I received my yard of colors! Here is Esther showing them off.
She couldn’t resist dancing with the colors in the yard.
Each color block has the corresponding number to it. So the idea is to work directly from this color “swatch” because we know that Spoonflower is able to print these colors. By doing this you shouldn’t have any surprises when you open your fabric package.
I also received my bird swatch and I was very pleased. The colors were exactly as I projected. For those of you just tuning in, please check out my Spoonflower Fabric Development Series to see where we are at right now.
Here is a small swatch of the color image:
Here is the corresponding swatch of the printed colors:
Instead of working off your colors from your computer, we are now going to work backwards and start with the colors on the fabric.
Let’s work through a sample together.
I’m using the free art program Inkscape to develop my images. I’m going to work on my roaring lion image. I think it would be really fun to make some fabric out of this one. This is what I want my printed fabric to look like:
Here is the close-up tile:
I’m going to start with the single lion.
I’m going to “ungroup” the lion so that I can change the colors individually. To “ungroup” you select your image and go to Object-Ungroup.
Looking at my fabric, I’m going to try and match the colors the best I can. I’m going to start with the yellow body of the lion first. I found my color on my fabric swatch and I’m changing the color on my computer lion.
I’m working my way down through the mane.
Here is my final lion with all the color changes.
Just to let you know, the background will not be as dark as the original image. On my huge swatch, browns are pretty tricky and a lot of them fade with a grayish tone to them which I don’t really care for. I picked the darkest brown on my swatch without the gray tone. So, we’ll see what happens from here.
ORIGINAL LION COLORS
CHANGED LION COLORS
Now I need to put the lions back together, get my tile, and upload it to Spoonflower. If you need a refresher course on how to do this, visit Part 4 in my Spoonflower Series on Creating the Perfect Tile. There are so many cool things I could make from this fabric. I just love it. Thank you Lilly!
I’m getting the tile from my lions.
And here it is, my final tile! Now remember that Inkscape exports to .png format so you will need to convert this image before you upload it to Spoonflower. I am supposed to write a post on that, but I haven’t yet. I’ve been plowing through this Color Calibration very slowly! Ahhh!!!
I’m uploading my final .png lion tile to GIMP (visit Part 2 on Computer Art Programs). In this program, I re-save it as a .jpg. Done!
Nothing looks different, but it’s a .jpg now, believe me. I’m going to upload it right now to Spoonflower and get this fabric printing! I’m still waiting for my latest order of my happy lions. I changed all the colors on that image and I’m trying again! I can’t wait to make a dress out of that fabric, but I just wasn’t happy with the previous colors for what I wanted to do.
Here is the image I uploaded to Spoonflower to get my color swatches.
I ordered a yard. Feel free to upload it yourself and get yourself a color swatch to work from. (Thank you pagetutor.com!) Be warned, however, that Spoonflower will be changing their printers within the next couple weeks or so. You may want to wait until they do that.
When you upload it, make sure you upload the original size. That’s it for now! I’m very excited to see how my “ferocious lion fabric” turns out. Hmmm…what to make, what to make…
Love, Rachel
Thank you to Melissa Madison of Crab Apple Designs who has been following this series and wanted to share her amazing design! If anyone else would like to share what they are creating along with us, send your image to: info@mammamadedesigns.com.