Beth Ferrier’s Blog

One of the nice things about applique is that while my hands are busy trimming, gluing and docking I can catch up with my favorite podcasts. Hands down my favorite is Annie Smith’s Quiling Stash. She’s so real, so down to earth. She’s one of us! Her voice is so rich and calm, I can feel the stresses of the day slip away as I fall under her spell.

 One of the surprise treats of the Bernina Teacher’s Retreat last year was meeting Annie in person. I was delighted to find that she’s a gentle, thoughtful and kind person. Now when I hear her laughter over the computer speakers I will remember how her eyes crinkle when she smiles.

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the newest podcast. I’m in it! I must be big time now, if Annie mentioned my blog! Click HERE to listen. And when you’ve got lots of hand work to do, check out the podcast archives.

What a delightful week! I’ve just returned from a visit with the East Cobb Quilt Guild of Marietta, Georgia. We had two wonderful days of workshops and a silly, giggly lecture. I was honored to discover that several vistors had driven quite a distance just to hear me speak. Thank goodness for double doors or I might never have gotten my head out of the room!

 Thank you all for your generous hospitality!

 Few things are as beautiful as a fresh snowfall.

The gray days distill the world to black and white, an excellent lesson in appreciating the depth that comes with shadows.

Even the remains of last summer’s garden take on a magical quality with a dusting of snow. Waiting, waiting for spring. In due time these stalks will give way to the sharp green of new growth.  For now they rest, gathering strength for the seasons ahead. We could learn from them.

Now the fun begins. The design for the new block of the month is complete. The fabric has been selected. Let the sewing commence!

A palette of thirteen cheery fabrics were chosen from that glorious stack of more than seventy-five different prints. A pretty pale aqua will sparkle as the overall background. I can hardly wait to get started.

 Yes, we will be offering kits this year. The details will follow in the next week or so. We’re on track to begin on February 15th.  The introduction pages with the particulars should be up on the web page soon. Stay tuned!

It’s primary season in the US, time to choose who will represent the two parties in the general election. If you want to have a say in who those folks are, now is the time to have an opinion.

Voting has always been important to me. Each trip to the polls reminds me of how blessed I am to live in a place where my voice can be heard. Oh, I know it’s not perfect, nothing on this earth is. But each election gives us a chance to make our values known.

Seems like there has been a lot of complaining, lately, and not a lot of action. If you don’t vote would you please just stop griping? I hear lots of excuses about voting, and lots of opinions about how the country should be run. Now is the time to do something about it.

Wherever you live, get involved. The “government” is us. It’s up to us to make it work. And it works best when we each do our part.I’m not saying who to vote for, that’s not appropriate for this space (but if you want my opinion, I do have one). Just vote, please!

The first round of strike-offs appeared about two months ago. Notoriously awful, these practice runs give the first indications of how the digital files will translate when printed on fabric.

I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the fabric looked, even though it was printed on griege goods about the quality of cheese cloth. After some fine-tuning, the changes were sent to the mill in Japan for another round.

The next package of strikes offs appeared on my doorstep just before Christmas. Knowing that the household would be in an uproar (and the studio was still being used as a dining room) I peeked into the package and then tucked it away for the first quiet moment after the holiday.

The day after Christmas dawned bright and clear. Sunshine sparkled on the fresh snow and flooded the studio with clean light. One by one the scraps of fabric were plucked from the package. I was surprised to find that for some of the prints there were as many as five strike offs, each subtly different. Laid out on a white tablecloth, the selections begin.

 Out came the original printouts, and my pantone color book to compare to the fabric prints. Oh, my! So many decisions to make! Starting with the main prints and working towards the coordinates, the strike offs were compared. Not only did I need to choose the best colors I needed to keep in mind how the different colorways would work together, and how the values read.

 After several hours the collection is whittled down to thirty-one lovely prints. I’m so excited, we have a great mix of scale and value! I can hardly wait to cut them up. And we  will have a wonderful selection of coordinates that will make applique fun too!

Now it’s hurry up and wait again. A couple of the coordinates needed just a little more tweaking, possibly one more round of strike offs. Or, we may just go straight to printing.

While I wait for yardage, still several weeks away, I’ll be busy designing quilts to showcase the fabric. For as long as I’ve been making quilts I’ve wondered what it took to design fabric. Now that I know, and I really hope I get to do it again and again!

