Kate Colleran – Kate Colleran Designs, LLC
Kate Colleran is a quilt pattern designer as well as a fabric and surface designer and a notion designer! She loves color and fun designs, and that is evident in all of her work! Her quilts are a mix of modern and traditional, with bright colors and simple shapes.
Seams Like a Dream Quilt Designs, started in 2003 as a collaboration between Kate Colleran and Elizabeth Balderrama. Kate did the quilt pattern designs and Elizabeth did consultations, pattern testing and was the shipping maven. They designed quilts for patterns, for quilt magazines, for fabric companies and for their book, Smash Your Precut Stash, with C&T Publishing.
When Elizabeth retired in 2015, Kate changed the name of the quilt pattern line to match the official name of the business, Kate Colleran Designs, LLC.
Kate has also designed several specialty templates… which we talk about in this interview.
Show Notes:
Check out the Kate Colleran Designs website.
Find the Braid Template here.
Find the Mini Braid Template here.
Find the Drunkard’s Path Template here.
Listen to the Episode:
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Transcript with Kate Colleran:
Carolina Moore:
I love notions and I’m guessing that you do too. Hey there, friend. It’s Carolina Moore, your favorite sewing and quilting YouTuber and now podcaster here with another episode. So I’m sitting here with Kate and we’re outside the H&H Show and you have a ruler.
Kate:
I do.
Carolina Moore:
Okay, so let’s actually start at the beginning. You’re a quilter. Where did this all start?
Kate:
Well, if we want to really talk about where I started quilting, I started quilting when I was a teenager. So I had a cousin who’s older than me, she’s married and she’s having a baby. So I thought, “Oh, a baby needs a quilt,” but nobody in my family quilted. So I went to the local dry good store. I bought flannel because I thought, “Oh, it’s a baby. You need something soft.” So then I went home and I took a cereal box and I drew a square and I cut it out with scissors. And then I laid it on my flannel, traced it with pencil and then cut out the squares.
Carolina Moore:
And then did that a hundred times?
Kate:
Oh, yes. And then because I had taken home ec, I sewed them all together with a 5/8-inch seam.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, perfect.
Kate:
Right, so because who knew that there was such a thing as a quarter-inch seam?
Carolina Moore:
Not in garment sewing.
Kate:
No, and I didn’t know. So anyway, and then when I was all done, I was like, “Now what do you do with it?” So I put some batting with it, I sewed all the way around the edges, I turned it and I tied it with Girl Scout, floss from a Girl Scout project.
Carolina Moore:
That’s amazing. My very first ever quilt was also tied.
Kate:
Was it really?
Carolina Moore:
Yes, yes, yes.
Kate:
Yeah, because I didn’t know what else to do.
Carolina Moore:
But that’s what we actually did in those days. That was really, really normal for quilting.
Kate:
Right, right. So it wasn’t unusual and it was a quick and easy way to do it. And it was a baby quilt, so it was just squares sewn together. So it was fun. That was my very first quilt.
Carolina Moore:
Yay, and you caught the bug.
Kate:
I caught the bug. So I went to college and I tried to convince my college roommate that we needed matching quilts on our bed.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, that’s fun. Did it work?
Kate:
Sort of. Hers never got finished until after she graduated college, but it was there at the end of her bed for a while, but it was unfinished. And then I made a quilt when I got married. That one, I put a sheet on the back because I didn’t know any better again.
Carolina Moore:
Well, but there’s probably still a lot of people who use sheets. They’re inexpensive.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
You don’t have to put a seam on them. The thread count isn’t ideal for quilting and …
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
… it can cause some problems there, but …
Kate:
But it works.
Carolina Moore:
… it works. And if that’s what you have in your budget, then that’s what you have in your budget.
Kate:
Right. Because you’re newly married, you’re young, you’re just starting working, so it just made sense. And I was thinking of hand quilting it and then I think I did about half of a square and said, “Oh, this isn’t happening,” when I tied it.
Carolina Moore:
So it has a half of square tied on there and the rest of it is just all tied.
Kate:
Oh, yeah. And to be honest, that quilt is now … Unfortunately, they’re long gone because I had kids and I had dogs and I had whatever and-
Carolina Moore:
Because quilts are made to be used and that one was well-loved.
Kate:
It was well-loved. It was well-loved. So I was self-taught for a very long time. And then I went to work. I was a nurse for 30 years, so I went to work at a visiting nurse agency and a whole bunch of women quilted. Yeah, so that was fun. So they directed me to my very first quilt class at a local shop that I knew nothing about.
Carolina Moore:
And you learned about a quarter-inch seam.
Kate:
I learned about a quarter-inch seam. I did. And these ladies were very big into applique, but they would like-
Carolina Moore:
Was this hand applique, needle turn applique?
Kate:
Hand applique.
Carolina Moore:
Hand, then needle turn applique?
