Foundation Fabric Blog Tour

Well, guys, I designed some fabric! If you follow us on Instagram, or get our newsletter, you are thinking, "duh!" Foundation is shipping in March and with Quilt Con coming soon, we thought now would be a good time to get some creativity flowing, so.....

We are kicking off the Foundation Blog Tour today! I have asked some of my favorite makers to create projects using the fabric line and I can’t wait to see what they have come up with. For the next two weeks, a different designer will share the project they made on their blog. I will add a direct link to each project blog post on the schedule (keep scrolling!), so be sure to check back in. Each of these creatives has amazing vision and you should be able to get loads of ideas of what to do with Foundation.

Now, if you will indulge me, I would like to share a little bit about the inspiration, process and creation of Foundation.

The Inspiration

For my first line, I really wanted something versatile that I could build off of in the future. I named the line Foundation because of this and as a little shout out to my Architectural studies. All of our quilt designs began as rough line-drawing sketches. As I was flipping through my sketchbook, I was inspired by the simplicity of these clean hand drawings. That is when I decided to do a line full of white hand drawn designs on rich bold colors.

The Process

Once I had this in mind, I dug into my sketchbooks and found 10 different designs - some became quilts, some were from architecture school and some were completely random. The combination of diamonds, hexagons, triangles, arches and squares create a fun variety of shaped. I redrew the designs at a similar scale and from there, I dug into colors! This was fun and challenging! 

I went to the hardware store and grab some swatches to see how the white line drawings would look on solid colors. This was a really fun part of the process. From there, I started collecting color swatches for the prints. Everything from paint chips samples to fabric swatches and magazine cut-outs weren’t sent along with my sketches to the art team at Windham.

They sent back color printouts of what the fabrics would look like once printed on fabric. Once we loved how they looked, they sent the designs to the manufacturer. I received back strike-off samples of what my designs looked like on fabric. It was so exciting!! After a few back and forth exchanges of notes to get the colors just right, a final box of fabric rolls showed up at my door!

The Final Product

Foundation contains 30 total prints - 24 bright colors that create a spectrum, 2 grays, a black and 3 low-volume prints. The colors, grays and black all feature hand-drawn white designs. The 3 low-volume prints feature grey hand-drawn designs with subtle pops of color very once in a while! 

The Lookbook

Remember that box of fabric rolls that showed up at my door, well I started cutting into it and sent my Mom and friend, Juli Kieny, fabric to sew up some amazing projects for the Lookbook! Between the three of us, we made a ton of different projects including our Cadence Court BOM quilt.

Putting together this Lookbook was way more fun than it should have been! Kristy and Juli worked their butts off making projects for it, I forced my friends to model and a great photographer friend shot it for me! All the projects shown in this book are Sass patterns and we shot it where I call home, Boulder, CO.

Here are some of my favorite outtakes from the photoshoot and random snippets. See the Foundation Lookbook here for some inspiration and a lot of color!

The Blog Tour

Now enough about the fabric, let’s get to the blog tour! There will be two full weeks of posts featuring Foundation and I am completely giddy about it! I will be reposting photos on Instagram and updating the schedule below as the posts go live. Can’t keep up? That’s okay! I will do a recap post on Tuesday, February 20th with all the projects.

Tuesday, February 6th: Shayla Wolf | Sassafras Lane Designs
Wednesday, February 7th: Giuseppe Ribaudo | Giucy Giuce
Thursday, February 8th: Tara Curtis | Wefty Needle
Friday, February 9th: Nichole Vogelsinger | Wild Boho
Saturday, February 10th: Robin Long | Robin Ruth Design
Sunday, February 11th: Jessie Stern | Jessie Stern Sews
Monday, February 12th: Jessica VanDenburgh | Sew Many Creations
Tuesday, February 13th: Kristy Wolf | Wolf Creek Quilting
Wednesday, February 14th: Sarah Sharp | No Hats in the House
Thursday, February 15th: Nicole Daksiewicz | Modern Handcraft
Friday, February 16th: Elise Baek | Elise & Emelie
Saturday, February 17th: Kaitlyn Howell | Knot and Thread Design
Sunday, February 18th: Sarah Thomas | Sariditty
Monday, February 19th: Jo Westfoot | The Crafty Nomad
Tuesday, February 20th: Shayla Wolf | Recap

The Prizes

We will be giving away some prizes, including charm packs, patterns and a fat-quarter bundle, on the very last day, so check back in to get some Foundation! 

Big thank you to all the makers who are sharing their creations with us, Windham Fabrics for making my dream of being a fabric designer come true, all my friends who helped make the lookbook happen and all of you! Without you guys, I wouldn’t get to do any of this, so truly, Thank YOU!

Tomorrow, Giuseppe of Giucy Giuce, will be the first to share his project! He doesn't have a blog, so be sure to check out his Instagram to see it!