Barbara Brackman's MATERIAL CULTURE: Queen Victoria Fabric & Patterns

China plate celebrating the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1840.

I used this sweet portrait (does it look like either of them?)

to make a fabric repeat for some commemorative fabric.

Print this JPG on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of treated fabric

on your ink jet printer.

I've been working on four prints for the Stars in Her Crown Quilt Along that starts here on Saturday.

Polka dots always good.

In the old days when I worked for a fabric company they had fabulous graphic artists who took care of repeat, clarity, print size, etc. I just had to come up with one image. I'm trying to learn how to do all that other designing myself.

I'm also experimenting with Spoonflower, the online custom fabric printing service.

Here's one of the four designs I've done, vignette portraits of Victoria, Albert

and the nine children. Spoonflower pictures a fat quarter here.

Here's my Spoonflower fabric shop, Material Culture:

https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/materialculture

You pick a design, a fabric and choose how many yards (or fat quarter yards) you want.

The quilt weight cottons range from $17.50 to $20.00 a yard.

I'm still experimenting with scale and clarity but see what's up there.

It's frustrating to realize how little reproduction fabric is available now and it's because the current market is so small (you and I). I figure the future is custom fabric printed on demand. I'll keep you posted.

And speaking of On Demand:

I've made a 16-page pattern for all the blocks and the border in the Stars in Her Crown series.

You can buy it in my Etsy shop. See the links to a paper pattern or a PDF to print yourself.