It is my very great honor today to welcome Natalie Chanin. If you don’t know Natalie’s work from her label Alabama Chanin, please head here right now. I have to admit, I have a couple of these pages bookmarked and I check in on my favorite designs from time to time when I need a visual hit of something singular and quieting and feminine.

Natalie just released her new book, Alabama Studio Style from STC Craft. It picks up where her first book, Alabama Stitch Book, left off. She was kind enough to take a break from her travels and answer some of my questions below.

KW: Hi Natalie, Welcome! I’m going to gush here because it’s the right thing to do. I met you a couple years ago when I walked into a studio in San Francisco where you were getting ready for a trunk show. I had only seen your work in photographs, then all of a sudden I stepped into a room full of racks of your dresses and skirts. To me, your clothes had such a presence in the room. It was almost like they hummed – or purred! – from every seam being loved into place. Which of course, they are because every aspect of your clothing line is done by hand: cutting, stitching, sewing, embellishing. So I wonder, do clothes feel different to you that haven’t been made by hand?

NC: Thank you so much for your kind words.  I am so happy to be here and to be heading out your way very soon! I do feel what you write about in our clothing - being in the studio everyday is a luxury.
 
It is funny how spoiled you get after wearing our garments! I have a very hard time to find garments that meet all my requirements since starting my work with Alabama Chanin. Our pieces are just so comfortable, so easy to care for and designed to LIVE in a busy world and a busy life. I have become very demanding of my wardrobe. You know, most of our clients become repeat clients as they learn that a garment can truly become a part of your life.
 
And you know that old saying about “Loving Your Thread”… hard to measure but I certainly feel loved in a garment where every seam has been loved for me!

KW: I read your first book like it was a novel, cover to cover, and re-read the parts I especially loved. And this second book is no different. This time I finally took the plunge and am working on a tunic with the Angie’s Fall Stencil. After tracing and cutting the pattern and fabric, I arrived at the stenciling part. And I’m not going to lie to you, this part was a little terrifying, because I wanted it to work so very badly.

So I plunged in and then when I peeled the stencil back, I almost gasped – it was perfect. It looked and felt so real, so Alabama Chanin. What does it feel like as a designer to see your designs sort of fly the coop and have other people recreate them?
 
NC: This is absolutely the BEST part of the books… I love seeing how the books come alive in the hands of others!
 
KW: When I tell people what I’m working on, I hear a lot of, oh I could never do that. I don’t have the patience, etc. And I want to blurt out that I love an instant-gratification project as much as the next harried person. But you deconstruct the process of making these garments so well. What do you say to cheer people along who think they could never complete one of your projects?

NC: Until you try it, you don’t really understand the completely calming effect of working on these pieces and sewing by hand. Working in this way is so calming and you don’t appreciate it until you actually take up needle and thread.

It is more the other way around – after working this way, you have very little patience for other things… smile.

KW: One thing I love about your instructions is your plug for keeping working on something after it’s technically “finished” – to keep adding beads or embellishments. Do you have favorite pieces of clothing that keep evolving?

NC: In reality, every garment is a work-in-progress. I was just in New York at the ACE Hotel and found a hole in my favorite sweater.  I mended the hole but had some extra thread on the needle… so, I just kept going and added a bit of embroidery around the neckline and a few beads that I happened to have in my sewing kit.  
 
In order for us to keep garments in our lives and to be continually inspired by those garments, we have a commitment to keep going… to make that garment continue to evolve as we evolve.  

KW: There is such a strong sense of place to everything you do, and this book is no exception. You include recipes and glimpses at your homemade dining room table and home. Can you talk about the sense of place that you bring into your work?

NC: There have been library shelves filled with works and studies about the Southern Sense of Place… I capitalize those words on purpose. It is such a big question that you ask. I wrote recently that the security of my home gives me the freedom to explore the world fearlessly.  In essence, this sense of place is the basis for all that I do.  

KW:I have to ask you while I have you here about your connection to radio, since I work as a reporter for my local public radio station. Do you see parallels between your craft and your love of radio? And I’m not thinking about the kind of quick deadline work I do, but the long-form work like The Kitchen Sisters and Ira Glass.

NC: I am addicted to radio… to the Kitchen Sisters and to Ira Glass and I have a great respect for craft of all kinds.
 
You know, the word “craft” has such strange connotations these days.  Some people equate it with poorly made products while at the same time, it means exceptional products which are made by hand. I look forward to the day that craft claims its rightful place of honor.
 
