FabricSmiths is the brainchild of Sharon Smith, with some technical support from her husband Steven Smith. Sharon is a trained textile designer and wanted to have her art printed on textile products. Anyone reading this will know how difficult it can be to research, identify and integrate to a manufacturer. FabricSmiths was created to provide creative entrepreneurs with the quickest and easiest way to create and order their own unique products.

We are separate companies.

Catalyst Fabric Solutions are one of the manufacturers used by FabricSmiths.

You'll need two accounts to use our solution; 1) A store account and then from your store account page 2) Request a Converterfy Tool account.

You'll use the Converterfy Tool to create your products, which you can then order and have delivered to you or directly to your client.

Just your original digital art file.

We'll take care of everything else, creating the print template and all the data that is sent to our manufacturing partner.

Your designs are stored in a secure area on our server. As with the products you create, only you have access to them.

NO! this is not our business model. There are other websites that leverage your designs and pay you a nominal commission when your design is used on a fabric or product purchased by someone else. We don’t believe this sufficiently recognizes the investment you have made in your artwork. Instead we want you to use us as your supplier, maintaining the inherent value in your design, by allowing you to price and market your products as you wish.

All rights to any artwork uploaded to our site remain with the creator of the art. Uploaded art will only be used and seen on the products the art owner creates and orders.

When your account is first established, all orders will incur sales tax. Once you email us a copy of your resales certificate, we will update your account to reflect a zero tax rate. Please allow 24-48 hours for your account to be updated.

Typically products are manufactured and shipped in 1-3 days.

Any 1(ONE) item.

We are always looking to provide our clients with more options.

We'll shortly be adding natural fiber(cottons/linens) options for Fabric by the Yard and the same fabrics on selected bedding and top of the table products.

Sign up to our newsletter and you'll be the first to know when these products are added.

Currently no, but we are looking at adding this option in the future.

Yes, you can have products shipped directly to your customer, or to yourself.

Currently our fabric based products are offered in; Amerisuede, Microfiber, Broadcloth, Poplin & Faux Linen, all of which are Polyester based.

You can order a sample swatch of these fabrics here.

We are in the process of adding natural fibers(cotton/linen) to both Fabric by the Yard and selected cut 'n sewn products. This will include; warp satin, half panama, jersey knit, linen canvas, and more .......

Please sign up to our newsletter to be the first to know when these fabrics are added.

Floor Coverings & Blankets are manufactured using pre-formed blanks. Please review the appropriate product page for construction information.

The washing and drying instructions are detailed on each product page.

Most polyester fabrics should be spot treated with a damp cloth, can be tumbled dry on low heat, and should not be ironed.

Most natural fibers can be machine washed cool/warm on a gentle/delicate setting, using phosphate-free detergent. Then machine dry on a low temperature setting and ironed on the reverse side of the fabric.

DPI stands for Dots Per Inch. A file that has 3000 pixels width and 4500 pixels height, with a DPI of 150 will print at 20" wide x 30" high. The same image file with a DPI of 200 will print at 15" wide x 22.5" high.

The higher the PRINTED DPI, the smoother and better quality the printed detail will have, up to a limit! The result can be significantly impacted by the type of fabric and the method of printing.

All of our products will look great when printed at 150 DPI. On some products with a texture or pile, your images will still look OK when printed at 100 DPI. And on some of our products you may see a higher quality print when printing at 200+ DPI.

The Converterfy tool supports most of today's common image formats.

If you use a BMP, PNG, JPG or Tiff, file with RGB format data, with no layers or special channels, you should be able to use it to create any of our products.

You can also try using PDF or EPS, but as these can contain vector information, the translation to printed pixels may result in a lower quality printed product.

Our preference is PNG or Tiff, but we have successfully tested Converterfy with; .ai, .bmp, .eps, .jfif, .jpe, .jpeg, .jpg, .pdf, .pjp, .pjpeg, .png, .ps, .tif & .tiff

Our site sizes your design based on 150 DPI to ensure your print quality is acceptable. However, you may use the QuickFit options of Repeats or Best Fit to change how your design is printed. We'll show you how your choice affects the DPI. If you see the DPI is less than 150 but more than 100, the printed result will not be as good, but may be acceptable. If the DPI is less than 100, we recommend you upload a more detailed image (more pixels), as the print result is likely to be poor. All of our products include the optimum dimensions for your image file, if you were creating an image specifically for this product, known as an engineered print.

