Coordinates

Announcing the StoryPatches Design Challenge Winners

June 30, 2016

We’re thrilled to announce our winner is Heleen van Buul! Her design bird family tree was voted tops by our community. Heleen will receive a $300 cash prize from StoryPatches and a licensing contract to create a line of quilt labels plus $300 Spoonflower credit and a press release. All other entrants in the top 10 receive $100 in Spoonflower credit. Thanks to everyone who entered, and stay tuned for tomorrow’s announcement of the July Design Challenge!

“Bird Family Tree Coordinates” by Helen van Buul won our Design Challenge with StoryPatches!

Introducing our June Design Challenge

June 1, 2016

We're teaming up with our friends at StoryPatches to bring you June's Design Challenge: Family Tree Coordinates! This Challenge seeks 4 coordinating designs that celebrate family, in all of its forms. No need to attach a story of any kind or create a quilt label, just submit four designs formatted in a one-yard sized file, that all go together and symbolize family to you. The winning coordinate designs will be licensed for an exclusive set of StoryPatches labels!

Not sure how your designs will look as StoryPatches labels? The possibilities are endless! The winning designer will work with the team at StoryPatches to create an exclusive set of quilt labels adapted from their Family Tree Coordinates – the perfect complement to any handmade project created with the winning designs!

Not sure how to design coordinates? Check out this blog post where our friend Bonnie Christine shows us just how easy it can be.

Need help with design layout? Download our coordinate template and instructions.

Still can't get your head around this challenge? Check out one of our previous "coordinate" design challenge winners.

Here's an example of four coordinating designs in the layout we're looking for for this Design Challenge:

An example of four coordinating designs, formatted to fit on one yard. All designs are by Bonnie Christine, and are not related to the theme of this Design Challenge

Prizes: Winner receives $300 cash prize from StoryPatches and a licensing contract to create a line of quilt labels, $300 Spoonflower credit + a press release. All remaining entrants in the top 10 to receive $100 in Spoonflower credit.

Click below to read more details about the Design Challenge timeline and official rules, as well as how you can be entered into a giveaway!

Announcing the Top 10 Butterfly Coordinates!

August 20, 2015

With everything from leaf-munching caterpillars to nectar-sipping butterflies on display, the many phases of the life of the most showy pollinator were not lost on the more than 275 entrants to our Butterfly Coordinates Design Challenge! Congratulations to the first-time contest winner Oohoo with her butterfly coordinates design and don't miss all the top 10 winners' lovely coordinating designs! Be sure to browse our photoshoot with all the butterfly coordinate fabrics today on our Facebook page!

1. 329 votes for butterfly coordinates by oohoo
2. 321 votes for Butterfly Coordinates by memory
3. 312 votes for butterfly-coordinates-SF by treefishjane
4. 299 votes for Butterfly coordinates by heleen_vd_thillart
5. 276 votes for Butterfly Sketches Collection by khubbs
6. 269 votes for Wings N Things by natalierobin
7. 267 votes for spoonflower_butterfly_contest by dana_elena
8. 264 votes for With An Opposing Cloud by seesawboomerang
9. 263 votes for Vintage Garden Delights by christinewitte
10. 255 votes for Flying Fancy Butterfly Garden_Coordinates by robinpickens

Vote for Your Favorite Butterfly Coordinates!

August 14, 2015

When the sun is shining and flowers are abundant, we delight in watching butterflies take flight and revel in summer glory. To cap off our Summer SpoonChallenge, we put designers to the test by asking them to come up with four coordinating designs inspired by butterflies. As always, we are so impressed with the results. Check them all out and vote on your favorites!

VOTE NOW!

You Completed the SpoonChallenge!

August 1, 2015

Hooray! You completed our four-week SpoonChallenge on how to create a fabric collection. Give yourself a pat on the back and fine tune your new skills by entering our Butterfly Coordinates Design Challenge! The winner by popular vote will take home $100 in Spoonflower credit and a special surface design prize pack! Deadline for entries is August 11th, 2015. For more information visit our upcoming contests page.

Share!

What were a few of your favorite parts of this series? Is there something you wish we'd tackle in our next SpoonChallenge?! We'd love to hear your thoughts! Share them with us using hashtag #spoonchallenge on your social media platform of choice or in the comments below!

