Spoonflower plans

I’ve been looking at Spoonflower quite a bit recently (a print-your-own fabric company). See: www.spoonflower.com. It’s a great idea, and I have two plans for what to make:

1. Custom garment labels. Printing with Spoonflower is expensive, but labels are only small. I’ve calculated it’ll be about. £10 for more than a years supply.
2. Toddler T-shirt in custom fabric. It’s my niece’s 2nd birthday coming up, so, seeing as the T-shirt I made was quite a good fit, I thought I could make another one with a design specifically for her. I’ve had my go at designing and here’s what I’ve come up with:

I’ve put some of the animals on that I know she likes, and some phrases in French specific to her (she does love cheese and she is so cool!). She’s bilingual, though obviously can’t read yet. You’ll see I’ve included the number 2 as well, in disguise!

It’s really hard to design something that doesn’t look amateur, and I’m not sure that I’ve suceeded wih this! It was great fun to do though, and hopefully she’ll like it.

However, I don’t think I’ll be using Spoonflower very often. I ordered the swatch pack and none of the fabrics were amazing. Many are polyester, which I’m avoiding for sustainability reasons, and the others are just a bit too stiff. My favourites are the Cotton Knit Ultra (which is what I’ve ordered for my neice) and the cotton poplin (chosen for my labels).

My other issue with Spoonflower is the price. It may relate to the exchange rate, as the UK pound is down, but it’s costing me £27 for 1 yard of the knit. That’s practically equivalent to Liberty Fabric. So I’ll only be using Spoonflower for those projects where I want something totally unique.