Welcome to Spoonlandia! Announcing the Staff Challenge Winner

After weeks of preparation, much gnashing of teeth, innumerable exchanges of bitter looks, and a week of voting, we are pleased to announce the winners of our annual internal craft smackdown. This year Spoonflower crew members were divided into teams and asked to try their hands at something that, in many cases, they had never tried to do in their lives: creating a quilt. The fifteen teams produced a number of witty, creative and in some cases even beautiful efforts. They included an LED-lit quilt, a 3-D quilt that showcased fabric manipulation techniques, a scented quilt with a flower design, and a tribute to Spoonflower's hometown of Durham. But the winner turned out to be a tribute to Spoonflower itself, and to the many talented designers who make up the Spoonflower community. With all the votes counted, the Staff Challenge winner is the Spoonlandia quilt by the team of John, Abbey and Laurie. Their prize will be a set of cooking lessons at one of Durham's most cutting-edge restaurants, Revolution. Thanks to everyone who voted and cheered them on!

 

 

We're not going to post vote totals on this one, partly because -- at least in our book -- we think all the teams are winners. But just to remind you of the entrants, here's the list in no particular order:

1. Beth, Anne, and Kimmie: Team Mandala
2. Caroline, Joey and Leah: Team Bumblebee
3. Adam, Chad, and Kelsey: Team Color Wheel
4. Abbey, John and Laurie: Team Spoonlandia
5. Mary, Thomas, and Kerry: Team Minimal
6. Danielle, Kim F., and Kate: Team Texture
7. Deron, Kelly W., and Lindy: Team Steampunk Chess
8. Holly, Paula, and Yoalder: Team Music Tapes
9. Allie, Theresa, and Kimberly: Team Hey Girl
10. Anna, Jorren and Emma: Team Horror Closet
11. Katie, Stephanie, and Sharon: Team Haiku
12. Jesse, Kelly B. and Stephen F.: Team Durham
13. Caitlin, Jaysen, and Sarah: Team Rocketship
14. Janet, David and Stephen B.: Team Baum
15. Becca, Darci and Gart: Team Kite

Quilt vs Quilt: The Spoonflower Staff Smackdown

Every year we turn the tables for a week and ask you to vote for designs created by the Spoonflower staff. This year we divided all of our people randomly into fifteen teams of three people each and then asked each team to create a quilt using fabric it designed. We also asked the teams to chronicle their efforts for the Spoonflower blog. We hope you'll agree that the results are quite entertaining. Here's your chance to help choose the winning team!

The participating teams are:

1. Beth, Anne, and Kimmie: Team Mandala
2. Caroline, Joey and Leah: Team Bumblebee
3. Adam, Chad, and Kelsey: Team Color Wheel
4. Abbey, John and Laurie: Team Spoonlandia
5. Mary, Thomas, and Kerry: Team Minimal
6. Danielle, Kim F., and Kate: Team Texture
7. Deron, Kelly W., and Lindy: Team Steampunk Chess
8. Holly, Paula, and Yoalder: Team Music Tapes
9. Allie, Theresa, and Kimberly: Team Hey Girl
10. Anna, Jorren and Emma: Team Horror Closet
11. Katie, Stephanie, and Sharon: Team Haiku
12. Jesse, Kelly B. and Stephen F.: Team Durham
13. Caitlin, Jaysen, and Sarah: Team Rocketship
14. Janet, David and Stephen B.: Team Baum
15. Becca, Darci and Gart: Team Kite

2013 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 15: Craft Closet Of Terror

This is the fifteenth -- and final! -- post in our series of staff project narratives created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilt Challenge. Voting for this contest opens tomorrow, Thursday, 3/14.

---

Howdy! Are you looking for a tale of suspense, eerie coincidences and spoooooky sounds? If so, you might be in the wrong place, but if you’re looking for the story of Team Terror’s staff challenge quilt, you’re in the right place.

Our team boasted 3 members from across Spoonflower’s departments. I (Emma) work at the help desk, Jorren works in Operations and Anna is an accountant extraordinaire. I’d heard through the grapevine--the Spoonvine?--that Jorren was known for his pretty excellent doodles and drawings (if you’ve received an order recently, you may have been lucky enough to receive one of his masterpieces on your packslip). The Craft Closet of Terror was hatched when Jorren emailed us this classic horror comic cover from the 1950’s.

