Spoonflower giveaway on The Long Thread

Our friend Emily over at The Long Thread is running a contest for two free yards of Spoonflower fabric AND she's offered to help with the design if you are not design-software savvy.

This is a great opportunity for those who have yet to make your first Spoonflower order: hustle on over to Emily's blog and comment on her post to enter.

The weekly array of designs

Nice bunch of designs this week, don't you think? They are:

• Hibiscus by Studio Fibonacci
• wheels by Ros Clarke
• snowglobes by min elliott
• willowcarrepeat by J.R. Campbell of Glasgow, Scotland
• fractured_flower_yellow_600 by Lee Thomas
• lanterns by Bronwyn Landvatter

Let your vote for the next fabric-of-the-week be known here. Follow the results as they come in here.

Review the weekly contest rules and/or enter your own design here.
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Congratulations to designer Sharon Wilson of New Zealand. Her "ant swatch" won the most votes last week and you can buy her cute little creepy-crawlies in the Spoonflower Etsy shop as a limited edition fabric through Sunday.

The final voting results:

• Man-L3-b1-sf by Nine Tomatoes: 247
• Floral2 by M Y: 266
• Green_Crayon_Mandala by TJ Bower: 294
• Flee_s_Beach_is_Blue by kklebe: 296
• WatchesTossedPacked by Sandra Stewart: 235
• Ant_swatch by Sharon Wilson: 373

Thanks, everyone!

SmileRecipe-style cuteness

I don't know about y'all, but I'm in serious need of some springtime cheer these days.  I know it's just February and all, but I am so over winter at this point!  Which is perhaps why SmileRecipe's adorable little gadget pouches jumped out at me while I was browsing our Flickr pool today.  They're so cute and springy to me, though I have to admit I had to look up what a Nintendo DS Lite was.  I'm sure my digital camera would fit very cozily, though!  You can see more of SmileRecipes's cute projects at her Etsy shop here.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I was just noticing that our pool had passed the 1,000 member mark over the weekend.  We're now at 1,001 members, which seems to me like a fine reason to celebrate.  Woo-hoo!  Thanks for playing, everyone!

Mangled missives

For those of you who receive our weekly contest emails, if you use Outlook to read email you may have received (another) mangled missive this morning. If so, apologies. We're going to try to work with the MailChimp help department to figure out how to avoid that particular problem.

You can read the email as intended here.

Pigeon Fabric

 

Congratulations to Charlene Lam, whose birds stole the show this week.  Her "Pigeon Parade" now joins the elite ranks of the Spoonflower fabrics-of-the-week. You can buy it for yourself for the next six days in the Spoonflower Etsy store. Final results for voting last week were:

• Pigeon Parade by Charlene Lam: 509
• roobric by Tessa McSorley: 95
• trees4 by midcenturymaude: 424
• Snowmen by Susan Mitchell: 308
• Abstract_Sunny_Flower_Explosion by Carol Megivern: 119
• late_fixed2 by Kate McInnes of Australia: 298

Charlene has her own Etsy shop as well over at Birdnerd.Etsy.com. (Oops!  Not Charlene's Etsy shop, though still a nice one.)

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The Next Six Fabrics

 

Well, what are you waiting for - go vote!

The designers this week are (clockwise from the top left):

• Man-L3-b1-sf by Nine Tomatoes
• Floral2 by M Y
• Green_Crayon_Mandala by TJ Bower
• Flee_s_Beach_is_Blue by kklebe
• WatchesTossedPacked by Sandra Stewart
• Ant_swatch by Sharon Wilson

Thanks to all for participating. You can stay current on the votes as they are cast here.

Find out how to enter your own design here.

Better late than never... Congratulations to Nissa and a new contest

[For those who received a mangled version of our weekly email,
you can view the pretty, pretty version here. Sorry about that!]

