Prints charming making dreams come true for Elizabeth House
- posted: 08 Apr. 2008
- scrolllifestyle@byui.edu
Quilts may remind people of their grandmothers, but Elizabeth House, a 22-year-old senior studying art at BYU-Idaho, recently broke into the market, creating prints that she hopes will appeal to younger women.
House designs prints for fabric that are “meant for a younger generation.” House said she began her first line about a year before getting her first contract with a quilting goods company. She and her mother have been quilting for many years and began a professional business called Cherry House Quilts about a year ago.
House’s first line of prints will be available for preview in May in many quilt shops and online. The line, called Lizzydish, will be available for sale at the end of the year.
“They [quilt vendors] keep talking about a young, new generation of quilting,” House said, “but what they mean is 30-year-old moms dressing their kids.”
It may be uncommon to see modernized prints for quilting fabric, so House decided to design her own and see how people in the industry responded.
“It’s an incredible foot in the door [for me] in the industry,” House said. “All these women who are the darlings of the fabric industry are about 35-ish and there is a limit to what they can do. I have no boundaries.” House’s line may be considered unusual to the quilting market, and some wouldn’t embrace it.
“I designed a line called ‘Paper Airplane’ first. Most companies were really dismissive saying, ‘That’s not really the direction we’re going in,’” House said.
Selling the idea to companies may involve a lot of convincing.
“[The companies] have to know that you are able to do more,” House said. “Smaller companies who are just trying to keep existing aren’t willing to go out on a limb with something new and different,” House said.
One company seemed to think highly of her designs.
“Andover said to me, ‘Normally, we don’t take people into the industry who don’t already have a name for themselves, but you can stay,’” House said.
House said she thinks young women will need to have sewing skills in the future.
“It’s important for girls to know how to sew; fewer girls do today. I want girls to be enticed to do something, to make something. I want to keep the tradition alive. When the women who are doing it now are gone, the tradition will go with them and the market will die.”
House has a blog at www.lizzyhouse.com. She plans to begin a quilt guild at BYU-I
this summer. 
