My First Stop When Looking For Fabric And Wallpaper (And Why)

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you why Spoonflower is always my first stop when I’m looking for fabric. This isn’t a sponsored post. (I haven’t done a sponsored post in many years.) I’m just a genuine fan of the site, and if you’re a person who loves fabric as much as I do, but you haven’t yet discovered Spoonflower, you’re missing a goldmine.

If you’ve been around for a while, you know that I love Spoonflower. I have used them not only to have my own designs printed on both wallpaper and fabric, but also as my first stop when shopping for wallpaper and fabric in general.

I designed the floral mural for my studio and then had it printed at Spoonflower.

And then I had a smaller version of that design printed on fabric for the back entry of the studio.

And more recently, I designed the striped accent fabric for our bedding in our new bedroom and had it printed at Spoonflower.

Beyond having my own designs printed, the number one reason I love it so much is because they have literally thousands upon thousands of prints. In fact, they have so many that it can get pretty overwhelming searching through all of the options. Fortunately, their search function is pretty good at narrowing down the options.

But another reason I love shopping for fabric and wallpaper on Spoonflower is because it’s kind of like Etsy (the old, original Etsy before they allowed the cheap, mass-produced products to take over). Spoonflower doesn’t actually design fabrics and wallpapers. They sell the designs that artists choose to upload and sell, and in doing so, that artist makes money off of each sale of their designs. I wish they made a higher percentage of the sale, to be honest. But at least they’re getting paid for their designs. I really like the idea of supporting these individual creators who might not ever be offered a partnership with a big fabric or wallpaper company.

I will admit that while it has an Etsy vibe to it, there’s also a Goodwill vibe to it. And by that, I mean that not everyone who fancies themselves to be a pattern designer is actually a good pattern designer. So just like you go to a thrift shop and have to search through a whole lot of junk in order to find that one treasure, that’s sometimes how Spoonflower feels. 😀 But unlike Goodwill or other thrift shops, the treasures on Spoonflower aren’t all that rare. They’re actually quite plentiful.

But here’s another reason I love Spoonflower so much, and probably the biggest reason it’s my first choice for fabric. Each design can be printed on one of 30 different fabric options. That is the biggest advantage, in my opinion. When you’re shopping in a regular fabric store, whether it’s brick-and-mortar or online, I’ll often find a print that I absolutely love with all of the colors I’m looking for, but the fabric itself is all wrong. Maybe I’m looking specifically for drapery fabric, but the perfect print I’ve found is actually a heavy-duty upholstery fabric or a stretchy fabric that would be completely inappropriate for use as draperies. That can be so frustrating.

But at Spoonflower, that’s not an obstacle. Once you find a print you like, you can then choose the fabric that you want to have it printed on. They have options for apparel, options for upholstery, options for draperies, and options for just about anything else you could want, from sheers to Lycra.

When you click on a print, it almost always shows the option for their Petal Signature Cotton as the default.

But if you click where it says “Change Fabric”, that’s where you’ll find the 30 fabric options. And you’ll get an idea of the appropriate use for each fabric based on the thumbnails it shows you on the left of the large image. For example, the Petal Signature Cotton shows a thumbnail of the print on a skirt. If you click that thumbnail, you can get an idea of the scale of the print, and you can see that the chosen fabric is appropriate for apparel and anything else that would use that weight of fabric.

But if you choose a heavier fabric (in this case, Belgian Linen) that isn’t appropriate for lightweight use, it’ll switch the thumbnail from a skirt to a chair so that you can see how that print would look on an upholstered item.

And if you choose a medium-weight fabric, like the Lightweight Cotton Twill, it will change the thumbnail to a pillow.

And the on others, like the Minky and Polartec Fleece, it will change the thumbnail to a blanket.

There are some fabric options, like the Chiffon, where it doesn’t give you a thumbnail showing a specific usage, so you can just read the description of the fabric and then see the suggested uses of that fabric listed underneath. For the Chiffon, they say it can be used for accessories, apparel, costumes, curtains, dresses, and scarves.

So I just wanted to pass along this information for those of you who love fabric as much as I do. The selection of prints at Spoonflower is second to none, even if you do have to search through some duds to find your treasure. But I’m not aware of any other company that offers so many fabric options for each print, and that shows you how each type of fabric would look on apparel, home decor, and an upholstered item. I’m such a huge fan of Spoonflower, and it really is my first stop any time I’m looking for fabric (and wallpaper). That doesn’t mean that it’s the only place I shop, but it’s always the first. And they don’t even have to pay me to say that. 😀 That’s just my genuine, honest opinion. I’ve never been disappointed with the quality of any of the fabric or wallpaper that I’ve purchased from Spoonflower.

UPDATE: I almost forgot to mention another HUGE benefit of Spoonflower. They offer extra wide fabrics! They have two different weights of extra wide fabrics that are 116″ wide. Those are perfect for making duvet covers without having to seam the face fabric, or for quilt backing, or for any other wide project where you don’t want to have to sew widths of fabric together and take the chance of seams showing. I used the heavier 6.5-ounce extra wide fabric to upholster my headboard so that I wouldn’t have seams on the front of the headboard. And every single print on their site can be printed on extra wide fabric.