DESIGNING PART IV

 Greetings,      This will be our final post for the design series. We appreciate all of you who have been interested in this and who have taken the time to e mail us. We sincerely hope you have enjoyed the series.
      It is time for us to finish our line and we have been busy painting all of the designs. We paint a large repeat of each design, then a smaller chip usually only a two inch square of the other colors we want that print to be in.   

Next we assemble all the pages with the artwork and label them carefully. We also have to come up with names for each print and each color which is sometimes a challenge in itself.

It's time to wrap up this package and get it to UPS for overnight delivery.  We try to present it in a story and make it as attractive as possible. It now goes to the hands of Cheryl Freydberg, she is Vice President of Design for Moda Fabrics. There isn't a yard of Moda fabrics you see that does not meet with her approval. She will critique the entire package we have sent. Sometimes it is all perfect and she can notify the mills and send it off for production, other times she will find an error we have made in a panel layout or a color she thinks might work better from a past line. She travels to the mills twice a year to assure that Moda's quality standards are continuing to be upheld.  Below we have attached a video link which shows you what happens at the mills once it leaves Cheryl's hands. We hope you enjoy watching it.

                                                                    Until next time,  Eileen & Lynn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xovcyiwYRyY

DESIGNING PART III

Thank you for all of your comments on this series. We are so glad you are enjoying hearing about the process we use to design. There are many different ways to design. For instance you have designers who research the history of quilting and they sometimes find antique fabrics and actually send a scrap to the printing plants for that fabric to be reproduced. There have been antique quilts that are sent to the plants to have entire collections reproduced.  Some of the contemporary new designs are very graphic and can be created on computers. Our designs are drawn as you saw in Part II.

After we have decided on the specific designs, the scale sizes and the color for each design, the painting phase begins. As we told you in Part II we do all our prints first in black and white as you see in the first image. Each one is transfered onto a heavier crescent board using believe it or not good old fashion carbon paper (image 2). Once the design is copied onto the board, the background is painted. The elements in our designs are left white so that the background color will not bleed through and distort the color of the elements. Then those elements are painted last, as you can see in the last image, that process is repeated for each color variation of that design. This print is from a previous line. Next and the last part of this series will take you on the final process and where it goes upon completion of our part.  Tune in 

                                      Until then  Eileen & Lynn                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

DESIGNING NEW COLLECTIONS PART I

 We are always on the lookout for new subject matter, it could be on a road trip spotting something in nature or just sitting in my dining room and discovering we like the look of a center piece on my table. It reminded us of the sun shining on the different grasses and reeds on the pond behind my house. We loved the look and feel of it. It was like we were both on the same page in that minute and the creativity started to flow from there. We try to include something live from nature in every line we do,  and that is where all of your comments came into play. We listened to what some of the things were that you liked best in our previous lines. From those comments we came up with what we wanted the line to look like and what we wanted to use for subject matter. ( But we can't divulge to much. Moda likes to keep secrets until the lines are shown by the reps. at Market.)

  Next we start working on a color pallet. We have files of every line we have ever done, so we check back threw a lot of those to see what colors we have used in the past, looking for the most successful ones you have chosen to use in your quilts. For this line we are selecting some colors that are a little different. It could be just a little more blue tone to a purple or a slightly more yellow tone to green.We have also found color pallets we love in the fashion magazines and just changed them to fit our North woods designs. Over the years we have collected hundreds paint chips from designer paint studios. They are really helpful when we are putting the pallet together but it actually comes down to mixing our paints to exactly what we want. 

These are the colors we will start with. There is also a beautiful soft brown .

Time to start mixing and testing it on paper in a few designs.

Watch for part II in the coming weeks. Let us know your comments on whether or not you enjoy hearing about designing.

