Be prepared to a long post! I have been absent from here lately - I lost my dad in February, and I just haven't taken the time to keep in blog touch. But, I wanted to share with you a fabulous experience I just had. Ignore grammer and run-ons. This was a quick summary of the adventure!
The Double Tree by Hilton hotel in Durham was
just a short, five minute walk to Spoonflower on a tree lined path. So far, my impression of Durham, NC, and the
people,was far different than the awful
news reports. The city is green and
Green, progressive, inventive, inclusive, and friendly. Being gluten free was never met with a
quizzical look...many options were always available and delicious. My room at the hotel was a suite. A living/dining/kitchenette, and a huge
separate bedroom/dressing area/bath. The
only thing missing was Carl. I realized
that it had been almost 12 years since my days of traveling all over alone for
work, and I missed sharing the adventure with him.
We were to meet at the Spoonflower offces at
4:30 on Friday, April 22, 2016. I had no
idea how many students were going to be in the class, if I would be the
oldest/slowest, or what I would take away from the experience. I knew that I was tingly over the prospect of
seeing the Spoonflower process; I had been a customer almost from their
beginning. I also knew that I always
wanted to learn to draw with vectors, and that Adobe Illustrator was a
complicated software that I really wanted to start to learn. Add in the opportunity to have Becka Rahn as
the instructor....you can imagine my disbelief that this was really happening.
I ran into a couple of other ladies in the hotel
lobby that asked if I was also a Spoonflower class attendee and they took me
under their wing to show me where the path was to the class site. I quickly realized that I should have brought
my rolling laptop bag and that I am sorely out of shape. The brisk walk with the heavy shoulder bag
had me clammy by the time we found the place.
Spoonflower has a series of suites in an
industrial, non-descript, one-story building complex. A peek of brightly colored furniture through
a window, and some Adirondack chairs by a door were the clue that we had
arrived. The door was locked, we needed
to be buzzed in. This is not a retail
destination, it is a serious manufacturing facility that happens to have a
creative-rainbow-willy-wonka-Disney-Pixar-wonderland feel.
Walking in the door I see chairs, pillow,
lampshades, pictures, clothes, walls - all covered in original, colorful
designs. Material range from poly-suede,
and eco-canvas to peel-and-stick removable wallpaper and gift wrap. I already want to burst into tears of joy from
the sheer overload. To the right of the
entry room is the Greenhouse Room where the classes will be held for the next
three days. This room is where
Spoonflower has one a month open work days for the public to come in and mostly
work on community and charity projects, a huge emphasis of the Spoonflower's
outreach mentality.
As we all gathered, I realized that even though
I was probably the oldest student at age 64, there were a couple other women
that may be close to my age. The
youngest appeared to be in her 30's.
Most of the other11 students seemed to be in their 40's and 50's. As we introduced ourselves, it was apparent
that there was a huge amount of talent and accomplishment in the room. Most all seemed to be in the Makers
industry in some way and most were
current Spoonflower customers and were just as thrilled as I to have the
opportunity. This was Spoonflower's
first ever Mastery Class , and we were the lucky Golden Ticket holders. At times I felt I had just landed on a
reality tv show, and was nervous I would
be the first to be voted off.
As we settled in to our work areas, and admired
all of our awesome welcoming gifts, Meredith,
our darling Spoonflower fabulous liason person, arrived with pizzas for our
dinner. Two GF options were there!
Stuffing our faces, we had a
youngish, cute, male arrive, casually introducing himself as Stephen Fraser,
founder of the company.
There are several great articles you can Google
on the history of Spoonflower, but basically the idea started in 2008 by
Stephen's wife. She was frustrated that
she couldn't find the fabric she wanted for curtains, and why wasn't there a
place she could just print what she wanted?
