Sleepy, wiggly creatures

This week's contest was dinosaurs! I have been thinking about trying to make a design for a lovey blanket for my son, so making some uber-cute dinos seemed like a good possibility. Then, looking through the Synergy palettes, the "Serenity" group seemed to fit both "calm and sleepy" and "dinosaurs."

Then it was just a matter of drawing a bunch of sleeping dinosaurs - I decided to go for non-species-specific heads and anthropomorphic bodies. It was fun to think back to all the funny little poses my son would make when he was a tiny baby. Then, I filled in all the little onesies with all the "small" patterns I have on hand from other designs.



I really want to make a cheater print as well, using all the little sub-patterns in use here. I'm pretty pleased with how this one came out - it's very close to the vision I had in mind. It did quite poorly in the contest though - a mere 19 votes. Insert sad trumpet noise here. No matter, this will be another one like the adder, where all I can say is, well, I liked it!

Novelty prints for kids certainly dominated the entries. Indeed, it's hard to think of any other kind of fabric you could make based on the dinosaur theme. My favorites were this damask that went more towards the girly side (and came in second), and these colorful dinos all standing atop one another that would be considered more of a boys' fabric. Moving into less cartoony territory, I thought this mix of doodles and bright pixelated textures was a really fresh combination. Then there were two plesiosaur designs that I really liked - this almost Edward Gorey one with lacy textures, and a more graphic take with a plaid underlay that was my favorite entry.