Fabric designer by day…watercolor artist by night!
Karen Roti, one of the fabric designers for Clothworks also spends her time creating watercolor paintings. She has been designing fabric for about three years and now uses her artwork for both venues. Her new fabric design, Garden Joy, is available for ordering and will ship in October and her paintings are currently on display in West Seattle!
“Not all my paintings turn into fabric and so I started painting, just for fun. I was surprised when people starting asking about them.” says Karen. “It’s just one of those things that started to happen. At first I wouldn’t sell anything, but then my sister went through my “discarded” file and took home four paintings for her own home. I was shocked at first, but then decided to try to sell the rest of the paintings and it took off from there. It’s funny how life works. Who knew the paintings would sell?”
Karen continues to specialize in flower images and is currently showing at the Hotwire Coffeehouse in West Seattle. 4410 California Ave SW 6:30 AM – 7 PM daily. The coffeehouse is next door to the West Seattle Post Office. Hotwire was voted the best coffeehouse in Seattle two years running.
If you can’t make it to West Seattle, you can see many of her paintings on her website karenroti.com and email her if interested. She also dabbles in photography, needlepoint, and gardening. She would be happy to hear from you. Expect the Unexpected!
I found something really cool on the internet and I am hoping you all are game to give it a try with me. There is a neat website called Totally Tutorials that plays matchmaker between producers like Clothworks and crafty sewers/makers like you. We provide fabric shipped to your door and you put together a free tutorial using our products (we hope that will be some of you!). Basically we’ll do a sign up here and I will randomly draw 6 people out of a hat to be the tutorial makers, send you all the fabric and then you’ll be on the hook to make some kind of tutorial on your blog or elsewhere.
IF you’re unsure how to make a tutorial, here is a pretty good how-to by ArtMind. Totally Tutorials also has a link to a long page of tutorials that have been published and you can check some of those out to see how folks do it. And here is a link to an enormously simple yet beautiful tutorial to inspire you even further! So, if you’re curious, but green, go ahead and sign up and I bet you’ll be able to do it on your own. And if you can’t, I am sure we can work SOMETHING out!
So, let’s get to the meat of the sandwich here. I’ve got a big stack of fat quarter packs: 6 packs, each containing 9 fat quarters of a collection called Sophie. It’s pretty stinkin’ cute and has a featured pattern by Anita Peluso in Fons + Porter for some eye candy. All the fabrics are shown above and you can also head to our website to see all the other bits of Sophie if you’re curious. The tutorial itself can pretty much be anything that you make yourself AND that could explain to others online. If you have a sewing idea, do it! If you have a collage idea, do it! Just make sure to take pictures and put together directions for your/our readers. For even more ideas about tutorials, head to our Pinterest page. We’ve got several boards dedicated to tutorials and how-to’s. If you win, you’l have one month from the date your receive your goods to create and publish your tutorial on the web. To enter, we’re gonna use Rafflecopter so I can keep track of everyone and not get bogged down by counting comment numbers and cross-checking and other things involving a calculator! Scroll down to see the entry form. You don’t need to know what you will make in order to sign up–you can fill in that blank later! We just want you to sign on and then let the creative juices flow.
I hope this is fun. The added benefit is that if you are an aspiring, designer, blogger or the like, we will gladly promote you on all our social media once your tutorial is published.
Click here to sign up on Rafflecopter
Here are the official rules:
1. Only US residents
2. Contest ends 5/30 at midnight
3. One fat quarter pack containing 9 fat quarters will be awarded to 6 entrants. Entrants must agree to create a tutorial using the products and post it within 1 month of receiving their goods.
Thanks for playing!!
Okay!! The random number generator has done it’s work and here are the winners:
Shawn J
Donna Rae
AND, I realized that I had to cut a second stack which means that I was going to wind up with 3 stacks so I put the random number generator back to work on a third!! YAY! I love giving away more.
The third winner is:
Rebecca H from WAshington!
I have emailed all of you and will send those puppies out soon. Thanks to everyone for playing. I noticed taht the folks who won have been dedicated followers and have entered other contests (several!) and it is always nice to see a winner who has already tried a few times finally reap the benefits! Check out the blog tomorrow for a really fun idea that we are launching!
I’m always really excited to share about what is happening with Clothworks and all the folks we work with for Quilt Market but it is also bittersweet. Most of you readers and sewers will never go to Market because it is a tradeshow for the industry and if you don’t own or work for a company in this category, you aren’t able to come in. So, in honor of Quilt Market, I would like to start a tradition of doing giveaways that EVERYONE can enter.
