Spoonflower Advent Calendar Contest

I've entered the Spoonflower Advent Calendar Contest!
I worked on it up until the entry deadline. I wish I could have done more for the presentation layout but I did not have time. Last weekend was entirely consumed with Lily's school project, Her school's Family fun Day at Great Wolf Lodge, Her Birthday Party at Speed Zone, and then another child's birthday party we had to attend. With all the events I lost 4 whole days of work on my entry.

I wish the Spoonflower  website showed better images of my advent pockets. You can't zoom in on any of it or provide thumbnail details. So I'm providing some detail images here and leaving a link on my Spoonflower description for people to follow from there.

I had a hard time coming up with a consistent idea to begin with. I wanted a Quilter's Advent that featured fat quarters or cheater quilt squares but the size constraint (42"x36") was very limiting. So I decided to make pockets shaped like sewing tools. Except sewing tools are not easy to hem unless you put an uninteresting square border around them. I went ahead and made 12 thread spools with Christmas themed colors and decorations and decided to come up with something to accompany them as I worked on them.

 

 Then I decided to use Illustrations from 'Easy Steps In Sewing For Big And Little Girls'. My original idea was to make 12 trade cards ore needle books featuring the cute little characters from the book. The book was published in 1902 and is written by Jane Eayre Fryerand illustrated by Jane Allen Boyer. The book is loaded with sweet little illustrations on every page. Unfortunately, the scans I took from my copy are very dirty and neede lots of cleaning in order to be usable. Cleaning and coloring one image takes me roughly 2 to 3 hours (with occasional interruption of children and husband). Despite this I managed to get 6 images cleaned and embellished for my needle books. Here they are in detail:

The borders also took a lot of time to create. I couldn't find any copyright free borders so I ended up making my own based upon the borders of Christmas themed vintage and antique linens. The holly border is my favorit. I's actually a bracelet design from the early 1900's.

To fill in the extra spots in my advent calendar I made 6 snowflakes at Make-A-Flake. With practice you can get some really fantastic results from Make-A-Flake! 

I'm sure the competition for the contest is just as good as the last contest! The contest starts later this week. So go have a look at the wonderful work done by the other Spoonflower designers and vote for your favorite!