Featured Designer - Sew Many Creations December 28 2014
This month's featured designer is Jessica VanDenburgh from Sew Many Creations. Her patterns are easy and beginner friendly and many of them use precut fabrics such as jelly rolls, layer cakes and fat quarters. In fact, the Stacked pattern was the inspiration for the first quilt kit made exclusively for Red Thread Studio.
I was able to catch up with Jessica at the 2014 Quilt Market in Houston this October.
Jen: So Jessica, can you just tell us a little bit about how you came into sewing?
Jessica: I've been sewing probably since I was about eight or nine. My grandmother taught me how to sew. I still have that old Singer that she taught me on. And it's come and go over the years of my enjoying it and putting it aside. And then I started quilting about eight years ago, and I just really fell in love with fabric and quilting, and that's what led me into starting a pattern business.
Jen: Excellent. So when you decided to pursue designing patterns, did you know immediately that you wanted to start a business? Or how did Sew Many Creations come to be?
Jessica: I guess how it came to me, I actually started as a bag designer, and then I got into quilts a little bit later, even though I had a love for quilting. I was always buying patterns and then making adjustments to them and not really doing them the way that the pattern designer wrote them. And I thought, maybe this is what I need to do, so I'll start writing some of my own patterns. And about a year ago, I got into the quilts more.
Jen: So could you tell us a little bit about your design process and what your inspirations are?
Jessica: I am inspired by everything I see around me, from the floor, to the walls, to other people's patterns. I read a lot of magazines. I love social media, so I'm always seeing what everyone else is doing and playing with colors. And my design process varies. A lot of times, it's doodles on whatever is in front of me: a napkin, a piece of paper. I love to draw on graph paper, and then I tape it to my computer. And I use EQ7, and that's how I do all my quilts.
Jen: So, what's coming up for the year ahead? What things do you have going on?
Jessica: I just introduced my new Pathways ruler, which is a multiple-size Drunkard's Path ruler. So, all of the quilts behind us, I used the ruler, so it's a lot of curved piecing. I have some new bag ideas I'm working on, and hopefully I'll have even more curved quilts coming out.
It sounds like Jessica has some exciting things for us around the corner. I know I am looking forward to kitting more of Jessica's patterns!
Check out the Sew Many Creations collection at Red Thread Studio.
Updated JUNE 2016:
You can also check out Jessica's video interview!
