It’s been such a busy week that I was beginning to think the only chance I’d have to introduce you to my next Oliver + S fabric collection (like I promised on Twitter the other day) would be by taking photos with my iPad, fabrics arranged on the floor of the airport.
Really, it’s been that kind of week. Thankfully, a flight delay and the scanner at home came to my rescue. I think you’ll be able to see the prints much better this way than in images shot with an iPad at JFK airport.
Usually, we wait until our fabric collections are starting to ship before we introduce them to you, but this time I thought it would be fun to let you see them in advance. I really hate keeping secrets! These fabrics won’t actually be available until July, but I know you can be patient, right?
Let me introduce you to The Ladies’ Stitching Club. I’ve told you before that I always start with an idea or concept for a collection, and then as I’m developing the prints I start telling myself little stories about them.
This collection started out as a sewing- and stitching-inspired group of prints. I knew I wanted to feature details like hand embroidery in my designs, and I had already drawn a lot of the motifs. But it wasn’t until I actually started working on the prints that the story started to develop.
The Ladies’ Stitching Club is the story of a young woman who dreamed one night of a gorgeous blouse. It was covered with embroidery and wonderful details that she had never seen before. When she awoke the next day, she couldn’t stop thinking about the blouse. After several days of pondering this wonderful creation, she decided that she’d better learn to sew so that she could make it for herself.
After asking around for a while, she was referred (I’m sure it was her local quilt shop that did the referring, although that’s not part of the story) to an elderly woman who had worked for many years as a seamstress. The two women hit it off immediately, despite the different in their ages, and they struck up a friendship that went well beyond their sewing lessons.
Soon, other women heard about the lessons and wanted to join. Before they realized what was happening, a strong, supportive community of like-minded women had developed, and their shared interests went far beyond sewing and embroidery. They threw garden parties and tea parties for no particular reason, visited museums together, and spent their time volunteering in the community. The result was a network of women who supported each other through hardships, who celebrated their victories, and who became lifelong friends. All with a sense of humor and a freedom to be themselves, no matter how eccentric and usual that might be.
Isn’t that a nice story? I think that’s what happens when women find a common cause. We bond together and form powerful connections. We’re a good bunch, women. That’s what I was thinking about as I worked on the prints that became Ladies’ Stitching Club.
Ladies’ Stitching Club came together in three colorways: Tea Party (pink, plum and gold), Garden Party (red, gold and blue), and Solarium (plum, blue and green). The prints, as you can see, have lots of stitching and garden motifs, and maybe a few drawing room and solarium motifs, too.
Moda is taking wholesale orders for this collection right now, so I’d love it if you would help me get the word out about it by talking with your local quilt shops. It’s orders that are placed this month that determine how widely available the collection will be when it begins arriving in stores next summer.
We’ll be showing you lots of samples made with the fabrics when the spring patterns launch later this month. And in the very near future, I’ll show you how the quilt that I designed for this group worked out. I’m so pleased with it. My wonderfully resourceful Moda colleagues Lissa and Lisa found a way to strip piece my design, and I was amazed by how clever it is! I think you will be too.