The newest Oliver + S trunk show has been booked for the remainder of the summer. If you’re in the area, stop by one of our retailers to participate in the activities they will be hosting in conjunction with the show.

You can see the trunk show at the following locations:

• Waechter’s Silk Shop Asheville NC, June 2-June 15
• Seams Like Home Quilt Shoppe, Anchorage AK, June 19-July 3
• Colonial Quilts, Savannah GA, July 10-July 24
• Bay Window Quilt Shop, Perham MN, July 30-August 13
• The Stitchin’ Post, Sisters OR, August 18-September 7

The new Oliver + S spring trunk shows have started making their way across North America. Here are a few photos of the garments traveling in one of our shows.

The first four stops scheduled are:

• Cloth & Bobbin, Narberth PA, March 28-April 7
• Bobbin’s Nest Studio, Santa Clara CA, April 15-April 23
• Olive Juice Quilt Shop (formerly A Stitch in Time), Onalaska WI, April 27-May 7
• Hip Stitch, Albuquerque NM, May 12-25

We’ll be adding to this list over time, so stay tuned for more locations and dates.

If you are a retailer and would like to book a trunk show for your shop, please email us for details.

If you’re in New York, be sure to stop by Purl Patchwork on Sullivan Street to see their Oliver + S window display.

Purl is well-known for its outstanding selection of fabrics. The staff stocks beautiful Japanese prints, a wide selection of Liberty tana lawn, and a number of other exquisite offerings inside this jewel box of a shop.

For these samples Purl selected a sweet floral Liberty print for the Birthday Party Dress and paired it with a coordinating Kona cotton solid for the tab. Because Liberty prints are very light-weight and ever-so-slightly sheer, we used a white cotton lawn for the facings to be sure they didn’t show through. (The Liberty print sold out within two days of setting up the window display, so I’m sorry I can’t give you a link to it.)

The Sailboat Top and Pants are made from a fresh architecture-inspired Anna Griffin print and a Kona cotton.

We raided the fantastic button selection at Purl’s yarn shop just down the street for the finishing touch. Those buttons on the pants are wool felt!

And here are some views of the window from inside the store. How about those giant paper dolls?

Located in historic downtown McMinnville, Oregon, Boersma’s Sewing Center offers a tremendous range of products and services, from sewing and knitting supplies to long-arm quilting machines for rent and sewing classes of all sorts.

Because the store is located in a former department store, Boersma’s also has enormous glass windows at the outside of the shop. We’re thrilled to be featured as their fall window display; the large-scale paper dolls from our banner at Quilt Market look terrific displayed among the clothing samples made from our patterns, with giant scissors in the act of cutting out the dolls and their outfits.

You can see more photos from the shop windows on the Boersma’s Flickr set.

I’m so excited to have been asked by our top distributor, Brewer, to give a talk at the School House Series at Quilt Market this year. My presentation, “Oliver + S: more than just paper dolls,” will be held at 11:00 this Friday in room 372B. We’ve got slides, samples, some materials to hand out, a drawing for some gifts, and a few surprises as well.

If you’re planning to attend the show, I hope you’ll join us for the presentation.

The fall trunk show has left the building. First stop: Quilt Essential Fabrics in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

We showed you the fabrics we selected for the show. Would you like to see how the samples turned out?

I think the fabrics in the 2 + 2 blouse and skirt are so fun together, with all those polka dots in different scales. We used a light-weight quilting cotton for the blouse, since the heavier home dec quality would have been too stiff. But the pleats look terrific in the heavier fabric. I want to wear this one myself!

The playdate dress has the same print as the 2 + 2 skirt, but in a different colorway. And I like how the weight of the fabric helps to maintain a crisp inverted pleat at the front. The patterned piping gives the dress a fun little shot of color and texture, too.

The Sandbox pants look great in corduroy, and the use of a printed fabric at the waistband adds a little interest without overwhelming it.

Flannel Bedtime Story pajamas are cozy for fall, and we used the home dec fabric for the neckband, waistband, and leg trim. Again, I like how just a bit of the busy print doesn’t overwhelm the outfit but gives it a little pop.

And the Sunday Brunch turned out beautifully. I really need to take a photo of the inside of the jacket because our sample maker did such an amazing job with the binding at the seams. It’s as beautiful inside as it is outside, which is really saying something for an un-lined jacket. That little kick pleat at the back skirt looks really nice and crisp in the heavier fabric, too.

I neglected to ask our sample makers whether I can identify them here. Is it ok, everyone? I’m thrilled at what beautiful work they did, and I’m sure they’re pround of it as well.

We’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of the fall patterns in just a couple of weeks, and in the meantime we’ve been pulling together our fall trunk show, which will be making its way around the country to show off the patterns.

This season we fell in love with Denyse Schmidt’s County Fair collection by Free Spirit. The patterns and colors are fresh and exciting, with a bit of vintage flavor and a contemporary autumnal color palette.

County Fair has a lovely weight that is very appropriate to fall dressing. It’s slightly heavier than a quilting cotton, with a wonderful drape. Although the line is billed as a “home dec” weight, it’s not heavy or stiff like you might imagine. Instead, it’s perfect for little jackets, skirts, and pants. I’m having trouble keeping my hands off the fabrics and wish I could sew all the samples myself, it’s so wonderful.

If you’re a wholesale customer who is interested in hosting the trunk show, please drop us a line. The collection will be ready to go by the end of August, and we’d love to send it your direction!

We were rather excited to learn that our new friends at J. Leutenegger, our exclusive distributor in Australia and New Zealand, decided to reproduce our booth at their quilt market, held last weekend near Sydney. And they did a bang-up job, too, especially considering the short time frame in which they assembled it all. Look, they found the same cabinets, table, and chairs. And even the same flowers!

Boutique sewers, here’s your chance to use those labels! We’ve lined up two shops here in Manhattan, two sweet little boutiques that want to carry Oliver + S handmade clothing.

If you’d like to lay claim to selling your sewn garments in New York City, drop us a line at information@oliverands.com. We’re assembling a list of interested craftspeople and will pass along that list to both shop owners. The shop owners can then contact you to negotiate terms for a small collection of Oliver + S clothing styles in their shops.

Please note that Oliver + S won’t be part of these business arrangements; we’re merely making introductions so you can start discussions and hopefully work together to assemble a collection that will be unique to each shop. The specifics are up to you and the shop owners to work out.

Good luck, and happy sewing!

P.S. Regarding the photos: I love that word, “purveyor”. Makes me wish we had used it in our branding. I mean, “Oliver + S: purveyors of quality sewing patterns for children’s clothing” is a bit long, but it has such a nice sound to it, doesn’t it?

I gave you a Before teaser and then never posted the After photos! So sorry. Actually, I’ve been procrastinating because my photos didn’t turn out very well and I was secretly hoping they would miraculously improve if I let them sit on my desktop for a while. I think I confused them with green tomatoes or bananas or something.

Oddly, they didn’t get any better. But you can still get the idea.

And I negected to photograph the newest element in our booth: we bought an industrial laundry cart (the kind found at your local laundromat) to use for displaying patterns and for hanging garments. It’s very cute and rather practical. If it weren’t so big (by New York standards) I would use it in our design studio, but in our current location it would eliminate the option of walking. We’ll forego the cart for the time being.