dream building

oh, fabricmatcher, you are the mother of all internet timesinks. i've never gotten into the whole doll-dressing, avatar-making thing, but creating a virtual quilt? which i can then buy the exact materials to make? genius.

essentially they have a bank of fabric, which you can select with a color picker, a theme, a favorite designer, etc. you create a palette, and then apply it to a pattern. it's not perfect; i want some flickr-quality flash engineering, especially the ability to drag and drop to rearrange my palette or place fabrics in the pattern, but it goes a long way towards helping to visualize overall effect. (my penchant for outmoded electronics means that the page refreshing every time i change a color gets old quickly.) the experimenting with color theory is fun. the whole thing is connected to a store to sell you the pattern and the fabric if you like what you've done.

it's pretty weak compared to electric quilt, but i'm not sure that i'm ready to buy a new computer just to feed my craft habit. (although it sounds like a better idea all the time, and would remove the part of the creative process where i cover the entire living room in fabric and keep rearranging and restacking while an indulgent C tries not to step on anything.)

anyway, fabricmatcher is recommended for anyone who wants to play with the pretty colors (i'm looking at you, pixxelpuss). it also has a feature that will match fabrics to an uploaded image that i haven't tried yet. the clothing pattern section sounds cool until you realize that they only have a few New Look patterns, and the pixels applied to the irregular shapes of clothing remind me of homemade paper doll outfits. i'm looking forward to seeing the service improve over time.

dream building

oh, fabricmatcher, you are the mother of all internet timesinks. i've never gotten into the whole doll-dressing, avatar-making thing, but creating a virtual quilt? which i can then buy the exact materials to make? genius.

essentially they have a bank of fabric, which you can select with a color picker, a theme, a favorite designer, etc. you create a palette, and then apply it to a pattern. it's not perfect; i want some flickr-quality flash engineering, especially the ability to drag and drop to rearrange my palette or place fabrics in the pattern, but it goes a long way towards helping to visualize overall effect. (my penchant for outmoded electronics means that the page refreshing every time i change a color gets old quickly.) the experimenting with color theory is fun. the whole thing is connected to a store to sell you the pattern and the fabric if you like what you've done.

it's pretty weak compared to electric quilt, but i'm not sure that i'm ready to buy a new computer just to feed my craft habit. (although it sounds like a better idea all the time, and would remove the part of the creative process where i cover the entire living room in fabric and keep rearranging and restacking while an indulgent C tries not to step on anything.)

anyway, fabricmatcher is recommended for anyone who wants to play with the pretty colors (i'm looking at you, pixxelpuss). it also has a feature that will match fabrics to an uploaded image that i haven't tried yet. the clothing pattern section sounds cool until you realize that they only have a few New Look patterns, and the pixels applied to the irregular shapes of clothing remind me of homemade paper doll outfits. i'm looking forward to seeing the service improve over time.