And a big thank you to our friend Bonnie Christine for sharing her expert thoughts on creating a textile collection!

SpoonChallenge: Completing Collections & Building a Portfolio

July 27, 2015

You've gathered inspiration, created a lovely focal print and perfect coordinates. In our last post from Bonnie Christine as a part of our SpoonChallenge, she shares how to put the finishing touches on your collection by building a professional portfolio.

Working in collections, finalizing your designs and completing a body of work will really help to round out your experience and expertise as a pattern designer. Offering patterns in complete collections will give the end user an immense amount of options and opportunities to use your prints. From making large focal print dresses to small coordinate bags and quilts. The possibilities are endless!

Another wonderful incentive to working in collections is the finalized body of work it will give you in the end. Having an array of finished pattern collections that you're proud of will show the breadth of your work and open up opportunities for you as a designer. One thing you might want to consider after you've finished a few collections is making a pattern portfolio.

No matter how beautiful your work is, it won’t sell if it’s not presented in a polished, professional way. For me, presenting a finished body of work in a well thought-out portfolio was an essential part of moving my career forward as a creative. I believe making a handmade portfolio that is a true reflection of yourself and your work can absolutely help advance your career, too!

Crafting your own portfolio can be such a creative, fulfilling project, and definitely a labor of love as many, many hours go into the precise planning, designing, printing, and binding of the book. you can see a few images of mine below. I absolutely love watching it come to life!

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin to designing your portfolio.

What to include. Portfolios can range from simple to complex, and there's really no right or wrong answer. Take some time to decide what you'd like to portray in your portfolio and jot down the pages you would like to include. A simple portfolio could only include a collection or two and a contact page. A more complex portfolio might include a table of contents, about page, several collections with stories, mockups, social media & blog page, contact page and more!

Who will see it. Do you know who you'd like to show your portfolio to? Having an end viewer in mind (an art director, publisher, professor, etc) will help give your entire book direction. Keep this person (or group of people) in mind as you decide what to include and begin designing its pages.

How to stand out from the crowd. The world of surface pattern design is buzzing with designers and companies will often times review 100s of portfolios a week. That's why it's important to stand out from the crowd! When designing your portfolio, pour yourself and lots of love into every detail. Make it a true reflection of you brand and yourself as a designer. I like to say your portfolio should be 'you in a book'!

Showing your work. Of course, showing your work isn't easy and I want to recognize that. As designers, we pour every ounce of ourselves into our work and it can feel very vulnerable to start sharing it with the world. I want to encourage each of you to show your work though, because without sharing it no one will ever see it! We have all received rejection and criticism before, but there's always something to be learned throughout the process. Sharing your designs, patterns and process with the world will always pay off in the end. We can't wait to see what you create!

I'm so passionate about having a professional portfolio, I recently taught a class on it! If you're interested in learning more about creating a handmade portfolio, how to design and print the pages and how to build and bind your own book, you can check out my new brand new skillshare course: design & bind your own creative portfolio (which is a great follow up to my first two classes, intro to surface pattern design and surface pattern design 2.0)!

What's your favorite part about designing in collections? Have you made a portfolio? If so, where would you like it to take your career? We'd love to hear more about your work, so share with us in the comments section, or on your favorite social media platform using hashtag #spoonchallenge!

Missed some of our SpoonChallege: Creating a Fabric Collection posts? No worries–all of the content is available here!

About Our Guest Blogger

Bonnie Christine is a fabric designer for Art Gallery Fabrics, teacher and creator of Going Home to Roost. In addition to teaching Adobe Illustrator and sharing all that she knows with the Roost Tribe, you can find her working in the garden and spending time with her husband and children. Join her in living an extraordinarily creative life on her blog, Going Home to Roost!

SpoonChallenge: Designing Coordinates for a Pattern Collection

July 20, 2015

Once you've created your focal print, it's time to get started on filling out your collection with coordinates. Bonnie Christine walks you through the process with today's SpoonChallenge post.

Though designing single prints is a fun way to express solo ideas, designing entire collections will round out your pattern skills and bring cohesion to your work. It's also a really fun way to bring your ideas to life and see them come together in a full expression of prints. Generally, a well rounded pattern collection will include 8-12 prints. In addition to designing a focal print, you'll also want to include several coordinate prints.

