A Chat with Jen Kingwell + A WINNER!!!

[Music] [Applause] [Music] well guess who I have up here in the Beehive Jen King well all the way from Down Under I've actually I feel like I have a rock star here don't ask me to see whatever you do so I'm taking a Class A to D class in which you get to work on anything you want and I could have done a UFO but I decided that I really just wanted to do something new and everyone in the class is so alive with excitement you know there's just talking and you said that actually that hand piecing you actually have more connection to the people around you than people who are machine you have to go you shouldn't write much more when your machine and I guess the noise of the machine to where people when they're hand stitching I don't know they just sit and cheddar so there's always a lot of chatter and a lot of laughter which I love I love that too so tell us a little bit about the town that you live in okay I leave on the southeast coast of Australia so on the great ocean road actually it's a little town called Torquay it's about one and a half hours out of Melbourne CBD and it's it's beautiful coastal town so only a few thousand people there during winter but then in summer you know it explodes and there are twenty or thirty thousand there but peaceful a little like here quiet gorgeous we just we just love a real community aspect so we have our business there and we've gotten to know some of the local people and now we're doing more collaborations with local other local businesses and Turkey is the home of Rip Curl and Quicksilver some of the really well-known global surf brands and there's a small surfboard maker there and he is now buying fabric from the store and actually putting it underneath the Risen glow on the surf boards really yes so he's doing some amazing things because in the big cities you don't always meet those people or tap into those canoes so it's been it's being a great look great move wow that is really cool yeah now you have a shop there I do and what's the name of your shop Emma Qi energy takes tunnels and what is their name about um Emma T's a French word for friendship so I think part of quoting is just that connection of people writing it's such a special thing that we have yeah I always believe cultures it's all about the giving and me sharing it oh I love that I love that so you have been designing not only patterns but fabric how many fabric lines have you oh because you haven't been doing this for a really long no you like hit the door running I did so I think it was something like 2000 and maybe six I met sue Spago I was very fortunate she came to Australia and she came and taught at my store and she was really like the only reason that I ever came to court market as a vendor with my patterns I would never have even drink that anybody would want to buy them but sue was really encouraging and she got me here really so I'm eternally grateful she's so love when she is the nicest person isn't she I've never met anyone that doesn't love sue and so then I did it was just that when I did the second market that motor approached me about designing fabrics for them and fw me after the second market a second market and so it took me a little while to get my head around it because i it was not something that I can't use a computer like I can barely send an email I'm so bad so um I mean your hand piecing yes we're not talking make technology very basic but they saw something in you yeah they liked I guess the designs that they saw but it took me it's probably two years to actually say yes to them because all sorts of reasons such a scrap quilter I couldn't see myself working just with a line of fabric and I love so many colours that I thought you know if I was restricted to a color palette but look they've been great and they've helped me and worked with me and you know we've adjusted things along the way but I've enjoyed working with them it's been a good a nice process so how many markets is this now well I think the very first market I did was the year that hurricane sandy hit the East Coast so it was that 12 2012 maybe see I think hurricane sandy well that was where we lost our cuckoo clock vent yeah I think it was 12 yeah because we had a weird situation where we've gone to the largest quilt show in France and I ordered a clock for him that never showed up and six months later I get a notice in the mail that if I don't pick this up it's not gonna be delivered and I didn't even know what it was and it turned out that that cuckoo clock was on a boat in New York City so that I know that year so that was the October and then it was Portland the following spring oh and that was when Moda first approached me so that was 13 but I think my first did your head just want to explode at that point I had no idea what to think I mean that that was Lucy's head was exploding my daughter cuz she was so excited for me she was like you know but I was just I can't do this so I think my first line was shown 15 so it was two years later huh yeah but your whole family is so supportive of your gift I couldn't do this without without you know all and Richard and Lucy both worked work actively in the business but my two other daughters are just like my oldest daughter Meg had her tonsils out just two weeks before I left to come over here so while she was recuperating she was making tassels for me for the corner of the pillows that I was showing at mark so they do and you know Abby comes down and she has worked in the cafe we have a cafe in our store and you are kidding me I see me I I don't know why more stores don't because it's really in reality if you want your customers to stay there longer sometimes you get lightheaded because of all the shopping and you need a snack and the coffee or the head and you'll get to it's a true cafe like it's not just a biscuit in a packet and there's something we have got the most amazing pastry chef called Tana and she is just I don't know what please we say please don't leave this time because she's just incredible so the food is amazing if you're looking at our blog the shop blog and we post the food on there sometimes people just like comment about how good it is and how do they get to the shop blog um just emma de textiles a medietext oh oh no time hang on shop blog a midi that's a really good question it's on the web site the web store tea set committee kaamdar au and the link to the blog yeah okay so we shall find it well you know you're always on the road how many how many weeks a year are you on the road I just told you I can't use a computer I travel a lot between sort of April until November and and that is winter winter for us for you so I try and be home December getting ready for Christmas but then our summer is sort of December January February and that's because we're at the beach the last thing I want to be is traveling then and also it's when the kids are always down for ice so I want to be there for that so I try not to do a lot in that time oh that's yeah we you know family trumps everything silence absolute and you're expecting your first friend and that's pretty exciting Basso your number no quilt market for us in Houston this year because we will be either waiting for a baby or we'll have a little baby by then glad you