Word Game Fabrics – Now Available! (Updated)

Printed on Cotton Sateen fabric.

UPDATE 8/26/11: I spent most of yesterday re-drawing this design (as I mention later in this post), but I was so happy with the results that I uploaded the revisions as REPLACEMENTS for the printed samples shown here, instead of completely new designs in addition to these. Updated photos are forthcoming, but you can see the designs at the end of this post.

A while back I designed three coordinating fabrics inspired by the Scrabble® brand crossword game. My fabric proofs just arrived from the printer, and here they are…

There are three related versions of this design: an all-over print of the board with a game in progress, a border print where the playing board repeats as an all-over print, but the letter tiles are confined to one edge of the fabric, and a version with just the board and no tiles. These three versions give you a lot of flexibility in using them: you could design a Scrabble® dress or shirt, with the word tiles just along the hem, or a quilt that has a blank board on the back you could actually play on, etc.

Recently, someone contacted me via Spoonflower and asked me to make the fabrics available for sale (which involves ordering proofs of the printed fabric from Spoonflower.) I just got the proofs in, and have approved them for sale, with the following caveats:

• The colors are much darker and vibrant than I expected (not necessarily a bad thing). If you look at a Scrabble® board, the colors are actually washed out. While I think these darker colors make for a better fabric design, they are not the most accurate colors compared to the real thing.
• Because during my research I had no luck at all discovering what the official “Scrabble®” font used in the game is (it seems to be a proprietary font) I used the closest fonts I could find. Surprisingly, this varied from letter to letter. I ended up using a mix of Helvetica Neue, News Gothic, and Myriad Pro. What I did not notice during the design phase was that these fonts vary slightly in their weight. It is more noticeable in the printed fabric. However, the difference is so slight that it’s possible I am the only person who would notice or care. Why I didn’t think to scan actual Scrabble® tiles is beyond me.
  

  Printed on Upholstery-weight Twill. Note those are actual Scrabble tiles lying on the fabric in this photo, not part of the design. In the other photos, the "tiles" are part of the design.

I think the final three fabrics are fine to release as-is on their own, but I do plan to spend more time re-doing the design to lighten the colors and re-letter the tiles so they’re more consistent. The downside to this is that it will be at least two more weeks, and probably longer, before those re-vamped versions are ready for the public.

Printed on Linen-Cotton Canvas. The tiles on the board are part of the design.