Fabric8 Finalist Profile - Andie Hanna

This is the last designer profile in our series of profiles on the eight finalists in the Fabric8 contest, a competition from Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics to discover a handful of the world's best amateur textile designers. Today we hope you enjoy reading about designer Andie Hanna.  Voting on the eight Fabric8 finalists' collections begins next week!

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Painted Petals by Anderson_Lee, Andie Hanna

I was born in Greenville, South Carolina but really grew up in Columbus, Ohio.  As an adult, my career has taken me all over.   I've lived in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas and Minneapolis.  Now I'm back in good old C-bus and I'm glad to be home.

For the past 13 or so years I’ve worked as a fashion designer of apparel and accessories and have always had a passion for color and print and pattern.  Throughout my career I've had textile designers on my team to handle print and pattern development but about 7 or 8 years ago, I learned how to create my own textile designs when the workload became too much for my textile designers.  I fell in love with it and have been doing it ever since.  I currently work as a design manager and have an amazing team of designers.  I've taught all of them how to design their own prints and create repeats and they love it, too!

When I’m not designing fabrics, I love to play with my 5-year old son, work on my photography, play the piano, draw, and sew. The last big project I completed was making seven roman shades for the breakfast nook in my kitchen.  It really changed the space and I love them!  I also like to read and cuddle with my hubby while watching a movie. I have a hard time picking favorites but right now I’m really into reading Lisa See. One of my favorite movies is American Beauty. (It makes me feel so normal!)

As creatives typically go, I’m kind of a weirdo.  I'm very analytical and very much a planner. I have to plan things out in detail.  I’m also a list person. My husband thinks I’m crazy because I’m always making lists and analyzing the options.

When I first saw the ad on Spoonflower about the Fabric8 contest, I thought it looked interesting and thought I should check it out. When I saw what the theme was, I was hooked. I just love pen and ink and watercolor and couldn’t wait to work on my modern interpretation of those techniques. I’m very inspired by nature and also by travel and culture and discovering new places. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel all over the world for work and it's always extremely inspiring. A recent trip to Florida and my obsession with flowers were the main influeneces behind my “Painted Petals” design. I spent some time sketching out a few flowers before I started drawing them in Illustrator. 

When I first heard that I'd been chosen as one of the Fabric8 contest finalists, I was completely shocked. I really didn’t think I’d make it to the top 8 because there were so many amazing designs. I was in a meeting at work when the email came through. I about jumped out of my chair!

I have my collection somewhat planned out at this point. I have about seven ideas and will probably work them all up before trying to narrow them down. I know I want to have at least one bold black and white print. I love black and white and I think it would sit well with “Painted Petals.”  I also want to do a tonal print with the citrus green color.

Painted Petals by Andie Hanna, Fabric8 finalist

Coats Of Arms Of Many Colors

For this week's challenge we asked designers to create an original family crest, or coat of arms, for their own family and to turn that into a fabric design. As is the case with many of our more outlandish challenges, this one drew somewhat fewer entries than usual, which means that voting should be pretty quick. Perhaps everyone is still recovering from the mob of entries in hand-drawn contest a couple of weeks ago!

 

This week's participants are:

1) "R is for Rudolph"... by retrorudolph's 
2) 8 bit Family Crest by leighr 
3) a crest pro victoriam by paragonstudios 
4) A Rossi Family Crest by thatrossiart 
5) Air, Earth, Water, Fire: Growth and Perserverance by vo_aka_virginiao 
6) amazing orchid by arnie 
7) AmericanWoman by american_women 
8) Armorial Ant by spellstone 
9) atelier des cinq chats by cinqchats 
10) bear crest by annaboo 

Scooters Win Motorcycle Fabric Contest

Not surprisingly, it turns out that the Spoonflower crowd would rather be stylish than speedy, choosing a set of dainty scooters as the winning fabric in our motorcycle-themed contest. Congratulations to Eloisa D., a designer from Crystal River, Florida, and the winner of this week's competition! (You might remember her previous win in the Robot Cheater Quilt contest.) If you're looking for a little more power, be sure to check out the top ten. 