Kate:
Uh-huh. Yes, so I got involved with them, and we decided to form a little group and we were making quilts for each other. And so we did this thing where each month it was a different person’s turn. And when it was your turn, you handed everybody blocks to make for you.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, lovely.
Kate:
Yes, and we’d bring the blocks back all pieced, appliqued, quilted.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, wow.
Kate:
And then we’d sew together during the meeting and then you’d get the next block to make the next month.
Carolina Moore:
That’s amazing, so-
Kate:
Isn’t it?
Carolina Moore:
Basically, every month, you were making a quilt, but as a group.
Kate:
As a group.
Carolina Moore:
And then one of the months was yours.
Kate:
Right, exactly.
Carolina Moore:
Yeah, that’s fabulous. I love that.
Kate:
And I still have that quilt. It was on my bed for a long, long time. And I still have it, but it’s starting to fall apart because it’s been a while.
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Kate:
But what’s really fun is, on the back of everybody’s block, I had given them a little heart to applique and they signed their name. So I can turn the quilt over and see all the names of the ladies who worked on it, some of which of course are no longer with us.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, that’s just my heart.
Kate:
Isn’t that fun?
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Kate:
Yeah, it’s a beautiful memory for me. Yeah, so that’s how I started getting into quilting. But then the group stayed together and what we did was every year we made a quilt as a group and we would raffle it off and raise money for our patients, so that we could pay for transportation to the doctor for a patient who didn’t have it or an aide to stay with a family member so they could go to the doctor or something like that.
Carolina Moore:
So you were a guild basically without being an official guild and you had a mission and …
Kate:
Yes.
Carolina Moore:
… you had a community?
Kate:
Exactly. And when I started, I was the newbie, of course.
Carolina Moore:
Of course.
Kate:
I hadn’t even taken a class, but by the end, I was helping pick out the patterns, I was tweaking the patterns, I was helping pick out the fabrics. So it was a really great learning experience and that’s how I fell into thinking, “Oh, wait, I like tweaking everything. Maybe I could design my own.” Yeah, so that’s how I got started. Kind of a long story, but-
Carolina Moore:
No, it’s a great long … I love long stories. They’re the best. When someone says, “It’s a long story,” that’s the story I want to hear.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
And then usually, it’s not a long story, it’s just an uncomfortable story, but I want to hear the long, long stories.
Kate:
Well, because it’s so interesting. We all come at it from a different place. Sometimes people have family members who quilted. Sometimes people just knew somebody or a neighbor or a grandmother or whatever. And my mom sewed, but she never quilted. So I just fell into it and I loved it and I’ve been doing it ever since.
Carolina Moore:
So you started designing your own patterns?
Kate:
Yeah, so I left the VNA and I went to work at a nursing home. And the woman I shared an office with, she was like the nursing department secretary. She was crafty. She’d made a few quilts and we kept talking about, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do something other than work in a nursing home?”
Carolina Moore:
Right.
Kate:
So I told her how I wanted to design stuff and she’s like, “Well, I could be the tester,” and so that’s how we started our business and we called, Seams Like A Dream Quilt Designs because it seemed like a dream to do something creative and was different than working in a nursing home.
Carolina Moore:
But you spelled it S-E-A-M, Seams Like A Dream?
Kate:
Oh, yes.
Carolina Moore:
We love a pun.
Kate:
Oh, yes, we did. So that’s how I started the business. And our very first pattern, we called it, Seams Like A Dream Quilt Designs, but our very first pattern was a bag. And it was the cute little bag. It was called the Four Star Tote, a prosaic name because there was, oh, wait, two stars on one side and two stars on the other side, so it had four stars.
Carolina Moore:
But honestly, I love names that are descriptive because you don’t have to remember like, “It’s a tissue. Oh, it’s a Kleenex?”
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
“No, no, no, it’s a tissue because it’s a tissue. You call it what it is.”
Kate:
You call it what it is, yes. And it used five-fat quarters and we, our very first pattern, we managed to get in Keepsake Quilting catalog.
Carolina Moore:
Look at you go.
Kate:
Right, because what we did was we ordered one of their fat quarter packs, made the bag and sent it to them.
Carolina Moore:
Smart girl.
Kate:
Yup, it was in there for two years.
Carolina Moore:
So you made a million dollars and you retired.
Kate:
No, because we all know pattern designing is not like that, but yes, it was great. It was something that launched us. Do you know what I mean? So then from there, we learned all about, “Oh, Quilt Market. What’s Quilt Market? Oh, it’s a quilt trade show. You should go see what that is.” So we went to Quilt Market and figured that out and figured out what it was. We got approached by a magazine who said, “Oh, would you like to put that in our magazine?” Well, heck yeah. Wish you would.” We had quilt shops locally where we tried to sell them the patterns and they said, “Oh, do you teach?” And we said, “Sure, we teach.”
Carolina Moore:
“We will once we teach at your shop.”
