a visit with Jodi Godfrey

One of the highlights of my work is that I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with and influencing talented makers in their early days. Jodi Godfrey is one of those makers. Stitched in Color is the first blog she started following, way back when, and we developed a friendship before she launched Tales of Cloth. Five years later, it’s inspiring to see what she's made of her quilty business.

Are you a fan of Tales of Cloth? Me too. You’re going to love this behind-the-scenes chat! Settle in with a warm cup and enjoy.

Question: Jodi, you've just released a brand new batch of patterns into the world - your Applique Collection. What do you like most about the collection and why?

Jodi: With some quilts you make plans for colour combinations the whole way through. They’re usually quilts made from blocks with 3 or 4 colours in each block (my Cherish and Ice-Cream Soda are examples). It can be a lovely and rewarding way to make a quilt, but it can also take a bit of space, both physically and mentally, and planning.

Another way to make a quilt is to have the blocks made of completely random colour or print combinations, or from a single print and common background. That's what my Applique Collection quilts are, and it's my favourite thing about them. These quilts, once cut out, take very little ‘space’, and can be just the thing when life is full or chaotic. All the blocks in these quilts were sewn together in a noisy and unsettled beginning to our year, and I drew such peace from either sewing scrappy prints together at random, or from making simple, single print and background blocks.

Question: In an Instagram posts, you said:

“All of my #TOCappliquecollection patterns started their life as something else, or as nothing, just for fun. Sometimes I get tempted to think that I need to plan out the life of a quilt before I dive in. Actually, I get tempted to think that about all kinds of things in my life. My garden, changes in our business, homeschooling. I spend so much time and energy trying to plan out a future I can’t know. But I like this reminder that sometimes the plan comes later. It finds us after we spend time playing.”

— @TalesofCloth

Can you share more of the backstory on this collection? How did each one begin?

Jodi: Sure! My green and white Laurel Quilt started as a Christmas wallhanging. I got a flash of inspiration a few years ago to make a bunch of beautiful Christmas decorations that were handmade, because I wanted them to be part of my children's memories. Beauty was never really important in my house growing up, and I've spent a lot of time over the years mulling over why it’s important to me. We were living in a rental at the time that was just so ugly, and we had no power to change it, and I think it was this act of creative desperation. What could I do to at least make Christmas beautiful? Anyway, I never finished it. By the time I came back to it, I decided I wanted to go bigger. I’m such a sucker for quilts!

My original Wild Sage quilt, formerly called Urchin, started as a single block cushion, and then a pack of shapes, and then, very slowly, a quilt. When I finally sat down to write the pattern, I wished that I’d made it as I have now in the new version - with smaller shapes and the star hollow in the centre. And so just like any melancholy creative would do in that situation, I abandoned it rather than finish it in an unideal form!

My Meadowsweet quilt started early in lockdown last year. I had bought Rifle Paper Co’s Primavera collection and was completely taken by it. I had decided to make my hexagon sampler, the Hexie Harvest Quilt from it. But the idea was pragmatic rather than inspired. I shoot myself in the foot with those every time! The quilt needed to be made, and I had Primavera to play with, and they just ended up at the top of the list together. About 20 blocks in, I hated it. It was so muddy and busy.

After putting it away for a few months, I took the fabric, laid it out, and spent time just sitting with it. I decided that in order for it to be something I would love, I needed it to be more spacious. And scrappy. And regular. I added more prints and solids. I chose 1” barrel flowers because it's a single shape quilt, and there’s a lot of space around them. And then I went to work sewing them together at random. I really, really love that quilt now! So many of my quilts start with the lines, but the ones that start with the colours often end up my favourite.

I started my Plenty of Thyme quilt when I was promoting my book The Seedlings Quilts, and I had an idea for another sampler EPP & Applique quilt. I had drawn a few ideas up: a row by row, a medallion, and a random layout. I had all kinds of ideas for how it could be a quilt-along or an e-book. But it was one of those inspirations that is all in the head and not the heart. I’m not sure if that makes sense. I just couldn't find a single ounce of motivation in me to begin. I didn't have any ideas about how to colour them in, or where to start. The creative businesswoman in me loved it. The creative artist in me just didn’t.

I let it sit a while, figuring 2020 would be a good year to make and plan it after we moved house and I settled into my big, new workspace. But we all know how 2020 worked for all of us! Then earlier this year, I decided to let it go. Not all ideas have to be made. Not all good ideas have to be acted on. I would just make the quilts I really felt strongly about, and maybe once laid to rest, that old idea could grow into something new and better fitting in the future.

“Not all ideas have to be made. Not all good ideas have to be acted on.”

— Jodi Godfrey

I always have several quilts in project tubs in various stages of completion. And so I find it telling if I’m going back to a particular quilt because it ‘fits’ with my life at the moment. Sometimes I'm just ready to finish something and tidy up the project tub, and so I choose the next easiest thing. But other times I want to play with colour, or do something easily and mindless.

