MEBANE - Stephen Fraser will tell you that he can't sew to save his life. But his livelihood now depends on it. He and a former colleague, Gart Davis, are behind Spoonflower, a Mebane startup that lets people print custom patterns on fabric. The business gives crafty consumers original material to create pillows, blankets and skirts.

It's an idea that's simple in concept but ambitious in scope. Spoonflower harnesses digital technology to take advantage of an expanding do-it-yourself culture -- a movement that has spawned a resurgence in knitting, scrapbooking and all manner of related hobbies.

The arts and crafts industry has grown almost 40 percent since 2000 to more than $31.8 billion, a lucrative market that an untold number of businesses are trying to tap. While Fraser and Davis don't know how to spin a shirt from nothing, they figure they have something in common with customers.

Spoonflower is the common name of an endangered wildflower found in North Carolina. It grows around bogs.

A couple years back, Stephen Fraser and his wife, Kim, were looking for flowers to plant around a bog in their backyard. They discovered the spoonflower.

They liked the name and decided it fit with the company.

"We share a sensibility," Fraser said. "What we're making here is a company from scratch."

The idea for Spoonflower was born about a year ago. Fraser and his wife were talking one evening, and she wanted to know whether she could make her own fabric.

Stephen, an Internet marketing specialist, knew something about custom creations. He used to work for Lulu.com, a Raleigh company started by millionaire Bob Young that allows aspiring authors to bypass the traditional publishing industry hierarchy to reach readers.

With a little investigation, Stephen Fraser found that people could create custom fabrics but that doing so was often cost-prohibitive because printers required minimum quantities. What's more, he found that the digital printing technology that allowed Lulu to grow would work on fabric, too.

He talked with Davis, Lulu's former president, who embraced the concept of Spoonflower. With the help of Fraser's wife, who is "way into sewing," they floated the idea on sites such as sewmamasew.com and saw interest from thousands of people before they even had a product to offer.

Spoonflower launched in June, offering customers a way to print custom fabric in any quantity for $18 a yard. It remained in limited trial through October, when it opened to the public. More than 15,000 customers have signed up for accounts.

The company is printing about 60 yards of fabric a day -- with about 20 percent of its orders coming from overseas -- and bought a second printing machine a couple of weeks ago. This month, it received a $45,000 grant from NC IDEA, which provides funding for early-stage businesses.

For Fraser, one of the best parts of the business is seeing the designs people submit.

Laura Alexander of Chapel Hill used Spoonflower to create a Christmas present for her mother, a quilter. Alexander has several nieces who refer to her mother -- their grandmother -- as Lolly. Alexander ordered custom fabric with that name and images of lollipops for handmade quilts.

"It was a perfect Christmas present," Alexander said. "I was really excited about giving it. She was amazed."

For now, Spoonflower is a bootstrap operation run from a former sock factory in Mebane.

"Neither Gart nor I are wealthy people," Fraser said.

Next year, they expect to seek outside funding, and they want to create a marketplace where people can sell their fabric designs.

Fraser doesn't see Spoonflower knocking off industry giants any time soon. But, by his calculation, Spoonflower sells something more.

"The fabric that you design has a meaning that no other fabric can have," he said.