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Custom fan production: take two
Sep. 17th, 2011 04:47 pmIn my windows of "hurry up and wait" this tech weekend, i've been working on further explorations of custom printed fabric fan leaves by Spoonflower. Recall my earlier post on reproducing a fan design from 1885, which was my first foray; today's post addresses my second experiment: cotton voile.
The first fan i did was in silk crepe de chine, a fairly common fabric for a fan leaf, which needs to be something thin enough to fold up between the sticks of a fan frame but substantial enough to create a good breeze when the fan is used. I wanted to test some of Spoonflower's other fabrics for this purpose, so my second shot was their beautifully light cotton voile.
For this project, i also wanted to experiment with generating fan art from scratch, rather than working from an existing historical fan leaf painting. (Wow, proofreading this just now I realized this is a COMPLETELY different meaning of the phrase "fan art" than it usually connotes.)
The fan leaf is a fascinating conundrum from a design perspective, as the artwork needs to be something that works in a weirdly compromised semicircular shape. I spent a few days looking at all kinds of round things--mandalas, rose windows, radial patterns--until i finally decided upon a clock face as a design motif. This fan design is an aged and cropped photo i took of the clock on my fireplace mantelpiece at home! The final thing wound up looking kind of Steampunk to me, hence the design name on Spoonflower of Steampunk Clock Fan.
In the course of manipulating the image in Photoshop, I also realized that I could rotate my art and get TWO fans onto a fat quarter, which is so much more efficient use of fabric. I decided to treat these like a cut-and-sew textile panel design so i included some useful instructional text right on the leaf design as well. I ordered the test print in cotton voile, and began to assemble my fan.
( Read more... )
The first fan i did was in silk crepe de chine, a fairly common fabric for a fan leaf, which needs to be something thin enough to fold up between the sticks of a fan frame but substantial enough to create a good breeze when the fan is used. I wanted to test some of Spoonflower's other fabrics for this purpose, so my second shot was their beautifully light cotton voile.
For this project, i also wanted to experiment with generating fan art from scratch, rather than working from an existing historical fan leaf painting. (Wow, proofreading this just now I realized this is a COMPLETELY different meaning of the phrase "fan art" than it usually connotes.)
The fan leaf is a fascinating conundrum from a design perspective, as the artwork needs to be something that works in a weirdly compromised semicircular shape. I spent a few days looking at all kinds of round things--mandalas, rose windows, radial patterns--until i finally decided upon a clock face as a design motif. This fan design is an aged and cropped photo i took of the clock on my fireplace mantelpiece at home! The final thing wound up looking kind of Steampunk to me, hence the design name on Spoonflower of Steampunk Clock Fan.
In the course of manipulating the image in Photoshop, I also realized that I could rotate my art and get TWO fans onto a fat quarter, which is so much more efficient use of fabric. I decided to treat these like a cut-and-sew textile panel design so i included some useful instructional text right on the leaf design as well. I ordered the test print in cotton voile, and began to assemble my fan.
( Read more... )