The new year often leads us to reevaluate our lives. The cold weather here in Saginaw is perfect for cozy contemplation, curled up before a fire with a cup of coffee and a sketchbook. This year I found myself wondering about my quilting career. What next? Where do I want to put my energies in the coming weeks and months?

The truth is, I love to teach. I do believe that it was what I was put on earth to do. Why else would God have given me five sisters and four sons to practice on?

A lovely email arrived in my inbox a couple of days ago. Every time I think of it a slow smile steals across my face, a giggle rises in my heart.

I’ve been nominated by The Professional Quilter magazine for Teacher of the Year! I am humbled and honored! Thanks to all who took the time to submit my name for consideration.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on the design process. It’s often a case of hurry up and wait. So, over the next few days there will be several posts to get us up to speed.

Once the drawings are approved it’s time to choose the color palettes and prepare the work for the printing process. Since I pretty much love all sorts and styles of fabrics I decided to turn the colorway choices up to the smart folks at P&B. They know alot more about color trends, what’s hot and what’s not, and what will work with fabrics in their other collections. I did make quite a few suggestions and changes as we worked together to refine the designs.

The next step is to prepare the designs for the printer. This is the part that I knew was way beyond my skill. The design needs to be split apart into screens so that it can be printed. This link on screen printing will give you a handle on how fabric is printed.

The upper limit for fabric printing is seventeen screens, which means seventeen passes at the fabric to lay down the colors. Subtle shading requires a screen for each value of the color. All those color dots on the fabric’s selvedge correspond to a screen. This is a very primitive example of the screens required to make the flower at the left.

In this example it would require five screens to create the flower. In real life I’d bet there would be at least one more, maybe two shades of purple in the flower and one more shade of yellow in the center, for a total of eight screens! Add in the background, with shading, the leaves, with shading and the other flowers, with more shading! You can see that those seventeen screens can get assigned pretty quickly.

So far everything has been totally digital. I know some fabric artists begin with pencil, pen or paint, but I can’t draw! I do all of my designing on the computer, and that’s exactly what I did to create the original drawings for the fabric line. It’s now the job for the mill to cut the screens to print the fabric. Modern day fabric printing uses something that is more like a cross between a screen and a stamp, but either way, it’s still a matter of  preparing for multiple passes at the fabric.

We had a little hiccup in  our process. My designs were so subtly shaded that the mill needed to rework the layers. It meant that the line would be delayed several months. A disappointment, yes, but done first is does not mean done best. (Where have I heard that before?) Better to take the time to make it wonderful than to make a deadline with a compromise.

Next, the first strike offs arrive.

Yes, I am thinking about the new block of the month. Yes, I have even begun work on the design. And even better, I already have the fabric for it.

Isn’t this an amazing stack of fabric? The design is barely started but my theme for this year is “cheerful”. These basics from P&B and Blank Textiles fit the bill perfectly. I’m thinking that we all could use a little whimsy in our lives.

I have other, more pressing projects that demand my immediate attention. The fabric line is coming along wonderfully (more on that soon), the applique book is moving forward (available in May) and my teaching schedule is pretty hectic until mid-March.

The goal is to get the new project posted on the website by mid-February. So far the plan is to make a smaller quilt this year, wall or lap size, not the ginormous quilts that we’ve done the last few years, but don’t hold me to that!

And we’re hoping to offer fabric kits again this year. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Last year Nate and Amanda earned the favorite gift award with the announcement that they were expecting. This year they surprised me with a darling new kitten!

Meet Lucy. She’s a domestic short hair, a diluted tortie and a real spit fire. She’s a quite the lover, very frisky and gives lots of kitty kisses. She also climbs with claws fully extended and I have the marks on my legs to prove it .

Her favorite hang out is my desk. She loves to chase the pointer on the screen. I just upgraded from two monitors to one extra wide screen. I sure hope that she doesn’t put her claws through it!

When she’s not watching the letters form on the screen she’s parked on the shelf behind the monitor. It’s the perfect vantage point to watch the birds at the feeders outside. And every now and then she pops up to make sure that I’m hard at work. (Yes, Lucy, that’s the beginnings of a design for the new applique book, coming out later this spring. Thanks for checking.)

Thanks, Nate and Amanda, once again you win the favorite gift award, two years running. How will you hold your status? Is it time for another grandchild?