My Trip To Quilt Market As A Designer

Really? It's almost December? And I'm over here still trying to recoup from my trip to Quilt Market and the Immersion Retreat that was at the beginning of the month!

As I've mentioned a couple of times on the blog, this year I spent quite a bit of time learning Adobe Illustrator and surface pattern design. The culmination of all that work was a portfolio containing three fabric collections that I showed to a few fabric companies at Quilt Market in Houston. I approached the opportunity as a learning experience to gain feedback on the direction of my style and designs.

I went armed with my portfolio that I made myself. The cover features the focal print in the fall colorway of my collection "Lena", and the bow is one of the coordinating prints. I had the fabric printed at Spoonflower. 

The inside cover and title page also featured coordinates from the Lena collection printed on paper. I named the collection Lena because the collection was inspired by a piece of fabric that I inherited from the hubby's great-grandmother Paulina "Lena" Dierks.

I designed a tea towel that coordinated with the collection and featured Lena's recipe for peppernuts or pfefferneuse. The above photo is of the page in my portfolio featuring the tea towel.

I had the tea towels printed at Spoonflower and gave a tea towel (with a USB drive with my portfolio tied to the ribbon) to each art director I met with. I also had business cards printed featuring the Lena floral on one side and a coordinate with my contact info on the other side and attached them to each tea towel ribbon tie also.

Of course, if any art directors happen to be interested in seeing this collection, please contact me via the email on my contact page and I'll send you a link to my online portfolio.:)

Stay tuned and I'll share snippets of the two other collections in my portfolio soon!

~Sharla

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