I just discovered
Spoonflower, a site that allows you to design your own printed fabric custom by the yard.
In the interests of experimentation I have signed up and created a fabric for the purposes of assessing the site. A sample swatch should be here in the next two weeks, at which time I will update.
This is my experimental fabric. I created it using a public domain image from the
Florida Educational Technology Clearing House. For those of you not in the know, they are an excellent source of free old style clip art, provided you are not using their images for profit.
I also changed the colours on the image using their insite editing software. No photoshopping required! They offer a number of different fabric weights, all of which are machine washable. You also can dicker around with the size and layout of the design. I've opted to print my fabric with a smaller image offset, so it'll look a little different.
The whole experiment cost me $7, though it'll come in a wee bit more than that after converting to Aussie dollars. That's including international shipping.
I see great utility in this. We have the same two clock print fabrics pop up on just about everything. The same two key fabrics. This could open the doors to a HUGE range of different looks, especially for our various groups who could conceivably use this to print off custom military patches.
They also operate a marketplace where designs can be bought and sold - Vicky will be hitting the marketplace if I like the look of the swatch! Some fabrics with potential:
Bees and clocks,
a lovely blue Alice border (which would make a gorgeous Loli-style jumper dress - I can see it in my mind!),
creamy geometric patterns, all the math you can handle, lovely marbly swirls,
wallpaper bats,
silver keys,
Mucha silver wallpaper prints,
teal cameos.