Spoonflower & Fabric Design

19 August, 2026

What I Wish People Knew Before They Start Designing Fabric

beckarahn2026-08-19T14:34:04-05:00Spoonflower & Fabric Design|6 Comments

Spoonflower announced a sort of re-branding this week and I was thinking back about my relationship with Spoonflower over the years. If you’ve taken a class from me, you might have heard some of my stories, but I was on the beta-test list back when Spoonflower was basically just an idea and a single ink-jet printer. I’ve still got that first yard of fabric that I printed. We wrote The Spoonflower Handbook a few years after that. I’d like to think Spoonflower and I were still friends these days, although I don’t think I even know anyone who works there anymore. It’s been a lot of years and rebrands since then; I’m sure they’ll never see this post.

I met Spoonflower’s co-founder, Steven, because I was an assistant at a class he taught here in Minneapolis for the Surface Design Association. In class, we were making dinner napkins from crayon drawings. Yes, a big national conference workshop and we were drawing with crayons.

And that got me thinking about what I wish people knew about designing fabric. In the time since we wrote the book, the marketplace for teaching people about fabric design has boomed in epic proportions. I got to teach exactly four “master classes” at Spoonflower with about four dozen awesome students. (Some of them I still talk to! Shout out Anne and Mary and Carolyn!)

Now there are teachers working with thousands of students (and making many many dollars) teaching all of the secrets of fabric design. I’d love to be one of those super internet-famous successful teachers, but the reality is that I’m not. And that’s because I don’t believe there are any secrets. There’s no magic formula. There’s no one right way. There’s no must-have tool. And that’s not a great hook for selling a thousand dollar class.

When we started out teaching about Spoonflower, it was with crayons, because honestly, you can make some abso-freaking-lutely amazing designs with crayons. Or colored pencils or paint or recycled paper or block prints.

That bananas design up at the top of the post is a great example.

I made the bananas from scraps of yellow paper: envelopes, scrapbooking paper, junk mail.
I spatter painted some black ink on a piece of paper and scanned it.
I made a rubber stamp out of a pencil cap eraser and made a pattern of open polkadots and scanned it.
I colored the black tips on the bananas with a sharpie and scanned them.
I put all of those together in layers in Photoshop and added the aqua background.

That’s a piece of the printed fabric you see in the photo. If you set down the device you are reading this post on, you could do almost all of those steps right now with just that much vague description from me.

What about the next step?

People have been making seamlessly repeating patterns, ie the kind you need to make fabrics look right, since before the Industrial Revolution. There’s nothing high-tech about it. Shout out to Agto Nugroho on Unsplash for the photo of someone printing a seamlessly repeating pattern carved out of a block of wood. I made the bananas into a seamlessly repeating pattern by essentially moving them around until they looked good. I used Photoshop, but I didn’t need Photoshop to do it. I could do the same thing using a freebie app on my phone. (Although I will be honest, that would be a lot harder for me.)

Why did I make bananas?

I could tell you something about researching trends or keywords or things like that, but it’s a much simpler reason. I was at a knitting conference show selling my work and someone asked me “Do you have a bag with bananas on it?” And I said: I don’t, but I can. So I did. It’s been a really popular design. I like it because it’s quirky and colorful. There was no marketing department pitch or having to get the creative director to sign on to it. I just designed it because it sounded like something I’d like.

Here’s another great example.

This Walk the Dog design started as a pencil drawing.

I refined and cleaned it up in Illustrator.
I “colored in” the dogs with collages made from security envelopes and scrap paper.
I made a repeating pattern and added the background color.
I printed the fabric.

Why the dogs and the red background?

At the time I was selling a lot of scarves made from my fabrics and many people love dogs and love red. I don’t like red so I don’t use it alot, but it was a great way to get a color into my collection that I wouldn’t have picked otherwise.

You are probably thinking “there’s a little more to it than that, Becka!” You aren’t wrong. And if you are super excited reading this and don’t know how to start, then that’s what my class Spoonflower Step One is for. I explain all of the things I glossed over in those bullet points. If you wanted to make a design like Walk The Dog, then A Trio of Techniques for Designing Fabrics digs a little deeper into that process.

What do I wish people knew about fabric design?

The important part is making something.

You don’t need to buy more tools or apps. You can start with crayons, paper scraps, paint, a rubber stamp, a pencil—or whatever you happen to have nearby.

You don’t need to know exactly what you’re doing. Make something interesting first. There is no ideal pattern size or color palette.

You don’t need to design for everyone. Make the thing you want to see in the world. Someone else might want it too.

