Custom Fabric

My little boy loves airplanes. Anything that resembles an airplane, he repeatedly exclaims, "Airpay!". Well, I've talked my husband into making him an airplane bed for his 2nd birthday when he will get his big boy bed. It's times like this that I don't mind that my husband bought, yet again, another expensive tool.

My husband still has a blanket that his mom made for him when he got his big boy bed. In fact, he still sleeps with it, and I am not allowed to take it off the bed when I make the bed in the morning (haha---hopefully he doesn't mind that I shared that). Well, I want to carry on the little tradition of a new blanky when our little guy turns 2.

I've been looking for airplane fabric for the new blanket. The stuff that I like is completely out of stock everywhere that I've seen it listed. So, I thought there had to be a way to somehow get what I was looking for.

Then I stumbled upon Spoonflower. That's when I decided that this was way better than the fabric that I liked anyway. Now I can make my own design and am able to incorporate Tucker's name into it. How much more personalized can you get? I love it. Here are a couple designs that I came up with in Photoshop and then uploaded them to Spoonflower. Once you upload your design, you can choose how you want your design to repeat and preview what it will look like when printed on the fabric.







Spoonflower also has an area where you can see others' custom designs and some of them are available for you to order too. Here are some that I was eying!

There are a few places besides Spoonflower where you can customize your own fabric.  Fabric on Demand also uses the same idea, and their prices are pretty comparable. Fabric on Demand was just barely a little cheaper starting at $16.25 a yard and up depending on what kind of fabric you want to print your design on. Spoonflower's started at $18 a yard and up, but if you upload a design on your own, you get 20% off. So they come out to be about the same if your doing your own design. Yes, it is more expensive than most fabric, but if you really can't find what you are looking for then I think it is worth it!

When I was looking around for other ideas, I found a great tutorial from Cynthia Howe Miniatures on how to make your own custom fabric, by using your own home computer printer. Obviously you would only be able to print fabric as wide as your printer can print, but that would be just fine if you are doing a quilt and are going to piece the fabric together anyway. Cynthia uses this way for printing fabric for doll clothing because most fabric is made in scale for humans.

Needless to say, I am so excited to get my custom fabric and start on sewing this new blanky!