Spoonflower Swatches — Color Wheels

There are many projects I keep meaning to post about, and then before I get around to actually doing so, I completely forget. Now that I am jobless (temporarily, hopefully), I may try to catch up on some of the forgotten and neglected posts. So, to start with, Spoonflower.

Sometime last November Spoonflower held a 'Buy-1-Get-1-Free' deal on Fat Quarters. So, I got motivated to put together a full set of Sylvanian Family clothes to be printed out. That by itself is unrelevant to this blog, but I also had a swatch of some of the exact same designs printed out at FOD. Spoonflower has a cotton voile and FOD has a polyester voile, so while a direct comparison isn't quite possible, some examination is still useful (and is something I've been meaning to do for awhile). That post will probably come next, however.

Anyway, I figured I may as well print out full fat quarters of a few of my fabric designs while I was at it. I mostly work in Inkscape, and I prefer to work in HSL or CMYK colorspaces, so I made up a set of a few color wheels and had those printed out.

Fat Quarter on Arrival

After Washing and Pressing

Of particular note is the difficulty in getting all the in-between blues and pinks. There's also a fair amount of shift in the lightness of the colors (as compared to what's on my screen). Spoonflower now has a $1 8in sample of colors they've selected to be close to screen colors (they may have had it for awhile, but I only found it after my I'd already received my color wheels), and I ordered that this spring. From that, it looks like a decent range of blues is possible.

Spoonflower Sampler Colors

So while color wheels are traditionally useful, these mostly they just tell me that gradiants will fail horribly. On the other hand, its good to know that my normal adjustments in HSL or CMYK won't work as I expect, and I'll have to mostly stick to the colors I actually have printed out if I want the printed cloth to match my intentions.

Anne of Denmark — Neckline and Collar

I came across an old post by a friend asking what this sort of neckline would be called:

The collar style is unusual enough that I decided to look up general neckline descriptions. The closest appears to be a neckline called either the Elizabethan or the Queen Anne, but the descriptions all concur that the bustline for a Queen Anne is a sweetheart shape, and the bustline of this is more of a scoop neck shape.

Curious about the naming of the neckline, I did a Google image search on the term 'Queen Anne'. This primarily turned up images of Queen Anne of Great Britain (1665-1714) with scooped neckline but no collar. The search also turned up images of Anne Boleyn (1501-1536) with a square neckline, Anne of Austria (1601-1666) with the scooped neckline but the wrong collar, and Anne of Denmark (1574-1619).

Anne Of Great Britain (1665-1714)

Anne Boleyn (1501-1536)

Anne of Austria (1601-1666)

Looking at the Wikipedia article on Anne of Denmark resulted in the following set of images:

I don't know if images of Anne of Denmark were any sort of basis for the Queen Anne neckline, but I do think the first image I showed of the white top is a nice modern interpretation of this 16th century neckline and collar.

Costume College 2011 - Day 3

While I have not yet managed to wear any costumes to Costume College, I have participated in Sunday Undies each year. The first year I wore a light blue pinstripe Victorian styled corset (pattern LM100) I made in a workshop held by Lacis and taught by Carol Wood. Last year I wore my machine-washable corset (all the bones and the busk are removeable), which was drafted and modified from Corsets and Crinolines (#43, pg 84). So I decided that this year I should really finish up my stays and wear those.

I started my stays over two years ago, before my very first Costume College. They were drafted/scaled-up from a plate by Leloir. By that first costume college they were, for the most part, corded, boned, and put together, and I was partway through attaching the binding. I finished the binding some time ago, and they have spent the last year or so sitting around waiting for eyelet holes to tie the shoulder straps, and a couple more bones to stiffen the last few tabs. So in off times between when we arrived Thursday night and Saturday night I finished off those last couple things. I also finally got around to hemming my chemise (which has been sitting around, folded up and neglected, in its unhemmed state for the last two years). No pictures for now, since I didn't think to have one taken on my own camera.

After breakfast, I went to the 2D to 3D comic/anime lecture, found time to go by the costume exhibit, got distracted buying 3 gross of buttons at the marketplace, so was late to the Knotty Girl hair to wear class, and finally attended the hat blocking lecture and the electronics in costuming lecture. I spent the evening in the Hospitality Suite and had a wonderful time hearing about fruit-platter-hats and miscellaneous other items.

