March 11, 2019 Podcast
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Guest: Kelly Parker Smith
Topics: designing fabric
She says: "I kind of do things backwards. Maybe that is the self-taught designer in me, but I usually start with color. Color really speaks to me, so if I see a really cool color palette and I'm really into retro colors, so I'll go online and look at old postcards or old photography. Then I let the color palette speak to what it wants to become and then the drawings come to me."
Guest: Joanne Hillestad
Topics: sewing organization
She says: "My Pop-Ups happened as a total fluke. I was at a creative arts business summit in Washington D.C. with a bunch of other creative professionals, and we received a swag bag. And the swag bag had this little purple ready-made thread catcher in it with a spring in it. My husband luckily bends wire for a living. I walked up to one of my friends and said, "'My husband can make this.' And it just so happened that the person I was talking to was my buyer from a major quilting distributor and she said, 'You need to have him do that and then you need to write the pattern, and we'll sell the crud out of these things.' And we did."
Guest: Kim Jamieson-Hirst
Topics: binding tips
She says: "Faced binding is like binding strips you put on your quilt, but instead of going all the way around your quilt and miter your corners, you are just doing strips on each side of your quilt. Then there are actually little triangles that go over to hold the edges of the facing as they come up to the corners. And you can use those little triangles as hanging strips as well."
Guest: Michelle May
Topics: quilting inspiration
She says: "As a designer and teacher we get caught up in, 'I've gotta make this, and I have to make that, and what will my students like, and what will be the next thing to do.' Sometimes your creativity goes into a little slump. Last year, I turned 50 on March 27, and I decided that I wanted to do a little project that was just for me to celebrate my 50th year and the whole journey of this year. Hexies are fun, they go together really quick and I love to do hand-stitching. And I thought, what if I just stitch like journaling through embroidery. Every day, I could think about the day before and what stood out to me the most, and then take that thought and turn it into an embroidery."