Harry Mustoe-Playfair, co-founder of Prinfab explained:

Prinfab is offering DTF transfer printing as A4 and 76cm wide continuous metres prints. Co-founder Oliver Mustoe-Playfair said:

The inks (NEP 1603) and adhesive (SH150 267687) used in the DTF transfers carry the OEKO-TEX Eco Passport. This means they have been independently checked to ensure they do not contain chemicals that are harmful to human health.

Representative samples have also passed the EN71-3 standard ensuring they are safe to use in products for children carrying the UKCA mark.

• epson.co.uk
• ntu.ac.uk
• lboro.ac.uk
• burberry.com

On 26 November 2025, Prinfab supported Epson with their Textile Academy at the Epson Innovation Centre in Lutterworth, United Kingdom.

The event, attended by final year students at Nottingham Trent University and Loughborough University was created to provide an insight into commercial textile printing.

Duncan Ferguson, Managing Director at Epson UK said:

Prinfab ran business and a “no sew dress” workshops throughout the day.

No Sew Dress

Working with Epson and Texintel, Prinfab created a "no sew dress" pattern using a square piece of Stretch Lycra with 3 simple cuts to create a dress. During the day, students were able to unleash their creativity to make their own no sew dress with Burberry designer AJ Bell choosing a winner.

• schoolofupholstery.com
• schoolofupholstery

The exhibition was held from 20 - 21 July 2024 in the historic Faversham Guildhall and featured work from the schools AMUSF (Association of Master Upholsterers & Soft Furnishers) students.

AMUSF is an organisation who offer upholstery accreditation and support for those in the upholstery and soft furnishing industry. Members must pass a number of requirements, including having worked in the industry for 3 years or more.

The School of Upholstery, led by Alex Law, is one of only a few schools in the UK who are AMUSF certified and offer both professional grade AMUSF courses and leisure classes.

Alex Law is an experienced master upholsterer who has excelled in the upholstery industry for over 30 years and has written two books on the subject, Quick and Easy Upholstery and The Upholsterer's Step-by-Step Handbook.

Under the experienced and skilled eyes of the School of Upholstery, students flourish and create stunning professionally finished pieces for personal and commercial use.

Seams Random by Caroline won the "Best in Show Stage 2" award with fabric printed by Prinfab and Josie Claughton won the "Best in Show Stage 1" award.

Students were guided to design and digitally print their own custom designs onto fabric and then use this to reupholster their final pieces of furniture. This collaboration between traditional upholstery techniques and cutting-edge digital printing technology combined to make some truly stunning finished pieces.

• livingwage.org.uk

The real Living Wage is the only rate calculated according to the costs of living. It provides a voluntary benchmark for employers that wish to ensure their staff earn a wage they can live on, not just the government minimum.

In the South East of England, 10.1% of all jobs (409,000) pay less than the real Living Wage.

Oliver Mustoe-Playfair, Director, Prinfab® said:

Katherine Chapman, Director, Living Wage Foundation said:

Prinfab® is based in Faversham, Kent that employs a team of local people to offer a world class textile print on demand service to thousands of customers worldwide.

The Digital Printer Awards are an annual event celebrating excellence and innovation in digital print. In their entry, Prinfab showcased products designed and manufactured by customers Aimee and Fred.

Company founders Oliver Mustoe-Playfair and Harry Mustoe-Playfair collected the award at an event attended by hundreds of industry professionals in central London. Oliver said:

This is the second time that Prinfab have won an industry award for excellence as they continue to revolutionise the way textiles are printed.

• tora-lily.com
• toralily_
• toralily_

London Fashion Week is a clothing trade show that takes place in London twice a year showcasing over 250 designers to a global audience. London Fashion Week is one of the "Big Four" fashion weeks, along with New York, Milan, and Paris.

TORA-LILY started in 2021 by Tiger-Lily Booth. They are now a team of three seamstresses who sew all of the items to order. Tiger likes everything to be made sustainably and by making garments on demand, it encourages less waste. Once an order comes through, they order the fabric through Prinfab and make every piece in their UK studio within 7-14 working days.

Tiger-Lily designs all the prints herself; some feature original photography and others are made up of old family images. She has recently brought out the AW23 collection which is TORA-LILY's biggest collection yet made up of 20 looks.

Over the last few weeks, our team have been hard at work preparing our stall for the Lovely World event organised by Swale Friends of the Earth.

The event was held at The Alexander Centre in Faversham on 24 - 25 June 2023 and featured letters printed by Prinfab on the windows outside.

Each member of our creative team worked on these letters, designing them in-house.

Clare, one of our cutting room assistant's told Prinfab:

Over 30 projects, initiatives, individuals and companies took part in Lovely World with the aim of working towards a fair, carbon neutral, planet-focused and energy efficient world. It presents a vision of a future in 20 years' time in which the 'right' environmental choices have been made. It was an exciting and visionary event inspired by the film 2040 and the book by Jonathan Porritt, The World We Made. There was a flowing program of live events including talks, films, poetry and performances, as well as a clothes swap and workshops taking place over the weekend.

Our office manager Natalie said:

Our stall featured a sketchbook, a 3D model of our factory and mountboards showing our organic and recycled fabrics, sustainability milestones and sustainability statements from the team. Our rail consisted of printed eco fabrics and products in these same prints to show the endless possibilities for how your printed fabric could be used. The cushions were filled with fabric scraps and our sample packs were available in both the full range and just the eco fabrics.

We also displayed a beautiful chair, upholstered by Alex Law from The School of Upholstery, in our Organic Optic Half Panama and Organic Half Panama, as well as cushions also designed by him.

The team really enjoyed working for a local event where the fabric was designed and printed locally too. There were so many different companies that were involved who had their own take on sustainability and how to create a lovely world.

• greengrads.co.uk
• greengrads22

Green Grads is an initiative founded by award winning design journalist Barbara Chandler. It aims to provide a platform to promote work by recent graduates engaging with ecological issues.

Prinfab provided graduates Sarah Thorley, Rebekah Longland and Rhiannon Weaver with printed fabric for the event. The designs were printed on organic optic half panama using an Epson ML-8000 running organic pigment.

The organic optic half panama is a popular fabric in the Prinfab range. It uses GOTS certified cotton to provide a heavy cotton print base. The ink is GOT certified and carries an OEKO-TEX Eco Passport.

An event hosted by Jay Blades from the The Repair Shop was held at the London Design Festival on 25 September 2022 to showcase work by the graduates.

• mysticalskystudio
• mysticalskystudio

Sarah loves the maximalist style and is a big fan of small details and vibrant colours.

She tends to switch between watercolours and fine liners, depending on the design, and is always keen to continue developing her own unique art style.

After studying textiles, fine art and fashion at The Northern School, Sarah went on to study womenswear fashion design at Central Saint Martin's in London.

Having worked for many creative companies over the years, it was during the lockdown that she really started to focus on creating her own pattern designs and thus launching her small business, Mystical Sky Studio.

As a child, Sarah felt very connected to nature. She lived in a small countryside village and would often spend hours outside learning all about flowers, trees, insects and wild animals where she would always be sketching or scribbling down ideas.

Nature now plays a huge part in her designs and is her main source of inspiration. Sarah's designs are never overly planned; she likes to let them come to life organically on the page. Once her artwork is complete, she then loves choosing which fabrics to print on and what products to make.

• kerrielouaccessories
• kerrie_surface_print
• kerrielouaccessories

Kerrie's love for creating abstract doodles and illustrations has led her to launch a range of unique designs, which she later transforms into small accessories, using her custom printed fabric.

After studying Textile Design for Fashion and Interiors at Bath Spa University, Kerrie was keen to develop her love for arts and crafts, fashion and sewing further. She loves keeping up with the latest trends and finding ways in which she can incorporate these into her own work.

Kerrie enjoys coming up with a range of colour palettes until she finds one that will work for her collection. She also finds mood boards to be a crucial part of the design process as she is able to compile her creative ideas and inspiration in a more visual way. Kerrie told Prinfab:

Sometimes, in the back of her mind, she thinks about what her tutor would say during her time at University and how she would help her to improve and give her that extra motivation. Kerrie feels that she is her own main source of inspiration as "no one knows your design style better than you do: you have to put in the hours and the only person that can do that is you". Putting time in to your work makes for the best results; the final part of the design process is the part that Kerrie enjoys the most. Styling and photographing the final products is the last step in bringing the whole project together and seeing what you have achieved.

We asked Kerrie what first sparked her passion for design:

Something that helped Kerrie greatly on her creative journey was undergoing industry experience. Placements and internships are a great way of learning new skills which you can then implement into your own work. Setting up an Etsy shop will also help you to learn valuable skills on the way to growing your own brand. Nowadays, having social media is essential in growing your business and getting your work noticed. Kerrie's advice to those just starting out in the design industry is to "create an Instagram, or even a TikTok account, as this will spark people's interest in your designs".

Kerrie's profile on Arts Thread showcases her design portfolio of unique projects, professional mock ups and collection photographs using her custom printed fabric.

• abbeyprice.com
• abbeypricetextiledesign
• abbeypricedesign

She first got into print making by studying textile design at university, where she specialised in print design for fashion.

From a young age, Abbey always had a passion for print and anything that had a pattern on it.

Her obsession for plants only continues to grow, where her studio space is now her main source of inspiration: "it is pretty much a jungle". One of Abbey's main influences is the work of textile print designer, Cassie Byrnes, who creates colourful paintings that are then digitally printed and turned into clothing.

Abbey loves coming up with unique colour combinations and working in different mediums. Each tropical design is created by combining both hand and digital techniques before being printed using sustainable fabric printing technology.

This process allows the hand painted details from the original designs to be translated through to the final product. Her bold and colourful design style has played a huge role in creating and developing her range of contemporary accessories.

Fabric manipulations are a great way of adding a three-dimensional, textural appearance to your projects.

Drawings and paintings are a great source of inspiration, being able to see your designs come to life at the start of the design process can lead to unique results.

In this guide, we explore a number of hand sewn and machine sewn fabric manipulations that you can try with your custom printed fabric.

Hand Sewn Manipulations

Suffolk Puffs

1. Cut several circles, either free-hand or by drawing around a template, that vary in size. You will need to ensure that the circles are no smaller than 20cm in diameter so they don’t become too small to work with.
2. Thread your needle with your chosen colour of thread and begin sewing around the edge of the fabric circle, leaving no smaller than a 5mm edge.
3. Move the needle up and down, gathering the fabric on the needle as you go. There is no need to pull the thread all the way through each time as it can be pulled through the gathered section in one go when the needle becomes full.
4. Repeat this process until you return to the start of the sewn circle and pull the thread to create a puffed circle effect. You may need to pull the edges of the suffolk puff slightly to ensure that no fabric is tucked inside.
5. Knot the fabric closely to the centre of the suffolk puff to ensure that the gathers are held tightly in place. Cut off any excess thread and repeat this process to create more.

Folded Flowers

1. Cut 24x circles each measuring 5cm in diameter. The quickest way to cut several circles at the same time is to fold your fabric a few times before cutting.
2. Working with one circle at a time, apply a small amount of glue to the base and pinch the edges, until the glue is dry, to create a petal shape.
3. Repeat this process for the rest of the circles so you have 24x individual petals.
4. Starting with 4 petals, stick them to a 20cm x 20cm scrap fabric square in a diamond format and repeat this process for the next 4 petals to fill in any gaps. Continue adding your petals to the gaps and see a flower start to form.
5. Once all the petals have been added, cut the edges off the square fabric base to follow the shape of the flower.

Machine Sewn Manipulations

Ruffles

1. Cut your printed fabric into strips that vary in length and width, no smaller than 30cm in length and 5cm in width.
2. Place your strip of fabric under the machine foot and start by sewing a small reverse stitch to create an immovable end.
3. Using a relatively wide stitch, sew a straight line along the centre of the fabric strip until you reach the end. A reverse stitch is not needed here as the loose threads are needed to create the ruffle.
4. Leaving a 20cm long length of thread, cut the thread away from the machine and separate the threads into two sections. Only pulling one thread, push the fabric in the opposite direction and see a ruffle start to form.
5. Once your ruffle is as gathered as you would like it to be, knot both threads to hold the ruffle in place and repeat this process to create several more.

Frilled Pleats

1. Cut your printed fabric into several strips, each measuring 15cm in length. You can use several different widths of fabric or have all the strips the same width of 5cm, depending on the look you are going for.
2. Cut a square of scrap fabric that measures 15cm by however wide you need your manipulation sample to be; this will be used as the base to sew the pleats onto.
3. Place the left-hand edge of your first strip against the left-hand edge of the fabric base and sew a line down the centre of the strip, ensuring to reverse stitch each end.
4. Place the left-hand edge of your second strip against the right-hand edge of the first strip and sew down the centre of the second strip so that the two stitch lines are right next to one another but not overlapping.
5. Repeat this process until your strips have filled the fabric base. You will be left with a section of pleats that have a frilled effect.