At the costume exhibit, Lynn McMasters had a nice display of hats up, with paper hair in the appropriate styles. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of the whole table. One of my favorites because of the bright colors:

I saw two examples of a black netting overlayed on gold colored cloth, and I really liked the look, in particular of the bodice/corset near the entrance to the exhibit (on the left below).

Many more pictures from the costume exhibit here.

This concludes this mini-series about Costume College. Previously Day 1 and Day 2

Costume College 2011 - Day 2

On Satuday, day 2, I went to the Chinese Armor learning circle, which was neat to hear about. (Some pictures here.) This was immediately followed by the corset fitting learning circle; I now have some ideas to try to adjust the fit of my modified Edwardian corset.

Later I attended the Boutis Provencal workshop (resulting in Unfinished Project 2 of the weekend), "The Corset Unboned: Florentine Form", and "18th Century Fan Language - Fact and Fiction". I may or may not actually attempt to finish the Boutis Provencal sample we started on in class. While it may be nice to finish the sample and have it around, the overall idea is fairly simple so I may just jump to a final project (if/when I decide on a project to use it on). The Corset Unboned lecture was extremely informative as was the Fan Language lecture. In particular I liked hearing about the attempts to track down the original references and sources for the fan language (and finding out it didn't really exist in the way the later references implied). I think it would be awesome if the museum with the example of the 18th century parlor game coversation fan had reproductions made; it might be fun to have an event based on parlor games.

Friday night was the Gala: Creatures of the Night. I helped set up so I was able to get a few photos when the lights were still on before the doors opened:

I felt like a lot more costumes had lights this year (and lights which were used well), which was exciting to see.

More photos from the Gala

Previously, Day 1. Next, Day 3

Costume College 2011 - Day 1

This was my third year attending Costume College, and probably my most relaxed: I didn't even bother trying to think up or make any costumes; and I didn't spend the weekend working (no writing papers or revising my dissertation, like the last two years). I arrived late Thursday night with my friend. Friday I spent all day in the Regency era corded corset workshop (taught by JoAnn Peterson of Laughing Moon). We were guinea pigs for a new pattern: exciting! My gussets were inserted and all the grommets were set before the end of class. Stitching all the cording the lines is going to take awhile of course. So, Unfinished Project 1 (of the weekend).

The Friday night social featured the contestants of Project Funway. I only managed one still photo of one of the dresses.

Highlights of the night from my point of view were the teapot purse, and finding out about a particular Simplicity pattern. The teapot purse:

One of the marketplace vendors was selling similar teapot purses; I didn't like the sizes as much, so I may try to look for my own acceptable teapot at the numerous thrift and dollar stores nearby.

I saw a lady walking around with a blue coat on, then another lady walked by with the same coat style in different fabric. Look at the difference the choice of fabric can make to the look of a pattern:

This is Simplicity 2171 by Theresa LaQuey. I really like it. If I weren't right on the borderline between their size sets I would get it. Instead I may get it, or I may redraft something similar; I think one of the Francis Grimble books had some vaguely similar coats that I also liked.

More photos from the Ice Cream Social

Continued on Day 2 and Day 3

A Continuing Trend

My fabric design contest entry (mentioned a few weeks back) reached a new low in the number of votes received: 26. Total. From this I have learned that pirates are popular, and the theme of the contest is irrelevant. (Although supposedly they do attempt to filter off some of the really off topic entries.) Also, maybe this time I will actually learn not to bother entering any more of Spoonflower's contests.

In other, more positive news, I have been working on a charting app. I finally got frustrated enough with my current charting process to make something better. My process before for posting charts: Google Docs Spreadsheet → app script I wrote → LaTex → pdf (using pdflatex) → clip/paste into GIMP → get a png → upload to Picasa → link to from blog post. New process for posting charts: my web app → svg and symbol key → include svg in blog post. Unfortunately, inline svg images are not supported in IE and older browsers. I can also do: my web app → LaTex → pdf, easily enough; getting an image to link to from the blog post is the annoying part.

So I am thinking of only posting the svg versions on this blog, but eventually making collections of the charts available in pdf form. My plan is to start with the "Fish Napkin Patterns" in Lambert's book, My Knitting Book, vol. 2.

I have a long list of uncompleted projects, however, so swatching the patterns may take awhile. In the meantime here is the Double Rose Leaf Pattern - Revised (originally mentioned in this early post and also mentioned in my last post).

