Fresh Figs

Another Fabulous Market is done!

As I settle in on the plane returning from the 2007 Fall Quilt Market, my thoughts turn slowly toward home. I think of the things that were left undone before I left- the hemming of a few Halloween costumes, the carving of a few pumpkins, the last minute decorations to the front of the house where skeleton arms "must" poke out of the grass at just the right spot to scare the greatest amount of treaters tonite. My thoughts turn to my studio which lies in grand ruin [okay so I'm feeling a bit dramatic], piles of fabric, piles of paper, piles of scraps that need to be organized or compiled or filed.
As I snack on peanuts and Diet Coke [my standard Southwest food faire], my thoughts turn to blogging and as I work through the hundreds of emails that have piled up while I have been at Market, I wonder how I'm going to best describe the Quilt Market experience from my own personal perspective. Quilt Market can be seen through so many different peoples eyes. I am confident that Pam will show great shots of many different booths and other fun things that she did and experienced while there. I am sure that other pattern designers will show you their own booths & the the things that they were inspired by. I am sure that shop owners will post about the newest products and goodies that they discovered while walking the Market floor. For me, Market is a time to spend time with and connect with the people who make my work possible- the shop owners, the distributors, the book publishers, the magazines and ofcourse the other designers who inspire me and with whom I work across the industry and those more closely at MODA. For the next couple of days I thought I would share with you a few stories about some of the wonderful people that I get to work with. These folks will include other designers as well as publishers & other industry friends.

MODA ADDS 2 NEW DESIGNERS TO THE TEAM
MARY ENGELBREIT
As many of you have probably already heard from Gina, MODA has invited 2 new inspirational talents to join the ranks of our design team, Mary Engelbreit and Joelle Hoverson. Market was a great opportunity to see their debut fabric lines, Friends & Flowers and Cake Rock Beach, and to spend some time getting to know these gals.
Mary Engelbreit
doesn't really need an introduction to most of us as she has been an inspiration and a mentor from afar for many years to many of us. She has been a talented illustrator since she was young and has been an inspiration and a mentor from far away of sorts for dozens of us designers who have looked to her suceesses for inspiration and for hope.


Her wonderful magazine, Home Companion, continues to inspire and awe us with every issue and her images never fail to make us smile and to remember our own childhood. It was great to meet Mary in person and get to chat with her a bit about her work. She is a gracious & down to earth lady who clearly loves her work. She still draws every design by hand even though she now has a small empire behind her to translate her work into various mediums. It was very nice to chat with her as she came by the booths of the other MODA designers & introduced herself, complimented our designs and confided that she doesn't sew! Well, we immediately had many suggestions for her on how to start & hopefully as she continues to design fabric alongside us, we will somehow manage to transform her into a quilter :-)! When I have a few minutes I will post some pics of her debut line with MODA which centers around a charming littlre girl holding a huge daisy. She also has a few finished products with MODA HOME shown here. She spent some time signing these charming house pot holders for the store owners & it was fun to see her fans line up to get a chance to meet her in person. We wish her the greatest of successes in the quilting industry. What an inspiration & a great addition!

JOELLE HOLVERSON
Another wonderful talent, even if perhaps a bit newer to the design world than Mary, is Joelle Holverson of PURL PATCHWORK fame. She is the owner, along with her sister Jennifer, of one of the countries most chic and fresh quilt shops! PURL PATCHWORK is located in Soho, right down the street from their sister store, PURL, which is a trendy knitting store. Read more about Joelle here or get one of her charming books.

Joelle is a soft spoken and immensely talented gal whose design background goes from Yale to Martha Stewart Living to the knitting industry and is now winding its way into the hearts of the younger quilting generation with her wonderful color sense & design aesthetic. Joelle's debut line, Cake Rock Beach, is a set of botanical imprints on wonderful,

vibrant backgrounds grouped together with a collection of some wonderful small complimentary prints. I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it and although it is completely different from my own design aesthetic, I like it! It is unique and different, which is sometimes difficult to do in an industry where many things are the same and knock offs are plentiful. Joelle made a few great bags as samples of her fabric & she even managed to finish a quilt with her strikeoffs. Unfortunately she shared with me that the quilt didn't quite make it to Market due to some shipping "snafoos". I'm sure she will show us a picture of it soon on her website or on the purl bee.

As soon as I get a chance to upload all of my images, I will show you some shots of our booth as well as share some more stories about some of the wonderful people I get to work with.

Talk to you soon.

A Promise is a promise

The luggage is packed... well, mostly.
The clothes are washed.... well, kind of.
The sewing is done.... well, besides a few bindings.
The designing is finished.... well, not so much.
The kids are asleep. Or at least they are pretending.
And I am working on some last minute booth decorations.... ofcourse!

I promised pictures from PIQF last week and ofcourse they never happened in the midst of the whirlwind that we have all come to know as Pre Market Frenzy. So here are the pictures of our booth from PIQF. Probably more pictures than you wanted to see, but I just don't even have the wherewithall [how on earth does one spell that word anyway??] to pick through them and narrow them down. So here are all the ones that were good enough to save.
I'm off to Houston tomorrow. Talk to you after I get back or if pigs fly, during the show :-)!

joanna

Procrastinating

I'm supposed to be piecing some final projects for Market. My husband thinks thats what I am doing on this beautiful October Saturday. In fact he took all the kiddos to his parents house for the afternoon so that I could do it more efficiently. And what am I doing... I'm sitting here looking at the pile of blocks with no energy left to assemble them... How pathetic is that? My standard Murder She Wrote marathon is on in the background and these blocks are staring at me...daring me to do something productive...

So I thought I'd finally post again instead. Unfortunately, the pictues from PIQF are on the other computer which would require that I actually get up and move to another room. Even that seems like too much work right now.
So instead here are some of my favorite vintage Halloween images that a friend emailed over the other day. One of these days, these images will make it into a design, but not this year.

Lost

Here are a few vintage images that I found this week that were making me happy...

You might think that I'd gotten lost. Lost somewhere in the pre Market drama, the sewing, the writing, the editing, the printing, the binding, the stuffing, the formatting, the packing... Thank goodness that other people do most of those afore mentioned tasks or I really would be lost under a pile of fabric or paper...take your pick. A special thank you goes out to all of you who work so hard around here, well above and beyond the call of duty at this "crunch" time of year, you know who you are. There is no way that we could do it without you!!

Well, I'm trying to resurface for a bit, even if just for an afternoon before the piles swallow me whole again. 350 yards of my newest line of fabric, Dandelion Girl, arrived last week and when I can actually make it into the studio, I am madly working on a couple of samples for Market. We'll see what actually gets done and in print versus what's in my head at the moment. I find that designs until the actually "meet up" with the fabric for which they are intended are really hit and miss and most often they have to be altered or scrapped all together when the fabric combinations start coming together. Will have some swatches of the line to show you next week.

I'm also working on the next isssue of Fresh Vintage which will come out the last week in October/first week of November. I love the process of watching an issue come together with all the various pieces, images and articles. I am enjoying the process of being my own editor when it comes to Fresh Vintage!

Many of you are emailing me about the leather handles from our Easiest Handbags Ever, we do carry them and re-stock them regularly in brown, honey and green. We also have a few House books left before we reorder.

Hope you are all enjoying fall time quilting and designing. I hope to resurface again in a few days.

Talk soon.