How To Draw Designs On Bedding

Take you heard the latest and greatest? Spoonflower— the visitor that lets anyone become a fabric designer (like me!)– now let's you design your ain bedding!! What?!?! I have about 1,001 ideas for my own bedding, but for this (sponsored) collaboration with them, I am going to bear witness you lot how I took my son's drawings and fabricated him the bed of his quirky little dreams.

The Backstory:

My son was supposed to be sharing a room with his niggling brother who is two. It wasn't working out because the older kids like to stay upwards later reading in bed, and they also become upwardly earlier to become to school. So my 6 year old son had been sleeping on a camping ground mat on the floor of his sisters' room for months. We recently moved his bed out of the "boy" room and brought it in to the new "big kid" room.

Now about the bedding:

First off allow me say— I had an idea of how this was going to go, simply it didn't go co-ordinate to my program (does it ever when there are kids involved?!).

A few weeks agone I saturday my son down and told him he was going to design his ain bedding, and wasn't that exciting? He said "yes," but and then told me he wanted his bed to exist a fort. No, no, that is not what we're doing here buddy, I just want you to do some drawings that I can put on your coating! I handed him some sharpies and white paper (to make it easy for scanning and switching colors) and after he sabbatum in his chair for twenty min he came to me and said "merely I simply don't sympathise how my drawings will stick to the bed. They're just going to fall off!!!" I tried to explicate again, showing him my painting on the wall and the apparel I'd fabricated with that fabric (Spoonflower Fabric). Afterwards a lot of back and forth (similar an hour, I swear) this is what he drew for me:

That would be a drawing of the downstairs, the stairs, and his room with lots of beds in it. Ummmmm he withal hadn't understood.

Then this is where I changed the programme. I said "thank you lot!" took the drawing and told him information technology would be incorporated with other previous drawings he'd done on his own.

Plan B: use drawings we already had.

Here are the drawings I used from his sketchbooks:

Hither is my proffer for letting your kid design their own bedding:

Either start with a blackness and white design that you can convert to a color profile that coordinates with the rest of their bedroom, OR give them a limited palette of colors to work with.

If you don't want pink and orange bedding in a room that has mostly dejection and greens, then you have to give your child limits. Just hand them blue and green pigment, oil pastels, colored pencils, markers or whatever fine art supplies they're going to utilise. During "Plan A" I had given my son different sized black sharpies because I knew I was going to catechumen the colour to chartreuse to friction match his sister's beds (and black and white is the easiest for selecting color in photoshop).

Now before I tell you what I did to manipulate them and create the repeat, I'm going to requite you a few specs about the bedding:

It'south made of 100% Natural cotton wool sateen duvet cover
Bachelor in Twin, Full/Queen, and King
The pattern is printed on the front end and back
Hidden zipper closure (I was happily surprised with this ane see photo below!)
Comforter ties (not sure what those are merely the website says this..)

Let me tell you lot, that Italian cotton sateen is incredible. It looks and feels then good and the color comes out very vibrant!

When yous are creating your bedding, you want to think about the size of your bed in relationship to the elements that echo. I made the duvet with big elements (effectually 12-18″) and the sheets with smaller (about 6″), considering I retrieve that is the most visually appealing.

**Because yous are making something large, you will need the paradigm to have a high resolution (so information technology doesn't cease up pixelated when printed). Scan information technology equally big equally you can, or if you don't have a flatbed scanner like me, apply a DSLR camera. Take the photos in expert lighting so you lot can use a lower ISO and have a less-grainy epitome.

Here is the sheet ready with his blackness and white drawings at a smaller scale. I like how some of his drawings were darker than others. (I didn't actually manipulate that, it was just how he drew them.)

How to modify the color on a line drawing:

Okay, and then now I want to show you how I changed the colour of the drawings in Photoshop before using the "Cloth Designer" Extension to make the seamless echo.

Beginning I fabricated a bare 24″x 24″ file so that the repeat pattern I created would exist big (a twin duvet is 68″x86″ .

In order to get just the drawings into the blank document I selected a "color range" and clicked the grayness lines of the drawings (meet in a higher place). Then I dragged the selected image into the new medico ( you practice this because you desire the drawing but not the background paradigm of the newspaper).

Once it's in there and yous have moved everything effectually where you want information technology, Double click the layer (in the box on the right). A box that says "Layer Manner" comes up. Cheque the box next to "colour overlay" and click the + sign.

At present yous want to click the piffling square on the right that has a color in it (mine is chartreuse in that photo in a higher place). A box chosen "Colour Picker" will pop upwardly (photo to a higher place). Here is where y'all can pick your color or add a hex lawmaking for a specific colour. I used my Spoonflower Colour Map to find a color that was similar to my daughter's bedding.

Even though my girls' bedding is more than yellow than green, I wanted his bedding to be a petty greener so I found a hexcode for something similar but darker. I used BBB020 only EFCC00 would've been almost exact. (I wanted more than contrast with the white.)

Here is where I played with the layer style again. You come across this drop-downwardly menu over on the correct? Clicking on those words changes how the color overlay looks (I don't totally understand them all but just click and see what they do!). To achieve this look I clicked "lighter."

And there you lot go! I inverse his drawings from black/grey to green! woohoo! Thank goodness I take graphic designer friends who can show me this stuff.

That is the quilt I made for him when I was pregnant. I made them for each of my babies. Except my 2d child. Oops.

He is currently out of town at his grandparent'due south house and I can't wait for him to come home and see his new bed with his "bad guys and good guys" all over it! (And also that information technology'due south not just pieces of newspaper that I taped to a blanket like he'd envisioned. Hahahaha!!!!) Thank you lot Spoonflower!

…….And do y'all desire to meet what my designs look like on beds? Y'all tin can now see what each pattern on spoonflower will wait like on a bed with a simple click!

So fun right? Get here to bank check out all my designs on bedding!