Toasty by Jo Morton

It is a cold winter day growing up, and you are woken up by the warm crisp smell of bread goldening in the toaster. Any memories kicking in? I once read research has proven the smell of toast triggers happiness. It reminds people of home and their childhood.  Of course not everyone will have that correlation, but it was proven to be a very high percentage in the study. Well maybe this is why Jo Morton has now created a Toasty trilogy with the new release of Toasty III. Today, we were lucky enough to catch her to chat a little bit about... well, Toasty!



Hello Jolly Jabbers!

I have been a designer for Andover Fabrics since 2002, and we have been offering small neutral fabric lines several years. The first one was 'Biscuits and Honey' in 2005, then 'Biscuits and Jam' in 2006.

I designed my first 'Toast' group in 2008, followed by 'Toast II' in 2009. For my current line, I really did not want to use 'Toast III', I mean, who would remember the number?

Selecting names for fabric lines is almost harder than designing the line, it is for me anyway. After much consideration, I really liked the word 'Toasty' as it is such a common word people have experienced. Either A. sliced bread browned on both sides by exposure to radiant heat or B. a call to a gathering of people to raise their glasses and drink together in honor of a person. Either of these work for me as A is about a color and B is about joy and praise.

As always my pieces are from 19th Century quilts, tops, blocks or pieces of fabric. 'Toasty' also includes a couple of earlier pieces from around 1830 to 1840. I think of these designs as being timeless and perfect for today's quiltmaker too. I love this range of mellow tones to use with my fabric lines as I think of these as good additions to your fabric 'collection'. They are classic and will go flawlessly with past and future Jo fabric lines.




I have used them with the 'Ember Reds & Evergreens' line from November 2010 and the quilt will be in a future magazine issue. I also used this same fabric combination in a Retreat project for June 2011.

Currently we are working on a new book with quilts from last year (hopefully to be finished soon) so I have yet to create projects with this new line. I think a number of these would make nice backgrounds for appliqué projects. I am so excited to start some serious sewing with 'Toasty' soon. I'm sure you will enjoy sewing with them too!

Happy Stitching!
Jo Morton