Many of you will know that I don't really like thinking about Christmas too soon - preferably not before half term at the end of October.  However, if you want to make presents and decorations, you need to start long before Christmas.  So I've decided to embrace it this year and make an early (for me!) start and encourage you to come along with me.

Are you ready?

We'll kick off with a Design Competition. 

Can you design a Christmas Stocking?  If your family is more into sacks than stockings, you can design a sack instead.  Either way it should fit onto a fat quarter (56cms x 50cms).  You only need to design the front.  If you want to design a back as well, and can fit it onto a fat quarter, that's fine.  (If you want to design both front and back on 2 fat quarters for your own use, you can still make that public on the website.  You will need to make it clear that customers would need to order 2 fat quarters to get the front and back.  However, only the front will be entered into the competition.)

The competition closes on October 16th.  The entries will be displayed on October 18th and will be judged by Christine Leech.  The winner will be announced on October 25th.  Don't forget, when designing your Christmas stocking or sack, to make use of the capabilities of digital printing - lots of colour, small patterns work well, and you can make a cuff, toe cap etc in a different pattern. Also mark cutting and stitching lines and maybe include simple instructions.

All designs must be made public.  In order to do that, you will have to place an order for your design.  Order a swatch using voucher code STOCKING.  You won't be charged, I won't print the fabric, but you will be able to make it public.

Our usual prize of 3m of your fabric isn't really appropriate this time, so the winning design will be printed twice for the winner (once in reverse if required).  The winner will also receive a £40 voucher to spend at Print me Pretty.

Special Offer

If you order a stocking during the competition (from now until we announce the winner on October 25th), you may also order a plain fat quarter for the back of the stocking or sack (which you could decorate at home with block prints, embroidery, applique etc) for just £1.  Drop me an email (admin@printmepretty.co.uk) and I'll send an invoice for the extra £1.  Unfortunately, I can't easily add things like that to our Market Place.

Our judge

Christine (from her Instagram account)

Christine Leech of sewyeah! has very kindly agreed to judge our competition this month.  You can find her on her website, or on Instagram, where she hangs out regularly, showcasing her amazing makes and providing tutorials for many of them.  You may also have seen her at Hampton Court if you went to the Handmade Fair, or even on television, on Kirstie Allsopp's Handmade Christmas in 2016.  She won the Christmas-stocking-making contest then, with a snazzy sequin and pompom covered  stocking.

FULL COMPETITION RULES AND DETAILS:

Please upload your competition designs to your account on our website.  If you haven’t already got an account, it’s simple to set up.  You just need an email address, password and name, which can be your own name, a nickname or a business name.  (You will be prompted to log in or create an account when you try to save your design.)  Order a swatch of your design using voucher code STOCKING and make it public.  Then email me at admin@printmepretty.co.uk, to tell me the name of your design.  (So I can find the right one!)  I will then put them onto Facebook .  The winning design (and possibly one or two others) will be put into our competition winners slot.  In case you're wondering about the order in which designs are listed on Facebook, the first to arrive in my inbox goes at the top, with the rest listed in the order in which they are sent in.

So, the competition is:

Create a design suitable for printing on fabric to make a Christmas Stocking or Sack.

Technical matters:

Your design should be at a resolution of at least 150 dpi, but not more than 300, using RGB colour space.

When it comes to printing, the repeat options are:  Straight, Centre, Half-drop, Half-brick and Mirror.  Once you’ve uploaded your design to our website, you can play around with the repeats to see which one will look best.  For pictures of what the different repeats look like, check this blog post.

To enter:

Upload your design onto our website by Tuesday, October 16th, giving it a title.  Email me at admin@printmepretty.co.uk, telling me the title of your design and the name of your account.

The closing date for receiving designs is midnight on Tuesday, October 16th, after which designs will be displayed (at the fat quarter size) on Facebook.   The winning design will be printed twice and its designer will also win a voucher for £40 to spend at Print me Pretty.  The winning design will be available for sale on our web site for at least 1 week after the close of voting.  

The official bit:

By entering, you agree to our competition terms and conditions.

You may only submit one entry, which must be your own work and based on Christmas Stockings. ‘Your own work’ means any form of original art work, photography, etc which you have produced. Your design should not have been entered in one of our previous competitions.

All entries will be displayed, unless we feel that the subject matter is inappropriate.  Copyright will remain with you, but by entering the competition, you give us the right to use your design in any way we wish on our web site and social media, for advertising purposes.

All entries must be made public by October 16th.

The winning design will feature on our web site and will be available for sale for a week after we announce the winner.  After that time, the designer may leave the design for sale, or remove it from public view.  The designer will be paid £2 per metre commission on any sales of the design.

Happy designing!

** Look out during the next two weeks for more ideas for Christmas makes, with associated special offers. **