Flounces

1. Cut several circles by drawing around a template that measures 15cm in diameter. Next, draw a smaller circle in the centre, over the top of the cut circles, that measures 7.5cm in diameter.
2. Fold the circles in half and cut them to create several semi-circles before cutting around the smaller semi-circles that were drawn over the top.
3. Pull the edges of the small semi-circles to create a straight line with the inner edge.
4. Using a square scrap of fabric that measures 30cm wide by however long you need your manipulation sample to be, place the left-hand edge of the inner semi-circle against the left-hand edge of the fabric base before pulling the flounce and sewing a straight line across.
5. Repeat this process by sewing one flounce alongside the other and underneath the layer above, as close to the above stitch line as possible, to create a unique effect.

• theneighbourhoodthreat.co.uk
• theneighbourhoodthreat
• theneighbourhoodthreat

The Neighbourhood Threat is the colour-popping, charismatic and nostalgically cool kitchenware brand and brainchild of, Salford artist, Holly Ramsay.

Built upon foundations of quality and sustainability, every product is produced by Holly, or with UK suppliers who have been meticulously vetted and work in close partnership with the brand. Sustainable, socially-conscious and made to last, the brand is focused on ethical sourcing of high quality materials. Bursting with oddity but warm and welcoming in its weirdness, its range of tea towels, oven gloves, mugs, coasters, and cushions is both theatrical and irresistible.

Named from the Iggy Pop and David Bowie track, icons from whom Holly draws inspiration, The Neighbourhood Threat- appropriately - is ever-changing. While her latest designs have one foot in the 70s, Holly's ability to take inspiration from the everyday and turn designs on a dime means that the brand is one to watch. From the Space Age collection to the Kitsch line, you'll find science fiction teamed with glam rock, animals-at-loose alongside antique curiosities, and colourful caricatures contrasted with floral motifs and fruity prints.

Based at Islington Mill, a creative hub on the border of Manchester and Salford, The Neighbourhood Threat has been born into a community of collaborators and creators. Holly is a vocal supporter of her peers, a champion of independent business, and always ready to team up with her contemporaries in the name of art and innovation.

The brand has built an emphatic following amongst those in the know in Manchester and the North-West. Bursting out of its Salford studio into an ever-expanding list of style-conscious stockists, The Neighbourhood Threat is gaining pace and growing fast.

• rosimorosi.com
• clairemorosi

Claire is passionate about brightening up homes and promoting home furnishing items such as lampshades, clocks and cushions as artworks in their own right. She loves lampshades and the way they can add a magical pop of colour to a room; an antidote to the grey-taupe of recent years.

She urges others to embrace colour wherever possible. Sometimes she goes loud with colour and other times she uses the pops of colour to accentuate a shape or texture. Whichever way she uses it, colour is always at the forefront of her mind when designing new collections.

After attending the Bath Academy of Art, Claire went on to study for a degree in Graphic Design at Leeds. Over the years she has explored the world of collage and assemblage. She has exhibited her work in UK galleries as well as having pieces in South Africa, Europe and Australia. "I have always loved pattern and, looking back at the work I produced in Leeds, pattern, texture and colour played a large part in everything I did".

Claire spends time in her studio every day and always has a sketchbook on the go as an essential way of documenting her creative thought process. "I am truly fortunate to work from a small garden studio. The studio has floor to ceiling windows so I get plenty of light and gorgeous views of the garden as it changes through the seasons".

She is inspired by the natural world as well as artists such as Jacqueline Groag, Phyllis Baron, Dorothy Larcher and Enid Marx. Claire also has a very inspiring godmother, the artist Salliann Putman.

She gets so wonderfully lost in the pleasure of experimenting that she has found a way of using her fabric offcuts, from lampshade making and test squares, to minimise waste as much as possible. Her fabric pendant necklaces have been so popular that she now makes material/wooden brooches and keyrings too. In addition to this, Claire is launching a range of wooden tree decorations for Christmas this year and has also started making a small range of unique shoelaces using her printed fabric.

Having found the wonderful Make it in Design online school of pattern design, through being a huge fan of Rachel Taylor and her team, she re-discovered her inner creative spirit, after having a creative break for a few years, and has not looked back since. Her re-found creative confidence was further boosted by having her work shown at Top Drawer London as part of the spotlight given to new designers, followed by the British Craft Trade Show in Harrogate. She is now looking forward to showing at Blue Magpie Contemporary Art & Crafts and the Art Collective Christmas Weekend at Sir Harold Hillier Gardens this November.

• lizziemabley.co.uk
• lizziemableyfabrics
• lizziemableyfabrics
• lizziemabley

As a linocut printmaker and fabric designer, Lizzie starts each of her designs with a hand-drawn sketch which is transferred to lino, carved, and printed by hand. Some designs are transferred to silk screen and hand-printed onto fabric while others are scanned, coloured on screen and then printed digitally.

With a background of creating and making from an early age, Lizzie went on to do an art foundation course and degree in Textile Design and Surface Decoration. At University she explored screen printing, layering colour, stitch, and appliqué.

While bringing up her two children, she found ways to feed her creativity at home and went on to open a market stall at Stroud Farmers Market selling hand-printed textiles, art prints and cards. Lizzie told Prinfab "I am lucky enough to rent a studio at Victoria Works Studios in Chalford, which has enabled me to grow my business - albeit at an organic rate to fit in with family life!".

Her love for the countryside is portrayed in her designs as they capture the vibrancy of her surroundings, particularly her garden and the coast which she visits whenever possible. This in turn inspires her love of interiors, fabric, pattern, and décor.

Lizzie has a passion for gardening and feels her eye for design translates well with the colour and shape of the plants and landscape. She came to Prinfab after realising that she wanted to see her designs as printed lengths. While she could produce small lengths of hand-printed fabrics in her studio, she needed a way of producing larger pieces of fabric to use for her collection of cushions and lampshades.

We asked Lizzie if she had any tips for new designers starting out in the creative industry:

"I would also try and get some industry experience before starting out. This is something I didn't do which has meant learning as I go, which is good, but somewhat a slower pace! Never stop learning new things and developing your experiences. I have recently started a ceramics class which feels like a natural progression and I am loving using this medium as a new way to realise my designs".

• deliriumbysophie.co.uk
• deliriumbysophie
• delirium.by.sophie

From a young age, Sophie loved experimenting with different fabrics; this is an obsession that has only continued to grow throughout her career. She loves art that is overstimulating for the brain with lots of tactile layering, repetitive patterns and clashing colours. Surrealist art and anything with texture and vibrancy are her biggest forms of inspiration.

Universal awakening is also a fundamental concept behind the designs at Delirium. Sophie's aim is to share with people how she views the world. By seeing design as a form of expression, she has been able to use her work as a way to bring a sense of togetherness into the world. Her psychedelic patterns play with scale and form, turning striking detail into fluidity.

Sophie believes that we are more connected than we realise and uses her repeat patterns to illustrate this.

Growing up on a farm in Surrey, Sophie had a balance of practical living mixed with eccentric artistry split between both sides of her family. Her love for the big wide world naturally drew her to the city where she has lived for roughly 9 years (with a few adventures around the world and in between). Most of her free time is spent attending music events and festivals, going to art exhibitions, exploring the outdoors and having deep conversations until the early hours of the morning. "It is important to appreciate all the small joys a day can bring. This world is full of wonder, we must only open our eyes to see it".

Sketching can lead you down a range of experimental paths where initial ideas can then be developed in other mediums. Sophie's advice for new designers starting out in the industry is "whether it takes one year or five, just start. You won't believe what you have achieved when you look back".

She feels there is nothing wrong with imagining the end goal but that this can often be slightly overwhelming at first. Her best work comes from taking one step at a time. She starts by sitting at her desk and picking up the pen as, once she starts, one idea automatically snowballs into the next.

One key thing that Sophie has learnt throughout her design career is to not compare herself to others. Her passion for inclusivity and individuality is demonstrated throughout her fashion pieces. These are especially popular both on her website and on the ASOS Marketplace.

We asked Sophie how we have helped her on her creative journey: "Prinfab are amazing! I've genuinely never had a company be more helpful and feel so personable. My orders arrive so quickly, it's incredible. I did a lot of research on costings and fabric quality before I decided on Prinfab; they have such a huge range of great quality of fabrics. Prinfab even help me when I send over completed images to print. They are so diligent that they picked up on an error I had missed before printing- if that's not incredible customer service, I don't know what is!"

Prinfab beat strong competition to win the "Best Digitally Printed Textiles" award by showcasing work from Prinfab customer COtoo.

"Being recognised as the best digital textile printer in the UK is a fantastic achievement for Prinfab. Our textile print on-demand service is truly revolutionising the industry and creating new opportunities for our customers", said Prinfab co-founder Oliver Mustoe-Playfair.

Co-founder Harry Mustoe-Playfair adds, "It's great to see our team get the recognition they deserve. Their perseverance and determination is nothing short of amazing."

The award was presented at an event attended by hundreds of industry professionals at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane London.

• studiopinkys
• pinkys.studio

Kasia is interested in all things creative, with a particular passion for arts and crafts, cooking, gardening, reading and fashion. After seeing other artists get their work printed onto various different mediums, it gave her a distinct vision for how she could apply her designs onto fabric to create a collection of unique accessories.

Sourcing inspiration from nature- flowers, mushrooms, animals, the solar system, music, philosophy, psychology and poetry, Kasia has created a range of truly unique products from custom printed fabric. Her favourite part of the design process is seeing the finished product come together exactly as she imagined it.

Kasia's advice for new designers starting out in the industry is to "design whatever you want as long as it makes you happy". She went on to explain how Prinfab has helped progress her business by giving her the ability to create exciting new products in a really easy way.

Her love for being "consistently inconsistent" has allowed her to create a "weird and wonderful world through magical maximalist artwork" and express her individuality through artistry. This is a skill that her favourite artists use: Yayoi Kusama, Salvador Dali, Zdzislaw Beksinski, Andy Warhol and Jean Michael Basquiat all have an expressive style.

Many of the designers we print fabric for use well known artists as a source of inspiration to create their own unique style.

Kasia's psychedelic style has attracted many fans on Etsy, where she sells her handmade accessories and home décor pieces to customers worldwide. Etsy is online marketplace specialising in handmade products. Sales in excess of $10 billion were made on Etsy in 2020 making it a fantastic place for our customers to sell their products.

• Nikwax Cotton Proof
• Vlieseline Lamifix Gloss

There are many ways in which fabrics can be treated for water-repellency. The examples below show two quick and easy techniques which can be used to make your fabric suitable for a wider range of uses. Both Nikwax Cotton Proof and Vlieseline Lamifix Gloss are readily available online or at your local haberdashery.

Nikwax Cotton Proof

Nikwax Cotton Proof is an environmentally-friendly water-repellent treatment that coats the fabric with a network of water-repellent molecules. These molecules are able to bond to anything that is not water-repellent, while still being breathable. It also adds tear strength and can withstand several washes. Nikwax Cotton Proof is easy and quick to apply by hand or in a washing machine and ensures that the treatment goes right through the fabric.

For best results, use Nikwax Tech Wash in a separate cycle before applying the waterproof treatment; there is no need to dry your printed fabric first. To maintain waterproofing, always wash your fabric with this after the treatment has been applied; detergents should not be used.

Machine Wash

1. Wash the fabric with 3 full caps of Nikwax Tech Wash; there is no need to dry the material.
2. Place the clean fabric in the washing machine, with a maximum of 3 items at a time, using 50ml of Nikwax Cotton Proof for 1 item, 100ml for 2 items and 150ml for 3 items.
3. Wash the fabric according to the care label before leaving to airdry.

Hand Wash

1. Add 3 full caps of Nikwax Tech Wash to a bowl of hand-hot water and agitate to mix.
2. Rinse the fabric 3 times with clean water, as well as the Tech Wash cap.
3. Immerse the clean fabric in 6 litres of hand-hot water, using 50ml of Nikwax Cotton Proof.
4. Thoroughly swirl the fabric in the water, leave for 5 minutes, then mix again.
5. Rinse with cold water until the water runs clear and leave to airdry.

Lamifix Gloss

Lamifix Gloss is a fusible, transparent, iron-on transfer film designed for laminating a wide range of fabrics. Its gloss finish shows the true vibrancy of the print while being strong, durable and wipeable. In addition to fabric items such as tablecloths and aprons, it is also great for homeware items such as placemats.

1. Place the Lamifix on the printed side of the fabric shiny side facing up
2. Lay a lightweight tea towel over the top and set the iron to mid-heat
3. Start ironing from the center outwards for no longer than 8 seconds at a time
4. Remove the tea towel to reveal your final fabric
5. Repeat the process if any air bubbles are found

warningThis article has been provided for guidance only and you should always follow the manufacturer's instructions.

