If you're crazy for dots, no doubt you've been (im)patiently waiting for the arrival of Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr's new collection, Dot Crazy. These bright, fun prints are so much more than dots, and packed full of inspiration. Today we are sharing an interview with Weeks and Bill about their fabrics. This husband and wife team both have design backgrounds (Bill's is in modern art, and Weeks, among other things, is a master Japanese flower arranger). Within a copule meonths of meeting, they made their first quilt together, and their favorite jokes is that when Bill asked Weeks to marry him, he was marrying her for her Bernina.
They spend their days designing, sewing, teaching and creating their publication, Modern Quilts Illustrated, as part of their business, the Modern Quilt Studio. Weeks and Bill were modern quilters before modern became a thing, and we're thrilled that they've brought their design talents to Contempo Studio!
What made you decide to create a collection based on polka dots?
We work frequently with a Japanese quilting magazine called
Quilt Jikan; our aesthetic is very much in line with modern Japanese design. I
wanted to do a version of the On the Dot quilt using a whole bunch of different
dots. I got our dot collection together from our stash and posted a photo on
social media. That picture went crazy! People wanted to know where we got al
those dots. Sometimes you think you’re the only person who likes something, but
we got such an exceptional response and people wanted to know where we’d gotten
all those dots.
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| "On the Dot" updated with Dot Crazy fabrics |
Can you tell us more about Yayoi Kusama and how she influenced you?
She’s a contemporary Japanese artist—really a household name
in Japan. All of her work is polka dots. She has nothing to do directly with
our fabrics, but her artwork puts polka dots on people’s minds. You’ll be blown
away by her work. She’s had a traveling show in American museums this year, and
tickets are in ultra high demand. I have a feeling there’s going to be a
trickle down of dots into mainstream design because of her work.
Tell us about your dot collection.
I kept telling Bill that I wished we’d had larger dots and
more varieties of colors (when making the first On the Dot quilt). In the back of my
mind, I had this fantasy of designing a line with a huge number of dots. Most
people design dots that are all the same size. To me, that’s missing the point
of the fun.
We really wanted this line to be fun. It’s half dots and
half prints that are friends of dots. We always want to design beautiful
fabrics, but also beautiful fabrics that you can use with what you already
have. You can use them with solids, plaids…there are so many different things
you can do with them because they’re such a timeless motif.
We’ve always loved circles and dots. We even have a
15-year-old portrait of us in front of a giant dot quilt!
How did you choose what sizes and color combinations to include in the
line?
Narrowing down to just 18 SKUs was really hard. If you’re
going for this kind of look, you want a ton of dots. At the same time, we
wanted both quilt shop owners and customers to look at the fabric and get
excited about it—it needed to be visually compelling. For us, one of the
checklists that a fabric collection has to pass is "does it look good in a fat
quarter bundle?" If you stack up the whole line, are there just three
interesting prints, and then a bunch of blenders that you don’t “have” to have?
We think that if you stack up Dot Crazy and remove one print, it would look
like there’s a hole. Every one of those colors had to be in there.
Everyone is talking about the Fun and Games print!
I felt like having a very busy but fun fabric that you could
fussy cut and make kaleidoscope with really elevated the line. If we had done
only dots, I would have had a voice in the back of my head saying, “it’s just
dots.” We love it. It’s just happy as yardage. We like to play around with
scale. This print is great on the bolt, but you can cut a 3” square and get a
really interesting textile too.
What do you want quilters to think about as they see your fabric?
Our ultimate goal is to get people to make things. We want them to be successful.
We want to expand people’s definitions of what they thought
they could do with a quilt. We’ve created a publication to show people what they
can do with these fabrics. Use these prints boldly and mix them in with things
you already have. Don’t be afraid to mix them with plaids, florals, novelty
prints, etc. The beauty about dots is that they’re timeless and they work with
everything. They’re a real chameleon.
Can you even pick a favorite print?
Weeks: It’s got to be Fun and Games for me. But if you asked
me my favorite part of the line, it’s the combination of all the prints. I love
looking at that fat quarter bundle.
Bill: The pink version of Fun and Games. It’s totally fun.
Click here to see the entire Dot Crazy collection.
Click here to see more of Weeks and Bill's work.
We'll be featuring Dot Crazy all week here on the blog, so come back for your fill of polka dots!
