How did I end up here?
I come from a very long line of seamstresses and quilters. As a child, my great grandmother taught me to quilt. I can remember sitting at her full-sized quilting frames that took up most of her living room. My mother, though, taught me for the most part. She had a home-based sewing and alterations business. While Mom was working to provide athletic shoes and lessons for my brother and me, I was allowed to make anything I wanted from her scraps. While I’m sure my mom tried to teach me to use a proper pattern, I still can’t follow anyone else’s ideas or directions!
As a young woman, I was determined that I would never sew. As the first woman in my family to attend (graduate, get a MA, etc.) college, my future was to be in the professional world. Many of the opening pages of my Master’s Thesis from Columbia details how I would make a life and career outside the home.
Fast forward to the spring of 2001. I was still home on an extended maternity leave after the birth of our first child. My grandmother and her husband came to visit us on Long Island. Despairing of how to keep them occupied, I fell back on my mom’s suggestion of taking my grandmother to a fabric store. When I walked in door, and saw the fabric, something clicked. Suddenly, a door that I hadn’t realized was closed opened before me. So many colors, ideas, possibilities! I’ve spent the last dozen years knee-deep in fabric.
I began by quilting. Over the next few years, I made numerous quilts. Every size from crib quilts to king-sized, all meticulously hand quilted. At one point, I could proudly state that every member of the family slept under quilts that I made. (Now, of course, we’re much like the cobbler’s family: shoes for everyone else, but not for us!) I was able to sell a few quilts here and there, but as a bed quilt takes 6-9 months to hand quilt, there was just no way to make it even vaguely profitable.
“Pieceful Design” began after a request from my sister-in-law. She was in seminary, and was looking for a set of stoles to wear in the pulpit as a United Methodist minister. She knew I sewed….but I had never done applique, or any type of garment sewing. Undaunted, and not having any idea how much I didn’t know about such things, I made a promise. For her graduation, I created a set of six stoles for the different color “seasons” of the church year. One of those creations included over 200 hand-cut and appliqued grapes in varying colors of purples and lavenders. From those pieces came “Pieceful Design” as a concept. The actual business would come a couple of years later.
