Geology

This week's contest was for "geology." I knew lots of people would be doing designs with crystals and/or gems, so I stayed away from that area. They've had an "earth science" contest before, in which I did soil formation. (Wow how times have changed! Back in 2012 there were only 160 entries in this whole contest...now it's rare for them to be below 500)

I love cross-section diagrams so I did a bunch of those - like what you'd see in a text book showing different types of volcanoes, faults, erosion, and other random geological features.



This actually did fairly well - in the top 200! My favorite was this nice assortment of pebbles.

Gardening

This week's theme was the extremely broad "gardening." I based mine around beneficial insects, specifically bees and ladybugs. I populated the rest of the design with stylized flowers that are supposed to attract one or the other: asters, butterfly bush, fennel, lantana, sunflowers, sweet alyssum, alstroemeria, butterfly weed, chives, cosmos, marigolds, and statice.



I actually made it well into the top half of the contest, which is pretty good considering how heavily tilted the entries were toward florals. I really liked this other design inspired by flowers for bees, these veggies, the little potted plants, and the mossy one.

What is a "Modern Farmhouse" anyway

The theme this week was "Modern Farmhouse" - as in, the popular design style, most prominently seen on the HGTV show "Fixer Upper." Kind of a hard concept to put in a fabric design, as it's more about textures (barn wood, tile, sheet metal, etc). I browsed around Pinterest, where there are a whole bunch of "Modern Farmhouse Paint Colors" with names like "Intelligent Gray." So I made up my own array of tasteful neutrals, but with unpleasant and ridiculous names.



At first I was afraid I would run out of names, but once I started I just kept coming up with more and more.

THEN, after I entered it in the contest, it got disqualified for not being "on topic!" Ha! Well, I emailed them right back, explained my perspective, and got it re-instated. Not that it mattered because it still only ended up in the bottom quarter of entries.

My favorite design was this one, and the one I thought best fit the theme was this one.

Fuel for grilling

This week's theme was "summer cookout." I tried to compose a plaid out of a few of the different types of fuel you can use for grills - propane tanks, charcoal briquettes, and wood pellets.



This did extremely poorly in the contest! Can't win em all. My favorite was this one, which made it into the top ten.