Nissa Prohaska's "colorleaves3"" won the most votes last week, but only by a hair! In our closest competition ever, we saw Nissa's design beat Cate Anevski's "Pink Bears" by just a few votes. The other designs weren't far behind, either. It was a good week for the contest, no?

You can buy Nissa's lovely fabric through this Sunday in the Spoonflower Etsy store.

Full voting results for our closest ever fabric-of-the-week contest:

• "Pink Bears" by Cate Anevski    19.9%    388
•  "plane_ocean_fabric_real" by briana miller   8.9%    173
• "Floral_BlPkPur_SF" by Annie Dwyer Internicola    19.7%    384
• "texture" by Elisa Meneghin    17.0%    330
• "colorleaves3" by Nissa Prohaska    20.6%    401
• "crosses" by Jinjer    13.9%    270

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Another six designs compete: vote now for your favorite

This week's designs are (clockwise from the top left):

• Pigeon Parade by Charlene Lam
• roobric by Tessa McSorley
• trees4 by midcenturymaude
• Snowmen by Susan Mitchell
• Abstract_Sunny_Flower_Explosion by Carol Megivern
• late_fixed2 by Kate McInnes of Australia

Good luck to all! Keep up with  the votes as they are cast here.

Find out how to enter your own design here.

YouTube jackpot

I have a love/hate relationship with the internet which I suspect many of you out there might share.  On the one hand, I really hate how much time can be sucked away before I've even realized I've been reading blogs for an hour during my girls' naptime when I had planned to actually sew something.  But on the other hand, sometimes I run across something so brilliant and amazing that I know I never would've found out if I hadn't been dorking around online.

Courtesy of an archived podcast on dress forms by Lori at Sew Forth Now!, I present to you this fantastic video on how to make your own dress form.  Out of duct tape.  Really.

I love the internet.

Spoonflower swatch toy bag

When I'm cutting row after row of swatches at our cutting table, the thrifty part of me sometimes wonders what people do with their swatches once they've made sure that their design prints the way they want.  I imagine that the professional designers do something...professional with them.  Put them in a swatch book or tack them on a bulletin board with a bunch of other swatches or something.  Personally, I've felt a bit guilty chucking mine into the scrap basket, though it's true that my daughters use them heavily for tiny doll blankets, makeshift doll clothes (tied on with skinny scraps), etc.

Enter Rae, "professional home executive" of Made by Rae.  Rae figured out a very virtuous and extremely cute and practical way to use up a swatch if you've got loose ones lying around.  Her toy bag is pictured left and she's posted a tutorial on her blog.  It's intended for her son's loose toy train bits, but who's to say you couldn't turn it into a little jewelry or lingerie bag for traveling?  Thanks, Rae!

And Stephen?  You can now refer to me as our "professional home executive" when you're not referring to me as Spoonflower's "crafter-in-chief."  Ahem.

Congratulations to Occorb

Congratulations to Occorb, whose "Field-Ornate" design won the most votes in last week's contest. For the next seven days you can buy her fabric in the Spoonflower Etsy shop.

Final vote counts were:

• autumn_suns by Lindsey Kennedy: 108
• Field-Ornate  by occorb: 678  
• childpinkhorsedamask  by Charlotte Warner: 259
• Retro by Mallory Cumrine: 381
• heartPlaidBlue_repeat by steph calvert: 295
• Woman by Christy Brock: 260

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Get Out the Vote

We've got a terrific batch of designs for you to vote on this week, so be sure to weigh in.  From left to right below we have:

• "Pink Bears" by Cate Anevski
•  "plane_ocean_fabric_real" by briana miller
• "Floral_BlPkPur_SF" by Annie Dwyer Internicola
• "texture" by Elisa Meneghin
• "colorleaves3" by Nissa Prohaska
• "crosses" by Jinjer

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VOTE

Tough choice this week! Be sure to follow the votes as they are cast here.

Find out how to enter your own design here.
(Please note that submitted designs must already be uploaded to Spoonflower)