Art Quill Studio: My Fabric Collection:"Oh, Oh Marilyn and Mona!"@SpoonflowerFabric Lengths & DesignsMarie-Therese Wisniowski

I have several collections of fabric designs with Spoonflower that are available for purchase to the public at large. Today, I will highlight one such collection.

Spoonflower - A Brief History[1-2]
In 2008 Stephen Fraser and Gart Davis launched a startup company - Spoonflower – with the aim to give people, who make unique wearables or fabric items, a platform in order to create their own fabrics and items and moreover, to make their creative fabric designs available to others.

Spoonflower founders Stephen Fraser and Gart Davis.
Photograph Courtesy of Spoonflower.

Perhaps they were not aware of the advice India’s first Prime Minister Nehru gave to his daughter Indira Ghandi, namely, “Be Brave - the rest will follow!”. But surely they have followed his advice in spirit, since they launched their company in the middle of the Global Financial Crisis using their own money and secured personal loans. While their company is a “dot com” company, it nevertheless has doubled in size each year and now employs ca. 40 people.

Traffic Statistic for Spoonflower.
Graph - Courtesy of Quantcast.

Neither Fraser nor Davis had any formal training in textile manufacturing. However, the business model for the company was not unique in that both had previously worked for Lulu.com, a Raleigh company that sells e-books and moreover, helps authors to self-publish their works. Hence what was “new” was the application of this business model to fabrics and to fabric items, a direction that they have attributed to their wives, who were both fabric crafters.

The company is physically located in Durham, North Carolina (USA), which makes it one of the few profitable digital printing fabric companies that does not rely on China nor India in order to outsource its workload and so reduce its operating costs. Its physical location is also important for its continuing growth, since both founders learnt the digital printing techniques of fabrics from the College of Textiles, North Carolina State University - one of the world’s leading institutions for textile education and research – which continues to work with the company in order to assist in maintaining its leading edge.

Spoonflower now resides in the Research Triangle Park, Durham North Carolina (USA).

Spoonflower has built a community that now numbers around one million individuals[1], who use their own fabrics to make curtains, quilts and clothes etc. as well as to sell their fabric designs to a larger cohort. The Spoonflower community straddles most continents, with Australians featuring strongly in their community mix.

Spoonflower has now widened its printed media from fabric to wallpaper to gift-wrap to decals. It uses eco-friendly digital textile printing technology and offers natural fiber fabrics. Custom fabrics from Spoonflower are used to make quilts, clothes, pillows, dolls, blankets, ArtCloth and many other products – too many to list here!

Spoonflower today prints out more than 1,000 yards of fabric a day using water-based pigments. At the time of writing, the company charges, for example for combed cotton (US)$17.50 per yard, and customers have a choice of 10 fabrics. The fabrics are printed using large versions of inkjet printers that have been modified to print on fabric. After fabrics are printed, the pigment is set for a minute at 330^oF.

Spoonflower's Fabric Printer in Action.

"Oh, Oh Marilyn & Mona!"
A New Collection of Digitally Designed Fabrics
The "Oh, Oh Marilyn & Mona!" collection of digitally designed fabrics is based on my original signature Post Graffiti artwork which employed dyeing, multiple drawing, screen printing, mono printing, digital imaging and mixed media processes. The works investigate the influence of the "fine-art" world on the awakening of "street" art, and the evolving iconography of female "fine-art", "pop" icons and their continuing urban influence.

The collection consists of four designs. There are two designs in the "Oh Marilyn" series - "Oh Marilyn 1" and "Oh Marilyn 2", and two designs in the "Oh Mona" series - "Oh Mona 1" and "Oh Mona 2" that are available for purchase. The designs are available in a "half drop" format and can be used for interior design, clothing items and other decorative purposes.

The eco-friendly textile printed designs are available in ten natural fabrics including silk crepe de chine, heavy cotton twill, organic cotton sateen, organic cotton interlock knit, linen-cotton canvas, cotton silk, cotton voile, cotton poplin, quilting weight Kona® cotton and basic combed cotton. Fabric widths vary from 40" (102 cm), 42" (107 cm), 54" (137 cm), 56" (142 cm), and 58" (147 cm) depending on the chosen fabric. The designs are also available to use as self-adhesive wallpaper and peel and stick wall decals.

There is no minimum order and the printed fabrics range from a test swatch (8" x 8" or 20 cm x 20 cm) to a fat quarter (21" x 18" or 53 cm x 46 cm) or to whatever your yardage requirements may be.

These fabric lengths can be used for wearable art, accessories, furnishing and interior design projects. You can purchase fabric lengths from my “Oh, Oh Marilyn & Mona!” collection. More information can be accessed about the various fabrics and wall media as well.

Images of my "Oh, Oh Marilyn & Mona!" collection - for wearable art, accessories, interior and other design projects - are shown below. Each work in the collection below shows a test swatch (8" x 8" or 20 cm x 20 cm) view of the printed fabric design and a one yard length (36" or 91.5 cm) view of the printed fabric design.

"Oh Marilyn 1" - test swatch.

"Oh Marilyn 1" - one yard length.

"Oh Marilyn 2" - test swatch.

"Oh Marilyn 2" - one yard length.

"Oh Mona 1" - test swatch.

"Oh Mona 1" - one yard length.

"Oh Mona 2" - test swatch.

"Oh Mona 2" - one yard length.

References:
[1] https://www.facebook.com/spoonflower/info
[2] https://www.newsobserver.com/2012/08/26/2292834/fabric-printing-company-a-cut.html