Spoonflower Custom Printed Fabric Review and Recommendation

As I mentioned last week, I placed an exploratory order with Spoonflower, an online service bureau that custom prints fabric (of all sorts, from cotton sheets to upholstery canvas to silk) with whatever you want. I created an immense image that’s a collage of many of the paintings that I’ve done and uploaded it — if you like it, you can buy fabric with this print on it here — and today got my order. Their “official” delivery date wasn’t until next week so I’m thrilled with how quickly they processed and shipped the order. It looks absolutely stunning. The colours are deeply saturated and the inks look like they’re embedded in the fibres rather than just floating on the surface. The quality is superb. I chose heavy upholstery fabric and Caitlin is going to be making a quilt out of it, but there are so many things I can imagine doing — an obvious example would be uploading photos of loved ones to make pillows and things like that, or even just using it for tapestries, as an alternative to posters for large-scale printing. Most of these images in my print were nice and high resolution, but there were a few paintings that were as low as 60dpi and even they turned out beautifully, with smooth lines and tones with no visible pixelation in any of it. I’m very happy with what I got from Spoonflower and definitely recommend them. Plus the price was great.

You can zoom in on this picture by clicking on it, and there are three close-up images after the break, all of which you can zoom in on as well.

20 Comments

  1. Cheree wrote:

    That’s amazing. I can totally see using this as another medium for displaying photography. Thanks for sharing the review!

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 12:41 pm | Permalink
  2. Gillian wrote:

    The fabric junkie in me is excited that my painting is in the mix. :)

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 1:27 pm | Permalink
  3. Virginia wrote:

    That is just an incredible piece of work!

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 1:53 pm | Permalink
  4. Dresden wrote:

    Wow, that looks fantastic!

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 5:11 pm | Permalink
  5. Ashley wrote:

    This is great! I’d really like to order some to use as a wall hanging and was wondering if you knew the dimensions of the repeating pattern? Looks like it’s probably 1 yard vertically by 3 yards horizontally? Thanks!

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 5:51 pm | Permalink
  6. Shannon wrote:

    Ashley, if you mean my pattern of the paintings, if you print it at 300DPI it sizes to 54″ wide by 24″ high (that’s how I printed it here, with an offset brick layout). However I’m pretty sure you can request that the tile size is made smaller or larger… Unless it’s only showing me those options because I’m the design owner?

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 6:09 pm | Permalink
  7. Shannon wrote:

    Oh sorry the size is 54″ by 28″. I just fixed it, because it was twice that size when I first posted this for some reason. However, fixing it may have caused a technical glitch, although it could just be having to wait for the server due to the nearly 400 meg file being processed.

    At least on my computer though something has gone wrong with the page on spoonflower and I can’t currently see the image so I’ll get to the bottom of it assuming it’s not just on my computer.

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 6:15 pm | Permalink
  8. Ashley wrote:

    Thanks Shannon, yeah the page looks broken now to me too. Before it was broken I was getting options to specify the vertical height to order but I couldn’t see a way to have anything but 1 yard in width…

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 6:24 pm | Permalink
  9. Shannon wrote:

    I guess check back tomorrow. Worst case I will re-upload it to a new URL. Sorry…

    Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 6:28 pm | Permalink
  10. coldclimate wrote:

    So many of my favorite images from your blog in one place!

    Friday, January 27, 2012 at 1:04 am | Permalink
  11. Elizabeth wrote:

    Amazeballs!!!

    Friday, January 27, 2012 at 6:11 am | Permalink
  12. Shannon wrote:

    Looks like they fixed it by the way.

    Friday, January 27, 2012 at 7:15 am | Permalink
  13. Ashley wrote:

    Ordered!

    Friday, January 27, 2012 at 9:07 am | Permalink
  14. Ace wrote:

    It looks awesome! I got some spoonflower fabric from their free swatch day, but the pattern only came in 150 DPI so it’s considerably less impressive. That is amaaaazing, though.

    Friday, January 27, 2012 at 4:29 pm | Permalink
  15. nice going! love your paintings! I’ve been looking for a place like spoonflower – thx for the turn-on!!!

    aloha -
    Angela

    Friday, January 27, 2012 at 5:00 pm | Permalink
  16. Lane Jensen wrote:

    Very cool

    Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 9:24 am | Permalink
  17. anna maria wrote:

    Stunning is the perfect description!

    Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 9:42 am | Permalink
  18. Karsten wrote:

    seriously great!

    Saturday, January 28, 2012 at 6:42 pm | Permalink
  19. Lizzard wrote:

    Looks amazing!

    Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 12:58 pm | Permalink
  20. CutThroat wrote:

    I won a design contest when Spoonflower was a lot newer.
    The prize was several yards of fabric.

    They were quick, and the fabric is still kickin’ ass.

    It makes me want to take up quilting.

    Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 6:35 pm | Permalink
Wow Shannon, that's really annoying! What is it, 1997 on Geocities? Retroweb is NOT cool!

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