How to create a Fill-A-Yard from Spoonflower

Have you heard of Spoonflower’s Fill-A-Yard (aka FAY in the surface pattern design world)? It’s a budget friendly way to proof up to 42 designs on one yard of fabric! Before I knew about FAY I was proofing individual designs one at a time. Granted, I only had a couple designs, just one-offs from challenges, BUT had I known about FAY beforehand, I could have been more strategic about proofing.

In case you didn’t know, if you are looking to have your designs for sale on the Spoonflower marketplace, you need to purchase each design first before it can be available on the marketplace. This is why FAY is a great way to go about proofing lots of designs for just one price on one yard of fabric.

At first, getting to 42 designs sounds so hard if you’re new to Spoonflower and starting off in surface pattern design! However, once you do a few different colorways and/or differing scales, you can get to 42 pretty quickly without having to make 42 completely unique patterns. Once you have 42 uploads, you’ll want to add them all to a “collection” that is set to private.

If you hover over the collection you’ll see you can favorite it, design a FAY, or edit you collection.

From there you have options for FAY, but the most cost effective for mass proofing is the 42 design FAY.

You’ll also get to choose between “Petal Signature Cotton” and “Cotton Poplin” with the Petal Cotton being the cheaper option. I’ve purchased both and I’ll be sticking to the PCS for the future. It’s a bit sturdier, but both wash up nicely.

You then fill up the next screen with 42 squares of your designs. It’s also a good time to evaluate the scale of your patterns. I’ve gotten to this stage and realized I actually wanted patterns smaller than I had set them. Can’t say I’m the best at visualizing from a ruler lol. If you need to make changes, now would be the time to do it. Just be aware that after changes are made like scale, it can take some time for the changes to reflect in mockups on the site. I usually give it around 30 minutes so I can be sure it’s how I like it.

The last part is to pay for it. There are usually good deals happening on Spoonflower, so if your budget is tight, you can hold your FAY in your cart until a sale comes up that can be applied to fabric yardage. You can also check coupon sites to see if there’s something out there. In my experience, albeit limited, I haven’t paid full price yet for a FAY. Once you have sales from your designs, you can use your “Spoondollars” towards FAY so you save even more! Yes, it’s actual money though it has its own name (I thought it was pretend money at first).

For this FAY, I used my Spoondollars and I found a coupon via RetailMeNot. It was going to be $20 at first so I’m happy to save where I can because there is tax and shipping involved in the final price as well. I’ve only done standard shipping and it typically comes within a week. When you finally get to hold something you made in your hands, it’s SO exciting!

Here are my two FAYs after washing hanging on my clothesline outside. I’m in the process of uploading smaller scales for all these designs because a lot of these work well on home decor, some not so much for sewing projects. That will be a post for another day!