Challenges & Contests Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Princess YellowBelly Designs

The Tiger is Named!

November 18, 2020November 3, 2020 by admin

Well folks, the results are in! We had some amazing submissions, and some fun responses. There were a few unexpected finalists – and a truly unexpected winner!

The Finalists

There was a three-way tie for second place, if you can believe it! Apparently everyone else was having nearly as much trouble as we were on picking out the perfect moniker for our handsome jungle tiger.

Those finalists – with 3 votes each – are:

Welcome to the Jungle
Bob
Raja

And our surprise winner – with a solid lead of one vote – is:

Shere Khan

Which is remarkably fitting, actually. “The Jungle Book” was a favorite with my kids, and the dangerous antagonist, Shere Khan, is one of the most iconic villains of the page or silver screen, ever.

In fact, according to Wikipedia – here’s what “Shere Khan” means:

“According to The Kipling Society, the word shere (or shir) translates as ‘tiger’, and khan is a title of distinction, used together “to show that he is the chief among tigers.“
The Kipling Society & Wikipedia

Below you can read the exciting saga of how you – our wonderful readers – helped us to finally pick out the perfect name. And soon, we’ll share the finished product with you!

The Election

It’s time to vote on a name for the tiger quilt! We’ve had some amazing submissions, fun, funky, impressive and lordly. It’s hard to decide which one fits him best, so we’re opening up the floor to our readers.

Please let us know which name best suits our majestic jungle tiger (he thinks he’s soooo special, doesn’t he?)

Update!

We’ve had some submissions for the names, and a bit of voting going on. As of now, we have a clear leader, and several challengers tied neck-and-neck. Voting ends on Saturday, November 14th, so make sure to vote now:

Shere Khan – 4
Welcome to the Jungle – 3
Bob – 3
Raja – 2

tiger names vote tallies - Princess YellowBelly contests

Cast Your Vote Now! (or sign up to vote next time)

Your Choices Are:

Welcome to the Jungle – Princess YellowBelly Designs
Fridge – subset of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Anna Oulette (reference to the character from the highly fun “Jumangi” movies)
Shere Khan – Suzanna Fitzgerald (co-designer of the quilt)
Bob – Unique Artist Jolene Noyes
Captain Furry – Karyl Fitzgerald (in memory of my beloved miniature Tiger)
The Boss – Leiajoy Fitzgerald
Raja – Unique Artist Nancy Lattier Hinsey

Original printed photo panel tiger quilt

Pretty good, right? So far “Shere Khan” is in the lead, but that could change with your vote. You can vote by leaving us a comment in the comment section below, or by sending your vote in by express mail:

You can always contact us with more ideas via karyl@pybdesigns.com.

The Original Story

If you want to see all the details of the tiger quilt, and hear about the construction process, and what our handsome Raja will look like when it’s all completed (“Almost there…”), you can still check out our original challenge article.

Get the Tiger Details

Special Gift

For those of you who’re already newsletter subscribers, thank you! You’ve already gotten the inside peak at our Cattastic story and know a few secrets. For those of you who aren’t yet subscribers, we’ve got a special Halloween treat.

For this issue we’re giving you the direct link to the newsletter archive. You can get an inside look at our basic newsletter, the newsletter-only information our subscribers are privy to, and the beautiful pictures and products we like to share.

Enjoy!

Open Princess YellowBelly’s Secret Insider Vault

Join the Conversation – Live!

Or, if you’d rather be part of a dynamic group who might discuss this, you can head on over to our Facebook page and check out comments, more pictures, and updated content all the time.

It’s as simple as a click and a like.

Happy voting! (Remember, this is important)

Join the Facebook Fun

Thank you for voting on the perfect name! Make Sure to sign up for our FREE newsletter so you can be part of our next exciting adventure!

Can You Name This Tiger?

October 18, 2020October 18, 2020 by admin

Calling all fans of Princess YellowBelly Designs! We need your help. We’ve got a “serious” problem. We have a quilt that’s almost finished – it’s gorgeous, it’s stunning, and it’s a true Princess YellowBelly original (just being modest here). But we can’t decide on a name for it.

Can You Name This Tiger Quilt for Us?

If you’re one of our wonderful newsletter subscribers (and if you’re not, you really should be, because that’s where the action is!) you know that we’ve been working on a big project for the last few months. OK, almost nine months, on-and-off, but who’s counting?

Anyway, sometime in the last year, we acquired a printed digital photo panel, and we decided to do what we do – and remove it from its ugly black background, and give this handsome tiger a new and colorful quilted home.

This is just the inside – there’re double layers of borders that we’ve added, plus a super-exciting final edge!

