And The Winner Is...

First of all, a tremendous THANK YOU is in order...

...for everyone who participated in our giveaway and for ALL of your kind words. My mom and I were blown away by the sheer number of comments we received on our blog hop post. We have had a ton of fun reading all 576 of your comments!

Congratulations are also in order for our giveaway winners...

Cathy who said "I love the bright colors in your fabric….I would appreciate being entered in your giveaway……loved trying to find all the details in your fabric" and Judy who said "Awesome giveaway – Hideaway is terrific and I would love to win". Be looking in your inboxes for an e-mail from us and be sure to send us photos of the projects you make from your Hideaway fat quarter bundles!

Thanks again to everyone for your love and support. We hope to share our next collection, Flora, with you soon!

Let's Talk Pillows!

Welcome to the Pillow Talk Blog Hop : Day 15. Thanks for stopping by!

If you are new to my blog, here is a little background on what has now become quite the family affair… My mom and I started this whole venture about two years ago, right after I had finished a grad program up in graphic design. I was unemployed for a depressing 5 months… and it was during this period that our ideas started hatching. I've since moved up to Pennsylvania and we're now doing the majority of our work over the phone. Luckily, we've found that most of our tasks can be divided up... And they are as follows.

Jessi: She's in charge of all of the initial concepts/sketches for our fabric lines, as well as all of our quilt pattern designs (which includes writing the instructions, sketching the diagrams, and testing each of the patterns). She also likes to yell at me over the phone. A lot. Prior to our pattern business, she was working with her best friend and neighbor, Connie Flora. They designed the quilt planner named Plan Bee for Prym Dritz as well as creating their own series of quilt patterns.

Lauren: I work in Cranbury NJ as web designer at a software company. I also do a lot of freelance web work as well as our own fabric site... I put the entire thing together myself... which was hard!! I'm learning how to do some basic website coding, thanks to the awesome group of guys that I work with. (Thank you Ambrose, Ed... and sometimes Devin and Brian! Even though Devin and Brian have on occasion, caused me to cry myself to sleep after claiming that some of my designs have made their eyes bleed... not exactly constructive criticism...) In addition to the website stuff, I format all of our quilt patterns and create the ridiculously meticulous illustrations that accompany each instruction.

Carrie: My younger sister, Carrie, was recently dragged out to Albuquerque, NM with her husband Jon who got a secret job for the government.

Carrie is very bored now.

If you live out in that area and you want to give her a job in marketing... she's super cool and very smart. Anyway, in the meantime... we've made her our Little Project Manager / Copywriter. I'll still be writing our blog entries because I like to be long winded... And I don't think Carrie has it in her to capture the subtle nuances of my extreme ADHD. But she'll be doing the copywriting for the website... She's under the impression that websites shouldn't sound like some "ridiculous stream of consciousness that no one bothered to proofread". This is based off of the stuff that she learned while getting her masters in marketing... so who am I to argue with that logic, right? (For the record... I do proofread... and my streams of consciousness are almost always grammatically correct.)

And well, my dad is sort of in on it too... he's in charge of anything that involves math.

Because we hate math.

Beau (my fiance), Peter (my BFF at work), Brianna, Jason, and Julie (plus the four guys mentioned a few paragraphs back): This group makes up my team of moral support. (The first two guys emailed today and told me that they were mad that there was no mention of them on my credits list. So there you go Beau and Peter. :) )

When tasked with the project of making a pillow that represented us, my mom and I went back and forth between entirely too many ideas that were…well… sub par. And that’s just not how we Jungs roll. Luckily though, with a little bit of patience we finally came to a pillow design that my mom and I are proud to offer our readers, thanks to our adorable dog Rudy. (See above)

Rudy is our dog, and we love him more than people should ever love their pets. (I say this because my mother mentioned once that she would jump in front of car to save him... Which, I don't know... sounds a bit unhealthy to me. But can you really blame her... Look at him!!) Anyway. Rudy thinks that he is our guard dog. (Yes I know... he's a very tough looking little Westie.) He sits up at the window seat in my parents living room and scans the front yard for any suspicious activity. He'll then bark and warn us if anyone is up to no good.

