The patch I got free with The Simple Things magazine was the beginning of a collection, so when they held a competition to design one I had to get involved! In the end I didn't win, but I had a lot of fun creating my design.
The patch was to be on a theme of giving. Coming up with my design was a bit of a brainstorming process, looking at images online on that theme, doing some doodles, and coming up with a final idea. Once I had my idea, I used Adobe Illustrator to create the design. I scanned in one of the existing patches so that I could get the proportions right, and used the logo at the bottom from the scan. I tried to keep the shapes fairly bold, so that they would work well in an embroidered design.
Using colours that worked well with the other patches was important to me, so I picked some of the colours that were used in the other patches, then used a few other colours that matched well with them.
The wording at the top was the most difficult bit. I knew that I wanted it to be two or three words like the other patches, so I didn't want it to simply say "Give". It took a lot of brainstorming, with an online thesaurus and the help of a friend, and coming up with ideas that veered from cheesy to sweary, before I came up with the very simple idea of "Be generous". It was frustrating that I couldn't find an exact match for the font, so I just used the best match that I could find.
Although I didn't win the competition, I absolutely loved the winning design by Lauren Bowers, and can't wait to get the patch. There were over 100 entries to the competition, and some were picked to appear in the magazine - including mine!
So I think I can say that I came in the top 20! It was really interesting to see how everyone had interpreted the idea, and to see the different styles of illustration. I think my favourite of the other designs was the one with the watering can by Amy Hampshire which I think would have worked really well as a patch and had colours that worked well with the other patches.
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