Fall Quilt Market Fun!

It’s been a whirlwind these last few weeks (in fact the whole year!) but I  finally found time to sit down and share with you our experience at the recent International Quilt Market in Houston, Texas.  The International Quilt Market took place October 26th-28th (always over my birthday wouldn’t you know it!) and is THE PLACE to see all the new fabrics, patterns and products by shop owners and industry professionals before they arrive in the shops some six months later.

We didn’t have a booth this time around but rather chose to “be free” and able to roam the show floor – this was a first for us and very liberating!  As always, Market is full of seeing old friends, meeting new ones , super fun antics and just an all around generally inspiring, terrific quilty experience!

We debuted six new patterns for Quilt Market – You can see them below in the slide show, and we’ll highlight each of these new patterns  in future blog posts, but all are available for order in our Colourwerx shop right now!

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We had several versions of our new quilts displayed with various companies throughout the quilt market floor.

First, we collaborated again with our good friends at Island Batiks and five of our quilts were displayed in a special preview window at the front of the Island Batiks Booth (slideshow below).  All of these quilts were made using the new and super gorgeous Jewel Box Batik Collection designed by Kathy Brett Engle for Island Batiks and coming to a shop near you in February 2020.   Check out the fabrics in the link above! Just lovely!!

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We also collaborated again with our  partners at Free Spirit Fabrics and always welcome opportunities to make our new patterns using Kaffe Fassett’s newest fabrics or other beautiful collections coming soon.  Here’s our PaintBox pattern in both the Warm and Cool colorway of Kaffe’s new fabrics- arriving in shops in February 2020 and we will also have kits available too.

We  also made our new Waterfall pattern in Martha Negley’s newsest fabric collection called Veggies – I am super in love with the rich jewel tones of Martha’s newest collection and the vegetable designs of carrots, beets and cabbage are to die for – it partners super well with all things Kaffe and I just love it .

Continuing on with our collaboration and great friendship with Christa Watson of Christa Quilts.com – I was thrilled when she asked if I would make our new Paint Box pattern in her new fabric collection called GridWork.  Of course I would!  Here’s the finished version and of course a cute picture of Christa & I in her colorful booth at Quilt Market. Her new fabrics, GridWork will be coming to your local quilt shop in February!

We also formed a new relationship with Windham Fabrics and their popular fabric designer, Carrie Bloomston.  You all know Carrie by her popular fabric design, Love Newsprint that we sell in our Colourwerx shop right here!

Carrie’s fabric collections are always full of whimsical motifs and adventures and mostly have a collage look with super beautiful color palettes of magentas, turquoises and golds.  Her newest collection “Wish” was fabulous and fun and we were thrilled to make our ModBlossom quilt for display in her booth!  Carl and  loved meeting Carrie and also love her new Wish fabric collection which will be coming to shops in the Spring!

Last but not least and perhaps most exciting, because we were free to roam the show floor, we were finally able to share our fabric design portfolio with many of the fabric companies’ design directors.   We can’t say anything just yet, but Carl and I were super pleased by the positive feedback we received regarding our fabric designs and are excited to explore this additional design avenue in our business! Look for more news on this in the very near future! 🙂

Until your next colour fix – thanks as always for following along and Happy Fall!  L&C xxoo

 

Get Your Colour Game on with Prismatic!

I’m catching up on new pattern blog posts – so let’s talk about one of our newest patterns – Prismatic!.  Boldly go where no colour has gone before!  – It’s  a terrific pattern for batiks, prints or solids! And good news, it may look complicated, but it’s not.

Prismatic! is a fun, easy to piece quilt.   All the blocks are pieced exactly in the same fashion..the only difference is how the fabrics are combined and in what order they appear in each block.  Luckily, we gave you a handy reference chart in the pattern, and if you follow that and a few additional tips below – you’ll be on your way to creating this gorgeous quilt.  Click here to purchase the pattern in either a paper pattern or PDF download pattern.

This new pattern from Colourwerx was designed by Carl on a whim….he was playing around in EQ7 designing quilt block patterns while watching TV one night and happened to switch the channel over to CBS…the logo appeared….this was the result —- see the similarity? Kinda like a cat’s eye, right….    Sometimes it takes just a little inspiration to light a creative fire; and yes, that old saying that ‘inspiration is everywhere’ is absolutely true.