So this pillow will at some point become Rudy's guard dog pillow. That he can lean on while he's keeping watch by the window... Perhaps a bit of a stretch, but that's our story and we're sticking to it.

We especially like this pattern because it helps to show off our hilltown pattern. This particular pattern is extra cool because it has a bunch of little secrets hidden within the landscape. If you look hard, you'll see a chimney sweep, a little fisherman catching a fish, a waterwheel, some deer, a little bridge with children playing nearby, a bum with a liquor bottle up in a balcony, Rudy (our dog) is in the town square, a quilt that is hanging up on a washline... and more. It's quite a lot of fun!

With that in mind, the window theme seemed like a natural choice. I mean how cool would it be to look out your window each day to see this awesome little town.

You can download the pattern for free here. It is one of 6 free patterns that we have available on our website! You can view all of them here.

Also in the spirit of free stuff, my mom and I are giving away full fat quarter sets of Hideaway to TWO lucky winners. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post. We will announce the two winners in a week!

If you don't know how to comment... Don't worry! Blogs are confusing sometimes. Up at the top of this entry, click on the title. This will take you to the area where you can comment. At the bottom of the page you will see a comment box where you will then be prompted to post your comment, your email address and your name. Then just click "Post Comment". And that's it!! You're done!

And finally, the much anticipated pillow talk questions…

What is a little known fact about you?

LAUREN / I CAN’T cook. In fact, I’ve been known to burn Ramen noodles (permanently adhering them to the bottom of the pot), turn quiche into quiche soup, and thoroughly botch the process of making a grilled cheese.

JESSI / I know sign language. I had to learn it for my first job at the South Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind.

How do you relax?

LAUREN / When I actually have free time… I LOVE to watch my retro detective shows: Magnum PI, Simon and Simon, Murder She Wrote, and Matlock.

JESSI / Solving the worlds problems with the company of my best friends and a cappuccino (and maybe a little bit of chocolate).

What do you sleep in - PJ's or NightGown?

LAUREN / I'm partial to black exercise pants and a wife-beater.

JESSI / Any flannel PJ pants and a t-shirt.

What kind of pillow do you like, Hard or soft, foam or feather? And why?

LAUREN / I can sleep on just about anything… a brick floor would be no problem for me. It's almost like a super power.

JESSI / I like hard pillows, and I am allergic to down, so that eliminates the feather option. Also, I love flannel pillowcases almost as much as flannel PJs.

When you were young did you sleep with a stuffed animal? If so what?

LAUREN / I used to sleep with a stuffed polar bear that I cleverly named “Bear”.

JESSI / I slept with my real miniature poodle, Martini. I’m not sure how much he liked the sleeping arrangement though.

Do you sew in bed? Read? Watch TV? eat?

LAUREN / On the weekends I don’t get out of bed…so all of the above... and then some.

JESSI / I stay in my studio until I can’t keep my eyes open.

How many nights have you or your spouse spent on the couch?

LAUREN / I don't have a husband... yet. So only time will tell.

JESSI / My husband, Chip, has a bad habit of falling asleep on the La-z-Boy most nights.

Nighttime toddy?

LAUREN / When I was younger, my dad used to put me to bed with a glass of water that he called “Super Water”. The term stuck, and I still REQUIRE a glass of “Super Water” before bed.

JESSI / I’m not much of a drinker, but I do love a little bit of chocolate at night.

Early to bed or all-nighter?

LAUREN / Most definitely a night owl. I think I'm nocturnal.

JESSI / Since I discovered fabric designing, I’ve been a night person.

Who would you most like to have a pillow fight with?

LAUREN / Brad Pit, Jake Jyllenhal, Johnny Dep...

JESSI / I would love to hit Lauren with a pillow when she doesn’t do what I say. Kidding! Sort of.

Thanks again for stopping by. Don't forget to enter our giveaway by leaving a comment on our post! And if you liked our blog, stop by our Facebook Fan Page and click LIKE up at the top of the screen (beside our names). The next stop on the Blog Hop is Sweetwater!

Oh, and... if you want to see the entire line... check out our fabrics page on our website!!

Get Ready for the...

