Ready to vote again? Doll Panels, Round 2

Ok, after some good feedback on a flawed voting process last week, we've decided to experiment with the way we handle voting during weeks when we hold semifinal rounds. Instead of having to choose a single favorite design per page, you can vote for as many -- or as few -- as you want. This week we've spread 37 designs over three pages, and on each page you can 'check' all the designs you really like and then move on to the next page. The vote totals will obviously be much higher, but everyone will get a chance to vote for designs they like without being forced to skip over one excellent design in favor of a slightly more excellent one. That's what the finals are for, right? We still plan to take the top five designs in the voting and run them against the top five from last week for the final round. Vote here.

The contestants in round two of our doll panel-themed fabric of the week contest are:

Heidi Crawford  dollpanel
Rochelle Hughes nancy_ann_drawing
Stephanie Faith This Doll Loves
Kim Niles Christmas Westie Doll Panels
mel latthitham bright owl
Tina Rose annabelle_doll
Jane Pierce aka zJayne Galley Girl
Chelsee Gobin  What a Doll ! - Happy/Sad
Michelle @ Wee Folk Art weefolkart-gnome-dolls-four-colors
Jean  img056
vo monkey_doll_all_tealsharpened
kismutt Little Geisha Girls
blueberryblonde Nurse Berry
Carrie Kirby Clementine thinking
connie kaiser Gingerbread Doll
susalabim doll_panel
Kim Timothy Nesting Dolls
Joan De Lurio stuffed vegetables: roots
Mochi Studios Ninja Beans Panel
Emily Hawke astronaut
Gretchen Schroeder Baby Saguaros
Kathy fronczak  Gnome_for_the_Holidays_Dolls
jackie the weebotts
TurquoiseCro Pink Rose
Cate Anevski The Pact Doll Panel
melanie hamilton catrinaFatQuarter
Dawn Huntington ChristmasBoggie
Jordan Perme wonderland_flip_doll
Star Primm audrey_and_pippin
Uptown_girl  Winter Dolly
Katy Tanis Teddy Bears of the World
Sarah Nussbaumer Cats in pajamas
Rosanna Bernstein Jazzy Jasmine Dolly from Japan
emily  ready for play
kari DollPattern
Aliza   Rich Doll Poor Doll
smilerecipe Kawaii Kokeshi

Good luck to all!

The top five vote-getters from last week, by the way, are listed below. These five doll panel designs will appear again next week in the final voting.

Jessee Maloney 'Robot Dolls'
apoo 4 little gnomes
Renule 'Dollpanel_triorio1'
Sylvia Ion Humpty_Shelf_Sitter
Gila von Meissner  14"/ 35cm Kawaii Kokeshi Dolls

And for those of you who pulling together costumes this weekend for yourselves or your little ones, have a happy Halloween.

A new sewing obsession

In the last 24 hours, I have become completely obsessed with sewing a zigzag quilt.  It all started with a general feeling of bummed-ness that came on while reflecting that I am really not so good with the clothing sewing.  Then came a little twinkling of re-interest in home-sewing projects. I start craving as much cozy as possible when the weather turns cool.  Shortly thereafter, dear Stephen picked me up a copy of Material Obsession which pictures quilts sewn with just the right mix of reproduction vintage fabrics and funky modern prints.  Then on to the Material Obsession blog--where I saw this beauty--and then on to the Flickr zigzag quilt pool.  (Is there a Flickr pool for everything?)  I'm totally smitten.

Lest you dismiss this quilt project because of all that triangle piecing, did you know that you can make one with strip-pieced square blocks sewn on point?  You can!  Amanda Jean from Crazy Mom Quilts offers a tutorial on Bee Square Quilts here!

Fabric Of the Week: Fish & Colors Theme - deadline Nov. 2

When I posted about the upcoming Fabric Of the Week theme in our email last week, I made two mistakes:

1) The deadline for submitting your design is Monday, November 2, 2009 at noon, EST -- NOT November 5th, as I wrote in the email.

2) In addition to the prescribed palette of colors, I wrote initially that you could use only white. Upon further consideration, we decided that white AND black are both ok to use. Apologies for the late modification!

You can read more about the rules for entry and find the form to submit your Spoonflower design for the contest here. 

Due to widespread dissatisfaction with the voting methods used in recent semifinal rounds,  the upcoming voting this week will allow you to vote for as many -- or as few -- finalist candidates as you like in our doll panel design contest. So stay tuned!