Since the quilt is entirely pieced (and not foundation or paper pieced as many think), a good 1/4″ seam is imperative,  so you’ll need to whip out that 1/4″ patchwork presser foot for your sewing machine.  Mine is the #97 for my Bernina 750QE – it comes with this handy metal guide that keeps my 1/4″ seams perfect and I love it!

Fabric selection for Prismatic! is super easy too – you just need twelve coordinating fabrics plus three neutrals for the backgrounds.  The pattern includes two sizes: a Large Lap with a 6″ finished block – and measures 72″ x 84″ – which uses just twelve half yards; and a Small Lap Size with a 4″ finished block  – and measures 48″ x 56″ – which uses just twelve fat quarters. Refer to the Material List at your right  for further information on yardage requirements.

So if you’ve been lusting after half yard bundles or fat quarter bundles this may be the perfect pattern!  I selected to use one of our personally curated bundles of gorgeous batik fabrics from Island Batiks.  This is now available for purchase in Fat Quarter or Half Yard bundles in our Colourwerx shop – click here for more information.

It of course follows colour wheel order (….and I always love a good colour wheel order quilt…), but the depth of saturation and gorgeous texture of the Island Batik Basics really call out to me.  This colour palette may also look familiar to you as I chose this exact same bundle to use for the Big Kahuna version of my ModTiki quilt – this pattern is also available on on our Colourwerx website here.  For the background fabrics, I used my favorite Island Batik neutrals in the colors of Smoke (dark gray), Tin (light gray) and White. Once your fabrics are selected, creating a fabric color key is paramount – just snip a 1″ square from each fabric, staple the fabric squares to a piece of paper and label them accordingly.  This key will aid you continually in keeping your fabrics coordinated and in the order needed to make the pattern work.

Cutting your fabrics is also pretty easy too – using the pattern templates provided and following the cutting chart provided in the pattern,  each fabric has exactly the same quantity of shapes cut – it’s just a matter of cutting the correct template shape from each fabric.   Once the fabrics are cut, the most challenging part is to separate and combine the the fabric shapes into the different block combinations, following the color coded block combination chart provided in the pattern.    There are thirty three different block combinations, so getting the right shape in right color in the correct combination is important – check and double check!.

Once my block combos were separated, I placed each of them into ziplock bag and labelled how many blocks I needed to make for that combo –  all I needed to do was select a bag and sew the units together in that bag.    Eazy peazy, right?

Once all thirty three combinations were completed, I laid out the blocks on my design  board and began to sew the blocks together. I then quilted it on my APQS Lucey longarm with an all over pantograph pattern.  Voila!!

This pattern is so versatile and as mentioned above, choosing twelve coordinating fabrics will always create beautiful results…Here are a few other versions of Prismatic!

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Prismatic! is a super fun quilt  – so dive in and step up your colour game!    Thanks for your support and happy holidays!  Until your next colour fix~Linda & Carl

 

 

 

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To Market We Go! Houston Recap & Giveaway!

To market, to market we go!  As always,  the Fall Quilt Market was held at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston.   Except this market, someone came knocking early – yup – Hurricane Harvey crashed our quilty party a few months prior.  Many of us vendors and many more shop owners and attendees were concerned that either Houston would not recover or that the promoters of the Quilt Market would be forced to cancel.    Well, I’m happy to report that neither was true and Quilt Market went off without a hitch – and amazingly, there was no sight of any effect from Hurricane Harvey except for upbeat banners and artwork like this one throughout the city!  The downtown Houston area was lively and the convention center (which just completed a gorgeous 2 year revitalization) was perfect!  And added to this excitement, the Houston Astros were in the World Series!  This all made for a very exciting market to say the least!

We debuted 2 new patterns – Mini ModDog & Mini Spikey – and before you change that channel – make sure you leave a comment at the end of this blog and ask your friends to follow us and do the same to enter the giveaway!  Two lucky winners will win either a Mini Spikey fabric kit or a Mini ModDog fabric kit –  just leave your comment below and let us know which one you’d like and why.…ok – ‘nuf said…..anyway back to market……we debuted 2 new patterns – Mini ModDog and Mini Spikey – both are now available for purchase on our website!

