Projects using custom fabrics

So the two Spoonflower designs I entered in contests so far (ditsy sugar cubes & ginger roots) were created with a specific project in mind. I'm trying to catch up on making baby blankets for all my nephews and nieces (and my son of course!). So far I've only made the ones for my oldest nephew and oldest niece. The one for my nephew is here, and I actually don't have any photos of the one I made for my oldest niece! Hopefully I can correct that over the coming holiday season. You can see the design itself on Spoonflower, at least.

So next up are the ones for my next oldest nephew and niece. Once I finish those I'll create the one for my son, and once that's done we should have found out whether the next one on my brother's side will be a boy or a girl.

So, back to those two fabric patterns I linked already. My idea for my niece was to spell out her name - "Maren," by the way - using international maritime signal flags. But the twist is that I would change them to more "girly" colors, and represent each color as its own print. Then, I could put the flags together on the quilt in a "cheater" style, to make it appear as though I pieced the images together. I decided to translate the white and red segments into light & dark pink prints, the blue segments into a purple print, and keep the yellow segments in a yellow print. Then I would create a medium pink print with yellow and purple accents to use as the background to tie it all together.

So once I decided on that color scheme, I needed to decide on what the prints would actually be. I decided to do a take on the old cliche "sugar and spice and everything nice." Sugar is represented by sugar cubes and candies on the light and medium pink prints respectively. Spice is represented by ginger on the yellow print. Everything nice could probably not be any more vague, so I just used things that I think are pleasing: roses for the dark pink print and square knots for the purple print. I also added hints of yellow to the dark pink and purple prints to add more balance to the overall design, since the yellow print was only going to get used in the "R" in Maren.

So here are all the prints together:


You can also see them all on Spoonflower.

But wait a minute - there are two purple prints in that photo, not just one! Well, some of the signal flags also use black - though not any of the ones in "Maren" - so I decided to create a darker purple print to stand in for black in case I wanted to create other letters in the future. This print shows sprigs of lavender as a counterpoint to the roses.

But back to the original thread, here is the printed crib-sized quilt top that uses these prints to spell out "Maren":

This picture shows the top laid out over the backing and batting - after this was taken, I basted it together and started quilting. Hopefully I'll be able to post another progress photo soon!

Christmas Ornament

One of the upcoming Spoonflower contests is for a cut & print pattern for a Christmas ornament that can fit on an 8" by 8" swatch. I created a pattern for a cute miniature wreath. I ordered a copy of it printed out...

...and today I sewed it together. As you can see, there are some instructions on the pattern itself, but I thought it might be nice to expand on them.

First, I cut out the two main pieces, pinned them together, and sewed the inner and outer circles. I clipped the seams to make it easier to make it easier to turn inside out.


Turning it inside out was a little difficult due to the small size. I used a skewer to push it through.


Then, I used the skewer to stuff it. I didn't have any stuffing on hand, so I cut up some leftover quilt batting and used that instead! Once it was filled up, I blind stitched it shut.


I finger-pressed and tacked down the two "ribbon" pieces. If I were making this from scratch, I'd probably just use actual ribbon instead to avoid dealing with the raw edges this way, but I thought it would be more fun to make it part of the pattern for the contest.


I looped one of the ribbons through the hole in the wreath. I messed it up a few times by not getting the trees upright on the side I wanted to be the top! But once it's looped in the right way, it's just a matter of sewing the ends together.


Just a few stitches were needed to close it at the top of the wreath to form the loop for hanging. I made sure that the seam in the ribbon sat at the bottom of the inside of the wreath so as to be least visible.


Then I folded the second ribbon into a faux bow and put in a few stitches to hold the shape.


Then it was just a few more stitches to put it on the wreath, and viola!

Second Spoonflower contest

I entered a second Spoonflower contest, this one themed "root vegetables." My design is of ginger roots. Like the last time, this was a design I had already created for my own purposes, that just happened to more-or-less fit the contest. I know ginger is not a "vegetable", but heck, another entry was themed on root beer, so there's some leeway!

It came in 88 out of 181 with 141 votes, so better than last time. I'm surprised, since it's not really a very strong design on its own - I created it to be a tone-on-tone element in a larger design. Of course, that's how the last one was as well, but they had a record number of entries in the last contest, and actually had to reject some entries for the first time ever. So I probably fared better simply due to there being fewer to look through. (The way these contests work is that you can vote for as many designs as you like, so the more you have to look at, the more fatigue sets in.) In any case, it's fun to have other people take a look at my designs.

First Spoonflower Contest Entry

I finally entered a Spoonflower design contest! They have a new inspiration every week, and this week was ditsy prints. I came in 218th place out of 247, with 45 votes! The design I entered is here.

I've started creating more designs. So far all the designs were created with specific projects in mind (just as I hoped to do), so I hope to post about those soon!

Interconnected Artists

The second issue of Illo magazine finally arrived! I am pretty jazzed. I learned something really interesting - James Gurney, the Dinotopia guy, was college roomates with the infamous Thomas Kincade, "Painter of Light." Even better, they worked together painting backgrounds for a Frank Frazetta-produced animated film. Frazetta is basically the guy who invented fantasy art as we know it, with muscly men, volumptuous ladies, and raging monsters, all naked or nearly so. To top it off, the film was directed by Ralph Bakshi, known to me as the guy who also directed an animated version of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings. I have fond childhood memories of watching this, which I've been informed by my brother I am completely incorrect to have, so I'm thinking I'd rather not see it again so I can continue to enjoy the memories.

The film in question was called Fire and Ice, and it sounds terrible.

Voice Range

I'm partial to Mozart's operas, though I have very little music theory or history foundation to speak of. A few days ago I was idly pondering how far apart the standard voice ranges are - for instance, tenor and mezzo-soprano. Wikipedia to the rescue! There is a lovely chart comparing not only human voice ranges, but also a number of instruments. The answer to my query - they overlap by about one and a half octaves.

In the same article, I was amused to see the note about highest and lowest notes in standard singing repertoire - both are in Mozart operas! The highest is in both arias sung by the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte, and the lowest is sung by Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. So, not only Mozart operas, but specifically German Mozart operas.

An Amazing Life

For my bedtime reading lately, I've been reading On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change, a collection of essays on architecture that my dad gave to me a while back. I've always had an interest in architecture - I even wanted to be an architect when I was a kid. I like to look at random buildings and imagine what it would be like to repurpose them, usually as houses. What if you converted that strip mall to apartments? Or that office building? These essays, by Ada Louise Huxtable, are mostly reviews of buildings (such as museums & corporate headquarters). I wish there were more pictures to go with what she's describing, but it's still fascinating to read critiques of structures. One of the architects who comes up frequently is Mies van der Rohe, who is basically the guy who came up with what we consider now to be the default corporate skyscraper - a giant glass-covered rectangular prism. One of the articles happened to mention that he lived from 1886 until 1969. What an incredible time to live - can you imagine if your living memory covered from a time before cars & planes and only a rudimentary electrical infrastructure, up to the development of computers and the landing on the moon? (Not to mention all the world-changing global conflicts in that span) We study all those things in history and know the dates, but it's still pretty incredible to think that they all really did happen in close enough sequence for someone to have lived through them all.