Print your own fabric designs and make everything - from clothes, to home wares, to accessories - exactly tailored to your taste. Read more
Print your own fabric designs and make everything - from clothes, to home wares, to accessories - exactly tailored to your taste.
About this project
Little over a year ago we launched our own line of womenswear sewing patterns, aimed at the new generation of DIYers and makers. After a wild ride so far, we have decided to add an entirely new facet to the brand: print-on-demand fabrics!
We owe our success so far entirely to the immense and ever growing network of home sewists: women and men all over the world who have reclaimed control over their own style, relearning forgotten skills and crafts and sharing their journeys and techniques through sewing and DIY blogs. We've seen the do-it-yourself bug officially go not only global, but commercial too, with everyone from bloggers, television networks and fashion magazines getting in on self-sufficient style. This resurgence of traditional DIY, crafting and home sewing is largely motivated by the growing demand for customisation and one-of-a-kind products that stand out from mass production. To this end, with our move into fabric printing, By Hand London will be giving our customers the raw ingredients to make anything - from clothes, to homewares, to accessories - completely tailored to the individual’s style and taste.
Sounds good! So what will you be offering?
- Custom print
Feel like you know exactly what you want on fabric and reckon you can create it yourself? Well, great! You can simply just upload your file to our website, arrange how you'd like it laid out onto your fabric and we'll print it out.
- Curated gallery of ready made designs
Love looking for and thinking about new fabric designs, but not sure you're up to creating it yourself? Well, not a problem either! Driven by design and community, we will also be offering a tightly curated gallery of exclusive designs in two ways:
1. By working closely with and championing emerging designers and students.
2. Through regular design competitions, open to one and all and with the winning fabric design voted on by the online community.
And, we want our talented designers to be complicit in the success of their own design! Which is why, anyone who's work ends up in our gallery will be paid an upfront fee and get a lump sum every time 500m of their fabric is ordered.
Okay, now tell me a little bit about the printing process
All designs will be printed using digital textile printers and eco friendly pigment inks. This print-on-demand method is particularly excellent for a variety of reasons:
1. Small minimum orders (as small as fat quarters, for all you quilters out there!)
2. No limit on the amount of colours per design
3. Print-on-demand means less waste
4. Pigment inks are kind to skin and to the earth
5. We will be printing right here in our hometown of London (England)
What fabrics will you be printing on?
Good question! We will start with a medium weight cotton poplin, because it is suitable for a whole range of uses, from dressmaking to quilting. From then on we intend to expand our range of fabrics to include a wide variety of (predominantly natural) woven and knitted fabrics. It really depends on what you want to see! At every stage we will be making sure to ask and find out what our customers want the most.
Anything else we should know?
Oh, why yes there is, thanks for asking!
1. We want to offer wider width fabric as standard. This means that all of our fabric would be approximately 60" or 150cm wide.
2. Pigment ink printing is not traditionally completely colourfast. We are currently busy doing some experiments to see if we can try get it that way with a 100% natural post treatment. Watch this space!
It is in order to fund this exciting new venture that we have launched this very Kickstarter campaign! The aim being to raise enough money to buy our very first textile printer and the accompanying shiny web and app development needed to make it fun, easy and beautiful to create your own fabric.
Obviously, all pledges are so so so incredibly gratefully received. However, we appreciate that this is not possible for everyone. In which case, any kind of telling all your friends and family or general shouting-from-the-rooftops kind of activity you could do would be wonderful too!
Hugest of thanks for stopping by,
x
Charlotte, Elisalex and Victoria
Risks and challenges
The biggest challenges we face are: 1. creating a really beautiful and easy-to-use website on which to create or select your fabric designs which makes the whole process enjoyable, 2. Linking up the printing technology correctly to get the best possible replica of the on screen design.
We have partnered up with an amazing user design agency, which specialises in exciting, dynamic content (most worked on BBC iPlayer together) who will help us work out the nitty gritty of the tech side.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
Have a question? If the info above doesn't help, you can ask the project creator directly.
Rewards
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Pledge £5 or more
17 backers
An awful lot of good karma, love and happy thoughts sent your way from us! Your name (and a link to your website, if you've got one) on a 'Couldn't have done it without you' page on byhandlondon.com. NOTE pledges 2 through 9 include this reward too.
Estimated delivery: -
Pledge £10 or more
104 backers Limited (896 left of 1000)
By Hand London tote bag featuring some of the fashion illustrations from our packaging and a handwritten thank you note proclaiming our eternal gratitude for your generosity. Oh yes, and stickers! Plus everything from reward #1.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £20 or more
160 backers Limited (840 left of 1000)
Everything from rewards #1 and #2 plus a mug (designed by us) to keep you company when you're working on creative pursuits and a By Hand London matchbox of dressmakers pins.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £50 or more
100 backers All gone!
Early bird special! Be the first to play around with our new website and print 2 metres of your very own fabric - one month before we go live to the rest of the interwebs. Includes everything from rewards #1, #2 and #3.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £50 or more
38 backers Limited (12 left of 50)
Early bird special! Be the first to play around with our new website and print 2 metres of fabric from our curated gallery - one month before we go live to the rest of the interwebs. Includes everything from rewards #1, #2 and #3.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £50 or more
7 backers Limited (4 left of 11)
Come and let us treat you to a delicious homemade Sunday roast (and copious cocktails)! Come over to our house, hangout, talk to us about anything from creative startups, to sewing tips, to textile designs and anything above and beyond - all while enjoying a delicious lunch made lovingly by us, with some cocktails and mocktails thrown in for good measure. UK only
Estimated delivery: -
Pledge £50 or more
50 backers All gone!
Early bird special! Be the first to play around with our new website and print 2 metres of your very own fabric - one month before we go live to the rest of the interwebs. Includes everything from rewards #1, #2 and #3.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £100 or more
50 backers All gone!
Everything from reward #4, as well as all of the sewing patterns we will have released by the end of July - which will be 7 sewing patterns in total.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £100 or more
0 backers Limited (60 left of 60)
Crafternoon with yours truly! Come and spend a day with us and other like-minded sewists and DIYers, share skills, bring your latest projects or start something new! We will be on hand to share advice, tips and cups of tea. Numbers will be limited to 15 people per session and with sewing machines, tools, some fabric and snacks on hand, this will be the perfect chance to hang out with us and make new sewing pals. Look forward to meeting you! NB. We will release four dates between May 2014 and the end of 2014 for you to choose from so we can accommodate more of you. UK only (London).
Estimated delivery: -
Pledge £100 or more
28 backers Limited (22 left of 50)
Everything from reward #4, as well as all of the sewing patterns we will have released by the end of July - which will be 7 sewing patterns in total.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £500 or more
3 backers Limited (2 left of 5)
A two day sewing course for beginners teaching you how to make one of our patterns. Includes all tools and fabric. (UK only)
Estimated delivery:Only ships to: United Kingdom -
Pledge £1,000 or more
0 backers Limited (10 left of 10)
Your portrait by our super duper talented fashion illustrator - Anna Walker - who does all of the fashion illustrations on our packaging.
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £2,000 or more
0 backers Limited (5 left of 5)
A luxury garment handmade exactly to your measurements from one of our sewing patterns by the By Hand London team. Using either custom printed or off the shelf fabric - whatever you prefer! And we're not afraid of wedding dresses either :)
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world -
Pledge £5,000
1 backer Limited (4 left of 5)
Lifetime membership to By Hand London - a copy of every sewing pattern we release plus 2 metres of every fabric that makes it into our curated gallery (including delivery).
Estimated delivery:Ships anywhere in the world
Funding period
- (30 days)
