July 2025 | Quilting
by Marilyn Heywood Paige
When Karla Overland talks about her fabric, there’s something almost evangelical in her voice. "Once they touch and feel the fabric, they’re hooked," she says with the quiet confidence of someone who has witnessed this transformation thousands of times. For forty years, Cherrywood Fabrics has been converting quilters to the unexpected beauty of solid colors—one hand-dyed piece at a time.
What started as a woman dyeing fabric in her basement has evolved into something far more profound: a philosophy that color, in its purest form, can be the foundation for extraordinary creativity. Under Karla’s stewardship for the past 25 years, Cherrywood has become less a fabric company than a creative movement, challenging quilters to see solids not as limitations, but as infinite possibilities.
When Serendipity Meets Passion
Karla’s journey to becoming what she calls "a split personality"—part artist, part businesswoman—began with a quilt hanging on her wall. Fresh out of college with a degree in graphic design, she had no idea that the beautiful gradation quilt her mother had made for her wedding was created with Cherrywood fabrics. When Dawn Hall, Cherrywood’s founder, came to her home for a business meeting about logo design, she pointed to the quilt and said simply, "That’s made out of Cherrywood."
"It was very much serendipity that our paths crossed like that," Karla reflects. What followed was a year of mentorship before Dawn’s passing from ovarian cancer—a bittersweet introduction to a business that would become Karla’s life’s work.
This origin story embodies everything Cherrywood represents: the interconnectedness of color and life, the power of recognizing beauty in unexpected places, and the importance of passing along not just products, but passion.
The Alchemy of Color
Walk into Cherrywood’s 3,600-square-foot facility in Baxter, Minnesota, and you’ll understand immediately why customers are "hooked" by the tactile experience. The showroom displays 200 colors in neat, perfect bundles—each one hand-dyed, hand-folded, and wrapped with the kind of attention to detail that has some customers collecting the bundles without ever cutting into them.
"People think it’s suede, flannel, wool, felt," Karla explains. "They can’t believe that it’s just 100% cotton." This transformation begins with high-quality muslin that undergoes an extensive process of dyeing, washing, rinsing, and pressing. The result is fabric with an even thread count, a suede-like texture, and colors that seem to emanate from within rather than sit on the surface.
Karla mixes her own color recipes, drawing inspiration from the forests and lakes of northern Minnesota. "I get most of my color inspiration from outside," she says, "in the forests and lakes." But her approach goes deeper than mere aesthetics. Her color theory philosophy reads like a manifesto for human understanding: "Every color sparks an emotional response and should be appreciated for what it brings to the color wheel... Analogous colors are comfortable, but by reaching across the color wheel, we add contrast and depth that open our eyes to new dynamics."
Building Community Through Challenges
Perhaps nothing illustrates Karla’s unique approach better than the Cherrywood challenges—annual quilt competitions that have grown from a hoped-for 25 entries to nearly 600 participants. These aren’t typical quilt contests. Every quilt must be exactly 20 inches square, use specific Cherrywood colors, and follow a unifying theme.
The genesis came from an unlikely source: Broadway’s "Wicked." Sitting in a New York theater, Karla was struck by the show’s graphic use of lime green and black. "I thought, well, there’s a strong color, a strong theme. Put some black with it, and let’s see what people can do."
What people did was extraordinary. That first challenge produced over 100 quilts that, when displayed together, "just glowed" under gallery lighting. "To see them all cohesive like that in a wall of color," Karla remembers, "I’m like, all right, this is good."
Ten years later, the challenges have become something approaching a cult in the quilting world. The "The Abyss" challenge alone generated nearly 600 entries, with 225 selected for traveling exhibitions that appear everywhere from major quilt shows to natural history museums.
The Education of Color
For many quilters, solid fabrics represent uncharted territory. "People are sometimes afraid of solid color," Karla acknowledges. "They’re used to ‘Oh, I like these little pretty designs. I can understand that.’ But this is just color and that scares people."
Her solution is education through demonstration. In color theory lectures, she shows how solids function as "visual clarity" in quilts—places where the eye can rest and appreciate the interplay of shapes and textures. Rather than competing with prints for attention, quality solids "elevate" the entire composition.
"If you have a busy quilt that has all of these gorgeous colors, it is just so much," she explains. "But if you put in some solids so your eye has a place to rest, the designs will come out way different. Because if you’re going to take all that time to cut up fabric and then sew it all back together, don’t you want to see the shapes that you actually cut?"
This philosophy extends beyond quilting. Karla sees color theory and human relationships as fundamentally similar. "Color theory and human rights are so similar," she observes, pointing to her mission statement’s message about appreciating differences and finding harmony through contrast rather than similarity.
Cherrywood Fabrics' mission statement
The Reality Behind the Beauty
Behind Cherrywood’s polished brand lies the gritty reality of artisanal manufacturing in America. With labor as her highest cost and a retail price of $28 per yard competing against mass-produced alternatives at $10, Karla faces constant pressure to automate or outsource.
Her answer is uncompromising: "There’s no plans of selling out. This is our story." Every bundle is still hand-folded by a team of fewer than ten people. When asked about introducing more automation, she gestures toward the machinery and simply says, "That’ll never be us."
This commitment comes at a personal cost. Karla describes the challenge of being both a creative and a business owner: "I went to school for art, I was a graphic designer. And now I have to worry about P&Ls and spreadsheets." The solution has been a business coach who helps her navigate the "have-to’s" while maintaining the artistic vision that makes Cherrywood special.
Passing The Torch
As Cherrywood transitions from direct consumer sales to wholesale partnerships with quilt shops, Karla faces her greatest challenge yet: maintaining brand integrity while scaling reach. "It’s terrifying," she admits. "My product comes with a little learning curve because people are sometimes afraid of solid color."
Her response is characteristically thoughtful: merchandising kits, educational materials, and carefully designed display systems that help retailers tell Cherrywood’s story effectively. It’s the same attention to detail she brings to color mixing, applied to brand stewardship.
This expansion represents more than business growth—it’s about accessibility. "I can’t travel everywhere. I’m getting older. I can’t keep going to quilt shows and schlepping my stuff," she explains. By partnering with quilt shops, she’s ensuring that more people can discover what thousands already know: that there’s magic in the marriage of quality and color.
The Deeper Thread
What makes Karla’s story compelling isn’t just her success in building a beloved brand—it’s her understanding that creative businesses are ultimately about connection. Whether it’s a customer who calls to say they still have their first Cherrywood bundle from 1998, or a first-time quilter inspired to enter a challenge, or a painter discovering fabric as a new medium, Cherrywood has become a catalyst for creative confidence.
"Our customers are our best advertising," Karla says, but it goes deeper than marketing. In a world increasingly dominated by fast fashion and disposable goods, Cherrywood represents something rare: the belief that quality, craftsmanship, and authentic passion can create lasting value.
As she continues to mix color recipes in her Minnesota studio, surrounded by the forests and lakes that inspire her palette, Karla Overland embodies a simple but profound truth: that when you approach your craft with both technical excellence and genuine love, you don’t just create products—you create possibilities.
For quilters ready to explore the unexpected beauty of solids, Cherrywood offers more than fabric. It offers an invitation to see color as a language of creativity, to understand that sometimes the most powerful statements come not from complexity, but from the perfect simplicity of color in its purest form.
Marilyn Heywood Paige is a marketing consultant and award-winning content creator. She posts about junk journaling and making greeting cards on the Estelle Facebook and Instagram pages.
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