new quilt labels + weekend reading

This week, I added a new item to the shop: custom cross-stitch quilt labels. These new labels feature your choice of message in a simple, modern cross-stitch font, which is hand stitched by me in my studio. The custom label can either be attached to a quilt you purchase from the shop, or sent with unfinished edges for you to turn under and stitch to your own project. It's such a nice and thoughtful way to personalize a quilt for gift giving, and I'm really excited to be able to offer this service---hopefully you are too!

Do you have any fun plans for the weekend? I'm planning to check out a local chapter meeting of the Modern Quilt Guild, as well as Squam Art Workshops' Art Fair. In the meantime, here are a few fun links from around the web that I've gathered up for your reading and viewing pleasure:

• These coastal quilts from Haptic Lab are stunning (I spy Cape Cod and the Outer Banks!).

• Love how this closet became a sewing station. 

• Did you see Skinny laMinx launched a new fabric line? It's called Diggi Dot and it's gorgeous!

• I enjoyed this interview with maker and quilter Stephanie Renee. Her Instagram feed is always super inspiring.  

• NYCxDESIGN (a 12-day celebration of design in New York City that includes exhibitions, talks, trade shows, and open studios) recently wrapped up, and Design Sponge did a nice round-up of a few of the quilts on display. 

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

salty oat spotlight: sarah waterhouse

Today is the first in what I hope will be an on-going series of interviews with inspiring and creative people---including fabric designers, shop owners, quilters, and other makers. To kick things off, I'm so excited to welcome Sarah Waterhouse to the blog! Sarah is an incredibly talented fabric designer based in England, whose work I have the pleasure of stocking in the shop. Sarah's designs are fresh, modern, and often geometric, which is what immediately drew me to her work when I stumbled across it almost two years ago. Read on to learn a bit more about her background, her design process, and how she has environmentally friendly fabric specially woven for her.

Image source: Sarah Waterhouse

Caitlin: Tell us a bit about your background and how you got your start. What was the path that led you to where you are today?

Sarah: I studied art and design at college but decided to pursue the academic side of the subject by doing a History of Art & Design degree at Sheffield Hallam University in 2000-2003. I loved Lino printing at college, but never got a chance to screen print and I was determined that I wanted to have a go. So when I finished university I went to work in an art gallery and started to teach myself how to expose screens and screen print and soon became addicted. I also had to teach myself how to put designs into repeat and absolutely loved working with patterns. I used my new fabrics to make gifts for myself, family and friends and it just blossomed from there.

C: What does a typical work day look like for you?

S: I get into work early, usually around 7am, and deal with all my admin, marketing and orders first so I can spend the rest of the day on the practical side of the business, so designing, sewing and printing. There are also extremes in my working week so some days I might be completely glued to the computer and others I’m printing all day. I love the variety in my work!

Image source: Sarah Waterhouse

C: It’s not always easy---from a sourcing or financial standpoint---to use organic fabrics, but sustainability and environmentally friendly materials are obviously a big part of your company’s story. Why is that?

S: I’ve always been very environmentally minded and determined that once I started a business, it would continue in the same thread. I didn’t like the thought of putting something else out into the world that was damaging, and the processes surrounding cotton production are so polluting. It was very difficult to source both materials and inks though. Even looking for the right packaging was difficult as I didn’t want the quality to suffer in the face of the environmental aspects. Once I found some good suppliers for fabrics and started buying in bulk, my choices grew. I’m now at the point when I’m able to commission my own woven cloth made here in the UK and that is wonderful.

C: What three words would you use to describe your aesthetic?

S: Bold, contemporary and colourful.

Image source: Sarah Waterhouse

 C: What’s your current favorite color palette?

S: I love all the colours as you can probably tell from my fabrics, so I don’t really have a favourite palette. I don’t like to limit myself in any way. I love putting different colours together and creating unusual combinations.

C: What are your sources for inspiration? Can you walk us through how an idea goes from your sketchbook to fabric, and how you refine design elements and select colors before committing to printing the final design on fabric?

S: Most of my inspiration comes from nature so either from direct sketches or photographs I’ve taken. I carry a sketchbook and my camera with me everywhere so I can record any interesting shape, pattern or composition I find. I sketch all throughout the year but twice a year I have a period of about 2 months when I concentrate on work specifically for a new collection. I look through all the work I’ve done so far and then start picking out elements I find interesting to build up a set of about 10 different ideas which are worked on again to see how they could be turned into repeat patterns and my final choice cuts this again down to 3 designs. Once I’m happy with the designs, I refine them as a repeat pattern and get the screen etched. Whilst I wait for the final screen to arrive, I start work on mixing colours. By this point I usually have colours in mind which have come from the point of inspiration. I usually mix up about twice the number of colours I think I might need and do test swatches until I’m sure of the final set and am happy that they all work well together.

