Jolene’s blueprint Crafters as far away as Michigan stitching with berry-themed fabric designed by self-taught artist from Jonesport

Jolene Harmon had no idea what she was getting herself into when she signed up for an art class in 1998.

Harmon, who lives in Jonesport, always had wanted to paint, so she started with drawing lessons at the University of Maine at Machias.

“It was life drawing with nude models,” Harmon, 56, said with a sly smile. “They said if a person could draw the body, they could do anything. I worked night and day just drawing everything I could draw.”

She enjoyed it so much that the next semester, she signed up for a landscaping class, but it was canceled for lack of students.

“So I went to Wal-Mart and bought an $18 acrylic paint set and taught myself to paint.”

Harmon began with local landscapes, but it wasn’t long before she turned to fabric design. As a longtime seamstress who runs a gift and crafts shop out of her home and online, she saw a void in the market for blueberry fabrics. By late 2005, most of them had been discontinued, and her quilting customers kept requesting the prints.

She decided to take matters into her own hands, painting the wild Maine blueberry – fruit and flowers – against a periwinkle blue background. When she researched how to print her own fabric, she discovered she would need to purchase a minimum of 3,000 yards upfront.

“How would I know if I could sell 3,000 yards of fabric?” she asked.

That’s the question she posed to Sarah Nugent, the business development manager at Washington-Hancock Community Agency. Nugent suggested a market survey, so Harmon sent questionnaires to fabric shops and quilting groups throughout Maine, showing a photograph of the pattern and asking a few simple questions. She also posted her design online.

“Off my Web site, people were contacting me from as far as Arizona,” Harmon said. “Their response was that no fabric company ever designed something that detailed.”

In April of last year, Harmon decided to shop her fabric around. One representative told her to give up on her idea. Another company asked whether she would like their artist to change the style of blueberries because they weren’t perfectly round.

“I said, ‘Absolutely not,'” Harmon responded.

“And they asked, ‘Why do you have blueberries and blossoms on the same vine?'” Harmon’s employee and friend Dee Thompson, 48, added, shaking her head.

Harmon persisted and chose Northcott of New Jersey to print her fabric. The company’s graphic artist made slight adjustments to Harmon’s painting for screen-printing purposes, but otherwise, it’s true to the original. At Thompson’s suggestion, she decided to call it “Blueberries My Way.”

When she received the finished product in September, she planned to concentrate on Maine quilt shops, but through word of mouth – and a vacation that doubled as a sales trip for Harmon – fabric stores in Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Michigan now carry the fabric. A Vermont woman loved the fabric so much that she offered to be Harmon’s sales representative throughout New England.

But not everyone shared her enthusiasm. One shop owner complained that the fabric looked “too realistic.” Another turned Harmon down because it wasn’t realistic enough.

“I don’t expect everyone to love it, but the design is me,” Harmon said. “It’s my folk art, realistic, what I see. It’s my style that my people like.”

And the people who like her style are thrilled with the fabric.

“It’s the only fabric out there that actually looks like blueberries,” said Holly Simpson, who owns The Quilted Cabin in Orland. “Hers are very realistic. You have the blossoms, you have the ripe berries, you have some that have gone past, all in the same cluster, which is what you get when you look out in the blueberry fields. These are Maine blueberries.”

Simpson said the pattern has been popular with quilt makers, who appreciate the quality of the cotton fabric. Sewing aficionados like it for bags, curtains and table runners. Though it’s not a busy season at her shop, she already has sold three bolts of the pattern.

“I can’t wait for her coordinate to come out,” Simpson said. “I love it. Her colors are beautiful. She does a very good job with color and that’s what you notice first.”

Before Harmon’s first fabric came back from the factory, she had requests from quilters for a coordinate – a different but complementary design. She made fast work of painting her blueberries on a white background, in shades of indigo, pale violet and spring green. She calls the pattern “Blueberries My Way Too.”

Buoyed by her initial success, Harmon is in the process of painting a lighthouse pattern modeled on beacons in Maine and Michigan.

“I don’t know where we’re going to put it all. We have it under the beds, in all of our closets, and there’s some over there,” Harmon said, pointing to the space under a clothes rack in her sewing room.

“I keep telling her to tie herself down,” Thompson added, smiling at her friend. “She’s so happy she’s going to float away.”

Jolene’s Originals fabric is available at A Straight Stitch in Brewer; Nancy’s Sewing Center in Belfast; A&D’s Sew ‘n Sew in Augusta; Country Farm Fabrics in Caribou; The Quilted Cabin in Orland; Fabric by the Pound and Silks & Tapestries in Bucksport; Gingham in East Machias; and online at www.jolenesoriginals.com.