Since this is Spoonflower, we decided to create a campy horror-comic cover but with a crafty twist. We started with a few quick sketches and keywords we thought we might want to use: It was decided that the scariest thing, for a crafter, was the looming pile of unfinished projects hiding somewhere just out of sight. Whether it’s the works-in-progress or the unfinished objects, what could be more terrifying?! We discussed the finer points of naming--would it be Crafts from the Fabric Stash, à la Tales from the Crypt? Which rolls off the tongue better, “Closet of Horror” or “Closet of Terror”?

Jorren pointed out that many of these mid-century horror comic series had a “host”--a little character featured on the front of the who introduced the creeeeepy tale inside. It seemed only appropriate that the “host” of our journey through the terrors of the craft closet be our own fearless leaders, Stephen and Gart, co-founders of Spoonflower.
Since neither Anna nor I can draw worth a hoot, Jorren took over the design process of the front of the front panel of the quilt. He started with a quick sketch (notice the empty circle where our hosts would be--we wanted to be sure that our bosses wouldn’t mind being depicted as a grotesque headless 2-headed monster. If they do, we haven’t heard about it yet!).

Then Jorren started the process of drawing his design on the computer. Using a drawing tablet and a lethal combination of InDesign (for the typography) and Photoshop, Jorren started with the lettering at the top of the quilt.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 14: Color Wheel Quilt

This is the fourteenth in our series of staff project posts created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilt Challenge. Voting for this contest opens tomorrow, Thursday, 3/14.

---

 

For the 2013 Spoonflower Staff Challenge, our team decided to make an unconventional quilt. As printer operators, Adam and I (Kelsey) are constantly working with color, while our other teammate, Chad, spends most of his time in the Engineering Department. So, in order to use everyone’s talents, we came up with the idea of an illuminated color wheel quilt.

The first step was to design a color wheel.

After we established the concept, Adam utilized a few functions in Adobe Illustrator to make the base of the design. First he used a little math to separate the circle into 60 equal sections.  

Once Adam had the angle for each section he used the “Copy Rotate” feature to complete a 6 degree rotation, and then used Command D until he was back at the beginning. 

2013 SPOONFLOWER STAFF CHALLENGE Pt. 13: Flight Kite Quilt

This is the thirteenth in our series of staff project posts created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilt Challenge. Voting for this contest opens tomorrow, Thursday, 3/14.

---

My imaginative Spoonflower crew mates for this year's annual staff contest, Gart and Becca, brilliantly brainstormed our way into an unusual answer to the challenge to design fabric for and sew a quilt. I (Darci) was fortunate to be along for the ride. 

Becca found inspiration for this quilting challenge in an old issue of Vogue, of all places! While educating herself about the proper accessories for a weekend in Montauk, NY, a gorgeous patchwork kite by Betty Street caught her eye and she immediately tore out the photo to show the team.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 12: A Textured Quilt

This is the twelfth in our series of staff project posts created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilt Challenge.  Voting on this contest opens Thursday, 3/14.

---

Danielle, Kim and I (Kate) weren’t really sure where to start with this year's staff challenge.  A quilt?  Made with Spoonflower fabric?  What limitless possibilities!  All avid crafters, it was a little difficult to begin to narrow down the focus, so we ruminated on our ideas for a few days before our first meeting. 

Several years ago, I'd got my hands on a lovely book, The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff.  I had since hoped to have the time and focus to sit down and try out some of the phenomenal grids and patterns she suggests for pleating, tucking, smocking and more.  This quilt project seemed to be the perfect time to try it out and when I suggested this idea, Danielle and Kim were both enthusiastic.  As a matter of fact, Kim had a copy of the same book on her bookshelf!


Danielle and I each took a gander at reproducing some of the patterns that served as guides for assorted types of fabric manipulation in the book.  Printing those patterns onto Spoonflower fabric enabled us to bypass the usual time-consuming task of manually measuring and marking grids, which allowed us a lot more time for sewing exploration.  Danielle started with designing simple grids of dots, each spaced in different increments, using different colors, and printed onto different fabrics so that we could explore several different methods of manipulating fabric to create textures.

