2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 7: Reupholstering a family heirloom

This is the seventh in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

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Kelly and Jaysen Reupholster a Chair:

For our project, we decided to reupholster a family heirloom chair that belonged to Jaysen and his wife, Melodie.

The chair was originally hand-crafted by Melodie’s great-grandfather in the 1940’s and had already been reupholstered once in the 1960’s. The chair has been owned and loved by many of her family members. Her uncle even carved his name into the arm when he was a child! While Melodie loved the family history that was attached to the chair, she wasn’t very fond of the pea green velour it was covered in.

After much discussion, we decided to use a sailing theme in our fabric designs. In their home, Jaysen has a framed old-style map hanging above the chair, and Melodie has always been interested in learning how to sail. Jaysen drew the sailboats by hand, and then imported them into Adobe Illustrator to color them. You can see his fabric here.

 Kelly then created a collection of simple accent fabrics that could be used together with his design.

Finally, we could start in on the actual chair. Kelly had some small experience in reupholstering a chair because she’d done one for her own home. While reupholstering a chair isn’t difficult, it is very tedious and time consuming and she vowed she would never ever do it ever again. Little did she know.....

The first step in reupholstering a chair is to remove all of the original fabric. This means prying out thousands of staples by hand. It’s important to preserve as much of the original fabric as possible because you’ll need to use the pieces as templates later when cutting out the new fabric.

When we began uncovering the matching footstool we found a surprise!

Melodie’s great-grandfather owned a furniture business, and when he made this chair for his family, he let his son (Melodie’s grandfather) sign the base fabric of the footstool! After finding his signature, this chair became even more precious to Melodie and her family.

After removing all the old fabric, we labeled the pieces and laid them out onto the new fabric to trace their shape. Then we took the pieces of new fabric, stretched them over the frame of the chair, and stapled them into place.

 

 

 

 

The final step was to refinish the wooden arms and legs of the chair and footstool:

Finally, we had a chair!

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 6: Making a Teepee

This is the sixth in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

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Kelly’s Introduction:  When I (Kelly) first heard about the details of the staff contest I immediately thought teepee. I had been wanting to make one for my niece for quite some time so I thought this might finally get me motivated. I suggested the idea to Mary and thankfully she was on board!

The first step was finding a tutorial that was easy to understand. I googled “how to make a teepee” and quite a few tutorials came up. I chose the one on Crickets. I love a tutorial with tons of pictures and she did not disappoint. The directions were clear and it made the whole process pretty easy.

Next was designing the fabric. Mary was nice enough to take over this portion of the project. I know nothing about Photoshop, so I was happy to leave it in her hands. We talked about doing something Navajo inspired and she came up with a couple different variations.

Mary on Designing the Fabric:  When looking for inspiration for the design I admit I didn’t have to look very far.  Traditional Native American weavings are lovely with their geometric shapes and bright colors. This gave me a lot of ideas to work with.  I knew that I wanted to work with a faux ikat design and found a great tutorial here:  How to Make “Tenun Ikat” Looks with Digital Prints.  It was a little slow going at first since I had never used Photoshop for anything other than photos.  Once I got the hang of what I was doing, I played with a few color schemes before finally having fat quarters printed on our linen/cotton which is my favorite of our fabrics before deciding on the final design.

Kelly on Assembling the Teepee:  Once the 6 yards of fabric needed was printed, we carefully read through the tutorial and started cutting down the fabric. Mary made the front panel with the opening and I assembled the rest. We used burlap to line the front panel and to make the rod pockets.

I purchased 4- 2 ½-inch x 5 ft. long dowel rods from Home Depot. We inserted them into the rod pockets and a teepee was born! I think we both learned a few new things from this project. I’m now convinced that if I’m ever stranded in the woods with my sewing kit, I won’t have to go without shelter!

 

 

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 5: The Ocean Mobile

This is the fifth in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

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Lindy’s Introduction:  When we first heard about the contest project, Stephen B. and I (Lindy) started exploring all sorts of ideas. We agreed that we both wanted to do something sculptural and artistic with the fabric. Stephen mentioned this amazing large scale puppetry group in town, and the thought of creating something that could move sounded intriguing. Then over a weekend, I happened to be viewing some photos that I’d taken from my recent trip to the beach. I started thinking about the ocean and the waves, so I began sketching. Stephen thought the ocean was a great theme to play with because of the movement involved. Using some of my sketches for inspiration, I drew repeating elements in Illustrator and formed a striped type of design which could easily be cut up for our project. I finished the design in shades of blues that reminded me of the ocean and its waves.

