As some of you might know, I am the catalog manager for Connecting Threads. I am responsible for laying out and designing the catalog from start to finish, but I couldn’t do it without the wonderful team of people here at Connecting Threads. After months of prep work, and after all the photographs of our quilts have been color-corrected by our fabulous in-house photo department, I will send the catalog to print.
As a relatively new quilter, I already know how important it is to be able to order the fabric in “just the right color”. That’s our goal for the catalog: to represent our collections as closely as possible to the real thing when you flip through the pages, (plus, we love to ‘ooh and ahh’ just as much as you do!)
Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to our printer, R.R. Donnelly, in Maple Grove, MN to tour the facility and perform what’s called a “press check”. Doing a press check means that I will watch the catalog as it’s being printed, and have the color analysts make any necessary changes to make sure our catalog’s color is spot-on. When it’s all done, they fold and staple the pages into 8-page signatures, trim the pages, and then send it off to the appropriate locations all over the country. As a graphic designer, this stuff thrills me. It was a really great experience to watch the catalog come to fruition. Did you know that you can download our current catalog here? There is also a link on our Connecting Threads home page, in the lower left-hand corner.