close-up of linen fibers Before I started my research, I didn’t know that linen is made from the flax plant. We’re talking the same flax that provides the seeds that provide all those good Omega-3 acids. Here is some etymological goodness from Wikipedia: The word linen is derived from the Latin for the flax plant, [...]
As Spoonflower and other digital textile printing services make custom fabric accessible to the masses, I thought it might be helpful to talk about fabric design basics. Since I am not a fabric designer by trade, I called in Michelle Engel Bencsko of Cicada Studio to help write this. She graciously obliged. Thank you SO [...]
A vintage quilt square in need of some TLC The following was written by Nan Jaeger on the Revival Fabrics blog. She gave open permission to reprint the article, and it’s a topic that I’ve had brewing for a while, so I was happy someone did the work for me! Vintage fabric care is important. [...]
Surface pattern designer extraordinaire Julia Rothman is guest-blogging at Design*Sponge this week. Today she shared her method for hand-drawing repeating patterns. Just draw, cut, reassemble, and fill in the blank space! Well, not “just”; there’s much more to making attractive patterns (technical drawing skills, artistic voice, and color savvy to begin with), but if you’ve [...]
One of my favorite eBay finds Oh boy, I just got my first question. Do you have a fabric question? I will do my best to answer: just respond to this post or email to kim at trueup dot net. I am new to sewing and collecting fabric, and I was wondering if you have [...]
Spoonflower promises to be the most exciting and revolutionary service to come along in the craft word since Etsy. If you haven’t heard, Spoonflower, which is set to open its doors this summer, will offer custom digital textile printing to the crafter market. It was founded by Stephen Fraser, formerly of Lulu, a service that [...]
Hello and Welcome! True Up is a blog devoted solely to fabric. “True Up” means to make something square or straight, and as a sewing term it means squaring up your piece of fabric, making it true to grain. The term for me also evoked taking a large piece of fabric and chunking it into [...]
Hello Kitty. Turns out you can make things and sell them from fabric bearing licensed characters. My previous posts here and on Whipup about fabric legalities garnered lots of interesting comments. People are all over the map with their opinions. One new thing I learned: I assumed that fabric printed with licensed logos/characters were in [...]
Today Boing Boing threw in its two cents about one of my favorite contentious issues, fabric and copyright (our prior discussion here), and it caused all sorts of turmoil. Here’s what happened: 1. Boing Boing takes issue with Heather Ross for releasing a fabric designated with “for personal sewing projects only. This print cannot be [...]
Who Belongs to Whom? My mom got me the completely awesome book Handkerchiefs: A Collector’s Guide for my birthday. The most prolific and well-known designer in the handkerchief world appears to be Tammis Keefe. I couldn’t find out much about her, except that she died too young, at age 40. She also designed other linens [...]
I’ve been wondering about copyright laws as they apply to fabric. The question of interest to probably most of us: is it legal to use fabric to create something that you turn around and sell with your own label on it? Internet research yields some enlightenment. I know some designers (e.g. Munki Munki) specify that [...]
I recently won an eBay auction for a 10lb. box of fabric scraps “from the 50s and 60s.” The box was not well photographed but I glimpsed some treasures. I ended up paying $18 plus $13 shipping, thinking there might be some cool stuff but expecting 90% yuck. But it was the opposite: about 5% [...]
Batteries, originally uploaded by Extreme Craft. On Flickr: Very pop-artish wax print fabric from Ghana. Check out the whole photoset by member Extreme Craft, who also has an equally linkworthy set of scans from the 1973 oddity Rosey Grier’s Needlepoint for Men. Note: A version of this entry was originally posted on Dioramarama on June [...]
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