Graffiti Quilting You Can Color!

As I am sure you are aware by now,

I PUBLISHED MY VERY FIRST COLORING BOOK!!!

With over 50 different designs to color, I am super proud of this book!

Booyah!

I am proud to announce that it was a huge success:
selling over 150 copies in the first month!

The idea of a coloring book was stewing in my mind
before I did my Graffiti Quilting World tour at the beginning of the summer.

But I just wasn’t quite sure if the
“adult coloring book train” was one
that I wanted to ride.

(Not that I don’t love coloring and stress relief as much as the next adult,
I just had a hard time with the idea of having a coloring book that
I wouldn’t be able to share with all the youngins’ in my life.

As I toured to Canada, England, and Australia
to teach my Graffiti Quilting technique,
I just kept hearing time and time again how much
my students thought my drawings and designs would
work in a coloring book.

(It also helped when those comments followed up with,
“If you made a coloring book I would FOR SURE buy a copy”)

πŸ˜‰

So, it seemed as if by the end of the summer, the stars were just starting to align.

I mean,
I already had like a ton of drawings in my sketchbook
that would fit perfectly into a cohesive coloring book.

So in October, I put the project into motion
and the book was in production by the week of Thanksgiving!

I know that sounds like I just threw the book together in a month.
But hey, when you have spent your whole life drawing,
and the last 4 years of your life perfecting a specific style,
putting a book together that encapsulates that is
“just another day in the life”.

Here are a few of the finished pages of the coloring book
(without the watermark, obvs):

Upon finishing the coloring book,
I found that I gained much more than I bargained for.

I learned 2 things:

One: There is just something to be said about buckling down
and just putting in the time to perfect your art- whatever style it may be.
It is one thing to create a single work of art with polish and poise.
It is a whole ‘nother ballgame to create a cohesive series of pieces
that all speak the same visual language.

Two: When you create art, everything is morphing from one thing to the next.
Publishing this coloring book not only expanded the breadth of Graffiti Quilting,
but it paid an homage to Graffiti Quilting’s humble beginnings.

When I first started the Graffiti Quilting style,
I practiced daily in my sketchbook.
(These pages are from 2009, before I started quilting
or even new that quilting machines existed!)


Then, I moved to fabric and thread to further explore and perfect the technique.

The coloring book was the perfect way to bring me back to the roots
of developing my personal style and
what Graffiti Quilting means today.

And that is pretty awesome.

For those of you who have the coloring book,
you’ll notice that it is called
VOLUME 1.

Hopefully this means there is more to come
in my endeavorΒ as a coloring book designer.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

And if you don’t have the coloring book,
I’m just going to leave this right here… πŸ˜‰

(BUY IT NOW)

Be great to each other.

-Karlee

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