Image source: Sarah Waterhouse

C: What projects have you or your customers made with your fabrics?

S: My customers use my fabrics for a variety of uses which is lovely, that’s why I like being able to offer many different weights of fabrics that are suitable for a range of uses. My designs have been used on everything from upholstery to clothes. I always ask my customers to share any images with me of the finished work. It’s lovely to see my fabric become a part of someone’s home or wardrobe.

C: What’s Sheffield, where your studio is, like? Any favorite places to shop, eat, or hang out?

S: Sheffield is a wonderful place to live. I was born here and couldn’t really see myself making my home anywhere else. We’re the greenest city in the UK with more trees than people and we’re surrounded by one of the country's most beautiful national parks, the Peak District, so I’m very lucky to live here. We also have a fantastic cultural vibe in the city, especially music, art and design. There are so many makers based here and we have lots of studio spaces. My studio is lovely. It’s my home away from home and I share it with my husband and our rescue pug Etty. The room is mostly taken up with a huge printing table, 8.5m in length.

Image source: Sarah Waterhouse

C: Where can people find you online? Do you have any upcoming in-person events or open studios?

S: I sell through my own website shop. I also sell through Etsy and have a number of stockists. I like to do as many trade and retail shows in the year as I have time for and try to visit as many places in the UK as I can. The big event of the year is definitely our Open Studios though, which happens every November. This year it’s the 20th-22nd November and all of our studio buildings are open over the weekend so that’s the chance to see about 140 different artists and makers. I like to put on a good display and sell a variety of different fabrics and finished items over the weekend and it’s a lovely chance to meet so many of my customers face to face.

Thank you so much for your thoughtful responses, Sarah! You can find a selection of Sarah's fabric in the Salty Oat shop (it's currently on sale!), along with a recently added pair of pillows featuring her designs (red and orange), which I made in my studio. 

solid scrappy trip around the world quilt

 

Since my weekdays are currently spent sewing commissioned quilts, along with goods for the shop, I like to set aside time on the weekends to sew for myself and catch up on charitable sewing projects. This past long weekend I did just that when I basted, quilted, and bound a quilt destined for donation.

It's no secret that I'm a fan of the Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt pattern (this is my fourth time making a quilt from it; here are quilts one, two, and three), but each time I work with it, I like to approach it differently. For this go around, I opted to use only solids from my scrap bin and try out a new block layout. The result is a bold, and very colorful, quilt.

For the back, I used a floral cotton voile I bought while living in Maryland. I have to say that the voile makes this quilt so soft, which makes me want to back all of my quilts in voile from now on.

Rather than adding a Salty Oat tag, I sewed a "Handmade with Love" tag into the machine-stitched binding, as a little note to the recipient. You can find my tutorial for making your own handmade fabric tags over on the Spoonflower blog.

This quilt, along with those that I make for the Wish Circle of do. Good Stitches, will go to my local chapter of Project Linus.

Quilt Stats
Finished dimensions: 47" x 59"
Quilt pattern: Scrappy Trip Around the World by Bonnie Hunter

black-and-white pow-wow quilt in cotton lawn

 

Just before I left Spoonflower, we added a super soft cotton lawn to our line-up. I was really excited for this fabric's release, as I knew it would be perfect for quilting (think Liberty of London's Tana Lawn). Wanting to make a quilt from it myself, I selected a number of low-volume designs from the Spoonflower marketplace, and the Marketing team kindly provided me with a stack of fat quarters to work with.

I quickly decided that I wanted to give Cluck Cluck Sew's Pow-Wow quilt pattern a whirl (I purchased it a number of years ago). Rather than using prints for the arrows and a solid for the background, as the pattern suggested, I switched things up and used a solid black for the arrows and the assortment of lawn prints for the background.

I really love the graphic pop that results from pairing the low-volume prints with a solid black, and how the prints create a subtle, yet interesting background. It's fun to spot faces, bow ties, and letters between each of the arrows.

The construction of the arrow blocks results in leftover half-square triangles, which I in turn sewed into a row, and set amidst a light gray cross-hatch print on the back, which shows off the zig-zag quilting beautifully.

I used a black-and-white striped binding (love!) to finish everything off, which I machine-stitched down.