Building the mobile/structure in Stephen’s words:

Coming away from the first conversations with Lindy about our project, I knew that we wanted to create a fabric “something” that included movement, but I didn’t know what. Lindy had the skills to turn design ideas into graphic files in Illustrator and her water/wave theme gave us some direction. Despite working in Spoonflower’s customer service department and dealing with graphic file issues every day, I possess very little skill in graphic design and knew that my contribution would need to be more conceptual and physical. Charged with the task of figuring out what to make, I began to think of rotating music boxes and kinetic sculptures and got lost online with all of the amazing links that I stumbled upon.

Meanwhile Lindy had come up with these great watery design ideas and created the files in Illustrator. We printed some test pieces to see how these would look when printed. The fabric looked great, with colors and design elements that would be excellent printed individually or as complements. I was now in the deep end, with all of this watery fabric and no clear sense of how I was going to assemble this into a project. Overwhelmed and unable to land on a basic design idea for how to construct or re-purpose a moving structure onto which a rotating fabric “whatsit” could be placed, I began to falter. I did what every good artist does when searching for inspiration.  I made a mess.

I began to cut the fabric into strips so that I could apply a liquid fabric stiffener to give some structure to the fabric, but was not sure what these pieces were actually going to wind up being. I wrapped the goopey strips around canisters thinking that they would dry and hold the cylindrical shape. The fabric dried and did indeed become stiff, but lost any quality of water-like movement that it might have once had. The testing showed me that I was farther from the goal than when I had started, so I did what any good artist does when the goal gets farther away and the mess gets messier. I cleaned up the mess and scrapped the plan (the one that didn’t really exist).

By then I was realizing that I am not a good artist.  I’m just good at making messes with art supplies. Like any not-so-good artist who is struggling to appear creative, I sought ways to “borrow” an idea from a “good” artist. I heard that a local university art museum had just opened a Calder mobile exhibit, and I knew that the movement I’d been looking for would be possible if the fabric could be incorporated into a mobile. Thanks, “Sandy”!

I was back on track, ready for more messes. A bit intimidated by my poor beginning with the fabric, I went to the hardware store and did what any creatively challenged average Joe trying to create a mobile does.  I bought wire. I bought 16 and 14 gauge wire and began cutting and twisting pieces which could be hooked and hung together. The heavier gauge wire seemed to be too stiff for the kind of bending that would be necessary to get the multiple arms of the mobile shaped and hung just right, but when I began to test these pieces with more weight on them I found that the lighter gauge wire bent under the weight. If you consider making a similar fabric mobile (or any type for that matter) choose wire that will not bend under the weight. In the finished project photo the arms can be seen to bend under the weight. The intention had been for these to rise, swell and crest like waves, and for the colors and movement of the fabric pieces to suggest the movement of water.

Assembly

The wire mobile structure was built separately and then the fabric rings were added and balanced. This can be done with a pair of needle nose pliers and any durable solid wire (including coat hanger). Wire pieces can be cut to the desired length and a loop can be created anywhere along this length of wire by grabbing the wire with needle nose pliers and twisting. Hooks can easily be made on the ends of the wire lengths so that the hooks and loops can be used to begin connecting several pieces together. It will now help you to establish a point from which you can hang the wires so that you are actually working on suspended pieces. The general rule of thumb for mobiles is to start balancing from the bottom and work upward. In our case we had assembled numerous fabric cylinders of varying sizes and weights so there were many choices for balancing the arms.

To assemble the fabric rings we cut down the fabric into strips varying from 5 inches to 30 inches. We folded the strips right sides together and stitched down the long edge, then turned these fabric tubes inside out (photos below). A piece of the lighter gauge wire was inserted into each sleeve to provide the structure that we needed to create the cylinders. We turned in the cut edges of fabric at the ends and bent the wire in the shape of a circle so that the fabric piece became a cylinder. These hoops of fabric became the hanging elements of the mobile. These were hung by stitching heavy duty thread to span across the top of the hoop with a bit of slack left to hang the hoop.

