We have been in awe of Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts for over a decade. She has been an Aurifil Designer for years and has been sharing her love of our thread with fans, students, and peers for as long as we can remember. She has impeccable taste, is wonderfully endearing, and both she and her designs are beloved worldwide. We love working with her on collections, both because she always selects a stunning range of colors and because she does so much with her threads that each box functions like a full on thread education.
She currently has three curated Aurifil collections available at shops worldwide — Signature Style & Secret Stash share her go-to neutrals & colors and her latest release, English Garden, is a soft range of 12 hues designed to perfectly complement her Andover Fabrics of the same name. We’d consider all three to be sewing room staples, whether you’re working on a pattern from Laundry Basket Quilts, picking up a bit of thread painting, crafting something new with your favorite solids, or even better, with any one of Edyta’s fabrics with Andover.
Find all three on Shop Aurifil and then head to Laundry Basket Quilts to browse Edyta’s exclusive Aurifil sets, available only on her site… from a coordinating set of Aurifloss for English Garden to two stunning sets of 50wt to coordinate with Cocoa Blues (Large & Small). No matter what your quilty need, Edyta always has something that perfectly suits.
We had the pleasure of chatting with Edyta last week, just before a NorthEast storm and a once-in a century Eclipse. It’s always a delight and we loved talking with her about her plans and goals for the coming year. There is so much to look forward to! Thanks so much to Edyta for her time and her stories!
(note: this interview was transcribed from a conversation between Edyta Sitar & Aurifil’s Creative Director, Erin Sampson on April 2, 2024.)
Hi Edyta! Thank you so much for joining me today for a chat – I always love having the opportunity to talk with you! How are you??
Yes. Really well, the family is growing, you know, and everybody is thriving. My kids are getting older and older. All of them are just enjoying life and growing and still living in Southern California. And a few weeks ago, after Easter breakfast, we all went for a nice walk on the beach and it’s just such a good reminder… such a good spot to live, good food… and also the business is thriving! It’s just growing so much. We just moved locations and my hope, my plan really, is to open an event center for crafters, quilters, and all needle & thread stitchers.
Awesome! I feel like you had mentioned something about that last year, and I wasn’t sure if it had gone through yet or not. That’s so exciting!
So, we did purchase the building and we moved in in January. We are in process of remodeling and we have about two thirds done. I’m expecting that sometime toward the end of this year or the beginning of next year, we’ll have a nice grand opening and start being able to have customers come in and enjoy themselves… to stitch and quilt with us and have a cup of coffee and a good dessert. That’s my dream!
That’s incredible, I’m sure it’s gonna do so well, too. I feel like everything that you’ve done so far has been leading to this point and the network that you’ve built… the community that you’ve built, I think is such a rich community. People are just going to be so excited about this new opportunity to come together.
I’m excited about it too, and very, very thankful for all the friends who stood by me and always supported me with the kind words… and to all who supported my business with purchases from us that have allowed us to grow. We now employ all these wonderful, wonderful people, and a lot of them are navy spouses… we are so proud of that mission. Our next step is that we are able to figure out how to have some of them work remotely. So if they’re moving on with their families, they can take the job with them and still be part of Laundry Basket Quilts in some magical way. So that has been a business honor and you know… I’m a girl from Poland… I’m somebody that came from nothing, and now being able to even think about having the ability to give other people jobs. It blows me away. That stops me in my tracks…
I love that you’ve been able to do that with the Navy spouses as well. I remember talking about that in your last interview and how that program came into being. And I think it’s incredible that that’s still something that’s a huge part of your process. And the fact that you could go remote to so that you have the opportunity to build those relationships.
Yeah, and to have them last… I love that part. But the newest thing that we’re doing is right now just really working hard on bringing to life the Event Centers so quilters and crafters from all areas can come and enjoy themselves, from sewing to playing with fabric by creating pictures and collages to stitching and embroidery to crochet… it just goes on and on and then ends up with watercolors. So this new Event Center is going to have a lot of fun things happening, I hope. My goal is to have quilters teach quilters or crafters teach crafters, so I wanted the people who I have learned from, the regular quilters, the people that share with me like, ‘Hey, did you see this’, I want those people to be our staff and share with other quilters and crafters. So we’re working on that. That’s my new journey.
That’s going to be amazing. And you’re thinking end of this year, early next year is the overall target?
Yes, I’m hoping that we’re gonna soft open at the end of this year and then have a grand opening at the beginning of next year. It is just that the construction is definitely taking much longer than I expected. That is pushing us and I don’t want to set unrealistic expectations… I want to give ourselves time to welcome everybody. So we’re taking our time, but already, we have multiple studios that we can use for filming our YouTube videos, and that has been life changing for our business. That has been so much fun. So that is just wonderful.
