Following my visit to Appleton, Wisconsin last June and my meeting with local groups headed by Kathy Meyer, it was time to go home and create a custom fabric design. Armed with notes from our meeting with business and city marketing leaders, and a lot of reference pictures, including the Lawrence University Memorial Chapel shown above, I was ready to pull it all together.
I made quick sketches of the local landmarks on tracing paper, cut them out, moved them around, scaled them up and down until it started to create a composition. This was going to be sold as individual panels and yardage, so I kept the elements contained within the borders of my square rather than bleeding off. The design included the Children's Museum, Houdini Plaza, Building 222, Hearthstone, the Fox River, Mill buildings, water fountain at City Park, the wind sculpture on College Avenue, and references to recreational activities such as boating, jogging, biking and kayaking. There are also icons representing the Flag parade, Mile of Music Festival, Octoberfest and Farm Market. I shared a final pencil drawing with the group and just a couple minor adjustments later, I scanned my drawing and started outlining all the icons to fill them with color. The group requested a turquoise/lime color way like my City of Lakes. That works well because they can use the wave coordinate with their City fabric using the same colors. The other color way is more Fall colors with tans, reds and oranges.
I sent the files to Modern Yardage for a strike off of each and liked how they turned out. Next I designed a coordinating text panel using words that describe the city and local events.
The group chose the second version of type with the waves between words and Appleton in the same script font as the main panel. Then I approve final files of the printed strike offs from Modern Yardage and jpgs of the art is posted on the Modern Yardage website and are ready for purchase.
Here's a link to where you can purchase the Appleton fabrics at Modern Yardage. Kathy Meyer has ordered fabric and within a day, has sewn herself a beautiful top in voile! I am excited to see what the Appleton Quilt Guild will create out of their own custom fabric. Local quilt shops can order panels to sell in their shops for customers,too. It was so much fun to create a custom design thru Modern Yardage for Appleton. It's a great niche market. Next on to Watkins Glen and their custom fabric design.
