pistachio whole-cloth quilt + an interview with kelsey boes of lovely and enough

Today, I'm so excited to reveal the second of two whole-cloth quilts I launched this week! (You can read about the first one here.) I've been collaborating with a few designers to design quilt tops for the shop, which I then have digitally printed onto fabric and turn into finished quilts. You can read more about my thoughts on whole-cloth quilts and why I've been exploring them here.

The second quilt in this collaborative series was designed by Kelsey Boes of Lovely and Enough. Kelsey is a quilter, textile designer, and PhD student. She designed the Pistachio Quilt for the shop, which features her hand-drawn motif in an elegant gray, white, and red palette. The quilt is now in the shop and will be made to order. 

Please read on to learn more about Kelsey, what store she'd love to sell her quilts in, and her process for designing this quilt. 

Caitlin: Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to design fabrics and quilts?

Kelsey: My love of textiles began with a pair of knitting needles from Disney World when I was eight, and has morphed and blossomed unimaginably since with encouragement from my mom. Fabric design has been the most recent adventure. Just two years ago, I stumbled upon Leslie Keating’s Hand-Printed Fabric Swap online and printed my first fabric design, Drunken Circles, with a stencil and embroidery hoop. That next summer while studying abroad, I took a textile silk-screening class for a month and fell in love. Come fall, I wheedled an independent textile design course out of my advisor and transformed it into a senior exhibition the next spring. It’s a year and a half later now, and I have never looked back.

C: Tell us a bit more about the degree you're pursuing. How do you balance your creative time with your course load?

K: I’m a nerd. I am currently pursuing a PhD in Fiber and Polymer Sciences at North Carolina State University. Learning about topics as far reaching as dirt-masking carpet fiber shapes, wrinkle release treatments, and color vision has only enhanced my interest and passion for fabric. This semester, especially, I am known to spew tidbits from my most recent lecture to anyone who will listen (or can’t escape). Balancing creative time with my course load is tricky and lately has involved umpteen sketch breaks during proposal writing and lab reports. I find a little creative break is the best way to rejuvenate me before hitting the books again (and a little book studying is the perfect way to energize me to sew!).

C: How would you describe your aesthetic? What motifs and colors do you find yourself drawn to?

K: I am a stickler for clean design, which more recently has pushed me toward grays, white, and red.

I am also obsessed with midcentury modern furniture: clean lines and eye-catching angles. If my quilts could be sold just one place, I would choose Room & Board. When I’m dreaming up a new quilt, I imagine I’m standing on the first floor of Room & Board in Chicago, and I try to picture how the quilt would look hanging above the Eames chairs and minimalist table there. If the quilt fits, it’s a winner.

C: Can you describe your workspace/sewing space in Raleigh, NC?

K: My workspace is in flux right now. Although I mostly sew in my bedroom, I feel most inspired to sketch in the gorgeous modern library at school. With rather poor light at home, photographing for the blog happens across the city, from the library to the warehouse district to a panel of beadboard tossed on the balcony. In fact, my favorite new way to snap quick pics is rolling the butcher block kitchen cart over to the window and pulling the white curtains around for extra reflected light.

I'm in my bedroom right now actually! I just assembled a new desk this weekend so that I can have my sewing machine set up at all times. I do believe that sewing productivity is dependent on having good work flow with stations for cutting, pressing, and stitching all at the ready. Now, I have two of the three! When I want to truly get in the zone, I pop up the antique wooden ironing board that is propped against my wall, and then I am set to go for hours with Netflix as company.

C: Tell us about the gorgeous Pistachio quilt you designed for Salty Oat! What was your inspiration and how did you decide on a design?

K: Thumbnail, thumbnail, thumbnail. Ms. Tank would not allow me to begin a printmaking assignment until I’d drawn at least six thumbnail sketches, her theory being that your first idea is likely not your most developed. I have carried that practice with me and draft multiple versions of a project before beginning. Sometimes I circle back around to my first strokes, but often my mind wanders, and I end up in entirely new territory. The pistachio quilt was seven of nine. Experimenting with transparency and seeking a graphic gender-neutral quilt, the design morphed a fair amount moving from paper to computer, finally landing with a red overlay and five minimal stripes.