• alisonbick.co.uk
• alison.bick.designer
• alison_bick
• alisonbickdesigns

As a designer and illustrator, Alison creates unique artwork inspired by the natural world with a modern heritage twist. She creates a wide variety of everyday products including lampshades, cushions, home textiles, art prints and greetings cards. Her design business was set up in 2015 where lampshades soon became a bestseller both online and at craft fairs. She describes her style as:

Alison grew up around the exotic colours of nature when living in Vanuatu, a group of islands in the Pacific. Her parents were keen gardeners and her daily job as a child was to water the plants in the orchid house; she spent most of her childhood surrounded by flamboyant plants. After finding the confidence to return to college in her 30s, Alison went on to study Multi Media Design where she became a web and graphic designer, working for local companies in Cornwall. She soon realised that her passion lied within creating artwork of her own.

Following her creative energy, Alison signed up for evening printmaking courses, initially creating fabric collages by hand using tiny pieces of vintage fabric, before going on to do screen printing workshops. This was the impetus for a new direction and she began selling her screen prints at design fairs around Cornwall; the response she received was phenomenal.

Visiting beautiful botanical grounds and working in her own cut flower garden is her main source of inspiration. She also enjoys searching the strandline for interesting shells, pebbles and seaweed and foraging for elderflowers and sloes along Cornwall's unique hedgerows. Her designs start as rough sketches which are then digitised and applied to a range of printed surfaces, whether that be fabric, paper or wood. Alison is passionate about being a part of a creative community and designing colourful textile pieces that create a mood in a room.

At the start of her design career, Alison signed up to an 8 week workshop on how to set up a business. She was featured in a marketing campaign by Outset Cornwall, called "Choose Outset", where she was invited to speak on Radio Cornwall about her experience.

In 2016, Alison co-founded a local team, organising the first ever Etsy-made local fair in Cornwall. After three successful years in St Ives, they moved the event to Penryn Campus Sports Hall where over 5,000 visitors attended. In 2020, Alison was given the opportunity to be filmed and featured in an episode of the BBC's well-known program, Escape to the Country (Series 21 Episode 33).

To make her business flourish, she ensures that her products are of a high quality and relies on Prinfab for printing her custom fabric, knowing the colours will be accurate to her digital design files. Using her experience, she has gone on to teach her children the importance of loving what you do and that having a passion is the key to success.

We asked Alison if she had any tips for new designers starting out in the creative industry:

Prinfab have announced all orders are being shipped within 2 working days making it one of the fastest textile print on-demand companies in the world.

"Reducing turnaround is a direct response to customer feedback" said co-founder Oliver Mustoe-Playfair.

In 2021, Prinfab invested a record amount in machinery and have been working with the Innovate UK Edge team to innovate beyond the competition.

"Proprietary software enables us to run a lean and efficient operation. Every step of production has been optimised to maximise productivity and minimise wastage", explains co-founder Harry Mustoe-Playfair.

The textile print on-demand company supply thousands of customers worldwide and has ambitious plans for 2022.

Textile print-on-demand company Prinfab announced today that it has been nominated for best "Digitally Printed Textiles" in the Digital Printer Awards 2021.

Started in 2007, the Digital Printer Awards recognise industry pioneers that define new standards for quality and innovation.

Harry Mustoe-Playfair, co-founder of Prinfab said, "The nomination provides recognition for our team who share our passion for building the best textile print on-demand service in the world."

The nomination showcases Prinfab customer COtoo, an artistic partnership between Odette Illingworth and Caroline Leeson, who collaborate with independent artists to bring affordable textile products to market.

Oliver Mustoe-Playfair, co-founder of Prinfab said, "COtoo is a great example of a customer that has created a successful business powered by our textile print on-demand service."

Prinfab use next generation industrial digital textile printers to offer a print on-demand service with no minimum and 5 day turnaround to thousands of customers worldwide.

Winners will be announced on Thursday 4 November 2021 at an awards ceremony being held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane London.

UPDATE - we won! Read more

Ensuring a fabric meets the requirements of EN71-3 (2019) is a critical step in CE marking products for children. More specifically, the standard sets a limit to the amount of potentially harmful chemicals a fabric can contain.

A representative sample of each fabric in our range was printed and independently tested by a UKAS accredited laboratory to ensure they meet the requirements of the EN71-3 (2019) chemical migration standard.

This means customers can be confident that any fabric printed by Prinfab is of the highest quality and can used in products carrying the CE mark.

We’ll cover a few ways of resizing an image to a specific physical size for print.

Contents

Introduction

Resizing a file for print is very easy to do, but difficult if you don’t know how.

We’ll guide you through the process of resizing your file exactly without affecting the quality.

The trick is to alter the physical dimensions of the file without changing the pixels of the image.

Quick Steps

For this guide we’ll be using Photopea to resize the file, although the steps should be very similar in any image editing software.

Open Photopea

Open your browser and navigate to https://photopea.com.

Open your file

You can drag and drop your file into that window to start editing, or choose File > Open.

Resize your image

In menus, find Image > Image Size or press ctrl + alt + i to open the image size dialogue.

Be default it will show pixels and the resample image will be ticked.

Untick the Resample box. This will stop Photopea from changing the pixels of your image when you change the physical dimensions.

Change the units box from px to mm or in.

You should also make sure the little chain link icon is selected like in the example - this constrains the proportions of the image, so you don’t end up stretching it too much in one direction; i.e. when you change the width, the height will change accordingly and vice versa.

You can now change the size to whatever physical dimensions you need for your print.

Export your image

In the menus, fine File > Export as and choose your export file type. JPEG is a good all round option, but especially for Photographs, drawings and other non-digital artwork.

In Photoshop, you’ll want to choose File > Save as instead of export.

Upload to Prinfab

Now that you’ve exported your image, you can upload it to the Prinfab website.

If you’ve done everything correctly, your image should show at the exact size you set in the previous steps.

Cropping & extending

Sometimes, your image will be a different aspect ratio than what you intend to print.

In this case, you’ll need to crop or extend your image to be the correct size.

Canvas Size

Once your image is open, you’ll need to have a look at the image size dialogue and see what the size of your image is.

Resize your images using the steps above, but make sure the smallest of the two measurements is the one you want to end up with - i.e. that your image is slightly oversized.

In the menus find Image > Canvas Size. You’ll see a similar dialogue to Image Size, except missing the DPI box.

You can now enter your final dimensions here, and the respective part of your image will be cropped off to suit.

You can change the anchor placement to alter which edges get chopped off by the cropping.

You can also use the relative check-box to easily crop or extend the edges of your image by a set amount. This is great for adding borders to an image.

In Depth

The size of a printed image is typically defined by 3 numbers:

• Width (in pixels)
• Height (in pixels)
• Resolution (in pixels per inch or pixels per centimetre)

The combination of those factors will uniquely determine the print size of your image.

Pixels per inch or PPI is sometimes referred to as dots per inch or DPI, but means the same thing in this context.

Using the pixel width or height and the resolution, we can work out the physical dimensions of the image.

Most image editing software will allow you to alter these and change the other values accordingly, including the physical dimensions.

Resampling

When resizing your image for print, typically you do not want to change the pixels of the image, as this can lead to artefacts in the image from the resampling operation.

Here is an example of an image that has been resampled by a very small amount.

This is equivalent to changing your image from 150mm to 151mm by resampling.

You can see that the resampled image on the right is a lot less sharp and has had a lot of artefacts introduced, even though the physical size is not much different to the original size on the left.

This can have a large impact on artwork, and as such you will want to avoid resampling your image as much as possible, especially for digitally created artwork.

When resizing your image for print, you should thus disable resampling and only change the resolution as opposed to the pixel dimensions of the image unless you’re absolutely sure of what you’re doing.

Increasing the Resolution of your Image

There is unfortunately no way of increasing the resolution of your printed image without recreating it.

Resizing the image in Photoshop or other image editing software will not create a higher resolution print. Resampling the image will only make it worse quality by introducing artefacts.

The only way of increasing resolution is to print your image at a smaller physical size.

If you have a scan, photograph or digital drawing, then the only way to get a higher resolution print is to wish and hope that what you currently have is a version that has already been resized smaller, and that a larger version exists somewhere.

There are two exceptions to this rule:

• If the artwork is a physical artwork, you can re-scan at a higher resolution
• If the artwork is vector artwork, you can export at a higher resolution

Conclusion

To change the physical size of your image, the most important thing to remember is to not resample your image.

Other than that, resizing your artwork to an exact size is easy and something anyone can do.

More Information

You can find more information about resolution and DPI here:

The Relationship Between Viewing Distance and DPI

We also have some great advice on how to set up your artwork in Illustrator here:

How to Create and Export Artwork Using Adobe Illustrator

And there are several other handy articles on our blog.

Contents

Introduction

If you’re going to be wearing a mask all day, you want to try and make sure it is going to stay clean and germ free.

Using our Anti-Microbial Stretch Lycra, you can create a double layer snood to protect you and those around you while looking stylish.

Our anti-microbial stretch lycra is an innovative stretch fabric that uses a Silverplus® anti-microbial finish that can help maintain freshness with prolonged use. It can also be washed at 60 degrees for deep sterlization.

A snood, also known as a gaiter mask, neck tube or buff, can provide a first line of defense for your body and help protect others.

They are comfortable for all day use and only take 20 minutes to make. They are double layered for added protection.

Disclaimer

The face masks described in this blog post have not been tested or approved for medical use. The instructions have been provided for information only and recommend you conduct your own tests to ensure they are suitable for use. We accept no responsibility for use.

What you’ll need

Sewing Machine

It would be very difficult to hand sew these anti-microbial neck tubes, but still possible. We highly recommend using a sewing machine with a good stretch stitch.

If you have an overlocker, you’ll get great results using that in place of the stretch stitch used for the main part of the sewing.

Fabric

You’ll need a piece of our anti-microbial stretch lycra. A fat quarter will make one snood and a metre should make four.

You can make it from a single piece of fabric with a single pattern, or you can make it with an inner and outer layer.

For a single pattern / piece of fabric, we recommend the following:

For a dual pattern / reversible design, you’ll need two pieces of fabric measuring the following:

Make sure that the width is across the weft of the fabric. This is the stretchiest direction and will make the snood much easier to take on and off. If in doubt, hold the fabric in your hands and pull to the sides - the lines should run up and down, not side to side.

You should err on the side of making it wider than you think, because at step 7 you can always make it a bit smaller.

Choosing your Stitch

For the main part of this project, you’ll need a strong, stretchy stitch. Do not use a straight stitch, it doesn’t offer much stretch at all and will just snap.

Your sewing machine may have a selection of suitable stitches for this project. If all else fails, your sewing machine will ceratinly have a zig-zag stitch which will work in a pinch.

If possible, use a triple stretch stitch if you feel comfortable using it, or a three step zig-zag for a bit of an easier sewing job.

A stretch overlock stitch will also work well, but can be difficult if your edges aren’t cut exactly straight and inline with eachother.

In this guide, we’re using a three step zig zag stitch.

Sewing Instructions

1) Lay your fabric

If using a single piece, fold your fabric in half along the 50cm / 20in edge, lining up the rough cut edges as precisely as you can, with print sides facing eachother.

If using two pieces, you’ll need to just lay them on top of eachother with the two printed sides facing eachother.

2) Mark the turning in point

Place a small mark about 5cm / 1½½in from the corner on the long edge, and another mark 5cm / 1½½in from that.

This will serve as your small hole to turn the neck tube inside out, and will be sealed up with a small stitch at the end.

3) Sew the first 5cm hem

Set your sewing machine to a strong, stretchy stitch. You’ll need to refer to your sewing machine manual, but there should be either a triple stretch stitch or an elastic stitch.

If you have a 4 thread overlocker or a serger, you’re best off using that for the added stretch on these edges.

Stitch along the top edge to the first mark, with a short reverse section at the end, and then release your fabric and cut the threads.

4) Sew the long edge(s)

Restart your stitch at the second mark and sew the remaining hem.

If you are not using the folded method, but instead are using two pieces, you will need to stitch the other long edge entirely using the same elastic stitch.

Be sure to do a small reverse section at each end to keep the stitch in place.

5) Turn your raw edges to meet eachother

This is hard to describe, but the pictures should make this part clear. Bring the two remaining raw edges to eachother by reaching your arm in the tube and pulling one end through to meet the other.

You should end up with something like the second picture. Bring the edges together as neatly as possible and make sure the fabric isn’t twisted at all.

6) Sew the remaining raw edge

Using the same stretch stitch, sew around the remaining edge. The edge should make a complete circle around the entire neck tube.

Try and keep this edge as straight and neat as possible, and as close to the edge as you can.

7) Try it on for size

Try your snood on and see how it fits - if it’s a bit loose then you can repeat step 6 and place your stitch a bit further from the edge, cutting off the excess.

8) Turn your snood inside out

Using the hole we marked out originally, turn your snood inside out, being careful not to pop any stitches.