 

The voting results were:

1. 376 votes for Scooters by natitys 
2. 311 votes for vroom - vroom... by jumping_birds 
3. 304 votes for Biker_Birds by lien_geeroms 
4. 290 votes for Easy Rider summer by amel24 
5. 285 votes for Me and my bikers by verycherry 
6. 284 votes for MotorCycles Tires by cassiopee 
7. 281 votes for Good old time! by bora 
8. 233 votes for Cycle craze by orangeblossomstudio 
9. 220 votes for MoooCycles - Hogs & Kisses by bzbdesigner 
10. 213 votes for Mods Forever ! by demigoutte 

Crafty Photography Book Giveaway and Drawing Set Giveaway Winner

Photography has never been my strong suit so I'm often stopped in my tracks whenever I'm cruising around Etsy. How did all these people who are clearly so talented at making stuff--purses, knitted shrugs, pendant necklaces, paintings, or what have you--also get blessed with crazy photography skills?  And will my life suddenly look all perfectly lit, immaculately composed, and clean if I buy that purse/knitted shrug/pendant necklace/painting/what-have-you?  A beautiful photo suggests to me that yes, it just might.

If you need to upgrade your product photography skills, enter this week's giveaway of a copy of The Crafter's Guide to Taking Great Photos.  Just leave a comment on this post or on the corresponding Facebook post and do include your Spoonflower screen name or other means of tracking you down easily if you're our winner.  Entries close next Tuesday, 6/5 and we'll announce a winner on Wednesday, 6/6.  Good luck, would-be shutterbugs!

Last week's winner of a set of Lyra drawing pencils and some good drawing paper was Jeannie Rowan in the UK--congratulations, Jeannie!

Turn a family treasure into a fabric design: Make a silk scarf from old newspaper clippings

This week guest author Emma Jeffery from the blog Hello Beautiful shows us how she turned a family keepsake into a beautiful silk scarf.

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I have never really been the kind of person who collects trinkets, hoards keepsakes or has many treasured family heirlooms tucked away in the attic, but now that I have children of my own, I am increasingly aware of the importance of keeping items that will one day tell our family’s story. Our family history is no more, or less, remarkable than that of the next, but it is unique in its detail and its narrative is a gift for future generations to treasure.

That said, I am not naturally predisposed to keeping things that do not serve a practical purpose so I’m trying to think of ways to preserve the memories of events and people without cluttering up my house with boxes that are never opened or with figurines that sit on a shelf and gather dust.

When my mum told me she was in possession of a newspaper published on the day she was born I was immediately inspired to think of ways to release it from its captive state at the bottom of a dusty drawer and to bring the printed material to life once more. After all, what good are treasures or keepsakes if we don’t stop to reflect upon them once in awhile?

My mum was born in England in June 1944, the day after the Normandy Landings when the allied troops invaded northern France, resulting in the decisive allied victory that marked the beginning of the end of the Second World War. The newspaper is only 8 pages long (presumably because of the shortages at the time) but despite this, I felt there was a wealth of material: adverts, news columns, satirical cartoons, movie theater announcements, letters, crosswords...

I decided to take photos of different parts of the paper that caught my eye and although there was no ignoring the obvious war reports and political references, I found I was drawn to aspects of the paper that highlighted regular humanity during wartime. For example, there was an advert for soap which asked the readers to consider, ‘Will he find you as young and lovely when he comes home again?” I also took photos of the date printed on the paper (my mum’s birthday!)

With roughly 100 photos of different parts of the newspaper, I transferred them onto my computer and used Picasa to create a collage of my favorite images. In the collage option in Picasa, you are able to set a custom size so I put in 36” x 36” as I intended on making a silk scarf of these dimensions printed on to one yard of Spoonflower’s beautiful silk crepe de chine.

