Actually, strikeoffs came in about two months ago, but I’ve been a bit slack with the blog lately.

When I received the strikeoffs in the mail, I felt as though we had officially crossed our first milestone in the fabric design industry…

It was looking a little bleak there for a while, but our second line is scheduled to debut at the July Market…

Designing this line was quite the experience… we went through A LOT of rather painstaking, “start-from-scratch” rounds of revisions in order to come up with what you see here.

Initially, the line was called Cuckoo because the main theme was going to be cuckoo clocks.

Yes, this might seem like an oddly specific subject matter to choose, but we wanted to create something that was completely different from Botany. We worked on this line for some time and then reviewed with Moda… who, as it turned out, was not quite as impressed as we were with the series.

In hindsight, that first round was awful… but I find that when I’m caught up in the design process I sometimes miss those signs that would normally tell me to back up and reconsider what it is I’m trying to make.

We began our first round of revisions by reconsidering our actual illustration style. Botany was a line that revolved around exotic plants… so the illustration style was done with a wild and organic style of drawing, in an attempt to really drive home our theme. Some people have even said that it’s vaguely reminiscent of art nouveau… which tells me that we were on the right track in terms of style.

I suppose though that we might have been stuck in a Botany rut, because our Cuckoo drawings were just a little too similar in style to its wild/organic predecessor.

Cuckoo Clocks have a number of distinguishing characteristics that remain relatively consistent across the variety of models out there. The drawing style is much more tight than what we’re used to. Vines don’t drift and wonder around the front of the houses, they are drawn with a strict set of rules that require symmetry, perfectly curled tentrils, and flowers that follow a grid (never overlapping)… just to name a few.

So based off of this new set of design standards, we set out again and reworked the entire series, now naming it Hideaway.

But alas… still off base.

Our Cuckoo theme had gotten a bit out of hand because we had adhered very closely to the actual elements one might actually encounter on a Cuckoo Clock. We had a hill town made out of cuckoo clocks, dots made out of little round children wearing aprons and feathered caps, keyholes, birds in doorways… etc. The list goes on.

The image below shows the current version vs. the cuckoo version. This pattern required minimal changes, but it’s no longer beating you over the head with cuckoo clocks.

In the third round we scrapped most of the line yet again and went in a more “kid-centric direction”. We lost the Cuckoo stuff all together and went with all-things-cute.

In the fourth round we got rid of half of the cutesy patterns and replaced them with more decorative patterns. Because cutesy can get a little nauseating after a while, and I have to be able to sleep at night.

Finally, during our fifth round we were able to refocus ourselves and pull everything together into a unified set of graphics that were finally able to dance with one another.

When everything was all said and done, our line is loosely inspired by the Swiss Alps… quaint villages, clusters of deer, window boxes, mountain flowers, gingham, and cuckoo clocks. The illustration style is both intricate and festively elegant as well as slightly quirky and folk-inspired. It has a look and feel that is directly relevant to its subject matter.

And after our long, roundabout journey through our five separate attempts, we’ve realized the necessity for concept driven design, a point that had been drilled into me during my two years at the Portfolio Center, but one that I had initially chosen to ignore when it came to fabric design. I’m not entirely sure why.

Now that concept is going to be the driving force though behind our designs, I think we’ll be a much better group… and I can’t wait to start on our next line!

(The photos below show the 4 colorways within this series.)

As I’ve probably mentioned in previous entries, my roommate in Atlanta was a girl named Megan Kibby, who has since become quite the little photographer.

Her ideas/compositions are unique and off-the-wall and that’s what makes them so completely fabulous. The photos in this blog entry (in my opinion) show off one of her more brilliant concepts!

Daniel and Alicia (two of Megan’s clients) were wanting a natural/ eclectic/ Anthropologie style wedding, and she thought the fabric would make the perfect backdrop for the photo booth she planned on setting up outside of their reception.

Botany is made up of 5 colorways that all work well together… but these 5 colorways can also break up rather nicely into more specific color schemes.