For this giveaway, I’d like to highlight the fact that our Everyday Organic Solids line has grown to look like a full rainbow. I have been eagerly awaiting this day because nothing gets me like a stack of fabric organized in rainbow color order–or anything rainbow for that matter. Book shelves, laundry and Legos work, too. For our purposes, though, it’s fabric. It’s a huge pile of 22 fat quarters of our lovely Everyday Organic Solids that are soft like butter and sew beautifully–and there will be 2 winners. I just made a dress out of the stuff (you can see it on Pinterest) and will shortly be posting a free pattern for a rainbow grocery tote with an upcycled denim bottom (get a sneak peek here). But I digress. As usual, this giveaway requires one thing. This time, I would like you to sign up for our newsletter. It comes fairly infrequently (it was meant to be monthly, but that has proven hard to maintain) but it always announces something really fun like a giveaway, new collections AND free patterns / tutorials. If you’ve already signed up for this, give it a try anyway because we just changed mail services and it might do us some good to get an updated address for you. And finally, please share this on Facebook to let your friends know there is a tower of gorgeously soft solids awaiting them if they win. The link to sign up to our newsletter is below, so please click on it and enter! If you are absolutely sure that you are already on our mailing list, go ahead and leave a comment here and I can check your address on our list and enter you that way.
Subscribe to our newsletter!
Other rules:
1. Contest is only open to US residents. (Sorry internationals! We have had lots of trouble shipping your goods and they often come back at additional cost.)
2. If you are sure that you are already subscribed to our newsletter, but still want to enter, please leave a comment on this blog post and I will make sure your name gets in the hat!
3. Contest ends Monday, May 20th at the stroke of midnight!
4. Share this on Facebook!
5. There are two stacks to give away. 2 STACKS!! YEA!
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It’s true. We’ve been scheming a bit at Clothworks. There have definitely been some whispers and some, let’s not tell yets and all the stuff that happens when you have a BIG surprise. Well, here it is! We’re launching a 100+ strong batiks collection that is going to knock your socks off. It’s called Fresh Batiks by Clothworks and we have THE BEST people working on it to make it awesome and refreshing while staying true to the age-old traditions of batik art. With Quilt Market starting on Friday, we’ve been able to get a little bit of advance yardage and we are savoring every scrap to make some cool projects that we thing you will enjoy. If you’re not going to market, I will certainly share pictures here and on facebook of the beautiful Fresh Batiks AND we are doing a fun little window display showcasing some cushions that my Mom made. Each cushion that is featured there was made based on a tutorial that my Mom or I found on the internet for free and we have pinned them to the Clothworks Pinterest board. For those at market, there is a QR code they can snap to see all the tutorials but it’s much easier for you folks at home. HERE is a link to the pinterest board so you can have at it. And, we didn’t just pin the tutorials that we used. At this point, there are 40+ tutorials there and I hope to keep increasing the pins to make that board a really great resource for you all to find pillow tutorials. Some of them are very quilty. There are quite a few DIY/reuse ones that call for old t-shirts and the like. So, please take a look and have fun! Fresh Batiks by Clothworks will be in stores this fall (2013), so we’ve got a little bit of a wait.
Now, in the meantime, here are some photos of projects using Fresh Batiks by Clothworks and I promise we’ll have the WHOLE collection up on our website soon. It’s no easy feat getting 100+ different fabrics scanned and posted, so we are busily cranking out all our market stuff so we can move onto the regular work!! I’ll post pictures of the pillows from Quilt Market soon, and the projects shown here were created by Virginia Robertson, the designer of the collection.
If you’d like another way to get to the Pinterest board, here is the QR code:
Beach Garden Studio is one of our delightful local designer pairs, heralding from Bainbridge Island, just across the pond from Clothworks. Here are a few tasty images of what they have been up to. The project photos below are from Esther’s on Bainbridge Island where they had a celebration in honor of the launch and the above picture is a digital mock-up of a quilt using the collection. Click on that to get to Beach Garden Quilts’ site to buy the pattern. They’ll be featuring projects and fabric in their booth 1320 at Quilt Market.
You’ve heard from these gals before, so without further ado, here’s the Quilt Patch Gals!
Jeanne and I are so excited to have our advance yardage of our Wallflowers collection! We’ve made three quilts using our own patterns! Front Porch is the FREE downloadable pattern available online. In addition, if you are going to Portland Quilt Market, you can have a chance to WIN this very quilt! It’s being beautifully quilted as I write this! All you need to do to be entered, is to order a full collection of our Wallflowers fabric at the Clothworks booth and your name will be entered! What a great way to have an instant sample! If you won’t be there and want to learn more about Wallflowers, click here to read more on our blog.
The next two samples we made, are Hopscotch, (shown) which is one of our most popular selling patterns, and
we also whipped up a Strip Joint quilt which I think is fabulous!! Come see it in our booth at Quilt Market! Booth number 1419!
The Quilt Patch Gals can also be found via their website and blog.
Hi Folks! As part of our series on Quilt Market, Julie Creus of La Todera is joining us for a guest post about her upcoming collection.
The inspiration for A Closer Look actually started brewing years ago. I stumbled upon a book of extreme closeup photography of patterns in nature- insect wings, leaf veining etc. I bought it, just knowing that someday I’d base some fabric designs on this concept!
Since then, I’ve been filling my inspiration board with photos of all kinds of these patterns gleaned from everything from my husband’s (shagreen) stingray skin wallet to ordinary salt crystals! The collection is organized into four groupings based on the texture/design of the pattern and if you check out these links, you can read a bit more about how these came about. Here are the four groups: Salt, Shagreen, Air Dots, Purl.
