Designing fabric with Spoonflower for a Jalie Charlie Bomber Jacket

I was rather thrilled to be contacted by Spoonflower recently and invited to have some fabric printed for a project of my choice. Spoonflower have a massive library of designs to choose from, or you can upload your own design for a completely unique print. 

***DISCOUNT: If you are interested in having fabric, wallpaper or giftwrap printed for your own project, you can get a 10% discount on the Spoonflower website for the next month using the code meggipeg10. The design I created for this jacket can be found here***

I immediately thought I'd like to use my Mum's artwork as the basis for the fabric design. Mum paints a lot of landscapes with a sea of flowers in the foreground. I decided to use just the flowers as the basis for the design and to make a jacket. I chose a painting with lots of blue, khaki and white so it would be wearable with lots of colours of pants and skirts.

I selected an area of flowers and photographed that part of the painting in high resolution using the close-up setting on my camera. I then used that photo to create a repeating pattern with the larger flowers at the top and bottom of the fabric, transitioning to smaller flowers in the middle. If you would like to use this print, you can find it here. I have only just set this up for sharing, so I hope it works. I had the fabric printed on Organic Cotton Sateen Ultra (see fabric types here), which is just a lovely fabric. I prewashed it before making the jacket and the colours held up beautifully.

My design as it would appear on one yard of fabric

The pattern I used was the Jalie Charlie Bomber Jacket. I have made this before in adult and child's sizes and it's a brilliant pattern.   

I added about 4cm to the length, but otherwise chose the size based on my measurements. My tip for the jacket would be that the pocket fabric will show on the outside of the jacket as the welts are cleverly formed from the pocket piece, so it's best not to use lining fabric for the pocket! I chose to use some striped ponte to match the cuffs, neckline and hem band. I love the classic look of striped ribbing on bomber jackets, but it's hard to find and this ponte does the trick just fine.

I decided to line the jacket. The pattern is unlined, but I just used the front, back and sleeve pieces to make the lining and I drew a front facing piece that was cut from the main fabric. I lined the jacket with white cotton that I had dyed blue to match the outer colours. I bagged the lining for a clean finish. There are lots of online tutorials for this.

I used a nice black and silver zip with a fancy pull from Homecraft Textiles to finish it off.

I was very pleased with the print quality and the way the design worked out. I was easily able to cut the pieces so the larger flowers were at the bottom of the jacket. I deliberately made the sleeves slightly different for a more random effect.

I could not be happier with this jacket. I love the print (thanks Mum!) and the colours will make it such a useful piece of clothing. The Jalie pattern is also very comfortable and easy to wear.

Thank you so much to Spoonflower for providing the fabric. This has been a super-fun opportunity and has definitely got my creative juices flowing to create more designs.

Don't forget to use meggipeg10 for a discount if you order from Spoonflower!

Class artwork for school art auction

Every second year my son's school employs an artist in residence who inspires the children to create lovely things. These lovely things are then sold off to unsuspecting parents at an evening exhibition. In addition, each class produces an artwork to be auctioned off during the evening to raise money for the school. The parents coordinate the class artworks and, strangely, it's the same parents every time doing it. It will come as little surprise that I am one of those parents who always gets sucked in enthusiastically volunteers!

Secretly I love doing it, but don't tell anyone.

I am of the strong opinion that the artwork should have obvious input from the children. My idea for this year was to do a beach scene (beach scenes sell well, right?) populated by the children's beach-inspired self portraits.

Inspired by this SmartClass tutorial, I painted the background on a large sheet of stiff paper using a combination of acrylic paint, fabric dye and food colouring - basically whatever I could find in the right colours. I placed the paper on a slanted board, wet the section I wanted to paint and then dribbled the colour down the page, light blue for the sky, turquoise for the water and yellow for the sand, allowing the paint to dry between colours. I rocked the board and paper from side to side to gently mix and move each colour into place. The turquoise had a bit of salt sprinkled on while it was still wet to give a bubbly, sea foam effect.

Once the background was ready, I went into the Year 4 class (9 and 10 year olds) and played teacher for an hour or so, which was great fun. We talked about what the children liked to do at the beach, what they would wear and what they liked to bring with them. I then got them to draw themselves doing whatever they wanted and said the figure needed to be about 10cm high. I didn't worry about exact sizing as I knew I could use different sizes to create perspective later.

The teacher was worried that the pictures wouldn't be good enough, but I knew they would be fabulous. And they were!

 If a child finished their picture early I encouraged them to draw some extras for the scene, whatever they wanted. I got some lovely birds, helicopters, dogs, the hand of a buried person and a cute table that I ended up placing on side as I couldn't fit it on the sand.

The children really enjoyed doing their drawings and several told their parents that they HAD to buy the class picture as they'd done such a good drawing for it!

I spent a long time carefully cutting out and placing the self portraits on the scene before glueing them on and framing the picture in an Ikea frame. I was so pleased with how the picture turned out. It looked good from a distance and there was loads of gorgeous detail to look at once you got closer.

The auction was great fun and raised several thousand dollars for the school. My picture raised the second highest amount, over $600, so I was thrilled with that.

I wonder what the class and I will make next time!