Sometimes I wish I could use a sewing machine in a proper way! Unfortunately, even sewing on a button is a mission impossible!

After checking out Spoonflower,  I again felt the urge to learn some basic sewing tricks. Spoonflower is a website where you can design your own fabric. And although I can just design, order and buy my fabric … it isn’t enough, you have to do something with the fabric. But enough about my sewing disability. So Spoonflower offers custom digital textile printing. Everyone can upload an image, choose the arrangement (do you want your image being centered or repeated?) and have it printed on cotton. So if you just can’t find the right design for those new curtains, why not creating the pattern you’ve always wanted? And what’s more: every week, there’s the Fabric of the Week contest, in which the Spoonflowers decides which fabric they would like to buy. The winner of the contest not only gets 5 yards of the fabric for free, but his or her design will also be offered for sale in the Spoonflower Etsy Shop, for one week.

Another similar site is Bonbonkakku. This Finnish site is for fabric, what Threadless is for T-shirts. The basic principle in both sites is the competition, only the subject is different. In the case of Bonbonkakku, every fabric designed will be published on the site for viewers to see and vote on. The fabrics that get the most votes are chosen to be sold on the Bonbonkakku site. So anyone can upload and submit a fabric design to the competition and if the design gets selected, the winner gets a  heap of fabric, with his/her design on it. Furthermore the winning design  will also be sold on the site.

I think it’s time, I’m taking a sewing class!

Source: Spoonflower, Bonbonkakku

Everybody knows Threadless: where you can buy T-shirts that gained enough votes from Threadless-members. But Yerzies is different; it prints, stiches and presses every design on a T-shirt or other garment. Although they started with a competition model, this was rejected by the community.
So if you’re the only on that likes the shirt, you’re sure that it can be produced at Yerzies!

In times of mass customisation, children aren’t forgotten. Creashirt offers them - Crea Kit - a package that contains a T-shirt with an original drawing and a set of felt-pens.

Children can colour the drawing in accordance with their own taste or mood and create in this way an unique creation, that will generate some jealousy on the playground.

Mass customisation … the buzz word … everybody knows what it means and can instantly name 10 to 20 examples of companies that provide their products with mass customisation options.

But how does the production of those mass customized products work …. how do the underlying technologies funtions? On the blog of Joseph Flaherty - founder of Replicator, Inc, a company that manufactures and sells custom consumer products - all technologies that enable personal fabrication are explained.

Everything you always wanted to know about 3D printing, Laser Cutters, Waterjet Cutters, 2D Plotter Cutters, Print on Demand, Direct To Garment Printing, CNC Milling, CNC Embroidery, Cut & Sew Construction, 3D Scanning is explained with small video contributions in his post: ‘Personal fabrication for dummies’.