Kate:
“Yes, we will. We will be teachers. So we just fell into it, because when we started it, we were both working full time. I had three kids, Elizabeth had a kid and so we were doing this as our part-time, sort of a hobby business. We took it seriously and we were making it a business and we were investing in our business and we were doing all sorts of new things, but at the same point in time, I had a full-time job and I had three kids and she had a full-time job and she had a kid. So it was definitely part-time. It did help pay for our fabric stash, which was good.
Carolina Moore:
Right. I find a lot of people, when they get into the industry, it’s like, “Well, it will pay for my hobby.”
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
And then at some point, you have to make a decision of, “Okay, is this paying for my hobby or is this paying for my house?”
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
And you look at it a little different when it’s paying for your hobby because, “Okay, I’ll buy less fabric this month,” versus you can’t tell the mortgage company, “Oh, I’m going to just pay a little less mortgage this month.”
Kate:
Right. Yeah, because I had to buy a little more extra fabric and I didn’t sell enough patterns to pay the mortgage. Right.
Carolina Moore:
Right?
Kate:
Yes. Yup, so interestingly, so we were doing this together, but we were doing it together in one state. Elizabeth moved twice, then I moved across the country. We had a wonderful opportunity to write a book with C&T Publishing.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, fabulous.
Kate:
It’s called Smash Your Precut Stash because I am a bit of a precut nut. I love precut.
Carolina Moore:
Who isn’t?
Kate:
I know. My favorite though to be honest with you is fat quarters.
Carolina Moore:
Because they’re so versatile and you can use it for anything.
Kate:
Right?
Carolina Moore:
And you can always cut them up into smaller sizes. If you need 10-inch squares, cut them into 10 inches. You need five-inch squares, cut them into five inches.
Kate:
Exactly.
Carolina Moore:
You need two-and-a-half-inch strips, cut them into two-and-a-half-inch strips.
Kate:
Right. So you just need two of those strips to make one of the regular strips. It’s perfect, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yeah.
Kate:
And when they put them in the little bundles and they tie them with the little ribbons and then some of them are going in different directions, oh my gosh, I mean-
Carolina Moore:
And they’re in rainbow order or color gradient order.
Kate:
Yes, exactly.
Carolina Moore:
So collecting fabric and sewing with fabric are two completely different hobbies. A lot of people have both hobbies, but they are two different hobbies.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
And I would like someone to explain to me why. No one has ever asked a coin collector like, “When are you going to spend that money?”
Kate:
Right, but they ask-
Carolina Moore:
No one’s ever asked a stamp collector, “When are you going to mail a letter with that stamp?” But us, fabric collectors, we get asked all the time, “When are you going to make something with that fabric?”
Kate:
Oh, I know. And one of the things I say in one of my lectures is exactly that.
Carolina Moore:
I might’ve gotten it from there, [inaudible].
Kate:
And I sit there and I say, “Now you are the curator of your collection and you get to decide if that fat quarter bundle is part of your permanent collection and just there to make you happy just like the painting on the wall.”
Carolina Moore:
Nice, or it can be a temporary exhibit that comes down and becomes a quilt or a bag or anything else.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
Or gets destashed.
Kate:
Or gets destashed, but either way, you get to choose what to do with it. You are the curator.
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Kate:
So anyway, it was a fun start. It was a great way to dip into the business without it having to be my sole income generating. But when my husband and I moved across the country, the deal was, if he was moving me across the country, I didn’t have to work as a nurse and I could invest in the business more.
Carolina Moore:
Okay. Yes, we all make these bargains at some point of some kind, some kind of bargain like, “Here’s the deal.”
Kate:
Yes. Yeah. So that’s when I started doing on my own more like magazine quilts. We had done a few together, but I was starting to do more on my own. So I was doing more magazine quilts. I got classes on Craftsy. I got a couple classes on Quilting Daily. I was actually just recently on a couple of Love of Quilting episodes, which was really fun.
Carolina Moore:
Nice. Yeah, that’s fun.
Kate:
Yeah, so I was trying to make it a real business.
Carolina Moore:
Well, you did make it a real business.
Kate:
Yes. Yes, I did.
Carolina Moore:
Yes, you did. But there’s this, we talk about it sometimes in the industry that there’s this imposter syndrome, right? Fake it until you make it.
Kate:
It’s huge.
Carolina Moore:
And that until someone validates you that you are a business, it just feels like, “Okay, I’ve got this pretend hobby,” because so many people who don’t understand the quilting industry go, “Oh yeah, she’s got this little hobby …”
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
… and they don’t know the dollars behind it, but they also don’t know the stress. You are doing as many … You’re putting as many hours as a CEO of a Fortune 500.
Kate:
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that, because it’s considered crafty, it doesn’t have the same value to other people. They don’t perceive it the same way. It should because it’s not just crafty. Do you know what I mean? I think what we do when we’re designers, we’re designing quilt patterns. We’re designing fabric. We’re designing tools. What we’re doing is, what’s the word I want, as important in a way, but also as artistic and as intricate as an engineer or an artist. And we are in our own way, we’re quilt artists.
