Honoring Values With Fabric

 I have a home based business in Richmond, Virginia & specialize in repairing antique quilts & vintage textiles . I also finish & design quilts. I am fortunate enough to be in art shows, have one June 2007 at Medical College of Virginia lobby of main hospital.

I have been sewing by hand for 40 years with needle & thread. I don't use a machine. I design as I sew. I do not use a sewing machine, pattern or tape measure. My medium is fabric remnants, yarn & beads.

What I have to offer is hand sewing, design & personalization. I can repair vintage textiles. "Lost causes" are my specialty. I include fabric & materials in the price. Prices are for labor only. Most people pay about $ 200. which means most people's family quilts are damaged enough that they are afraid to use them but there is enough intact to make repairs an option.

I also finish quilt tops. I usually use a sheet or fleece blanket. If it's small enough I can use a fabric remnant in the middle of spongy polyester material.

                            A lot of the things people mount under glass could be made into wall hangings, especially textiles & fragments. If you have a portion of grandma's wedding dress or grandpa's military uniform I can mount it on a strong backing & it can be a wall hanging or I can design around it & it can be the centerpiece & inspiration for a crazy quilt.

What I do is somewhat hard to describe since it's not all the same. Some looks like folk art, some medieval tapestries & some victorian style crazy quilts. I'm always afraid to show anyone just one thing because I don't want people to think that's what their project would look like. It depends on what you are looking for, the fabric we choose & what happens in the design process.

My prices are not prohibitive. Things rarely go over a few hundred dollars here & that includes materials, original design, construction & appointments with you. It's been quite an adventure & maybe I could get into the habit of keeping track of my experiences here.

The biggest problem with my business has always been all the people who are not customers.This isn't a club for people interested in quilts or hand sewing. I am an independent artist offering a service to the public & my business has art shows & customers.

 I'm not trying to either promote hand sewing or prevent anyone else from doing it. I'm always looking for display space for art shows, preferably in my area - Richmond, Virginia or Brooklyn Heights, NYC where my family lives.

I don't SELL what I make. I use it in art shows to demonstrate the range of what I do.Now that my quilt repair business is busier I don't have time to replace what I make so now I have art shows & I do special orders.

Anything you see in photos that I've made or worked on is not for sale. Customer orders were here temporarily for repair & my original designs are on display in local art shows, not for sale.

      I came into this from the back door. I am not a traditional quilter. I've been sewing by hand with needle & thread for over 40 years but I started a business in 1999 when I needed extra income & no job would fit my eve work & day school schedule. I started doing repairs & mending - hems, holes, buttons - & those customers had quilts so I started working on those & found the quilt clients more interesting to me & more reliable. Over time, I phased out the clothing clients who left a $ 4. order for 3 months & complained about prices even when I skipped grocery shopping that week to pay bills.

The quilt clients care & are looking for someone else who cares & after what I'd been through the first few years with clothing clients I'd say the quilt families restored my faith in human nature. They are not trying to get away with anything & for the most part their order makes sense. With clothing clients I got a lot of inquiries the first few years that went something like this "I have a favorite outfit that is wearing out. I paid $ 15. for it 5 years ago. Can you make another one ?" If you'd known you would love it so much you would have bought more at the time but, no, I can't replace it for $ 15. You should just buy another one retail or on ebay or in a thrift shop.

People who sew & design can make almost anything if time & money & your preferance were not factors but if you want it for $ 15. don't try to have it hand made. Those were some hard times.

I was a writer a number of years ago & I'd lost my faith in language. I didn't like what anybody was doing with words. This is not to pick on any one religion, government or person. For a while, to me, it seemed everyone had an agenda so I communicated as little as possible. Something I found as the sewing business continued is that I had not given up writing I'd added an art form. I'm speaking in fabric now, using material & color & texture & images to honor what we all care about.

After Sept 11 I heard someone on TV say "We are all people of the book". talking about religion. For me the book needed to be wiped clean & we needed to start over so when i first started my business I had fabric covered notebooks but the books were empty. "The book is still sacred", I told myself, "but now it's empty". I wanted that empty canvas feeling, to just start again.

I originally started quilting on a notebook. I used fabric scraps & remnants & then added beads & yarn. When that didn't sell in the open air market I was at, I took the beads & velvet off the books & started making mini crazy quilts & beaded wall hangings.  As I write this, it's the last week of my solo art show in the display window of MCV hospital at Virginia Commonwealth University, floor to ceiling, 20 ft across window. That's the largest space I've ever had to show what I do & people are surprised that I no longer SELL  what I make. I do special orders & I have art shows. Until this week quilt repair & finishing kept me so busy I didn't have time for a blog but I'd like to keep a record of my experience & hope I don't get solicitations out of it.