I did a book called Museum Quilts and in it we were looking at all the wonderful vintage
quilts in the Victorian Albert Museum in London and this was one of the most spectacular
very very detailed kind of sampler quilt and it was fun doing it in very restrained colors
for me but around the corner here we have one of the first quilts that I made using
my hand woven stripes from India and so this is taking the stripes and doing what I call
handkerchief corners and this is on the cover of a book called Patrick that you did with
Liza Prylussi, Fashion Patrick. And how did this quilt come about? The way this quilt
happened is that we were doing the outside bits and we were cutting away all the bits that
are inside and I said I love those in that scale so we picked those to be the middle of our
quilt. It's just a kind of spontaneous design decision and here we've got just wonderful
kind of stars bursting into the sashing on this quilt it's a good way to use nice big prints
which I love so all the big scale prints are kind of framed. And this was featured on the
cover of quilts in an English village? There was a version of it yes yes so this is a second
version and let's see what that's lined with. Oh yes, lined with our lotus leaf under
an 18th wide backing and this was one that was in a book called Simple Shape Spectacular
Quills wasn't it? Yeah, it seems to be a popular one with a lot of people. Yes yes when I did
this book somebody said so far you've been doing recipe books this is the art of cooking because
we broke down each chapter into shapes and this was the diamond chapter so you can see all these
incredible stars. I took that from a design that I saw in an Australian quilt vintage quilt.
And what I like to think about with these quilts is run being found the world intimidated by
the overall finishing. Break it down into blocks into smaller units and you know you do this one
you do that one and that one and then long the holes you'll have enough together to make your own
quilt. Yeah it's all made with diamonds you know the same shape diamond. As you say diamonds are
girls best friend. This is a quilt designed by Liza Lucy taking all of our kind of high pastel
colors and doing it and this was in a book called Was it Quills in Ireland? Yes Quills in Ireland
and we photographed this on a wonderful hand painted house that was all filled with little folk
art painting and it went perfectly with this coloring. And the fabric in the background here which
is sort of affected the overall feel of the quilt. Paperweight is one of your it's been in the
collection for over 20 years. It's just a design that is so useful in that particular color way.
Because we have classics we are able to hold on to these fabrics for years and years which is
very unusual in this market. So coming along here this was a quilt made here in Texas by the most
wonderful collection of applique artists who gathered together and to carry out my designs which
was just fantastic to have that collaboration. More was the original inspiration for this?
The original inspiration was a vintage quilt called bird of paradise which is an antique quilt and it's
kind of brown and it's typically antique. More cave to it was set down and just drew out a
line drawing of a leaf kind of pattern applique and then these stitches chose fabric and did each
block individually by taking case line drawing and fitting in fabrics and then choosing this
polka dot in the background. Instead of a white fabric we used a nice blue polka dot.
We did a block each separately and then pulled it together and what I'm thrilled is that the
International Festival of Quilts here in Houston used this quilt to be the poster image to promote
the show so yeah yeah of this quilt festival. This is a quilt inspired by an old vintage
blanket created by priests in Tibet so it's old Tibetan robes that are salvaged and little bits
of brocade and so forth were used. So here I've used all of my prints to kind of get the same
atmosphere as that wonderful old antique. We give workshops on this structure and it's
really quite a simple straightforward structure overall quilt will look quite intimidating but
you know you've got large squares large square then you've got three medium size squares then
it's lined with three smaller size. It's done in columns which are very easy to construct and so
together and it's called sunlight in the forest. And what I particularly love about this quilt is
there's a lot of brown quilts out in the world and there can be a bit of a yarn whereas when
you look at this you just go back and back and back look at it with intrigue but I particularly
enjoy the way that the border just allows your eye to keep on flowing out it's not framed and
fenced in so the design just keeps on rolling out and rolling out and it's it's a great one
whereas this one case is going to show you now it just happens to be one of my favorites because
I think it looks like Indian feathers. This is called Big Bang for obvious reasons it's a star that
just keeps on going all made with the same shape diamond and it's an interesting collection of
fabrics these are these are amazing history for me looking back at all the collections we've done
through the years and that particular time when I was doing these particular prints. And this
particular kind of palette I think would be so suitable for a white bedroom you know where you
have low contrast you just be very peaceful and welcome in whereas something like this kind of
palette I'd want to paint the bed and walls a color so it would like a log cabin how about
yeah or in the log cabin in the deepest depth of the forest or something but this one is just
it just oozes um calmness I think and I love the way that cave incorporated the pink
which just gives it a little tickle you know just a nice little left. It's funny you see those
fabrics again. I know I know it's the combination of small escape prints with stripes. I love it it's
just it is one of my favorites. I'm not supposed to have a favorite but there you go. So here we've got
another playing with these wonderful handwoven stripes from India and this one is based on the
wonderful family of knitters called Misoni in Italy they do zig-zags as their sort of signature
and we took that idea from them and did it all in our stripes so this is called Rosita because
it's after Rosita Misoni. So if you look at this carefully it's all diamonds on the side
that form the ripples. So if you're coming closely you can see you have diamond diamond diamond
diamond and that's cool that's from the chevron but the secret of it is you have to take
enough stripes and then in between they've played with a solid here and a a darker solid light
solid just to break up the stripes and those solids are shot cottons and again it doesn't have
as oops it didn't have a hard border it just has a border that allows your attention to keep
flowing out which is really important. And then for our last number here we have the jewel window
blind and this is one of the first quilts that we did which ended up being on the cover of my very
first book and it's made with everybody else's fabrics because at that point in life I didn't
hadn't designed any fabrics so this is kind of real history looking at what we could find these
tiny little scale prints which I went on to do much bigger scale but it's fun to look back at this
nice bright jewel of a quilt. So one of our thrillers about being here in Houston is going
around the show and seeing how other people have used our fabric in their own medium and it's
incredible market research to see how people cut up our fabric what works best and also looking at
other quilts and seeing why they're not using our fabric. But the best thing is seeing people
dressed in our fabrics and seeing these wonderful prints in great big expansions. Well like this