I then positioned and repositioned the photos I had taken until I was happy with the design. At this point the colors were still their original yellowing newspaper with black text, but using Picasa’s Duo-Tone option under the image processing tab, I was able to select two colors for my print.

Though I tried a few test swatches before printing my yardage, all the color options I chose were within shades of my mum’s favorite colors, to make this scarf really personal for her.

When I received my yardage, I trimmed the edges and sewed a hand rolled hem around all four sides to complete the scarf.

This is beautiful fabric with such a special print that I know the scarf will become a family heirloom. And whilst the original newspaper may soon be returned to the bottom of the drawer and forgotten once more, the scarf will be worn and enjoyed, and will help tell part of our story for generations to come.

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About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.

Fabric8 Finalist Profile - Linda Mahoney

This is the seventh and penultimate in our series of profiles of the eight finalists in the Fabric8 contest, a competition from Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics to discover a handful of the world's best amateur textile designers. Today we're featuring artist and designer Linda Mahoney. Enjoy, and look for our final interview post at the end of the week!

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Butterflygarden by Mahoneybee, Linda Mahoney

I was born in Texas, USA, and now I split my time between Texas and New Mexico. I spend a lot of my time doing different types of artwork and taking photos. You can see an online art gallery of my work here. Spending time with my husband, family and our miniature schnauzer gives me utmost joy. Sneaking in a little time to read or listen to audio books while painting fills in the cracks.

I’ve always admired fabric and wallpaper designs and thought I would love to try my hand at it. I got a BFA in commercial art, but that was in the era BC (before computers). I am self-taught on the computer and am always looking for different challenges and opportunities to expand my artwork. I first found Spoonflower through a search engine about a year ago, and tried coming up with a few ideas, but the repeats were (and still are) somewhat of a problem for me. I didn’t get brave enough to put something out there until now.

I don’t sew and have decided to leave that to my friends who amaze me with those skills. My arts and crafts room threatens to consume me, so I keep trying to limit myself. I’m a signature member of the Colored Pencil Society of America and do free-lance artwork.

It’s so hard to narrow the field, but I loved reading The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene as an all-time favorite and more recently Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Temple Grandin and Crosscreek are two of my favorite movies.  I like way too many different types of music to pick just a few favorites and the same with artists, but when it comes to fabric design, I'm inspired by William Morris and Kaffe Fassett and like to review the work of Klimt, Monet and the living artist, Joseph Raffael, from time to time.

My reaction to being in the Fabric8 top 100 was shock, and then becoming one of the 8 finalists was beyond shocking as well as humbling. I saw some beautiful, amazing work by incredibly talented designers in the top 100. Honestly, I have always been leery of contests that involve voting because I assumed you only had a chance if you had a giant and loyal social network. (A lot of my friends don’t have a clue how to navigate the Internet to even vote!) I was at home doing a quick check of email before 5:00 a.m. before I joined a friend to walk and I read it then.  It jolted me right awake and I’m still smiling about it!

 

Linda's winning fabric design is in the middle, between two photos
she used as inspiration for the painting.

When I saw the theme of watercolor, pen and ink, I thought I wanted to create something a little loose to convey the feel of watercolor and include just a bit of pen and ink. I’m usually very technical with my artwork, so that was a stretch for me. I tried drawing out the elements first, but that felt too constrained, so I just did free hand work. I wanted to keep the colors bright and clear, too. I love flowers and thought of the light airy petals of poppies.

 

I have some ideas to develop for the rest of the collection but am not committed to them yet. I’ve been putting different colors together and am not sure which direction I will ultimately go with it.  I especially like paisleys and plaids and will probably include at least one of those in my final collection.

 

Butterfly Garden by mahoneybee, Fabric8 finalist

 

Fabric8 Finalist Profile - Tamara Serrao

This is the sixth in our series of profiles of the eight finalists in the Fabric8 contest, a competition from Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics to discover a handful of the world's best amateur textile designers. Today we're profiling Canadian designer Tamara Serrao. Look for our penultimate Fabric8 designer profile tomorrow!

