Sally Kelly - by Barbara

On a cold November evening there was a particularly good turnout of members and visitors to hear our speaker, fabric designer Sally Kelly.

Dierdre introduced us to Sally, who is a local resident living in Crystal Palace, and with the microphone adjusted Sally introduced herself by saying that it was the first time she had spoken to such a large audience and was more used to talking to small groups.

Sally went to Art School where she studied textile design which was always her first love. After graduating she went to work at Liberty, the mecca for all fabric designers. Her starting point was the Scarf department on the shop floor. Who doesn’t know about Liberty scarves!? With fabric design as her goal Sally worked in the store alongside other young graduates working their way towards the design department. For Sally that route was via the Buying department, working initially in admin and then as the buyer’s assistant in the gifts department. Here she collaborated with many small artist studios and artisan makers. This experience stood her in good stead when she became the buyer for the Christmas shop, a coveted post.

Eventually Sally made it to the fabric design department. At this stage in the talk Sally drew our attention to the Liberty principle of using their designs across a wide range of items sold in the store, from Tana lawn fabric through furnishing fabrics to the heaviest canvas weight material. With the same patterns used on cookware, homeware, stationery, china, bedding and other items. Sally passed round samples of the Ianthe design, that we all recognise, in many different weights and colours.

We were very lucky that Sally was able to pass round samples from fabric ranges where she was part of the design team. Beautiful swatch books with the full range of designs and colours to see. Who wouldn’t love to own one of those?

Sally went on to talk to us about her design process. Starting with a hand drawing in ink, the design is scanned into the computer to develop a fabric layout by working on the repeats and the colour mix and then different ranges of colours. It was a privilege to see all the original work, including designs where she had started her work with individual wildflower watercolour paintings. Drawings and paintings and fabrics were passed through the audience all evening, so much beautiful work.

After more than 20 years Sally left Liberty to work on her own designs. She is now working on her 16th collection for Windham Fabrics, an American fabric producer for whom she produces 2 collections a year. These are mainly quilting cottons but with some lawns and the designs are also used for gift items and wrapping paper. Now having control over her own work Sally has designed on gift ranges for Kew Gardens, Lush cosmetics, and Highgrove. 

To end the talk Sally talked to us about her first visit to the Festival of Quilts this year. She confessed to not having experience with patchwork or quilting but had made her first quilt, using her own fabrics, for the show – it was a very good first quilt! Sally had sent her fabrics to some of the makers that she had met at the show, and she had some of their makes for us to see. They included a lovely pair of trainers and my personal favourite, a quilt made by Adam Burch (some of you may have seen adamsews on YouTube and I believe Instagram, in brilliant brights and contrasting black fabric. 

Thanks to Sally for a fascinating insight into her world.