Spoonflower & Robert Kaufman names Fabric8 contest winners

After initially submitting a single design to gain entry in the contest, each of the eight finalists, selected by public voting from a pool of 100 semifinalists, were asked to create a fabric collection around his or her original entry. The contest garnered thousands of votes and over 700 entries.

The winner, Andie Hanna, is a fashion designer from Columbus, Ohio, who plays piano, sews, and is also mom to a 5-year-old.

Her prize is a design contract with Robert Kaufman Fabrics, $1000 advance against royalties, a professional-quality Wacom digital drawing tablet valued at $1000, and $250 in custom fabric printed by Spoonflower.

Fans, sewists and fabric enthusiasts can expect to find Andie’s designs in a quilt shop near them in the first quarter of 2013. Robert Kaufman Fabrics will now begin the process of developing the professional fabric collection, working closely with Andie, in the coming few weeks. A sneak peek of the finished fabric designs will be available at Fall '12 Quilt Market in Houston, TX. The official release will be in January ’13, with delivery to stores shortly thereafter.

Robert Kaufman will be posting glimpses into the process, to the swatchandstitch.com blog, throughout the design and production phases in the coming months, to give unique insight into the world of professional fabric production.

Andie’s winning collection can be viewed at fabric8.com, as well as the final collections from the other 7 finalists.

Spoonflower as a crowd-sourcing platform has already launched a handful of designers to success in the world of professional textile design. The site runs a weekly, themed design contest that draws participation from hundreds of aspiring designers and thousands of voters.

Spoonflower makes it possible for individuals to design, print and sell their own fabric designs. Founded in May 2008 by two Internet geeks who had crafty wives but knew nothing about textiles, Spoonflower's community now numbers around 500,000 individuals who use their own fabric to make curtains, quilts, clothes, bags, furniture, dolls, pillows, framed artwork, costumes, banners and more.

Robert Kaufman Fabrics, this Los Angeles-based fabric manufacturer wholesales to the home sewing retail and manufacturing markets, with customers including manufacturers of finished goods, such as apparel, bedding and accessories, and retail customers whose end-users comprise home apparel and craft sewers.

Robert Kaufman Fabrics