Most of you know that I have been designing fabric for quilters for a lot of years. My first line was introduced in 1981 by a company that shall remain nameless. I did three lines for that company in two years and they decided that quilting had reached it’s peak in popularity and they were getting out while they were still on top. Hah! Little did they know.
RJR Fabrics heard that I would no longer be with that company and asked me to work for them. It has been a great partnership between us and I have been working with them since 1983. RJR is in the Los Angeles area while I am on the east coast. We mostly meet remotely but manage to get together a few times throughout the year.
Recently, I flew to Los Angeles and went to the RJR offices to meet with the new art director, individuals from the Japanese company who work with my screen print fabrics, and those from yet another company who I work with in producing my batik lines. It was a whirlwind day and a half but we got a lot accomplished.
RJR has moved to new offices in the past year so it was great seeing their new place and touring the facilities. When you walk through the door, you are struck by the openness of the offices and color everywhere. Quilts are hanging all around and it is just a colorful, happy environment.
While at RJR, I sorted fabrics from my three batik collections, mixing the groups. RJR plans to make pixie groupings of these (2 ½” strips of 40 fabrics per group) and I am designing quilts that can be made with each group. In fact, I am recoloring our popular Crayon Box quilt using these pixies. Here is a sneak peak of one of the colorways.
Jinny, I have been an admirer of your quilt fabrics for many years. I especially love your use of shades of purple and teal. These are my favorite colors and I can almost never find fabric groups with them – unless I look for and find your fabrics. I am also always impressed with the quality that your maintain. Thank you for all you have done for the industry.
I would like to get on mailing list
You can sign up for our newsletter on our homepage: http://jinnybeyer.com/
You are an amazing designer. Thank you for all of the inspiration.
In the first paragraph, you wrote “they decided that quilting had reached it’s peak in popularity”. That should be “its” (with no apostrophe). The apostrophe goes only in the contractions for “it is” and “it has”; the possessive form of “it” has no apostrophe, just like “his”, “hers” and “ours” do not have apostrophes.
Thank you for your many wonderful articles. I am enjoying working my way through them.