With the remaining half-square triangles, I then pieced a complementary throw pillow cover. I really loved working with the cotton lawn---it was super soft---and I didn't have any issues pairing it with a heavier weight quilting cotton. I think the fabric gives both the quilt and the pillow a nice hand, making them perfect for snuggling.

Both the quilt and the pillow are now listed in my Etsy shop.

Quilt Stats
Finished dimensions: 38.5" x 42.5" 
Spoonflower designs used: Gilhoolie Tulip in Peachy Pink by Gilhoolie; Letters by Anke Panke; Cute Faces by Anke Panke; Bow #2 Black on White by I Got Stripes Studio; Mod Baby Tiny Crosses Grey by Miss Tiina.
Quilt pattern: Pow-Wow by Cluck Cluck Sew

a custom half-square triangle quilt

Prior to our departure from North Carolina, a dear Spoonflower coworker commissioned me to make a quilt for her and her husband. She provided me with a few fabrics from her travels to Japan and San Francisco---a navy floral, a mustard polka dot twill, and a blue-and-white ditsy floral---and expressed a love of triangles. My friend is a computer engineer, so when it came to the quilt's design, it was no surprise that she included the code-generated quilts of Libs Elliott (such amazing work!) in her list of inspiration quilts.

Inspired by Libs' designs, I created half-square triangles in two different finished sizes---5" and 10"---and stuck them up on my design wall, constantly rearranging as I went along, until I had a composition I was happy with. In addition to the fabrics my friend provided, I added in a few pink prints, a Leah Duncan print that happened to coordinate beautifully with the palette, and a large navy cross-hatch which I used for the binding.

For the backing, I used large, leftover pieces of the original fabric, along with a few extra half-square triangles. You can spot a few in-progress shots of the quilt over on Instagram, as I worked on the cross-hatch quilting and then added a leather Salty Oat label.

The quilt is now back in North Carolina, at home with its new owners, to whom I am so grateful for the commission and the fun design challenge!

Quilt Stats
Finished dimensions: 60" x 60"
Fabrics used include: Mojave Illuminated by Leah Duncan; Glimma Crosshatch by Lotta Jansdotter; Pink Paint and Pink Dot from Picnic Pals by Penguin and Fish
Quilt pattern: original by Salty Oat (me!)

quilting with stripes (and working from a kit)

After spotting a Kaffe Fassett quilt and its accompanying kit during a visit to the Waterwheel House Quilt Shop this past fall, my mom and I struck up a deal that she would buy the kit and I would make the quilt for her for Christmas.

I finished the quilt just in time to gift it to her for the holidays (I shared a process shot on Instagram back in November), and it's been a staple in the living room ever since.

This was the first time I'd made a quilt from a kit, and while the colors and fabrics were outside of what I typically work with, I really enjoyed learning a few new piecing techniques, and having the chance to work with the soft, yarn-dyed, woven stripes.

For the backing, I used a deep solid turquoise from my mom's stash, and added a strip of leftover stripes to the middle. I quilted it with a turquoise thread in a large grid, keeping the quilting somewhat minimal, so as to leave the quilt puffy and soft.

Have you ever made a quilt from a kit? If so, would you do it again? I'd love to hear about your experiences!

an embroidery stitch sampler

When I worked at Spoonflower, I had the chance to teach a number of classes in the company's public meeting space, The Greenhouse. Hand embroidery is one of my favorite things to teach---it's portable and so addicting---and with the ability to print patterns directly onto the fabric of your choice through Spoonflower, it was the perfect opportunity for me to design a few simple patterns for my students.

One of the first samplers I created was this stitch sampler. I quickly realized it was not a project that could be completed in a three-hour class (French knots take a long time!), but instead is best for stitching over time, as you learn and perfect your hand stitches.

Each word is stitched with the stitch that it represents---fern stitch, stem stitch, split stitch, satin stitch, chain stitch, running stitch and the French knot---and is framed with a back stitch and cross-stitch border. I kept my color palette super simple, using black floss for all of the stitches with the exception of the back stitch border, which was done with gold metallic floss. There are so many variations that you could try though; I think a color gradient, moving from light to dark, could be really beautiful.

Rather than using a hoop, I decided to staple the finished piece to canvas stretcher bars. The finished embroidery turns into an excellent reference chart to hang on your wall and refer back to as you stitch other projects.

If you'd like to try your hand at stitching up your own sampler, you can buy a pre-printed fat quarter in my Spoonflower shop (I recommend the linen-cotton canvas). Please be sure to share any projects you create with the hashtag #saltyoat, so I can see and share them. Happy stitching!