9) Topstitch the hole

Topstitch the hole to seal your snood. If you’ve been using a thee step zig-zag stitch like we have, reduce the width a bit to reduce the size and appearnce of the stitch.

Try and keep your stitch straight and neat and as close to the edge as possible, as this will be the only visible stitch.

10) Try it on again & share a pic

Try your snood on and share a picture with us at Prinfab using the hashtag #prinfab.

Why not try multiple different styles?

Tips

How many can I get per fat quarter?

You should be able to get 1 snood per fat quarter.

How many can I get per metre?

You should be able to get 4 snoods per 140cm wide linear metre.

Contents

Introduction

This guide should help you get the best results from your files when exporting from Adobe Illustrator.

It will go over how to set up your files correctly, and how to export those files for printing.

White Lines Around File

Using the export settings used in this file can largely fix any hairlines around image elements and around the border of an image.

These manifest as very thin white lines in your printed artwork, which can sometimes look like a grid in your artwork.

Set Up The File Correctly

One important thing to remember through all of this is that what you are going to be exporting from Illustrator are your artboards.

When creating a file, go to File > New.

For the Colour Mode, select RGB.

For the artboard size, select the size you wish your artwork to print at, in physical units (e.g. centimetres or inches).

Bleeds are not needed for printing with Prinfab, and should not be used for repeating designs anyway.

After clicking OK, you should be presented with an artboard in the size and colour mode you chose:

You can always edit your artboard using the ‘artboard’ tool

Creating Your Artwork

When creating your artwork in Illustrator, there are a few simple tips that can help.

Check Your Line Widths

Line widths should ideally be 1pt or greater, assuming you’ll be printing your artwork at 100%.

Light lines on a dark background are best printed 1.5pt or greater.

Smaller lines might disappear against a dark background as the heavy ink coverage or neighbouring areas floods the line.

Very light weight dark lines on a light coloured background may not be 100% sharp when printing on to fabric, so it’s best to stay above 1pt.

Text Size

Keep your text size as large as you possibly can. We don’t recommend going lower than 12pt for dark text on a light background, and 14pt for light text on a dark background.

Light text on a dark background should be as bold as possible. Avoid very lightweight or hairline fonts.ric, so it’s best to stay above 1pt.

Background Colours

Make sure your background colour covers the whole artboard.

You can even extend it past the edges of the artboard, because when we export, it will chop anything outside the artboards off.

This will make sure if there are any rounding errors when exporting your artwork, it won’t matter at the edges of the image.

Export Settings

To export your file, you should go to File > Export.

Choose TIFF as the filetype.

Make sure the Use Artboards box is checked.

You will be presented with another dialog. Choose:

• Color Model RGB
• Resolution 180DPI or greater (custom options can be entered)
• Antialiasing None (for printing)
• LZW compression should be checked
• Always embed your ICC profile, so this should be checked

Now, you should have a perfectly formed file with no hairline gaps and no white lines.

Contents

Introduction

An effective face mask can help protect you and others from pollen and disease.

Scroll down for a FREE face mask pattern that you can print straight onto the fabric, print out at home, or copy out using a pen and paper.

We have some great tips on which fabric to use as well as tips on laying out your pattern to make the most of the fabric.

Disclaimer

The face masks described in this blog post have not been tested or approved for medical use. The instructions have been provided for information only and recommend you conduct your own tests to ensure they are suitable for use. We accept no responsibility for use.

What you’ll need

Sewing Machine or a Needle and Thread

If you don’t have a sewing machine, don’t worry - it will take a little longer to make, but you can hand sew these masks.

Fabric

Your choice of fabric is very important. You want something that is going to stop particles and water droplets from getting in and out, but also allow you to breathe easily.

If you’re going to be wearing your mask all day, it’s also important that it is comfortable.

We recommend our Classic Plain 156gsm, Organic Calico 156gsm or Economy Cotton 136gsm.

Both these fabrics are light/middle weight with a plain weave that’s not too tight.

In a double layer, these are fairly easy to breath through while being soft on your face and still blocking water droplets. Being 100% cotton they are also washable and easy to iron.

The Classic Plain and Economy Cotton have also been tested to EN71-3:2013+A3:2018.

If you’re going to use printed fabric, we recommend a light colour print to help with the longevity of the print, as these masks will be subject to more washing than a normal print.

8cm of bendable wire

For the wire, you can use gardening wire, bonsai wire, cable twist ties; any wire that is easily bendable but keeps its shape will do the job.

Some 5mm wide elastic

The elastic can be found in most sewing kits. If you’re struggling to find elastic, you can always create some ties to go round the back of your head instead.

Pattern

The pattern is set out on 2 sheets of A4 for you to print out at home:

If you don’t have access to a printer, the measurements are all labelled on the pattern so you can draw it out onto a piece of paper, or straight onto the fabric.

The grid in the background is a 1cm grid you can use to help you draw it.

If you’re printing it out make sure to disable all scaling when printing, and double check the measurements once the pattern is printed out.

get_app Download the Pattern

Overlay

An overlay is a great way to save time and help plan your design by putting an outline onto your image to print straight onto fabric.

This makes it super easy to cut your designs out afterwards.

You can download the overlays here:

• Front Overlay 200x260mm @ 300DPI
• Reverse Overlay 160x200mm @ 300DPI

To use the overlays, drag and drop them from your download folder onto your pattern in Photoshop.

It should import at the correct size, but double check the measurements and make sure - the files are set up at 300DPI.

The folding lines are there to help you create the folds in the mask, and should be hidden by the hems. If you’re worried about them showing through, you can set your overlay layer to 25% opacity, especially for light prints.

Printed Result

If you used the overlay method like I did, when you receive your printed fabric, it should look something like this:

Sewing Instructions

1) Cut your fabric out

Cut out your fabric, staying as close to the lines as possible.

You should have two pieces of fabric, a front panel and a lining panel. The lining panel should be slightly smaller than the front panel.

If you have a larger head or face, add 1cm to the width and height.

If you have a smaller head or face, you can subtract 1cm from the width and height.

For children up to 12 years old, subtract 2cm from the height and 1cm from the width.

For children up to 7 years old, subtract 3cm from the height and 1.5cm from the width.

2) Fold and Iron

Lay your front panel fabric face down on the table, so that the unprinted/reverse side is facing you.

Now fold your fabric along the fold lines, paying careful attention to which way the folds go.

• “Mountain” folds should end up with the crease pointing towards you, sticking up, like a mountain.
• “Valley” folds should end up with the crease pointing away from you, like a valley.

There should be a shorter gap at the top than at the bottom on the front panel.

3) First Hem

Fold the edges of your fabric in 5mm and crease with an iron.

The exact width of the hem doesn’t matter too much, just try and make sure it’s neat and even.

Now sew around the whole hem, keeping the sewing to the insides.

4) Wire

Place your wire right up against the top hem. This is where you have to be really careful to make sure your fabric is oriented the right way around.

The print side should have the flaps facing down, and the non-print side should have the flaps pointing up.

Refer to the picture if you’re unsure, or double check against the template pattern.

If you have trouble keeping the wire in place, you can hold it down with a pin, or a small piece of double sided tape.

Make sure your wire is nice and straight otherwise you will struggle with the next step.

5) Trim and Place Reverse Panel

Trim your reverse panel so that it just butts up against the first hem, and place it on top.

The pattern is slightly oversized so some trimming should be required. Try and trim evenly from the left/right and top/bottom to keep things central.

6) Second Hem

Carefully fold the top and bottom hems over and sew, making sure the panel gets completely trapped in the hem.

The wire should now be right at the top of the mask, and get trapped by your second hem.

Be careful when sewing the edge with the wire that your needle doesn’t wander off and hit the wire.

It may be beneficial to place your needle all the way to the opposite side of the hem, if your sewing machine allows you to.

You should now have something that resembles a mask!

If your wire shows signs of moving around a lot, you can just tack it in place with a small bar tack.

7) Elastic

Cut two pieces of elastic to serve as the ear loops.

The elastic should be as long as two times the height of the masks. It may take a bit of trial and error, depending on the stretchiness and size of your elastic.

If you hold the mask up to your face and get a family member to hold some elastic around your ears, then take 1cm away from that length, that should be perfect.

Tack your elastic in place in all 4 corners with a bar tack, making sure that the elastic isn’t twisted in any way.

8) Check it out and Try it on

Your mask is finished!

Check it out, try it on for size, make sure it has a good seal around your face.

Enhancements

Removable Non-Woven Lining

If you hem the right hand edge of the front panel and the left hand edge of the back panel separately, you can leave that edge open for a removable non-woven insert.

This allows you to put in an extra filter layer that is disposable, meaning you can wash and re-use the outer mask, and only have to replace an inner layer.

No elastic? No problem

You can take the elastic from some old clothes if you don’t have any fresh elastic - just make sure to give it a good wash beforehand.

You can also use fabric scraps to create some tie backs to go around the back of your head.

Cut 4 pieces of fabric, 25cm long and 3cm wide. Fold in half, reverse side facing out, and sew all the way down the open edge, as close to the edge as possible.

Now, turn this inside out and you have some nice fabric ties that you can use instead of elastic.

More Comfortable Fitting

Getting the folds exactly straight helps a lot for a comfortable fitting.

You can also substitute the elastic for a soft jersey fabric that wraps around the back of your head, instead of around your ears.

Two loops, an upper and lower loop, will help to create a tight fit.

Save your Ears

Sew two buttons onto a headband, roughly where your ears are, to tie the elastic to, instead of hooking it around your ears.

Other Mask Designs

The mask above is easy to cut, make and sew - but it can be a bit uncomfortable because of how it presses on the nose.

If you find the flat, pleated mask uncomfortable, you can try an alternative design.

This mask relieves pressure on the nose and creates a nice area around the mouth and nostrils for comfortable breathing.

Tips

Practice

Because of the small amount of fabric that these masks use, it’s easy to practice using offcuts or plain fabric.

Laying out your pattern

You should be able to get quite a lot of masks out of your fabric. You can butt the masks right up against each other on the fabric.

The larger the piece of fabric you have, the more efficiently you will be able to use it.

It can really help to print lines on the fabric to help guide your cutting where possible.

How many can I get per fat quarter?

You should be able to get 3 whole masks per 70cm wide fat quarter.

How many can I get per metre?

You should be able to get 16 whole masks per 140cm wide linear metre.

This is obviously way more than 4 fat quarters - so where possible, order larger pieces of fabric!

Contents

For the most up to date information, visit the government website on copyright.

If you are visiting from a country other than the United Kingdom, then please check your local copyright laws.

If the image you’re hoping to use is from a country other than the United Kingdom, then different laws may apply to the copyright on that image.

This information is provided as guidance only. Prinfab® accepts no liability for checking whether or not you have the necessary permissions to use a specific image for your end use.

Introduction

Copyright law gives control to creators, writers and artists over the ways in which their works may be used.

This guide will give a brief outline of the rules and regulations regarding copyright, as well as give some guidance as to whether you’re allowed to use certain images for printing onto fabric.

Quiz

Take the copyright quiz to determine whether or not you can use an image for printing onto fabric.

What is copyright?

Copyright is a law that applies to any work created by someone that prevents people from:

• copying it
• distributing it (for free or for resale)
• renting or lending it
• performing it
• making adaptations of it
• putting it on the internet

It applies automatically to anything that has taken a level of skill and labour to create, and that is the author’s own intellectual creation.

Some common things that copyright applies to:

If you wish to print any of the above onto fabric, and you do not own the copyright or have permission from the copyright holder to do so, then you cannot do so.

What can I do?

If you are the creator of the work in its entirety, then you own the copyright to that work and can use it how you please. There is an exception to this rule, in that if you created the work while under employment and it was created as part of your job, your employer may own the copyright.

If the work, or any part of the work, is someone else’s copyright, then you will need their explicit permission to use it.

There are a few exceptions to these rules. You can use a copyrighted work even without permission for:

• Study Purposes (private or non-commercial research)
• Criticism and news reporting
• Caricature, parody or pastiche
• Helping Disabled People
• Royal commissions, statutory enquiries, judicial proceedings and parliamentary purposes
• Fair Dealing

Please see the gov.uk page on exceptions to copyright for more information.

It is important to note that for the uses above, the work would still have to be procured lawfully. You do not have a right to access a work, even if you may use it without the authors permission.

Licensing

Work can be licensed for use by someone other than the copyright holder.

The license can be issued freely, or copyright holders can charge for the privilege. There may be restrictions on what the work can be used for.

A common restriction for free licenses is that attribution must be present, and that you are not allowed to re-sell the work for profit.

Another restriction is on the amount of copies that may be made. For example, a personal license might grant you a single copy, whereas a commercial license might grant you 1,000 copies.

Personal Use

It is not acceptable to use copyrighted work for personal use without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Adaptations, alterations and compositions

The use of copyrighted work in adaptations, alterations and compositions is not allowed, unless the inclusion is incidental, or the work is altered significantly.