One of Danielle's grids of dots

2013 Spoonflower Staff Challenge Pt. 11 - Durham Renowned the World Around Quilt

This is the eleventh post in our series of staff projects created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting for this contest opens on Thursday, 3/14.

---

The Spoonflower staff members unfortunate enough to draw me (Stephen F., Spoonflower co-founder) as a teammate this year were Kelly B. and Jesse, two fine individuals whom I fear deserved much better. When we first sat down to talk about what our quilt project would look like, I was, as usual, full of terrible ideas that if executed would only have rained humiliation down upon our heads.

Kelly described herself as a novice quilter, and Jesse and I were quick to admit that we were not going to be any help in this department, so we decided right away to go with a cheater quilt option. The only big question, then, was theme. Jesse suggested that we do something related to Durham, which is the North Carolina city where Spoonflower is located, and where many of our staffers live.

Durham, for those of you elsewhere in the world, is an interesting city. It grew up as the capital of the tobacco industry (and the tobacco industry's bankers), but is also home to Duke University and Duke Hospitals, and has become known in recent years – along with the surrounding Research Triangle Park area (RTP) -- as a hotbed for technology startups. Durham is very close to Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina's flagship campus – and also to Raleigh, which is North Carolina's state capital. Durham is known as a 'grittier' city than its neighbors, which to some suggests higher rates of crime and poverty, but to many others serves as a sort of rallying cry that Durham is more welcoming to artists, food truck entrepreneurs, musicians and the like. It's not uncommon to see bumper stickers around town that say "Keep It Dirty, Durham." Kelly and I agreed that creating a quilt to celebrate Durham was a great idea, so we talked about trying to use an iconic image of the city like the Durham bull or the Lucky Strike tower downtown as a central focus.

A week after our first meeting I found myself attending an event at the Durham Library where I saw a young man show a slide that included a sign erected by the Durham electric company in downtown Durham in 1913 to promote the city. It read, spelled out in with 1,200 light bulbs, Durham | Renowned the World Around. Surrounding this were the words Health, Progress, Wealth, Success." (You can see the original photo on the blog Endangered Durham.) We decided this would be a perfect image around which to base our Durham quilt.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 10: A Baum-y Quilt

This is the tenth post in our series of staff projects created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting for this contest opens on Thursday, 3/14.

---

It was another peculiarly Baumy winter day in central North Carolina. The industrious denizens of this fertile Durham seed bed, the Spoonflower custom fabricators, were churning out yard after yard of one-of-a-kind fabric, their eyes alight with the joy that only they can know. Not one among them noticed that the wind began to switch and that the sky had become a bruise-colored, ominous grey-purple-green (Pantone Tornado Green).  This could only be the harbinger of one thing -- the annual Spoonflower staff challenge.

“It’s a twister, it’s a twister!” shrieked David shrilly from the help desk. The shutters clattered and the winds whipped up, sending stacks of swatches swirling skyward, swatches of lions, swatches of tigers, and swatches of bears. “Oh my!” everyone shouted, clustering in groups of three, bracing for the brunt and screaming above the din, “What ever will we do?”

Tossed over the rainbow of colorful fabric, Janet, David, and Stephen B. found themselves thrown together to face the challenge. Yet each was woefully doubtful of the skills they possessed and unsure of how to move forward in the changing landscape of Spoonland.

 Fortunately one among us had the courage to step forward with a bold idea.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 9: A Ryan Gosling Quilt

This post is the ninth in our series of projects created by Spoonflower employees for the 2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting for this contest opens on Thursday, 3/14.

---

The 2013 Staff Challenge has been challenging indeed.  Charged with the task of designing a quilt--any size quilt using our fabric designs--Allie, Theresa and I started brainstorming all the options immediately.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 8: A Musical Quilt

This is the eighth post in our series of project posts created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting for this contest will open on Thursday, 3/14.

---

Spoontunes: A Musical Quilt by Holly, Paula and Yoalder

All three of us work together on Spoonflower’s operations team, so we were able to meet and discuss our quilt ideas regularly.  Holly is an artist and seamstress, Paula is fabulously creative and has a long list of people already enjoying items made from her sewing machine, and Yoalder is a designer and DIY fix-it builder with absolutely no sewing skills at all.  Our biggest problem at first was too many ideas!  But finally we settled on one.  The main theme of our quilt is old and new methods of listening to music.  