Edging Pattern For a Hat

A couple months back I decided to make my mom a hat after finding a really lovely silk yarn (Louisa Harding Mulberry in 21/Claret). I started by looking through a number of hat patterns on Ravelry. I particularly liked For Joana by Agata Smektala, but my mom wanted a little more ruffle along the bottom edge. So I thought of doing something like the leaf edging along the bottom of this Greenleaf Cap by Freyalyn Close-Hainsworth, but perhaps using the Double Rose Leaf pattern. So I did a test swatch of half of the pattern with a faggoting stitch like edge as found in some of the edging patterns from Jackson's Practical Companion to the Worktable (for example, the pattern on pg 103).

The swatch and corresponding chart:

The green stitches in the chart highlight the leaf motif, and the blue stitches on the right indicate short-rows used for forming the curve.

I decided that the leaf pattern didn't curve and ruffle well.

Once Again

I went ahead and entered another Spoonflower contest. The theme this time was Rococo, and I'd already been messing around with 18th century styled designs, so I didn't make a new design specifically for the contest. Some time back I had visited my library and browsed through several fabric textile books. These included (among others) Printed Textiles: English and American Cottons and Linens 1700-1850 by Florence M. Montgomery and Americas Printed and Painted Fabrics by Florence H. Petti. I think the former of these two, Printed Textiles[GoogleBooks, Abebooks, B&N, Amazon], contained a nice selection of chintz and block-printed fabrics.

Anyway, I'd been working on some micro print designs for my Sylvanian Families at the time I visited the library, and so I used some of the stylistic features from a couple 1760-1780 block prints. Simplified, of course, for a smaller scale, and I arbitrarily picked some colors. I ended up with this fabric, the coloring of which makes me think of 'Hawaiian shirts'. When I saw the upcoming contest theme was Rococo, I decided to enter my design (on a marginally larger scale to show up better on the contest viewer). Yes, the styling is a little late for Rococo, and the coloring is very modern, but I have felt past contest entries always seemed overly loose with the theme anyway.

Well, after having looked through the contest entries, at least my entry has some relation to the 18th century. (I thought some of the other entries were interesting or pretty, but almost none of them made me think Rococo or 18th century. Of course, if I didn't have such a fascination of chintz, and I hadn't read through as many books on 18th century textiles as I have, I'd probably think better of at least some of the designs.) Look through the entries yourself and vote.

A Simple Stitch Pattern

I wanted to test some of the stitch patterns from Lambert's "My Knitting Book, Second Series", as mentioned earlier. Being moderately lazy, I decided to start with a pattern with few stitches and rows per repeat: Open Pattern for a small Quilt is on page 49, and has only 5 stitches across per pattern, and two rows. The chart is pretty silly, but here it is anyway (second row is purled across the back side, so not shown):

The slipped stitch is alternately passed over two stitches and one stitch.

Also, I made up that symbol combination, but the intention should be mostly clear if you understand the somewhat similar symbol combination that occurs in the last image in this article on FluffBuff and is also explained by ShowYouHowTo.

For the swatch I cast on 14 stitches: 2 repeats plus 2 edge stitches on each side. I knit about 12 rows; for the first three pairs of pattern rows I slipped the stitches knitwise, and for the second three pairs I slipped the stitches purlwise. I decided I prefered the look when slipping the stitches knitwise (bottom of picture).

High-tech Fabrics

I briefly referenced Ecouterre in my last post. It's big on sustainability, and recycling, and reducing waste. All good objectives, but the posts I've found the most interesting tend to be the slightly more bizarre technology posts: energy generating clothes, clothes that power your gadgets, invisibility cloak, glow in the dark clothing, fibers that can emit and detect sound, and spider dragline from E. coli. Another site on technology and fashion, Fashioning Technology, has more focus on the lights and gizmos on or in clothing, and less about new textiles. Also, Syuzi Pakhchyan of Fashioning Technology appears to have a DIY Intro book [GoogleBooks, Abebooks, B&N, Amazon].

Now about clothing style, or rather visual elements; I'm currently liking the sleeveless (or cap-sleeve) ruffle look. Clothing grown from bacteria seems a little weird, and I don't care for the paper-like look of the material, but I think this shirt design is kind of cute. Similarly, I like the ruffles over the shoulders on this dress and the fabric probably looks pretty neat in person, but the rest of the dress isn't very exciting. Both of these are part of the Trash Fashion exhibit at the Science Museum in South Kensington, London.

