My "Watches" in Spoonflower Fabric Contest!

ETA- Thanks to all who voted! (235 votes in the end) I fought neck and neck for last place with the one other design I liked the most out of the competition. Which says something I think. So I'm OK with the results, and happy to have been in the running. Eventually I'll pay to get a swatch or 1/4 yard of one of my patterns printed, and may enter another design in the competition... but probably for the short-term it will return to the back burner. :)

Fun! My "WatchesTossedPacked" textile design was in the running for "Fabric of the Week" at Spoonflower.com!

There were six designs, and the design that earns that most votes is printed on 100% combed cotton by Moda and then offered as an exclusive sale (for one week only) at Spoonflower's etsy store. The winner doesn't get any of the proceeds, but they enjoy 15 minutes (+/- ) of e-fame and a booty of 5 yards free printed fabric ($100 value).

A little background info: I've been following Spoonflower for a while now, having first heard about it via a flickr contact (I think?). Spoonflower is a small company based in Mebane, NC (hello future not quite neighbors) that digitally prints user submitted, custom designs on fabric. They launched a beta web site in Spring of '08 and "opened" in November '08.

Due to my stint as a graduate assistant / lab technician for the digital textile printer at school, and having had written a slightly similar business plan for a class project in Spring of '06, I was instantly curious and hopeful about their venture. I signed up for the waiting list and got my invite to join in August.

When I'd signed up as a member, I'd OK'd Spoonflower's email notifications, and also put their blog in my RSS reader. So while I hadn't tried the service out myself, I was watching it grow. When they started a "Fabric of the Week" contest in late November, my interest was piqued again. It occurred to me that entering a design in the contest would do two things- give me a chance to test out their interface (pretty simple) and serve as good incentive to dig out my rusty digital textile design tools. Would I remember how to do all the steps I'd taught undergrads for four semesters? A few of Spoonflower's print file requirements were different, like working in LAB color and only saving at 150 dpi-- but recoloring the motif, creating the tiled repeat and saving it in .TIF format quickly came back to me.

Instead of starting from scratch, I booted up my external hard drive and grabbed a couple files from my one of my lesson plans developed while as a TA/Lecturer for a CAD textile design course. I had used a marker rendering of a watch as a lab example for Spring '07s Project #1, "Designing for traditional print methods." That marker sketch (see right) was inspired by a memory of my fave childhood fishie Swatch watch, aided by a pic of some Swatch watches I'd found on eBay. For the lab example, I scanned my marker rendering in, and showed the students how to reduce the number of colors, clean it up and/or recolor it for future use as a design to be used as a "motif" in various repeat methods. I think it was actually December before I started hacking away at my watch file again in Illustrator and Photoshop. Beating it into submission until it was in two different LAB gamut colorways and ready to be put into various repeats.

The type of repeat I find the most fun to do is a seamless "tossed" pattern, in which you duplicate the motif and "toss" or scatter it randomly within a given area. For best results, you offset the file (the design is split a certain percentage, and wrapped around the edges) and then add even more of the motifs, offsetting and adding until you are happy with the somewhat random and "seamless" tiled pattern.

The amount of space or ground fabric between motifs determines whether it is "spaced" (example to left) or "packed" (my entered design). Also if there is more figure or "motif" visible than ground it has an "all-over layout." These non-directional, allover layouts are the most efficient for pattern cutting. When laying garment pattern pieces on a tossed repeat fabric for cutting, the pieces can be rotated 180 degrees, or even slightly tilted (only if necessary, they do this in production sometimes) in order to get the highest utilization of the fabric possible. Whereas if you were to cut the same garment out of a one-way or "directional" repeat (such as stripes or rows of Eiffel towers all facing the same direction), you'd have to make sure you cut all the pieces out in the same orientation which typically creates more wasted fabric.

As you go about your days this week, take a look around at the printed fabrics around you... are they randomly scattered? Tightly packed? Grid-like? Vertical or horizontal brick type patterns? Can you make out what the repeated design motif is? How often does it repeat? What is the end use? Wallpaper? Automotive upholstery? Long skirt? Home decor? CEO's tie? Snowboarding pants? Teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini?

This is the kind of wack-a-do stuff that runs through my head... and yet another reason I love thrift shopping. Even if I don't buy anything, I still enjoy looking through all the crazy printed garments on the racks. I'd totally buy something with a jumble of retro watches on it, wouldn't you? :)

In celebration of textile design, I'm going to try to wear prints all week...
here is Monday
here is Tuesday
here is Wednesday
here is Thursday
here is Friday

Thanks for visiting... Simmering on the back burner are plans to offer some of my repeated patterns for sale in my etsy shop. Maybe after I get that spare room sorted out.