Carolina Moore:
Well, because it is a labor of love doesn’t mean it’s not still labor.
Kate:
Right, right. And doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yeah.
Kate:
Yeah, so anyway, so that’s where we got. So-
Carolina Moore:
So you’re making pattern, you’re writing patterns, you were in magazines, and then at some point you decided, “I’m going to make some acrylic templates”?
Kate:
So the book that I mentioned with C&T, Smash Your Precut Stash, so we made quilts that used a jelly roll or charm squares or fat quarters because I consider fat quarters precuts.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, they are.
Kate:
Yes, absolutely, because they come to me precut.
Carolina Moore:
Yup, they’re not on the bolt.
Kate:
No, they’re not on the bolt. And I designed this one quilt that had a braid. Now, I had never made a braid before, but I designed a braid quilt.
Carolina Moore:
And they’re gorgeous. If someone hasn’t made a braid quilt before or seen them, you should look them up. I’ll put links in the notes like the braids-
Kate:
They’re fun and they’re versatile and there’s so many different things you can do with a braid once you’ve learned how to make it. And they look more complicated than they are.
Carolina Moore:
And I love that when I get to make a project that people are like, “Oh my gosh, you made that. How long did it take you?” Oh, you don’t want to know. It took a weekend. You don’t want to know that.”
Kate:
“You don’t want to know that,” right?
Carolina Moore:
And they’re thinking, “Oh, it took months, years of tedious sewing.”
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
But if you know the right techniques and you have the right tools-
Kate:
It makes all the difference.
Carolina Moore:
Yes. Okay, so you made this braid quilt.
Kate:
So I made the break quilt in the book. And in the book, we drew a little diagram that you can use and cut out a template plastic or-
Carolina Moore:
Or out of a cereal box?
Kate:
Or out of a cereal box. Good call. Or you probably could also tape it off on your ruler. But after I did it, I thought, “I want to make more braid quilts, but I don’t always want to have to make the same size. So what can I do to have something that will make multiple different size braids?” So I came up with a tool and so it’s the shape of a braid piece with an angle and it’s got lines on both sides. So it’s got lines on the straight side and lines on the angled side. So what that allows you to do is it allows you to cut different size braids. The smaller you cut your braid, the skinnier braid is. The longer you cut your braid piece, the wider your braid ends up.
Carolina Moore:
I love that you have one tool to do all the sizes. If I want to do a big one, I don’t need a small, medium, large. I don’t need a two-inch or three-inch or four-inch or five-inch. One tool is going to rule them all.
Kate:
Right, right. So the tool works with strips up to three inches wide and then it cuts pieces from five-and-three-quarter inches up to eight and a half. Yeah, so it’s got lines like for all the quarter inches in between. So it works out really well. So you can make braids with skinny strips. You can make braids with fatter strips. You can make braids with skinny strips that are skinny braids or wide braids. So it just gives you some versatility. You can even combine skinny strips with wide strips.
Carolina Moore:
And a braid doesn’t require any curves or any Y seams, so it actually is just simple, straight piecing, but looks like you’re a rockstar.
Kate:
Yeah. So I have this one table runner. It’s called table scraps because …
Carolina Moore:
I love that.
Kate:
… I made it out of my scraps.
Carolina Moore:
And it goes on the table.
Kate:
And it goes on the table.
Carolina Moore:
We love a pun.
Kate:
And what’s really fun is that, so you make a braid and then you just trim it. So you make this long braid and I like to call sewing braid, Sunday sewing. Because all you do is add a piece and press it, then you add another piece and press it, and then you add another piece and press it. There are no points to match if your quarter inches is a little bit off.
Carolina Moore:
Wait, no points to match?
Kate:
No points to match.
Carolina Moore:
You are speaking my language.
Kate:
Right, because all you do is just line up your two straight edges and then sew and then you just press it and you add another piece. And because you’ve already cut the angle, you can see the sides of your braid, which is really cool.
Carolina Moore:
Nice.
Kate:
And then you can just trim it. And so if you’re a little bit off on the edges, you trim what I like to call the wobbly bits.
Carolina Moore:
The wobbly bits.
Kate:
The wobbly bits. You just trim the wobbly bits. You just trim off the bottom, you trim off the top and you’ve got a perfect square or a perfect rectangle, whatever it is you need for your braid project.
Carolina Moore:
You can spend all Sunday just sewing the other braid, watching Netflix, watching whatever …
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
… watching a video, and at the end, you have this braid. And when people say, “What are you going to do with that?” You can say, “I don’t know yet because it might become a table runner, it might become a quilt.” You put it into anything.
Kate:
Right. It might become a place mat. Right.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, fabulous.
Kate:
Think about it, when I was just teaching one of my classes with the braid this past week at a guild, this woman had bought a panel. So she took the class, we were making table runners and she said, “I hope you don’t mind. I’m not going to make a table runner.” I said, “I don’t care what you make. It’s fine.”