We spent January working 60 hour weeks laser cutting kits for our 2021 BOM, Sunshiny Day. It had just gone so much better than I expected. I thought we would work full time for two weeks to get it all out, but it took four! Then early February, my in-laws came to visit and got stuck here for a snap lockdown. They ended up having to stay the whole month due to border closures. In March, Tim and I tried to finally sit down and work out how we would make the new year work now that all 5 of us were home full time in our 2 bedroom home. And then in April, my parents came for a month to make up for all the time not spent together in 2020. So completely full of lovely and unsettling things, especially for an introverted creative who needs routine and free time to feel like a normal person!

And so, in all that chaos, when I noticed that I was coming back to these quilts and getting excited about them, I decided to launch the appliqué collection. I loved that the blocks stayed small in my hands - no hand stitching whole rows or quilt tops. As I mentioned before, I enjoyed not having to plan out blocks or colour combinations. And then finally, I enjoyed the mix of process, sometimes basting and EPP, sometimes appliqué, and then finally sewing the squares together at the machine. It suited hosting guests in a small house, homeschool at the dining table, and weary evenings in front of the TV. It made me think it might be just the thing for lots of other people in these unsettled times.

And so, the reason I wrote that Instagram post is because in their own way, each of these quilts was a ‘failure’, or started out as one. But rather than pushing something that wasn’t right, I let them lie fallow for a while, waiting for the right time and expression. I’ve learned to do this with my quilts, but I definitely want to remember it more in the rest of my life. Sometimes something that didn’t work out isn't the end of the story but just the middle.

“Sometimes something that didn’t work out isn’t the end of the story but just the middle.”

— Jodi Godfrey

Question: In recent times circumstances have forced many of us to live with a "wait and see" approach to the future. This loss of foresight can make us frustrated and anxious, but it also leaves room for spontaneity. The parallel you've made between quilt design and business development resonates with me. Being open to discoveries through play and experimentation is absolutely key. Tell us, what is one aspect of your creative business that surprises you? One area that came more as a discovery?

Jodi: When we first started planning the business 5 1/2 years ago, we had a plan. I was going to make a big EPP quilt, promote it in quilt shops, take orders, travel, and sell this kit wholesale, and sell thousands. But then I read this book called “The Lean Start-up”. It was mostly directed at the tech industry, but author Eric Ries talked about his own experience of working on something for about a year that there just wasn’t a market for. And then he directed you through how to get things out there quicker and cheaper, letting the response steer your direction. It was so pivotal for us. I realised we could just open up an online shop and start selling hexagons and other basic shapes directly to customers. And we could start almost immediately.

Tim built a small laser cutter (instead of paying a lot of money for a big one), but that was also a huge learning curve. The laser wouldn’t cut through the paper properly, and moved slowly. It would take half an hour to perforate a sheet of paper, and then we would sit there and tear the paper into shapes and put them into envelopes. Total disaster! I cried for a while over that one, but we dusted ourselves off, spurred on by Eric Ries, and put it down to learning. We would see if people would actually buy shapes before we spent more money on a more powerful laser.

We opened the shop 5 years ago this weekend! The first 2 years was so full of mistakes and learning. We thought hiring lots of people would help things grow faster and make more money, but it just made us broke and stressed. We thought working out of the home would make our work/life balance easier, but it made it much harder, because if the kids were home sick or on school holidays, I was stuck home with them and couldn’t go to work. We rented a beautiful, old industrial brick shed to work in but it was freezing cold in winter and boiling hot in summer. The paper would catch on fire on hot days! And the neighbours complained about the acrylic smell.

Ha! This isn’t really about play, but it is about seeing everything as an experiment, and learning to try to set things up so that if it doesn’t work, you can change course easily. Rent and employees are a heavy burden and hard to let go. I really thought the answer was that the whole thing just wouldn’t work, but we decided to give it another try - move the business home, and set it up so just I could work on it. We did that early last year, and I finally felt like I was running the business in a way that worked for me and the business itself, rather than trying to push us both into something we weren’t, something that just fit my assumptions of how it should be done.

Question: I find that most parts of Stitched in Color fit me very well. No surprise - as I've developed the business to suit my strengths. But there are always areas around the perimeter that stretch me beyond my comfort zone. What about Tales of Cloth requires you to be the most brave?

Jodi: I think I’m actually very different - I’ve found it hard to give myself permission to make the business suit me. Last year, because of the pandemic, I was suddenly homeschooling. It was the first time is years that we weren’t completely stressed about money, which was really fortunate, because the pandemic brought money stress for so many people. But my time was completely different. So without that financial pressure, I decided to give myself the year to rest a bit, go with the flow, make what inspired me, and figure out what I wanted from the business. I’d worked so hard to keep it, surely it should be a gift, something I loved and treasured, rather than a ball and chain!

