[Above: rutabaga slices carved for printmaking purposes and a digital textile design using motifs created by printing with the rutabaga slices on paper.]
Back in 2008 Spoonflower altered forever the landscape of small-quantity on-demand fabric printiing. By offering digital printing at prices affordable to artists, hobbyists, and small crafts businesses, Spoonflower changed not only what can [...]
Each time I update fabric listings on this site, I find myself lingering over particular images and thinking about the design strategies behind them.
Fading and blending with restricted color
The three fabrics above, all quilting-weight cotton from the Northcott “Visual Arts” series, appear to be printed in the normal commercial way (i.e. using rotary screens, a [...]
There’s no such thing a an ugly piece of cloth. There may be lost or lonely fabrics, fabrics fabrics that have been damaged or strayed from their fashion era, fabrics that look good only when cut up into pieces and stitched into the company of others. But all fabrics have some use and potential [...]
It’s impossible, at least for me, to look at fabric designs involving dots without undergoing a kind of involuntary Rorschach test. Without, that is, on some subliminal level, seeing the dots on fabric as living creatures. They line up in rows and columns, drift apart, or contend for space. They jostle against each other, step [...]
The word “cartouche” has various meanings in art. Mostly it seems to refer to an enclosed area, often more or less rectangular, that contains words, symbols, or decorative elements. These enclosed areas work pretty well as a way of organizing motifs in tightly packed scatter prints. The two prints above (photos link to listings at [...]