To assemble a mobile, suspend the bottom arm. Experiment with achieving balanced placements by varying the sizes of fabric hoops that you use and by altering the wire arms by changing the placement of the fulcrum loops, snipping off wire, or adding pieces of wire to extend the down off of the hooks at the ends of the arms. Once the first arm is balanced you will need to remove it from where it is being suspended so that you can attach the next arm that will be above it. Hang the balanced bottom arm onto this next arm up and repeat the balancing exercise. Continue this upward until all arms are hanging and balanced. There will inevitably be some tweaking that will need to be done before the mobile can hang and move nicely. In life and mobiles there always is.

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 4: Transforming An Old Dresser With Fabric

This is the fourth in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

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When Adam and I (Sarah) were presented with the Spoonflower staff challenge, we brainstormed a few different projects, but ultimately Adam came up with the brilliant idea to cover a dresser with fabric. This was inspired by Apartment Therapy and it’s a project that isn’t done very often. It was also a project that others could easily emulate to spruce up an old piece of furniture that would otherwise be on its way to the trash.

Adam, being the computer-design-savvy member of the team, came up with a bunch of great designs and, after tweaking the colors and sizes, we chose seven designs that would make it to the printing stage. We also decided to use our linen-cotton canvas because we loved the texture of it as a contrast to the smooth surface of the dresser.

After the designs were printed out, we again narrowed them down to five designs that we thought worked well together based on color and composition.

Next, we bought an old dresser off of Craigslist and got to work on its makeover! 

I had previously done some research on how to attach the fabric to the wooden surface and found that Heat N' Bond Iron-On webbing was the best choice for the job. It can be found at craft stores, including Jo-Ann Fabric & Crafts, and costs about $2.99 per yard.

To cover the fronts of the drawers and the top of the dresser, we first made templates of each shape from pieces of poster board. Doing this first made it easier to get the shape right when ironing the fabric on to the dresser.

 

The next step was to cut out pieces of the Heat N' Bond webbing and the fabric. We used the template as a guide but made sure we cut out pieces that were slightly larger than the template.

 We ironed the webbing to the fabric. The rough side of the webbing faces down onto the back of the fabric.

Then we used the template to cut out the exact shape we needed so the edges would be clean.

Next, we peeled off the paper liner on the back of the webbing and placed it down onto the dresser surface to be ironed flat.

And voila! An old dresser is transformed into a crafty new piece of furniture!

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 3: A Chevron Revolution

This is the third in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

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Ta da! The Finished Sofa

We (Stephanie and Deron) decided to take on the task of transforming the couch in the Spoonflower conference room. The couch as it was was perfect for its use — plenty of seating for meetings — but lacking in Spoonflower fabric. If you’ve ever visited our offices, you may have noticed that we like to cover everything in fabric. Stephanie cried a little inside whenever she looked at it and would frequently try to convince others that they should recover it. This couch needed some Spoonflower life and color brought into it and the staff contest was a perfect excuse to fix it!

The Before: Bleh

The start of the project was a little rocky because we work completely opposite shifts and are never at Spoonflower at the same time. We worked out this issue with a couple of planning meetings at random hours. (Fact: Our design was finalized at 10 PM on a Thursday evening.) We knew from the outset that we wanted a design that flowed and covered the entire couch. We considered using the couch like a canvas — printing a huge nature photograph, for instance. In the end, we decided we liked the idea of an evolving pattern instead.  The design elements on one side of the couch would be heavy and congested, then the elements would break off and become more and more open as your eye moved across the couch.

Fabric Printing

We created the five designs for the couch in Photoshop starting with a basic chevron shape and choosing colors and textures. Once we had our basic elements, we went about conquering each design which needed to flow from lots of chevrons to fewer and fewer with each design. The hardest part was when we realized the center cushion needed to be curved to trick the eye into seeing that the pattern was flowing across the couch. After some digging through Photoshop and some expert advice (thanks, Beth!) we used the shear filter.

