Why Spoonflower Fabric?

Have you seen my new fabric collections on Spoonflower?

For several years now I’m been putting together color-coordinated fabric bundles and selling them in my shop. Now I’m transitioning to selling my own fabric designs through Spoonflower. I’ve had a lot of people ask why I’m making that switch – which is a great question.

There are actually a LOT of reasons.

I has been physically hard for me to cut and bundle fabric.

I injured my shoulder last year and it’s just not getting better – partly because the movements required to stack the bolts and cut the fabric are exactly what I need to stop doing. I invested in some tools to make cutting easier, but it’s not enough. I looked into hiring someone to do that for me, but I don’t sell enough on a regular-enough schedule to make that really work.

By shifting my fabric palettes to Spoonflower, they do all the heavy lifting.

Regular commercial fabrics go out of print really fast.

Every time I assemble a bundle I really love, I’m super lucky if I get to reorder it as-is more than once. Then one or more of the fabrics go out of print and I have to start all over again, ordering samples, trying to create a comparable color palette with all new fabrics. I have to cross my fingers that all the colors in the bundle will ship, and that they all ship in the correct amounts. And every time I create a new bundle I have to take all new photos. It’s a LOT of work to go through in order to create a bundle that always FEELS like it’s made with the same fabrics.

Also, I get a LOT of requests from people for very specific fabrics they see in my sample blocks – and most of the time those fabrics are no longer available.

With Spoonflower, I create exactly the palette I want and it’s always available. None of these fabrics will go out of print.

Now you can buy yardage.

I’ve never set out to be a fabric store. I’m not set up for cutting fabric every day, so when a fabric shipment arrived I immediately cut and bundle all of it. Bolts are never all the same length so any bolts that are longer than the shortest bolt in the bundle are available as leftovers you can buy by the half yard – but that isn’t nearly enough for people who want to get, say, an extra 2 yards of their favorite fabric in the bundle to use as the backing and binding. That just isn’t something I can do.

With Spoonflower you can buy small amounts of the fabrics for the individual blocks, and more yardage of your favorites for backings and bindings. You can even get your favorite prints on other fabrics like fleece and minky to make coordinating stuffed animals and extra-snuggly quilt backs.

You can buy just what you need.

Let’s say you’re making a Woodland Critters quilt. You’re going to need a lot of medium and dark brown and very little rust. In the old bundles you were getting an equal amount of each fabric. Now you can create your own bundles that are exactly what you need.

You can also build in more variety of your favorite colors. For example, instead of just one dark purple and one light purple in the old Rainbow Brights bundle, now you can shop by color and find a range from dark to light of that exact hue, so you know they’ll look good together. You can create your own bundles using exactly the prints you love, knowing that all the colors will go together.

And if you run out of dark purple, you can order more of exactly the fabric that you like the best and use the most. 🙂

Cheater Quilts and Coordinating Prints

Most of what I use in my own quilts are tone-on-tone blenders – but sometimes it’s nice to have a more complex coordinating print to use in alternating empty blocks, for sashing, or as the quilt back.

Since I’m the designer for both the blenders and the coordinating prints – I can make that happen!

Here’s a cheater panel I designed for some fun monsters. (You can find all my cheater fabric here.)

And here’s a smaller scale coordinating print.

I designed both of these using the exact same colors as the Gemstone Blenders.

So you can make a Mix & Match Monsters quilt using all the fun tone-on-tone prints from the Gemstone Blenders for your applique, checkerboard them with some non-applique blocks in the tumbling monster heads print, and use the cheater quilt as the backing.

Super fun!

Bonus – if you make that quilt for your baby, and they want a matching monster dress when they’re a toddler – the fabric will still be available!

Ready Made Items

If quilting isn’t your thing, Spoonflower offers ready-made duvet covers (and other home decor items) in all their fabrics. 🙂

And if quilting is your thing, but you also like other coordinating things, now you can get art prints and printables and other items that match the fabric you use in your sewing projects.

Fancy!

I Love Designing Fabric

Finally – I’m making the switch because I love designing fabric. 🙂

I have Very Strong Thoughts about what kind of fabric works for applique – and now I can design exactly what I want to use. And I love making fabric that coordinates perfectly with the characters in my patterns!

I hope you love using it as much as I love designing it. 🙂

Find all my fabric collections on Spoonflower here.

Spoonflower has millions of options – which can be a bit overwhelming – so I also have my fabric on my own website in these categories.

Here are links to all the posts about choosing fabric.

And here are links to posts about using specialty fabrics.

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Happy stitching!

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