Volume 2: Strike offs

Strike offs are hand-printed silkscreened swatches to show colour and registration.

This is the most stressful part of the process, because so much is left to personal interpretation when it comes to colour. Requested changes to the colour are communicated to the production manager at Windham, who passes them along to the print production folks, who are in this case, in South Korea.

Some colours are too dark, others skew to bright. Some are perfect, others need a bit more yellow, or a bit less yellow... or need to be warmer, or cooler... I mark down my comments for each design in each colour and discuss the requested changes with the production manager.

There isn't time in the schedule to see a second batch of strike offs, so the production team proceeds to make sample yardage based on the first round of comments. The sample yardage is used to make the projects for the look book, sample swatches for the sales team, plus sample fat quarter bundles and charm packs to give away at spring Quilt Market.