In order to provide her with options that fit within their chosen colors, I put together the groupings shown below. (They chose the last one.)

Up until now, I’ve really only seen Botany used in quilts, clothing, and bags… It never even occurred to me that it could be used in its raw form… straight off the bolt.

The result works really well though… The colors play off each other beautifully and act as a nice compliment to the bridal party’s coloring!

Basically, the way this idea works is, when guests are walking into the reception, they stop at the photo booth to have their picture taken. They get to hold signs… and make silly faces… and act completely spontaneous. All so that the photos come out with that same classic “photo booth style”.

While waiting in line for the booth, each guest signs his or her name into the photo book and writes a message to the bride and groom. Each photo is then placed above that person’s corresponding message (see photo above). This idea combines the guest book with the photo booth album… which is really quite smart! Kudos to Megan!

On a side note, you can view Megan’s work on her website Out of the Box Photography and Design. I designed and programmed this site for her, which I’m super psyched about! This is actually the first site that I’ve put together using correct programming techniques!

There are a few additional features that I plan to add to her gallery sections and homepage, but if anyone wants to view her work, that’s where to find it!

On another side note, I’ve just returned from my own sister’s wedding this past weekend, which was an absolute blast!

(I’ll have photos of the festivities in a later entry.)

And I love it even more when those people take awesome photos of their creativity and send them my way…

I received an email from a crafty genius out in Indiana named Britt who recently blogged about a quilt she was making with Botany! Her blog, Scrapyard, features an eclectic collection of projects that are sure to inspire… Between funky slippers, mini bloomers, crayon rolls, and quilts, she’s definitely a jack of all trades in the sewing world.

Her Picnic Quilt is made of an assortment of 42 squares, ranging in size from 1/4″ increments to 3″ and 4″ increments. It was inspired by a quilt by Ashley, which referenced Liberated Quiltmaking II by Gwen Marston.

The photos that she posted about her Botany project show the quilt while it while it was still in the production phase, something you don’t see as often a you do final quilt photos… in my opinion, a rather nice change of pace. Part of what makes quilts so special is the process that came before the finished product.

My fav is the big safety pin below. If the Discovery Channel were to do an episode on safety pins…

Additionally, the photos themselves are beautiful! The lighting… the vantage points… the depth of field… everything. So I when I wrote her back about the awesome blog entry, I asked if she would send along some photos of the finished quilt. Which she did! (See below.) I absolutely LOVE them!

If anyone else has made a great project using Botany that they would like to share… take some pretty photos and send them my way! I would love to post them!

Well, it’s official. Carrie Jung will be getting married to Jon Clausen on June 5th, 2010… and there are now 85 wedding invitations out there that back up the whole story.

As my wedding present to Carrie, I designed her invitations and took care of all the printing. Carrie headed up the production department and cut, scored, folded, glued, and corner punched each of these 85 invitiation suites (see Carrie below).

Needless to say they took a LONG time to make… fights have broken out… tears have been shed… doors slammed… tv remotes and tape dispensers have been hurled across the living room… It’s been a long, ugly journey… but I feel as though the end result has made it all worth it.

Formally worded invitations from back in the day were usually typed in a sappy/scripty font onto a blandly colored piece of paper (like off white or cream…) and then topped off with a sheer vellum flap of paper.

But there’s no need to be boring when announcing such a happy day! I wanted this entire invitation experience to act as an emotional preview of what’s to come… The envelope contains a branded tag that identifies which item in the suite you are receiving, as well as the recipient’s address. It adds an eclectic sort of feel to the set. The first thing you will see when you open the envelope is the Invitation Folder that is folded up and held shut with a ribbon and tag. When you open it, you’ll see the invitation on the left, and a pocket on the right that holds a series of cards. They are staggered in height so that you can see the title of each card, right at first glance. The Reception Card contains a map and a set of directions. The Accommodations Card contains a list of hotels in the area. And finally, the RSVP Card/Envelope sits in the very front of this little set. The arrangement of these individual pieces can be seen better in the photo below.