You don’t need to follow the rules. In fact, there are no rules. There are lots of ways to make a successful fabric design, and most of them started with someone trying something that wasn’t in the instructions.

I think that’s the thing that has gotten lost along the way: experimentation and curiosity. That’s probably the biggest thing I’ve learned—and tried to teach—about designing fabric. There aren’t really any secrets. There is just making something, seeing what happens, and being curious enough to make the next thing.

30 June, 2026

Pattern Review: Style Arc Barry Pants & iTokri Fabric

beckarahn2026-06-30T11:57:34-05:00Fabric Reviews|Comments Off on Pattern Review: Style Arc Barry Pants & iTokri Fabric

This post is going to be a double review! Today it’s 90+ degrees outside and I finished these pants and I might wear them all week. These are the Barry Woven Pants from Style Arc with a little modification and they are made from some beautiful cotton jacquard fabric from iTokri.

Barry Woven Pants

I made another pair of these in a rose colored linen but I decided those needed a few tweaks before I was really going to wear them, so this is the second attempt at this pattern. The major modification I made was to take out 5 inches from the length. They are drafted to be a slightly above the ankle length on someone 5’6″. I am only 5’4″ and when I made the first pair following the pattern exactly, they just look a little out of proportion on me. I should have shortened them, but I didn’t think to look at the height the pattern was drafted for until after I finished.

So for this one, I took 5 inches out at the lengthen/shorten line printed on the pattern. Easy! I like a capri length pant better than ankle length anyway, so these are really more my style. I wear about a size 10; I made the 16 in this pattern and I think that’s about right.

I also removed the faux fly and reduced the “ruffle” at the top by about 1/2 inch. The faux fly just seemed like a silly detail so I cut the center front seam straight and just removed that section. I like the paper bag waist detail but the ruffle on the first pair just felt too bulky (and no one wants bulk around the middle) so I just took an inch out of the waistband depth.

Things I love:

they went together so fast.
the pockets are nice and deep and stitched into both the side seam and the waistband so they aren’t flopping around.
the dart in the bottom of the leg gives them a slight balloon shape, which I like. It might be too comical from a stiffer fabric, but it works in this one. The extra room around the knee (since I shortened them) makes these feel really practical and movable.
Style Arc lets you purchase a pattern in a single size at a slight discount and when you download the PDF it includes the sizes one up and one down from what you chose (14/16/18) which is great if you need to grade between sizes or tweak the fit.

Things I didn’t love:

When I read the pattern reviews, several people mentioned that the instructions for attaching the waistband were dumb. I have to agree. I did it differently on this pair and I will tweak it a little more on the next pair. I didn’t change much about the waistband itself, I just stitched it in a different way.

iTokri fabric

I got really frustrated recently about being able to find clothing that wasn’t 100% polyester. I just don’t like to wear it and I won’t buy it anymore. So I took a chance and ordered some fabric from a place called iTokri in India. This piece was from my second fabric order and this green jacquard was just $5/meter. It is my absolutely favorite shade of green and it has a woven in stripe of creamy white.

Ordering from iTokri isn’t like working with an American company. There are tariffs and the receipt is shown in rupees so there is some currency conversion and you don’t know exactly what the total is going to be. But they ship things super fast, they are packed carefully, they have great communication, and I have been really happy with both of the orders I have placed. The tariff amount turned out to be $17 from the shipping company and about $9 in tariffs on a $150 order.

Their website says to hand wash the fabrics, but I am not going to handwash pants, so I threw it in the washer and dryer and took my chances. It washed up great; no regrets. I have another piece of cotton jacquard in a kind of olive/brown with a charcoal stripe that I will make into another pair just like this.

2 June, 2026

Fabric Review: Spoonflower’s Seersucker

beckarahn2026-06-02T10:52:46-05:00Fabric Reviews|2 Comments

I am just going to come right out and say it: I think this might be my favorite Spoonflower fabric for clothing. I had ordered several pieces of seersucker after they introduced it about 2 years ago and even wrote an intro post when I first ordered a swatch but this is the first real project I’ve made from it.

The print quality is crisp and vibrant. I think the one caveat about this as a fabric is that the design you choose has to lend itself to being layered with that narrow stripe texture of a seersucker. I don’t think a strong geometric print might look as nice with the texture lines fighting with the design lines. But this batik style floral is perfect. (This is one of my designs called Nutmeg.) The fabric washed up beautifully with very few wrinkles and little fraying at the cut edges. It pressed well when I was sewing it. It’s not a super drapey or flowy fabric because that texture gives it a little body, so that’s something to keep in mind when choosing a design to make. Why is it my favorite? Seersucker is really designed to be a clothing fabric so I think it looks more sophisticated than something sewn with quilting cotton. I’ve talked before how I don’t love how the cotton lawn and poplin fabric wrinkle easily and feel too crisp for the kinds of shapes I like to sew. This was a great fabric to match up with this pattern.