We were inspired by all the musical fabric designs that come through production, as well as the eclectic musical tastes of our own team.  One of the first things we did was poll our coworkers to see what their favorite music was, and we hardly recognized any of it!  The other idea we had was to make something non-traditional and asymmetrical.  (Holly had enough of cutting out little squares after last year’s challenge!)

First, Holly drew some pictures of old cassette tapes, and she and Paula colored them in with crayons.  

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 7: A Haiku Quilt

This is the seventh in our series of staff projects created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting for this contest opens on Thursday, 3/14.

---

Hello from Team Craft Revolution! We are Katie, Stephanie, and Sharon. 

At our first meeting I thought it would be fun to create a haiku about Spoonflower and base our quilt design on that haiku. After writing 10 or so haikus (mainly inside jokes about working at Spoonflower), there was our winner:

spoonflower is best

fabric designers unite

craft revolution

Once that was settled, we set about designing our fabric. Our haiku would be the focal point, of course. For the rest of the quilt, textures based on various crafting mediums (cross-stitching, crocheting, knitting, and quilting) would reflect our haiku inspiration. We wanted a bold color palette that included coral pink, navy blue, bright orange, and a golden yellow against a textured, neutral background.

In late January Katie showed us her initial design, which was quite amazing. Lots of different textures, layering effects, using the colors we liked.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 6: A Steampunk Quilt

This is the sixth installment in our post series describing the projects in this year's Spoonflower Staff Challenge.  Voting for this contest will open on Thursday, 3/14.

---

This year’s staff challenge was more focused than last year’s with everyone asked to make a quilt. Our group, known as “Team Steampunk,” consisted of Lindy, Kelly W. and Deron. We had somewhat of an additional challenge with planning at the beginning since each of us work separate shifts. However, our shifts did overlap just enough that planning could be done on the fly. As soon as our group got together in a brainstorming session, we all jumped at the idea of a steampunk-themed quilt. From there we just had to figure out what exactly it would be. Thanks to some great rough drafts from Kelly, a chessboard was born!

First sketches of the board by Kelly (left) and concept drawings by Lindy (right) of the pieces and background images.

Now if this was going to be a chessboard, we needed to have two opposing sides. Maybe the hardest part of the entire project turned out to be coming up with two unique sides to “fight” each other, not to mention having to draw them all. (Sorry, Lindy!) Early on, we had loved the idea of a giant octopus battling airships for the board's background, and that image fueled our imaginations in coming up with our armies. One side was going to be your more traditional pieces who were being controlled by the Kraken. We decided these pieces should look a little bit sick and almost zombie-like. The other set would be a mad scientist and his creations who have risen up to fight the brainwashed citizens of his country. Kelly then spent a little time writing a detailed backstory to be sewn onto the back of our quilt.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 5: Scented Flight of the Bumblebee Quilt

This is the fifth post in our series of staff projects created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting on this contest opens Thursday, 3/14.

---

 

From the beginning, our team set out to do the seemingly impossible: find a way to make a quilt cozier than it already is. We knew we didn't want to stray too far from something traditional, but we also really wanted to make something that wasn't just soft and pretty. That's when Leah mentioned some sachets she'd made for her mom one Christmas, and how easy it would be to make a quilt with pockets for storing something similar. A quilt that looked, felt, and smelled nice? Caroline and I (Joey) were on board.

We knew we'd need a motif that would allow us to incorporate the sachets in a way that made sense. Naturally, we immediately thought of doing a floral, but we also wanted it to have a slightly narrative quality. What pretty much goes hand in hand with flowers? Honeybees!

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 4: A "Minimal" Quilt

This is our fourth post in a series of posts about the projects created for the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting opens for this contest on Thursday, March 14.

---

"Challenge" was the key word for our team as we attempted to pull together a quilt concept across three shifts!  Given our odd combination of work hours, how could we possibly find time to meet, let alone plan and design? As the newbie in the group [Kerry] I took my lead from my seasoned workmates, Mary and Thomas, who both jumped on the idea of a cheater quilt. This seemed like the perfect strategy for us, and "minimal" rapidly became our theme when Mary sent out an image of a modern quilt that she thought might inspire our layout. Why make things harder than they needed to be? Thomas and I were both good with “minimal."