Lace as Jewelry

I'm not much of a jewelry person, but someday I really should pick up a few things to accessorize costumes. Actually, somewhere between Margaretville and I-87 in NY there is an antique shop in some building (which also contains a cafe and some other stuff), and this antique shop contained several 'Victorian watch pins'. I was very tempted to get one when I passed through last summer, and didn't because I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the $40 at the time, and I've been kicking myself since then. I don't even know the name of the shop, or building, so even if I end up in that region of the country again sometime soon I don't know that I'd be able to find the place again.

Maybe I will sketch out something of what I remember of it. Which honestly isn't much beyond stones spaced circularly, and two tiers. (I can't even remember if the stones were green or maroon, now.)

Also on the topic of jewelry, I recently came across Ecouterre, which had a post about vintage lace cast in gold and silver. Some of the crochet and Cluny lace pieces are kind of neat (See WhiteFly on Etsy). Although really, the Cluny lace could simply be made in wire, and the crochet piece could be made in metallic thread (not quite the same end look, but I think it could still look good if done well). Still, the idea of casting the vintage pieces in recycled gold and silver is interesting.

Knitting Patterns On My Phone

Google has (back in late Nov. or early Dec.) launched an ebook store site. As part of this they now have an e-reader for android phones. Although the old scanned needlework books are still images, and not epub books (with adjustable font size), several of the ones I have looked at appear to have originally been printed on half or quarter sheets of paper. This means they are just about the perfect size for displaying on my Nexus One.

Above, a page from Lambert's "My Knitting Book, Second Series". I have started to swatch out some of the stitch patterns and edging patterns from this book, and intend to chart them as I did previously with a few of the patterns from Jackson's "Practical Companion to the Work Table" (pg 102, 103, 105, 126).

Also shown in the picture: the same page printed out on paper, and a baby bonnet I am making for my niece. I started the bonnet with the intention of testing out some of the patterns in Lambert's book; at the moment only two stitch patterns are actually going to end up being used. More details about the bonnet will likely wait until after I have finished the bonnet and charted the stitch patterns. Another picture, with the GoogleBook app in 'night' mode.

Between the original printing and font, and the digitization process, I personally think the night mode is a little difficult to read.

Jackson's Practical Companion, Page 126

I have two more patterns from The Practical Companion to the Work Table, by Elizabeth Jackson that I have charted out: German Lace Pattern from page 124, and Open Pattern For Shawl from page 126.

Well, I haven't gotten around to knitting swatches up yet, but lillybomm on Ravelry has already tested the Shawl Pattern: in a lovely orange yarn. So I thought I may as well post the chart without knitting up a swatch to go with it. It is a fairly simple pattern.

The german lace pattern appears to have several errors in the written instructions, so I won't post the chart until I've actually swatched up what I think is the correct pattern.

Jackson's Practical Companion, Page 105

The next edging swatch I made in The Practical Companion to the Work Table, by Elizabeth Jackson was the Brussels Lace pattern, on page 105.

As with the prior two patterns (Pointed Lace, Open Lace), this pattern is again written in garter stitch lace, and I have charted (and swatched) both the original and a stockinette style version. These charts use two additional symbols. One is a double decrease. The other is a non-standard symbol indicating two yarns-overs; on the following row only one of the yarn-overs is used and the other is dropped. This results in an extra loose yarn over, and a larger hole.

This pattern has an 8 row repeat. The written instructions for row 9 say to bind off some number of stitches then continue with row 1. In the following charts, row 9 is fully diagrammed. Thus row 1 is only used at the beginning, and the pattern then repeats between rows 2 and 9. When ending, the last full row of the pattern should be row 8, with the 9th row being the bindoff. Here is a chart of the original version, with even rows knit.

Jackson's Practical Companion, Page 103

I continued swatching some of the edging patterns in The Practical Companion to the Work Table, by Elizabeth Jackson. Following is the sample and corresponding charts for the Open Lace Pattern, on page 103.

As with the prior lace pattern, the instructions were written for a garter stitch lace. I concluded after knitting both the version as written and the modified version in stockinette style, that I actually preferred the garter stitch version for this particular edging.

The original instructions are missing a single knit stitch at the end of row 8. Here is a chart of the pattern, with the correction marked in orange:

Jackson's Practical Companion

I was thinking of making a baby bonnet for my future niece, but I was unimpressed with the selection of baby bonnets I found on Ravelry so I decided to browse through the victorian era public domain books on Google. Well, I didn't find much in the way of baby bonnets (so far), but I found a number of edging patterns that looked interesting.