So we're participating in one of Moda's "blog hops"! More specifically... their Pillow Talk Blog Hop, where each of their fabric designers is given the chance to come up with a pillow design that is a representation of herself... but in the form of a pillow.

In addition to our personified pillows, we're each given a series of rather "off-the-wall" questions to answer. Hence the name... Pillow Talk. Not to worry though... Lissa (from Moda) promises that nothing too risque will come up throughout the course of this blog hop, despite the rather suggestive title.

I, myself, love risque stuff... so this will be difficult... Kidding.

If you want to keep up with it... the order is as follows:

FEBRUARY 1 : Aneela Hoey FEBRUARY 2 : Blackbird Designs FEBRUARY 3 : Jan Patek FEBRUARY 4 : Bunny Hill Designs FEBRUARY 5 : Cotton Way FEBRUARY 6 : Fig Tree FEBRUARY 7 : Kansas Troubles FEBRUARY 8 : Kate Spain FEBRUARY 9 : Kathy Schmitz FEBRUARY 10 : Camille Roskelley FEBRUARY 11 : Me and My Sister FEBRUARY 12 : Minick and Simpson FEBRUARY 13 : Liesl from Oliver+s FEBRUARY 14 : Sandy Gervais FEBRUARY 15 : Lauren and Jessi Jung (our new website!) FEBRUARY 16 : Sweetwater FEBRUARY 17 : Barbara Brackman FEBRUARY 18 : Deb Strain FEBRUARY 19 : American Jane FEBRUARY 20 : Primitive Gatherings FEBRUARY 21 : Laundry Basket Quilts

Anyway, the blog hop should be loads of fun, and if you do keep up with all of it... you'll probably get a number of opportunities to win free stuff. And free stuff is always cool. We haven't quite decided on our giveaway yet, but we're thinking about some free patterns and fat quarters! Whoo hoo!

Garden Tea Party

We're super excited to announce that this wall-hanging pattern is one of four that we've just introduced at Market this summer... Yaya!!

Each of these patterns took a long time to design but I'm so pleased with the final results. We started the process by collectively sketching out our preliminary ideas onto graph paper... my mom then took these rough sketches and turned them into fabric mockups. Next, she refined the designs into what was to become the final quilt. As she constructed the quilt for the second time, she wrote up all of the necessary instructions... She did one more test run in order to ensure accuracy as well as to create the final quilt that was sent off for photographs (taken by my friend Megan).

I was in charge of all the diagrams... a project that I found to be excruciatingly tedious. To a non-quilter (like myself) the instructions that my mom handed over to me could have been in another language and they wouldn't have been any less helpful. It took a lot of back-and-forth between the two of us before I was able to wrap my mind around what the diagrams needed to convey.

Prior to starting my diagram task, I looked at a number of other quilt patterns in order to gain some inspiration and incite into what makes a pattern successful. And though some of them were nicely designed, I wasn't able to understand any of them... something that I would find very frustrating if I were a new quilter (just having bought that pattern which turned out to be indecipherable).

Though I've never actually experienced the feeling of a botched quilt pattern... I've had my fair share of kitchen mishaps that have left me dinnerless on more than one occasion. Because... if you think about it... it's not just the pattern/recipe that you've wasted. It's the fabric/food that got ruined due to said mishap.

So with that in mind, we made it our mission to create patterns that anyone can use! Each cover shows a photograph of the quilt on the front... with the dimensions, supplies, and description on the back. On the inside of the cover is a gridded/color-coded placement chart that quilters can use while placing their appliqué pieces.

One thing that I found annoying with most appliqué templates is the mess of overlapping lines that you come across. I realize that overlapping saves paper, but it gets to be very confusing. We decided to maintain the overlapping line layout (because we're an environmentally conscious company), but we decided to color-code our templates. Each piece contains a color-coded number, outline, and brief description, so that there's no chance of mixing things up.

Our sheet of instructions is very easy to understand because each step contains a corresponding diagram. So if you're a visual person, you could get pretty far without actually having to read anything at all. If you're like me... and prefer to read the instructions first, then check the diagrams to make sure that you're understanding them correctly, then you, too, will be all set. Whoo-hoo!

