Spoonflower Fabric Comparison

Hmmm...well, I was very excited to receive my package from Spoonflower with my free fabric. Unfortunately, not everything turned out so great. I think it's worth looking at to compare what went right and what went wrong. I really do believe that this could be a great service for future projects, so I'd rather decipher what's going on than just throw it away.

So, look above and you'll see the first design. I think it turned out pretty cute. The colors are not the same at all, but I suppose that's my fault for not checking closer with their colors. Apparently, they have a list of colors they can print well, and I didn't check my colors with their colors. So that's o.k. I still think this is close to what I had, and it was free because I won it, so I'm happy. I left a lot of space around each little bug so that I could cut them each out and use them as little pieces of little projects. We'll see what I come up with.

You can see how the colors are a bit different in the bugs here. The periwinkle color turned out super purple, but was still cute. Also, the celery green in the other bugs never showed up at all. It was just a lot of yellow. The overall yard of fabric is a lot of purple and yellow, although the original print was soft yellow, celery green, periwinkle, and light blue. Oh well. Pretty close. And FREE!

Slam on the brakes!!! Check this print out. WHAT happened? Look at those cute dots and stripes in the print on paper on the left. Soft blue, cute little dots, and a red stripe. But on the right...a print that nobody would design. Ever. The dots run into each other and the red is awful. In some places it has a bunch of black. Blech. It's crazy.

The printed design is on paper on the left, and the fabric design is on the right above. So what went wrong? Color aside, the actual pattern didn't even work. Perhaps I submitted the file incorrectly. Wouldn't surprise me. But I think I followed the directions. It prints right on paper...hmmm. I'm going to email them and ask what I can do in the future to avoid this problem. I know that they always suggest ordering a swatch before placing a large order, but that wouldn't correct things, it would just save money.

Any ideas how to avoid this in the future? I'll make a post with Spoonflower's advice if they have any suggestions, so check back if this subject interests you.

***Read here to see what Spoonflower said about how to fix this.