Over the past few months, I have tried to give some help to inexperienced designers, so that you can have a go at designing your own fabric.  It's very satisfying seeing a design you have imagined and worked on printed onto fabric!  However, this has been over a number of posts, spread out over even more weeks, with all sorts of other blog posts in between.  So, this week, I'm going to bring it all together in one place.

You can create a design for your fabric in any way you wish.  There's an overview here, giving ideas for software which can help in the design process.  You may wish to draw a design,

use a photograph,

use a scanner, 

use software you already have 

or use more advanced design software.

Whilst working on your design, you need to think about colour, the size of your design and how your pattern will repeat.

Once you're happy with your design, you can upload it onto our web site.  Here, you can see what your design will look like on different sizes of fabric and decide which repeat you need.  If you have created a seamless repeat, you will need a straight repeat here.  Or you can ask for a number of repeat options, which can make your design look very different.  You can see what the different options look like in the post about our first design competition.

When you're happy with the repeat, you can save your design and order a swatch to see what it looks like, printed onto fabric!

You can also find help with a first design in the blog post Create your First Fabric Design.

You may then feel ready to try something a bit more difficult!

Let us know how you get on, if there's anything you can't follow, or if you have some tips of your own you're willing to share.  Once you have had your design printed and seen that it works, you may choose to make it public and we will all be able to see it in our Market Place.  If you make something with your fabric, we'd love to see that, too.  You can upload it below, or onto our Facebook page.

Animals in Winter image by Rhea Babla