We also attended our first ever Sample Spree selling already made Mini ModDog samples along with 6 Mini ModDog patterns – this way, shop owners have an already made sample and take it right back to their shop and start selling the patterns – nifty idea, right?!…Here’s Carl,  moments before the madness started.   Btw, the dog samples were a hit and the shop owners were thrilled to have an already made sample!  Below is a slideshow of all the Mini ModDogs samples we put together – we made 2-4 versions of all the styles you see – all in all, we estimated that we stitched up about 45 samples in the weeks prior to market – Wowwee!

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Of course, I needed to share these cute little pups with others too.  I also made a few for my friend, Jackie Kunkel at Canton Village Quilt Works to display in her booth –  using her new fabric collection, “Blue Moon” for Island Batiks.  This batik collection is super  gorgeous and so super saturated in all those blue, aqua, lavender and purple colours.  And of course, a play on the name – “Blue Moon”,  I couldn’t resist adding a moon behind one of the pups to make it extra super special for Jackie.  🙂 Jackie was so nice she even showed the Mini ModDog pillows to her schoolhouse attendees to generate more interest!

And spotted in another booth – Renaissance Ribbons had their very own Kaffe Fassett Mini ModDog too.  Renaissance Ribbons makes the most gorgeous ribbons and trims and since we embellish all of our Mini ModDogs with these trims so it only seemed quite natural that a pup pillow should be in their booth too!

And finally , we also designed and stitched up (with a lot of help from Teresa at Quilting is my Bliss and her extraordinary custom machine quilting) a grand total of 6 more quilts for Free Spirit Fabrics and 2 more quilts for Island Batiks. 

Free Spirit Fabrics always does a great job of displaying the new collections via their quilt gallery and this year they won the blue ribbon for best booth!  Yay! Super secret sewing was in full swing here at the Colourwerx Dezign Haus from early May onward – some of the fabric designers we had the honor of designing and making quilts for were:  Kaffe Fassett Collective, Tula Pink, Jenifer Paganalli,  and Corrine Haig.  Most of the quilts you’ll see here are now available as free PDF pattern downloads on Free Spirit’s website here.

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In addition to that, we also made large lap size versions of our Colourwerx patterns:  Spikey and Mix It Up! for our friends at Island Batiks in the their newest fabric collections debuting at market.  They displayed these in their booth – Take a look!

Whoo – time to rest?  Nah – we’re already planning our trip to Spring Market which will be in Portland…Yippee!

Anyway, thanks as always for following along with us!  And remember to leave a comment to enter the giveaway for a either a Mini ModDog fabric kit or Mini Spikey fabric kit! And be sure to ask a friend or two to do the same and leave a comment   Two winners will be randomly selected next Friday, November 17th!  Until your next colour fix – sew the rainbow and happy quilting!  L&C

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mystic Gold

Fall Quilt Market is quickly approaching and guess what? – we are finally catching up with this blog post about quilts we designed for the Spring Quilt Market in St. Louis!  Oh my – how time does fly!

Fabric designer and artist, Anna Marie Horner, debuted her gorgeous new fabric collection called “Floral Retrospective” at the Spring Quilt Market – which is now out in stores  – and we were fortunate enough to be asked by Free Spirit Fabrics to design a quilt for their booth using her new fabrics.   Introducing Mystic Gold!

When Carl designed this pattern in EQ7 (Electric Quilt 7 software), he wanted to accentuate the rings moving outward from center (as if a pebble had been dropped in a calm pool of water) and give the quilt that almost mystical  “vibrating” or “zingey” look (think of hitting a gong) – hence the pointed tips around each curve.

And what looks to be complicated curved piecing –  really isn’t!  Here’s how we did it:

1.   A simple half squared triangle block is created first;
2. ….then we added the corner triangles;
3. …then we created the petal applique by sewing the lightest weight fusible interfacing right sides together with the fabric petal, slitting the center and turning the unit right side out;
4. …lastly, we fused the petal to the center seam line, topstitched the edges  and voila! – it looks like some serious curved piecing occurred when in fact, it was super easy!

Topstitching was super simple using my #10 Edgestitch Presser Foot (a must for this type of job!) and a matching 40wt Aurifil thread. Perfect every time!  If you’ve ever made an orange peel block, then this is very similar if not the same method indeed!

