This is the adorable bowl I use for my pins while I am working on projects. I got it at Anthropologie and I got one for me, one for my daughter. When she decided she was done with hers it found a permanent home in my studio. It is the perfect size for the pins I scatter upon the tabletop as I am sewing. I love the bright pop of colors and happy feeling it gives me. 

But then Pincushion-Palooza (#ModaPinniePalooza) came along and I could not resist making a new pincushion to share the space with my striking bowl. I have noticed when working with my Poppy Mae fabrics that the inside of the poppy flower sometimes reminds me of a watermelon with seeds when it is cropped. I thought it would be super fun to do some fussy cutting and make a chunky watermelon slice for a pincushion. Being the novice quilter that I am, I experimented with making a template and sewing this curved wonder up. I'm not sure if it was the bias sewing and the stretching of the fabric or just my own lack of precision...but I ended up with a little bit of an off-kilter watermelon! Really...how many times is nature perfect and a watermelon is completely symmetrical?  At least that is the story I am sticking with. I am fondly calling this first prototype my "Frankenstein Watermelon" because when you flip it over you can see where the imperfections happen and my experimental seam/mistake fix happens. This is the honest, and sometimes not pretty, process of learning and experimentation and I proudly will use my mistakes and redo till I get it right! Hopefully I will have a free watermelon pattern up on my site by the time my fabric ships in November. 

I've filled this watermelon with ground up walnut shells that I purchased at a pet supply store. I have enough shell mix to make quite a few watermelons...so I'm sure I'll get it right eventually! In the meantime...happy summer and don't swallow the seeds! (A watermelon plant will grow in your tummy!)

Happy sewing!
Robin

These are some alternate color palettes for my Hawaiian Pineapple Tiki design. I know if I were wearing a Hawaiian shirt, I'd probably go for more of the teal colors mixed with warmer greens (than the original color palette that was specified by spoonflower.) Now for coordinates... Visit my spoonflower shop for more designs!
#SFWeeklyDesign #HawaiianPineapples

Today my experiment is with pinterest and a format that is good for pinning. With social media having different requirements in different places, I think it's a good idea to try out some tests. So excuse any duplication...I'm learning!

Another new thing I'm experimenting with is the spoonflower weekly design prompts. I loved the weekly contests they used to have. There was a wonderful sense of community, camaraderie and support with the comments people would leave on your designs for that week. It was great to see the variety of solutions people came up with for a theme. Often as I would go through the weekly voting, I'd be delighted by the unexpected perspectives and the gorgeous solutions the other designers had entered. It was a fun activity and a chance to experiment and push yourself to do new work or try new styles. I am sad that spoonflower is no longer doing the weekly challenges. They have larger, monthly ones with other sponsors, and although that is a good challenge as well, I miss the structure and the feeling that you didn't have to be too precious with the weekly one. Spoonflower has now started doing weekly design prompts that encourage people to share on social media. There is no "gathering place" to see all the entries on the spoonflower website at this point, but I am hopeful there will be at some point to replace the community that happened with the weekly contests. But I am also hoping the silver lining to this change is that I stretch myself in my social media and experiment and explore other avenues of sharing outside of spoonflower's site.

Back to the design prompt. This week's theme was to create a pattern that could be used on a hawaiian shirt using a limited color palette that spoonflower provided. I think I will experiment with some other color palettes (with a more muted green)  but I am happy with the pineapples and tropical feel. I mocked up this shirt using the Negroni shirt pattern on sproutpatterns.com. If you'd like to see more, see my shop page on spoonflower. #SFWeeklyDesign #pineapple #hawaiianshirt

Happy 4th of July!! I got to sleep in today due to the holiday (yes!!!) and awoke to an excited email from my Mom about the Spoonflower weekly competition. Yay! I won first place and am so thrilled! Thank you, thank you to everyone who voted!! There were many entries of fantastic designs (around 480 entries I believe) and I feel very grateful and honored to be selected to be in the top ten and as the pick with the most votes. I'm blushing brighter than a ruby-red grapefruit...

I am really thrilled to have placed in the top ten designs for the Spoonflower Farmers Market design competition! My design came in second place and I feel so thankful to everyone who voted for it! Thank you!

Because of placing in the top ten my fabric will be produced for this next week in a fat quarter bundle of the farmers market winners. And my fabric will now be for sale individually as well! I am so excited and am ordering some to make a market bag.

http://www.spoonflower.com/fat_quarter_bundles

One big, lovely thing I am finding with Spoonflower is there is a really nice and supportive community of designers and fabric enthusiasts who communicate with you. When you work on your own you often feel you are working in a little vacuum and it is great to have connection with others who are creative.

So onwards to sewing and again, thank you! thank you!

I love Fab.com! Fun and colorful inspiration and cool living... and now my designs are on there too! Check out the Studio Oh! kitchen collections. They are selling my garden variety recipe keepers and tear off placemats. Who doesn't love a sale?! Sale ends in 2 days, 22 hours... 21 hours... you know...

www.fab.com

Today my colorful veggie recipe keepers and placemats are for sale on Zulily! Check them out! If you are like me, I print out a lot of recipes from online sites and Orange Circle has come up with a great format to keeping track of all these recipe printouts. It is a vertical format with pages you can put your printouts in and wonderful divider tabs with cooking information like a cooking glossary, substitutions, common recipes, etc. The binder holds up to 70 pages and stands upright on your counter so it's easy to see while you are preparing your meal.

The placemats come in a tear-off pad with 50 sheets of paper placemats. Be inspired to get in your veggies everyday in a colorful and fun way!