We’ve included a bonus design of the chevrons in repeat without white showing just for fun, but we didn’t use this design on the couch.

Covering the L-Shaped Cushion

The sewing portion of this adventure went smoother than expected since part of the project included teaching Deron how to sew! He did a great job and knocked out all the pillows while Stephanie concentrated on the cushions. The biggest challenge was the large cushion that was in an “L” shape. It took some clever maneuvering and a ripped seam or two but,  once that cushion was conquered, the rest was done assembly- line style, making sure that we grabbed the right fabric and checked the orientation with the couch before putting the finishing touches on each piece.

Deron's Pillows

 

Attack of the Robot Quilts

For the uninitiated, we should probably begin by explaining that a cheater quilt is a piece of fabric designed to look like patchwork or applique that allows a quilter to avoid piecework and concentrate on quilting. The challenge to designers this week was to create a robot-themed cheater quilt design that fits onto a single yard of our fabulous Kona cotton. Have fun voting!

Vote For Robot Cheater Quilts

The participants this week are:

1. I, Robot by forest&sea 
2. Inside the robot by mariao 
3. "BOT-imore" Album Cheater Quilt by floathandmade 
4. "Robots for Girls" by bulldogsandbabies 
5. 'Howdee Yul' quilt by amel24 
6. 18th century karakuri tea serving doll by chameleonfire 
7. A Robot in Love Cheater Quilt by cynthiafrenette 
8. All my circuits by tscho 
9. AllGearedUp by beckydolley 
10. Attic Window Robot Cheater Quilt by joofalltrades 

Toiles de Brugge & Brooklyn, Chattanooga, Haarlemmermeer, Paris, Tilba, Le Roy, Riverside, and Yosano

Last week's contest challenge required designers to create Toile de Jouy fabrics inspired by the histories of the places where they live. The top ten offer a world tour as well as a set of mini-history lessons, with toiles de Brooklyn (NY), Chattanooga (TN), Haarlemmermeer (Netherlands), Paris, Tilba (Australia), Le Roy (NY), Riverside (CA), and Yosano (Japan).  For the second week in a row, however, the winner is a Belgian designer (we erred in last week's newsletter when we wrote that Zesti was Dutch). Cally, of Forest&Sea, won the most votes with her fascinating "Medieval Woodcut" toile depicting Brugge, Belgium. Lovely work!

See the Top Ten Your-Town Toile Fabrics

The final tally:

1. 586 votes for A Medieval Woodcut - Brugge by forest&sea 
2. 508 votes for Brooklyn Landmarks Toile - Aqua by carcamella 
3. 449 votes for Chattanooga Toile by chickoteria 
4. 422 votes for Haarlemmermeer Toile de Jouy by chameleonfire 
5. 420 votes for Paris sera toujours Paris... by mouchette 
6. 409 votes for ABC_Cheese_Tilba_toile__blue-bone_ by pavlova_is 
7. 387 votes for Le Roy, NY Toile by jennartdesigns 
8. 369 votes for The Eastern Shore of Virginia, a history in toile by ceanirminger 
9. 357 votes for Riverside ~ Arts and Innovation by vo_aka_virginiao 
10. 351 votes for Yosano Toile - Red by siya 

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 2: Nirvana Through Knit brought to you by Team Prana

This is the second in a series of posts describing the projects that are part of our 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge. Voting begins on Thursday, March 15, 2012.

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Team Prana consists of design wrangler Caroline and print wench Janet, otherwise known as Coco and Jaja. Coincidentally we have both lived in Sweden and came up with our idea one day while having our regular Monday fika. I was telling Janet about the yoga classes I've been taking and how everyone was very stylish and colorful. I have a bright purple mat, but usually wear all black and thought it would be fun to spice it up a bit. The discussion moved on to colors, how they  correspond to the various chakras and what they represent. We began by thinking it would be fun to combine meaning with form and function. After considering a few ideas involving coats that turned into sleeping bags, we changed gears and focused on brainstorming and creating designs for the pieces in our collection. What started as a few pieces and the idea of a couple of designs blossomed into 6 distinct pieces and 12 different designs. We decided to focus on the top three chakras and design around those colors and use elements traditionally associated with yoga (the OM symbol) and India.