I believe the little details that are added towards the end of a big project make all the difference in the world, and one of these tiny details can be viewed in the photo above. There’s a small row of purple flowers that make these invitations especially awesome… in my opinion.

Often times these details lie beneath the radar of the average observer, which is perfectly understandable… but when they do get noticed… everything suddenly becomes worth it. So I want to take this moment to say thank you to my sister’s college roommate, Becca Crane. Becca has made the enormous chunk of effort that went into these invitations worth it because when she called to discuss them… she said, and I quote… “I especially loved that cute row of purple flowers.”

The photo above is the rehearsal dinner invitations which uses elements from the initial illustrations, but in a slightly different style.

And that’s about all I’ve got… After all was said and done, I really enjoyed this whole process, so if anyone is interested in personalized wedding invitations… I’m your girl!

One of the first things that I love to do after finishing a big project is taking blog photos! I take A LOT and I waste a ridiculous amount of time… but it’s so much fun to scroll through all of them later!

Right before Market we got about 500 cards printed up at Kinkos so that we would be stocked up and ready to go. 500 cards cost $100 dollars… making me feel pretty confident that the quality would be halfway decent.

This didn’t turn out to be the case.

When I picked them up, I was horrified to find that they were the thickness of notebook paper!

So when my mom visited last month we worked on these little gems!

The idea behind our logo took quite some time for us to land on. I’ve always been taught to take the core essence of a company… then boil that down into its simplest, most iconic representation. But it’s sort of difficult to define our team without sounding completely sappy. When I first began my logo exploration, I worked on a mother/daughter theme… but those were turning out to be lame. Then, I began fooling around with just a simple logotype, but when I took that logotype and tried to match it up with our various fabric line logos, total chaos!

Then one night it occurred to me that we don’t really need to create a logo with a broad, all-encompassing kernel of truth… because our defining characteristic is what we’re making… pretty patterns. So in the words of Marshall McLuhan… I decided to let “the medium (be) the massage.”

The idea of using a hummingbird was arrived at rather arbitrarily… I like them and my mom likes animals that are tiny. While the symbol itself doesn’t have any meaning… the way that we handle this symbol… does.

With every line that we create, the hummingbird will be updated accordingly. It will always be used to showcase whichever line is current. Thus making the designs the hero. Additionally, the way that that the hummingbird is cut out of its white background is reminiscent of reverse applique… a technique that is very relevant to fabric design.

This reverse applique technique was first used on our website’s navigation bar… where the bird is cut out, revealing the yellow fabric from our Botany line.

This business card follows the same idea and is made up of two sheets of thick paper. On the front, the shape of our hummingbird is cut out from the card itself, then glued onto the other piece of paper, revealing the pattern through its dicut. The opposite side shows the full version of this pattern as well as a white tag containing our contact info. This technique gave our cards the tactile sensation of something that has in fact, been reverse appliqued… as well as thickening them up to the weight that I have always dreamed of!

The ten cards in these photos show patterns out of our next line, Hideaway! (Minus the black… because it didn’t make the final cut.)

They make me happy every time I pull out my wallet…

It’s about the little things!

This is one of our favorites! Both the subject matter and its bold use of color make BOTANY the perfect assortment of fabrics for such a spring-themed quilt!

Our Flower Basket Pattern is now officially available for download on our site, www.LaurenAndJessiJung.com, in our Quilt Patterns Section.

Currently, we have a total of 6 patterns available for download, so make sure to check out our entire Free Patterns Section!

Megan Kibby took these beautiful photos!

When I finished up grad school, the economic problems were in full swing, and it took me quite a while to find a job.

At the time, I was interested in an interactive agency in Manhattan called G2 Interactive. I wrote back and forth with them for months about a potential position as a Junior Web Designer. Then, four months into my job search, they offered me the opportunity to work in their PA office… and I jumped at the chance!