For example, painting a copy of an artwork, even if it’s a little bit different, may still violate copyright. Adapting an artwork to your own style may also violate copyright law, unless it’s truly transformative and distinct from the original.

A great example of this is Roy Lichtenstein’s copy of Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles. It has the same composition, but is completely different stylistically.

Compositions created with copyrighted works are also not allowed, for example creating a collage out of album covers.

Pastiche is allowed - doing your own artwork the style of another artist. For example, painting a portrait in the style of Roy Lichtenstein is allowed.

Derivatives and ‘Fan Art’

Fan art, sequels or derivative works are generally not allowed without explicit permission from the copyright holder.

This includes using a recognisable character and adapting it to your own art or drawing style, or creating a work so similar as to be the same except in a few regards.

Some copyright holders of famous works publicly announce their policies with regard to fan art and derivatives, however, you should be careful as your intended use may not match up with the original author’s expectations.

It is always better to seek explicit permission than to make assumptions.

How to Get Permission to Use an Image

The easiest way to get permission to use an image is to ask the copyright holder.

Quite often, doing an internet search for the name of the creator will yield contact and/or licensing information.

A lot of artists actually license out their work to stock websites or agencies, so quite often you can purchase a specific licensed work without having to contact the original author.

You can view the government guidelines on using somebody else’s intellectual property here.

Some authors will release their work under the Creative Commons licenses, which may cover the image for your intended use case.

Copying something you already own

It is generally not acceptable to create additional copies of something you own.

For example, scanning in wallpaper to create a matching print on fabric requires permission from the original copyright holder of the wallpaper pattern.

What if I can’t find the copyright holder?

If you cannot find the original copyright holder, mechanisms exist to help you find them.

Please see the government advice on using somebody else’s intellectual property here for more information.

Examples

Okay	Not Okay

Okay	Not Okay

Okay	Not Okay

Okay	Not Okay

Okay	Not Okay
A design licensed from an agency representing the artist.

Contents

Introduction

Our new Magic repeat style can turn almost any image into perfectly seamless repeat automatically.

You can find it on our create tool, under the “repeat” option:

Here’s a quick example of what to expect:

What is it?

We have talking previously about how to create a seamless repeat in our article on How to Create a Seamless Repeat Pattern.

It can be quite difficult to make a seamlessly repeating image, especially if you are working with an existing artwork or photograph.

The traditional resolution for this would be to use the ‘Mirror’ repeat option, however, that’s not suitable in all cases:

• Any images that contain text
• Odd looking patterns that can become apparent on a large scale
• Non-abstract photographs and artworks

Magic repeat hopes to solve these problems.

It works by taking advantage of some of the properties of repeating patterns, and overlaying each tile slightly on top of the previous one in a very specific manner.

The result is a seamlessly repeating image with no harsh join lines perfect for making printed fabric.

What is it not?

Magic repeat isn’t a replacement for proper repeating patterns.

There are artefacts introduced around the edges of the image, and colours can be subtly changed by the repeat. This can be undesirable in a number of situations.

Examples

Below are some examples of images that make great seamless repeating patterns with Magic Repeat.

open_in_new Upload Your Image

Snowy Bricks

Regular Repeat

Magic Repeat

Eurasian Blue Tit

Image taken from Coloured figures of the birds of the British islands, vol. 2, courtesy of Old Book Illustrations.

Regular Repeat

Magic Repeat

Dracaena Moorei

Image taken from L’Illustration horticole, vol. 14, courtesy of Old Book Illustrations.

Regular Repeat

Magic Repeat

“Summer” by Alphonse Mucha

Regular Repeat

Magic Repeat

Marble Pattern

Image taken from page 5 of ‘The history of Scotland … The thirteenth edition, with alterations and additions.’, courtesy of the British Library Flickr.

Regular Repeat

Magic Repeat

Iris Botanical

Image taken from page 23 of ‘The ladies’ flower garden of ornamental bulbous plants’, courtesy of the British Library Flickr.

Regular Repeat

Magic Repeat

What are you waiting for? Get creating now.

open_in_new Upload Your Image

Printing your own tea towels digitally is easy with Prinfab®.

You can print your own custom tea towels with no minimum order, so you can print a single custom tea towel or order tea towel fabric by the metre.

This guide will get you started on printing your artwork onto a tea towel, or even printing your own custom photo tea towels.

Contents

Introduction

A custom printed tea towel can make a great gift, or you could sell your own artwork printed on a tea towel on your website.

You can print anything on your tea towel, for example you can print photos on tea towels, you can print repeating patterns onto a tea towel, you can print paintings onto tea towels, and much more.

The steps are simple:

• Prepare your image
• Upload your artwork to Prinfab®
• Get your artwork printed on our custom tea towel fabric
• Prinfab® will print your custom tea towel and despatch it to you
• Cut and hem the edges

This guide will help you to print your images onto tea towels at Prinfab®.

Use the button below to go to the tea towel ‘Create’ page on Prinfab®.

open_in_new Prinfab Create Page

Simple Methods

Printing a Photo onto a Tea Towel

Getting a tea towel printed with your photo on it could not be simpler.

Step 1: Upload your image

Head over to the Create page on the Prinfab® website.

open_in_new Upload Your Image

Once you’re there, click the ‘Choose File’ button to upload your image for an instant preview.

Be sure to select the Tea Towel Cotton 220gsm for the material and Tea Towel 70 x 50cm for the size.

Step 2: Size your image

Once your image has upload, you’ll see an instant preview of your photo.

You can use the ‘Repeat’ and ‘Scale’ dropdown boxes to position and resize your image.

With a single photograph, a good idea is to use the ‘Center’ repeat option and ‘Cover’ scale option. You should end up with something like this:

Step 3: Order your print

Now, you are ready to add your custom printed photo tea towel to your basket.

Prinfab® will give you an estimated despatch and delivery time for your order, so you can know when to expect it by at the latest.

Printing your Artwork onto a Tea Towel

Printing your own custom artwork on a tea towel could not be simpler.

Step 1: Prepare your artwork

I’ll be using this Catbus painting from My Neighbour Totoro as an example.

We have a great guide on preparing your physical artwork for digital print here.

A good scan of your artwork works best, and a little touching up afterwards in image editing software will work wonders for the final print.

In a pinch, photographing your artwork will work, but takes a lot of care in terms of lighting and editing to produce good results.

Step 2: Upload your image

Upload your scanned and prepared artwork to the Create page on the Prinfab® website.

open_in_new Upload Your Image

Step 3: Size your image

Use the ‘Scale’ and ‘Repeat’ options to size and place your image on the print.

Step 4: Order your print

Now, you are ready to add your custom printed artwork tea towel to your basket.

Prinfab® will give you an estimated despatch and delivery time for your order, so you can know when to expect it by at the latest.

Finishing your Tea Towel

When your custom printed tea towel arrives, it should look something like this:

Your print will have a small blank border with some order information printed at the top.

Cutting out your custom printed tea towel

First, you’ll need to cut out your tea towel.

We recommend cutting right to the edge of your design, so that there won’t be any blank bits showing when it comes to the sewing.

Hemming the edges of your printed tea towel

The last step is to hem the edges of your tea towel.

You have a few different options when it comes to hemming the edges of your custom printed tea towel, however, the simplest and easiest is probably a double hem with box corners.

Fold and iron the short edges of your tea towel twice, about 1cm from the edge of the towel.

You’ll need to insert your hanging loop and labels along the inner fold.

Sew along the innermost edge, and repeat for the long edges. You should have some perfect looking box corners.

You can get fancy and try mitred corners, or a different style of hanging loop, it’s up to you at this point!

Advanced Method

Step 1: Creating your document in Photopea

To start with, you’ll need to open a new document in Photoshop or Photopea.

You’ll want to size your document to the size of tea towel you want to create. Our tea towel fabric is sized to 70 x 50cm, so that is a good place to start.

You will also want your document to be set up at a good resolution. We recommend 180DPI for most purposes.

If you want to skip the work, you can open this perfectly sized document in Photopea instead.

Step 2: Placing your artwork

Now, you can drag and drop your artwork into this document to completely customize your layout and positioning.

Start by dragging your artwork onto the canvas:

Now you can scale and position your piece on your tea towel:

Now you can add anything else you like:

You can use this method to create complex designs, as well as print multiple images onto one tea towel.

Here is my end result:

Step 3: Saving your artwork

Now you will need to save your tea towel artwork for digital printing from Photopea.

We recommend saving as a high quality jpeg. In Photopea, 80-90% is great, or in Photoshop quality 8-10.

Step 4: Upload your image

Upload your scanned and prepared artwork to the Create page on the Prinfab® website.

open_in_new Upload Your Image

Step 5: Order your print

Now, you are ready to add your custom printed artwork tea towel to your basket.

Prinfab® will give you an estimated despatch and delivery time for your order, so you can know when to expect it by at the latest.

Further Help

If you need further help, be sure to check out:

• Fabric Guide
• FAQs
• Design Guide
• Blog, with many more handy articles

And if you are still not sure what to do, feel free to get in touch and we will do whatever we can to help you on your way.

Prinfab® is less than 3 years old yet our commitment to quality has established us as a leading supplier to thousands of customers.

The whole team would like to take this opportunity to say "Thank You" for working with us and we very much look forward to continuing to work with you.

From Monday 28 January 2019, we will be based at:

H4 Upper Brents
Faversham
ME13 7DZ
United Kingdom

So you have a piece of artwork you would like to print, but the image is largely blue, and you need it to match your red living room - well what can you do?

There are many, many ways of recolouring your artwork, and which method is best largely depends on the type of artwork you are recolouring.

This article will go through 3 different ways of recolouring artwork which should hopefully help you to get the colours you are after.

Contents

Introduction

All the methods outlined in this article will be done using Photoshop, but where possible it will also be shown using free image editing tools.

One particular free image editing tool we like to use is Photopea. Photopea works in your browser, and for simple image editing makes a great replacement for Photoshop, and doesn’t even require you to install anything.

You will often find that the instructions for Photoshop will apply 1:1 to Photopea.

• Photoshop
• Photopea

Method 1: Selective Hue Saturation Adjustment

This method is suitable for many different types of artwork, from graphics to photographs to illustrations - it’s extremely flexible and produces great, natural looking results.

Source Image

The source image I’m going to be using for this demonstration is “The Great Wave off Kanagawa (神奈川沖浪裏)” by Hokusai:

I’m going to try and change the look of the image by changing the waves to a pink colour.

Start by opening the image in Photoshop / Photopea.

Create a hue/saturation adjustment layer

Go to the layers palette and click the half black/white circle at the bottom to open the adjustment layer menu.

Create a “Hue/Saturation” adjustment layer.

Select the colour you want to replace

In the adjustment layer properties pane, select the colour that you would like to replace.

By default, ‘Master’ is selected. Go ahead and change this to the colour you are hoping to change (in my case, blue).

Change the Hue

You can now use the ‘Hue’ adjustment slider to change the colour from blue to anything you desire. In this case, I’m going to change the waves from blue to pink.

You can fine tune the colours you would like to replace in Photoshop by using the eye dropper tool on the properties tab to select the colour in your image you would like to replace.

You can also play with the saturation and lightness to futher shift towards the colour you are after.

The steps to do this in Photopea are exactly the same, and produce very similar results:

Result

Here is the final result:

It also works great for photos

Method 2: Colorize Hue Saturation Adjustment

This method is best suited for images where you want to change the colour of the whole image.

Source Image

I’m going to be using this illustration of a blackbird for this example:

Start by opening the image in Photoshop / Photopea.

Select Your Colour

Select the colour you would like to change your artwork to as your foreground colour. By double clicking on the upper rectangle on the colour palette, usually found to the far left in photoshop.

You will then be presented with a colour picker:

Create a hue/saturation adjustment layer

Go to the layers palette and click the half black/white circle at the bottom to open the adjustment layer menu.

Create a “Hue/Saturation” adjustment layer.

Tick the ‘Colorize’ box, and you should see your image transform.

Result

Here is the final result:

Method 3: Solid Colour Blend

If the above two methods do not work for you, then giving this method a go may be worth a try.

This method works best when you want to replace multiple colours, or the colours are similar to other colours in the image and you need to be very precise.

It is hard to get good results with this method, but it can pay off.

Source Image

I’m going to be using this illustration of a blackbird for this example:

Start by opening the image in Photoshop / Photopea.

Select Colour Range

Head to the top menu, and click ‘Select > Color Range’.

You will be presented with the selection dialog. Us the eye dropper tool on your image to select the colours you wish to replace.

Create a Solid Colour adjustment layer

Go to the layers palette and click the half black/white circle at the bottom to open the adjustment layer menu.

Create a “Solid Color” adjustment layer, and choose your replacement colour.

The steps so far are exactly the same in Photopea, except you will have to manually apply the mask by ‘Filling’ your selection.

