My Prints Are (Finally) On Fabric!

I have great news!! You can now shop my fabric collection on Carriage House Printery (20% off with code ELYSEBREANNE) and Spoonflower. But I do have one very important ask if you do purchase my fabric: PLEASE credit me with creating the artwork (on all social media, including Pinterest, and anywhere items with my fabric are available for sale). Here's why:

I've been asked for years to get my art printed on fabric and I'm super excited it's finally happening. But it took a while for me to figure out how best to make EBD fabric a reality because there was a LOT to think about in how I wanted to do this.

The tea is: I actually had two of my prints (Black Floral and White Floral) available on Spoonflower from 2020 to 2021. Honestly though, it didn't go well.

While I was thrilled that there were people who bought the fabric and got creative, there were a few people who consistently purchased my prints and used the fabric to sew products for their businesses without crediting me for creating the artwork. Their website listings and social media posts wouldn't mention that I was the artist. And my issue with that is the lack of credit is bad for business - both mine and theirs. I am in no way suggesting this was intentional. I think that it was truly just an oversight or something that didn't occur to these business owners. I'm not mad or blaming anybody, but not giving me credit did cause some problems.

It became an issue when people who were already aware of my artwork and style saw the creditless posts. Those people would think these businesses had stolen my art and would message or email me to let me know that my art was being misappropriated. Unfortunately, that's not a crazy conclusion since my art is pretty much constantly being stolen or misappropriated. It's really heartbreaking, which is why I so appreciate, really and truly, that people are looking out for me like this. But I will say, it added a lot of explaining to my plate as I shared why my prints were on other businesses' products. 

But that's not all. The other side of this issue is that when people see my prints both on other businesses' pages and on mine, they might not know that the print is truly mine. So when they see my page or shop my website, they think that either I'm copying/stealing prints from someone else, or that my shop isn't unique or different because they see that print everywhere. This issue is less common than the first one, but I have received several messages to this effect and I'll tell ya, it hurts. 

So for the past couple of years, I've chosen to put my business first and not sell fabric at all. Simply put, it wasn't worth it to risk diluting my brand.

But now, I have a new plan. I'm in the middle of rebranding EBD (new color ways, fonts, graphics, and an overhaul of the website) so I'm taking a long hard look at which prints are going to continue being at the core of the brand and which ones are going to be retired. Those soon-to-be retired prints are the ones that I'm making available as fabric. I think this is the perfect compromise for me: I get to keep my brand consistent, unique, and exclusive, but I also get to see others put their own creative spin on the prints I'm no longer using for my own business. 

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm attention-seeking or gatekeeping when I ask for credit on my prints and only allow some of my designs to be made into fabric. I hope it makes sense from my perspective. Not only do I want to make the best business decisions for myself, but also for the people I employ, who depend on EBD for their livelihoods, too.

With all of that said, I hope you enjoy browsing and maybe even sewing with my fabric collection. It's available now on Carriage House Printery and Spoonflower. And if you do create something with my work, please do share it! Just please tag me so I can celebrate your work!