It’s a wonderful way to connect. I was thinking, too, the last time that we had spoken was before everything shut down with COVID. At that point, you were really focusing on your YouTube channel. It was, in retrospect, very timely, because then when everything shut down with COVID, you already had this established… way to connect with your followers, and you’ve just exploded with that and continued to get it to grow.
I think it has been incredible to be able to connect with everybody… add this to, you know, we have wonderful patterns, we have excellent fabrics and kits, we do those pre cut kits… adding a video element to it offers even more explanation. That really, really helps. So I’m very thankful for that part. And definitely our YouTube channel is growing in that way.
The next thing that I wanted to do is that we now have a lot of fun subscriptions, and we’re noticing our customers are loving them. One of our most successful is our Little Quilts Club, where you receive a complete quilt– quilt top, backing, and sometimes we include a fun tool, like a template. In one of the upcoming ones we’re going to include our Aurifil threads. It really gives the customers everything they need. The kit is pre-cut most of the time, and you just open this box and you make a little quilt… and just have something beautiful to hang and enjoy. This month is a super special month– we have two for the price of one– we add a bonus quilt in our shipping. So I’m super excited for our customers.
Yeah, that sounds incredible. I know that people will be really excited. Especially because, while I know there are a lot of people who get really into making all those decisions for themselves… I’m not one of those people. I’m definitely one of those people that would love to buy a predetermined kit, because it provides an achievable goal… that’s easy to dive into, you know, and it’ll still teach you how to create something new.
Yeah, I can guarantee results, but also use it as a learning tool. Just like in the past… you know, a mother would make a doll quilt with the daughter or son because she wanted to teach them how to stitch. And today, that’s what I’m trying to do… with every single little quilt, I poke at… let’s do a little English paper piecing. Why don’t we do a little triangle paper? What about trimming your blocks? Did you use this ruler? And in one of them I want to say hey, do you want to use another thread by Aurifil and I want to include the Aurifil thread because it’s nice to try it. There are still customers that are using certain things and you want to always give them that option… When you get it for free with your subscription, you’re more likely to try and see if that’s something you would enjoy.
Absolutely…
So, I’m trying to do that. And… we have incredible collections of fabric coming out. One of the other collections that I have is English Garden, and I have a beautiful set of threads, including my embroidery threads. I’m working on some embroidery projects that are coming out.
Oh that’s exciting!
Yeah, I’m going to keep in touch with you when they’re available, because I think our customers are going to love playing with them and will really enjoy them. I was able to get really cute canvas bags, but they’re like a soft canvas, easy to embroider… And then I have a pretty flower that I’m working on to embroider on it. That’s going to be a fun little kit. You get a bag and you just have to grab your threads, embroider with them, and you can then go to the store and show off your talent… right at your local grocery store!
Yeah, that’s perfect. When are those going to be available?
We’re hoping to have them in the next month or so, but we’ll be sure to share! They are almost done… we just got the bags, finally the right ones, because it has to be soft enough that you can stitch it but still canvas. So we just got those, I’m super excited about it. That will something that will have moving forward. And we have another new product– it’s a paper with the design on it. All that you do is place your paper on your fabric and iron and your design transfers to your background.
Oh, that’s fabulous!
Yeah, and we printed those in house… we do it ourselves. So we’re super excited about that…
Yeah, that takes out a lot of the extra work.
Yeah, you can just place that over any cotton and transfer and it’s gonna work. So that’s fabulous!
That’s really nice! We’ll make sure to share once they are ready so that I readers know and can go find them on your site! I would love to talk a little about what types of projects you’ve done with English Garden fabrics, and where people might want to use the collection that you put together for Aurifil, as well.
So first of all, we use the English Garden a lot in our Little Quilts Club, for smaller projects. I found myself pulling the threads and wanting to put some extra stitches… to do like a crazy quilt style and add a little bit of embroidery… the crazy stitches from crazy quilting. So for a little quilt that is so charming, so beautiful. Then, you know, when you do appliqué, if you want to add a little bit of extra oomph to the edges and put a little stitch, even if it’s a straight stitch around the edges to protect the edges of appliqué and give it a little extra detail, you can do that too. So those are there places that I thought, you know, the thread would work very, very nice. But especially, the third one would be that embroidered bag. But this particular package, especially for any hand stitchers and anybody that likes slow stitching, the embroidery threads work really, really nice. You can use one strand if you just want a very delicate touch, just like a little mist of color. Or you can turn the knob up a little bit using two or three to add more color to the edge with the embroidery stitch.
