Since Ivy Higa was sent home last week, Hawaii fans are now focused on Andy South’s status on "Project Runway." Episode 10 should have been fun and exciting, because it brought back the opportunity for the designers to create their own textiles based on their drawings. Except, the whole episode, titled "There’s a Pattern Here," became a big tearfest.

The garments they were to create could be anything, but the graphic was supposed to evoke something personal, and to get started the designers’ computers were loaded with images of their childhoods and family members. Just as they were missing home, Tim Gunn prepared them for welcoming visitors, which some assumed would be new models who might hate their prints. Instead, each welcomed their mom, other family members or loved one. That was just the start of the tearfest.

Who could work after that? So Gunn sent them all out to enjoy the day with their loved ones. In Andy’s case this was his mom, a single mother of five.

When they returned to the workroom the next day, South couldn’t focus after the emotional experience of the previous day, and he wasn’t inspired by his granny gray print of memory bubbles, although it was actually quite pretty.

"Seeing my mom took me way off my game," he said to the camera. "Like, I’m kind of just done."

I DON’T KNOW whether Hawaii is rubbing off on Gunn after having had South and Ivy Higa in the past nine episodes, but when it came to his critique of Valerie Mayen’s work, he said, "You don’t want too many construction details happening. I don’t want it to become like a pupu platter of different construction methods."

A lot of the designers were not able to separate analytical ability from the emotions that triggered their designs, so the runway wasn’t all that impressive.

I think a lot of them also aren’t accustomed to working with prints, judging from the pedestrian designs. It figured that Mondo Guerra, who’s terrific at juxtaposing all kinds of prints, would win this challenge.

He also revealed through his plus-sign print that he is HIV positive, a secret he’s kept for 10 years. More tears on the runway.

At the bottom were Valerie and Andy. In the end, the judges decided that Valerie had repeated herself, deeming her overworked design worse than Andy’s, even though they called his short-and-top ensemble "unwearable."