Carolina Moore:
Most teachers won’t mind, yeah.
Kate:
She wanted to surround a panel with a braided border.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, clever.
Kate:
Right?
Carolina Moore:
And you just need to put one on the top, one on the bottom and then one on each side or one on each side and then one on the top and one on the bottom and you’re done.
Kate:
Right, and you’re done.
Carolina Moore:
And your quarters-
Kate:
Exactly. So you could just make braided borders and you can decide as you’re making them, “Do I want my braid to go up one side and then do I want to break in the corner as it goes along the top or do I want to do something that pulls them together?” There’s just so many options.
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Kate:
So one of the things we were going to do with her, because she and I hashed out what she was going to do, so she was going to add a small framing border around her panel. It was going to be a light fabric. And then she was going to add that light fabric to the beginning and end of her braid, so the braid floated around the panel. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
Carolina Moore:
Yeah.
Kate:
I know, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yeah, and you can create your own gradients and …
Kate:
Oh, my gosh-
Carolina Moore:
… rainbows and-
Kate:
You can add squares in them. There’s just so many different things you can do to a braid. So you can cut squares that are the same width as your braid pieces. And so you add the squares to all the braid pieces on one side, and then when you sew the braid pieces together, you get a square going up almost like a diamond through the middle.
Carolina Moore:
What?
Kate:
Yeah. Very cool.
Carolina Moore:
This is craziness.
Kate:
Yeah, so it’s a fun technique and I think what I like most about it is that a beginner can do it. It can look complicated, but if their quarter inch is just a hair off, it doesn’t matter. So if their strip isn’t quite long enough and the pattern said, “Use 16 pieces,” and they use 16 and it doesn’t work, well, then just add two more.
Carolina Moore:
I know.
Kate:
What’s the big deal, right? You just add two more pieces.
Carolina Moore:
My favorite steam allowance is the quarter inch-ish.
Kate:
Yes.
Carolina Moore:
It might be a little scant, it might be a little generous, I don’t know …
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
… but I don’t have to worry about that …
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
… and that it’s still going to look amazing. And that someone who looks at it, they can’t tell.
Kate:
They can’t tell.
Carolina Moore:
Because that’s another thing that we quilters, “Oh, that looks amazing,” “Yeah, but I had to add two strips.” They’ll never know. Don’t tell them.
Kate:
Don’t tell them. I know. And I had somebody email me and say, “My braid wasn’t quite as long as you said it would be,” and I said, “That’s okay. That’s just because you have your own personal quarter inch. Add two more pieces,” and she’s like, “Oh, okay,” right? Easy-peasy. When you’re especially first learning to quilt and you learn all about when I have an angled piece and I’m laying things right sides together and I’m matching up edges and I come out on something that’s got an angle, there’s a little notch there, well, what if you miss the notch, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Kate:
Well, if you’re doing a braid and you’ve cut your pieces, then you just trim those little edges off and little bits that you’re off aren’t going to matter because you just trim it to size, “A little bit off here. A little bit off here. You’re good. It looks perfect.”
Carolina Moore:
Nice.
Kate:
And what’s really fun is when you cut a braid, and it’s hard because you can’t see what I’m talking about, but when you cut a braid, sometimes you get at the bottom of your cut or at the top a tiny little triangle. And your friends will look at your table runner or your quilt and say, “How did you piece that tiny little triangle in there?” They don’t know that all you did was make a braid and whack it off, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yeah. And you’ll say, “I’m that good.”
Kate:
“I’m that good,” exactly.
Carolina Moore:
“I’m just that good.”
Kate:
Now, I do have to admit that I do have a second braid and that’s because I wanted to make a little braid to use as an accent.
Carolina Moore:
Like an itsy-bitsy braid?
Kate:
Yeah, like an accent on a bag. I also did it as a headband.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, nice.
Kate:
Just made a braid and then put some elastic at the bottom.
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Kate:
Yeah. I did it on a tote bag. So I wanted to make a smaller one and I realized that, if I tried to put the lines on the big one, there’d be overlapping lines. So you’d have straight lines on top of angled lines and it would be …
Carolina Moore:
Too much.
Kate:
… too much and confusing. So I did come out with a-
Carolina Moore:
And not everybody wants to do itty-bitty piecing.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
Itty-bitty piecing, there are some of us who love itty-bitty piecing and there’s some of us who never want to see itty-bitty piecing in our life.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
And that’s okay. So you’ve made one just for the itty-bitty piecers.
Kate:
Exactly. So it makes these little tiny braids and you can use an inch strip or an inch-and-a-half strip. And what’s really funny is making those braids is no harder than making the bigger braids because all it is you just sew a straight line and press it and sew a straight line and press it.
Carolina Moore:
You just again look like a rockstar.
Kate:
Exactly.
Carolina Moore:
“You pieced that tiny stuff? How did you not go blind?”