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Dappled Migration by Kayajoy, Tamara Serrao

I was born in northern Ontario but when I was 4, my family sailed to Trinidad to live. There I grew up exploring the outdoors in a sunny and colourful environment. I left Trinidad to come back to Canada at age 17 but tropical birds, insects, fish, and flora were an enormous part of my younger years and remain ever present in my memories and imagination. Today I live in Montreal, where I long for the colour and warmth of summer for far too many months of the year.

I have a bachelors degree in art, with a major in textiles and a minor in art history. While in school, however, my main focus was in weaving. It wasn’t until last year, after many years of not being involved in textiles to any great degree, that my sister introduced me to Spoonflower and I quickly became addicted to the design process. I set myself the goal of entering as many of the weekly contests as I could manage so as to push my boundaries aesthetically and technically. I have learned so much through this exercise.

When I’m not designing fabric, I'm either at work designing packaging and labels, trying to cook an interesting meal (I stress “trying”), or being creative with my kids. In the summer I love being on our rooftop deck, planting beautifully coloured flowers in every available spot and enjoying the fresh air and sky.

I grew up with a mom who sewed most of our clothes. Delving into fabric shops, bags of ribbons, boxes of buttons, and stacks of patterns are some of my earliest distinct memories. I learned to sew at a very young age and have gone through phases of fervent stitching, embroidery, quilting or knitting when the inspiration has hit.

My favorite period has been the anticipation of and first years of my children’s lives. I still have the quilt my grandmother made for me when I was a baby and I wanted my kids to each have that tactile keepsake of their own. In typical parenting fashion, my firstborn’s was pretty much finished before she was born.

But my son’s quilt was only finished a couple of months ago. (He is now 4.)

I also enjoy making baby clothes because the scale is perfect for me. I get a great sense of accomplishment from such adorable, small, quickly finished projects.

Having two young children, I read a lot of kids’ books. Some of my favorites are Where the Wild Things Are, Iggy Peck Architect, Grandpa Green, and The Red Shoes. I derive so much inspiration from ideas and styles of illustration in our younger home library. My favorite musician at the moment is Michael Kiwanuka. His voice is spellbinding. As for fabric designers, that’s a tough one to narrow down. There is quite a range for me, from Amy Butler to Kate Spain to Lizzie House to Skinny Laminx.  My list of favorites goes on and on.  Probably due to the fact that my own work is usually quite detailed & controlled, I'm really enjoying the paintings of Lulie Wallace and Michelle Armas right now.

I was completely ecstatic when I learned that I was one of the Fabric8 finalists. I had just flown into Halifax in the late morning to spend some time with my mom and dad. Not being one of the most technologically advanced individuals around, it took me a good hour to get wi-fi running on my laptop. My email was the first thing I checked and there at the top was a message from Stephen saying I was in. I literally squealed with delight!

I would say that 95% of my fabric design work thus far has been created using Illustrator. I am a self-taught computer graphist and have been learning as I go. I have, however, been wanting to get back to drawing and painting for some time now, so the Fabric8 contest was just what I’ve been waiting for. It hasn’t been as easy as I'd thought it would be, though. It's literally been half a lifetime since I’ve used watercolours, so I've gone through whole days of sketching, drawing with technical pens, experimenting with paint, scanning, manipulating with Photoshop, and then starting all over again from scratch the following day. I think I'm finally on track, and I'm creating a collection based on sunlight and wind with fantastical patterned butterflies being the main characters. As always, colour and pattern are driving me.

Dappled Migration by Kayajoy, Fabric8 finalist

Spoonflower Picks for Pretty Skirts

I'm so pleased that Susan and Adrianna at Crafterhours invited us to participate in their annual Skirt Week series this year.  From the many times I was teased as a girl for preferring long prairie skirts over jeans, til today when moms at my daughters' schools frequently ask me why I'm "so dressed up," I just love skirts.  It's been really fun this week to have an excuse to think about them so much! 

