luckily, I had Friday off last week and made a Costco run.  I then spent the afternoon putting together freezer meals to go into the crockpot.  Now that dinner is done, I have time to get others things completed!  Like a pattern test I need done by Sunday!