Artichoke Collection is a new pattern designer to the Fat Quarter Shop. These patterns are so fun, we can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
Speaking of patterns … I am pleased to announce the winner from Friday’s Simple Abundance pattern giveaway … Pat!!
The winner of the Birdie prize pack from Tuesday is … Skippingdaisies!
E-mail Sarah (at) fatquartershop (dot) com to claim your prize 🙂
We’ve been long-time customers and fans of the Fat Quarter Shop, and we’re thrilled that our patterns are now available here.
My friend and business partner, Christie Batterman, and I started Artichoke Collection a couple of years back as a way to take our love of quilting to a new level. Why “artichoke”? The answer is quite simple: we love them! When I think of artichokes, though, I don’t just think of them on a plate. I think that the green and purple thistle that is the artichoke is a wonderful expression of natural grace and symmetry, and every time I see our logo I’m reminded of the beauty of simple natural forms. And anyway, we were pretty confident that Artichoke Collection would be a name that wasn’t already taken!
We started out with just a couple of patterns (Urban Chic and Table Chic), which we produced on our home computers, copied at the local copy center, and marketed to quilt shops in the Bay Area. Over the past couple of years we’ve built our catalog to a total of nine patterns, and our distribution has grown, through word of mouth and the occasional road trip, to include much of the West and even a few shops in other parts of the country.
Our ideas come from our lives and our surroundings. Our newest design, for example, which will be available next month, is a whimsical tribute to giraffes that was inspired by the birth of my first grandchild this past June. Christie and I have a lot of fun working together and over the years, our working styles and creative products have come to complement each other. While each of our patterns has a single principal creator, we each contribute to the other’s creations and ideas to give each pattern that distinctive Artichoke Collection feel. Our working styles, however, have remained quite different through the years: I tend to be the type of person who jumps on an idea and comes to a conclusion well in advance of its due date, while Christie does her best work when faced with a deadline (one of her favorite books is “Goddess of the Last Minute”)! We are very proud of what we have created, and we have a lot of fun doing what we do.
We hope you will visit our website, which displays a variety of samples for each of our patterns. We’ve been delighted to see our designs creatively adapted by quilters with very different styles and levels of expertise, and we can’t wait to see what Fat Quarter Shop customers do with our patterns!
Mary Jane Kelly
Artichoke Collection