150Mb or 235,000,000 pixels; e.g. 15,329 x 15,329 or 18,000 x 13,055 or 10,930 x 21,500

YES !  Our Converterfy Tool displays the print resolution (DPI) as a result of the layout/sizing options you have selected.

This is very easy, either print your design smaller in size, which effectively increases the DPI or upload a new version of your design, which has a higher number of pixels. 

NOTE : Simply(only) increasing the number of pixels in your image using a graphics application, such as Photoshop, is not in itself increasing the quality(visible resolution) of your image. This only duplicates the pixels that are already there, resulting in the print looking exactly the same, even though there are more pixels. You would need to manually enhance or use a filter to take advantage of the increased number of pixels. 

As we don't know what your objectives are, and we don't want to limit your creativity, we do allow you to create products with a low DPI print.

The simplest explanation is that when we print your colors, we're actually converting the RGB value contained in your image file to an ink recipe of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black, plus other ink colors. What we don't know is how that same RGB value is displayed on your monitor, which is affected by; the settings on your monitor, the monitor itself, the settings of the software you're using, your graphics hardware and even how you see the color on your monitor as a result of the environment your monitor is in.

If you're familiar with using color standards such as Lab & HCL and would like to learn about our color managed workflow options, please contact us.

Each fabric/material has different properties in regard how it absorbs/retains ink. In many cases, this results in a negligible difference from one fabric to another, that will probably not be visible.

In some cases, there will be a nominal visible difference. If you are concerned about matching colors across different fabrics, we suggest you order small samples of each fabric to compare the result.

Digitizing is the process of converting your handcrafted artwork from a paper based medium into a digital form. The scanning and cleaning process can’t be underestimated. With all the love and care you put into creating beautiful artwork, a sloppy cleaning job can negatively impact the artwork's translation onto fabric or the end product. These are our 4 top tips for getting the best result:

Clean the glass! It sounds simple but if your scanner glass is dirty with fingerprints, smudges, or paint drops, valuable editing time will be spent digitally cleaning these flaws out. Do yourself a favor and whip out the Windex glass cleaner to make sure the scanner glass is squeaky clean before you start.

Keep it straight. Don’t just throw your artwork on the scanner and hit the scan button. Be mindful of the end result by taking a minute to ensure your precious creation is set straight on the scanning bed. This is especially important if your design contains vertical elements such as stripe details. A little TLC straightening your artwork pre-scan can save the need for further adjustments during image editing.

Scan in professional mode. Most photo scanners come with two scan modes for the software: home and professional. Professional mode is the way to go, as it provides more editing capabilities and advanced quality controls. Ideally, scan in 24-Bit RGB mode and at 150 DPI, unless you plan on printing the image larger that its original size, in which case scan it at a higher resolution (300 or 600 DPI).

Tiffs are top! Most scanners allow users to save the image in a variety of file types. *.Tiff files are our format of choice. Why? Image and color definition are retained.

Save the scanned image file and open it in your preferred image editing software. Visually compare the scanned image on your monitor to your original artwork. What do you notice? Do the colors look different? Are there lighter shades of color missing from the scanned image? Have some of the darker shades merged, losing detail? Color is the most difficult of these issues to control. What you are seeing is the result of the scanner, displayed on your monitor, in your studio. Simply changing the settings on the monitor will change what you see, but will have zero effect on the data scanned, the file sent to the printer or the final printed fabric.  If you notice lighter colors are missing from the scan, then you should try lowering the brightness. If you notice darker colors have merged then you should try increasing the contrast. As each of these adjustments can affect the other, it may take you some to time, and multiple scans, to obtain the optimum settings and best result. As far as scanning your painted artwork, brightness, contrast and resolution are the primary adjustments for improving the image quality. You may also find other settings that are designed for scanning images that have been commercially printed, scanning digital photographs or for applying effects that alter the scanned image. Feel free to play around with these settings as you may discover something that you’d like to print.

Read our blog post to see how easy it is to match colors from one product to another using the same fabric, and to products made with different fabrics.