Put this under your glass

This week's contest was to make a fabric that could be cut apart and made into cocktail napkins. The guidelines suggested making 4 1/2" napkins, with 1/4" seam allowances, so the starting fabric squares would be 5". I decided to just make a repeat of 5" squares, instead of making it obvious that you could cut it out into napkins, so that it could look like a patchwork print.

One of the most-viewed designs I've made was the Doctor Who-inspired coordinate. So I decided to add two additional patterns to that set and use them for the napkins, since the colors already have a sort of harvest-y feel.



Added to the Time Lord collars, fourth doctor scarf stripes, and blown up tweed and tartan I had last time, are a bowtie stripe (for the eleventh doctor) and a pinstripe (for the tenth). I also finally uploaded all the individual patterns and you can see them together in a collection here.

It came in 84 out of 182 with 75 votes. I really liked these Mary Blair-ish ones, the jewels, the olives, and the quilt patches. All of the top ten are great, but I especially liked the retro ones that came in third.

ARROW'D!

Last week's contest was for a design that had something to do with arrows. I couldn't come up with anything that was both an appealing design and doable in the time I had, so I went with a simple geometric, which came in 126 out of 221 with 58 votes.



My favorite entry was the winning one: these swirly arrows. I wish it came in more than just plain black and white. Also good were these Frank Lloyd Wright-ish arrows, nicely-done rainbow-fletched arrows, and waves of gradient colored arrows.

The most recent contest was for a boy's novelty fabric in the theme "Be My Hero."  I knew the most common themes would be superheroes and first responders, so I wanted to do something different. I put positive qualities (courageous, thoughtful, etc) into stripes. Hopefully I didn't misspell anything!


They didn't publish the results of this one, other than the top ten, since the winner was decided by Timeless Treasures fabric, who is actually going to produce the design and sell it in stores and all that! So I'm not sure how mine did. My favorite entries were the super shields and the crossed swords.

Project Runway Season 10 Episode 12

Well, we're now two weeks into the new season of Project Runway All-stars, so I guess I had better get caught up on how the regular Season 10 ended.

Episode 12 brings us down to the final five. Heidi introduces the challenge in her craziest, strappiest minidress yet. They are taken to some ritzy estate turned tourist trap called Oheka Castle, where they learn that this is the makeup challenge. They have to make avant garde looks inspired by both the castle and a randomly-assigned "persona" associated with a makeup palette.  Fabio and Chris get "Enchanted Queen," Sonjia gets "Tempting Seductress," Dmitry gets "Wise Mystic," and Mellisa gets "Artsy Muse." So they are somehow supposed to make cutting edge fashion based on some of the stuffiest cliches ever unearthed from a bad fantasy novel?

Sonjia is in deep trouble from the very start, when they get back to the workroom and she discovers that her main fabric purchase - five yards of gold lamé - somehow did not make it back with them. Fabio and Chris are feeling the competition a bit more than the rest, since they're the only ones who have to compete on the same "persona." Fabio likes Chris' take, but Tim is literally rendered speechless when confronted with Fabio's. This inspires Fabio to break down all the stages of Tim's silence: first the breath in, then the chin on hand, then the crossed hands, then the lean back. Eventually Tim is able to say that he thinks it looks sad and flat, and like a costume. He is also not very positive with Dmitry or Sonjia, saying the former is producing a look with no remarkable drama and the latter is clearly stuck and not working up to her potential.

The second day in the workroom, Fabio has literally turned things around by flipping the jacket he's making upside down. Tim loves it, Sonjia hates it, Mellisa thinks it's her biggest competition. Mellisa is having time management issues, Dmitry says "no!" to Sonjia's look, Chris' is reading very 90's, and the other designers think Dmitry's is too ready-to-wear and too similar to what he's done before. Sonjia and Fabio luck out when their looks fit their models right away.

Sonjia makes a green dress with an illusion back. Heidi loves it and says she'd go on the red carpet with it, but Michael hates it and jeers that it's like an old lady's idea of a backless dress.

Chris sends down a black dress with padded hips. The judges like that part but hate the way it flattens the model's bust and feel the arm feathers push it too far into Goth Victorian costume territory. In all, they feel it was a mediocre execution of a good idea.

Dmitry makes a skirt suit with a separate Vampira collar. The judges love the sleeves but say the collar was too much. Heidi likes the peekaboo slit in the back.

Fabio makes a transparent black dress with a smock-like sleeveless burgundy jacket. The judges are pretty fond of the jacket, and once they hear that it was originally the other way, they make him turn it right-side-up again - and they actually like it even better that way. The dress, however, nobody likes - Heidi says it has no beauty and is not flattering.

