Janet Rae Nesbitt is the creative force behind One Sister Designs.
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| Janet Rae Nesbitt of One Sister Designs |
We caught up with Janet in a crazy afternoon as she was
preparing for quilt market, and putting finishing touches on her latest
book. We got a little glimpse into where
she’s from and what’s going on with her now.
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| Janet on the farm as a little girl |
Janet grew up in Western Washington, in the tiny town of
Reardan, the daughter of a dry land wheat farmer. One of four girls, she grew
up helping out on the farm with harvest and haying, whatever needed doing!
She
says she was an “oops” baby, born years after the other girls, so she spent a
lot of her younger days tagging along with her father, doing chores, feeding
cows, etc. She says, “Even as a little
girl, I’d go out with my dad to milk the cow, and my “job” was to hold her tail
to keep her from swishing Dad in the face as he milked! So I learned from a
very young age the value and benefits of hard work. Dad also taught important
lessons about integrity, honesty, and perseverance, while my mom taught me
kindness and to have a joyful and willing heart.”
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| Some of Janet's One Sister Design Quilts |
Janet always enjoyed sewing and crafting and got some
mentoring by participating in her local 4-H club. While in 4-H she made her
first quilt using a McCall’s pattern with a 4-point star. She even entered the quilt in the local
county fair! “Even way back then I liked star patterns!” she said.
As a young mother, Janet took a hand appliqué class from Sue
Linker who was teaching her Sun Bonnet Sue Throughout the Year (Martingale/That
Patchwork Place) and that was probably the first time the designing bug hit.
Janet started changing Sue’s patterns, with her permission, to Overall Bill,
and began drafting blocks of her own. Janet and Sue met once a month for 6
months and Janet got her foot strongly planted in the quilt design world. Janet even designed a quilt with Overall Bill
holding the cow’s tail during milking time!
In 1993, Janet, her husband and their two small boys moved
back home to Reardan. Her husband had a great opportunity in nearby Spokane for
work, and since Janet’s dad had recently passed, her mother needed more family
around. The downside of this move is
that Janet was now out of work. It did however, afford her the opportunity to
volunteer at school and church, and to continue quilting and trying a more
serious go at designing quilts. Janet says, “I didn’t think of it as
“designing”, I was just sketching something and appliquéing it down to make a
quilt! And yes, I do still have the patterns!”
The beginning of the Buggy Barn
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| The Buggy Barn on the Nesbitt's property. |
Then in 1996, her youngest son was heading off to
kindergarten and Janet’s sister Pam’s youngest was headed to college, so the
two decided to open a quilt store in the Janet and her husband’s barn! The
realtor had called the barn a ‘carriage house, but an elderly woman in the area
told them that it was always called the ‘buggy barn.’ And that became the name of the quilt store.
Since the Buggy Barn was about 25 miles from the nearest
city, Janet and her sister were looking for a marketing angle that gave a
reason for customers to make the drive out to shop. One day, a very dear
customer came in and was explaining a method she’d seen for making scrappy
pockets for a vest. Janet drafted a pattern a transferred the concept to a
pieced quilt, and Buggy Barn Crazies was born! This is a technique of stacking
fat quarters, cutting on the lines, shuffling the fabric so there are no two
fabric pieces alike in the same block, and then stitching it all back together
again. It is a nice systematic process and only requires squaring it up once
you’re done! What everyone seems to like about the technique of crazy quilting
is that the cutting is fast and easy and then you’re done and sewing.
Initially, Buggy Barn Crazies was the marketing angle that
would get customers to the remote location to take a class at the shop, but
people had conflicts and began asking to just buy the pattern. So this is how Janet, the pattern designer,
began. Since that first pattern, she has designed and produced over two dozen
patterns, and has her designs as the basis of 30 books!
The continued success of One Sister Designs
Now her brand is One Sister Designs and she is publishing
her fifth book under her new name. Her latest book came out in August (2016)
and was published by Martingale. (Yes, she will be a quilt market in the Henry
Glass booth signing her new book and giving several copies away).
So from pattern designer, the next step was fabric designer.
That’s when Henry Glass comes into the picture. About 2003, Henry Glass &
Co. approached Janet and her sister about designing fabric under the Buggy Barn
name. Since those early days, Janet has continued to design fabric under the
One Sister Designs name.
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| Showing off the colors Janet loves most, at a recent quilt market |
“For me fabric design is all about the color! Then I have to
have a variety of scales in the patterns in each line. I really like word
prints, stripes, and dots, I love stars and I have to have plaids! I can’t sew
with just a few fabrics! I’m a scrap-piecer at heart, and I love to hand
appliqué,” she says, “but I’m probably best known for the crazy technique of
piecing. It is so much fun! Once someone tries it, they usually get hooked.”
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| With her two grown boys, Ross and Zack, and husband, Tom. |
Janet’s inspired by the things around her; houses, barns,
country roads, gardens and color! She loves to garden, bike, kayak and paddle
board with her husband and the two grown boys. And, of course, quilt! She also
still has her hand in teaching both the crazy piecing technique and needle turn
applique.
Here is Janet’s book list in order of publication: Down This Country Road, Completely Crazy, Crazy Favorites, Crazy
at the Cabin, published by Martingale and the newest book, to be released at Quilt Market; Back Porch Quilts.
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| Janet's books under the One Sister brand (not shown; Back Porch Quilts) |
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| This latest book will be released at Quilt Market |
The feature quilt from her newest book; Back Porch Quilts.
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| Actually hung on the back porch! |
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| Close up of the quilt |
