Meet Jessica Rose
I've always been creative, however, as most of our parents told us, "art doesn't pay the bills!" so I majored in Business. I was finishing up a Masters in Org Development while my husband traveled for medical school rotations, and to keep myself occupied, I started quilting at night. I grew up sewing and crafting but I hadn't had either the time or supplies to do much until that point.
After searching for a beautiful, stylish quilt pattern to make for my husband, I ended up designing my own. Opening up a quilt design studio was never something I imagined, but there I was! It was almost an overnight success, I found that others craved stylish, modern quilt designs as well.
After about a year in the business I began to hear about Immersion from friends (who were licensed at Riley Blake and AGF). I thought it sounded interesting, so I saved up my earnings and enrolled. It was an investment, and one that I looked forward to making. Immersion took much more time and effort than I had anticipated and subsequently threw off most of my pattern/business schedule. I ended up making up a lot of missed work after the course finished, but it was worth it!
Being in Immersion was a pleasure, Bonnie radiates warmth and beneath that she's a brilliant businesswoman. Learning from her and the guest speakers was enlightening and inspiring. I already knew a bit of AI from being a quilt designer, but Immersion took it to a new level. I ended up learning AI, Photoshop, Procreate, and a host of other programs to get my art exactly the way I wanted. I designed in the mornings during class, and at night, often until midnight, perfecting everything. It was always hard to overcome the feeling of falling short, but I just kept pressing through that.
The course ended and I jumped back into quilt design, while working on several collections on the side. It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it, and soon developed a process for vectorizing, etc. After much encouragement from friends, I sent off a pitch email to one of the biggest fabric companies in the US in November 2023 (6 months from the course end) with just one picture of a mockup in the body of the email.
It was surprising to hear back so quickly, but I ended up making a portfolio (in 3 days, I didn't sleep!) and to my surprise and delight, signed a contract for my first fabric collection. It was an absolute dream come true, and in some ways, still feels very unreal. Immersion was critical to my success in licensing and I still go back and reference many of the videos even today. I'm looking forward to future licensing deals and can't wait to see my artwork come to life.
