I guess not

Aw, poop. That's what my 6-year-old son would say. I did not make it into the final round of Fabric8. Thank you so much to all who voted for me! Now, on to something else ...

Obsessing about sofa pillows! I was prepared to live with the last ones I recently made; but a sick kid barfed on one of them and, as I took the cover off to wash it, the zipper broke.









This time I used snaps.  You can still see the red chalk where I marked placement. It'll wash off.








Here's a closer look at the patterns together. I'm not crazy about these either.  I think I'm having a hard time because they're bed pillows that I'm trying to make work for sofa cushions   Maybe they need to match the futon cover.  Whatever!  I'm going to live with them for now (barring tragedies).

Exciting mail day!

The 15 test swatches I ordered from Spoonflower arrived today!  (This is a terrible picture, color-wise. More camera issues – grrr ...)

I was a little disappointed at how washed out and chalky the colors seem. I guess I'm just used to looking at them on the monitor. Overall, I am pleased. The only one I have to tweak is Entotools. The rest of them are now up for sale in my Spoonflower shop. Go have a little look-see!

And don't forget, if you haven't yet voted for my Fabric8 design, your last chance is Wednesday! Thank you!

I'm in!!!

I did it!  I did it!  I did it!  I made the cut into the semi-finalist round for the 2013 Fabric8 contest at Spoonflower with Robert Kaufman! Yippee! They said there were over 750 entries.

The first round of public voting is now open. Don't you just love my cubic crystal atom structure print? Please go vote for it! (After the jump you will see Winner's Circle, and Birthday Fabric. Look to the right-hand column.) Here are more detailed instructions for those of you who have not voted at Spoonflower before.

I forever thank you!

Sew, and No

Here's my exuberant little 8-year-old, happy about her new skirt and sandals!  I had to get off track and make her a new red skirt because her old one – her favorite – was faded, on the verge of being too small, and finally got a hole in it.  She picked out this fabric which is tiny white flowers on a red background.  I had the tiers sewn all together and she thought it was way too poofy so I ripped it apart and took out fully half of the fabric.  She is very pleased with it now.

As for my design for Challenge 3 of REPEATed, I was a little disappointed with myself after I saw what the contestants did. But, in my own opinion, I'd still be in the running – just barely. I'm not getting the professional advice from the judges like they are, so I'm operating under a handicap, right?  ; )

REPEATed: Challenge 3

Here is the challenge description:

Find a window in your house, look out it [sic], take a picture, and design one print around what you see. Interpret your surroundings as you see fit. What surrounds your daily life? Pick three solid coordinates to go with your print. You must present your image in your blog post about your print. 

This was a fun one for me. I take a lot of pictures out of my windows anyway. I had a whole slew of ideas going from about a dozen different images, but I finally narrowed it down to a design which sprang from the following two images for inspiration.

This one for color:



And this one for the pattern in the screen guard:



Believe it or not, I sampled the palette for this first design, which I'm calling Out the Window Summer, straight from the first image above:



I don’t know how this looks on your screen, but I can’t seem to get greens and turquoises to represent very well. I’m using the ASE file (for simulating a proof preview in Illustrator) provided by Spoonflower along with their color map; so we see why it’s a good idea to order swatches before putting a design up for sale. I hope this turquoise comes out as it looks on the color blanket and not as it looks on my computer screen!

I also came up with another colorway which I call Out the Window Spring:



I can’t decide which one I like better. How about you?

I assume the real contestants can only post a single design/colorway. Let’s go see what they did!

Ditsy hooha

Friday I whipped up these four little ditsy prints to reach my goal of fifteen, which gives me the best price on ordering swatches. I'm calling these little buggers ditsy hooha. Just goofy and fun. Good for quilting. They're not a cohesive collection, but I plan to add to them and build it into more of a "line."

I've been thinking that a good strategy for getting the most out of my Adobe Cloud membership is to concentrate on simpler designs that really take advantage of the pattern tool in Illustrator.  Once my free subscription expires (190  days left!), I think I'll try more complicated hand-drawn repeats with traditional media, using Gimp to help me convert them to digital files.

Color

In another life, when I was a graphic designer, I used to LOVE playing with the Pantone color chips in our office to devise new color combinations.  I've been fantasizing about having my own Pantone chips, but they are pricey ($319 for coated & uncoated paper, $4,200 to get the colors on cotton!). Then I thought maybe I'd order another color blanket from Spoonflower and cut it up.

Then! While I was looking for the perfect hue to paint our foyer, I remembered an old fan book the nice man at Ace gave me a few years ago. It suddenly occurred to me I could cut that up. Duh. Oh boy did I have a fun afternoon.

What you see spread on my work table is only about a third of the book. I've taken pictures of my groupings. I'm about to bring them into Adobe Illustrator to sample the colors into new palettes. Yippee!