Poppy Passion and the brief life of a fabric line

It has been an interesting year being a Northcott Fabric Designer. I have learned a great deal! It was a year of planning and work that lead up to the release of "Falling Leaves" in September. Much to my surprise, about 8 weeks after release, the fabric line is now sold out at the Canadian warehouse, with a little of the autumn line remaining in the American warehouse.  What does it mean when a fabric line is sold out? Well fabric companies typically take orders before the fabric is even available, and then they decide how many yards to print based on the number of orders received. Orders are made at Fall Quilt Market in Houston or Spring Quilt Market, which tends to move around. At Market, shops in the retail business can go to see and order all the new wares, and they are able to view a limited quantity of fabric (they call these first prints "strike offs"). In addition, sales reps travel to shops around the country showing displays of upcoming lines of fabric. Based on all the orders at a certain date, the company decides how many yards to print.

So has it been worth it?  Yes, it has been more worth it than I expected. Originally I was under the impression that only 1000 yards of each of the 30 fabrics in the line would be printed, but based on the orders that came in, Northcott ended up printing 2,000 to 3,000 yards of each fabric in the line. I have also found that having a fabric line has lead to an increased flurry of teaching and speaking invitations. So in a way ou could say that I'm the flavour of the month, for I know the flurry will pass and then it will be someone else's turn. After 8 weeks of being available, even I cannot purchase any more of my fabric line from Northcott. I would have to go to a store that still has some of the fabric available and pay retail price. Somewhere in my little brain I expected that I would always, at least for quite some time down the road, be able to order more of my fabric line if I wanted to.  Not so, as there has been a good run and no more will be printed.  In that vein, let me introduce you to each player in my new and upcoming Poppy Passion line, due to be released in April 2015.

Poppy Passion comes in two colour ways. Each of the two colour ways contains 15 different fabrics: a major poppy panel, two ombre fabrics running from dark to light and back to dark, a stripe, two poppy prints, a pixelated print, and 8 single colours that coordinate with the line. All of them feature that mottled hand-dyed look since they are inspired by my hand-dyed fabrics. You will also notice that this line features MY poppies, and so I feel very much that this line really does look like Elaine Quehl. In the centre of the panel you will find the very same poppy that is featured in my "Kissing Joy" quilt.

Kissing Joy, 2009

This first colourway is called "Purple Passion", and is in every way inspired by the quilt above, as well as some of my sketches and photographs.

The second colourway is called "Coral Bliss.  It features the very same poppies as above, but in an alternate colourway.  I'm loving these softer shades.

Finally, here is the beginner pattern I designed to go with the fabric line.  It is a very simplified version of the poppy featured in my "Kissing Joy" quilt. I have simplified it so it can be managed be a beginner. And that is the goal that Northcott presented to me when they approached me about collaborating on a fabric line: that beginners and beyond could make something fast and easy that had a similar look to my work that had taken a great number of hours.

Seems to me that I move a lot slower than a fabric company.  I had planned to have a shopping cart on my website for ordering patterns by the end of November. Little did I know that the flurry of requests for my "Falling Leaves" pattern would trickle out by November, due to fabric in the warehouse being sold out. We did sell more patterns than I expected ... I really did not know what to expect as I'm new at this. For my next line, I'll need to have that shopping cart working from Day 1!

So if you were hoping to get some of my first line of fabric, I'd advise you to get to a store that carries it ASAP. Once it is gone, it is gone!

September Activities

During the month of September I reserved a couple of weeks for vacation to a destination that has been on my bucket list for a while. I'll be blogging about that over the next few days. But here are a few good news items I wanted to share that have happened in the last few weeks.

I'm hearing reports that the show of the Crossing Oceans Textile Artists, on the theme of Nature, was a success at at Carrefour de Patchwork Europe. My Spanish friend Cecilia Gonzales, who was teaching there, sent photos of my pieces. It is a reminder to me of how much better quilts look on a gallery wall with appropriate lighting, rather than the pipe and drape of quilt shows. Cecilia and her sister Merce do some fabulous textile work. I met them last year when I was teaching in France, and did a blog post about their work. You can view it here.  Their website is www.desedamas.com.

A blogger from the UK, named Annelize, has done a very detailed blog post about our show, with very good quality photos. 

"Encore" was juried into the Infinity Art Gallery fibre art show. Just follow that link to see all the works in the show.

I was very pleased that "Returning 2", my donation to this year's SAQA Auction, sold on day one of Section 2 of the auction, raising $750 for SAQA. The auction continues for two more weeks, so have a look at the link and consider purchasing one of these one foot squares to help raise the profile of the art quilt and support exhibitions around the world. 

After my vacation I holed up in my office for most of the week, working on the pattern for my next line of fabrics. I thought I had finished the job before I left for vacation, but when the fabric scans became available I had issues with the colour loading properly. I've learned a lot this week and am feeling just a bit more confident with Electric Quilt.

I've also spent a lot of time cutting up fabric for promotional events, give-aways, and for sale. I've already had one give-away on Facebook of the Autumn Harvest line.

I've been thinking a lot lately how much activity I am engaged in on Facebook compared to my blog. So if you are on Facebook and also a reader of my blog, please do come and friend me on Facebook.

The Fall teaching season has begun so I'll be quite busy teaching for the next two months. When I get some time I'd like to make something with this colour way of my fabric line.

The Fabric Has Arrived!