C: Where can readers find you online? 

K: You can find me online at LovelyandEnough.com, as well as LovelyandEnough.Etsy.com, or follow me on Instagram.

Thank you so much to Kelsey for sharing a behind-the-scenes look at her creative practice! You can now find the Pistachio Quilt for sale in the Salty Oat shop. 

fairy tale whole-cloth quilt + an interview with this paper ship

Today, I'm so excited to reveal the first of two whole-cloth quilts I'll be launching this week! I've been collaborating with a few designers to design quilt tops for the shop, which I then have digitally printed onto fabric and turn into finished quilts. You can read more about my thoughts on whole-cloth quilts and why I've been exploring them here.

The first quilt in this collaborative series was designed by Joel and Ashley Selby of Saxapahaw, NC, the married duo behind This Paper Ship. Their adorable Fairy Tale quilt is now available in the shop, and will be made to order. Each quilt features a black-and-white bias stripe binding, a Carolyn Friedlander gray-and-white grid backing, and, of course, This Paper Ship's whimsical fairy tale-themed design. I hope you love this new quilt as much as I do!

Ashley and Joel so kindly took the time to answer a few questions for me while they awaited the arrival of their baby girl, who is scheduled to arrive today! I hope you'll read on to find out more about them, their work, and the inspiration for their quilt design!

Image source: This Paper Ship

Caitlin: Can you tell us a bit about your background and why you started This Paper Ship?

This Paper Ship: Going way back, we've both been obsessed with drawing for as long as we can remember. We met in a freshman drawing class and hit it off over a fabric study, kept drawing side-by-side throughout our design degrees, and graduated together. During our last year of college, we started an Etsy shop using our own illustrated wedding invitations as an example, and picked up our first client the day before our wedding. The economy was terrible around that time, which prevented us from ever getting our coveted entry-level design jobs, so we just kept plowing forward with self-directed work and paper goods! Seven years later, we're still crazy enough to continue to make a living off of drawing, and now even raise a family off of it. It's been a wild ride, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Image source: This Paper Ship

C: How would you describe your illustration style?

TPS: In a word: whimsical! We love bright colors, simple shapes, unexpected textures, hand lettering, and fun detail you can get lost in. Our style is made up of a combination of our two hands, since every drawing is a complete collaboration from sketch to ink to final touches on screen. It's taken a long time to merge our two (often) very different approaches to drawing, but it's been worth the effort, and we learn from each other nearly every day. We both like to approach the world with a sense of childlike wonder, though, so that's often our common ground on everything.

C: What have been some of your favorite projects to work on?

TPS: Other than our self-directed work, which 99% of the time ends up in our online shop, our favorite area to work on is the children's market. We both find that drawing things for an audience of children allows us the greatest freedom to play, to use our imaginations, and to really go for broke on bright colors! Specifically, we got the chance to illustrate for a bathroom line and a sleeping bag for The Land of Nod a few years back, which was awesome. We also really enjoy doing greeting cards and have had a good working relationship with American Greetings for a few years now.

Image source: This Paper Ship

C: Can you describe your studio in Saxapahaw, NC?

TPS: Saxapahaw is a hundred-plus-year-old cotton mill and mill village about 20 minutes west of Chapel Hill. The mill shut down 20 years ago but has since been rebuilt into a small community of businesses and loft apartments, and we're blessed to live and work out of one of them. We wake every day, walk downstairs with tea and coffee in hand, and go to work at a vintage drawing table and letterpress among the old brick walls, massive steel roof beams, and original floorboards pitted from cotton spinners.

Fairy Tale Quilt Sketch. Image source: This Paper Ship

C: Tell us about the stunning Fairy Tale quilt you designed for Salty Oat! What inspired the theme and color choices?

