…by the family quilter Jessi Jung
Lauren and I were recently asked to participate in a blog tour to review a new book by Clotilde, called Jump-Start Your Quilting. The official tour dates are March 10th through the 16th. Seven designers (I’m sure you’ll recognize many of them) are participating, and each reviewing one of the patterns from the book.
First of all, I have to say this is a great book! The whole idea is to save time (or “jump start” your quilt making process) by using pre-cut fabric packs. These packs come in coordinating fabric lines, and they are already cut to fit the quilt pattern…putting you way ahead of the game.
Our assignment was to review a quilt called Shadow Play, by Julie Weaver. The skill level is beginner. In my opinion, this quilt was so fun and easy to put together. There are no seams to match, except when joining rows, and it is the type of quilt that can be quickly constructed using an assembly line process. I used fabrics from my stash (to get a feel for the pattern), which can easily be done, but pre-cuts make it a breeze.
To see more pattern reviews, be sure to visit the other blogs on the tour:
March 11 : Linda at Quilt Cookies
March 12 : Here’s our website too.
March 13 : Pat Sloan at her blog
March 14 : Melanie at Texas Freckles
March 15 : Aunt Pitty Pat at her blog
March 16 : Glenna at Holly Hock Quilts
While this blog hop only reviewed 7 patterns, Clotilde compiled over 45 adorable projects for this book, including quilts, pillows, and gift ideas. Every project in this book includes clear directions, color-coded diagrams, various skill levels, and pre cut pack requirements.
I highly recommend that you all check out
Jump Start Your Quilting by Clotilde.
I'm the designer in the group... And I write about half of the blog posts here. I'm also co-founder of a startup called Shelf (launching soon).
Carrie heads up our PR department. She's also one of the main contributors to a book that we're publishing. And she takes care of LOTS of other stuff, because she's awesome! And we all think she should quit her day job to pursue the wonderful world of pattern making. (Kidding Carrie, chill.)
Rainbow of Business Cards
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, and whether you’re advertising a design company or encouraging people to use your brand of laptop to Visit foxybingo.com, it’s probably best not to look a little dramatic. 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!