No, it wasn’t quite New York City, but it was a job…

Last year in the middle of March, I left the beautiful city of Atlanta to move up to the town of Hatboro, Pennsylvania… a tiny little crumb of a city who’s claim to fame (I’ve been told) is its wind.

Having braved only the tail end of last year’s winter, I am experiencing what a Northern Winter actually means for the first time this year… The last round of snow added another 15 inches to a base of at least 10. (See below.)

So why are there TWO rednecks in Hatboro (as implied by the title)…  

Well, my sister ran into the same luck as I did when she began her job search, shortly after getting her Masters in Marketing…  

I suggested that she look for an internship somewhere… in order to gain some experience…  To which she responded “Well, How about an internship at G2 with you!”

For people who didn’t witness the two of us growing up, this would sound sweet, but to those who know us, they feared for our safety…  and hair…  a lot of hair pulling goes on between the Jung girls….

Kidding, sort of.

To make a long story short, she got the job and moved up here on December 2nd.  

Two days later I put in my notice at G2 because I happened to get two job offers from companies in Princeton, NJ!!!  And Princeton is lightyears cooler than Hatboro so I really didn’t have a choice in the matter!  I wound up choosing the offer from a software interface company that creates web components. I’ve been dying to learn how to program websites and this job is teaching me how to do all of that and more. Plus, I was very pleasantly surprised on my first day to find out that they are in the process of rebranding their ENTIRE company… and that I would be in charge of the website and product branding! I’ve always wanted to take a monster of a project… and this opportunity is giving me everything I could ever ask for in that respect!

And now I’m going to steer myself back towards my original topic…  

With Carrie being up here in Hatboro now, I’ve been trying to give her little projects to keep her busy.  

(I don’t have cable right now because I was sinfully underpaid for the last nine months…)  So I gave her my stack of Botany fabric and my mom’s old sewing machine… and after a day and a night she made this little messenger bag! (See below.)

Kudos to Carrie!  

That next weekend, we experienced our first big snow storm. It was a big day for us and rather than bundling up and staying indoors, we decided to go galavanting about outside… taking photos… because that’s what rednecks like to do in the snow!

Buying fabric always makes for a great time… until that day when the avid fabric enthusiast is forced to come to grips with the fact that her fun little weekend pastime is starting to put a dent into her wallet…

The problem here pretty much boils down to two issues: (1) Quilts that use an eclectic variety of beautifully colored fabrics are awesome… and (2) eclectic varieties of beautifully colored fabrics can get to be VERY expensive.

Thankfully though, necessity has proven, yet again, to breed innovation… because some wonderfully ingenious person came up with the idea of pre-cut kits!

Even though I have always liked each of our fabrics individually, I have to say… that when I saw them come together for the first time, as a group… and interact with one another… something magical happened!

HANCOCK’S OF PADUCAH® must have felt the same way, because they decided to make a kit out of our Garden Variety Quilt Pattern…

Their Quilt Kit will give you everything that you need to make this particular quilt… PLUS, you get to use each of the 40 fabrics without breaking the bank!

My mom designed our Garden Variety Quilt for Fall Market to showcase all 40 fabrics in Botany… we felt that this particular design really allowed the colors to mingle and play off one another… And after looking at the finished product… I really feel that this quilt embodies the essence of spring and nature… the explosion of colors coupled with the organic subject matter just about requires that this quilt be used when picnicing!

And finally… I’m in the mood for a tangent.

Everyone who’s ever visited to Paducah, Kentucky for the Annual Quilt Show, has also been to Hancock’s of Paducah! The two go hand in hand.

My mom (Jessi), and her three best friends have made this trec for several years now and have made Hancock’s their very first stop each time… almost as if the big quilt show, was nothing more than an afterthought!

I’ve listened to their colorful descriptions each year and they don’t seem to go there merely because its a fantastic store… They go there for the “Hancock’s Experience”… And it’s these stories that made me especially excited when I heard that Hancock’s wanted to make a kit out of one of our patterns!

