Previously on  'Would you like to design your own fabric?' 

This is for those of you who are not designers, but who would like to have a go at designing your own fabric.  

You can create a fabric design however you like – by hand, on the computer, with a photograph – whichever way best suits you and the design you’re working on.  

Today we’ll look at using photos.

Photos taken with a modern digital camera can usually be enlarged to a size suitable for a cushion or bag, often without much preparation work.  This photo

was amended to make it portrait rather than landscape

(I used Photoshop to copy the sky, add it to the top of the photo and smooth over the join.  I did the same with the sand at the bottom.  I should probably also have added 1cm at each side, as a seam allowance, so that I didn’t lose some of the huts in my seam)

and then printed.  (The colours on the actual fabric are pretty close to the colours on the photo.  For some reason, the photo of the fabric has come out with different colours.)

As you make the photo larger, the number of dots per inch will go down.  You musn't go below 150dpi, as the printer will not print below that.  Once you get to 150dpi, that's as big as your photo can go without becoming pixilated.  The photo above started at 300dpi.  There's a bit more about size in the blog post Size Matters.

I’ll tell you another time how I turned it into a bag.

You could use wedding photos or new baby photos to make cushions as presents, beautiful views to make greetings cards or bags, favourite photos can be turned into canvas prints  -  tell us your ideas for using photos on fabric.

You can find more ways of creating your own fabric designs in the blog posts Would you liike to design your own fabric?, Design your own fabric using your computer and Design your own fabric by hand.  Or turn your photo into a cushion.

To be continued ....