Mellisa makes an odd outfit combining a vest, a leather shirt, and a huge, long, high-waisted skirt. Michael loves it - it's interesting, flattering, and handles its colors well. However, Heidi hates it and thinks it's ugly.  Nina says the skirt is too long.

Dmitry wins! Sonjia is out. Who knows what would have happened if she hadn't lost her intended fabric? Next week, we get to see what the final four will make for their finale collections.

Three designs at once

So what have I been up to on Spoonflower? Since I last posted, I've had one successful entry and two duds. Well, maybe "dud' is too harsh, but you get the drift.

Most recently, it was the annual "tea towel calendar" contest. My starting point was representing each month by some type of produce that should be in season at that time (In order: potatoes, radishes, asparagus, bananas, artichokes, corn, nectarines, summer squash, apples, pumpkin, leeks, and oranges). The colors are based on the image in this blog post.

 

I'm not all that happy with how this turned out. The block of color are way too large and the way it looks from a distance is, well, ugly. Especially those big dark potatoes just hanging out there! I should have made them yellow. I think the three green veggies turned out the best. I guess the bananas are decent too. At least I made one improvement over last year's pie-based effort - I remembered to leave enough negative space around the design for a seam allowance!

This came in 113 out of 186 with 79 votes. I loved all of the entries in the top 10. I also liked the overlapping circles, wildflowers, exuberant tea set, and sashiko-inspired calendars. I also noticed someone else did a pie-of-the-month design!

Looking further back, there were two Halloween-related contests. First, a cut & sew pattern to make a zombie plushie. I hate zombies! Even when they're cutesy I just think they're off-putting. But with this week, I reached a complete year of entering every contest, so I wasn't about to give up. I took it in a different direction and decided to show a computer that had been turned into a botnet zombie.

 

The computer itself is just a fabric box, and you fill it with little stuffed tetrahedron viruses! I hope I have a chance to actually sew this together soon. It came in 53 out of 88 with 74 votes. My favorite entry was this spooky owl (with detachable eyeball!).

Finally, there was a contest to do something "creepy-crawly" that could be used to make a trick-or-treating bag. I love castles, ruins, architectural details - that sort of thing. So I made a haunted castle with frightening things in silhouette in the windows. Originally I was going to make it all spiders but I got bored with that pretty quickly and branched out.



The medium and dark grays are cool shades, and the light gray is a warm shade, to amp up the eeriness. I got a lot more comments than I usually do, so I had some hope it would do well. Then it turned out the guy who usually puts together the results post was on vacation, so it took four days longer than normal after the contest ended to find out! The suspense! In the end, I came in 23 out of 224 with 158 votes. My favorite entries were the google-eyed squish marks that came in second, and the one in ninth that my husband should definitely not look at because it combines his favorite and least-favorite things - candy corn with spider legs! *shudder*

Embroidering the Eighties

This week's contest was a first - an embroidery pattern. This was a new one on me, but apparently people have been making these on Spoonflower. You print the design reversed, use it as a guide, and - violá! - there's your embroidered design, on the "wrong" side of the fabric. And for this, it had to have something to do with the eighties. I decided to go for famous computer logos of the times, arranged so you could use them as patches.



Mine came in 21 out of 50, with 121 votes. My favorite entries were the homage to Keith Haring that came in second and the Lisa-Frank-esque panels that came in tenth.

Project Runway Season 10 Episode 11

Episode 11 was another muddled, confusing challenge. The six remaining designers must all make outfits for toddlers, and the winners (there will be a winner for each target gender) will be added to Heidi's new line of baby clothes for Babies R Us. That's simple enough. However, they are actually each assigned a specific toddler, who they meet in a line up of moms and tots. The moms and designers get some time to talk and get some ideas about what outfits the moms like. Dmitry compares this task to making an outfit for a cat, since the kids can't talk. Aren't we all relieved that foot-in-mouth Ven isn't around for this one?

The babies are all between 12 and 18 months old. My son is 17 months right now, so I definitely recognized his behavior in these other babies - switching between walking and crawling, stealing the designers' pens, etc. Chris is initially really happy with his pairing, since he really likes what the little girl is wearing - but quickly regrets it since the mom is very picky and opinionated. She tells him exactly what she wants him to make, notably a three-quarter sleeve white denim jacket (with NO POCKETS!).

Before they go back to the workroom, Tim emits the most ominous chuckle he's ever produced when he tells them they'll have a surprise. The next twist is revealed: they each have one of those newborn simulators they give to high school students, that cries all the time and has to be changed, fed, and rocked. I didn't really get this bit at all. Are they being judged on how well they take care of the baby? It sure didn't seem like it, since it never came up later. We were led to believe they even had to take them back to their apartments at night, but I'm pretty skeptical on that count. As for the supposed goal of this whole exercise - if a grown adult can't think of how to design clothes to make life easy for the parents of toddlers, I can't imagine that having them watch a newborn doll for part of a day would some how enlighten them.