Quilters (armed with little shopping carts) plant themselves between rows of tables piled high with the latest fabrics, (all different measurements). Each person peruses the piles, pulling out favorites… unfolding… refolding… for hours at a time. And after spending these huge chunks of time together… everyone with the same goal in mind… it’s only natural that the women begin to feel as though they’ve formed a camaraderie with one another… one person will yell across the tables for everyone to be on the lookout for a particular fabric… which will often make for yardages being thrown through the air towards some excited recipients…

Apparently, the quilters get so engrossed in their searches… that at closing time each night, an employee will have to announce over the intercom that the store will close in 10 minutes… AND rather than packing up… the women crack up and continue sifting through the mountains of fabric. Definitely a good time!

Carrie is my younger sister by two years, so we were all a little surprised when she was the first one to get engaged…

Those who knew her well, back in her high school years of dating, refer to that time period as her “dumpster diving phase”. She dated a few guys here and there, but each relationship ended quickly and tragically for Little Carrie…

Then in the summer following graduation, she began working at Brusters, an icecream shop in our home town of Spartanburg, SC. She became fast friends with her manager, Inbal, and started hanging out with her on the weekends…

It was on one of these weekend outings that she met Inbal’s boyfriend, Andrew… AND it just so happened… that on this SAME weekend outing, Andrew decided to bring his brother, Jon, along.

Jon fell madly in love with Carrie… Carrie fell madly in love with Jon, and the rest is history.

This wonderful happy ending was made even happier by the fact that while I was living in Atlanta, my boyfriend, Beau decided to move in with Jon. The two of them later moved into my same apartment complex, and the three of us, along with their third roommate, Kevin, became the best of friends!

So, I suppose it works out well for everyone… Carrie’s getting married… Jon was in my “Atlanta gang” so I approve of the decision… my friend, Megan, took these awesome engagement photos (see below)… Beau and I both get to be in the wedding… my bride’s maid dress is ADORABLE…

AND… I was put in charge of the wedding invitations! (…or I might have demanded to be in charge of them, but that’s neither here nor there.) We’ve just finished producing her set of Save the Dates and those will be going out tomorrow. (See above.)

And those are just a small taste of the interactive experience that is to come with the invitation itself!

Carrie’s wedding is in June and she decided to go with a very natural, garden inspired wedding… I used this organic inspiration as my jumping off point for the design… My first attempt with these produced a wild and crazy mass of plantlife that wound its way across the four page, accordion-fold invitation… But there was something about the illustration’s lack of structure that didn’t sit well with me. So I began again, and even though I kept the same flowers and vines, I let the structure of the vines take on the shape of an intricate wrought iron gate. Which produced this very structured, garden-themed drawing that we all LOVE!

Carrie’s starting to love them a little less, because she’s in charge printing, cutting, stickermaking, gluing, and round-corner punching each piece of her wedding invitation suite.

Add some leaves to your table top with this quick & easy pattern!

You can find it in the Etc. Section underneath our Free Patterns Tab on our website; just click the pink download button on the right side of the page!
Or, you can click on the direct link here!

Writing these patterns has become a very tag-team effort between me and my mom. We design them together. Then she takes the designs and figures out how to bring them to life. She writes up all of the instructions and then emails those, along with some rough sketches, to me. I take these and design the cover art and illustrations. Being a non-quilter… I feel as though I can objectively rate the ease of the instructions… and then add in a little here and there. Additionally, I’ve spent A LOT of time coming up with (what I consider to be) the perfect illustrations for each step… Because I know how annoying it is to have directions that were written for people with a very high skill level. (I think that if cookbooks would take a similar approach, I might try cooking once in a while…) After the instructions are written up, my mom then tests the patterns for the second time… just to make sure that we have all of our bases covered.

We realize though, that even the most thorough instructions may occasionally sound vague to someone who is new to quilting. So we welcome any comments or questions that you all might come across! Feel free to either post your question here on our blog, or you can email us at LandJ@LaurenAndJessiJung.com and we’ll make sure to get back with you right away… as well as update our patterns with any necessary content! Happy quilting!