Kimberly’s quilt pattern “Staring Contest” for Ruby Star Society, featuring her Anagram and Grid collections
RUBY STAR SOCIETY
AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA
A lifelong “art dabbler,” Kimberly Kight began sewing as a hobby. She soon found that she was more interested in fabric than sewing. “When I started,” recounts Kimberly, “there wasn’t a lot of fabric that spoke to me.” She scoured thrift stores and online sources and began to collect vintage fabrics. Kim saw an untapped niche in the quilting fabric industry and immediately wanted to print her own fabric, but she found that there were few resources for fabric printing. Her research inspired her to start a blog about fabric. Until 2011, True Up provided fabric lovers with a “global fabric fix,” featuring interviews with designers, collection previews, links, and a “swatch of the day.” Always faithful to its tagline, “all fabric, all the time,” True Up soon became an industry favorite. Melody Miller cites Kimberly’s blog as her “gateway to the industry” when she first began to explore fabric design.
In 2011, Kimberly released A Field Guide to Fabric Design. Still in print ten years later, her book offers straightforward instructions on color theory, creating designs and repeat patterns using traditional and digital techniques, and multiple methods for creating fabric from those designs.
The inspiration for many of Kimberly’s designs comes from vintage fabrics. “I’ve collected a lot of fabric over the past twenty years. There are pieces in my collection that I love and think should live again, and I try to build a story from those. Sometimes it’s a mash-up of different prints. Sometimes it’s literally just a jumping-off point; I start with one print but change it so much that it becomes something totally different.”
With her vintage fabric in front of her, Kimberly traces directly from a swatch into Procreate or an Adobe app on her iPad, depending on the look she wants. Antique typography is also a source of inspiration. She draws in black-and-white and adds color last. Sarah Watts describes her Ruby Star colleague’s color sensibility as “Retro Airstream...like fun seventies wallpaper and couches.” Kimberly notes that she often finds herself in a “blue, pink, and rust world” but is also drawn to bright reds and yellows.
Working full-time as a speech therapist, Kimberly finds that one of the most challenging aspects of fabric design is finding the time to do it. With the support of Ruby Star Society and Moda, however, Kimberly can focus on her “happy place.” She explains, “I love just working and getting in the zone, when the hours go by designing and moving things around and recoloring. I just love it!”