BUT, to answer your question, I do see a connection between the stories that we preserve with textiles and the stories that people like the Kitchen Sisters and Ira Glass preserve with audio. And, I am honored and blown away that you would include my work in the same sentence with those great artists. Thank you.

KW: When I was thinking about this project, a funny analogy came to mind: marmalade. It sounds weird, but there’s something similar about touching every part of the process: picking the fruit, preparing it, letting it soak, then finally cooking it, jarring it and having those gem-colored jars to give to people. I haven’t gotten very far into the hand-stitching part of the tunic yet, but I am looking forward to this project keeping me company in a similar way. Do I sound crazy?

NC: No, you do not sound crazy but very sane! What you describe sounds to me like living.  

I read the other day that every living being – be it a bird or a human – has 5 million heartbeats in its life. We should strive to make each heartbeat count. Beat by beat we should enjoy every minute growing into the next... sewing (or doing anything for that matter)… stitch by stitch, minute by minute… beat by beat. 

Thanks so much, Natalie, and congratulations on your beautiful, inspiring book. Find more of Natalie’s blog appearances here, and while you’re there, leave a comment for a chance to win the STC Craft book of your choice. Good luck!



This week it’s my great pleasure to have Heather Ross join me. If you don’t know Heather, you should. Whether it’s through her fabrics or new book or blog – everything she creates has a lovely, breezy-but-strong and very evocative pull: I want to read more stories, see more fabric, try more of her projects. Not to mention crash her parties to hear stories in person about skidding up frozen driveways in reverse and plunging into the cold ocean at Coney Island.

Heather was kind enough to answer some of my questions below, and she'll be back on Wednesday to answer yours. So leave any questions that bubble up from this interview in the comment section below, and check back later this week. Plus, Heather's giving a book away to a lucky reader -- simply leave a comment or post and you're entered in the drawing!

KW: Welcome Heather, it’s really great to have you here. I know that you grew up in a one-room schoolhouse in Vermont. And I grew up in a renovated barn in Virginia. For a while, when my parents were turning the barn into a home, we didn’t have plumbing downstairs, and my mom would follow me and my sister up a hay ladder to take a bath. And instead of furniture, we had a big radial-arm saw on the second floor. I know that environment was a big influence on me. How do you think growing up in that one-room schoolhouse helped shape you?

HR: The schoolhouse was actually one of several very unconventional living situations that my sister and I like to blame for our inability to clean our own houses. But of course, it was perhaps the most lovely and the most special. It was also incredibly isolated, so we were really depending on our imaginations to stay occupied. And, for better or for worse, we had huge amounts of unstructured and unsupervised time beginning when we were quite small. For us, it worked.

KW: I have such a personal connection to your fabric and your book, and I think that’s because of all the stories you share about growing up in Vermont: river swimming and fireflies and wild chamomile. Now you live in the city – how do you reconcile your rural upbringing and now-urban life? Do you miss those toads and critters that appear in your fabric?

HR: Honestly, its hard. I don't think that a single day has gone by since I left Vermont 18 years ago that I haven't missed it. Leaving the tiny town that I grew up in was so necessary, but so heartbreaking. I think it drives so much of my art and writing because I remain so haunted by it. I do go back, occasionally, and its always complicated. There is always a piece of me that wants to rip up my return ticket or drive my rental car into the river and just stay. The landscape feels like its a part of me, but I could never really find my place in that community. I think I could try my whole life and never quite fit in. My friends were mostly imaginary, and usually four legged and furry.

Heather hanging up doll clothes in VermontThere is a great joke I love to tell: A man leaves Boston and moves to a small town in northern Vermont. Every day he stops by the little village store for food or gas and every day he sees an older man, a real Vermonter, sitting in front of the woodstove. Every day The Old Man finds a way to remind The Man from Boston that he is not a local, not a Vermonter... and he will never be. Finally, after two decades, the man from Boston approaches him and says: Look, Old Man, I know that no matter how hard I try you will never accept me or consider me a Real Vermonter, but I find a great deal of comfort in the fact the my children are, indisputably, Real Vermonters. They were born here, they grew up here, they live here. They love it here. They have never known any other place. The Old Man looks The Man From Boston in the eye for a while and finally says: Well, I don't know about that. If your cat crawled into my oven and had herself some kittens, would you call them muffins?

But the swimming holes and old apple orchards always felt like home. You can love a place as a child, especially if you feel like its yours, without being distracted by the concern that it might not love you back. Its a lot like first love, maybe.