In any case, Fabio takes it very seriously. He talks to his doll very sweetly and is reluctant to put it down and work. The other designers mock him for this, to which I say, sure - but why didn't the rest of you take it further? If it's not part of the judging, why do it at all? Just leave it in the bathroom or something so you can't hear it cry! It's just a doll! Or at least try to come up with a "babysitting" agreement, where one designer watches a few babies at once so the others can work uninterrupted, and then trade off. I can only think that there were rules preventing these sorts of things, or else surely someone would have tried.

Heidi joins Tim for his workroom rounds. The only conversation that really stands out is the one with Chris. He has been busily making the white jacket as requested, but Heidi has a totally different idea for the rest - she wants to see a skirt made out of some textile with dimensional flowers. So, correctly realizing that Heidi's opinion matters and the mom's actually doesn't, he changes direction and does exactly what Heidi asks for.

Heidi then introduces the next twist: they have one more day and also have to make an outfit for the moms. However, as it becomes very clear later, these outfits are actually not being considered in the judging either, since the prize is solely about which toddler outfits will get added to Heidi's line. So again, why did the producers do it? For their second day in the workroom, their dolls are taken to "day care" - and never mentioned again.

At the judging, Heidi is in her weirdest minidress yet - a black sheath with a negative-space Peter Pan collar and double thigh-slits. Crazy! The runway show is very cute, as each mom walks down, either carrying or holding hands with her child. During the critique, they just bring out one mom/baby pair at a time to discuss the clothes.

Chris' mom does not at all like what Chris ended up making - not the white flowery dress for the baby, and not the bright floral dress for her. But both are a clear favorite of the judges, who love that it's a dressy look for both without being matchy. Sonjia has a huge advantage in that the little boy she worked with is such a charmer - he smiles and waves at the judges, and is otherwise unbearably adorable. She made him a little matching blazer and sweatpants, with a bright print onesie underneath.

Dmitry and Fabio both make somewhat retro one-piece body suits for their little boys. Dmitry's has a hood that's a little too pointy, making him look a little like a crayon, as Michael Kors points out. Michael also objects to the hood looking too much like a cape when down, but Nina and Heidi quickly correct him and say the kids like it that way! By the end of the judging, the little crayon is asleep on his mother's shoulder. Fabio makes a little hat that matches his, and the judges like all the details.

Elena makes a little jacket with an interesting pleated collar, and a plain shirt and pants to go with it. The judges don't like that it looks like mixed separates, rather than a specific outfit. Mellisa makes a vest, and a too-short, too-narrow white dress (with exposed zipper!) that rides up.

Nobody mentions the moms' outfits all that much. None of them are terrible, and none of them are really remarkable either - since they don't actually affect the competition.

Unsurprisingly, Chris and Sonjia are the winners! Interestingly, in the actual production outfit, the main color in Chris' has been changed from white to navy.

Elena and Mellisa are in the bottom, and in the end Elena is eliminated.

Old as dirt

This week's fabric design theme was "earth science." I knew instantly what I wanted to do - dirt! Something I've always been fascinated with is how dirt is made - I know it's partly rock, partly organic matter, but it seems so unlike either. My parents always had a big herb and vegetable garden out in the backyard, and my dad has made compost for many years. All those moist, hot, smelly piles covered with black tarp! Leaves and sticks go in, amazing dirt comes out. I used to help him strain out the big non-decomposed chunks before he spread it around. Also in the backyard was a large segment where my brother and I were allowed to play in the mud. We'd run the hose and make a big puddle, and as the dirt got saturated we'd dig it out and pile it up on the sides. We got some bricks too, and eventually made a whole city with a covered river running through it. I loved to see how the different consistencies of dirt would turn into varying kinds of mud. The layer on top had lots of leaves and other detritus, and below that it got very fine and smooth. Lower down it got sandy, and in some places a little claylike.

Later, in college, I took geology in hopes of learning more about soil formation. Teacher: "we're not going to get into soil formation, because it's pretty complicated." Disappointing, but intriguing! Nowadays, I have Google whenever I want to find out a little about things like this.

For the fabric design, I abstracted out the different stages and processes into stripes. There are two sequences - one is the darker green leaf litter, with worms below it, that turns into clay and then bedrock. The other starts with grass and roots, has ants, and also ends up with bedrock.



It came in 63 out of 160 with 153 votes. In a similar "vein" as mine, I liked the geologic strata print (that won) and these core samples. On a more macro scale, I liked these cutesy globe cutaways and magnetospheres. Of the crystal/mineral entries this was my favorite, and out of weather themes I thought this was best. This ocean depth map that came in fourth is neat and has a really large repeat.