For those of us who don’t draw, designing fabric is a bit more challenging.  So how about using rubber stamps?

I’ve been stamping for years, mainly on Christmas cards, so most of my stamps are related to Christmas.  I do have a few, though, which might make a good design.

So, first I tried out a few stamps.  It’s a while since I did any stamping, so my technique’s a bit rusty – and one of my ink pads is starting to perish.  I ended up with a big splodge, which was mainly ink pad! (and a stamp-shaped dent in the pad.)

I then scanned my efforts, to see how they looked.  (Shawn was the stamp that dented the ink pad - after I'd removed ink pad from his face!)

Some looked better than others.  The slightly uneven effect you get with rubber stamps is part of its charm, but if it annoys you (especially if you are going to copy and paste) then you can try cleaning your images up a bit.  It's fairly easy to remove excess ink; less easy to fill in the gaps, without losing the texture of the stamp.  Of course, you may not mind that.  The left hand bird below is the original print.  The right hand one has had excess ink removed.  From a distance, it's hard to spot the difference, but I think the right hand one will look better on fabric.

Having chosen a couple of prints, I copied and pasted them in Photoshop to make a design I was reasonably happy with.  I must confess that I did this fairly quickly and will probably not use the design.  If I wanted a design for something particular, I would probably spend a little longer on it.  You could colour the stamps, either before you scan them or in Photoshop (or whichever program you use.)  I decided to leave mine uncoloured, but added a coloured background instead.