Now – finally – we’re almost, almost, done. There’s one last border to attach, one last sashing seam to sew, and this handsome tiger will live forever.

Or at least until the fabric disintegrates.

But We Just Can’t Decide on a Name

Maybe we got too close as we built this beautiful quilt up from base strip sets and wove together a scene that we hope is beautiful and mesmerizing, that tells a story and sets free the imagination.

Maybe we’ve just worked on it too long and we’re a little burnt out.

Or maybe we just came up with a whole lot of awesome names and we can’t decide on our favorite (which has happened to us before).

Whatever it is, we can’t quite decide on the proper name to sew onto a fabric tag with our shop name and date and attach permanently and until the end of eternity to our tiger quilt.

So can you help us out, please?

Take a look at our pictures, and we’re sharing the rough, raw, and real workshop photos of how this quilt is coming together. And read the story below, as we describe the vision we had for this quilt and how it evolved. And then think of a name that you think is just absolutely perfect.

Step #1 to Name this Tiger Quilt

Share it in the form below, or if you’re a newsletter subscriber you can go back to the announcement email and hit reply, whatever floats your boat. And let us know what your name, or names, for the quilt are.

Step #2 to Name this Tiger Quilt

We’ll share each answer in the Facebook post, including the names we’ve thought of, and then we’ll round up every answer we receive during the next two weeks, and share them in our next newsletter issue.

Step #3 to Name this Tiger Quilt

Then we’ll ask everyone to vote, and all answers will count whether we get it on Facebook or here or on the newsletter, and we’ll pick a name.

(I’m not sure how, but just as a disclaimer, please nothing crude or explicit.)

brown, gold, and cream tiger and diamonds for tiger quilt

Alright – Let’s Learn About the Tiger Quilt!

We wanted to get a fabric tiger, I can’t remember why now. I think we were planning on making a fracture quilt or something. But we found a printed tiger panel – just one – on Fabric.com, one of our favorite supply sites.

He was a very handsome tiger, on a black-and-white background. I’m told this is a photography technique called “color-popping,” but in this case I just felt it didn’t do him justice.

Re-Doing the Background

So we ordered the tiger, and the first order of business was to take him off of his boring monochromatic background and begin puffing and popping him with batting, foam, and variegated thread highlights.

Once we’d done that, we pulled out all of the colors out of our stash that we thought worked to create a more natural background for the tiger – a kind of sun-washed jungle background. After a few false starts we ended up with a chopped-square mosaic background that we quilted all over with jungle vines and leaves.

Mosaic jungle strip sets for tiger quilt

Changing the Plan

At that point the plan was to stop. But – of course – the quilt had other ideas, and we had to listen to the muse.

So we started envisioning something new.

We saw a tiger, king of his realm, in a ruined temple in one of the amazing wildlife preserves in India. So we started adding in architectural pieces designed to evoke images of the awe-inspiring Taj Mahal, from sandrel-arches to mosaic diamond floor tiling.

**The Final Result (coming soon)**

We’ve put all these pieces together, and we’re working on the final border, which will be another Princess YellowBelly original design that’ll finish it off with flair.

So, this is the breakdown.

You’ve got a 3D quilted tiger face “laying” on a mosaic jungle background with a silk-leaf border under a diamond trellis border.

Next you have a geometric border of what’s normally called bi-colored chevron arrows with a copper metallic ribbon to define the points.

Now the top and bottom of the quilt have a special border – a straight green strip with striped cream, brown, and gold diamonds in the same diamond trellis design. And the little tigers that came with the big panel live there in stunning glory.

Finally there will be a border around the whole big, beautiful tiger quilt in a fabric we fondly refer to as “the tiger flame.” That’ll be a specially shaped border…once we stop achieving the cow udder effect.

Can You Name this Tiger Quilt?

Let’s Make Freedom Take Flight with the “Freedom Flight of Your Imagination” Challenge

March 24, 2020 by admin

Freedom Flight red white and blue patriotic wall hanging with challenge text

ATTENTION!

Announcing an exciting new challenge from Princess YellowBelly Designs to our wonderful quilters & readers.

We always want to inspire – and to be inspired – to push old boundaries, to re-imagine something great. So, in honor of patriots and the upcoming 4^th of July holiday, we’re inviting you to let you loose on one of our favorite pieces – Freedom Flight!

Freedom Flight embodies so much of what we stand for, which is possibilities. I designed this super 4^th of July eagle because it’s stunning; but also because of what it stands for:

American bald eagle flies wings spread with the colors of the flag, red, white and blue

Faith…
Family…
Freedom…
Imagination…
Heart…
And possibilities…

… Not only in our own lives, but also for our country.

