Today is a good day to pie

I didn't post about last week's contest, as I didn't have an entry - alas, it was only open to thirteen- to nineteen-year-olds. This week, the theme was pie. Pie is such a staple of the kitchen-crafts design world that, despite having a deep personal appreciation for pie, I struggled to come up with any possible fresh take on the subject. I was sure (and was proved right) that there would be plenty of lovely representations of assortments of pies. I went down the path of deconstruction, and thought about doing something with a recipe, or just the ingredients. A step further down that path, and I went with the plants that the ingredients are harvested from. And as far as picking which flavor of pie, since there's a synergy theme of "apple," that was easy enough.

So the design contains the flowers of apples, sugarcane, nutmeg, and cinnamon, plus sheaves of wheat. Also, the outlines of the hexagons are done in a wavy shape that's supposed to resemble mammary cells, to represent milk.



This came in 109 out of 236, with 47 votes. Along with the designs I linked above, I also liked the simple blueberry pie lattice, stargazy, and fruit tarts. For the obvious puns, there were some "pi" entries, but none I liked all that much - though there are some in the synergy group, like this; and of course pie charts.

Tea towel calendar

So "tea towels" are thin, mostly decorative cloths that are meant mostly to be hung up in kitchens, as I understand it. Around this time each year, Spoonflower has one of its contests to design a tea towel (to fit on a fat quarter) that has a whole year's calendar on it. I tried to think of what would be an interesting representation of each month of the year. Then I remembered...PIES. My mom makes the most wonderful pies. She always makes a cherry pie, a lemon meringue pie, and a chocolate (custard) pie every year at Christmas, and another cherry pie for my dad's birthday. One time, my dad was suggesting other pies that would go with other special occasions, and then had a sudden flash of inspiration - "What about a pie every month?" Being a kid, I took this joke and treated it as a serious suggestion to be enthusiastically endorsed. Mom, of course, quickly and laughingly shut us down. But the dream remained - the pie of the month club!

I decided to make my calendar design of twelve delicious pies laid out on a table. It was surprisingly hard to come up with twelve distinct pies! Then I had to come up with ways to create lighter backgrounds to put the actual calendar numbers over. Most pies I just heaped up with whipped cream or meringue, or topped with a cloud of steam as if they were fresh from the oven.

Anyway, the pie flavors are:

• January: Key Lime
• February: Boysenberry
• March: Banana Cream
• April: Strawberry Rhubarb
• May: Peach
• June: Lemon Meringue
• July: Cherry
• August: Blueberry Cream
• September: Apple
• October: Pumpkin
• November: Pecan
• December: Chocolate

I think it made for a very sweet design. There were a lot of really great calendars in this contest! It came in 103rd out of 146, with 93 votes.



By the way, the only pie I've made myself is cherry:


Now that I know how much work it is, I can understand not wanting to make a different one every month!