 

Teresa, from Quilting at my Bliss, did some awesome custom machine quilting.  The free motion feathers across each petal were to die for and her custom quilting in between was equally gorgeous. (click on the pictures to enlarge).

By the way, Teresa has a new book launching in October, called the “Longarm Quilting Workbook”.  It’s filled with great tips on basic skills, techniques and motifs to help get you started  longarm quilting – so if you’ve just purchased a longarm or are considering buying one – this would be a great book to consider adding to your reference library.  And of course, if you’re just looking for some new and fun ideas on how to quilt something – there’s lots and lots and lots of eye candy!  Of course, you can buy directly from Teresa and have her autograph it too!

All in all, this one was super fun quilt to design and create,  and we were so honored that Free Spirit chose this one to hang in their booth at Spring Quilt Market.

If you like this design, it is now available as a free download on the their website – here’s the link!

Until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

 

 

…Just exactly what do you guys do?…

For the trade only – Quilt Market happens just twice a year and it is ‘the place’ to preview the newest fabrics, patterns and notions that will be arriving at your local quilt shop in the coming year.

Like most Quilt Markets it was exhausting but very energizing….  The ‘exhausting’ is in the designing, making and preparing all of our quilts for display, coming up with a new look for our Colourwerx booth (see below for a couple of snaps) , designing and printing handouts and brochures, and the final step – hoping that it all arrives (including us and the quilts) in one piece to the venue and on time.

The ‘energizing’ is actually just being there – being able to view and or try out the latest fabrics, notions and patterns, seeing a vast variety of quilts all made with different techniques and styles, and lastly and most importantly catching up with friends and colleagues and meeting new ones. Here were a few of our favorites:

Amy Butler’s Booth

Sew Many Creations’ Booth

Tula Pink’s Booth

We were also thrilled to see several of our ‘secret sewing’ designs hanging in the Free Spirit Fabric booth and Quilt Gallery.  ‘Secret sewing’ – meaning we were not able to reveal them to you until now because the fabric had not yet been released.

Which brings me to this important note:  We get asked alot “….just exactly what do you guys do….”  – well, aside from the obvious fact that we sell patterns for our original designs and make quilts (and we make alot of them!), we also design quilt patterns and make quilts for many well known fabric companies.  Hence, the term “secret sewing”.

For example, a new fabric collection is due to be released in the next 6-9 months but the fabric designer may be a well known painter or illustrator and know very little about quiltmaking…so that’s where we step in….we are contracted by the fabric company to take the fabric collection and design several patterns highlighting that collection…then we are asked to develop one or several of these designs further by writing a pattern and actually making the quilt for display – it is great fun but it is also ‘top secret stuff’ as we can’t reveal to you what we are up to until the collection is released.

Back to Spring Quilt Market, we designed and made five quilts that were on display at Spring Quilt Market, and these were fairly “top secret” until about 2 weeks prior to Spring Quilt Market.  Some of these designs had been in the works since January so it was mighty hard not to tell you what we were up to….

We’ll highlight these designs later but here’s a short preview of them hanging in the Free Spirit Fabric Gallery of Quilts.  And we must give credit to our dear friend Teresa at Quilting is my Bliss – she custom  quilted all of these and did just an absolutely fantastic job!  If you see a quilt you like, then jump on over to the Inspiration page on the the Free Spirit website to download the free pattern  – some of these are available now and some are coming in a few weeks or so, plus there are loads more free patterns there by other fellow designers that are super terrific, so check it out!

Mystic Gold

Hat Boxes

All Stacked Up

Easy Sunday

Racetrack

And finally –  Colourwerx (meaning Carl and I)  designed and debuted three new patterns which are now available at your local quilt shops – they are also available for purchase on our website!   PDF versions of these are in the works and should be available by the end of June!  (drum roll….) They are: ModCats, Mod TV and Mix It Up!  All are super fun patterns and incorporate the slash ‘n sew method we love!

All in all, a great time was had by all and now we’re turning our thoughts towards the Houston Quilt Market in October (yes, October already!)

Thank you to all for following along with us, and until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

Roundabout Quilt

Oh my – how time does fly!  Unbelievably, it’s the middle of March and we promised with our last blog post in January that we would talk more…our apologies but the good news is we have been super busy designing and quilting, designing and quilting, and designing and quilting and so on….the only problem with all this ‘designing and quilting’ is that it’s been “super secret quilting” so we haven’t been able to share any of it with you until now….