Susan asked me to share some of my favorite Spoonflower fabric designs that work well for skirts and I certainly have my own opinions and preferences. But since the Spoonflower office is jam-packed with sewing enthusiasts, it seemed a shame not to ask them, too, and they didn't disappoint. Offering their favorite design picks are Holly, our operations manager, Melodie and Allie, both printer operators, and Caroline, our graphic designer. We were all in pretty close agreement about our favorite types of fabric for skirts--more about that later--but we all chose very different designs.  Some of their favorites were designs that even I hadn't run across before on Spoonflower, and I hope you enjoy them, too. Let's get started with some pretty designs!

Holly standing at left is modeling a pretty summery skirt made up in linen/cotton canvas printed with Spoonflower designer Holli Zollinger's design, "Diamond Circles." (That's the aqua colorway shown on Holly's skirt above.)  Holli uses a lot of geometric shapes and stylized motifs in her designs and she's a Spoonflower staff--and Spoonflower customer!--favorite designer.  Chevrons, large-scale plus signs, and highly stylized natural motifs like flowers and raindrops are all featured in Holli Zollinger's designs and make up into really striking, sophisticated skirts. 

Pictured next to Holly on the right, Melodie is wearing a skirt made from organic cotton sateen printed with a design by KristopherK called "French Stripe." KristopherK is another popular designer on Spoonflower with a more subdued and romantic design style. Personally, I love KristopherK's lovely "Magnolia Little Gem" series which features white flowers falling across the width of their solid-colored backgrounds.  

The "Arctic" colorway in this series is shown above. You could cut simple A-line skirt panels on the crosswise grain of any of these fabrics and end up with an incredible skirt!

Caroline, shown here standing outside the Spoonflower office front door, is wearing an A-line skirt she made from organic cotton sateen printed up with her own design, "Red Eyed Susan."  Caroline actually has quite a few designs she's worked up in her Spoonflower shop, and has been giving her new sewing machine a workout using lots of prints of her self-designed, yoga-inspired favorites.  When it comes to the types of prints she tends to like, she says, "The bolder, the better!"  Her skirt pick from the Spoonflower marketplace is a kawaii style print by Zesti.  Tiny deer printed onto an electric yellow skirt, anyone?

Allie is shown here wearing a cute skirt she made out of Pennycandy's "Mix Tapes" design printed onto organic cotton sateen.

Amy Peppler Adams is the Seattle based designer behind the Pennycandy front, and her style is circus- and retro-culture inspired with bold type fonts, jukebox song labels and 1960's coffee cups rendered in primary colors.  These are bold choices for clothing items, but I think summer is a great time for playing around with novelty prints for clothing. Novelty prints are also known as "conversational prints" in the fabric world.  Don't you imagine conversations about your colorful skirts at the farmer's market, neighborhood cook-outs, and ice cream shops?

Allie says her next project will likely be a skirt made up in one of Domesticate's "Jumbo Dots" prints.  That's the mint/neon colorway shown here.  The dots are a hefty 2-inches in diameter!

Next up is me wearing a wrap skirt made from organic cotton sateen (care to guess one of the Spoonflower staff's favorite fabric types for skirts?) printed with Thebline's "ABP Chandelier" design.  I love its simple blue on white palette, but now feel like a complete dork for being the fourth person in this post to be wearing a black shirt with their Spoonflower skirts.  That was definitely NOT planned!

My next skirt will be made up in another Thebline design called "ABP par avion" which looks just like the pattern trimming air mail envelopes, don't you think?  I've got two yards of this design printed on organic cotton sateen sitting on my dining room table right now, suggesting that it will figure prominently in my upcoming long weekend.

And all these mentions of organic cotton sateen bring me to the subject of fabric types that we like to use for our skirt projects around here. When Spoonflower first started, we printed only onto quilting-weight cotton. This fabric is most commonly recommended for lightweight home-dec projects including, of course, quilts but I think that quilting cotton has its place in the skirt fabric pantheon, too.  I have a few quilting-cotton skirts that I think of as everyday skirts because they're hard-wearing, extremely washable, cheaper to make up, and I don't mind if they get dirty.  If I'm wearing a quilting-cotton skirt, it doesn't bother me so much when one of my girls sidles up to me to sneakily wipe off her dirty hand or runny nose.  (Ok, actually I do kind of mind about the noses. That's gross however washable my skirt is.)

