Fabric design for the masses

I’ve been making clay “fabric” for years: Taking slices of my square canes and tiling them to make a nice sheet of clay that could be used as a veneer or to imitate the look of fabric. When I started playing with actual fabric last year, and mixing up clay colors to go with the color schemes in the fabrics, I started thinking how cool it would be to go the other direction: to make fabric to go with the color schemes I’d made up myself. Initially my thoughts were that the fabric would have the same patterns as my canes. Something like this sheet of Blue Weave, that I created by scanning in the face of my Blue Weave cane, and tiling it in Paint Shop Pro.

But then I started thinking, maybe simple, bold patterns that use the same colors would be more interesting. I could see making a linen tote bag, for instance, that featured a large stripe of polka dotted cotton, in my Blue color scheme, and then easily making a button to match with canes I already have.

Stripes would be important, too, of course. Everybody likes a good stripe.

And then there’s this one, which I love, but could never use. It’s my favorite Amy Butler design, but I replaced her colors with my Blue color scheme colors. Fun to do, but I suspect completely illegal to actually manufacture and utilize

What’s made me think more about this is a post I read yesterday on a fabric blog called True Up. They were talking about a new company known as Spoonflower, which, when it is up and running, will provide on-demand digital printing services for people who’d like to design their own fabric. No word yet on how much any of this will cost, but it certainly sounds like something that might be fun to play with at least once. And the idea that I could make myself a sheet of polka dot fabric to go with every one of my color schemes is a very cool one