One of the first quilts we designed and made for Free Spirit Fabric was our ‘Roundabout’ Quilt using Nel Whatmore’s beautiful and cottage chic fabric collection called “Rosealea“.  This was a fun quilt to create but I must admit when a quilt sample was requested to be created for of all venues – the Houston Quilt Market! (gasp) – I was a little intimidated to say the least.  Here’s the completed quilt hanging in the Free Spirit Fabric Quilt Gallery which was a special booth exhibit at last year’s Houston Quilt Market – indeed a proud moment for Carl and I.

Designed solely by Carl, this quilt is almost entirely paper pieced, which allows for the perfect sharp points and intricate secondary designs to come forth – sometimes I wonder if he designs these complicated looking things just to test me!  Lol! Paper piecing is a love of mine so I welcomed the task!

In creating this quilt,  I discovered a few tips and tricks along the way.   First, the ever useful glue stick came in very handy. I ran a light bead of glue stick along the first fabric so that I could place the black and white dots evenly and perfectly vertical over the the first paper pieced section without the dots shifting as I sewed – skewed dots would look awful and I did not want that look!

I also used my very handy ‘Add a Quarter’ ruler to trim off any excess fabric leaving just that perfect scant 1/4″ seam allowance.  If you don’t have one of these ‘Add a Quarter’ rulers yet, run – don’t walk –  to your neighborhood quilt shop and pick one up – they are super useful for all paper piecing and just  a great handy notion to have in your sewing kit!

There were three different units that needed to be created  to form just one quadrant of each block…so 4 quadrants make just 1 block and there were 5 blocks in all….60 units total needed to be completed and all  in a matter of a week or so as our turnaround was very tight.

 

To match the points of each unit, that old trick of pinning straight through the top point of the intersection and right through the matching top point of the intersection really did the trick and made piecing the units together a breeze.

And of course, the every helpful rubber mallet was most useful in pounding flat (yes you heard me, pounding flat!) the center of each block where there were many seams converging – hey, a quilter got to do what a quilter got to do, right?!

We added a black top and bottom border to frame out the quilt and make the completed version measure the perfect 45″ x 60″ size that was requested for the Free Spirit Quilt Gallery.

Once completed, the top was sent to Teresa at Quilting is my Bliss for some magical and very beautiful free motion machine quilting.  She did a gorgeous job adding just the right amount of quilting here and there without overpowering the design.

So once completed, off to Free Spirit Fabrics it went and took its place in the gallery for Houston Quilt Market!  A fun project indeed.

If you like our Roundabout pattern and want to make one of your own, you can download the free pattern by clicking here.

Stay tuned for more posts on out other designs that have started popping up!

Until your next colour fix~Linda & Carl

 

Recap of Houston Quilt Market – It’s About Time

I’m just getting back to blogging and writing a quick recap of our splendid time at the October Houston Quilt Market.   Truth be told – we’ve been just a tad busy around here lately….having spent the last month closing down our brick and mortar store, Linderella’s Quilt Works, and wrapping up a few odd ends here and there,  Colourwerx blogging had to take a back seat to everything else  (and yes, – I realize I am a year between blog posts, but hey-who’s counting, right?)

Anyway, back to Houston….We had a single booth space just a few spots away from one of our favorite fabric companies, Free Spirit Fabrics.  It was a great spot and so much fun to be just “down the block” from some of our favorite people like Kaffe Fassett, Tula Pink and Heather Bailey.

As usual, Carl did a great job designing the booth.  Like our previous booth at Houston (which I blogged about in “Colourwerx & Quilt Market”), Carl redesigned the 3-tiered truss system from a lightweight, metal EMT (electrical) conduit piping so that we could hang our quilts on drapery rings staggered apart for optimum viewing.  The big advantage we had this year was driving to Houston, which meant we could take the entirety of the booth – piping, rugs, decor, displays and tables all in the car and all ready for set up in a day without having to leave the convention center.  It was great! and a big relief to know that we had everything we needed packed and ready to go when we got there.  The car was a bit cramped though and due to the 10 foot pipe extending from the front window shield to the back, I was resigned to the back seat for the ride-check out the photo to the right for my view for 16 hours there and back again!  It was spacious but still in the back.