Select the layer mask in the layers palette:

Hit ‘Edit > Fill’ and select ‘Black’, then hit ctrl + i / cmd + i to invert the layer, making blacks white and whites black. This should let the replacement colour shine through only in the places selected with the ‘select colour range’ step.

Change the blend mode

Change the blend mode of the solid colour adjustment layer to ‘Color’.

Result

Here is the final result:

Conlusion

It can be very difficult to change colours in your artwork, but hopefully this guide has got you well on the way to recreating your artwork in many different colours.

Further Help

If you need further help, be sure to check out:

• Fabric Guide
• FAQs
• Design Guide
• Blog

And if you are still not sure what to do, feel free to get in touch and we will do whatever we can to help you on your way.

Like most websites, Prinfab has a limit on the size of the files you can upload.

This guide will give you some tips on how to reduce your filesizes to fit within the upload limit, and still get the highest quality prints possible.

It will also save you time waiting for large files to upload! Keep reading to find out some expert tips and tricks on reducing image file sizes.

Contents

Introduction

There are several factors that influence file size, ranked from most effect to least effect:

• The pixel size of the image
• How the image is stored (the file type)
• The bit depth of the image
• What is in the image (only applies to certain file types)

We’ll go over, one by one, each of these aspects and see how we can help to reduce your file size.

Summary

Generally, the following is a good guideline for saving your images:

• Use the correct resolution - 180DPI is more than enough for most prints.
• Save as a JPEG at Quality 8-10 for a small file size that still prints with great detail and colour.
  –or–
  Save as a TIFF with LZW compression for a losslessly compressed file.
• Always save your images with profiles embedded, where possible.
• Avoid using PNG, BMP or GIF for large images - they result in unnecessarily large file sizes, or aren’t fit for purpose, and won’t add anything compared to JPEG or TIFF file formats.

Recommended TIFF options

Recommended JPEG options

Image Size

You should use the minimum number of pixels necessary for printing your image.

You can safely downsample your image to the needed resolution.

For example, if your source image is 130cm wide and stored at 300 DPI, it will be roughly 15,000px wide.

If you plan on using this print as a poster or wall hanging, and it will be viewed from around 1m away, then you can safely downsample your image to 180DPI without any noticeable effect.

Please refer to our previous guide The Relationship Between Viewing Distance and DPI for more information on choosing an appropriate resolution.

Saving your image at 180DPI is more than enough in most situations.

File Types

Here at Prinfab, we accept the following file types for images:

• JPEG
• TIFF
• PNG
• GIF
• BMP

If you’re having trouble with the size of your files, you should definitely not be using PNG or BMP, and GIFs should be avoided unless you’re truly certain you want to use the restricted colour palette.

For all file formats, where the option is available, you should use 8 bits per colour channel (not 12, 16, 24 or 32).

JPEG

JPEG is a lossy image format.

That means that, when an image is saved as a JPEG, information is irretrievably lost.

This is important to bear in mind, as you should never use the JPEG format for your working files. While you’re still working on images, you should, if possible, use lossless formats.

For your final print files, however, JPEG is a great format to save your files in. It is particularly suited to photographs and paintings, and can achieve high levels of compression with almost no loss in quality.

The visual difference between a quality level 7 JPEG and a lossless TIFF is usually imperceptible.

For images that have lines of sharp contrast and block colours, then choosing a lossless file format such as TIFF is usually a better choice, where possible, although a high quality JPEG will result in almost no difference in printed quality.

TIFF

TIFF is a lossless image format.

It is a versatile image format that has support for many features.

For printing, a flat tiff file is recommended (no layers), as the interpretation of layers can differ between different software implementations.

TIFF usually comes in 3 different compression flavours:

• No Compression
• LZW Compression
• ZIP Compression
• JPEG Compression

all of which are lossless, except for JPEG compression, which is the same as the JPEG section detailed above.

There is no real reason to use an uncompressed TIFF file - it only makes the TIFF a bit faster to save and subsequently open.

LZW compression losslessly compresses the image, reducing the file size by a large amount - in most cases savings of up to 50% can be expected.

The same goes for ZIP compression, which can usually make files even smaller, typically up to 60% smaller.

TIFFs are a great option for graphics and text.

PNG

PNG is another lossless image format.

A great choice for graphics and illustrations, PNG is a good substitute for TIFF in it’s compressed form.

PNG does have a few limitations. Only the RGB colour space can be used, and more often than not software will strip many important pieces of metadata from the image file. This can include DPI data which is very important for printing images.

PNG is generally used for web applications, and as such has been optimised for these purposes. Using PNG for printing is generally not a great idea.

GIF

GIF is another lossless image format.

GIFs use a limited colour palette to save images. This is great for limited colour graphics, but most times when printing you’ll want to have as large a colour space as possible.

GIF is limited to a maximum of 256 RGB colours, so it should not be used for anything except the simplest of designs.

Generally, it is an unsuitable format for printing.

BMP

BMP is another lossless image format.

BMP are a very simple file format, and in it’s full colour form will store data completely uncompressed.

They are also capable of being reduced colour, and compressing the data, however, this is generally unsuitable for printing.

BMP files have many other uses, but unless you’re absolutely sure what you’re doing, it’s best to steer clear of the BMP file format for printing.

The advantage of BMP is that it’s a very simple file format, and as such is widely supported on nearly every platform.

Examples

To illustrate the differences in size between different filetypes, we’ll use the following two images:

Both images are sized to be 200 x 200mm at 180DPI (that is, 1417 x 1417px).

Below, you can see each setting used and a 100% crop of the image to see how it affects the quality.

Clearly, for example, a level 1 jpeg is insufficient quality, whereas a level 8 jpeg is high quality indeed.

Dog Image

Name	Size (KB)	% of Max	Download	100% Crop
BMP 16 Bit	3924 KB	50.0%	Download
BMP 24 Bit	5885 KB	75.0%	Download
BMP 32 Bit	7844 KB	100.0%	Download
GIF 4 Colours	109 KB	1.4%	Download
GIF 32 Colours	430 KB	5.5%	Download
GIF 256 Colours	871 KB	11.1%	Download
JPEG Level 1	109 KB	1.4%	Download
JPEG Level 2	129 KB	1.6%	Download
JPEG Level 3	147 KB	1.9%	Download
JPEG Level 4	159 KB	2.0%	Download
JPEG Level 5	183 KB	2.3%	Download
JPEG Level 6	233 KB	3.0%	Download
JPEG Level 7	233 KB	3.0%	Download
JPEG Level 8	295 KB	3.7%	Download
JPEG Level 9	373 KB	4.7%	Download
JPEG Level 10	494 KB	6.3%	Download
JPEG Level 11	739 KB	9.4%	Download
JPEG Level 12	1223 KB	15.6%	Download
PNG Compressed	2349 KB	29.9%	Download
PNG No Compression	5886 KB	75.0%	Download
TIFF LZW Compression	2963 KB	37.8%	Download
TIFF No Compression	5909 KB	75.3%	Download
TIFF ZIP Compression	2567 KB	32.7%	Download

Floral Pattern

Name	Size (KB)	% of Max	Download	100% Crop
BMP 16 Bit	3924 KB	50.0%	Download
BMP 24 Bit	5884 KB	75.0%	Download
BMP 32 Bit	7843 KB	100.0%	Download
GIF 4 Colours	152 KB	1.9%	Download
GIF 32 Colours	655 KB	8.3%	Download
GIF 256 Colours	1238 KB	15.8%	Download
JPEG Level 1	203 KB	2.6%	Download
JPEG Level 2	250 KB	3.2%	Download
JPEG Level 3	271 KB	3.5%	Download
JPEG Level 4	325 KB	4.1%	Download
JPEG Level 5	408 KB	5.2%	Download
JPEG Level 6	555 KB	7.1%	Download
JPEG Level 7	548 KB	7.0%	Download
JPEG Level 8	745 KB	9.5%	Download
JPEG Level 9	942 KB	12.0%	Download
JPEG Level 10	1238 KB	15.8%	Download
JPEG Level 11	1643 KB	21.0%	Download
JPEG Level 12	2504 KB	31.9%	Download
PNG Compressed	2387 KB	30.4%	Download
PNG No Compression	5885 KB	75.0%	Download
TIFF LZW Compression	4774 KB	60.9%	Download
TIFF No Compression	5918 KB	75.5%	Download
TIFF ZIP Compression	2488 KB	31.7%	Download

Further Help

If you need further help, be sure to check out:

• Fabric Guide
• FAQs
• Design Guide
• Blog

And if you are still not sure what to do, feel free to get in touch and we will do whatever we can to help you on your way.

Contents

How To Video

This how to video gives a quick rundown of how to upload and set up a file on Prinfab:

Your browser does not support video. Download the video file instead.

Setting Up Your Image

Before doing anything else, you will need to prepare your image file.

Prinfab can accept a number of different image formats:

• JPEG
• TIFF
• GIF
• PNG
• BMP

We recommend sizing your image to the dimensions you want at 180DPI.

For further information, please refer to the Prinfab design guide.

Uploading Files

First, you will need to navigate to our create page. There, you should be presented with something like the following image:

To upload a file, you simply need to click the ‘Choose File’ button and navigate to the image on your computer.

You can also drag and drop files straight from a folder on your computer to the page, and they will commence uploading.

Once you have uploaded an image, you will be able to re-select them using the ‘Select Existing Design’ link.

If you create an account, your designs will be saved there forever. If you are not logged in, your designs will be deleted after 2 weeks.

Choosing Repeat, Scale, Material and Cut Size

Repeat

In this dropdown box you will find a few options:

None		Center
Regular		Half Brick
Half Drop		Mirror

Fit Maximum

Fit Maximum is a special type of repeat that tries to fit the maximum number of copies of an image on the fabric and cut size chosen.

This is really useful if you are creating products from your fabric and want to fit the maximum number of panels onto a print, saving you money!

Scale

The scale option allows you to make your image bigger or smaller (e.g. 50% of the original size, or 200% of the original size).

Also presented are the ‘Cover’ and ‘Contain’ options, best explained with an image:

The contain option sizes the image so that it just fits inside the print area.

The cover option sizes your image to completely cover the print area.

Material

Here, you choose the Material you would like to print on.

The best place to find out about all of our fabrics is the Prinfab Fabric Guide.

You can also order a sample book that contains pre-printed samples of all of the fabrics we offer, so you can try them out before committing to a larger purchase.

Cut Size

The last choice is the cut size. We print onto certain sizes of fabric, so you will have to choose the size that best suits your needs.

Choose from:

• Swatch (small 20x20cm samples)
• Fat Quarter (a quarter of a Linear Metre)
• Tea Towel (only available on select fabrics)
• Linear Metre (full width of the fabric, 1 metre long)

Other Options

There are a few other options on the create page:

• Flip
• Rotate
• Quantity
• Show Preview

Flip & Rotate should be self explanatory - they flip and/or rotate your image.

The Quantity box allows you to print multiple copies of the same print.

The Show Preview checkbox updates the preview to show a render of what your print will look like on the chosen fabric.

Please note that this is only a preview, we have done the best we can to make it look as much as possible like the fabric in question, but of course it will differ slightly from the actual printed fabric.

Add To Basket

Once you have chosen all of the required options, simply add the item to your basket by hitting the ‘Add to Basket’ button at the bottom.

Once the item is added to your basket, you can check out like on any other online shop.

Delivery

The last step before entering your address and payment details is to choose a delivery option.

The delivery time consists of two things:

1. The time it takes us to product the printed fabric
2. The time it takes to get from our production facility to your door

Each fabric has its own lead time when it comes to production. Some are very quick, 1-2 days, others take a bit more time.

Standard

The Standard delivery option is a 2-3 day service. Once we have printed, dried, cut and packed your fabric it would take 2-3 days to reach you.

Express

The Express delivery option is a next day service. Once we have printed, dried, cut and packed your fabric it would be with you the next working day.

Rush

The Rush delivery option is a bit special. Rush delivery reduces the time it takes to print, dry, cut and pack your fabric so your order will be with you even quicker.

It is then sent using a guaranteed next day service.

In general, if you order using Rush delivery, your order will be with you within 1 working day.

If you need your printed fabric in a hurry, then the Rush delivery option is the best choice.

Further Help

If you need further help, be sure to check out:

• Fabric Guide
• FAQs
• Design Guide
• Blog

And if you are still not sure what to do, feel free to get in touch and we will do whatever we can to help you on your way.

What are you waiting for? Try it out now!

Each file is the exact size you'll need, with or without seam allowances, at 180dpi.

Contents

How to Use

1. Download the required template.
2. Open the template in Photoshop.
3. Place your artwork on the template.
   1. If there are cutting lines, make sure your artwork is within the lines. Hide them once you've finished placing your artwork so that they don't print.
   2. Optionally, you can extend your artwork outside the cutting lines to give you a coloured bleed for seam allowances - this will make sure there's not garish white pieces of fabric poking through after sewing.
4. Save your file as a high quality jpeg, and upload to Prinfab.