Stephen, a computer whiz, and his friend Gart, then found a fabric printer
in North Carolina, a state with a rich textile history. The first few months, they could print 3
yards an hour. More often than not,
however, the printer would malfunction, and the run was ruined, and they would
have to start over. They limited customers
in the early days because of the slowness and equipment limitations. I was one of
those customers on a "waiting list" to be able to even be a
customer. In just 8 short years, they
can now print 900 yards an hour, on 20 different materials. They have 160 employees, and thousands of
patterns you can get printed on those materials if you choose not to design
your own. They have just opened a
Spoonflower in Berlin to service their European customers. Do they need an American grandmother who
speaks German to come and help?
Stephen talked for an hour or so, answered
questions, and had us all glossy-eyed with our gratitude that he has this printing
idea and made it happen. So happy, yet I
was sad. I realize that I am on the
downhill side of my creative years, and what was going to be around the bend in
the next 8 short years? Or 16
years? My hope is that my children and
grandchildren grow up with this love of Making and, Technology, and always embrace opportunities to learn new
things.
Our first class exercise on Friday night was to
look through some books , by Ed Emberley, an American artist and illustrator,
best known for children's books on how to draw animals using basic shapes. We were given scissors, black paper and white
paper, and instructed to create an animal with basic shapes out of theblack
paper and glue-stick it to white
paper. It would then be scanned
overnight and given to us to use that as our first basis of an Illustrator
design. I chose to create a scary fish with spiney fins. It reminded me of an ugly , scary fish Carl
caught last summer that looked pre-historic.
Class was over for the night. A new friend gave me a lift in her car back
to the hotel. I knew then that I was not
going to get any sleep that night. My
brain was exploding with possibilities.
A bit (or bottle)of wine might have been helpful in hindsight.
True to my prediction, I didn't sleep much,
until 30 minutes before the alarm went off.
The hotel provided a great breakfast buffet, with the entertainment
being a woman casually walking around in her pajamas. I was fully dressed, ready to start the day
at 9:00.
We started the class with uploading our scanned
artwork from the night before. Using the
trace feature of Illustrator we learned how to click for straight lines and
drag and click for curves. It is a bit
tricky, and there is definitely a learning curve. Prior to this class, when I needed a vector
drawing, I designed an embroidery in the Bernina software, and then converted
it to a vector file. I thought that this
was a roundabout way of doing it. After
an hour into the class I was beginning to think that the way I was doing it was
way easier. But, I kept at it, and
eventually it got easier. Becka had
provided us with a thumb drive with many files, and we could find a background
design on that and use that for our animal.
I chose a wave pattern, changed the colors a bit for practice, and added
my fish. He looked lonely, so I added
two more, in different sizes, swimming in different directions. I also added bubbles. Each step was a learning process...figuring
out how to do what I wanted. Some steps
were intuitive, some were not! We then
uploaded our finished designs to a private Spoonflower account, and Meredith
hinted that we may be able to see our creations being printed.
Becka gave a short talk on design composition
and color with inspiring slides and examples.
She wore each day a skirt or dress she made from fabric she designed and
had printed. That in itself was a lesson
in creativity. I was starting to feel
very star-struck. What couldn't that
woman do? Amazing! After a delicious
lunch break, it was time for a Spoonflower tour by Meredith!
Oh, my. I
can't even begin to describe the tour.
We saw the huge fabric printers in action. There are two kinds. One is for printing on natural fabrics such
as linen and cotton. A large roll of
the target fabric is loaded and fed
through the printer. Each customer order
for that particular fabric is separated by a cutting line, and is bar coded in
the selvedge so that it can be matched to the order and mailed. Once printed, it is directly fed through
another huge machine that is a heat setter machine. It comes out the other end ready to get
rolled on a tube. These tubes are given
to cutters who inspect the printing, cut apart individual orders, and stack
them in cubbies that are computer assigned.
Packagers retrieve the order, package it and send it off.
A second type of fabric printer is for man-made
fabrics, mostly polyester. For this
material, the design is reverse-printed on big sheets of paper, then heat set
on top of the poly fabric. The heat
opens up the fibers and the ink can penetrate each fiber. This is why the colors on the poly fabrics
are so bold and vibrant. They also are
more color-fast. We saw examples of
printed poly suede, fleece and minky that were stunning.