Carl also designed this nifty display table which was the talk of market…the table was a glass topped-metal bookcase purchased from Ikea -he added a cheap  metal curtain rod with metal tie backs (bought at Walmart) and created a hanging rod on the front,  perfect for displaying a quilt – what a genius!. Then our friend Nancy at Shutterbug Graphix installed the Colourwerx vinyl letters on the glass top which Carl highlighted with a row of bright LED lights…it was all very theatrical looking and splendid. 

We debuted two new designs – “Mod Dog” and “Splendor” – both patterns are now available for purchase at your local quilt shops or on our website.  “Mod Dog” was a huge success and was clearly the favorite of of all of our designs by the shop owners.   We’ll also be blogging about these new designs and others soon – so stay tuned!

An additional thrill was to have one have one of our commissioned designs featured in the Free Spirit Fabrics Quilt Gallery.  This was such an honor as this was a special exhibit set up by Free Spirit Fabrics to showcase new fabric collections with accompanying quilts (which will be offered as free patterns when the fabric collection is released.)
We were asked to design and make a quilt for Nel Whatmore’s new collection “Rosealea.  “Rosealea” is a beautiful fabric collection chocked full of vintage cottage roses reminiscent of English countrysides. To the left is our design titled “Roundabout”.   Carl designed this in the software program called, Electric Quilt 7 – I paper pieced it and Teresa from Quilting is my Bliss, did a magnificent job free motion machine quilting it!  If you’d like a copy of the pattern you can download it for free on the Coats Crafts website.

There were a dozen or so other quilts featured in the Free Spirit Gallery too – some of our other favorite designs  were Laura Heine’s The Dress, Tula Pink’s Designer Essential Solid,  Kaffe Fassett’s Artisan and Anna Marie Horner’s Loominous.

 

 

 

 

 

And of course while we were away our trusty office manager kept a keen eye on all the activities at home.   All in all, quilt market is always so much fun and we are now looking ahead to Spring Market in St. Louie!

Until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

 

 

 

 

 

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Colourwerx & Quilt Market

We’re back from our first journey as Colourwerx to the Houston Quilt Market and we had a blast….

Quilt Market is the bi-annual trade show where the latest and greatest the industry has to offer is on display and available to be ordered by shop owners and other quilting businesses…most of what we saw at this quilt market will be arriving in your shops 3-6 months from now.  Attending as a shop owner is always overwhelming – there are literally hundreds and hundreds of notion vendors, fabric companies and pattern designers on display, and each one offering something totally unique for your shop.  It is very hard not to just order absolutely everything! 🙂

But this time around, we were also back exhibiting as a pattern vendor….I had forgotten how tiring and also exhilarating having a booth can be…

Carl designed the booth and lucky for us, his past experience as a television production designer and roadie experience really paid off…

We had a nice corner booth space right next door to Moda Fabrics…it was a great spot!  Instead of hanging colourful drapes for our backdrop to the quilts, Carl designed and had printed a series of vinyl banners that showcased our logo and fabric designs – this way the logo and artwork provided some interest in the background (behind the quilts) but better than that, the banners rolled up neatly in our luggage for travel and they did not need fire proofing like most drapes do (a messy task indeed).

Also another added benefit, in lieu of the customary pipe & drape system used to hang drapes or quilts, Carl designed a 3-tiered truss system out of ordinary lightweight, metal EMT (electrical) conduit piping that we purchased on our arrival in Houston from the local Home Depot….This way we had a place for our vinyl banners to hang but also could uniquely layer and change the height of the quilts that were on display….pretty ingenious and pretty cost-effective considering the rental of the pipe and drape from the convention center would have been over $200 and Carl purchased his system from the Home Depot for about $80.00 – it was easily adaptable to whatever we needed.

The first day of set up was spent building Carl’s truss system and hanging the banners.

