Winter, by Minick & Simpson, beautifully depicts the season with classic poinsettias, garlands, holly, and candy canes in soft winter whites, blues, greens, and red that you will want to curl up in. It has been flying off the Fat Quarter Shop's shelves since it came in, but it's Minick & Simpson after all! (Psst, they have a new blog!) Winter is a favorite for us as well, and we even have two quilt kits for it.
This collection started in one direction, took a u-turn and arrived a little unexpectedly with these soft vintage colors. How, you ask? Ok, I will spill it all. Polly and I worked together and came up with a large collection that we submitted (this means many phone calls, emails, digital camera scans, and shopping trips). It was the prints that you see, in the colors that you see, but also with many other prints and more colors that moved into sepia's and browns. We loved it all!
Ooooh, that was a great day when our package from Moda arrived with our yardage. The soft vintage colors and sweet little prints really came alive when you see them in the flesh, so to speak. I placed an order for some extra when it was ready to ship. I got my favorite bolt of fabric yesterday. I have so many ideas on what to do with it - I will probably have to order many more bolts. Curtains, pillowcases, shirts, baby layette's, and of course lots and lots of quilts. As you can see, sometime simpler is better. Yes, my favorite of all is the simple little polka-dot. Happy stitching!
It is our pleasure to write something about our latest collection, Winter! As Laurie stated it all started with us going over our valuable "stash" that we live by. Our stash box consists of scraps of vintage fabrics, vintage paper, photos of things we love, ribbons - you name it. To someone who would come across our boxes of stash, they may be confused and not think it worth much, to us it is gold. When we travel we are always in search of something that inspires us - it may be the color, the texture, just something that gave us a great idea, or something we cherish and have had in our own collections for a long, long time. Never did I realize how valuable our "stash" would be to us as we design fabrics. I think we can honestly say that almost every collection has been inspired by something we love and have hung onto for a very long time. Or, it can be something picked up at an antique show recently that became our inspiration - for what, our next holiday line - now you have to wait and see what Laurie found at a great antique show - stay tuned.
Thankfully those that we love and respect so much at the other end - they help us focus and pick our theme and move on - and this is what happened to Winter. You need to step back, look it all over see what is working, what may be crowding or really not working and pull your collection together. We really love how Winter turned out, and we were inspired to see so many wonderful projects made with Winter when we were in Portland - it always makes us so happy. Your collection becomes like your child and you want everyone to love and appreciate it as we do.Labels: Guest Quilting Writers