Violet/purple governs the CROWN chakra, at the top of the head and represents BEAUTY, CREATIVITY &  INSPIRATION. 

Indigo governs the BROW chakra or third eye, in the centre of the forehead and represents INTUITION, MYSTICISM, & UNDERSTANDING. 

Blue governs the THROAT chakra and represents KNOWLEDGE, HEALTH, DECISIVENESS.

 

SUMMARY OF PIECES

VINYASA WRAP SWEATER (reversible):

(Janet takes over here...) We wanted to create a sweater that could be worn to yoga class and could also be worn out after class. I set out to design a sweater that would be comfortable and loose-fitting but also stylish and versatile so it would look great with yoga pants as well as a pair of jeans. I decided to go with a "blanket wrap" style sweater because I thought it would drape really nicely with the Spoonflower knit fabric. 

   


A blanket wrap sweater is really simple to make.  Start with one large rectangular piece of knit. Drape it across your shoulders horizontally to decide where you want the arm holes to be. Cut two identical arm holes in the fabric. Next cut two identical sleeves out of the remaining knit. ( I traced a sleeve pattern from another pattern that I had laying around the house). Make sure that the width of the sleeve goes with the stretchy direction of the fabric. I hung the sweater on a dress mannequin and then pinned the sleeves onto the sweater before sewing them on to make sure that they hung well. Caroline had designed so many great patterns that halfway through the project I decided to make the sweater reversible. To make it reversible cut the exact same sweater and sleeve pieces out on a contrasting fabric and assemble them into a second sweater.

 

Here's the fun part: Lay the identical wrap sweaters directly on top of one another,  pattern-sides together, and pin them. Because the sweaters are two large rectangle shapes you can sew them together just like a large pillow case. Make sure that the sleeves and edges line up and that you leave a small opening to turn the new sweater inside out. Then just tuck each sleeve into its coordination sleeve. Now you have a reversible sweater! I used two yards to Spoonflower knit to make each "side" of the sweater. 

ACCESSORIES:

Along with the reversible sweater we created additional yoga accessories to complete the look. 

We used a complementary pattern to create an infinity (loop style) scarf out of knit. I took one yard of Spoonflower knit, folded it over the long way and sewed it together to make a double sided scarf. Caroline then added snaps to each end so that the scarf could be snapped together to take on multiple shapes. You can unsnap the scarf to wear it long, snap it together to create a long loop, or loop it twice to have a warm neck scarf.

 

 

We used another knit pattern to create a simple headband to keep your hair pulled back while doing yoga. I used a fat quarter of Spoonflower knit and was able to make several small headbands. I measured the circumference of my head and measured it out on the stretchy direction of the knit. I cut the fabric twice as wide as I wanted the headband to be so that I could fold it over and make it double sided. Then I sewed it into a loop.

The last thing I made was a stylish yoga bag to carry gear to and from yoga class. I traced another shoulder bag that I had and used it as a template. The body of the bag consists of 5 pieces: the front and back pieces, two thin side panels, and the bottom panel. The bigger the side and bottom panels are, the more your bag will be able to hold. I sewed the pieces together and then made a small pocket for the front of the bag and two straps. I used the Spoonflower linen because it is sturdy and strong.  I lined the bag with Spoonflower sateen in another one of Caroline's complementary patterns.

 

(Back to Caroline...) Two more essentials of every yoga practice are an eye pillow and a mat carrier. I used the cotton-silk for the eye pillow because of its soft and luxurious feel. I used one swatch folded in half to create the pillow and filled it with bergamot scented flax seeds.

 

 

The carrier is a design that I came up after noticing that people either struggle with an unruly mat and no way to keep it together or just simple straps that are usually in black and can easily get tangled when not in use. This carrier design brings vibrancy and fun to your practice, is easy to wash and can be carried in your hand or over your shoulder.

If you would like to check out the designs we used in our projects and the other pieces in the Prana collection, click on each image here and you'll go straight to that fabric page. Namaste!

APPRECIATION:

We would like to thank our beautiful models, designer and illustrator Amanda Wright of Wit and Whistle and her puppies Mabel and Oliver. Side note: if Amanda's home looks familiar, it's because it was featured recently on Design Sponge.

