Annie Lang's Blog!

As of January, Spoonflower has just stepped up the game when it comes to fabric designs by the independent artist community!  Artists no longer have to purchase sample fabric proofs, wait for them to arrive by mail and once approved, offer them for sale through the Spoonflower website.  Artist can now use Spoonflower's online digital proofing tool to detect any design flaws and resubmit revised files to make them immediately available for sale to the public.  This most definitely provides a bit of financial relief for independent designers with limited budgets and helps better detect problematic design issues that may have otherwise gone undetected.  To read more about how changes at Spoonflower impacts artists, here's a very well written article by Craft Industry Alliance   that you should check out.  The Designing Process Back in the early 90's, I was offered a unique opportunity to work with the Balson-Hercules Group (later became Balson Erlanger) who licensed my design

Fabric Designing I've been a "fabriholic" for as long as I can remember even though I was not very skilled when it came to sewing machines or threading needles!   However, in 1998 I was offered a licensing contract to design fabric prints based on the line art pattern characters I had published through Easl Publications and a whole new world of design possibilities opened up.   My fabric prints were being nationally sold through quilting, crafts and fabric stores like Jo-Ann Stores, Hancock Fabrics, Hobby Lobby, etc. until the recession hit and markets took a step backwards.  I then sold my printable designs for scrapbooking paper prints online and it was then that I discovered it was the design process that I've missed the most! Unlike the past when commercial prints required screen printing and final approval which sometimes took months, today's digital printing process takes only days before printed fabrics are shipped to the doorstep.  My Spoonflower sample s