Amazing. I love that.
I don’t use more than three strands of thread in my projects. But I know that you know, there’s so many fun things, so many creative projects that you can play with using this thread. What’s nice about this collection is that it does not only go with the English Garden fabrics, but because the colors are so soft and delicate, this particular package goes well with any number of projects. I was making a snowflake for the holidays and I ended up grabbing one of the blues, because it’s so dusty, and so simple. I did a little cross stitch snowflake and it worked really, really well. So, don’t feel like you only have to use this with English Garden. The English Garden collection has a little softness to it. And that’s why it goes well with a lot of different colors and fabrics.
That makes sense. It’s a really versatile set.
And I love the dark pieces in it, too. They’re so classic, but so nice.
That’s wonderful. And then your English Garden fabrics were available at the end of last year at the same time as your 50wt set, is that right?
Yes.
So they’ve been out for a few months now… I’m sure that people are starting to work through some quilts. Do you have a favorite quilt or pattern that you did with English Garden?
There’s so many, but our Alaska English Garden is beautiful. And again, having the 50wt set is so nice for piecing. It’s just incredible. And then if you decide to quilt yourself at home, you can do it too. But we had some really good quilts with that collection.
Oh, I have to tell you something very, very magical that happened with the embroidery threads.
Yeah?
My daughter Delphine, she is my oldest who lives in New York. She’s not a quilter… she’s not, you know, a crafter. But suddenly, she reached out to me and she said, ‘Mom, I want to embroider a tablecloth for myself. With little branches, little flowers, little images…’ You know, it’s a little fun trend that you sit around a table and you can doodle on the tablecloth and then the host, later on can embroider on it.
That’s very cool.
Isn’t that cute?
That’s very cool. And what a fun idea for a dinner party or gathering as well.
Exactly. So, for this one, I packaged a beautiful tablecloth and guess what… the English Garden embroidery thread… and I sent it to her. She was so delighted… she was so, so happy. So I’m probably going to post something this week on Instagram about, you know, doing something like this… to just spread the word. I thought it would be just so much fun… you can do a simple drawing or even just your initials to show that you were at that dinner party. Then, over time, you gather all the dinner parties around the same tablecloth and whether it’s your family or your friends, it’s going to end up being your favorite tablecloth. Even if the tablecloth gets a little bit dirty, that’s okay. You know, that is part of life. I call it but leaving a simple stitches with and maybe– and that’s what I’m gonna show it too– because if you have a little wine stain, throw a little circle around it and add some petals and now you have a flower… it definitely camouflages that little oops moment.
That is such a beautiful idea. Taking those little bits of life and turning them into art. I love that.
Yeah… and you can write, like I said, initials… simple words… a small drawing… less is better, you know, don’t overthink… don’t have your guests worry about it. If they draw a little heart, that means that they enjoyed that moment and you want to capture that all in Aurifil stitches.
That’s really wonderful. I can’t wait to hear how it goes with your daughter, too, and what she thinks about the whole process.
I’m sure that she’ll be excited about it. Sometimes if you don’t want to do a bigger project, you could do a simple table runner or even your napkins, you know?
Yes absolutely… I think you’re going to start a whole new wave with this! I want to do one here, too! So, what else is happening with you for 2024 outside of the event space. What other collections are you looking forward to? I know you have two super cute quilt alongs that are currently running. Is that right?
Yes! So we have multiple quilt alongs and also multiple Block-of-the-Month programs. We have three BOMs that are super cool. We have our Tailor Shop Village that is just pretty houses and that is done with English Garden. Then, our second BOM called Sewing Basket… that is epic. It is so beautiful. And then we are starting our winter one, our Blizzard BOM this month. So lovely!
But something super awesome happened, we had a beautiful book called Rainbow Scraps. And I think this book is so classic, so much fun. It just shows you how you collect your scraps and arrange them in the most simple way of following the color wheel. And you just have this gorgeous rainbow of quilts in your stash. I love doing that. I’ve done it for over 30 years. One of my books I made was a quilt arranging the fabrics in a color wheel like a rainbow arrangement. Unfortunately, I sold that quilt so I don’t have it anymore. Somebody bought it, and I know they enjoyed it very, very much.
So that’s, that’s what is happening. I do have awesome collections coming out. We have a collection called Pebbles. It’s a light collection that’s lovely. We have a Beach House collection that is to die for… another incredible light and blue collection. And then I have a smaller collection that looks tea dyed.