Kate:
Right. And people think that it looks so complicated like, “Oh my gosh.” The only difference is when you’re using smaller pieces or especially skinnier braid strips, it takes more braid pieces to get the length. It takes longer to get the length, but it’s no harder. It’s just straight line sewing. So it’s perfect when you’re just sitting there on a Sunday afternoon and you got a podcast on or a movie on or whatever and you just, “Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut,” sew, “Tut, tut, tut, tut, tut,” sew.
Carolina Moore:
Nice.
Kate:
Yeah.
Carolina Moore:
Now, I was looking at your site and the braid template is not your only template, is it?
Kate:
No, I have also a Drunkard’s Path template.
Carolina Moore:
Okay, so for people who want to do curves.
Kate:
Yes, so for people who want to do curves. So here’s the funny story about that. So have you ever heard of the Quilter’s Planner?
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Kate:
Okay. So the Quilter’s Planner came out and I submitted a quilt to the Quilter’s Planner and it was a Drunkard’s Path. And again, I had never done a Drunkard’s Path.
Carolina Moore:
Well, just throw your hat over the fence and do it.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
Why not?
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
You can do braids, you can do anything.
Kate:
Exactly. That’s what I figured, right? So they accepted it. So I had to figure out how to do it. Well, the Drunkard’s Path that I drafted, there wasn’t a template for that size.
Carolina Moore:
Gosh, darn it.
Kate:
I know. So I did the quilt, I did it with template plastic. It was just …
Carolina Moore:
Fine.
Kate:
Fine. You can do that. It’s fine. But then, and it was in the Quilter’s Planner, and then after the planner had been out a while, the rights reverted back to me and I thought, “All right, I want to put this out as a pattern, and I want to do a second quilt with it, so I want a template.” So that’s what I did.
Carolina Moore:
Well, we’re quilters, we need all the notions, we need all the templates.
Kate:
Somebody asked me the other day because when I was teaching them to do the braid and she said, “Well, Kate, couldn’t I do this with my regular ruler?” And I said, “Of course, you can. And that’s why I give you a diagram. You could absolutely do with your regular ruler. It’s just harder. Any template, its job is to make something easier.” So when people sit there and say, “Oh, well, I have a regular ruler. I can figure this out.” You’re right. You can’t.
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Kate:
But the template just makes it easier. Just-
Carolina Moore:
Yup, I was just having a conversation with someone of like, “Well, what do you value more?”
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
“Do you value your time or do you value your money? Because you trade a little bit of your money for this template and now you’ve got a bunch of time back.”
Kate:
Exactly, because you don’t have to figure it out. And I think that’s what the job is of any template or any ruler. It’s just to make your life easier.
Carolina Moore:
Quilting, original quilting was pieces of cardboard or pieces of paper templates that were traced onto fabric, that were cut with scissors and that were sewn together by hand. And now we use acrylic templates and we cut them with rotary cutters and we sew them together with sewing machines. So our tools have gotten fancier and that helps us be more accurate and put it together faster.
Kate:
Exactly.
Carolina Moore:
But the purpose is still the same and anyone can still go get paper templates and use scissors and hand sew it. That’s still a valid way to make a quilt. None of these other tools are invalidating the other way, but it’s just accommodating all the other things we want to do in our life.
Kate:
Well, exactly, and it’s a tradeoff and you get to decide. Each person gets to decide for themselves …
Carolina Moore:
Absolutely.
Kate:
… “Which way do I want to go?” Do you know what I mean? “Which thing am I going to use?” and I think what’s fun about some templates, some make a certain specific thing, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Kate:
And mine, obviously, a braid template or my Drunkard’s Path make a specific thing, but what I love about the braid is that you can be so creative with it on your own. You don’t necessarily need me to help you make a quilt because you could sit there and say, “All right, I learned how to make the braid from Kate and maybe I made her table runner or I made one of her quilts, but now I know what to do, so now I can apply my creativity and do something new and different with it.”
Carolina Moore:
And you’ve given all of us a way to take our scraps and turn them into larger, usable pieces, “Now my scraps become a border,” “Now my scraps become a bag.”
Kate:
Exactly.
Carolina Moore:
“Now my scraps become usable strips of fabric.”
Kate:
Yup. One of the ladies who took a class from me a couple of years ago at a guild, she came with all leftover fabrics that were Christmas fabrics. Because over the years, she has made all of her kids and grandkids a Christmas quilt and she had this huge thing of leftover pieces. So she cut them all into two-and-a-half-inch strips. She didn’t have a full strip of most of it, but that’s all right. She just folded it in half, cut the braid pieces that she could and just made these scrappy table runners with Christmas fabric for everybody for the holidays this year.
Carolina Moore:
Oh.
Kate:
I know, isn’t that fun?
Carolina Moore:
That is so fun.
Kate:
I know. I tried to see if I could get on the list.