But sturdiness isn't all that's needed in a skirt. I find that quilting-weight cotton tends to produce a stiffer skirt that doesn't drape as well as other fabric types.  It stands out from the body a bit rather than hanging in nice folds or swirling about my legs.  Most of us skirt sewers at Spoonflower tend to use our organic cotton sateen or linen/cotton canvas for skirt projects instead. The organic cotton sateen drapes just beautifully, has a lovely, subtle sheen, and measures a nice, wide 56-inches across. The linen/cotton canvas is also a nice choice for more structured types of skirts; it holds pleats and crisp edges beautifully and is a generous 54-inches wide. If you really want a flowy, feminine look, cotton/silk, cotton voile (with a lining), or silk crepe de chine are luxurious choices.  Just tell your kiddos there is to be no nose-wiping, please.

I hope you all enjoy the Spoonflower staff picks for skirts.  Now on to some pretty weekend skirt-sewing projects!

Fabric8 Finalist Profile - Julie Lynch

This is the fifth in our series of profiles of the eight finalists in the Fabric8 contest, a competition from Spoonflower and Robert Kaufman Fabrics to discover a handful of the world's best amateur textile designers. Today we're featuring Australian designer Julie Lynch. Enjoy, and look for our sixth interview post on Monday!

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The Scented Garden by CJLDesigns, Julie Lynch

I've always lived in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia.  I grew up in the town of Lobethal which is known for its German heritage and wonderful bakery, and also as the home for many years of the Onkaparinga Woollen Mill. I currently live with my husband and our two boys ages 6 and 7 in a little house in Littlehampton.

I work as a graphic designer in children’s wear and, apart from designing prints and embroideries and doing technical illustrations and croquis, I also design some yardage prints. I was so happy to find Spoonflower because I love patterns and putting things into repeat.  I do enjoy my work but it's also great to have the freedom to work on designs that are all my own. I've been at Spoonflower for just over a year now and was very excited to hear about Fabric8.

When I'm not working on fabric designs, I love to go driving.  Actually my husband does the driving as I haven't got my license yet. (I've been putting that off for many years now.) We like exploring places we've never been before with the kids or going to favourite places we have been, and doing a lot of photography along the way. I also enjoy going to lots of little markets in search of interesting bits and pieces for our many collections.

I don't sew on a machine so unfortunatley the only sewing I do at the moment is hand-sewing costumes for the kids or attempting to mend clothes (which often need mending after I've finished with them). I would love to make a quilt or two and learn to crochet properly. Before I had children, I made lots of handmade bears from mohair and old coats and I enjoyed making my own sewing patterns.

I also really enjoy printmaking.  I enjoyed a lino-printing workshop I took recently and have also done etching and screen-printing.

I'm really drawn to illustration and have many favourite illustrators, some of whom are also talented designers on Spoonflower. A few of my favourite children’s book illustrators include Graeme Base and Pamela Allen, and I love the beautiful work of Christopher Wormell.

I have to say that watercolour does not come naturally to me so when working on my design for this contest, I wanted to do something that had strong line work with the texture of water colour. I love working with natural motifs like flowers and birds and I'm looking forward to expanding on this theme for the collection. 

Living in Australia, the time difference means that the contest winners normally go up around 1:00 a.m. Friday morning. I was feeling a little nervous before the finalists were announced so I thought I'd just go to sleep and check when I woke in the morning. After finally dropping off around 12:30 a.m., I woke up again about an hour later, checked the finalist results, and was so excited to find my design in the finals that I couldn’t go back to sleep until around 4 a.m.!

Get Your Bobbin Running... and Vote for Motorcycle Fabrics!