Classic and Modern Fabrics book giveaway and Victory patterns winner

Do you know what cranky check fabric is?  Ever heard of either monk's cloth or nun's veiling?  Would you like to read more about these and 600 other fabric types?  (Do you need proof that there really are 600+ fabric types?  Apparently there are!)  If you want to completely geek out on fabrics with a brand-new (and very heavy) copy of the just released Classic and Modern Fabrics, just comment on this post or on the corresponding Facebook post between now and next Tuesday, 3/13, and be sure to include your Spoonflower name so we can track you down easily.  Entries close at 7 pm EST on 3/13.  Good luck, fabric hounds!

Last week's winner of a Victory pattern and three yards of Spoonflower fabric to make it up in was Kathy McKim.  Congrats, Kathy!

 

2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 1: How To Make A Giant Stuffed Unicorn

This is the first in a series of blog posts describing the projects in the 2012 Spoonflower Staff Challenge, an annual event in which we put our own creative talents to the test and ask you to vote on our work for a change. This year we divided Spoonflower (30 folks at present) into teams of two and asked each team to create an original fabric design. We also asked each team to create a finished project using its fabric and to document the project for the Spoonflower blog. I think you'll be entertained by the results. We'll post a couple of projects each day, but voting will actually start Thursday, March 15, 2012.

The first team to report back consists of yours truly (Stephen F.) and Beth, help desk ninja and master seamstress.

Our mission: creating a pattern to sew a giant plush unicorn toy. Project Codename: Cornelius Rising.

Stage One: Brainstorming. Before we started, I was convinced we had to design a plush toy of some sort. Unfortunately Beth rejected outright my first suggestion, which was a pillow doppelgänger of barefoot Spoonflower coder Chad, a project that would almost certainly have guaranteed our victory. Beth, a trained historical costume maker, suggested instead that we create a corset. Ignoring this, I countered with the inspired notion that we create a life-size plush version of my Spoonflower co-founder, Gart, who is 6' 6". At this point Beth started to look stressed. Aware that if our team was going to create anything at all then most of the work would almost certainly have to be done by Beth, I relented. "What about an animal?" she said.

I pondered for a moment. "How about a unicorn?" I have three daughters, so a unicorn would be guaranteed to garner all the votes in my household, at the very least.

The last thing I heard Beth mutter before heading back to my desk was, "It's going to be really big."

Stage 2: Beth Prototypes. After our arduous brainstorming session, next in the process came the (overrated in my view) stage in which actual skills are applied to do actual work. Here's Beth's take on this stage:

Although I have done quite a bit of patterning for garments, I have not previously made a plushie cut and sew pattern. The first step to creating this design included lots of research. With a bit of knowledge and creativity, it's quite easy to imagine how the pieces of a cut and sew pattern will fit and look when finished; however, there are also tons of resources available online that provide free patterns for various animals. I was unable to find one that would be easily adapted to a large format pattern, so I decided to draft one.

Beth began by prototyping her pattern in miniature, the first version of which came out looking like a mountain goat. Cute, Beth explained, but not what we needed for a Unicorn. Using Heather Dutton's Love Struck fabric, Beth made a second mockup. Then she tried out a few unicorn designs in different colors, all of which ended up being rejected. This was exhausting for me because at several points I was called upon to give an opinion. 

Stage 3: Scanning & More Designing. Once the pattern was drafted, Beth scanned the pieces and digitized the pattern by tracing each piece using the pen tool in Illustrator. Working in Illustrator allowed Beth to keep all of the pattern pieces in vector format, which means that she would be able to scale up the pattern easily. After more strenuous discussion in which I was forced to offer yet another opinion, we finally settled on a sort of tattooed design for the Unicorn fabric. Here are Beth's notes on that stage of the process:

The surface design itself was really quite easy to create. We used Illustrator to create some interesting shapes and defined each shape as a pattern brush. Next, we created concentric circles and used each pattern brush as a "stroke" on the circle. The pattern brush feature in Illustrator is amazing and automatically adapts your design to fit the path. The next step was choosing a color palette. We selected some colors using Adobe Kuler and a Spoonflower color map and dropped them into the design. It's important to set your colors using a color map or color guide, otherwise you'll likely end up needing to swap out colors later.