It feels so obvious now, but it really didn't come naturally to me to. I loved quilting and made a business out of it. But I thought making a business was a certain kind of ‘thing’. I didn't learn till later that I could make the business something I loved too.

Take for example saying no to people. I’m really bad at it. But the longer you run a business, the more you learn what ends up being a total time and money sink. Making custom shapes, sponsoring goodie bags at big events, designing quilts for other people’s clubs or magazines - these are things that at first I thought we should say yes to, but they take so much time and money to pull off for very little return. Even after I learned this, I would still say yes sometimes because I didn't want to disappoint people, or didn't know how to say no. It’s easy for me, if I haven't properly thought through the reasons I don't want to do something, to write it off as laziness, and then feel guilty. So it was good last year to have time to reflect, articulate things better, and know that saying no, while still hard, was an act of wisdom rather than something else.

“It’s easy for me, if I haven’t properly thought through the reasons I don’t want to do something, to write it off as laziness, and then feel guilty.”

Question: When I think about Tales of Cloth, I think of EPP (of course), but also of your glorious use of color and fabric. How do you usually go about choosing fabrics or colors for a quilt?

Jodi: Thank you! My most natural way of making a quilt, the way that makes me feel most ‘me’, is just random, all in, scrappy. Though, after doing the exercises in your book, Rachel, I realized that my ‘all in’ is actually very jewel in tone, as opposed to pastel or primary. I love purple and rust and gold and teal, but not really red or navy.

I have three scrap tubs - warm, cool, and neutral - and I pick through them to cut out my fabric pieces around the paper shapes. But as mentioned, I did make Meadowsweet with a fabric collection as a launching point. Sometimes I do this just enjoy a new palette I wouldn't think to put together myself.

My second Plenty of Thyme quilt has an autumn palette, which I built using a picture on Pinterest. I knew I wanted something rich and warm, but I also wanted a little guidance. Sometimes using a palette or a picture gives you nuance in the colours rather than just the obvious autumn shades.

Question: For someone new to EPP, you have some great resources regarding basting, stitching and finishing. Which of your patterns is ideal for a very first EPP quilt?

Jodi: I’ve been teaching my mum how to quilt since she retired a couple of years ago, and it’s been great watching how a total newbie interacts with colour and process. She first made my Caraway Quilt from my Seedlings book. She was used to knitting in the evenings, so making the little Caraway buds suited relaxed evening sewing, and then the big rectangles and machine sewing made the quilt come together easily and quickly.

Caraway quilt from Jodi’s book The Seedlings Quilts

Because she really enjoyed the EPP portion of that quilt, she chose Shallows next, because it also was made of simple 2-piece blocks of a single colour.

Now she’s making Cherish, a quilt made of 4-colour blocks, and she’s really enjoying learning to put colours together. In the other quilts, the overall palette was chosen with my help, and then she just went to work, and put the blocks together in a random scrappy layout. So, Cherish Quilt is different. Each block needs a little planning and play. I mentioned earlier that my year so far hasn’t really drawn me to that type of making, but she’s loved it. Having a project that needs a little more headspace has ben a real joy for her.

Last year my kids and I made a hexie quilt together and they helped me make little videos and take lots of photos of the process. Even though a quilt like this would normally just be sewn in rows, we showed how to make it into blocks first so it was easier for small hands.

secretgardenhexiequilt.talesofcloth3.JPG

The Secret Garden Hexie Quilt a great, free resource for those wanting to make their first quilt, or a quilt with kids. But really, you could use those videos to guide you through almost any EPP quilt. Once you’ve basted your shapes, the sewing-together process is basically the same for any quilt. My Email sign up comes with my top 10 tips for EPP that are great for someone wanting to dive in with something different to the traditional hexie quilt!

Question: What’s happening next for you?

Jodi: Well, I’m so glad you asked! ;P This week we’ve made some huge changes to our website so that we can accept payments in multiple currencies! 75% of our customers aren’t in Australia, so we hope this will be a great change for many people who want to buy but haven’t been sure how the Aussie dollar compares with their own.

We’re also celebrating our 5 year anniversary! After all I’ve shared here, I’m sure you can understand how proud I am to be loving my work after 5 years. I can absolutely see why most businesses finish up within 2 years. I wanted to be one of them so many times! So getting to 5 feels like an amazing gift and an incredible achievement.

Thank you, Jodi, for sharing your heart, your process and some of what goes on behind the scenes at Tales of Cloth. I’m honored that you chose to open up here and super proud of you for carrying your business forward through the tough times as you shape it into something that fits you well.

Congratulations! You deserve to be proud. Please keep it up, as you are an inspiration to many!

xoxo,

Rachel Hauser