Fabric Frenzy!

I think I failed to mention here that my Northcott Poppy Passion fabric arrived just two days before my teaching trip to Shelburne, Midland, and Barrie. So I had two days to get 300 meters of fabric cut and folded in order to take some with me.

That two day cutting frenzy was followed by a massage for very sore muscles!

The fabric is beautiful if I do say so myself, and it has been a great deal of fun being the fabric fairy, doing fabric give-aways and door prizes where ever I teach and lecture.

At the same time I'm having a fabric frenzy of another sort! Every other year I sell my hand-dyed fabric at the Ottawa Valley Quilters Guild's "Festival of Quilts"http://www.ottawavalleyquiltersguild.org/, that takes place on Mothers Day Weekend. I started preparation for this at least a month ago.

I've lost count, but I think I've dyed somewhere in the vicinity of 200 more meters of fabric to add to my travelling store. I always like to have a very good selection for this show because it is the time when people in my own region can find me to purchase fabric.

That also means a whole lot of ironing. There have been times I have hired someone to help with the ironing, but because I'm always jamming things in available time, travelling a lot, and often doing things at the last minute, I find myself doing the work myself.

There has been fabric in the dye ots nearly every day I've been home in the last several weeks. I've spent a lot of time in my dyeing "dungeon".

In the mean time, my Poppy Passion line has been spotted at the Australian Quilt Convention in Melbourne, Australia. Thanks to Annick O'Shaughnessy for sharing these photos. The vendor is "The Patchwork Tea House".

I am amazed that the fabric has made its way to Australia so quickly, and even more amazed that the shop already has samples sewn!!

Hope to see you this weekend at the "Festival of Quilts". In the mean time, I have another 45 meters to rinse and wash out and iron and cut and bundle before then. My "Poppy Passion" line will be available from several vendors at the show.

The Poppy Passion Party

Yesterday was about the finest day, weather-wise, that one could ask for to have a fabric launch party! It took place at The Pickle Dish in Carleton Place, Ontario.

This is the sight that greeted me when I entered the store. So fresh and spring-like.

I pulled my poppy sweater out of the closet for this occasion.

 A closer view of the fabric.

This is Jan Kittle, the owner of The Pickle Dish.

 Look who I ran into at the restaurant next door, on my way to the party.

Thanks to all the quilters and sewists and fibre artists who turned up for the event.

We asked people to bring Show and Tell of work they made with my previous fabric line, Falling Leaves. This one is by Lisa Smith. If you click on the photo you might be able to better see the striped binding she used. That is exactly what I envisioned for this stripe, that it would become a binding on something! I just haven't gotten there myself yet. 

This piece is by Emma Russell, and uses a lot of the leaf prints from the line.

Now I'm hoping my fabric arrives before I head out on my next teaching trip to Shelburne, Midland, and Barrie, Ontario.

I'm Having Another Fabric Launch Party!

My second line of fabric, "Poppy Passion", will be in stores in April. The Pickle Dish Quilt Shop & Studio in Carleton Place, Ontario, will be hosting a party to launch the line on Sunday, April 12, 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. Come on out for refreshments and a chat, see the new line, and perhaps purchase or win some! 

Says Jan Kittle, owner of The Pickle Dish,

"If you were lucky enough to purchase some of Elaine's Falling Leaves and have completed your project, bring it along for show and tell. I will have fat quarter bundles cut and one meter pieces also. I will presell up to half of each bolt, which can be picked up on the day of the event. The remainder will be held to be sold to those who attend. We sold out of Elaine's previous collection in 1-1/2 hours so either call the shop to reserve a bundle, or plan to arrive early." 

Please drop The Pickle Dish a line if you plan to attend so Jan can determine how many cookies to prepare!

Poppy Passion is available in two colourways:

Purple Passion (click on that link to view the collection on the Northcott web site)

Coral Bliss (click this link to view the alternate colourway).

Hope to see you there!

Oh No, I Dyed My Shoes Again!

The last week or two has been very busy at my house! Can you tell what I've been doing?  Darn, I dyed by brand new athletic shoes again ... by accident!!!  The good news is that a good scrub with dish detergent and discharge paste will take most of it out. They are going to look awfully ugly at the gym until I get around to it!

I've dyed and ironed and cut more than 50 meters of fabric.

As you can see I've beefed up the selection of warm colours in my store.

That would be the store of fabric I carry in the trunk of my vehicle when I'm on teaching trips.

Peak teaching season is beginning in earnest, and I'll be off next week on a multi-group tour, visiting four cities: Peterborough, Misissauga, Lindsay, and Toronto, Ontario.  I'll be gone about 10 days and have managed to build a couple of "down" days into my schedule.

The other thing I've been working on here is finalizing, printing and packaging the pattern I created to go with my new Northcott fabric line called "Poppy Passion".  The fabric line will hit stores in April, so I need to ship my patterns to Northcott by March 15 for distribution. I procrastinated on this too long so it is now last minute. I know why I procrastinated!  As soon as I get the patterns back from the printer I will probably find an error. This happened last time even though I had the pattern proofread and tested. Fortunately it wasn't a serious error. It costs a fair bit to print  hundreds or thousands of patterns, and one can suffer a big loss if one doesn't get it right!

The pattern, also called "Poppy Passion" can be created using the Purple Passion colour way

 

or the coral bliss colourway.

I designed the pattern to be do-able for beginners and beyond. It is a simplified version of the original poppy in my "Kissing Joy" quilt:

Meanwhile, I'm teaching two workshops locally, tomorrow and Saturday. Tomorrow is Session 3 of my "Dye Happy" class, and Saturday I'm teaching "Liberated Radial Piecing" for the local Common Thread Quilt Guild.

We will be folding and packing the patterns on Sunday.

All this is to say that I have not been in the studio creating very much. However, I do have a couple of designs at the printer being enlarged. I will share more soon!

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!