write it quick markets oh yeah so you don't want to have to like rush home why would I even know that I'm not even thinking it yeah so just um how many patterns well maybe that's too big a number to ask I honestly don't know the answer to it and yeah books out da book we did booklets I've just done one sort of like book with a publishing house the rest we self-published that's with FW media and it's called quilt lovely and can we talk about the coop mania oh yes I think mystery I think in the future I'm going to do a mystery look one month of quick mania which is just areas it's just something we talked about a crook market so I have you know definite yeah but boy they wouldn't if they wanted to you know it would be smart to get you to do that thank you and then your husband does the templates that are used which is so awesome you know because they're so accurate there's repose to when I'm using the my art you know I don't know like here's a piece of template that's one block I did it this is Valerie's one of Valerie's quilts and you know as I shave I keep shaving a little bit more off so it's nice to have your heavy plastic templates especially if we want a rotary cut something but that's so neat that your husband does yeah D runs that side of it the whole side the wholesale side and the template side and that's been really good for us too and that's you know we've got a building large enough that we can has all of it so the whole sales on one half and the retail shops on the other half and we've got fantastic staff like we can come away and they think it takes the wheel keep turning they know what to do so what are their hobbies any other hobbies besides cooking no nope I enjoy the garden but um it's not that not looking as nice as yours is at the moment because I don't spend much time in it but well I don't either okay someone decided if there was any way to splurge on ourselves it would be to have landscaping yeah because it is a full-time job isn't it yeah yeah no I think by the time I travel and by the time I do what I do and I like to be in the shop at least some of the time and in the design studio some of the time so it keeps me fairly busy and probably when I'm not working as such I'm with the family so yeah then I can't imagine you'd have a favorite color I mean when I look at your quilt you know I love every color blues probably my least favorite finally still my blues - is a lot smaller thing here and when I order fabric for the store I really have to concentrate on blue because it's not something like I'm well in at the beach but what blue yes I do really you know making myself look at the Blues but if I had to pick just one color I was going to say I love chartreuse that gorgeous sort of citrus in green yeah but then I was while I was thinking that I thought but I love orange oh yeah this year I would say this year my favorite color is orange you know last year it was something you know and look I think it's a little bit like your children you know one day someone's my favorite but then the next day they're not and the other one is and colors are a little like that with me I get that with children yeah now do you cook yes I do I love to cook and I love to do do you cook like is there is there an Australian no people ask me that all the time it's really interesting we have like a real sort of fusion food culture so I guess her greatest influence would be Asian food in which we all laugh and we have heaps and heaps of like Vietnamese restaurant don't high restaurants and the mayor's would have to be my favorite I have all I wish but then a lot of the really good restaurants in Melbourne have that slightly Asian huh but not really Asian you know what I'm trying to say so but they'll have a little Asian sort of twist to things so we have fantastic restaurants it's I guess I've just been in Portland with some really good restaurants too so Melbourne in Portland I can see a lot of similarities but Melvins are real foodie cities so and we have that real sort of love of food but there's no real I guess that our traditional Australian food would be based on the old British roast or something like that but not many people not as many certain better young ones like my girls are into stir fries and you know a very sort of quick and and easy and healthy food and we cook a lot of that sort of thing too I'm a bit of an old country cook I guess farm girl grew up on the phone my mom was a great cook and so we always have lots of I don't know I don't really know I like to cook everything and anything and you know no so I cook meats and porks and beef cheeks and just what are these Peaks really Oh kind of like fish there's there's something some part of the fish where they use that and yeah some of the finer restaurants that I've seen well Portland because we are part time in Portland that is we love to eat out we don't cook much I get the best mac and cheese that I've ever had any Portland graça on Southwest Washington oh really oh heavens it was amazing it had this slow-cooked pork belly on top of it than it is to see I when I was with I was with Stacy a lot for a buttermilk basin and I told her one of the fabric distributors was taking her out to dinner and they were going to Jake's crawfish which is one of the oldest restaurants in Portland if you ever get back there but they have the best banana cream pie and people come all over for that but so next time that's what you need to have is banana cream pie there but they they have a very eclectic food the food cart thing is all over the city and stuff so that's fun well I think it's time for margaritas too to just one you know yeah just when you really see what one is and because you know I was so excited about class today I'm assuming that's what it was that I have been up since 3:00 so I worked really hard in class though but I think that margaritas gonna make me go to sleep but you have to help me before we go so come over here for a second [Music] I wanted to thank Jen King well again for coming to visit me in the Beehive and whether she thinks so or not I consider her a quilting rockstar so now for the winner of the Cathy Cardiff donation a cottage garden that person but first oh let me tell you we want if we could if we had a way we would give each and every one of you something we probably couldn't afford the postage between j'ni but we truly would we so appreciate all that all of you that subscribe and like our videos and hang out with us but because we can't make a decision we use the random number generator on the woolly mammoth blog and so the winner a cottage garden book donated by Kathy Cardiff and then some little goodies from Lynette Anderson from Down Under that winner is Susan Paulson P o u LS o n yes you won it's got to feel good so be sure you email me your mailing address so I can get this off to you and thank you again to all of you who left us a comment and are coming along with us we'll have more giveaways either here on the woolly mammoth blog or on the quilt show the daily blogs so stay tuned [Music]

Channel: Quilt Roadies

Views: 12,140

Rating: 4.9429479 out of 5

Keywords: Jen Kingwell, Amitie Textiles, Cottage at Cardiff Farms, Kathy Cardiff, Quilt Roadies

Id: H-rhpRz0EAA

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018