I have always loved the vintage feel and variety of the products offered up by Indygo Junction.  I have gotten to know Amy Barickman, the woman behind the company, and have asked her to tell us more about what and how she does what she does!  

So here is Amy: 

When Gina contacted me to guest blog for QuiltersBuzz, I was thrilled! What a wonderful opportunity to share and inspire!! I will start out by telling you a little bit about myself and my businesses. I am married with 2 children, (my greatest accomplishments).

In 1990, straight out of Fine Arts school at the University of Kansas, I launched Indygo Junction, sourcing from designers from my mother’s craft store.  Over the years I have marketed the talents of more than 25 designers, publishing 600 pattern titles and 70 books. In addition, to self publishing, we recently published Indygo Junction’s Needle Felting and The Vintage Workshop’s Art-to-Wear with C&T publishing.

As an entrepreneur with a love for antiques and vintage, I began collecting an archive of vintage ephemera with the vision of fabric design, and that lead to licensing designs with Red Rooster Fabrics.

As my love for vintage art grew and as technology improved, I envisioned what crafters could do with their home computer and printer. I founded The Vintage Workshop in 2002 to create products that combine timeless vintage artwork with inkjet printable papers and fabrics.

  We offer user-friendly kits, CDs and downloads for purchase direct from our website. Shop day or night, artwork downloads instantly to your computer! We stock thousands of high quality images...take the time to visit the site, Sewing is a fun category to browse. If you are new to the download process, we have a "Try Before You Buy" section you will want to visit. 

I am fortunate to have a wonderful creative team to work with, and we are constantly collaborating to develop content for the businesses.  With Valentine’s Day around the corner, Dian mentioned she was creating some fun fabric postcards - and I thought they would be perfect for QuiltersBuzz! 

So here it is—

The image we used is the Deco Heart from Download Collection IE107, The Vintage Workshop’s Image Emporium Valentine II.  It was inkjet printed to our linen fabric-my favorite among our fabrics. Consider adding a vintage-style postcard back. You can add your greeting with a fabric pen.  A variety of postcard back images can be found in Download Collection Postcard Backs IE475 as well as several in our Art-to-Wear book and Paper Arts Sampler kit. 

Embellish the image as much or as little as you like.  Adornments should be small and secured well; the flatter, the better.  Dian stitched size 11 red seed beads to accent the doily-like edge detail on the card, then combined the same size colored and pearl beads to add dimension to the basket of flowers.

If you are not in the mood to stitch try Hot-fix rhinestones using our Stone Styler.  For stiffener use either Timtex, Peltex, or Fast2Fuse.  Sandwich your card together with the stiffener in the middle, and then secure layers using your favorite fusible product. Finish the card using a zigzag, satin stitch, or binding the edge. 

Now put on a first class stamp, mail it and wait for the response from the lucky recipient! 

I did get to do some shopping at an antique show in Kansas City several weekends ago and wanted to share my finds!  Here are some fun retro Valentines—I love the card with scissors, the greeting reads…I’ll cut it short- If you’ll “CUT” me in on your Heart, Valentine!  

Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Amy 

FREE Download! 

PS As a welcome to QuiltersBuzz readers, we are offering a free download.  This birthday card was a recent giveaway to our Vintage Workshop newsletter subscribers. It would make a wonderful fabric postcard. Sign-up and receive an image each month!

Amy is on the Lookout.... 

For those of you who are doing your own creating and maybe want to become designers...

According to Amy, she is always on the look out for great designers with fresh new ideas.  She says, "We are always looking for new designers, and invite submissions.  As we do not have any formal guidelines, we request photo(s) and a brief description as the initial step in considering content for publication." Email to: info@indygojunction.com.  

Thanks for the post Amy.