Fair-Isle Quilt pattern available soon at Latodera.com
When Clothworks approached me to develop a ‘funky basics’ line, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to bring this idea to fruition!
The trick was to play with the scale of these textures enough to give them new interest, but keep it small enough to read as a small, textural repeat, and to recolor the resulting illustrations to give them a new spin, while keeping the contrast of colors low enough so that they would be useful as blenders.
When you take ‘A Closer Look,’- the possibilities are endless!
Julie Creus
Meet Julie and see her patterns and fabric in Booth 363.
>CONTEST CLOSED–Winner is Angela F. Thanks all for entering!!!
Hi All,
I just got wind of a really darling pattern using Clothworks fabric and thought, that’s cause for a giveaway! Meags ‘n’ Me has created a super pattern using Flowering Around by Beach Garden Quilts + Studio. Meags ‘n’ Me have been featured here before because they have a handful of patterns that use Clothworks fabric AND they also have a stack of other really great patterns for sale on their website. In particular, they do a really sweet block of the month called Squeal of which I’ve heard countless positive reviews. This pattern, Blossoms, celebrates spring with a flower-ish pinwheel pattern for each block and the kit we are giving away is plenty of fabric to make a baby quilt top.
The collection, Flowering Around, comes from some local Northwest Gals who live on Bainbridge Island and they were even featured recently in the local paper there. The collection is pretty hot off the press, so if you’re looking for something springy and light, stores have got this on their shelves. Here is a screen shot of the full collection.
Here is how this giveaway will work. Rafflecopter worked pretty well last time, so I am sticking with it. Click here to enter!
Alyssa Thomas of Penguin + Fish is not quite a veteran in the fabric design industry, but she’s on her way there. She is introducing her third gorgeous and playful collection, Critter Patch Organic, to rave reviews and lots of interest. She has an embroidery and craft book due out this spring and she’ll be hosting her own booth and schoolhouse at International Quilt Market 2013 in Portland. To celebrate all of this, she’s sent me a stack of process sketches and images from her work on Critter Patch Organic. Enjoy these and look forward to the September arrival of this collection. If you’re at market, you’ll find her in Booth 1319, right around the corner from Clothworks in booth 1314.
Critter Patch Organic started in part from our Penguin & Fish characters from our embroideries.
Here you see bunny sketches. It’s kind of more like thinking in sketches, versus actual drawing.
These show some of the early renderings, with a some different patterns and some different colors.
I’m working on a test cheater quilt that I will use at Quilt Market because the fabric doesn’t come in and get to stores until September. This is a good way for me to see the prints next to each other in a quilt. It will be printed at Spoonflower and I’ll quilt for Quilt Market.
And, drumroll…the final swatch page! It’s pretty exciting to see them all together, laid out nicely and getting along.
Marsha McCloskey, designer of the ever popular Staples, is back with a collection in deep blue. This is how she describes Everything Blue:
Think of a fabric collection gathered over time where the colors look great together, but don’t quite match. Everything Blue is a line of over 30 pieces in just blues. It includes light, medium, and dark values in prints from small dots to large-scale romantic florals. The palette of warm white, to Chambray, to Indigo, is a delight to the quilter who loves blue and is always looking to enrich the fabric collection.
Here is a snapshot of her full collection (and a little sneak peak of our new website which will be launching in summer!)
For those of you who will be at Portland Quilt Market, Marsha McCloskey can be found in Booth 1318, not far from Clothworks in Booth 1314.
For Everything Blue, McCloskey has developed 3 new quilt patterns that she will be launching at Quilt Market in Portland. Each one reveals her love of stars and are heirloom quality.
Marsha sent me a sneak peak of those patterns which I will share with you here. She had done such a beautiful job of adapting her feathered star patterns to feature all blue–she calls them two color, but I see quite a few shades of blue in there. You could easily substitute any color of your choice in there if you want to make a quilt in a different shade.
The first two patterns come with full instructions and a custom ruler. The third pattern is more involved and is in book form. The Feathered Star Ruler is recommended.
FSSP1 Massachusetts Cross & Crown with the Precision Trimmer 6 ruler by Marsha McCloskey. Step by step instructions for 65″ x 76″ quilt.
FSSP7 Blueberry Delight by Marsha McCloskey Easy Piecing with the Precision Trimmer 6 ruler. Step by step instructions for 60″ x 60″ quilt.
FSP14- Star of Chamblie: A Feathered Star Sampler Quilt by Marsha McCloskey Step by step instructions for a Feathered Star Sampler Quilt in six different sizes. Feathered Star Ruler recommended. AVAILABLE JUNE 2013
In addition to these gorgeous patterns, Everything Blue has already inspired one of our favorite pattern designers, Rochelle Martin of Cottage Quilt Designs. This quilt is called Argyle Blues which is what I felt when I shrunk a beautiful wool argyle sweater, but this quilt puts a different meaning to the blues! Click here to purchase this pattern and see all the other beauties for sale at Cottage Quilt Designs.
