Oh, a "Jug!"

It's interesting how the Spoonflower contests vary in specificity.  The last one was just "watercolor," which implies actually not a whole lot about what the resulting design will look like.  This next one was much more constrained: we had to use a set group of colors, and the design had to be kitchen-related.  We were given the exact RGB values for the colors, which were brown, beige, yellow, and red (and optionally white).

My first thought was to do sets of matching pitchers and bowls, but I found so many interesting shapes of vintage pitchers (on Etsy and plain old Google image search) that I stuck with just that.



Many of the other entries were in a similar vein - representational, single-orientation prints of collections of objects.  My favorites of this type were the mugs, egg cups, appliances, and tea kettles.  Other than that I liked this one, which has representational stuff and abstract motifs arranged in stripes.

My design came in 79 out of 281, with 133 votes.

Postscript: The title of this blog post is from an incident that I think about nearly every time I hear the word "pitcher."  When I was a young teen my family went to the UK.  At one restaurant, my father asked the waiter for a pitcher of water and we got an incredibly blank stare in response.  My father then mimed the act of pouring a glass of water, and the waiter said, "Oh! A JOOOOG!"

Doubled up

There was actually a second contest that closed on the very same day as the non-owl animal contest, with a much harder theme. Spoonflower announced they were teaming up with Robert Kaufman fabrics, and doing a mega contest, where the designs had to look at least partially like watercolor paintings, with two rounds. The top eight vote-getters of the first round would get a few weeks to create full collections around their first entry, and the winner of that round would get a contract with Kaufman to be a professional fabric designer.

They actually announced this one first, and then two weeks before it closed, posted about the animal one closing on the same day.  Whaaaa? I thought it had to be a mistake at first, but alas, it was true.  This was especially irksome for me, because I was going to be traveling for the week leading up to the last day of these two contests.

Since I hadn't made much progress on my watercolor entry, I figured I would just finish my animal entry first and then go back if I had any time. Hipster Piglet actually came together pretty quickly, so I got a little bit done before the trip started.

Of course, 'watercolor' is just an appearance, and doesn't give any suggestion for actual subject matter. I tried to think of something that was really 'me'. When I was little, I wanted to be a Ballerina Plumber - fixing plumbing by day, dancing on the stage at night.  I drew a couple of the little B.P.s and some plumbing for the background, all in SketchBook Pro so I could make them look like pencil drawings.

Once we were back, I had one evening to finish up.  I followed this tutorial to make the color look a little more like watercolor paint. The end result is still far short of what I was wishing to make, but a decent first attempt.



Definitely one I want to take another stab at!  Not sure if I would necessarily make it a watercolor design again, but it's a concept I want to develop.  One of the weakest parts is the color - I tend to be far too literal and representational with colors, so I need to do some thinking on how to come up with a scheme for this that is more cheerful and bright, but still allows for the ballet & plumbing elements to come across clearly.

I also uploaded a version with just the background, which I think makes an interesting blender print on its own.



Alas, but unsurprisingly, my design didn't make it into the second round.  They didn't show the voting results so I don't know the extent of how poorly it did, ha ha!

My favorite entry was this one, which also didn't make it into the finals. Of the final entries, none particularly grabbed me.  I thought all of them were good, but nothing seemed like anything super-special that's beyond what you see in conventional fabric collections.

The pitter-patter of little feet; the incessant poking of little toes

As well as replacing our old mattress last weekend, I tackled another bittersweet project - packing up a batch of clothes my son has outgrown, for my nephew, who is a year younger. This is only the second time I've had to do that, since it seems like most of his growth since he was six months old has been just to make his limbs longer. I've been seeing him in some of those little shirts and footies for months and months now, and they're only just now too small, so it caused some pangs to give them up! But hopefully at least a few items will find use again for his cute little cousin.

To that end, I tried to do some repairs on one of my favorite little footies. He wore it so much that the feet developed holes at the toes.


First I took the foot bottoms off as carefully as I could.


I have no way of replacing that fabric, so in order to get a nice knit, I grabbed an old onesie that got a bad stain on the back. It has a pleasing waffle-weave texture.