Color and fabric were next and we took a look at some sample palettes that accompanied the layout inspiration. We sent around our thoughts on pattern and after a bit we concluded that maybe each of us could contribute a little something on the surface design front. Apparently there are great snacks on 3rd shift, because Thomas came back with a leopard print in stereoscopic 3D. How about some wonky stripes (me) and some pebbling (Mary)? Perfect!  After some manipulation of color and pattern on my end, we had version 1 ready to throw darts at. Here’s a detail from this first round:

 

The consensus? Not so crazy about shifting stripes. Remember, think minimal and let’s tone down the white! Thomas came back with version 2:

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 3: Rocket Ship Quilt

This is the third post in our series of project posts for the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting on this contest opens on Thursday, 3/14.  

---

For this year’s staff challenge, our team consisted of Jaysen, Caitlin, and I (Sarah). It was great working with this group because we were all hired at the same time and have since diverged into different departments here at Spoonflower.

We brainstormed for a while on some different ideas but we liked the concept of creating a quilt to give to someone as a gift. Caitlin’s brother and sister-in-law, who currently live in Japan, are having twin boys in May and we loved the idea of making a baby boy quilt for them to enjoy. We chose rocket ships (because what little boy doesn’t like them?) and Caitlin’s brother graciously provided us with the Japanese kanji for the word.

Jaysen began designing a rocket ship print that would be used for the backing of the quilt.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 2: Mandala Quilt

This is the second in our series of posts describing the projects in the Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge.  Voting on this contest will open Thursday, March 14th.  

---

Anne: I originally thought of creating a mandala design because it is something I do for fun and relaxation. Coloring is a form of meditation and I find it as soothing and rhythmic as breathing. I love mixing up all the colors, and seeing what comes out is always a surprise. Every mandala in our quilt comes from a book called Coloring Mandalas 2: For Balance, Harmony, and Spiritual Well-Being by Susanne F. Fincher.

After getting approval for entering the mandalas as our design theme, Beth and I picked about twelve. Originally, we wanted to scan in each one but at 10”X10” they were too big for a traditional flatbed scanner. Beth prudently decided to take photographs of each image and upload them into the computer that way. She then fired up Adobe Illustrator with a 36”x36” canvas and each mandala sized as a 9”x9” square.

Beth: To keep the designs somewhat consistent, I did need to run a filter to make them more painterly. I then used the color dropper tool to select colors from each design for the borders and sashing.

2013 Spoonflower Staff Quilting Challenge Pt. 1: A Quilt From Spoonlandia!

Today marks the start of our annual Spoonflower staff challenge in which we turn the proverbial tables and ask the Spoonflower communithy to vote on us for a change.  This year's task was to come up with an original fabric design or designs and create a quilt.  Stephen sorted us all randomly into 15 teams and we got to work.  Some of us had never made a quilt before, so this proved pretty challenging.  But I suspect that equally challenging for those of us who are proficient quilters was having to give up a little control and work with a team.  Regardless of which category we fell into, I'm quite sure that everyone is pleased--and perhaps a bit relieved--to have finished their quilts!  (Or almost finished.  Ahem.)

This is our first blog post in this series of staff challenge projects, and we'll be posting a few each day before voting opens on Thursday, March 14th.  We hope you enjoy our quilting adventures!

---

Greetings from Spoonlandia! For our group project, Abbey, John and I (Laurie) went vintage postcard style. We get quite a few visitors here to Spoonflower through tours and classes, so we wanted to created a welcome quilt that our guests will see when they visit. The staff around here affectionately refer to Spoonflower as Spoonlandia, so we included this inside joke on our quilt. 

John was the mastermind who came up with the postcard theme and Abbey came up with this awesome sketch during one of our early brainstorming sessions.

Several meetings later we decided to shift our concept away from monster Kraken tentacles and onto the fabric and wallpaper that we print here.  Below are a few shots from the batch of photos I took around the Spoonflower office.

We came up with the idea to place fabric and wallpaper images into the letters that spelled out "Spoonlandia" just like the vintage postcards you might have found while traveling around America back in the day. John found the most helpful tutorial online that allowed us to easily create this look. So with our photos and concept nailed down, John and I worked on the design side of things until we came up with our final art to be printed on Kona fabric.