So with that all being said, please don't hesitate to contact us if you find yourself in the middle of our pattern with a question. Shoot me an email and we'll help you through it! (We want our instructions to be for all levels, so feedback will really help us out!)

And... last but not least... I recently had a quilt shop owner named Vicky contact me because she was interested in "kitting" two of our patterns... something that my mom and I both think would work really well with this particular group. She asked me for the specific sku numbers (of fabric in our quilt) before placing her order with her sales rep... so that the fabric inside the kit would match the fabric used on our covers. (Currently orders can be placed with United Notions.)

In case anyone else is interested in that info... I'll post the sku numbers along with the necessary dimensions for each of the remaining three patterns in the next few blog entries. (And if you need that info before those posts are up, you can contact me directly by clicking here.

Introducing Hideaway!

Actually, strikeoffs came in about two months ago, but I've been a bit slack with the blog lately.

When I received the strikeoffs in the mail, I felt as though we had officially crossed our first milestone in the fabric design industry...

It was looking a little bleak there for a while, but our second line is scheduled to debut at the July Market...

Designing this line was quite the experience... we went through A LOT of rather painstaking, "start-from-scratch" rounds of revisions in order to come up with what you see here.

Initially, the line was called Cuckoo because the main theme was going to be cuckoo clocks.

Yes, this might seem like an oddly specific subject matter to choose, but we wanted to create something that was completely different from Botany. We worked on this line for some time and then reviewed with Moda... who, as it turned out, was not quite as impressed as we were with the series.

In hindsight, that first round was awful... but I find that when I'm caught up in the design process I sometimes miss those signs that would normally tell me to back up and reconsider what it is I'm trying to make.

We began our first round of revisions by reconsidering our actual illustration style. Botany was a line that revolved around exotic plants... so the illustration style was done with a wild and organic style of drawing, in an attempt to really drive home our theme. Some people have even said that it's vaguely reminiscent of art nouveau... which tells me that we were on the right track in terms of style.

I suppose though that we might have been stuck in a Botany rut, because our Cuckoo drawings were just a little too similar in style to its wild/organic predecessor.

Cuckoo Clocks have a number of distinguishing characteristics that remain relatively consistent across the variety of models out there. The drawing style is much more tight than what we're used to. Vines don't drift and wonder around the front of the houses, they are drawn with a strict set of rules that require symmetry, perfectly curled tentrils, and flowers that follow a grid (never overlapping)... just to name a few.

So based off of this new set of design standards, we set out again and reworked the entire series, now naming it Hideaway.

But alas... still off base.

Our Cuckoo theme had gotten a bit out of hand because we had adhered very closely to the actual elements one might actually encounter on a Cuckoo Clock. We had a hill town made out of cuckoo clocks, dots made out of little round children wearing aprons and feathered caps, keyholes, birds in doorways... etc. The list goes on.

The image below shows the current version vs. the cuckoo version. This pattern required minimal changes, but it's no longer beating you over the head with cuckoo clocks.

In the third round we scrapped most of the line yet again and went in a more "kid-centric direction". We lost the Cuckoo stuff all together and went with all-things-cute.

In the fourth round we got rid of half of the cutesy patterns and replaced them with more decorative patterns. Because cutesy can get a little nauseating after a while, and I have to be able to sleep at night.

Finally, during our fifth round we were able to refocus ourselves and pull everything together into a unified set of graphics that were finally able to dance with one another.

When everything was all said and done, our line is loosely inspired by the Swiss Alps... quaint villages, clusters of deer, window boxes, mountain flowers, gingham, and cuckoo clocks. The illustration style is both intricate and festively elegant as well as slightly quirky and folk-inspired. It has a look and feel that is directly relevant to its subject matter.

And after our long, roundabout journey through our five separate attempts, we've realized the necessity for concept driven design, a point that had been drilled into me during my two years at the Portfolio Center, but one that I had initially chosen to ignore when it came to fabric design. I'm not entirely sure why.

Now that concept is going to be the driving force though behind our designs, I think we'll be a much better group... and I can't wait to start on our next line!

(The photos below show the 4 colorways within this series.)