Spoonflower in black and white

We posted about this on Twitter & Facebook last week, but failed to take note on our blog - Tina Firesheets of The Greensboro News & Record recently penned a very nice account of the Spoonflower story: Spoonflower: A Blossoming Business. It's been republished once or twice in other places. Most impressive -- to us, at any rate -- were the very large photos that appeared on the front page of the paper. [A shot of Danielle showed up on p. 2]

Fabric Of the Week: Vote for your favorite doll panels (round 1)

Once again we were blown away by all the responses to this week's contest theme. With 77 entries in the Doll Panel contest, once again we'll be breaking the contest into two weeks of semifinal voting with a third week for the finals.

Week one has thirty-nine designs, spread out over four pages in the voting. You can vote for up to one design per page (although a vote on each page is not required) by clicking on the design you like best (a green check mark appears on the image when you select it). We'll take the top five designs from this week and the top five from next week and run them the week after -- with photos -- in the final round. [note: I originally wrote to the participating designers that we'd take the top fifteen designs, but we've since decided just to run ten finalists]

There's one other point that may deserve explanation. As you look through the entries you will notice that not everyone interpreted the idea of 'doll panels' the same way. That's our fault, really, because we failed to set out a technical definition of 'doll panels' in our entry form. As usual, we've accepted all of the entries regardless and we'll leave it to the crafty Spoonflower community to decide which approach to 'doll panels' it most favors.

VOTE HERE. The participants in week 1 are:

Beth Parker Obama Doll
Joysmom 'dozen_faces'
Rochelle Fugate Birthday Girl
Joanne C. Harper Saint Nick in Green
Diana Symes dolls
Julie Shaw Curlicue Girl
Kweli Kitwana MyAffirmDoll
Renule 'Dollpanel_triorio1'
Marie Eiriksson pigeboldlillagul
Sylvia Ion Humpty_Shelf_Sitter
Kelly Grooters monster_dolls
jennifer borrell anderson out of doors girls
peggy gatto 2_copy
katy keuter nesting-dolls
Cathy Comora 'The_Ta_Ta_Dolls'
Jessee Maloney 'Robot Dolls'
Laura Wilson Build Paint Bake Sew Dolls
Kelli Perkins perkinsdolls
Crittie M. Gay Sassy Dolls
Annelie Hervi Dollpanels
Lisa Rene Anderson Spoonflower_doll_panel_LRA
Cathy Bullington vudo2
Leigh Forest Sprites (Mini Dolls)
Shala Kerrigan Flower Kokeshi Dolls
Lynn Baron twobloomfairy
Stacy Campbell-Kraft Darla_the_doll
Leanna Maksymiuk gnome_grey
Linn Bodur doll1
Valorie Wilson steampunkdoll
Jen Addotta matroyshka_nesting_dolls
apoo 4 little gnomes
Gila von Meissner 4"/ 35cm Kawaii Kokeshi Dolls
Elizabeth McKenzie vincent van gogh ...departed artist doll
Ginette Callaway Beauty Large
Linda Tieu  Singing Doll Boy Panel
Katie Bailey Kawaii Kokeshi
Lindsay Nightingale The Extra's
Karen cox Northern Light Dreams
Sharyl Chow Sailor Kitty

The Numbers Are In: Congratulations to Katie Daisy for winning Fabric Of the Week

The Fabric Of the Week winner in our numbers-themed design contest is Katie Lombardo (Katie Daisy) an artist and illustrator who also runs an Etsy shop called The Wheatfield. The final round had many lovely and original designs, but "Candy Coated Numbers" came out on top.

If you want to refresh your memory on the finalists, you can see them all in our numbers-fabric Flickr set. You can also see how the final voting turned out here.

For the first time this week you don't actually have to truck over to Etsy to buy the winning fabric, it's available for sale on Spoonflower itself! So buy it here for as long as Katie decides to keep it up for sale. Hurray!

Fabric Designs With Numbers: Vote For Your Favorite Fabric Of the Week Finalist

Once again this week, we fudged a little and have sixteen -- rather than the planned fifteen -- finalist designs based on the voting last week. From forty down to sixteen is not bad, and ended up with a really diverse group of designs for our Numbers-themed Fabric Of the Week competition.

You'll have only one vote this week, so choose carefully. On the polling page you'll see a photo of all of the fabrics and then a series of squares showing the designs themselves. You'll vote by clicking on the design you like the best and when you do so you should see a green check mark appear on the design. Submit your vote by clicking the 'done' button at the bottom of the polling page. Voting happens here. Please vote only one time!