TPS: First, we had a blast doing this—it belongs among the projects in question 3! We had decided on a loose fairy tale theme for our baby girl due October 3 (still not here as of the time of this writing), so we took the basic idea of medieval European banners and used them as the basis for the quilt pattern. In the alternating rectangles with images in them, we drew objects that were personally meaningful to us, but also worked well as general heraldic-style symbols—a ship (for This Paper Ship), the fleur-de-lis of Florence (one of her middle names, where we honeymooned), a bird (inspired from a vintage wall decoration from Ashley's grandma's house), etc. For the colors, we wanted to go bright and make the design work for both boys and girls; we were inspired by Disney's immaculate Sleeping Beauty and their vibrant treatment of color in a Middle Ages setting.

Image source: This Paper Ship

C: Where can readers purchase your work? Any upcoming events or exciting projects you'd like to share?

TPS: We currently are selling solely at our Etsy shop, but are also working on a new shop site coming soon. The next market we'll be vending at is the Saxapahaw Holiday Market in early December at the beautiful Haw River Ballroom—come on out if you can, and you just may be able to meet little miss Sadie in her holiday best! We plan to do a lot of craft markets in the new year, which we'll be announcing on social media as we book them up (@thispapership on just about everything). We're also really excited to announce that we're finalists in the Martha Stewart American Made 2015 Awards, so we would be honored to have you go vote for us! You can vote up to 6 times a day until October 19. (You can see our profile and vote here.)

Thank you so much to Joel and Ashley for taking the time to answer my questions and for designing a quilt for the shop, and congrats to them on their growing family! You can find their quilt in the shop here.

exploring whole-cloth quilts

Each time I make a quilt, I spend a significant amount of time piecing the top. Depending on the size of the quilt, I spend anywhere from 2 to 13 hours rummaging through scrap bins looking for the right fabric, trimming blocks, ironing rows, and auditioning layouts on my design wall. While it takes quite a bit of time, I do love the process of creating a top. Piecing little bits of fabric together to create a larger design is so fulfilling.

I do realize, however, that not everyone is in a position to be able to afford the higher price tag that a time-intensive quilt requires. So I've been working on alternate ways to create quilts which cut down on production time, but still result in the high-quality product that my customers have come to expect from me. My gradual transition to machine-stitched bindings is part of this---hand-stitched bindings take anywhere from 3 to 4 hours, while machine-stitched ones can be done in 30 minutes to an hour and create a durable finish.

I've also started to experiment with creating modern whole-cloth quilts (sometimes also known as cheater quilts)---those with a quilt design already printed onto the fabric. By cutting out the need to piece blocks, the amount of time needed to make a quilt is significantly less, thereby reducing the price of the finished quilt. I find this idea so exciting, with limitless possibilities! So today, I'm excited to share with you the first quilt I've made using this process.

Of the whole-cloth quilt fabrics that I've come across (and there aren't many), most are rather dated in color and design, so I decided to design my own. I designed a simple yellow and white half-square triangle in Photoshop (Googling each step as I went!), which I ordered and had printed through Spoonflower on Kona cotton. I basted the quilt as usual, using an organic modern feather print for the back, and then quilted along each of the design's lines. Because of that quilting, the top actually appears as if it were pieced.

As I continue to explore the possibilities of whole-cloth quilts, I've asked a few other fabric designers and illustrators to design exclusive quilt tops for the shop. The initial sketches I've seen for the quilts so far are amazing, and I can't wait to share more with you in the coming months as we put the finishing touches on the designs.

In the meantime, this quilt is now in the shop. If you like it, but would prefer a different backing or binding, let me know! The beauty of digital fabric printing is that I can print the same quilt top an infinite number of times, and then add unique finishes to make it different each time. I'm very excited to see where this project takes me, and hope you are too!

Quilt Stats
Finished dimensions: 33" x 39"
Fabrics used include: Of a Feather (Ivory) by Rashida Coleman-Hale; digitally printed Kona cotton; Hearts in Cherry Blossom by Umbrella Prints.
Quilt design: Salty Oat