Until next time,  Eileen & Lynn

MERRY CHRISTMAS

FROM MY HOME TO YOURS

I WISH YOU AND YOUR FAMILY A WONDERFUL JOYOUS TIME

MAY THE NEW YEAR BRING YOU NOTHING BUT HAPPINESS

                                               EILEEN & LYNN 

                                                                                HOLLY TAYLOR DESIGNS         

Contest Winners Announced

Winners are:
Sue from Vermont, Sharon from New York, Linda from Georgia, Cindi from Georgie, Julie from Michigan, Kristen from Minnesota, Rosa from Spain,and Gwen from Minnesota.  The following two people I have not heard back from for an address Barb D.  11/ 13 who said "pick a favorite Holly Taylor line ummm like them all. And Barbara who posted on 11/22 and said"I love all the lines but cardinal was the favorite as it was their school mascot". If you are one of these two please e mail me with address at        hollytaylordesigns@gmail.com

We want to thank everyone who sent in their comments. We loved reading them. If I ever have a day feeling down I can always go back to all your lovely comments that were so uplifting.  They were also very helpful in choosing a subject for our next Spring line. Starting in January we will be doing a four part series in how we design. We hope you will follow along with us, as we choose color pallet and proceed threw the process.

Please remember to add your e mail on our follow section. We will be sending out fun little random gifts occasionally. We can't forward them if we don't have your e mail address.

                                             Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,  Eileen

FROM THE PAST CONTEST

    We will soon be starting our 65th line of fabrics for Moda. We could not have done it without all of you. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
.   One of my favorite lines Lynn and I have done is Canoe Country. It was a spring line from 2007. It had the scenes we love to do and our most favorite color pallet.  The pillow was done by This & That Patterns using the center of the panel. The quilt was done by a small pattern who moved on to take a full time job.
The other quilt is also a This & That from our Christmas line North Woods Botanical.

     We are giving away 10 prizes of Charm packs and a  Layer cake. All you have to do is head to the bottom of our page and comment on your  favorite Holly Taylor fabric line. We will do a random select from the entries received. Names will be selected by December 15.  I will notify you by e mail and send a request for your address. Good luck.

     Next month we will be taking you along with us as we create our next line. We will try to show you the process we use to design.    Happy quilting, Eileen

Happy Halloween

My family loves Halloween. Every year we all get together, we all dress in costumes and take the little ones trick or treating. It is always such a fun time. I usually make a kettle of homemade soup and we make sandwiches before we head out into the almost always cool Minnesota night. My family's favorite soup is Chicken Wild rice. (recipe below) Here are some of my costumes I have come up with in the past few years. I have been old man winter, a Christmas present and just a crusty old man. The best was last year when my grandson spent two hours putting fake tattoos on the baby, (he slept threw half of it) he was adorable. He won best costume.



Chicken Wild Rice Soup

32 oz chicken broth

2c water

4 carrots sliced

green onion tops

2 chicken bouillon cubes

simmer in a large soup pot until carrots are tender
add 2 to 3 c. cooked chicken
(if I am in a hurry I buy a precooked rotisserie)

In another pan

1 stick of butter

1/3 c flour

 poultry seasoning to taste seasoned salt and pepper

stir until mixed and bubbly

with a wire whisk add a carton of half and half

Add slowly to the broth mixture

add in 2 to 3 cups of cooked wild rice

Enjoy

Getting ready for Quilt Market

   Minnesota is starting to show it's beautiful fall colors. I cleaned out my summer plants and bought mums and added my silk flowers. I headed for the pumpkin patch this afternoon and picked out two pumpkins and now the house is feeling like fall.
   Now I have to get a quilt ready for fall market. It's all pieced and my dear friend Sherri Falls will be doing the quilting. When it's finished it will get shipped to Dallas to pack for market.
    

 This quilt is from our new batik line called "Sunrise Sunset". We used 15 out of the 30 prints. The purples and rich teals were selected for this one. The line also has some great light backgrounds and  includes some warmer tones in golds and browns. It will be in the stores spring 2012. We used a pattern from a great booklet by This and That Patterns called Moonlight Lodge. It was originally for our flannel line but as you can see it worked great for the batiks. The pattern from the book is called Around the Campfire. The little toes you see under the quilt are none other than the pattern designer herself, Sherri Falls.
    Although there are two of us designing fabrics, I will be the one writing the blogs. Lynn is still busy working everyday at a regular job and I on the other hand retired from my sales representative job of 17 years for Moda Fabrics.
     Watch for lots of fun updates on our fabric lines, new patterns and books coming out and we will be running a great contest in November with a spectacular prize. Don't forget to sign up as a follower so you don't miss out. 
                                                  Until next time Happy Quilting,    Eileen Taylor