A kernel of truth

Like the previous contest, this one also had an assigned palette:
 
Color by COLOURlovers

The additional requirement was to make it look like something that could be in a Matisse painting. That didn't capture my imagination so much, so I read through Matisse's wikipedia page to see if anything grabbed me. One thing that stuck with me, for whatever reason, was that his father was a grain merchant. Additionally, I've seen a type of grouped floral print in a couple of different places I wanted to try to make a version of - like this or this. So I decided to use different grains instead of differently colored flowers. I also made this my first attempt at a true half-drop repeat instead of a straight repeat.



So the colors formed up into an unintentional diagonal stripe, but that's ok. For the grains themselves, I looked up eight different grains that are actually major crops in France. I also tried to be less literal with the colors than I usually am (or else I would have just made all the grains yellow with red shadows or something like that). The large white grains are wheat, the small white grains are rye, the pointy blue ones are oats, the large pink ones are barley, and the round red ones are sorghum. The pink squarish ones are corn, the little red ones are sunflower seeds, and the tiny blue ones are sesame seeds.

My entry came in 31 out of 303 with 147 votes. That makes it just the second time I've come in the top ten percent (after the Spider Castle)! I really liked these patterned plusses, these berries, and the cherries that came in tenth. For designs more directly inspired by specific Matisse motifs, I liked these graphic shapes, and the horizontal and vertical stripes of abstract elements. For more conventional florals, these two were my favorites.

Blown Away

Alas, I have neglected to post a few contests now - time to start catching up. First up, this contest had two aspects. One, you had to use these colors:

Color by COLOURlovers

And two, it had to have something to do with birds or flight. I made a first pass at an abstracted, geometric repeat of dandelion puffs.

 

Then I made the terrible mistake of looking at the Spoonflower site and I accidentally saw some of the designs that had already been entered - such as this amazing dandelion design. As Cathy would say, ACK! So at that point I lost my nerve and gave up trying to improve my poor little effort.

My entry came in 264 out of 323 with 24 votes. That intimidating design ended up, very deservedly, winning. I also liked these bees, birds with foliage, and geometric owls.

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.