Some More Product Designs

After discovering Spoonflower and then Society6, I've added a number of designs to both sites. There are quite a few items that simple don't feel right in fabric for me. Maybe I realize that unless it's a scarf or shawl which can demonstrate a complete panel, the repeats make it ugly. Likewise some of the pattern fractals I've produced in the past seem sort of boring as a laptop cover or IPhone skin. Here's a few:

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Colored Tab Slot

Society 6 Ipad and Laptop Skin for Colored Tab Slot

Red Squares

Blue Lavender Maroon Diagonal Cards

Society 6 Blue Lavender Maroon Diagonal Cards

A Bug In A Box

Some designs seem to fit well with the Society 6 products, and some do not. For instance this effort:

Trying to put it on a T-shirt or hoodie was awful in so many ways. However, as a skin or case for an electronic device it has a whole different vibe.

http://society6.com/BillFesterDesigns/A-Bug-In-A-Box_iPhone-Case

Branching

I've now added a Society 6 account to the fold since while there are a number of fabric related projects I'd like to get going with, there are only so many hours in the day, plus I've got no clue how to make such things as cellphone and laptop skins. Take a peek if you like and another later since I'll be adding a number of designs to the site. Here's a throw pillow.

http://society6.com/BillFesterDesigns/Garden-Mosaic_Pillow

Day and Night at the Aztec Tent Farm

Birth

Floret Stain Glass Pocket Square

Along with my efforts in producing textile designs using Spoonflower, I have delved even further in a DIY approach to producing my own patterns on cloth by purchasing a sample bolt of jacquard silk from Dharma Trading Company which is paper backed and works well with a standard inkjet printer. A previous post shows a silk pochette from that material, and in today's post, I'd like to explain more about what it's like to use your own designs to print material.

First, in this case, I created a pattern that I thought scaled for the end use (a pocket square). I'm sure there are many many books on how to scale patterns right, but for me it's just a eyeball approach: too small and you can't see the detail, too big and you can't see the pattern (or it makes the garment look ugly). Here's what the original pattern looked like:

This by the way is a fractal based pattern and not actually from any sort of prior image. I liked the colors and the scaling and did very little to touch it up with Photoshop.

Printing it out is a snap, and for those who have printed on paper backed fabric before, you know that the critical element is to use the highest resolution possible, and the highest amount of ink/ toner possible. I just set it to Best Quality and no borders on my HP 8.5"x11" printer.

Coming out, and after a minute of drying, I remove the paper backing (gently). However, this doesn't mean it's colorfast and any moisture will ruin the detail. For this reason, the silk has to be steamed. Fortunately the folks at Dharma have a whole section on how to build your own stovetop steamer using a large pot and a short section of stove pipe. With a bit of experimentation and patience (it takes roughly three hours to steam silk), I was able to get steam to the garment without getting it wet (which would ruin it). This sounds physically impossible, but it does work, and the result is not only a cloth that is colorfast, if anything the colors are more vivid and more deeply set into the silk (naturally all paper backed printed designs are primarily one sided).

The result is something that, after hemming, is completely wearable.

Purple Petals

Yin & Yang: The Reunion Tour