The making of Jo's Azure Skies Quilt Kits

Several months ago Jo Kramer, of Jo’s Country Junction, a proficient blogger and quilter, asked if we’d fill quilt kits for her upcoming published quilt, a Kaffe quilt design being published in the December 2020 issue of a national quilting magazine.

After a little bit of study, Becky and I decided that we’d enjoy the chance to meet a bunch of new people, provide a high quality materials kit for a bunch of quilters, and hopefully, get a chance to get our name recognized a little bit more by the National quilting magazines.

After all, we are a tiny player in a world of a whole bunch of tiny players with about three or four large ones!

So, first we had to find out what was in the quilt kit, and decide on a price. We had to tell the magazine quite a while ago, even before we had our fabrics in hand.

Then the hard part came. We had to source our fabrics.

Jo sent me a picture of her quilt hanging from her front porch, and I had to decide which fabric was on the border, as well as which shade of green, and what to use for the middle part of the quilt.

It was a process, that was at times, a bit daunting.

Then the scary part came. After all, when you promise to do something, you really have no idea how well you’ll be able to do it, or if there will be a demand for whatever you’ve promised to do.

I contacted my Kaffe rep and he went to bat for me to help me source the featured outer border fabric. We found out that there was under 300 total yards in inventory at the warehouse, and that I’d better snag it all, in case it was all needed. I had no idea how popular these kits would be.

So, I ordered that. I felt like that was the hardest part.

Then, I had to decide which green to use. I knew I wanted to use MODA solids because not only does MODA have an impeccable reputation for quality, they have an outstanding customer service department, their shipping speed is amazing and they are 10000% up front as to whether their stock is there or if we’re going to have to wait until a certain day, and if we do, what day. This makes it easy to make up kits. I can just keep looking until I can choose something that is in stock.

I ordered about 25 different greens, figuring that the one that matched would be super obvious and then we’d put the rest of the greens into our solids inventory, and then I could order in several bolts of the needed peppermint green, once I knew which exact shade it was.

Now we have over 50 different greens on our solids shelf. However, that’s great. I also ordered in a slew of blue-greens, as well, since I wasn’t sure if I needed a blue green or green. I was only working off a picture at this point, since I hadn’t received any fabric yet.

The white was easy. I would need 4.5 yards of white for every quilt. Wait a second. Easy? Did I say EASY? White. Does that mean bright white? Creamy White? Ivory white? Soft White? Which white? So, I ordered in several whites to see which ones played well with the featured outer border and the spearmint green.

Then, came what should have been the easiest – the assorted Kaffe. The middle part of the quilt is just miscellaneous Kaffe fabrics in blues, purples and greens. But wait – Kaffe has several shades of green, tends to throw purples in with lots of pinks and sometimes well, they just don’t look great together!

Here are some of the blues, greens and purples that I’m going to use in this particular quilt kit. It will be an assortment.

So, I got on the stick, asked my wonderful rep again, for look books, so I could pore over them and order in Kaffe in blues, purples and greens. Then came the bad news that they were out of many of them. Thankfully I was able to order more in that were IN stock, so that I was able to get enough to make the kits. I needed 9 different ones so that I could come up with nine different half yard pieces, totaling 4.5 yards.

As everything trickled in, I merely stuck the bolts up high on the shelf, out of the way and let myself rest from worrying or even thinking about it. Then about 2 weeks ago, Jo contacted us again to find out when we’d be ready with the kits. The time had come. It was time to prepare the website link and turn it on so that promotion could begin. I had actually prepared the entry back in August, but I had hidden it, so that no one could see the quilt, as it was supposed to be a surprise. However, I realized that in order for people to be able to promote it, they had to be able to link to it. To do that I had to turn it on.

And yesterday, the phone started ringing and people started ordering the Azure Skies, Jo’s quilt kit!

In order to get the pattern, you have to buy the December edition of American Quilting, but the fabric kit is available directly and exclusively from Quilted Twins HERE.

My husband helped me make up some of the kits in between a live feed, receiving a pallet of fabric and putting away fabrics!

Firstly, we spread out three layers of the 2.5 yard outer border. I ran it down 7.5 yards long on my table, and cut 3 sets of 2.5 yards, three layers deep. Once Ken finished ruler folding that up for me, I had 9 outer borders ready.

Then, I spread out 3 layers of 4.5 yard strips for all the white that was in the quilt. Ken ruler folded that up for me, while I was opening the assorted Kaffes in blues, purples and greens. Once I stacked them all up, I decided to throw out one of them that didn’t look so great in the mix.

Then I spread those out and started to cut up the nine piece half yard collections. That’s when Ken looked out the window and he semi pull into the parking lot. So much for finishing. “Were you expecting a shipment today?” I said, “No, not really.” But, we got it, right when we were supposed to be starting our live feed! Sigh. INTERRUPTION. Stop for 1.25 hours for the unloading and the live feed!

After the Ken and Rachael Show, introducing our fabrics, and the bringing in of the pallet, I finished cutting up some of the spearmint green fabrics, decided to gather it all up so that I could prepare it in the comfort of my own home, and left. (We had a birthday party coming up shortly for Becky’s twin granddaughters!)

So, if you want this Azure Skies kit, I will be limited by how much of the outer border we have. Freespirit was out of stock with what I took. So, it is what it is. That’s all she wrote. Whatever I have, we can use. After that, you can’t get anymore – at least not until they reprint it, if they do!

Get your complete quilt kit here. There is no pattern in this fabric package. The Kaffe nine piece half yard pack will not necessarily be matching this set of nine half yards.

So, hurry and get your Azure Skies quilt kit here.

Read all about Jo’s creating this beautiful quilt HERE.

---

---

---