Cushions

Cushion templates for every size

12 x 12in

12x12in - with seam allowance
12x12in

13 x 13in

13x13in - with seam allowance
13x13in

14 x 14in

14x14in - with seam allowance
14x14in

15 x 15in

15x15in - with seam allowance
15x15in

16 x 12in

16x12in - with seam allowance
16x12in

16 x 16in

16x16in - with seam allowance
16x16in

17 x 17in

17x17in - with seam allowance
17x17in

18 x 14in

18x14in - with seam allowance
18x14in

18 x 18in

18x18in - with seam allowance
18x18in

19 x 19in

19x19in - with seam allowance
19x19in

20 x 14in

20x14in - with seam allowance
20x14in

20 x 20in

20x20in - with seam allowance
20x20in

21 x 21in

21x21in - with seam allowance
21x21in

22 x 22in

22x22in - with seam allowance
22x22in

23 x 23in

23x23in - with seam allowance
23x23in

24 x 24in

24x24in - with seam allowance
24x24in

25 x 25in

25x25in - with seam allowance
25x25in

26 x 26in

26x26in - with seam allowance
26x26in

28 x 28in

28x28in - with seam allowance
28x28in

30 x 30in

30x30in - with seam allowance
30x30in

Fabric Specific

Each of these templates is perfectly sized to fit each cut of each of our fabrics.

Cotton Lawn 75gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

Cotton Poplin 130gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

Economy Cotton 136gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

Classic Plain Cotton 156gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Cotton Sateen 167gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Cotton Fine Warp Satin 172gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

Cotton Linen Pro 200gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Cotton Twill 213gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Tea Towel Cotton 220gsm

Swatch
Tea Towel
Linear Metre

Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

Natural Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

Cotton Half Panama 230gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

British Natural Cotton Linen 250gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre

Cotton Drill 255gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Cotton Heavy Half Panama 309gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

Cotton Hopsack 398gsm

Swatch
Fat Quarter
Linear Metre
30 x 30cm Cushion with max margins
46 x 46cm Cushion with max margins

This guide will help you to take your paper or canvas artwork and get it onto the computer in a printable form.

Contents

Preparation

First you’ll need to prepare your artwork. All the work you do in preparation is work you don’t have to do later on in the editing stage.

Get rid of as much dust, debris and other marks from the surface of the artwork.

If it’s a pencil drawing, consider erasing any stray pencil marks now.

Capturing the Image

Using a scanner

If your artwork is relatively small, around A4 or smaller, the absolute best way to capture the image is using one of these:

A flatbed scanner is the absolute best way to capture your images.

Scanners do a great job of evenly lighting the image, being in perfect focus and providing great details and popping colours.

Scanners will also get the scale exactly right and embed the correct DPI in your image for faithful reproduction at 100% of the original size.

If you do not own a scanner, many office supply stores or photographic stores have scanning facilities that are very reasonably priced.

Using a scanner is by far the best way of capturing your artwork, if possible.

Settings

You should set the scanner to Colour Photo mode (or Artwork mode if your scanner has it).

The resolution to use depends on what scale you hope to print the image at. You should aim for 180 DPI × Scale Factor.

So, for example, if you want to blow your image up 4× larger, you’ll need to scan at 180 × 4 = 720 DPI.

Using a camera

If your artwork is not flat, too large or there is some other reason you cannot use a scanner, then you’ll need to use a camera to capture its likeness.

Use the best camera you can find. Try and steer clear of phone cameras. A digital SLR camera will work great.

The key to photographing your artwork is even lighting.

Any difference in lighting across the image will show when it comes to printing. Any source of shadows should be eliminated, and a large, strong light source should be used.

Luckily, we all have access to the largest, strongest light source in the solar system - the sun!

Try photographing your artwork by a large glass door or window, out of direct sunlight, or outdoors on a cloudy day.

Place the image as square as you can inside the viewfinder.

The more square you get your image now, the less we’ll have to straighten and distort it later on.

If you have a fancy tripod, you can try laying your artwork on the floor and photographing it from above. Some tripods allow you to mount the head on the bottom of the column, or have an extending arm specifically for this purpose. If the head has a spirit level built in, even better - make sure it’s perfectly level!

Settings

In general, you’ll want to slightly underexpose, as we don’t want any blown out highlights. It’s easier to lighten dark areas afterwards than darken highlights.

Use as low an ISO as possible while still allowing you to get sharp images.

Manual focus combined with live view can help, if you have a tripod.

Shoot in high quality JPEG or RAW if your processing workflow allows it.

Processing

Once you have your image, it will probably look something like this if you photographed it:

Or something similar if you scanned your image in, just without a foot poking into the image along the bottom.

The first step is to crop our image down and straighten it up, getting rid of any non-artwork elements in the image:

Next, we can use a curves adjustment layer to brighten up the image and improve the colours a bit:

And that’s it, we’re good to go!

Correcting Colour Casts

Because our cameras assume everything is neutral gray and light by the sun, any deviation from that can cause a colour cast in our image. Cameras are not as smart as our eyes at correcting for different subjects or different types of lighting, so well probably need to do some colour correction.

For this reason, it’s a great idea to photograph your subject next to a gray card, which will let you alter the image afterwards to get perfect colours, faithful to the original.

In Photoshop, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves, and you’ll have a new curves adjustment layer on top of your image, and the following window will pop open:

We’ll use the black, grey and white droppers on the left.

• Click on the black dropper, and click on a part of your image that should be neutral black.
• Click on the grey dropper, and click on a part of your image that should be neutral grey.
• Click on the white dropper, and click on a part of your image that should be neutral white.

These three steps should remove any colour cast from your image, and also help to restore some of the brightness and contrast in the image.

Examples

Printed Results

On Luxury Cotton Linen:

On Natural Luxury Cotton Linen:

When you’re creating something for print, when you first open a document, you’ll be presented with a dialog that looks something like this:

So what should we choose on this dialog? What are the correct options?

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What is DPI?

DPI stands for ‘Dots Per Inch’ and describes how many pixels there should be per inch when the image is printed.

Generally, the higher the DPI, the higher resolution the image and the more detail will be in the final print.

What settings should I use?

Generally, when making an image for print, you’ll want to think in terms of real measurements (cm, m, inches, etc) and DPI or PPI, which we can use interchangeably for our purposes.

If you wanted your image to be 10 inches wide, and wanted it to be sharp from distances of 3 feet, then your image would need to be 1800 pixels wide.

Most image editing software will do this all for you:

You can just enter in the DPI and the measurements, and it will create a document at the correct size.

DPI and Viewing Distance - What DPI should I choose?

What DPI you should aim for depends on what the end use of your print will be.

For most applications, especially on printed fabric, 180DPI is more than enough for most purposes and will serve you well. (Printing on fabric has it’s own limitations, and so printing using a higher resolution/DPI image won’t necessarily increase the printed resolution).

The main thing to take into account is the viewing distance.

If you’re viewing something very close up, you’ll need a high DPI for it to appear sharp and not see any pixellation, like in a magazine or book. Magazines are typically printed at 300DPI (actually magazines typically use halftone screens, with 150 LPI, but that’s another story!).

If you’re viewing it from very far away, like a large poster or billboard, then you can get away with a low DPI. Billboards are typically made at between 10 and 50DPI.

Of course, there is a lot of room for variation - for example text might require higher DPI settings than photos, because there are more small details in text than in photographs.

Here’s a handy table for determining what DPI to use for common viewing distances

And here’s a handy image showing commong viewing distances and DPIs with a human for scale:

Image Sizing Calculator

If you still find yourself getting stuck, this calculator can help you choose the correct DPI, viewing distance and image dimensions.

Simply change any of the fields and all the others will update accordingly:

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Custom Personalised Christmas Stockings (using only a Fat Quarter!)

What better present to give your loved ones this Christmas, than a personalised stocking?

Make their presents extra special with this great personalised Christmas idea!

With a bit of wadding and a bit of fur, you’re well on your way to a customed holiday treat!

Here’s a handy template for two stockings that fit perfectly onto one of our Fat Quarters:

Stockings Template for Photoshop.

Personalised Cotton / Linen Anniversary Presents

What better way to celebrate a 2nd (cotton) or 4th (Linen) anniversary than with a personalised anniversary present on cotton or linen.

Photographs print great onto fabric, and printing a photograph of the happy couple on their wedding day, maybe along with a touching and relevant quote, will make a great gift.

You could use the fabric in a frame, as above, or fashion the fabric into a small keepsake, or use it to cover an album of photographs or them - the possibilities are endless!

Children’s Art on a Backpack or Pencilcase

A great gift to give to your partner, or your child, is your children’s art made into a cool item they can take with them everywhere.

All you need to do is upload your child’s artwork to Prinfab, and in a few days you’ll be able to make your child’s artwork into an article that will last a lifetime!

Personalised Star Sign Accessories

A personalised star sign cushion or bag would make a great gift for a loved one:

Cheater Memory Quilt

A memory quilt is an excellent gift, but they can be very hard to make - luckily, there’s an easier way.

Using Prinfab, you can make a cheater’s memory quilt by printing the patchwork onto one large piece of fabric, and then embroidering over the top to fake the stitching!

We use an excellent website called BeFunky, whose collage maker will make this an extremely simple task. Simply upload your photos (or use your facebook photos) and lay them out in one of the pre-defined grids. BeFunky will do all the hard work for you.

Now you should have your very own printable patchwork, ready to be made into a quilt!

Throughout this guide, I’ll be using Adobe Photoshop, but the effect can be recreated in any good image editing software.

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How does screen printing work?

Screen printing is all about layers. Layers of colour.

If you imagine taking an image, it can be broken down into it’s component colours. For example, with a picture of a landscape, you could have the blue sky, the green grass and the brown trees (and maybe a grey cat?). These would make up your individual screens.

As an example, we can take this image of a feather:

And break it down into its component colours:

We can then use these components to create screens (or masks) of three different colours that would be printed one on top of the other to create the final image.

Depending on the type of paint/ink you are using, when certain colours are printed on top of one another, you will get a mix of those colours.

Part of the art of screen printing is managing this mixing (called overprint) to produce the desired results.

Here’s an example of colour mixing:

So with the feather example, the third screen with the shading might be better to print using a grey colour as opposed to a dark purple, to get the resulting shading. Alternatively, a half tone pattern of black could be used for the shading, giving us just two screens instead of three.

Okay, so how do I recreate this digitally?

Our trick is going to be to use layers in Photoshop set to the multiply blend mode to recreate this effect.

There are many ways to do this, but the following, I have found, is the easiest, most flexible way to recreate a screen print.

First, you want to create your background layer. A simple, plain colour will do for the moment.

Now, for each colour in your artwork, you will need to create a group. I’m going to start with red, so I’ll create a group and name it Red.

Inside this group, create a white layer, above that a group called ‘Artwork’ and above that a Color Fill adjustment layer. Set the colour of the Color Fill to red (or whatever colour you choose.).

Now, we need to set the Red group to Multiply blend mode and the Colour Fill layer to Screen blend mode.

Finally, we can start creating our image inside the Artwork group. For the artwork, it needs to be all black - the Color Fill layer will pick up any black and make it Red.

We then repeat this process for each colour we’d like to simulate in our screen print.

As always, a picture speaks a thousand words - here’s a diagram showing my image and my layers palette:

An Example Image

I’m going to create an image of a Blue Tit using a screen print style. I start by creating all the elements I want to put together:

Once combined, it produces something like this:

And I’ll add a bit of extra visual interest to the picture:

Here’s the layers being stacked on one another:

And here’s a tiled result:

And here it is printed:

When re-printing, the paper background will often leave unsightly shadows and marks on the print that are easily corrected.

All instructions in this article will be using Adobe Photoshop CS6, but any image editing software should be able to do these simple edits.

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Starting Image

We’ll start with this image, obtained from the British Library collection of public domain scans. It’s a fairly simple image, but it could do with a little cleaning up before printing.

Cleaning Up

Start by using the Patch tool to get rid of any marks or parts of the image you no longer want. I use the following settings:

Don’t worry too much about cleaning it up too much, as the next steps will help to get rid of a lot of the blemishes.

Decrease Saturation

For black and white drawings, a sensible next step is to get rid of any colour in the image.

To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and drag the Saturation slider all the way to 0, and hit OK. You should end up with something like this:

Lighten and Darken

The next thing we want to do is make the paper white, and the ink black.

To do this, we’ll use the ‘Levels’ adjustment tool. Go to Image > Adjustments > Levels, and drag the right slider just past the first big peak on the right, and the left slider just past the other first big peak on the left.

And you should end up with something like this:

Colour Drawings and Paintings

The same principle can be applied to colour images, you just have to miss out the desaturation step:

The best way to choose a fabric, is to get a sample book:

The sample book contains pre-printed swatches of each of our fabrics, so that you can actually feel them in your hands before committing to a larger purchase.

