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!

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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.

From there, Abbey took over with the sewing to complete our postcard quilt.

I (Abbey) took on the challenge of sewing our postcard quilt to perfection. I wanted to show off three details that I really loved about our quilt: the Spoonlandia lettering, the map background and the area of Durham.  I quilted all of the lettering to make sure it stood out, and also quilted the outline of North Carolina.

Embroidery was a new adventure for me, so I chose to do a simple stem stitch to outline the area of Durham. 

Please visit Spoonlandia and snap a photo with our quilt!

A BIG THANK YOU!!! to all the Spoonflower designers represented in this quilt. By the letter they are featured in, they are listed below:

S – wonky wood – calming grey – jesseesuem –http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/813630

P – dragon boy – zesti – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/521685

O – serpentine754 – muhlenkott – www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1363184

O – rootin tootin veg summer – sonny&bee – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1529608
pretty nature – pink – sonny&bee – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1117006
little summer village – sonny&bee – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1117033

N – pomegranate stripe – art_is_us – www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1244121
rock daisies – sky – inscribed_here http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/224562

L – vintage buttons (grey) – marcelinesmith – www.spoonflower.com/fabric/175337

A – inverness – natitys – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/749863

N – pink lemonade ikat – sara_berrenson – www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1218747

D – henrim2 – antoniamanda – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1595088
les cerises au matin – cynthiafrenette – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/1590246

I  - all signs point to peace -amy_lou_who – www.spoonflower.com/fabric/274253

A  - nature print green – lola_designs – http://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/163775