I made a top from a pattern called the Bondi Top from Sew to Grow. I love this pattern because it has only three pieces, which is great to show off a fabric print since you aren’t chopping it up into a bunch of smaller pieces. (I usually wear a size 8-10 and I made the size 12 in this pattern with no alterations.) I love the curved hem on this one which I think makes the shape look a little more put together than a plain t-shirt. The curved hem takes some patience to sew, but I used a bias binding technique I saw in this instagram reel for this one and it turned out perfectly. The back has a yoke piece at the top which you can do in a contrasting fabric. I’ve made several from this same pattern, so also played around with cutting that piece on the bias with stripes, adding some ribbon and hand embroidery to make that piece have a little extra detail. Because this fabric is a little extra wide (52″) I have enough scraps that I am going to also make a Bucket Hat from Betz White from the leftovers.

14 October, 2025

Studio Windows: Designing a Custom Fabric for WBCA

beckarahn2025-10-14T14:22:51-05:00An Artist's Life, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Studio Windows: Designing a Custom Fabric for WBCA

If you subscribe to the newsletter for White Bear Center for the Arts, one of my local art centers, you might have seen a new fabric featured. I had a really fun time working with WBCA to make a custom fabric in celebration of their new branding and logo. They reached out after a class that I taught on digital fabric design and asked if I could do something for them. This is one of my favorite kind of projects! I’ve done fabrics for the Guthrie Theater Shop and Darn Knit Anyway in the past few years.

For this design, the art center had a new palette of colors that were their new brand. I thought it would be fun to highlight those colors by making the rest of the design in black and white. I went to one of my very favorite art materials: security envelopes. If you aren’t familiar, security envelopes are the ones that your bank statement or utility bill comes in that have black and white patterns printed on the inside. I love those patterns. So I made 10 different tiny illustrations: painting, writing, sewing, weaving, clay, glass, metal, drawing, woodworking, and music. Each one has a close up of hands doing one of those crafts. I also hid the initials WBCA in 4 of the scenes, so it spells it out when the design is all put together.

I started this design with an idea of scenes in frames because of the new frame shape in their logo design and I wanted it to look like you are peeking in the windows to see what’s going on. Once I finished the paper illustrations, then I scan them and assemble the repeating pattern in Photoshop and add the bright colored frames.

It was a fun design to work on. They asked me to make artist tool bags, which are on sale in the WBCA shop now. We decided to do two sizes so one is good for pencils and markers and the other for larger tools and maybe a sketchbook. And they are printed on recycled canvas, which is made from recycled plastic bottles.

30 July, 2025

Fabric Design Myths: Photoshop Does Everything

beckarahn2025-07-30T20:36:52-05:00An Artist's Life, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Fabric Design Myths: Photoshop Does Everything

I’ve done a couple of events in the last few weeks where I have been showing and talking to people about my fabric design work. I love the reactions when I start to describe how I design all of the fabric from scratch. The toucans shown up above are one of the examples I pull out all the time. You can see the kinds of paper I use: painted paper, recycled security envelopes, magazine pages (bottom right). Then I make cut paper designs like this toucan (top right). On the left is the finished printed fabric. But there is a step in between that always makes people stop me and comment. I scan those paper patterns and I pull them in to Photoshop.

There is a myth that Photoshop somehow magically does all the work and spits out a fabric design without anyone having to lift a finger. I’ve been plagued by this myth for years. I made pieces called Faking It and Trash Bags (left) that are responses to this same conversation that I have had before. If you’ve never used Photoshop before, let me assure you, Photoshop doesn’t do anything magically for you. In fact, it’s really complex to learn and even though I’ve been using Photoshop for at least 25 years, I don’t know to use 3/4 of the tools. I’m just good at the stuff I need.

And what is that stuff? Here’s what I use Photoshop to do:

Clean up little flaws in the recycled papers I use so there aren’t obvious things distracting from my art.
Erase pencil lines and dog hairs and fuzz that show up when I scan the art.
Rearrange the individual pieces (toucans, leaves) so that I can make a repeating pattern. This is tedious, time-consuming work; shifting things by pixels so that they match up exactly when they repeat. That pink line shows you one corner of the toucans design tile.
Sometimes I add a solid colored background. It’s hard to scan a large solid colored area and have it be one single color.
Adjust the scale. When I work in cut paper, sometimes I can’t actually cut the paper pieces as small as I need the pattern to be. So I make it larger and shrink it down. Or vice versa.