Spoonflower also prints two types of wallpaper,
wet hang and peel-
-and-stick, and wrapping paper. As the tour wound its way around the main
building and the new expansion building, we were treated at every turn to
beautifully papered walls, stunning couches and chairs in brilliant fabrics,
and imaginative pillows and wall art.
Individual work stations were personalized with favorite fabrics and
custom laptop skins. It was clearly a
very happy place to work, and the work force appeared to be young and
enthusiastic.
Time to learn and design more on
Illustrator. We had just started a
project when Meredith burst in and told us our fabric was being printed. We squealed with delight as we saw our fat
quarters come out of the printer and feed into the heat setter and out the
other end. The operator of that machine,
a young, hip lady with gorgeous tatoos, had
never had anyone watch their design being born before, and was delighted at our
delight. We were told we had to wait
until Sunday to talk about the finished product. They needed to go to the cutters to be cut
apart.
We were becoming more acquainted with our
co-students, and the afternoon proceeded with Becka helping us with design
challenges and others chiming in with help and opinions. The excitement was everywhere and sparks of
ideas were flying all around. Meredith
had rented a bus to take us to the charming downtown Durham for a group
meal. Great bbq and adult beverages were
the perfect toppers to our day.
No sleep that night, either. I was beginning to understand a little of the
possibilities in Illustrator, and was gob-smacked at the possibilities of
creating on Spoonflower. When you hear
the phrase "you are only limited by your imagination", I was
beginning to think that my creativity, which I had always thought was pretty
good, was woefully lacking. I felt my
life was somehow shifted to a new path.
It is hard to unsee the seen. I
knew that I had the formula to do anything.
It was up to me to figure out what that was.
Breakfast pajama lady was not there the next
morning. I shlepped all my stuff to
Spoonflower, as my dear friends Wynne and Paul Cook were going to pick me up at
the end of the day and take me to their house for the night. That was another huge bonus of this whole
trip: seeing them and their absolutely
charmingly beautiful house in Durham where they retired to just last year. Old dear friends are priceless and these two
are at the top of the list.
We talked more about design as it relates to
fabric design. We talked about design
size, balance, variation, seamlessness, and intention. Becka shared with us an app that her husband
wrote that will help you see if your design is truly seamless. If they are not a power couple, I don't know
who is! It is RepeatIt, and it is
fabulous. We worked on more ideas, then
got to see our previous day's creations.
They all turned out great, and very varied. A few design flaws were pointed out and we
talked about how to correct them. All
were different colors than on our screens and we learned how to use the
Spoonflower color map to make sure what color we want printed is the one we
upload to their site.
Becka talked a bit about the Spoonflower site; how to navigate, the Picmonkey tie-in, the
various fabrics and what they can be used for, and how we can use our
designs. Later in the day she introduced
us to repperpatterns.com. Warning: once you start playing with this design tool,
you will never again have any time to cook, clean, or sleep. Such a fun site! I won't even tell you what it does. You will have to discover that on your own.
Class was officially over, but a handful of us
stayed for some snacks and wine and to work on projects in an informal
setting. They would kick us all out at
8:00. I was sad to see it all end, but I
was not sure anything else could be crammed into my brain. I arrived as a "1" on the 1 to 10
scale of how much I knew about vectors, and was leaving as a solid "6.75". I now had 13 new friends - Becka, Meredith, and
the other 11 students. Along with
Becka"s Spoonflower book, and other goodies, I was leaving with a coupon
for a free yard of printed fabric, but Meredith warned us she may not print it
if it wasn't something we designed.
(there are thousands of cool Marketplace designs to buy, but the whole
idea of the class was to learn to do our own!)
Thanks for reading all of this. I need to jump into the pile of stuff I have
to do now that I am home, but I wanted to get most of what happened down on
paper. There are so many things I didn't
touch on that were part of the tremendous learning experience. Wow.
If you ever want to hear me go on and on and on and on, just give me a
call! xox Jerilynn