Carolina Moore:
Yes, there are some quilters that need to adopt me. I agree. I’m with you.
Kate:
Yeah. But yeah, I love watching people be creative with this. Like the woman who wanted to do a border, this woman who wanted to make them all Christmas quilts. I had a woman who was going to make her own braid quilt and she decided it was going to go, and it’s hard to describe it, it was going to go up one side, cross the top down, over the bottom and then come in almost-
Carolina Moore:
So like a snail shell?
Kate:
Yes.
Carolina Moore:
Or a spiral?
Kate:
Or a spiral. Yes, exactly. And I thought, “Oh, won’t that be cool?”
Carolina Moore:
Yes.
Kate:
I know.
Carolina Moore:
I think that as notion designers, that is one of the best things, is that we come up with this idea and we say, “Okay, I’m going to solve this problem that exists in this industry because I’ve experienced it. I want it to be fixed and no one else out there is fixing it, so I’m going to fix it.” And so we come up with a solution. And then once we put this solution into other quilters’ hands, they say, “Oh, did you know that it does this?” “I had no idea.” “And did you know you could do this with this?” “Oh my gosh, this is amazing.”
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
And almost shamefully, we get to take a little bit of credit for that, but not really. But it’s like you have all these children out in the world that you helped. I don’t know, I mean it’s a quilting midwifery, I guess, to create these products that everyone else gets to give birth to these creations with.
Kate:
Exactly. And what I love about is I love when quilters take my pattern and do something different with it. I’ve had people take a class from me and they’ll come up and they’ll say, “Now, Kate, I didn’t pick the same fabrics this year.” I say, “That’s perfect because I want you to pick fabrics that talk to you, not what I put on the cover and I can’t wait to see what you do that’s different, how this inspired you to be more creative.”
Carolina Moore:
So I have learned that when quilters are picking the fabrics that are on the cover, I feel like … So my experience says that the big reason that quilters are picking the fabrics that are on the cover is because a quilt is going to take you a long time. It’s going to take hours, days, weeks, maybe months. And if I’m going to put hours, days, weeks, months, in addition to all those dollars into this project, I want to know that …
Kate:
That it’s going to work.
Carolina Moore:
… the end project is going to look good. And if I pick the same fabrics on the cover, then it’ll look like the cover quilt and it will look good. But the other side, and good … I mean, we all want our things to look good.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
But the quilters who pick their own fabrics, they want it to have their personality and your personality will always look good. Your personality is always in style.
Kate:
Right. And so many quilters, that’s the hardest thing, right? Now, of course, I’m also now a fabric designer, so of course, I love it when they pick the fabrics I pick …
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Kate:
… because it’s, “Oh, wait, my fabric now.” But the other thing is you do want them to find their own style. And I think one of the best tips you can give someone is, if they’re looking at a quilt on a cover and they’re trying to pick their own fabrics and they want to make sure it’s going to look good, pay attention to value.
Carolina Moore:
Yes. So your darks, your lights, your mediums.
Kate:
Right, yup.
Carolina Moore:
Yup, and how they play together and play off each other.
Kate:
Exactly. So look where the designer put the lights, medium and dark. Do you like where she put them or you just want different colors? Then use colors you like, but follow her value placements and you’ll know that your colors will work for that quilt because you follow the same value.
Carolina Moore:
This is a great tip because you can have a quilt that is red and blue. And if it’s a dark solid red and a solid navy to Kelly blue, that red and blue will read as the same color.
Kate:
Exactly.
Carolina Moore:
And so your quilt will be very flat. But if instead you use that dark, dark red, like a blood red, but then picked a light blue, now the red is popping off the blue. Or if you chose a much lighter shade of red, almost a pink and then your navy, now they’re popping off each other.
Kate:
Right, because we know this statement that color gets all the credit, value does all the work.
Carolina Moore:
Yes. I haven’t actually heard that. So color gets all the credit and value …
Kate:
Does all the work.
Carolina Moore:
… does all the work. What else in my life do I know that follows this model? Okay, color gets all the credit, value does all the work. Yes.
Kate:
Right. And I think that it’s mostly true.
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Kate:
One of the things I love to talk about, I love to talk about color. I just think it’s so much fun. And I love to tell people, “Look, I was a nurse. I wasn’t trained in color. I wasn’t trained as an artist or I didn’t go to design school.”
Carolina Moore:
Most of us aren’t trained in color.
Kate:
Right, exactly, but we learn little bits over time by experimenting. And your stash is really good for experimenting and using patterns where you can just do some scrappy stuff allows you to experiment with color and value and how colors play off of each other.
Carolina Moore:
The thing I like to tell people is take a picture of it, because for some reason, the picture will read different. The eye of my camera sees different than the eye in my head. So even when the eye in my head is looking at the picture that the eye that my camera gave, it looks different.
Kate:
It does.