That night we had a hot date at Wal-Mart (yes, that’s right – Wal-Mart..) to pick up our stools and bar table. It is amazing what you can find at Wal-Mart Online…we had ordered the bar stools and table 2 weeks prior to market and asked them to be shipped to the local Houston Wal-Mart…so easy to do and no hassle or expense of shipping them to the convention center to potentially get lost or misplaced….we went to the special order desk picked up our delivery, and it was back to the hotel to settle in for a night of building bar stools and the table…

The second day of set up, we hung the quilts, placed our stools and chairs and finished off the booth with that fabulous rug from Ikea.  Once complete we “locked” up the booth with our trusty white tulle ‘security barrier’ – amazingly tulle or some garland-like barrier across your booth signals to the rest of the convention center world that you are now closed for the evening…not really secure but hey –  it works….

The next day, quilt market was officially open – Carl sported his paisley!….and it was great fun to be back exhibiting…we had a blast making new contacts but also seeing old friends from long ago..

But after 2 days of set up and three days of meeting and mixing, it was quickly over and packed away in less than 3 hours….always amazing to me how fast this goes!  So now we turn our energies towards our next deadline of November 20th when our patterns for the new designs will be released- very exciting!  And we look forward to the next Quilt Market, which will be in May in Salt Lake City!

All in all, quilt market was a blast, our new designs were a success and we had so much fun! We thank you all who stopped by the booth and welcome those of you who now follow us along on this amazing journey….

Until your next colour fix~
Linda & Carl

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Back to the Future….

It’s hard to believe that in a few short months we will be headed back where it all began some 14 years ago….back to the Houston Quilt Market trade show…..but this time under our new design company….Colourwerx.

We booked our very first trade booth at the Kansas City Quilt Market in the Spring of 2001….we debuted with just six Linderella patterns…it was a monumental task for two individuals who knew nothing about the industry and who were really going because it “sounded like a fun thing to do” (oh my!)   At that time, we were both working full time at our “TV jobs” in Hollywood – we designed in the mornings and made quilt samples in the evenings…we drew the illustrations by hand and scanned them into Adobe Illustrator without having a clue about how to use the program – we must have set up and auditioned and re-auditioned the booth in our backyard about 20 gazillion times – we direct mailed to quilt shops across the country inviting them to see out booth and enclosed free patterns for them to test (can you imagine?) Instagram and Facebook would have been great assets but at that time, they weren’t even invented! – in short, we jumped in head first and never looked back.  Our patterns were a hit and we were on our way!

Now we’re headed back to where it all began – to Quilt Market and the funny thing is, it is under very similar circumstances… our full time job is running our quilt shop (Linderella’s)  but at the end of each day, our attention turns to Colourwerx and the patterns and design process….we collaborate each evening….free moments are usually spent designing, sketching or feverishly sewing up a new quilt sample for our booth….Sunday is no longer a day of rest  but rather a day to squeeze in all that Colourwerx needs doing….we are essentially headed back to our future, and it feels great!  Colourful things are coming – see you in Houston!

Until your next colour fix~Linda & Carl

Back to the Drawing Board…

Well, we are back at the drawing boards…After an eight year absence from design, the creative juices are flowing and Carl and I are back to designing…..it feels great!

Our goal was always to get back to it someday, but we never intended our absence from designing to be this long.  In our defense though, these last eight years we have been a bit busy – we have moved house twice and opened and still operate full time our quilt shop in Southern Pines, NC, called Linderella’s Quilt Works.  Running the shop by itself is a “48 hour/7 day” a week job times two…but we’re not complaining though…our customers are super and best of all, we love our jobs – what could be better than that!   But now that the quilt shop is established and in a routine, we are ready to get back to designing fabrics and quilt patterns….

The exciting news is that we decided to form a new company and call it Colourwerx…….. Why a new company?  Well, we could have stayed with the name Linderella’s and why not?  Linderella’s is well known, there is an established quilt shop and website to accompany it and a portfolio of dozens and dozens of popular quilt designs and illustrations that have been published under that name….but Linderella’s is also known for playful, whimsical and character driven designs and graphics…although those fun designs will never go away – and some may even pop up in new colourways under the Colourwerx name – we felt that going forward we needed a new vehicle and a new name that embodied our goal of creating bold surface design that was more stylized, graphic, and contemporary….a fresh start….hence the name Colourwerx – mixing our love of colour with the industrious nature of our spirit for design….. Now to get back to the drawing boards where the creative mojo, we’re happy to report, is overflowing! Until your next colour fix ~ Linda & Carl

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