Stiletto is the latest collection by Rachel Brenchley, the designer behind BasicGrey. It’s an aptly named collection that coordinates with past collections including Little Black Dress, Little Black Dress 2 and Black Tie Affair, as well as potential future releases.
“Stiletto is part of a larger body of work that has consistently been very well received,” Brenchley says. “It all started with our Little Black Dress collection and has grown to include many collections in the same vein. It is special because it’s exactly that: the ‘little black dress’ of fabric.”
Little Black Dress, she says, is an essential collection that is both versatile and easy to dress up or down. “The simple and elegant palette and patterns allow the user to dress it up to look and feel formal, or pare it down to feel casual and easy. It’s also classic and will never go out of style.”
Rachel has enjoyed art and design since she was small, and nowadays designs everything from interiors and floor plans to surface design, including fabric.
“It’s hard to pinpoint just one place or one significant influence in my work,” she says. “I follow many industries from architecture and interior design, fashion and travel and more. I would say that I am most inspired by fine art. There is nothing better than an artist who are doing their own thing, blazing their own trails and stepping outside the box. Nothing excites me more than a fresh perspective.”
Rachel studied computer-aided design—hence the floor plan designing—but always wanted to be in the fine art world. She worked in advertising after she finished college, but always pursued her own design interests on the side. Like many fabric designers, Rachel founded a paper and scrapbooking company first, and then expanded into the fabric world a few years later.
Stiletto—as the name suggests—can dress up almost any project. The prints are mostly classic blenders in neutral shades of black, grey, tan, cream and a newly added caramel colour. There are useful checks, elegant lace designs, floral prints and circular shapes that play together as a collection, or will coordinate with other neutrals in your stash to create sophisticated quilts and homewares.
Rachel says that the designs within the collection are curated enable a formal look, when dressed up, or a “casual and easy” feeling when pared down. They are, she says, truly versatile.
There are three intermediate quilt patterns released for this collection: Lust Have, Foxy Roxy and Silver Lining. If you’re a brave beginner with a couple of quilts under your belt, we know you can pull off these precut, friendly designs.
Lust Have is twin size, jelly roll quilt pattern. It features overlapping squares with contrasting stripes for a very contemporary design.
Foxy Roxy uses mostly a layer cake and features an on point statement design. The unusual layout gives the effect of a border top and bottom and offers a new twist on a courthouse step and nine patch block lap quilt.
If you love geometry in quilts, you will love Silver Lining. This pattern also uses a layer cake—along with some background fabrics—but is essentially composed of squares, rectangles and half square triangles to create a dynamic design that feels simultaneously contemporary and traditional.
And of course, you can take any of these patterns and make it with any other Moda precut that captures your fancy—you’ve got many to choose from.
Stiletto and the patterns for this fabric line are being delivered to Canadian fabric stores now. TrendTex is proud to supply Canadian stores with BasicGrey fabric, and BasicGrey patterns as well as products from other Moda designers. Touch, feel, and experience the fabric you’ll use for your next creative project at your local quilt store.