Based on the voting last week, our finalists are:

• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/99676    Candy Coated Numbers by Katie Lombardo
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/99753    dropping_sixes_and_nines7 by Nancy Rink
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/99721    hermes number tumble by Darci Falin
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101138    'Numberology' by tammikins
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101216    tree2 by Star Primm
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/100529    Numero Uno by Heather Dutton
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/100952    Retro_clocks_and_Numbers by Cynthia Frenette
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101027    ready_or_not_two by Joy Lamphere
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101217   'NumberBlocks' by monkeybutt
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101260    Five_Little_Ducks by Sylvia Ion
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101270    Big_Fat_Zero by Alex Morgan
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/99750    typewriterbw by Lauren Dahl
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101157    fractions by Michelle Freedman
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/100779    NumberFun by kari
• http://www.spoonflower.com/explore/101350    4_four_tile by Sarah Meyer
• http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_entry/101195 numbers2ndtryallflat by Lauren Hunt

The deadline for submitting doll panels for next week's contest is Monday, October 19th at noon EST.

Questions about Spoonflower's doll panel fabric design contest

As you may remember, next week's fabric design contest is specifically for doll panels. [Deadline is Monday, October 19th, at noon, EST. Entry form and details are here.]

We've received a couple of good questions about this particular Fabric Of the Week theme and I thought it would be a good idea to post the questions and responses here in case anyone else is wondering the same thing. [questions below paraphrased from our scrapbooking friend KarenHarveyCox]

o What size should I make the doll panels?

They can be any size, but we will preview the panels in the contest as 1-yard pieces rather than quarter-yards, which is what we usually show for contests, so size your design to display well at one-yard. A yard of quilting weight is, by default, a 6,300 pixel canvas (42" x 150 pixels). So if your doll panel is 1,575 pixels wide, it will repeat four times across the width of the fabric preview. If it is 1,050 pixels wide it will repeat six times across. A  yard is 5,400 pixels tall by default. To repeat your panel twice vertically, it would need to be 2,700 pixels tall.

o Does my doll panel have to show the front and back of the doll?

Not required, but cool.

o Spoonflower seems to have lots of doll panels, teddy bear panels, etc. I'd like to design an apron panel. If I do that, how do I size it?

As with all files on Spoonflower, we don't alter or adjust the file you upload in any way. If you want to create an apron panel, you'll need to design it yourself using a graphics program of some sort. If one-yard of canvas is enough to make your apron, you should try to design your panel to a one-yard canvas. In the case of quilting-weight cotton, you should design to a 6300 pixel by 5400 pixel space (42" x 36" at 150 pixels per inch). Large designs that take up an entire yard will almost certainly have to be saved either as PNGs or JPGs rather than TIFs in order to get them under our 30MB upload limit.

If anyone else has questions about the doll panel design theme, please post them in the comments!

Fabric Of the Week: Numbers - Semifinals Voting!

As we've come to expect, the announcement last week of another design theme challenge inspired an avalanche of creativity. Last week's theme was fabrics using numbers and we received forty submissions. For the voting this week you'll have four pages to go through with ten designs per page. You can vote for one favorite on each page. Next week we'll take the top fifteen vote-getters and put them up for another vote as finalists to determine the next fabric of the week.

We're trying out a new tool for running surveys, so forgive us if it still seems a little rough around the edges. One of the advantages of our new survey is that it is a bit more secure than the old one so we can easily eliminate efforts by any one individual to vote many times for a single design. The downside of our new security is that it limits votes by location, rather than individual computer. So that may make it a bit difficult to vote if you're sharing an office or house with other Spoonflower fans. We'll try it this week and see how it goes, but if you have feedback or suggestions please leave them in the comment thread on this post.

Get out and vote!

Our intrepid textile designers this week are:

1. chiffres by Corentine Georges
2. number_bumper by apoo
3. twelveoclocklunchtime by Linda Tieu
4. Candy Coated Numbers by Katie Lombardo
5. typewriterbw by Lauren Dahl
6. dropping_sixes_and_nines7 by Nancy Rink
7. mmmat6510's organic numbers by Melinda Mathews
8. Numbermals by Neris Paris
9. Fish Alive by Julie Shaw
10. Numero Uno by Heather Dutton
11. Numble1 by Anna
12. vll_numbers_6_26_fabric_5 by Victoria Lasher
13. number by Ky Deslatte
14. numbers by Valorie Wilson
15. NumberFun by kari
16. calculations by Dalit Pessach
17. Fairies_Can_Count_too_you_know by Gila von Meissner
18. numbers and things by Jane Marlow
19. hermes number tumble by Darci Falin
20. Spell My Name in Binary by FreakGeekUnique
21. Retro_clocks_and_Numbers by Cynthia Frenette
22. Retro-Numbers by Chantele McPhee
23. PalaceScript26 by Gregory Campbell
24. ready_or_not_two by Joy Lamphere
25. 'Numberology' by tammikins
26. fractions by Michelle Freedman
27. retro_123 by Virginia O
28. Crayon_Numbers-ch by Cynthia Strickland
29. Numbers in Numbers by jackie
30. 'NumberBlocks' by monkeybutt
31. DigiTartan by Bonnie MacBird
32. numbers2ndtryallflat by lauren hunt
33. tree2 by Star Primm
34. Five_Little_Ducks by Sylvia Ion
35. NumberFabricSpoonflower by Amy Kuhl Cox
36. Big_Fat_Zero by Alex Morgan
37. numbers2 by elisabeth
38. just_a_number by Sandra Stewart
39. DollsonParade2 by Kweli Kitwana
40. 4_four_tile by Sarah Meyer

Spoonflower Spoons & Flowers: Fleur de Cuillère Wins Fabric Of the Week

Congratulations to Heather Dutton of hang tight studio! Her Fleur de Cuillère won out over an inspiring field of entrants in our Spoons-and-Flowers-themed fabric design contest.

One of the cool things about the Spoonflower community, as most of you know, is how many amazingly talented amateurs use our site to create fabric and try out ideas. Anyone who can put together a digital design can create fabric using Spoonflower, and many of the efforts we see -- even from people trying this for the first time -- are really fun and creative. [Anyone remember Kim's flower and bees fabric? It was her first effort at creating digital art.] But in my mind what makes our community even more cool is that we also have professional textile designers mixing it up elbow-to-elbow with the amateurs. I mention this because in glancing at Heather Dutton's web site, it appears that she is a professional who also does this sort of thing for companies like Pottery Barn and Starbucks as well as for fun. It makes me happy to see designers of many experience levels inspiring and sharing with one another.

At any rate, you can buy Heather's Fleur de Cuillère fabric for the next six days only from our Etsy shop. And thanks to all seventy of the designers who participated in this theme! You all rock.

Fab Fabric Finalists for Fabric Of the Week Spoons and Flowers Theme

We started with an eye-popping seventy submitted designs last week. We've taken the top fifteen vote getters and narrowed them down to just sixteen finalists [we said fifteen last week, but there was a tie for fifteenth place!]. This week you'll have only one vote, and when voting closes next Tuesday we'll have our next Fabric Of the Week winner. Good luck and have fun! Voting closes on Tuesday, October 6.

Vote here. Follow the results in real time here.

The finalists are:

1. Nasturtiums Spoons Mosaic by Jane Walker
2. Spooning Orchid by Cynthia Strickland
3. Spoon and flower by cynthiafrenette
4. spoonsflowerslion by Emily Whittaker
5. Spoon Flower Festival by geemarie
6. Spoonflowers4 by Rosey_Lady
7. Fleur de Cuillère by Heather Dutton
8. Flower_Spoons_and_Bumble_Bees by Jennie Baer
9. my-grandmother_s-spoon by katy keuter
10. grow_where_you_grow_best by kate_ryskamp
11. blooming spoons by LucindaNewtonDunn
12. Crazy_Spoon_Flowers by Sandra Stewart
13. lovinspoonful by Michelle Freedman
14. spoons-made-from-flowers by royalforest
15. My_Soonflower by Alex Morgan
16. 'spoons_and_flowers' by susalabim

Thanks to everyone who participated! We really needed more finalist spots to do justice to all the creative talent on display last week.

Thanks to everyone who participated! We really needed more finalist spots to do justice to all the creative talent on display last week.

Two New Themed Fabric Design Contests: Numbers and Doll Panels

Because themed Fabric Of the Week contests are turning out to be so much fun, we're going to keep running with the idea for a while longer. Pulling from some of the stellar suggestions we received when we posted about themes a couple of weeks ago, we've got two new contest themes to announce, the first on a short turnaround and the second on a longer time frame so you have a chance to gather your creative wits. They are:

Numbers. Simple enough, right? Design a fabric using numbers. Deadline is this Monday, October 5, at noon EST. Entry form and details are here.

Doll Panels. One of the coolest uses of digital textile printing is to create dolls and other plush toys. At Spoonflower we get to see people doing cool stuff along these lines all the time. So the next contest theme -- with a longer time frame for entry -- is dolls. Deadline is Monday, October 19, at noon, EST. Entry form and details are here. [for an example, see the talented Jennifer Vallez of Sophie and Lili.]