So I've started to chart and knit a few of them. Almost all the patterns I looked at are written out as garter stitch lace, but I've charted them out as both garter stitch and stockinette stitch. Thus, the following charts show the front of the lace. For the most part, the charts use the JIS symbols (a list and visual instructions of how to knit the stitches can be found at this helpful site, and more general information on Japanese knitting symbols can be found here), but the following key can also be used (in the following, SSK is used instead of SKPsso).

I started with the pointed lace pattern, on page 102 of The Practical Companion to the Work Table by Elizabeth Jackson:

V&A Fashion In Detail

At some point this summer, when I noticed Amazon was out of "Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Fashion in Detail", [Amazon, B&N,GoogleBooks,V&A], I hurriedly ordered "Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail" before it also vanished, [Amazon,B&N,GoogleBooks,V&A]. At some point "Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Fashion in Detail" came back in stock and I got around to ordering it. Well, last week I ordered "Underwear: Fashion in Detail", [Amazon,B&N,GoogleBooks,V&A]. So now I have three V&A books of eye candy.

The cover photos on the books are of course ©V&A
Shop at the V&A: 17th & 18th C., 19th C., Underwear

The "Underwear: Fashion in Detail" may have somehow been both the most disappointing and the most interesting. Despite having a gorgeous corset on the cover, I think most of the book covered 20th century underwear. They had plenty of earlier pieces (chemises, shifts, drawers, stays, corsets, hoops, and bustles), but the book was organized to highlight certain things, and the 20th century had so much change in underwear, including underwear as outerwear, that there seemed to be a lot of 20th century selections. I found this is what made the book interesting; the text explained a lot of the changing fashions and how they sometimes fit within the more general social context.

In any case, some of the 20th century pieces were still stunning. One of my favorites was the stocking with the embroidered, sequined snake encircling the leg, circa 1900, Item V&A:T.53-1962. Another was one of the dresses, circa 1930s, shown on the back cover (the one on the left), Item V&A:T.308-1984.

Again, photos displayed on the front and back covers are ©V&A

I am also vaguely tempted to try and crochet a whirlpool bra. Don't know what I'd do with it if I made one, but designing and creating something like the bra on pg 150-151, Item V&A: T.196-1989, just seems kind of interesting.

Omiyage Bags, Set 1

As I mentioned in the last post, Spoonflower is not the only business to print fabric on demand in small amounts. And I have decided to test as many of them out as I can; this has turned into an ongoing, and very slow project.

At some point in my infrequent browsing through craft books in bookstore, I came across "The Perfect Bag" by Linda McGehee [GoogleBooks,B&N,Amazon]. Well, I managed to find this book in my current local library not too long ago, during one of my browses through the craft section.

I also came across "Omiyage: Handmade Gifts from Fabric in the Japanese Tradition" by Kumiko Sudo [GoogleBooks,B&N,Amazon]. I'm not much of a purse person -- I have one purse that I use constantly (it occasionally switches, approximately every 2-5 years I think) -- but Omiyage completely captured me. The only problem is that nearly all the projects involve a whole bunch of piecing. I got taken with a quilt/piecing bug once, and made myself a chair cushion cover; I have since lost nearly all interest in projects that involve piecing (the prospect of crazy quilting still has me captured though). To eliminate the piecing problem of those fantastic bags, I decided to make a cheater print of custom fabric. And since I had almost 50 designs by this point, I decided to try and use them all as a sort of sampler.

So I laid out the necessary pieces for 6 bags from the Omiyage book, and one purse/bag based on what I remembered from The Perfect Bag. Originally I was going to print them out through Spoonflower, but I wanted a slightly heavier weight fabric than their quilting cotton (and I didn't want to pay the price for the cotton sateen). So I took a look at Fabric On Demand, which offers a 62" wide 6oz cotton poplin for $16.75 (probably the best price per cloth area I've seen).

On Demand and Custom Fabric Printing

Spoonflower is not the only site that will print custom fabric, but at the moment it seems to have the best combination of price and easy to use site/ordering. I figure, however, I should spread my business around where it seems appropriate and try to promote competition.

Following is a list of the current set of sites I have looked at (or rather found) thus far for custom fabric printing (in small amounts).

