They say there is
always more than one route to a destination. Barbara Jones, a designer for
Henry Glass, and owner of QuiltSoup Pattern Company is a perfect example of one
who has taken one of the more interesting routes to becoming a fabric designer
and pattern maker. First, she became a molecular biologist and worked in human
genetics at the University of Utah.
That certainly isn’t an ordinary route, but one that seems perfect for
Barbara.
So what was the
beginning of this journey? Barbara, of
course, had endured her adventures in sewing, like many of us have, at the
hands of zealous home economics teachers who insisted our seams be beautiful
and the clothing we make in class actually fit. (Who among you ever actually
WORE your first home economics project?). She knew she wanted nothing to do
with that kind of sewing.
She started
quilting very young… 18, as a matter of fact, in preparing for her first baby
she ventured into quilting at an invitation from her mother-in-law. After that
first glimmer of interest she set the hobby down until her first grandchild came
along when she picked up quilting again, and hasn’t stopped for the last 30
years.
Her interest peaked
when she saw a beautiful quilt in a store window that caught her eye. Here was
a beautiful object that was flat, and didn’t have to ‘fit’ anybody. This was
her kind of sewing. She inquired about the quilt, and was encouraged to take a
class, as this particular quilt was an ‘advanced’ quilt with a lone star and
log cabin blocks. So she started with the class, and a couple of others.
After making a few
patterns, it occurred to Barbara that she never made the quilt the same as in
the picture or even followed the pattern very closely. Every piece she created
was truly something that she created from inspiration from the pattern, not the
pattern itself. When she discovered applique, her own techniques blossomed, and
soon after Barbara was designing quilt patterns herself.
Designing quilt
patterns was really just a hobby, until friends started saying they wanted her
patterns, and then the hobby became a full-time job at age 51. She quit her job
sequencing the human genome, and focused her efforts on designing creative quilt
patterns. Seven months later she went to her first quilt market and began to
sell patterns.
It seems a logical
question to ask, how does one get from a molecular biology lab working on the
human genome project to designing quilts? How do those two pursuits fit in the
same brain? “Very easily,” says Barbara. The two tasks are very similar in
approach. They both require left brain and right brain thinking. They both
require tremendous precision. They both require visualizing the results of an
experiment. They both require inventing the manner that will show the result of
what you are investigating.
And so when did
designing fabric enter into the picture? At her second quilt market Barbara was
approached by four different fabric companies to design fabrics. The first experience
designing fabrics wasn’t what she thought it might be, so she gave up. Then, after some persistence by one of the
Henry Glass lead stylists, Barbara joined the design team of Henry Glass. That
was 8 years and 25 collections ago.
Barbara begins her design process with
a concept, and she starts drawing or painting with every collection she starts. For
instance with QuiltCamp it was the elements of the cute ‘glampers’ or retro 1950’s
glamorous campers that are everywhere now. She thought the only way she would
go camping would be with her quilt friends, and she knew that quilters can also
be terrific cooks, so she added the cook-out elements to the line.
The Clean Living
line was inspired by a recent move Barbara made to St. George and a total re-do
of her home in the mid-century modern style. She had a few of her mother’s living
room pieces from the era when avocado green, harvest gold and orange ruled the
country’s palette. She even has a bright orange chair in her new living room to
pull it all together! Once she began thinking about that time period there
were lots of elements that just aren’t around any longer, like the starburst
clocks, records and old TV’s. She has found that this time period resonated with a lot of people depending on how familiar they
are with those years.
Barbara professes a
LOVE for color, and creating the color palette for a collection in one of her
favorite parts of fabric design. “It is part of the precision of the process,
to be calculating and still visionary. You know it when you see it.”
Henry Glass is grateful too, to have an awesome designer like
Barbara Jones on our team.