Generally, for very vibrant, deep colours, a heavier fabric is better.

Here’s a big list of fabrics you can use for many different applications. Ones highlighted in bold would be my personal choices.

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Cushions

• Cotton Twill 213gsm
• Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm
• Natural Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm (Natural Colour)
• Cotton Half Panama 230gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm
• Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm (Natural Colour)

Upholstery

• Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm
• Natural Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm (Natural Colour)
• Cotton Half Panama 230gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm
• Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm (Natural Colour)

Tea Towels

• Cotton Half Panama 230gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm
• Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm (Natural Colour)

Wall Hangings

• British Natural Cotton Linen 250gsm (Natural Colour)
• Cotton Heavy Half Panama 308gsm
• Cotton Hopsack 398gsm

Outdoor Furniture / Displays

Note: Fabric used outdoors will need to be treated with an adequate waterproofing treatment.

• Cotton Heavy Half Panama 308gsm
• Cotton Hopsack 398gsm

Shirts

• Cotton Poplin 130
• Cotton Sateen 167gsm

Jackets

• Cotton Sateen 167gsm
• Cotton Twill 213gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm

Scarves

• Cotton Muslin 66gsm
• Cotton Sateen 167gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm

Bedding and Curtains

• Cotton Sateen 167gsm
• Cotton Fine Warp Satin 172gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm

Dolls / Teddies

• Classic Plain Cotton 156gsm
• Cotton Sateen 167gsm
• Cotton Twill 213gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm

Coasters and Place mats

Note: To make your fabric last longer, apply a waterproof coating such as Vilene Lamifix Matt/Gloss.

• Cotton Twill 213gsm
• Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm
• Natural Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm (Natural Colour)
• Cotton Half Panama 230gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm
• Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm (Natural Colour)

Lampshades

• Cotton Twill 213gsm
• Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm
• Natural Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm (Natural Colour)
• Cotton Half Panama 230gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm
• Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm (Natural Colour)

Bunting

Note: Any fabric can be made into bunting, it’s almost completely personal preference.

• Classic Plain Cotton 156gsm
• Cotton Twill 213gsm
• Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm
• Natural Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm (Natural Colour)
• Cotton Half Panama 230gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm
• Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm (Natural Colour)

Bags, Pencil Cases, Glasses Cases, Makeup Cases, etc

Note: Largely personal preference, although stick to mid-heavy fabrics.

• Cotton Twill 213gsm
• Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm
• Natural Luxury Cotton Linen 228gsm (Natural Colour)
• Cotton Half Panama 230gsm
• Cotton Warp Satin 246gsm
• Cotton Drill 255gsm
• Organic Cotton Half Panama 280gsm (Natural Colour)

This guide should hopefully help to alleviate some of the confusion and leave you feeling more confident to tackle the subject.

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What is a colour space?

In it’s simplest form, a colour space is a way of describing a colour so that it can be reproduced reliably.

Most colour spaces describe colour in terms of components that are mixed in a specific way to produce an output colour.

For example, the RGB colour space is described by Red, Green and Blue components that are additively mixed to produce an output colour.

Some colour spaces work with references, e.g. the Pantone collection, assigning each colour a name or identification number.

For digital print, there are two main colour spaces we need to worry about:

• RGB
• CMYK

RGB is an additive colour space, meaning you start of with black, and add colours (red, green and blue) together in certain amounts to achieve the required output, with the maximum amount of all 3 components making white.

CMYK is a subtractive colour space, meaning you start of with white, and add colours together (cyan, magenta, yellow and optionally black) in certain amounts to achieve the required output, with the maximum amount of all 4 components making black.

RGB is the space typically used by display and capture devices, e.g. cameras, scanners, computer and phone screens, etc.

CMYK is the space typically used by production devices, e.g. printers.

What is a colour profile?

A colour profile is a way of characterising how a certain device captures or displays colours. Any device that captures or displays colours in any form can have an associated profile.

A profile tells a device how it displays or prints colours, or how it captures colours. It gives us a way to transform a colour that is captured by a camera, to one that we see on a screen, to a colour that we’d like when printed.

Profiles are like a map - they let you transform from one colour space to another, via an intermediary colour space known as CIELAB (or sometimes CIEXYZ).

To convert an image from an RGB colour space (e.g. sRGB) to a CMYK colour space (e.g. Fogra 39 coated), you would first use the sRGB profile to convert the RGB image to the CIELAB colourspace. Once in the CIELAB colour space, the Fogra 39 coated profile can be used to transform the image from the CIELAB colour space to the CMYK colour space.

By default, most digital images use the sRGB colour space. In addition, most software is only capable of displaying sRGB images, for example all internet browsers. If you try and view an AdobeRGB file or a CMYK file in Google Chrome or Internet Explorer, it may not display correctly. For example:

Compared to how it should look:

Some operating systems and some browsers will render the top image correctly, and some won’t - in short, when working with images that are intended to be viewed on screen, your only reliable option is sRGB.

As a quick note, if there is no profile embedded in the image, most software will assume it is sRGB, and display it as such.

To further illustrate the difference, take a look at these two files:

Do they look different? They should. This is what it should look like:

If they both look like the image on the left, then your browser doesn’t respect embedded profiles.

Which colour space/profile should I use?

In general, it’s best to stick with the RGB colour space, and sRGB v4 Preference colour profile.

The sRGB colour profile has a large gamut, is well supported, and should serve you well for almost all purposes.

At Prinfab we use an expanded CMYK ink set, giving us a larger gamut than most CMYK profiles, so by using CMYK you’re only limiting yourself to the amount of colour you can use. By using sRGB you will get more vibrant colours.

Here are some examples of images that have been converted to CMYK. You can see the colours lost, especially in the fluorescent/bright primaries:

Even at Prinfab, our printers don’t cover the whole sRGB gamut - given the inherent differences in the additive vs subtractive colour space, the colours are never going to be exactly the same.

If you would like a very rough preview of how a file will look when printed, you can use the soft proofing tool in Photoshop (or equivalent software) and select Fogra 39 Coated as the proof profile, ticking the ‘Simulate paper color’ and ‘Simulate black ink’ boxes.

Sample Image for Testing Colour Profiles - The Image of Shame!

If you would like, you can use the following image to test which of your favourite website manage their colours properly.

Just save this image, and upload it to your favourite sites and see if she turns purple:

If she ends up looking like this:

Then you should probably walk away and find somewhere that respects colour profiles!

Because of the way our eyes work and the way screen technology works, matching a real world colour to a colour on screen can be an extremely difficult task.

Traditionally, this is where colour matching systems such as Pantone® come in, however, we’re going to go through an effective DIY method of colour matching.

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Eye vs Screen

The most important thing to know is you cannot compare real world colours with colours on screen 100% reliably.

There are a number of factors involved when trying to colour match a real world object:

1. Lighting on the Object
2. Eyesight
3. Screen Calibration
4. Lighting Around the Screen
5. Printer Calibration
6. Texture of the Final Print
7. Lighting on the Final Print

Human eyes are wonderful things, and they correct for an infinite number of situations to give us good eyesight in a huge range of situations. This, however, can work to our detriment when it comes to colour matching.

As an example, if you’re in a room lit by normal tungsten lightbulbs (or warm LED lights) these tend to give out light with a yellow colour cast. Our eyes are good enough to completely correct for this change in lighting colour, so that a white piece of paper still looks white.

Here’s an example of a scene lit with tungsten lights, and a colour corrected version (which is what our eyes do automatically).

If you’ve ever taken a photo in a dimly lit restaurant, you’ll know about the colour cast that tungsten lights give to a scene. Your photos will have probably come out orange.

Compounding this matter, most screens found on computers, laptops, phones and tablets have a colour cast to the light they give out. If you have never calibrated your screen, then you cannot rely on the colours it produces - and even if you have, the inherent difference between how screens produce colour and how a printer produces colour means that the colours will never match up perfectly.

Hard Proofing

The only way to get truly reliable colour matched prints is hard proofing.

To illustrate this, let’s pretend we want to create a colour match for the green in this sofa:

Now, looking at the image of this sofa, there are a wealth of different colours actually present:

So, I’m going to take the one that looks closest to my eyes:

To do a hard proof, first you need to make a sample image. A great way to do this is to create a small colour chart:

Now, you need to print out this image on your fabric of choice. Once you’ve printed out your chart, you can physically compare the colour on the chart with the item you wish to colour match, and choose the closest match available.

If it’s not quite close enough, you can use the closest match as a starting point for another hard proof, and repeat the process.

Once you’re happy with the colour in your hard proof, you can go ahead and use the colour in your designs. Using the green above, I created this cushion cover print to nicely match the colours:

That’s not actually my living room above, but here’s the finished product!

Top Tip

When colour matching using your chart, it really helps to cover all but one square on the chart, like this:

That way, you’re not put off by any of the other colours on the chart and you can directly compare to just one of the little swatches.

First of all, what is a colour chart?

A colour chart is a map. Not like a treasure map, or an ordinance survey map, but it does help to keep you on the straight and narrow when it comes to colour.

In its simplest form, a colour chart is a map from screen colour to printed colour. It will show you the way when it comes to trying to match a colour on screen to a colour on fabric.

Here’s what the Prinfab® colour chart looks like:

The Prinfab® colour chart aims to cover as wide a gamut as possible when it comes to colour, while still being readable - as such, we stretch across the whole rainbow, from red to blue, and from dark to light.

Next to each coloured block is a hex reference for the colour. To use the chart, you find the colour you want on the printed piece of fabric, look at the hex code, and then use that colour in your artwork. That way, you can guarantee that the colour you’ve put into your artwork will come out exactly how it is printed in the colour chart.

Sometimes, though, our colour chart may not quite cover the colours your looking for - in which case, you’ll need to create your own.

Squares, Lots of Squares

Let’s say you have an existing cushion in a shade of light blue that you’d like to match the colour. You play around on the computer and find that this colour looks fairly similar:

Now, you need to copy your square and create lots of slight variations of the colour. It helps to label each of the colours so you can refer to it with confidence later on:

In general, you’ll want to vary the hue and the lightness of the colour swatch by a small amount (the hue ranging from +/- 10° and the lightness +/- 10%).

Once that’s done, you need to have the image printed on your fabric of choice. Once you receive the printed fabric, you’ll be able to check the colour in person and choose the closest matching colour, and use that colour in your design.

If you like, you can use this handy tool to help you create a simple colour chart - just choose your colour, and then right click the result and ‘Save as Image’.

Once you get your head around it, however, creating a seamless repeat is actually fairly easy.

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Thinking About Edges

Creating a seamless repeat pattern is all about edges.

For a pattern to repeat seamlessly, the top edge has to match up with the bottom edge, and the left edge has to match up with the right edge.

And that’s it.

This can be accomplished in a number of ways. The easiest way is to have nothing on the edges:

If there’s nothing on the edges, then your pattern is guaranteed to repeat seamlessly. If you want some design elements around the edge, you’ll have to do some more thinking:

If you don’t have any artwork on the edges, you may end up with some weird negative space in your repeated patterns if it’s not planned out carefully. For example, this tile:

Creates this repeat, with the dodgy negative space highlighted:

This can sometimes be fixed with Half Drop or Half Brick repeats:

The Cut ‘n’ Stick Method

This method allows you to have patterns around the edges of your image, as well as in the center.

The best thing about this method is it can be done just as easily on paper as it can on the computer!

Start by arranging your design in the center of your paper/image, like this:

Then, divide/cut your image into equal quarters, and place each corner on the opposite side from where it started:

If you’re using photoshop, the easy way to do this is to go to Filters > Other > Offset and set the horizontal offset to half the width of the image and the vertical offset to half the height. Make sure that ‘Wrap Around’ is checked.

Here’s a labelled version in case you couldn’t get your head around that:

You can then go ahead and draw in the middle of your image:

This should result in a seamlessly repeating pattern!

Creating Seamless Patterns From Existing Images

It may not always be possible to create your design from scratch, in which case you’ll need to use image editing software to make your repeats seamless.

To demonstrate this, I’m going to use a copy of The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai. Here’s the original image:

I’ll start by cleaning up the image, and doing our ‘offset’ trick. In this case, the image is 3859 x 2594px, so our offset needs to be 1929 x 1279px:

As you can see, the edges do not match up at all.

This is quite a complex task, but with a bit of cloning, patching and brushing, we can ‘blend the seams’ so that the edges flow into one another:

Now, we do the reverse of the offset, using -1929 x -1279px:

Great, that doesn’t look too bad, and retains the effect of the original image! Now, all we need to do is tile it:

Here’s a quick comparison of the original vs the seamless version:

Finally…

There’s one other method to creating seamless repeats - mirroring.

Mirroring is by far the easiest way of creating a seamless repeat, and it works great for a lot of designs.

It’s not so suitable for anything that has an orientation, e.g. text, which will appear upside down and backwards in parts.