Sunday night I got home from Quilt Market, and I’ve spent the last couple days ruminating about what I saw, and how the industry is poised to change once again. When we started our business twenty years ago, we identified a niche that was not being served: fabrics for people who were not afraid of color!
I went on a mission to find those juicy saturated colors that were missing in most of the quilt fabrics. At the time, the quilt shops were full of beige and brown and dark fabrics, although thankfully that has changed. Now there is a greater appreciation for clear bright beautiful colors, and a recognition that colors make us smile, heal our soul, and invite us to explore our innate creativity.
Fabrics can also make us laugh, and they can also spark conversations that are unexpected. Designer Giuseppe (also known as Guicy Guice – pronounced “Juicy Juice”) has come up with a hilarious collection based on UFO sightings, with the main print as Redacted Federal documents about UFOs. I just knew that many of you would need these fabrics.
We find that the plain flat modern fabric designs do not stand alone and sell as yardage, but these color collections *do* sell as precuts. So, I bought a lot of these beautiful rainbows of precuts!
Over the years we have attracted customers who are not afraid of COLOR. You like to dive into Big Color the way a kid bites into a slice of sweet dripping watermelon. Sometimes when we do that crazy patchwork thing with lots of colors, we find that we can combine all kinds of wild fabric combinations, just because the colors are right. We couldn’t dream up these color combinations in our head, but when we lay down these colors to audition them, we say Bazinga! – and a new color story is born.
There are no new colors out there, only new color combinations. That’s why every year we see new and sometimes strange color combos, we swallow hard and slowly start to bake them into our ongoing color choices, and then suddenly those bizarre combinations give us the most pleasure. We are always thirsting for something new and different, and these new color combos give us something to bite into….like that juicy slice of watermelon.
So go on… take a bite!
sharing your Passion for Fabric…
Luana and Paul
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Luana’s Travel Calendar:
May 24-25 – Dairy Barn – Quilt National Opening – Athens OH
June 11-15 – Quilt Canada Ottawa – (lecture Fri 6/14)
July 18-22 – Sacred Threads & Not Fade Away (VA & DC)
eQuilter Classroom:
June 1 – Charity Sewing Group – RSVP
July 11-14, 2019 – Cindy
Lohbeck – Shibori, Ice-Dyeing and Ombre Dyeing – Almost FULL
Sept 13-15 – Cas Holmes – FRCQ Workshop
Oct 8-10 – Jacqueline de Jonge – eQuilter Classroom
