Back in June of 2016, I decided on a whim to enter Stash Fabrics first ever Design Star competition. I had just begun working with Art Gallery Fabrics as their sewcialite and thought it would be a neato way to represent by creating a virtual bundle using only AGF, since, of course, I was all #AGFforlife. I’d never really thought in bundles before, so I basically just picked a bunch of turquoise and black & white variations and called it a day.
Then in August I found out that I was selected to be in the 2nd round of the competition. Yaaaay! And this time, we had to choose based on a theme, which at first I thought was cool until I found out it was vintage. Like vintage is totally cool and I love it when I see people create in that aesthetic, but it’s not naturally my jam. And on top of this, AGF is modern and hip, so I was like how am I going to create this bundle. Legit I almost quit the competition at this point because I didn’t think I could do it. And then I gave in and relaxed and stepped way outside my comfort zone and these lavender/tan/black prints popped out at me and I was like ooooh. And then the rest of the bundle kinda just flowed from those first prints going from browns to pinks to light blues. To me, this bundle wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to where I felt comfortable putting it onto the interweb, so yaaay!
And phew I made it to the next round. Yaaaaay! And this theme was gender neutral for all ages, which is a theme I’m all about. When Helena as born, we consciously chose to create a gender-balanced environment, so this was very top-of-mind. So basically I envisioned creating a bundle that all genders from kid-to-adult would think is super rad. I’m obsessed with the solid smooth denims, so I knew that had to be in there. And theeen there was this gray print with yellow and light blue, so I used that as my jumping off point because it was perfect to me. To elevate the palette, I went with more mint blue and mustard, but boy oh boy am I still in love with this one.
And look. This is when our bundles became real bundles for sales, which took my love to another level.
Okay so next round had the theme of Wanderlust, which I had to look up so just in case you don’t know it means a strong desire to travel. Immediately I was thrown into the memory of my favorite trip with my best friend Jennifer: Sedona, Arizona. The colors there were so vivid and really stuck in my mind, so I knew exactly how it had to look. Lucky for me, Art Gallery Fabrics has some awesome designers that love this palette and Stash Fabrics had some to choose from. And at this point, I feel like I was developing a routine to creating a bomb bundle, which was finding a couple prints to base the rest of the bundle off of, which you can see here too.
Yaaaay. I was in the final three! And this round I wanted to do something strong and different. No two bundles of mine had looked the same, so I wanted to continue that into the finals. And weirdly I started with hot pink. This color has been my nemesis in life and I even wrote a whole blog post about it a year ago, so I decided to face it head on. And then once again I came across a couple prints that got the ball rolling to bring in the other colors. Never did I imagine that I would create a sophisticated masculine bundle from a hot pink starting point, but this was wow to me.
And guess what?!?!? I wooooooon!!! I mean you probably knew that already but oh em gee I couldn’t believe it. Yayayayay! And my final task as the 2016 Design Star Champ was to create a final bundle that would be the 12th bundle in the Design Star subscription. And for this one, I was able to pick outside of the current Stash Fabrics stock. So with sleeves rolled up, I curated this bundle, which, to me, is absolute perfection. Aaaaand they have some of these bundles for sale in their shop so if you wanna play with these then get it while it’s hot.
So what started as a while and an honest challenge for me became an exercise in creating my own technique for creating bananas bundles. And to keep the bundle party going, I will be curating a 100% Art Gallery Fabrics bundle for the a new AGF Remix Club with Stash Fabrics starting in June. You can totally sign up now:
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