I’ve wanted to buy custom printed fabric from Spoonflower for a while and when they had a 20% off sale I thought it was a great time to try it out. Happily this coincided with a number of events. My husband had thrown away some worn-out shirts, his birthday was coming up and I saw for the second time an ABC Australia video with “Dr Karl” Kruszelnicki wearing his themed shirts that his wife makes for him.
Choosing the Fabric Design
The fun part was choosing the fabric design. I knew that I wanted to buy a design created by someone else rather than creating my own, and I wanted to create my husband a “themed” shirt to wear to work in his role as an IT support officer. He was really enthusiastic about the idea.
I looked through the designs that were IT related, and showed them to my husband. After a perusal he settled on two designs:
History of the Apple by 1stPancake
He choose the “History of the Apple” print because his workplace doesn’t support Apple computers, even though people bring them anyway. A nod to his dry sense of humour. This has a summery vibe so would suit a short sleeved shirt.
if you can read this you are too close white on black by feeling_artsy
The “Back Off” print appealed due to the tendency for those requiring his IT services getting just a little too close for comfort. As well as the whole stay 1.5m away from each other during these COVID times. This would be great as a long sleeved shirt.
Choosing Spoonflower Fabric Type
Spoonflower have quite a few different fabric types to choose from, but the one recommended for shirting on their Fabrics page is Cotton Poplin. I have the Spoonflower Fabric Sample Pack that I bought a few years ago for a couple of dollars, so I pulled that out to see how it compared to my husbands current shirts. My sample pack had one labelled Cotton Poplin Ultra which I assume is the same as the Cotton Poplin, and it was a pretty close match to his existing shirts.
Calculating Fabric Length
When it was time to do the deed and buy the fabric I changed the Ship To field from US to Australia, and this also gave the option to change to metric. So all the calculations were to the metric scale, my preference. I also found that when buying by the metre (39″) it only prints a width of 106cm (42″) and you can only buy it in whole metres. No partials permitted.
The shirt pattern I wanted to use was Kwik Sew 3422. I’ve made it a few times before for my husband and he loves the relaxed fit, and requiring no adjustments it’s always been a breeze to sew together.
The fabric required for the pattern was given for 115cm (45″) wide fabric. To check if the amount of fabric to buy needs adjustment each pattern piece was measured. These pattern piece sizes were laid out to create the most effective cutting layout to determine the minimum fabric needed.
The short sleeve version in the Large size needed 2.4m (7′ 10″) and the long sleeve version 2.6m (8′ 6″). With the restriction of only buying by the metre I ordered 3 metres (9′ 10″) of each fabric. At AU$28/m, including a 20% discount, it would make quite an expensive shirt but one I hope will last for many years.
Calculating Shipping Costs to Australia
On the shipping calculation page I was totally surprised. The cost to send 6 metres (19′ 8″) of fabric from Germany to Australia was only going to cost AU$9.92. We can’t get parcels sent within Australia for that price.
When looking to buy fabric from overseas in the past it has always been outrageous, costing nearly the same amount as the fabric itself, so this was a pleasant surprise.
My Spoonflower Fabrics Delivered
I ordered the fabric on the 13th February 2021. It was shipped from Germany on the 18th February 2021 and arrived at my doorstep in Adelaide, Australia on the 5th March 2021. Approximately 3 weeks from order to delivery. Quite a quick timeframe, even with the COVID situation, and Australia Post not always being the quickest.
Spoonflower Fabric Review
When I opened the package I did think the fabric felt a bit stiff and the print not quite as clear as I expected. The fabric was 115cm (45″) wide, with a white border around the entire printed section, which measured 106cm (42″) wide. I haven’t looked into how Spoonflower print their fabric but I imagine it works similarly to a home printer, whereby it doesn’t print right to the edge of the fabric, thus the 106cm (42″) printed width.
The charcoal “Back Off” fabric was slightly stiffer than the teal “History of the Apple” fabric. As an experiment I cut a 5cm (2″) strip off each fabric then washed the remaining fabric twice. When I compared the washed and unwashed fabric I did notice that it had soften up a little bit. I’m hoping further washings will soften it even more. On a positive note, it didn’t lose any of it’s colour during the washing process.
Fabric Cost (6 metres) and delivery: AU$177.95 (saving of AU$38.18)
Days to Deliver: 20
Fabric Satisfaction: 7/10
Now that I have the fabric I can get onto making my husband those two shirts. I’ll add photos of the completed shirts in the coming weeks.
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