There was enough room on the onesie around the seams & stains to get a double layer on the feet. Also I decided to incorporate the embroidery that had been on the front.


Then it was just a matter of pinning the new feet in place...


...and sewing them in place.  To try to replicate the performance of serging with handsewing, I both straight-stitched AND whip-stitched all the way around.


Right-sides out again, here are the 'handsome' new feet!


So these are on their way to my nephew now, with all the rest.

The ebb & flow of life, as demonstrated by mattresses

In the summer before my last year of college, nine years ago now, I was an intern at the company where I now work full time as a software engineer. My then-fiancee and I were living in Isla Vista, where most UCSB students live. The internship actually paid pretty well, so I had some extra dough after expenses and whatnot. (My parents smartly left me to entirely support myself over that summer.) We decided to go for a big-ticket item - we replaced our crappy futon with a Real Mattress and Real Box Spring. We got just the most basic metal frame possible as a bed. It was soooooo nice! We did eventually get a real, grown-up bed, once we later moved to a real, grown-up apartment - but kept the mattress.

I spent the next nine years trying to remember to flip it regularly. I did pretty well for a while there by doing it on the first weekend of every month, with odd-numbered months requiring a rotation and even-numbered months an end-over-end flip. (I turned this into a name as a mnemonic: r(otate)+odd and fl(ip)+even became "Rod Fleeven".) However, after we bought a house two years ago, with a master bedroom with a ceiling fan thus requiring a lot more care be taken while flipping, this tapered off significantly.

I'm sure I don't need to describe how slumped and saggy a mattress gets after nine years. We had two nice little depressions on each side. It was time to go.

So now, across the hall from our sleeping toddler, sits our brand-new mattress. We bought it from a man who can only be described as a "mattress nerd." He & his family own & run a store in Santa Barbara that sells mattresses (and apparently they also construct them). It was amazing! He knew everything about the composition of mattresses, when certain mattress technologies came about or became unpopular - a regular font of information. So with his expert advice, and a lot of awkwardly lying on mattresses in public, we got a natural latex foam mattress. It's supposed to be a balance between a traditional inner-spring mattress and a memory-foam mattress, very breathable, and even eco-friendly.

Best of all, they took away our old mattress & box spring away when they delivered the new one. It was a little sad to see it hauled away, thinking of how proud I was to buy it back then. The new one could, in theory, last for 20 years. In 20 years our son will probably be in college, perhaps reaching the point where he's starting to get tired of his crappy futon and thinking about getting a real, grown-up bed. Hopefully he can find a mattress nerd too.

I'll let the pie do the talking for me

Hipster Piglet

Hipster Piglet.



Because, what else would you make for a contest that calls for an animal-themed fabric, with the restriction it can't be an (overused, cliche) owl? More specifically, the idea was to come up with a design so compelling, your chosen animal would unseat the owl as the favorite of the crafting world. So I tried to think of an animal that has a distinctive silhouette or features, but that hopefully not too many other people would also land upon (like cats, dogs, or rabbits). Somehow the image of a pig wearing glasses entered my head, and who could turn down an inspiration like that? So I went whole hog (see what I did there?) and decided to make him a full-on hipster with ironic glasses and trendy scarf. I used the same colors as the seadragon fabric, but added black (for the eyes) and gray (for the checkerboard background).

This came in 163 out of 226 with 62 votes. My favorite was a crocodile pattern that came in 2nd. I also really like this quail entry, which I fully admit I saw before I made mine and inspired the layout.  And finally, I'm fond of this cute panda fabric, which should remind family members reading this blog of a certain toy I had when I was small.

Contest Catchup - Again

Oh yeah, didn't I used to post here? Sheesh, four weeks goes by like nothing! Well, let's see if I can at least squeeze one post into April and get back on track.

Alrighty, starting with the oldest contest: the theme was to create a pattern for a bag that fit on a yard, that had all the directions to allow you to cut it out & sew it together. (Like the previous contests for the baby book, advent calendar, wrestling mask, and Christmas ornament.)  I decided to make something for kids, like a tote for toys.  I looked for free bag patterns online, and found this one that I liked.  Since it was reversible, I thought of maybe doing a more "boy" side and a more "girl" side, and that evolved into doing an Easter side and a Halloween side. You could use the same bag for trick-or-treating and egg hunting.