Oh wow…
It’s so beautiful. That one mimics a look of wool with stains on it. It is incredible! And then I have just the simple little stars called Twinkle, twinkle. And that one is just stunning, too. So I have some fun stuff! And today actually, I’m working from home because I’m finishing a collection. It’s Practical Magic Two. It’s so beautiful with black and purples and gold and it’s just so full, and it’s just going to make such magic for any quilter that buys it. I think it’s gonna be very, very popular. I have a good feeling about that one.
When can we look forward to seeing some of these?
So, all of the collections that I mentioned to you are all scheduled to come out this year. So all of them are coming before the end of the year. And right now, this month, we are getting our next collection… the Joy Collection. It’s our Christmas collection. I have to start on my Christmas projects early. So it’s a holiday collection, really, not just Christmas… it’s the greens, the reds. It’s beautiful, very traditional. It’s really really nice.
Do you do usually start your holiday stitching around now or are you more of a Holiday in July type of person?
So, any time I can, I start up a project… sometimes I don’t even know who it is going to be for. But, I love making table runners and smaller projects so then I have a whole stash of them and when it comes to pulling gifts, I go to my stash and I have all of those gifts ready. I think sometimes that is a little bit better than putting too much pressure on yourself, thinking ‘oh, I have to finish 12 of them.’ Just keep making!
I’m also doing a video on table decorating. And that includes table runners, placemats, and napkins. I think when that video comes out on YouTube, a lot of our viewers are gonna be very, very excited to just grab some fabrics and start making projects that are wonderful.
Amazing, we’ll definitely look forward to that.
Our retreat this year… we have two retreats in the fall… In each of them, we have 50 participants who come and quilt with me. So, 100 total. And it is so incredible. And this is our fifth year for our retreat.
Is it really?
Yeah. Can you imagine? I’m excited! So, they’ll be coming in, and we’ll work on a quilt from Joy. And actually, I structure it so that you can either make a quilt, you can make four smaller quilts, or you can make a dozen table runners. So I think they’re going to love this, because you can make your blocks and then you can quilt them yourself. So, thinking that way and getting those those projects done ahead, is so much fun. And of course people receiving them and how joyful they are, and they can use them for the holidays. So I’m excited about doing my Christmas projects from Joy, but also to be able to share them with others.
Just so we know, are the registrations for those retreats all full?
Yes, yes… we’re full and we have a waiting list. That’s why I saw the need for opening an event center… So we could do more of the events and classes and make it available for a wider group of quilters and crafters… ones who could come on a weekend, for two or three days or even just one day or one afternoon. We’re going to have a variety of events, including smaller events just to three hours. For example, next Valentine’s– because we are already planning all our events– we’re going to have a couple’s event where couples can come enjoy a little dessert and make Valentine’s cards for each other.
Oh, that’s so nice.
Yeah. Well, I’m super excited about it.
It’s very cool that there will be such a variety of opportunities and classes… That it’s not just quilting… I really love that there’s this expansion that you’re looking at with the event center… that you’re hitting a lot of different areas.
I’m hoping to do that, because quilters love other things as well. So you know, any quilter would love to make a wreath and oh, if the wreath is made with fabrics, that’s even better! But quilters love to craft, make other projects, and do local gardening. So I’m seeing a little bit of a need for things like decorating on a shoestring and doing a little bit more of overall crafting and decor, not just quilting… but how you made the quilt, how to display the quilt, how do you use the quilt, how you take care of your quilt… and speaking of taking care of things, I have a brand new line of wonderful, wonderful goodies coming out. And that begins with a fabric spray.
Oh really?
Yes, fabric and quilt wash. Then we have a special special lotion for quilters for their hands. I put my lotion on and I always have to wipe my hands because I’m worried about getting any greasy stuff onto the fabric. So we developed a lotion from scratch that it’s so soft and delicate on your hands and wonderful to touch your fabrics. So, we have all these incredible wonderful things coming out that are going to be little sets or you can buy them individually from us and enjoy it.
So, I’m sure everyone will want to know when you are anticipating they would be available?
So we’re in the final stages of production of them. We are hoping to have them available in the next two months on our website. I’ll let you know and maybe we can do a giveaway for readers here on the blog or on the newsletter! I also want to add that we have the cutest little tools called Sew Daisy. They work SO well with Aurifil spools. They create a little hiding space for needles and such.
Wonderful, I love that!
Yeah, there are so many fun things happening, so we’ll have to share more later this year!
It’s always so great to talk with you, Edyta – thank you for sharing everything happening in your world and we’re looking forward to the next one!
Thank you Aurifil for the wonderful interview. We ALL love Edyta and her endless creativity and crafting inspiration!