Carolina Moore:
So when you see something and you think, “Okay, I think so,” take a picture of it and look at that picture. And then as a benefit, when you later go, “Oh, what was I looking at?” you have a picture to reference. And now cellphone photos, it costs us nothing. Digital photos cost nothing to make.
Kate:
Exactly. Digital is free, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yup.
Kate:
And a good way too when you’re picking out fabrics and if you’re thinking about value, we’ve all heard that you take the black and white photo, so that you can see the value change. But part of doing that also is, as you take a picture of those fabrics and you do see them differently, I don’t know if it’s because it’s small and it’s almost like we’re farther away now, could be, right? I’m not sure.
Carolina Moore:
I feel like the photo’s also flattened it, so you’ve removed all the dimension from the photo.
Kate:
Right. And the other thing too is because it’s flattened it, because you’re not as focused now on the exact blue in that flower matches the exact blue in the background of this, you’re less focused on that and you can see them as a whole. Because how many times do you put a quilt together and this blue matches the blue in this pattern beautifully and these look so beautiful together and then you put them in the quilt and you think, “Meeh, it didn’t come out.”
Carolina Moore:
They’re not playing well.
Kate:
They’re not playing well because usually we overmatch. We match them so much, we lose the value change. And the value change is what allows those design elements to stand out, right?
Carolina Moore:
Yes. You did all that extra piecing to get little stars or little whatevers to show up and then you can’t even see it, it all just blends in.
Kate:
It all just blends in. Yup. So I think your tip of taking the photograph is huge, because especially if you take a picture of all the fabrics, you don’t want them to look like they’ve all blended together and they coordinate beautifully. You want to see some value change.
Carolina Moore:
We all have scrappy quilts.
Kate:
Yes, yup, and you need that. The other fun color tip is to think about the unexpected visitor. So you’re making a quilt, let’s just say. You’re making a quilt and it’s primarily blues. And there’s a few little colors. Maybe you have a print in there with some other colors in it, but it’s blues and it’s greens and everything else and you’re looking at it and everything coordinates really great. But when you take that picture, you realize it’s a little flat.
Carolina Moore:
Little monochromatic, yup.
Kate:
Right. And monochromatic can be good, but you need massive value change for it to really work. But the other thing that’s fun sometimes is pick a color that maybe either is in the print or is a complement to one of the colors in the print and add just a little bit of it in. Maybe you add it in as a star point, right? Or if you’re doing flowers, it’s the center of the flowers. And that unexpected color suddenly lets everything else shine.
Carolina Moore:
Nice. And because you’ve given … The funny thing that I also find is that sometimes I’ll pick a fabric and I’ll be like, “Oh, this isn’t really what I want, but it’s what I have, so I’ll put it in.” But once you sew all the pieces together, the act of stitching has made it intentional. And so the act of it being intentionally there makes of it.
Kate:
Yes, yes. There is that too. Absolutely. And I think it’s just getting out of the matchy head and thinking about, “How can I just give it a little interest?” and being careful about where you place it so that it doesn’t take over, but it just complements everything else and lets everything else shine.
Carolina Moore:
Nice.
Kate:
Yeah, I love that idea. So I remember learning little bits about color makes such a difference.
Carolina Moore:
It really does and it makes you feel more confident in a project and confident to buy all those things to be able to make the project knowing, “Okay, this doesn’t look like the cover, but it’s going to be great.”
Kate:
Exactly, yup, yup. And so you just get your clues from the quilt that is there and you think less about color and more about value. I wonder if it would work to … I’m just thinking about this.
Carolina Moore:
Sure.
Kate:
I wonder if it would work is, if you have a cover quilt and you want to make it, but you want different colors if you took a black and white of it. Because then you would be picking colors …
Carolina Moore:
Based of value.
Kate:
… purely off value. I wonder if that would work. I have no idea. I’m just thinking out loud.
Carolina Moore:
I’d be interested in that. All right, someone needs to try that and let us know how it works.
Kate:
Yes, absolutely. We’d love to hear.
Carolina Moore:
All right, Kate, it’s been so fun chatting with you and I hope everyone else has enjoyed this conversation as well.
Kate:
I’ve had so much fun talking with you.
Carolina Moore:
Oh, not only did we learn about your braid template and we all want to run out and go make braids now, but we’ve learned about color and value. And this is why I love having conversations with quilters, because usually, I know them from one thing.
Kate:
Right.
Carolina Moore:
Like you do this one thing, but really as quilters, we do so many things and we get to find out so many other things as well. So-
Kate:
Yes. Well, thank you so much for having me.
Carolina Moore:
Of course.
Kate:
Yay.
Carolina Moore:
Friends, that’s our episode for today. I hope you loved it as much as I loved having this conversation. Remember that you can find all the details that we talked about in the show notes and those are all at ilovenotions.com. And make sure to leave this podcast a review in your favorite podcasting app. Leaving it a review will help the podcast algorithm show this podcast to other people who love notions just as much as we do. Friends, that’s all I have for you today, but I will see you right here real soon. Bye for now.