 

It's almost summer, when the lure of the open road is at its most powerful. While most of us are probably not in a position to throw away everything and hit the highway à la Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, we can at least have our pick of motorcycle fabrics. Vote for your favorites and we'll unleash the top ten next week.

Vote for Motorcyle Fabrics

 

This week's participants are:

1. 6 coloured scooters by rocket_and_bear 
2. 6 little Indian bikes no logo by karisplace_com 
3. A Part Here, A Part There... by shelleymade 
4. American Motorcycle by glimmericks 
5. An American Classic-Indian Motorcycles by mammajamma 
6. At the Finish Line - Motocycle Race Pennants by owlandchickadee 
7. BIKE (natural) by scrummy 
8. Biker Bliss by droyal 
9. Biker Chick Fashions by ★lucy★santana★ 
10. Biker Chicks on the Open Road by sammyk 

Announcing the Top 10 Hand-Drawn Fabrics

With a field of 500 entries, it's a special treat to announce the top ten in our contest for fabric designs created from handmade art. This week's winner is quilter and graphic designer Diane Frazier, whose "Henna Birds" fabric was created using Sharpies.

See the Top 10 Hand-Drawn Fabrics

Ok, so we're posting all of the (lengthy) results below:

1. 489 votes for Henna Birds by dianef 
2. 465 votes for Big Blooms by pattysloniger 
3. 429 votes for Sweet Paradise by demigoutte 
4. 390 votes for branches on lacy beige background by katarina 
5. 387 votes for Giraffe Line-Up (Color Pencil) by ttoz 
6. 381 votes for Tree of life by dinorahdesign 
7. 376 votes for Bukhara by chulabird 
8. 351 votes for I love Maija! by ravenous 
9. 317 votes for botanical hand drawn by sonny&bee 
10. 313 votes for Jasmine by puimun 

Announcing the Urban Sightings Contest Grand Prize Winner

Remember the Urban Sightings contest we ran a few weeks ago? As you may remember, the co-sponsor for that contest was the Textile Center in Minneapolis, which turned the top ten designs into a terrific exhibit in the Center's gallery:

The final piece of the contest consists of awarding the grand prize, selected by jurors at the Textile Center from the top ten: a full copy of Adobe's Photoshop software, an indispensible tool for the digital textile designer.

Well, we're pleased to announce that the grand prize goes to St. Augustine by Tricia Coulson, a part-time textile artist from LeClaire, Iowa.  She creates art quilts but tells us that she's just started designing textiles. Congratulations, Tricia!

See the Urban Sightings Contest page

St Augustine fabric by Tricia Colson

 

Drawing Set giveaway and Handmade Weddings book winner

Browsing all the amazing hand-drawn fabric designs for this week's contest--not to mention the pen, ink, and watercolor renderings for the Fabric8 contest--has gotten us pretty excited lately about designs created by hand. To my eye, there's something so organic, approachable, and just plain human about designs that are drawn and painted by hand, even after they've been turned into a digital file. The little line variations and imperfections of designs created in this way are just so compelling to me. 

If your interest has been piqued by this approach to designing, too, why not enter this week's giveaway of a swank new set of Lyra Aquarelle colored pencils and a giant pad of high-quality drawing paper and get started!  As always, to enter our giveaway please just leave your comment below or on the relevant Facebook post, and do include your Spoonflower screen name or other means of tracking you down easily.

Entries close next Tuesday, 5/29 at 7 pm EST, and we'll announce a winner on Wednesday, 5/30.  Good luck, everyone!  And while you're brushing up on your drawing skills, you might want to check out Julia Rothman's tutorial put up on Design*Sponge awhile back that shows how to turn a hand-drawn image into a repeating fabric design with just a pair of scissors and some tape.  I've been sending people to this one for a couple of years now which makes it an internet oldie, I guess, but it's a very goodie.

The winner of last week's giveaway of $50 of Spoondollar credit and a copy of Handmade Weddings is Irina Elenskaya in Ukraine--congratulations, Irina!