More Fabric Design and Spoonflower Contests

I decided after the tessellation contest result (and looking at the winners of that contest and previous contests) that my design has too many colors, or too much variety of colors. So I set out to learn something about fabric design. I borrowed "The Fabric Design Book: Understanding and creating patterns using texture, shape, and color." by Karin Jerstorp and Eva Köhlmark from my local library [GoogleBooks,B&N,Amazon]. At this point I've still only made my way through about a third of the book; I keep getting distracted with working on new designs.

Around this time Spoonflower held another contest; this time to design a one yard cheater quilt. Inspired by Gerry Smeltzer's "Black-White and Chartreuse" quilt at PIQF (2009), I decided to make something similar with a slightly more 'steampunk-ish' flair. Here's a picture of "Black-White and Chartreuse", which I am in love with still (I like the color green, especially lime green):

As an exercise from the book, or based on a couple exercises, I decided to make a fabric collection using variations of a single element and a restricted palette. For the design element I started with two simple gears, then used a quarter or half of the gear as the basic element. For the palette I picked a single hue of brown, then selected three saturation levels and four intensity levels at each saturation level. The final design set didn't fit in a single 'collection' on Spoonflower's site, so its separated into two collections: Variations on a Gear and Gear Flowers.

I then used a subset of these designs to make my gear quilt cheater print (click the image to get to the Spoonflower page).

I concluded after the contest that Spoonflower's contest voting display favors somewhat simple designs, especially when the contest entries are for a full yard of fabric. Some of the top designs looked great on the screen, when the image was only 2 inches wide, but after thinking about what the design would look like on a full yard of fabric I noticed that at least one design featured flowers (or something) where the center of the flower consisted of a plain white circle 8 inches in diameter.

I only managed to come in 40th out of 127, with 225 votes, in the Cheater Print contest, with my gear quilt. I've since made a reduced version to be printed out as a table place-mat, but I haven't gotten around to having it printed yet (and its one of my few designs that isn't yet viewable by the public).

I made several designs using the Summer Flowers color theme: Summer Flowers collection. I entered "Diamond Leaf Scroll" in the weekly contest. The design came in 83rd out of 136, with 91 votes.

Well, then I got excited when they announced a weekly contest with the theme of "Desert"; I grew up in the desert (the Mojave Desert to be specific). Desert is such a broad theme, however. I thought about doing desert wild flowers, but I don't actually have any personal pictures of them (or at least not any digital ones). So I asked my dad if he had suggestions for a desert themed fabric (he's an art teacher in the Washington D.C. area, and he's really good at thinking up interesting ideas for pictures). He said I should pick something from the desert with a nice pattern, and suggested the Mojave Green (a diamond back rattlesnake), and then he suggested having it kind of appear out of the background (my interpretation, not his words).

Since it sounded like a cool idea I decided to try it. I had some difficulty trying to figure out how to draw the snake in the computer. Then I had some difficulty trying to figure out scales. The scales ended up being a bump map pattern in GIMP, followed by some back and forth between Inkscape and GIMP to get a scaly skin: I made an image of a single scale in Inkscape, then imported it into GIMP and created a beveled image (I think I went with beveled rather than bump map), then created a set of scales in the diamond back pattern using Inkscape, imported the textured image of a scale as a pattern into Inkscape and applied it to each scale in the diamond, and finally exported the bitmap so that it could be imported into Inkscape as a fill pattern.

Scale exported from Inkscape:	Saved from GIMP, and imported into Inkscape as a fill pattern:	Exported from Inkscape, and bitmap imported as a fill pattern:

I then found a public domain image snake and laid out the diamond pattens, then filled in the extra spaces with solid scales, and finally took the whole coiled snake and laid it on top of a plain diamond filled area in GIMP. (Then I fiddled with some gradients to make the snake pop out a little more relative to the background, especially the head.) And I had my contest entry.

It came in a disappointing 70th out of 119, with 70 votes. I've concluded that crafters like cute happy images. And snakes are generally not considered cute, or happy. (As a side note, my dad said most of the contest entries looked childish, which made me feel better. I suppose artists and crafters have different mindsets.) The winning entry was probably my favorite contest entry (after my own of course); even I like cute.

Given my degrading contest performance, I've decided to stop designing fabrics for Spoonflower contest, at least until something really good comes up. (I haven't stopped designing fabrics, but they're for other projects.)