A Week in the Life of a Designer, Part 4

In the previous three posts, I've shared about managing a quilt shop with fabric that's in the store, preparing for special events with fabric that's coming soon, and designing fabric for next year. This week, I'll give you a taste of what I'm working on for Spring Quilt Market through computer generated quilts and how it all comes together.

Computer Generating a Quilt Design

After editing the fabric collection and selecting my top 40 picks, the mill makes any changes requested, and begins printing. The first fabric shipment is sent with limited yardage and precuts, just enough for Moda to use for marketing purposes and to send a few yards to me to make my sample quilts for market. The larger quantities of yardage and precuts aren't printed and shipped until after the orders are gathered at market.

In the meantime, I have jpeg images of each fabric in the collection that I can insert into my designs to create a pretty good facsimile of what the final quilt will look like. I place each piece of fabric into each block of the quilt to make it as realistically scrappy as possible, sometimes using the 40 prints dozens of times a piece. I swear sometimes it takes longer to computer generate an image than to piece the quilt!

Here's the Cabin Sweet Cabin computer generated quilt I shared earlier. If a quilt looks flat without the dimension of quilting, it's probably computer generated.

And here's part of the not-quite-finished Cabin Sweet Cabin quilt in reality on my ironing board. Joy pieced and quilted the charm quilt, then I added the candy cane appliques. I'm still waiting on red buttons to decide on the perfect size berry accents for the holly motif. Sweet Holly ships to quilt shops in June.

Writing , Piecing, Quilting

When the computer version of the quilt is completed, I do the math to figure out the yardage requirements. The computer image of the quilt plus the supply list is included in Moda's Playbook. That's the quilt shop owners' guide to ordering fabric and patterns. If they decide to kit a project, they need to know how much of each fabric to order. I've found if I wait, often the fabric is sold out before it even arrives at the warehouse. You have to know what you need months in advance. Not an easy task as a shop owner. At this point, I'm also writing the instructions so they will be ready when the sample yardage arrives, about 5-6 weeks before market.

As soon as the big brown truck delivers the boxes of sample yardage from Moda, Robert brings the new goodies home so I can begin to cut kits for all the projects. I have several great piecers that will turn a project around in a few days to a week, depending on the quilt and the timeline. No one is allowed to take a vacation in April or September :). They are the first eyes on the instructions, making notes and editing as they go.

Kathy Limpic (also our KT Event Coordinator) is an excellent traditional piecer. Her quilts always measure the exact size and are super flat, often pressing seams open. This is the Evergreen runner that arrived in my mail yesterday, not yet quilted.

When the tops are completed, Joy Johnson is my go-to quilter. She also piecec and works in the store parttime. She has a way of adding a spark of life to a quilt without overpowering the fabric or the design. You can see in the photo above of Cabin Sweet Cabin how simple grid lines in the log cabin blocks with a ribbon candy border sets this little charmer off perfectly.

Prepping for Market

Once the quilts are quilted and bound, the next thing on my list is photography for market brochures and pattern covers. Robert is my in-house guy. We set up lights in the retreat space upstairs where I have a large design wall. I pull props from the storage room and style the quilts when I can. This is also when I'm planning how to decorate my booth at market - planning a theme, gathering props, etc.

The quilts are finished, the brochures are ready, so it's off to Market we go. In May, we'll go to Pittsburg, PA for 3 days to show our newest collections to quilt shop owners and the quilting industry. Fabric orders are taken at the Moda booth. After the fabric arrives, it's time to fold/roll huge bolts onto the smaller bolts you see in shops. In October, they'll ship the newest KT fabric and patterns all over the country.

So, I sent the new Spring Market collection to Moda in August, and it will arrive at your favorite quilt shop in October. Now you know why we, as designers, can't show you what's new to us, because it isn't available for months! We don't want you to be disappointed in the long wait. (It's difficult for us, too.)  

I'm still computer generating the newest fabric collection for Spring Market (it's top secret right now), and I can't share those images yet, but watch here and follow me on Instagram @lynnektq for the first look later this spring.

Thanks so much for reading along and commenting throughout this 4-part series. I've enjoyed reading each one of them. Please continue to send your questions.

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