Hedgehogs at the last minute

For the hedgehog contest, I had literally ten minutes to make a design before we left on a trip. So I made a little ASCII hedgehog. I made it a little too small though - it would have had to be bigger to be easily readable in the contest format. But I discovered that too late to redo it.



But in any case, this is the scale that I prefer it at, so no big deal. It got 23 votes in the contest. And unfortunately I didn't even get a chance to vote in this contest so I don't have any other entries to call out specifically, but these are the top ten.

Sandcastles

For the theme "sandcastles," I went for the simplest type possible: digging holes in the sand and then mounding it up by hand. I looked for a sandcastle-themed set of colors and went with this one:


Color by COLOURlovers




I'm not all that happy with how this turned out, and it didn't do very well in the contest. But here's the funny thing - even though I think some of my other recent entries are CLEARLY far superior to this one (pickles and power tools), this got a handful MORE votes than either one of those. I can only shrug!

My favorite entries were these two.

Watercolor power tools

Here's a weird theme: power tools, but done in a watercolor style. This is the kind of contest that just makes me think they're trying to keep the number of entries down to make voting easier. In any case, instead of focusing on the tools themselves, I did just the chargers. They have such interesting shapes and I wonder what kind of thinking goes into their design.



This was pretty fun to draw. I used some free watercolor textures I found online.  However, it only got 12 votes and came in 81st out of 84. Ha, ouch!  My favorite was the drill bits.

Mermaids and other things for children

Spoonflower had a contest for a mermaid design - and this was another partner contest. The winner has a chance at getting their design made into girl's pajamas! So they had some (somewhat confusing) guidelines about not making the design motifs too big or too small, and not using more than eight colors. I didn't fuss too much about it, because I had my own purpose in mind for a mermaid design.

I was getting ready to make another set of three bags for our upcoming family Redwoods trip, and unlike last year where I used fabric I had on hand, I wanted to make specific fabric designs for each kid for their bags. So for my niece, I wanted to make robot mermaids, using the same colors as her robot quilt.



And here's how it turned out as a bag:

The fabric for my son features some of his favorite things: dalmations, a convertible Mustang (just like Dad drives- well, except in yellow instead of gray), giraffes, and penguins. The penguins are facing each other because the last time he went to the zoo, he got to see two penguins pecking at each other and thought it was the most hilarious and interesting thing ever. "They were playing penguin BEAK FIGHTING!" he would say, with accompanying hand gestures. This uses the same set of colors as my animal tax accountant design.


Color by COLOURlovers

For my nephew, I found an interesting palette with his name:

Color by COLOURlovers

And for the design, I combined some of his favorite animals: cheetahs, dragons (a two-legged wyvern style) and penguins.

So for my family it worked out well but made no impact in the mermaid competition. My favorite entry was this night-themed one.

Pickles

Pickles! During my latest pregnancy (this is a scheduled post, so I was still pregnant when I was typing it) I had an ongoing craving for pickles - in particular, miniature gherkin-sized dill pickles. This wasn't all that helpful for coming up with a design, however. I eventually went with just arranging pickles in a herringbone pattern.



The colors are from here:


Color by COLOURlovers

The background texture uses the "star" lines previously seen here. I'm really happy with how this one came out - the layout is clear but it still has textural interest. The pickles are abstract enough that it's not just a novelty print. But, the majority of voters didn't share my opinion and it only got 14 votes. My favorite entry was this one that shows cucumbers, pre-pickling, along with their blossoms.

Woodshop

For the woodshop theme, I went with one of my strongest woodworking memories. When I was pretty young, probably no more than eight, my dad painted a block of wood pink and let me hammer as many nails into it as I wanted. I can remember sitting at the picnic table on our patio out back, my mom probably watching me out the kitchen window, hammering to my heart's content.



I used the same colors as the ballerina plumbers, as it ties into the same "girlish tomboy" phase.

This one actually just squeaked out of the bottom quarter of entries. My favorite was the lathed spindles.

Flower border print for mom

For the contest right before Mother's Day, the challenge was to make a floral border print, the idea being you could sew such a print into a skirt to give to your mother.

I wanted to use some of my mom's favorite flowers: jasmine, cherry blossoms, honeysuckle, and orange blossoms. (Which are also some of mine, seemingly not very coincidentally!) But I wanted to go for a more graphic rather than ornate feel, so I kept it to just navy and white.



Since all the flowers except honeysuckle are five-lobed, I used a tessellation of pentagons as the basis for the layout of the flowers. The background is a simple basketweave, previously seen here.

 Like so many of my designs, this one was in the bottom quartile of votes. The entry I'd be most likely to wear as a skirt myself featured thistles and yarrow. The one I liked best based on visual appeal, without regard to wearing, was this super-sweet and cute one.