The miniature prototype, which requires only a fat quarter of fabric, is actually part of the full pattern (here). You can get the mini-version by just ordering a fat quarter of the giant pattern on our linen-cotton canvas.

Stage 4: Building to Scale. The next step, of course, was to bring the Unicorn to life. Beth scaled everything up and laid it all out in a single, giant file, which she ordered on 5 yards of our linen-cotton canvas. [You can find the giant Unicorn sewing pattern here.] Beth did lots of tweaking during all of this, while I put my own limited skills to work on a sawhorse made from 2" x 4"s (with 30" legs and a 24" back using simple, aluminum sawhorse brackets purchased for $6). Beth initially created the Unicorn's skin with an invisible zipper, which was a decision abandoned when the zipper snapped during Step 5.

Step 5: Bringing the Unicorn to Life. The last stage of the process required no fewer than two giant trash bags of polyfill, which Beth managed to score free of charge from Craigslist. They turned out to have been left over from a Christmas display at our local Museum of Life & Science and consequently, as an added bonus, were seeded with the perfect amount of glitter (one of the primary ingredients in Unicorn-making, as everyone knows). The Unicorn was at this point officially dubbed Cornelius. Let it be known that not only did I help stuff the Unicorn, but I also played an instrumental role in breaking the invisible zipper that Beth had carefully placed on its back.

Step 6: Hair. I wouldn't normally give hair its own step in the Unicorn-making saga, but in this case I don't think there's any way around it. Every child that has seen this Unicorn so far has been mesmerized by it and Beth herself spent many, many hours making it. She explains, "I decided that I wanted the Unicorn to have hair that kids could brush. Little did I know that sewing hair wefts with ridiculously long synthetic hair would be such a lengthy and complex process!" I think the results speak for themselves. 

Now there's only one step left to make the project complete: Unicorn Rainbow Poop Cookies.

Keeping Your Toiles Local

Our contest  this week required designers to create fabric designs inspired by the 18th-century style of toile de jouy, but using as their subjects the histories of the designers' respective towns. The result provides an entertaining set of fabrics, but also a nice set of mini-history lessons for a handful of cities you may never get a chance to visit. We're imagining these fabrics as curtains for a lucky bunch of  local libraries.

Vote For Your-Town Toile Fabrics

The intrepid designers this week are:

1. A Medieval Woodcut - Brugge by forest&sea
2. A Hannibal Home by paragonstudios
3. ABC_Cheese_Tilba_toile__blue-bone_ by pavlova_is
4. Aberystwyth_Toile by moobug
5. Alton, Hampshire & The story of Sweet Fanny Adams by kimberly-ann
6. anaheim - the happiest town on earth by cheyanne_sammons
7. Anderson, South Carolina - The Electric City & home to Hot Air Balloon launches by amy_lou_who
8. Annandale, Virginia by glimmericks
9. Antique Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, P.Q., Canada. by fantazya
10. Arizona Rough Riders by galinaz

One Bicycle Fabric Breaks Away From the Peloton

As a cluster of great bicycle fabrics came into the final stage of this week's competition, one designer broke away and finished the week wearing the yellow jersey (or interlock knit, in our case). She is Ine Beerten (Zesti), a Dutch Belgian illustrator (so sorry, Ine!) whose work we've had reason to admire previously in the Project Selvage finals from last year, as well in our kite and carousel contests. Congratulations, Ine!

See the Top Ten Bicycle Fabrics

 

The final tally:

1. 637 votes for Vive Le Tour de France! by zesti 
2. 536 votes for Bicycle Under The Tree by melisza 
3. 533 votes for Here and There, Near and Far, This Way or That by gsonge 
4. 522 votes for As I Ride by jeannemcgee 
5. 502 votes for Retro Bicycle Love (Green) - by ebygomm by upcyclepatch 
6. 497 votes for bicycle or grapefruit ? vélo ou pamplemousse ? by cassiopee 
7. 476 votes for Penny Farthing red by melissamelissa 
8. 417 votes for City Bikes by gracedesign 
9. 412 votes for Me and Minnie May by addilou 
10. 411 votes for Circus Bicycles by pennycandy