There are tools that can help with some of these tasks, but there is not a tool that you can choose that says “take these toucans and make them into an awesome repeating pattern”. That takes an artist behind the wheel. With more and more AI fueled art out there, I’m also really careful about what Photoshop tools I use so that I am not adding AI generated elements to my work. I create my own textures by drawing or painting something and making a pattern I can add as a layer over my work. Sometimes I paint with Photoshop “brushes” to add color to a line drawing design (because I hate painting). Many other artists use other apps to design; you don’t have to use Photoshop to do all of those tasks I mentioned. I just like Photoshop best because it’s the tool I’ve invested the time to learn.

16 July, 2025

Adapting to a New Spoonflower Color Profile (Argh!)

beckarahn2025-07-16T10:02:32-05:00Everything Else, Spoonflower & Fabric Design|Comments Off on Adapting to a New Spoonflower Color Profile (Argh!)

If you follow me over on Instagram you might have seen a series of photos I posted about Spoonflower’s new color profile that they adopted earlier this spring. It was a complete surprise to me when I got an order of fabric in designs that I print all of the time to see that some of the colors in my designs shifted dramatically. Here’s what I mean. The colors I expected are on the top; the new fabric is the colors on the bottom.

For some designs this might not really matter, but when I sell these zip bags in my Etsy shop, my customers expect to get a pink bag when they choose a pink bag, not one that’s the color of grape candy.

I spent a lot of time talking to Spoonflower’s tech support and their philosophy behind making the color shift is to make the colors that print better match the colors that show on your screen. I think this is an impossible task because everyone’s screens are completely different. This is a photo I use in classes a lot when I teach about fabric design. It’s the same exact file pulled up on my laptop screen and my phone screen. They look wildly different. If I have everyone in class open this same file and if we step to the back of the room, we see 15 different shades of aqua on 15 different screens. So I think what they are trying to do is an impossible task, but I totally understand that it’s important to their average customer. You want to get fabric that looks like it does on the screen when you order it. So I don’t have an argument with what they are trying to accomplish, but rather how they went about it.

I don’t expect this shift again any time soon, and I totally understand that with print-on-demand that there is going to be some variation. But some of the colors I was working with were more than just a “little variation”.

I decided that the best (and certainly not easiest) solution for me was to re-color my designs. Some of these zip bag designs I have been making for years, so they “should” be a certain color. So I got a new colormap so I would have a physical copy of what the new colors looked like when printed and I could easily compare to the colors I was used to.

I started by making a spreadsheet and recorded the main color for each of the designs. For example, the “Be-ewe-tiful friendsheep” design below is #7473BE in my original design file. That’s a lilac purple color. But instead of printing as a lilac color, the new fabric I got was cornflower blue. You can see the old and new versions on the left in this picture. Those are the same HEX code but printed before and after Spoonflower’s software update.

Next, I put my old and new colormaps side by side. That’s what you see at the top of this post. I found the original color (#7473BE) and then found a new color on the new colormap that I thought best matched the original one. In this case, that was #9777D0. Then I changed the color in my file to the new HEX code. Repeat this for about 40 different designs.

Then I uploaded new versions and re-printed all of my re-colored designs. On the right above, you can see the original color version and underneath is the new color version. The new lilac is slightly warmer, but it’s perfectly acceptable to me as a little variation. Most of my new colors worked out great. I have a few I need to try again. It has taken me about 15 hours so far, 6 weeks of diagnosing the problem and waiting for samples, and 4 yards of re-printed fabrics to get most of them back to printing the colors I expect them to.

The thing that’s the most frustrating about this whole situation is that in the end it is going to probably be about 20 hours worth of work that no one but me is ever going to know about or benefit from, that I certainly wasn’t planning for in my schedule and that I am not getting paid for. My Etsy shop is super low on inventory because I had to do all this work behind the scenes. Today I am sewing up some of the successful samples so I can re-stock a few things in my shop, re-photograph a few that I couldn’t get a color match, and then I’ll sit down to revise again on a few others. In my last newsletter, I talked about ripple effects and this is certainly a great example.

If you haven’t printed anything with Spoonflower in a while I recommend you get a new colormap and order a swatch of a few designs, especially if you have ones that are predominantly pink, purple, or cool blues.