I had higher ambitions for this one, but alas ran out of time.  Plus the large size of this file made GIMP crash, and I ended up losing some progress the very night it was due.  Arg!  So, I would've like to add more detail, and perhaps made the Halloween troll side look not so much like a generic green Satan.  Ah well, another for the "remake someday" pile. Then, what hung me up was that I wanted to sew the bag together before doing this post. Well, I've had the printed fabric awhile, but no chance to sew yet.  Soon!

This came in 42 out of 76, with 152 votes. My favorite entry was the one that came in first place.

Next up, the theme was books. I discussed this one with the husband, since both of us have probably spent more time reading books than not, and the first idea we came up with was to make personifications of books - like a hardback of "The Firm" dressed as a lawyer and whatnot. But again I had time issues and just couldn't make the book people look like I pictured them in my head.  Then one evening near the deadline, I came up with the idea of creating library cards for libraries in fictional cities from books. Since I had made this fabric based on the Cluny library in Sacramento already, I decided to use some of the same colors in this one so they'd go together.



The cards are for libraries in the Emerald City (Oz), Krondor (from Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar series), Camelot, Newford (from the urban fantasy by Charles de Lint), Metropolis (the Superman version), Fort Weyr (from the Anne McCaffrey Dragonrider books), Rivendell (Tolkien), Atlantis, and a Hogwarts extension in Hogsmeade.

This came in 75 out of 143, with 120 votes. The one I liked the best came in 2nd.

Then, a contest for sewing-themed fabric. The only way it could be more meta is if we made fabric-themed fabric. First I thought of doing a mock sampler in progress, showing how to do various embroidery stitches.  That turned into a thought of making a trompe l'oeil quilted pattern, so the fabric would look puckered and 3D.  Finally I kept it simple and just did a design depicting a running stitch in progress.  First I colored it in just in grayscale, to get an idea of how I'd apply actual colors, but I ended up liking it on its own.  Then, I decided to try it with the two palettes I used for the feather fabrics.  I went back and forth on which one to use, and eventually decided to go with the more muted version rather than the brighter one.



It came in 13th place with 417 votes! This was out of 111 entries.  That's definitely the best I've ever done in one of these contests.  I'm pretty pleased.  Woohoo!  My favorite was this one, which came in 23rd - I'm stunned I came in ahead of it.  I also really like the one that came in 3rd.

Finally, there was another cut & sew contest - for a hat.  In this one, happily, I came very close to meeting my ambitious goals for the design.  I went the obvious route of a baby hat, but since we had a whole yard to work with I figured I could fit more than one hat.  Also, I wanted to try the technique of making an "extra" part of the design that you get if you buy the larger fabrics - specifically, if you get the knit instead of the basic woven cotton, the yardage is a whopping 14" wider!  So I searched around for patterns until I couldn't squeeze any more in.  I found a reversible bucket hat and a reversible hat with earflaps.  For the "bonus" 14" segment, I went with a little topknot beanie (since that for sure would be in the knit). And in the space leftover I put a bib.  Then, to be extra clever, I arranged the bucket hat pattern so that if you buy just a plain fat quarter, you get one side of the hat - so you can make it as it is, or use another fabric to make it reversible. No idea if anyone will end up buying any of it, but it was a fun challenge nonetheless.

Next, how to color it in? Well, a number of people have actually bought my computer science baby book, so I decided to stick with that theme. I created a few patterns based on the book, and then some more general computery ones - a computer keyboard and a iPhone checkerboard.  I'm going to upload each of those as its own fabric as well.


(Update - the preview changed at some point to show only the FQ part of the design, so here's a photo of the whole thing printed):
(Update 2 - looks like the preview is working correctly again...)


It came in 28 out of 42, with 133 votes. I have the printed version of this sitting next to the bag fabric too - can't wait to try sewing them all together!