Designing fabrics

Hello Everybody,

This week I want to tell you about designing fabric.

As a quilt designer, at one point I really wanted to go one step beyond and design the next best thing which was fabric. Since I had been designing cross stitch patterns, I used those drawings to build up a collection. Got to go to Quilt Market in 2010 and presented my work to different companies. My luck struck when Lecien, a Japanese company, which got interested in my work and accepted to edit a collection. 

It was called "La Petite Mercerie":

My collection was made up of 21 bolts in the red, blue and brown tones.

I was featured on their list of designers on their website.

I was so proud of having a collection, I started working on the second one with Nireko, unfortunately the tsunami occurred and changed Lecien's strategy, they decided to only work with "in-house designers", so my second collection never got to come out.

This set back didn't stop me, I decided to work again on several collections and went back to the Quilt Market in Pittsburgh in 2014 to present my work. I was lucky once again to meet with Clothworks that decided to launch a collection with me called "Maison & Jardin".

Here are the videos I made, the first one was when I received the document used by the sales representatives to go around the shops to present the collection, and the second video are the strike offs that I received. (sorry both videos are in French, but you get to see the collection in full).

 

 

As I was waiting for the bolts to arrive at my house as I had a deadline to turn in a quilt for the French patchwork magazine "La Pratique du Patchwork", I called Clotchworks to find out why the bolts were taking so long to arrive, they finally told me they had cancelled the collection. And that was it, no other explanation on why after being all over their website, being on the front page of the biggest distributor Ee Schenck Co, they had just decided to cancel my work.

The feeling I had that evening was terrible. I was so sad. 

I decided a few weeks later that I wouldn't give up, so once again went back to the Quilt Market, went to Minneapolis in 2015, showed my work to Red Rooster, they chose the collection they wanted to work with, I came back to France, made all the changes they asked for, I worked all summer on the strike offs, and it all just stopped all of a sudden, they didn't reply to my emails, no news. Once again all that work for nothing.

In 2018, I gave one more shot, went the Quilt Market in Houston, went from one desk to another of all the fabric companies, showing my work, talking passionately about what I did and who I was. Met with Art Gallery Fabrics, she told me she loved France and would love working with me, told me what to work on, but guess what, she never answered my mails.

So what did I do?

I will tell you all about it next week!!

PS: this weeks block of Mini Quilt Fun is here: PDF,

But a little extra for you, here is the Lecien PDF of my collection "La Petit Mercerie" with the pattern that was available on their website back then.

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