One of the things I enjoy about my job is the opportunity to meet some of the designers we work with in Quiltmaker. I’ve had the pleasure of spending some time with Margo Krager at Quilt Market and here in our office when she shared one of her  antique fabric sample books with us. You can find her pattern To Market, To Market in our Jan/Feb ‘10 issue.

Margo Krager

Do you love the look of old fabrics? They are my passion! I love buying and selling them, designing reproductions, learning about their history as well as writing and lecturing about the chemistry, technology and skills that made it all possible.

Reproduction fabrics are the focus of my store in Bozeman, MT. We sell to quilters as well as costume designers from television, theater, the movies, re enactors and living history museums. Our website brings us customers from around the world. Recently, I did have to check the map for the exact location of Estonia as I was taping up the box.

Delving into the rich history of textile printing and design is my idea of a really good time! I try to include, in each order, a page of information about the fabrics in the box. That could be an essay on double pinks or violets, a listing of fabric colorations and styles popular during the Civil War or a short history on the advent of those much loved Depression Era prints.  

 My favorite lecture topics are Textiles of the Fur Trade Era and Indigos. Indigo dyed threads have been found in the selvedge of a 2000 B C Egyptian mummy wrap. A synthetic form of Indigo now dyes 1 billion pairs of jeans annually. From the 17^th century to the early 19^th century, North American Furs were a global commodity and exchanged for manufactured goods of all kinds. Merchant ledgers from New France detail an amazing list of products used for trade, including printed and plain cottons, woolens and silks.

Dargate book

Beginning in 1997, I started collecting antique fabric sample books. I now own nine of them; six from the 19^th century and three from the 20^th.  I have been designing reproduction lines from these books since 2002 and just recently signed a contract with Blue Hill Fabrics. We hope to introduce my newest line, Little Pink Stars, at Quilt Market in Minneapolis this May.

To Market, To Market

There is a local Bozeman company that prints Vintage Images on fabric. Their collection of antique post cards and other old art work has been my inspiration for quilt and craft projects recently. Designing the “To Market, To Market” bag was fun! The Royal Anne Cherries and Black Raspberry can labels caught my eye—elegant designs from the 1930s. I thought the dramatic brass and rich indigos were the perfect balance for the delicate coloration of these fruit cans labels.

People often tell me I have a dream job. I own a fabric business with great employees and wonderful customers around the world. I get to write on a regular basis for my blog and travel around the country lecturing and sharing my passion for the history as well as the spectacular art and craft of antique printed cottons.

Edyta Sitar (Laundry Basket Quilts), fabric designer for Moda Fabrics and author of the new book Friendship Triangles, organized a fun exchange with other Moda designers. Each of the different designers made triangle-squares that they shared with each other plus more to give away at market.  I collected autographed triangle-squares from the different designers along with a copy of Edyta’s book, published by Landauer Publishing that we’ll be giving away.

autographed triangle-squares

Here are a few of the designers whose triangle-squares we’ll be giving away.

Edyta Sitar

Karla Eisenach of Sweetwater

Sandy Klop

Jan Patek

Just leave a comment and tell us your favorite way to make triangle-squares and we’ll randomly draw a winner on Friday, October 16th.

Update 10/15/09: Carolyn won’t be in the office on 10/16 to pick a winner–she’s extending this giveaway to next Friday 10/23. Leave your comment by noon MST!

The first day of Quilt Market and we are meeting with fabric companies. Before our meeting with Lissa Alexander of Moda Fabrics, we stopped by the booth of one of their designers, Barb and Mary of Me and My Sister Designs. They know how to have fun.

The weather is cloudy and rainy in Houston, but warm and sunny in their booth.

We’ll show you more from the floor at Quilt Market later.

We had a baby shower here at the office yesterday for a member of our online team and his wife, and everyone brought a dessert to share. I brought one of my favorite summer desserts—Frozen Fluffy Strawberry Pie. As we were standing in line filling up our plates, June commented that she thought she had a better recipe for Strawberry Pie. Hmmm, this sounds like a challenge to me. We’ll let you be the judge! Here’s my recipe:

Frozen Fluffy Strawberry Pie

Combine the following 4 ingredients in a food processor:
3 oz. cream cheese
1 (14-oz) can sweetened condensed milk
2 1/2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries
3 Tbsp. lemon juice

Fold into mixture:
1 cup Cool Whip

Pour mixture into prepared graham cracker crust. Freeze 4 hours or until firm. Garnish with strawberries if desired.

June will post her recipe in a later blog. Do you have a recipe for strawberry pie that you love? Send us your favorite strawberry pie and the QM Test Kitchen will determine our favorite. No, seriously, post your favorite recipe. We’ll randomly select four names to receive a set of fat quarters from the fun, summery Wildwood collection by Erin McMorris for FreeSpirit.

Wildwood by Erin McMorris for FreeSpirit

We’ll select four names at noon mountain time on Monday, 7/6. Oh, and let us know which of our recipes is your favorite.

I started working on another UFO last week, in pursuit of my goal to retire 12 UFOs this year. It’s a top I pieced from Denyse Schmidt’s first line of fabrics called Flea Market Fancy for FreeSpirit. It can hardly even be called a quilt design: it’s just squares set with sashes and corner posts. Here is the recipe:

You need big squares cut 9.5″ x 9.5″

You need small squares cut 3.5″ x 3.5″

You need rectangles cut 3.5″ x 9.5″

Join them as shown below.

I created a “fake” border by making all the perimeter patches dark. I like this effect a lot and will do it again sometime.

I only auditioned one border fabric, because it was so funky and unpredictable that I just had to use it.  It’s a FreeSpirit from about five years ago, designed for a line by Terrie Hancock Mangat called Fiesta. The print is called Pie Party. Isn’t that fun?

The people in the border are just wonderful!

So are the dogs!

I didn’t want to lose the craziness of the scene, so I cut the borders 11″ wide. I like this! Even though I had several yards of the fabric (off a clearance table), I had to piece the top and bottom border strips; I also needed to add corner posts.

In some ways I think this is hideous. But I also love it because it is so weird. Have you made a hideous/funky quilt? We’d love to see it.

Now to think up some off-the-wall quilting designs and calm down the edges with a simple binding fabric. I’ll keep you posted.