Coordinate prints serve several purposes. They support the focal print, bring balance to the collection and help reference the overall theme.

Ideally, you'll have a nice balance between focal prints, medium prints and small coordinates (maybe 3-4 of each). Below are a few of my own prints that I consider to be coordinate prints.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you begin to designing your coordinates.

Scale. The supporting coordinates in a collection should range in scale from medium to small. This will give the overall collection an appealing look to the eye and draw the viewer in to study the prints in detail. If your collection will be printed on fabric, these small to medium scaled prints will also give the sewer several options to choose from for the details of their project. Think quilt bindings, the lining of a bag, a collar to a dress and more!

Complexity. These prints should also vary in complexity. Having too many complex designs will make the entire collection feel hectic and busy. Including a few simpler coordinates will give the eye a place to rest and the end user more options for using the collection as a whole.

Contrast. Coordinate prints will also present various contrast values. As you design a collection, it's a great idea to include an equal amount of dark, medium and light patterns in hue. Using color to add contrast to a collection will help the final designs feel balanced and detailed.

Motif Theme. Finally, you'll want to make sure that the prints support your overall theme and story, but aren't too repetitive. For example, if you have several floral patterns, adding a few geometric or abstract prints will break them up and add value to the collection as a whole.

Creating a well balanced collection in scale, complexity and contrast will give the end user several options when it comes to using your collection. For instance, a quilter will use focal prints and medium scaled prints for the bulk of the quilting pieces and backing, and the smaller coordinates for the binding. Sewers will also enjoy using these smaller coordinates for things like piping, linings of a bag, collars and more. Of course, other industries will find them useful as well for things like stationery collections, wallpaper coordinates and more!

One of the best ways to work in Adobe Illustrator is to take full advantage of all the keyboard shortcuts. It will make your workflow run smoothly and your designs come to life even quicker. To help you learn the most essential keyboard shortcuts for surface pattern design, I've created an 8×10 printable for you. You can grab the download from my blog, Going Home to Roost!

What comes more natural for you to design – focal prints or smaller coordinate prints? Let's chat in the comments section and by using hashtag #spoonchallenge on your favorite social media platform!

There's still time to get caught up if you're just now joining our SpoonChallege! Find posts we've already shared here and sign up here to receive future posts to your inbox!

About Our Guest Blogger

Coordinates In Bloom: Congrats to Hang Tight Studio!

January 12, 2012

We just finished printing and photographing the winners of our coordinates contest, in which designers were asked to create four fabric designs in a collection to fit on a single yard. Wow. I'm not sure if this will come across in the photos, but the entries in this contest have almost certainly provided some of the lovliest fabrics we've seen emerge from our (many) contests. The winner is the Bloem Coordinates set by Heather Dutton of Hang Tight Studio. While Heather is one of our favorite designers, this is actually her first contest win since our spoons and flowers contest back in the fall of 2009. A lot has changed since then!

See the Top Ten Coordinates Entries

The full results are as follows:

1. 735 votes for Bloem Coordinates Set by heatherdutton
2. 706 votes for Footnote Flower – Coordinates by pennycandy
3. 680 votes for What_The_Hoot by bzbdesigner
4. 654 votes for 4 for 1! by mariao
5. 642 votes for linear love collection by amel24
6. 622 votes for Les Monsieurs by kayajoy
7. 546 votes for Animal Impressions Collection – 4 FQ in 1 Yard (Bird Vine, Animal Silhouette Quilt, Animal Tower, and Elephant Tracks) by ttoz
8. 510 votes for Gnome_Patch_coordinates by mayabella
9. 497 votes for Crazy Circus Coordinates by made_in_shina
10. 479 votes for It's a Handmade World: Coordinates by cynthiafrenette

A contest to create four coordinating fabrics: Vote!

January 5, 2012

This week's challenge offers one of the most difficult themes we've put together for a regular contest. We asked designers to come up with four coordinating fabrics laid out to be printed on a single yard of fabric. So you're voting not just for a single design, but for a collection. Fun, no? The work submitted for this contest is just amazing.