I’m bringing it up now because it will probably take a while for you to get this done if you decide to accept our challenge…

This piece is stunning as is – but we know for a fact that some other fantastic quilter will be able to elevate, change, or enhance it in some way. What we’d love is to be part of that story…to be able to see how our original pattern has inspired creativity, quiltivity, and passion in our readers.

So, here’s our challenge:

Freedom Flight of Your Imagination Challenge

Out of the endless pool of human imagination, creativity, and adaptability, can you – as a quilting artist of any experience level – do something new to our Freedom Flight panel? Can you:

Adapt it
Re-imagine it
Or even to improve it

…If you can!

We want you to make your own Freedom Flight with as many alterations or additions as you can imagine. We will pick the top contestants based on the quality of the finished panel, beauty, personal expression, and creativity.

The winner will be chosen by popular vote across our newsletter and social media channels.

All pictures of your finished masterpiece need to be e-mailed to us here – karyl@pybdesigns.com – by June 17^th, 2020 so that we have time to evaluate and choose our champion.

Thanks-for-Sharing Prizes

We know how hard a quilter works to make a finished piece, and how much pride you take in it when it’s done. So we’d like to thank everyone who submits with a few prizes:

We will use all submitted pictures to make a video collage showcasing the talent and quiltivity of our readers. The video will be showcased on our website, social media, and finally added to our Freedom Flight post forever.

In addition and as thanks for sharing your pictures and quilivity with us, all participants will receive a 6 months free shipping coupon from us!

Winning Prizes

The winner will receive both of the entry prizes, and, in addition will also receive:

A showcase spot in our “closest-to-the-4^th-of-July” newsletter, on our website, and on our social media accounts.
1 month FREE membership to Princess YellowBelly Designs inside circle (which, barring any technical difficulties), will be live and functioning by then – HURRAY!
Finally, and this is unprecedented, you will have the option of selling either your finished eagle panel, or your altered pattern, alongside ours in our store! We will use our platform and help you ship it if it’s purchased – but minus the cost of shipping, all profits will be yours!

How to Get Started

First, if you don’t already own the pattern or kit for Freedom Flight – you can purchase it right now.

Yes! I Want to Buy the Freedom Flight Pattern Today

Second, once you receive your kit or pattern, decide how you’re going to change it.

We’re quite positive that, just like a crime scene, you can start with the exact same product and yet every point of view will deliver a different result. And, of course, all entrants will have their names mentioned both in our newsletter and in our video collage. So, dear readers, please join us in this creative journey!

To receive more updates as the challenge progresses – please consider signing up for our FREE newsletter now

Note:

If you’re concerned about being able to make this eagle, please don’t worry. It’s actually very easy, and we have a tutorial video series that you can purchase along with the pattern to make your journey even easier!

If you have any other concerns, as always, please send in any questions you may have to karyl@pybdesigns.com.

A Few Guidelines & Answered Questions

We’d like to be able to recognize our pattern in your finished work, of course, but other than that we don’t want to restrict your creativity in any way. Feel free to let loose, go a little crazy, and come up with something wild, fun, and spectacular!

Question #1:

“Can I change the colors, add special meaning and insignia…?”

Something personal, inspirational, or heartfelt, like…?

Breast cancer survival…
Military veterans…
States…
Sport teams…
Ethnic heritage (St. Patrick’s Day eagle, African tribal eagle, etc.)…
Or whatever holds special meaning for me?

Answer:

Yes! Which brings up a good point – whatever you do decide to alter, please consider including your reasons why. Art is better with a story, so if you’re supporting or remembering or honoring something special, you can only increase the value and beauty of your finished piece by telling us about it.

Question #2:

“Can I change the shape somewhat, or anything else that springs to mind?”

You might want to put a different style of head, or choose different edging, outline thread, etc.

Answer:

Yes! Here at PYB we encourage all creative and quilting endeavors and we dearly want to see what you can come up with. So be brave and share your quiltivity with us!

Question #3:

“Will the team at Princess YellowBelly Designs be participating in your own challenge?”

Answer:

Yes! We’re planning an alteration of our own pattern, for fun and to participate. We’ll keep you updated on that as it progresses, and our eagle will be included in the finished video collage, but of course we won’t be eligible to win any other prizes.

We so hope that you will accept our challenge. We know that you can create something amazing, fresh, and beautiful. Something so much more than we can even imagine (and we can imagine quite a lot!) Just remember, we need your entry pictures by June 17th, which is just enough time to order your pattern or kit, make the panel, and send in the photos.

What will your Freedom Flight of the Imagination look like?

Get Started Today!