After a process of about a year of discussions, planning and designing, my first line of fabric with Northcott arrived today. All 30 bolts of it! I've already begun cutting it up for gifting and sales. This is a beautiful culmination to my week with Electric Quilt, trying to design a pattern for my second fabric line.

This colourway of "Falling Leaves" is called "Spring Rain"

This colourway of "Falling Leaves" is called "Autumn Harvest"

Never thought my name would be on a selvedge one day.  Now I'm thinking that maybe I should get a stamp so I can add my name to the selvedge of my hand-dyed fabrics as well.

In the Ottawa area, my fabric line will be carried by The Pickle Dish in Carleton Place and Textile Traditions of Almonte.

Stay tuned for news about an upcoming fabric launch party. 

Designing for Northcott Fabrics and New Patterns

I will admit that it was never a goal or dream of mine to be a fabric designer, except for my one-of-a-kind hand-dyed fabrics. I'm not even sure I would consider those fabrics "designed" either. Often they are the result of serendipity and many years of experience working with Procion MX Dyes and knowing the colour properties and what different colours can do together. But then this past summer I received an email from Deborah Edwards at Northcott Fabrics. She had seen my work pinned all over Pinterest and was thinking of running a new line of fabrics called "Artisan Spirit". She invited me to become a designer for Northcott. I had to think about it for two weeks. What sort of time commitment would this entail? Would I be under a lot of pressure during my peak teaching seasons? What would be the return? After asking a lot of questions, I said YES. It couldn't have happened at a more perfect time for me. I have a lighter teaching season from November 2013 to February 2014 so I have time to invest in learning the ropes here. Once I learn them things should be more straightforward. More on that in a minute. I have to believe that this line canl be successful (i.e. the fabric will sell well). Northcott and I are hoping it will be as popular as their Stonehenge line.

For the most part Northcott will be producing lines of fabric based on my hand-dyed fabrics. In addition, however, there will be printed fabrics based on elements from my quilts. In the last few months we've gone through a couple of ideas, which involved me doing a fair bit of dyeing to try to produce a line that would work and reflect the correct season when the fabric will be released. The other challenge for me, seat of the pants dyer that I am, is that I want a second set of fabrics almost identical to the set I am handing over to Northcott for photographing, scanning, etc. That second set is what I will use to make things from this line of fabric.

This meant having to keep records of sorts. I would write down what I did on a piece of paper, but when all the fabrics came out of the dye baths, I couldn't always tell which was which. This was compounded by the fact that some of my favorite dye colours have changed lately (OK the purists will be saying "told you so", you should have only used pure dye colours and done all your own colour mixing, but alas I love the complexity of already mixed colours when they split). So it meant getting used to the new chartreuse and the new avocado, and the new dark green, etc. Then one day I dyed some fabrics, stacked my containers on my dryer to batch, and a few hours later all the containers had toppled to the floor due to the vibration of the dryer, which had clothes drying inside. Well don't ask what my floor looked like! But the fabrics were gorgeous and I can't reproduce them exactly because I don't know exactly how long they batched! So you can see the challenges here!

I eventually settled on the plan of writing the dye colours and amounts used on the selvedge of the fabric with a pigma pen. For example, in the photo below, "D chartreuse" stands for "Dharma chartreuse" (purchased from Dharma Trading company). The fact that no other information is present means I used only one colour at full strength. The challenge here is that I need to make notations while the fabric is dry, or the ink runs, so I have to plan it all before I even wet the fabric.

We've reached the day though where I can share the news. Northcott loved the fabric line, and are rushing it through, so that it will hopefully be released in January 2014. That means it won't probably hit the stores until August, just in time for autumn.  And the palette? All I can say at this point is that it is inspired by my quilt below, Losses 1. Look at all those yummy gold-greens, poison greens, etc!

And one of the things I'm really proud of is that Northcott Fabrics is a Canadian company!

So now I'm thinking about a pattern I can publish using the above colours.

The other part of the relationship with Northcott is that they will become the distributor for my patterns. Those of you who are pattern designers know what a benefit it is to have a distributor so you don't have to do all the marketing and selling yourself! The one thing that made me hesitate though, was that I wasn't really planning to publish patterns. I do have a few patterns that I use in conjunction with teaching, but I don't sell them anywhere else. Publishing and selling patterns means having to write clear and fool-proof instructions. So that's another challenge I'll be taking up this winter. 

The deal with Northcott comes perhaps at a perfect time for another reason. During the last few months I decided I would create two hosta patterns to use for teaching. I've already booked my first hosta class for March, and will take bookings for hosta classes effective March 2014. The wonderful thing is that the patterns can be made with greens contained in the line of fabric with Northcott. One of my concerns was always that people would want me to provide the hand-dyed fabrics for a hosta class, and how would I keep up with all that dyeing? Now at least there will be fabrics out there readily available.

This week I've been in the studio and have built these two small hosta quilts from the two new patterns I've drafted. I've tried to keep the designs fairly simple for people who have never tried this method before. I'm not sure they will stay on these backgrounds, but I haven't fused them yet so I still have time to change my mind.  

This is pattern one. Interesting how the green looks so much darker on a spring-like background

and so much brighter and lighter on a dark and dramatic background.

Pattern 2

In addition, I'm planning a series of floral quilts, to replace the patterns I've been using in my "In Full Bloom" class. I intend to publish these as well and hope there will be fabric lines with Northcott down the line. Here is my new poppy, that I designed this summer and finished this fall.

Peekaboo and I have lots of work to do this winter. She's training to be my studio assistant :-))

I'll write soon about my other major winter project.