Loving New York is more like second love. Like loving the guy who you fell for in college who you kept telling yourself you should break up with (and run back to that really nice boy, Mr. Small Town), the good looking drummer who isn't any good and spends your money and gets your car towed... but takes you to great parties and introduces you to amazingly talented people and incredible adventures and opportunities and new ideas and takes you to fine restaurants and galleries....until he dumps you for your room mate. That Guy.

You get the idea. I'm going to stick it out for a while. Living here inspires me in so many ways, not the least of which is that it has amplified my aching for the forests and the fireflies and the swimming holes, which consequently won't stop appearing in my sketchbook.

And of course, after a lifetime of wondering what it would be like to live in a city full of art and fashion and good food.... now I know. And someday I'll head back into the woods for good.

Last summer someone decided that my apartment needed new smoke alarms installed. I wasn't informed, and came home late to find a sleeping husband, and crawled into bed without turning on the bedroom light. For about twenty minutes, I lay in bed looking up at a tiny blinking green light, awestruck by the idea that a firefly had somehow found its way into our apartment. I was so thrilled. Finally I couldn't contain myself anymore and woke up TC, and pointed up at what I thought to be a sign that we belonged in the country but what he knew to be our new smoke alarm. "Oh Honey." he said, with a look on his face that was pure love. "I know. Its a lovely firefly".

KW: Speaking of those critters, can you talk us through the process of designing new fabric lines and sewing patterns? Do you start with a clear idea, or does it emerge more slowly?

HR: It changes every time. With Mendocino it was about building a whole world around this one little girl and a mermaid that appeared in my sketchbook. With my new line, Far Far Away, it began with a donkey who thought of himself as a Unicorn, and then demanded a surly little princess. I'm really really not in charge.

KW: It’s one thing to design fabric and another to write a book that’s so infused with your life – not only the kind of clothes you design, but where you get peaches and how you spend your weekends. How does it feel to share so many parts of your life so widely?

HR: So easy. I am a terrible keeper of secrets and a compulsive over-sharer. And because I think that everyone should know about places like Warrups Farm in Redding, CT, or about Blueberry Hill Inn in Goshen Vermont.... because they are such special places.

KW: So what next for you, Heather? What new adventures are on the horizon?

HR: I am working on a few things, hoping to have more opportunities to write and illustrate. I would love to do another book, it was such an great experience. I have a few things ending right now, professionally, so I am trying to stay as open as possible to what happens next. As much as it makes the people around me a little nuts, I like to reinvent things every few years and am trying to keep things simple enough to allow that. My career goal, ultimately, is to be able to spend my days drawing and writing and then to disappear for a few weeks every summer without anyone noticing. A plan like that won't make me rich, I know, but thats OK.

Thanks so much, Heather! Can everyone please give a little clap in front of your computer for how great she is? Please leave your questions below and drop by on Wednesday for more about fabric and fireflies.

Today we bid farewell to Heather Ross. But we can follow her as she skips around the Internet on her blog-to-blog tour. Find details here and tag along – she’s headed to some fantastic blogs and plans to cover topics ranging from a day in the life, to proper fit, and much more.

Thanks to everyone for your comments and making Heather feel so welcome. Now, onto your great questions:

What was your first big splurge after you made some spending money? What's on your iPod? What songs were in your head when you made the new line?

HR: I will let you know as soon as that happens.

What, if any, magazines to you subscribe to?

HR: Cooking Light, Domino (which is now gone, how sad is that?), Selvedge, and I pick up the occasional Vogue or Vanity Fair at the airport. I am also a daily NPR listener and overly fond of This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, and the lovable foodie Mark Bittman from the New York Times

As someone who yearns to be crafty and wants to carve a little time out of each day to create something by hand.... but with 2 little kids running circles around me, how would you recommend doing that? Are there fun little projects that don't take a lot of time that are super fun and rewarding? Or better yet, projects I can do with the little ones?

HR: Luckily, creating things is my job! I have learned that if you wake up early enough to make a smoothie, the whole day belongs to you. I do wonder what having kids would do to that theory though. I'm guessing it would be blown out of the water.

Being as creative as you are in many areas, how did you eventually focus your time and energy on fabrics and sewing projects? I'm so scattered creatively, it's no wonder my brain and my barn are full of "stuff"... not all of it pretty.

HR: I am quite scattered, but have found that deadlines are a marvelous motivator.

When I was trying to run a manufacturing company I was always apologizing for my lack of attention span, which I think was a good sign that I was doing the wrong job. At the time, I was seeing an analyst who was trying to help me figure out how to get out of the situation I was in, ie, doing a job that I wasn't very good at and trying to keep my company afloat. I told her that I thought that with enough discipline and exercise I could eventually build up the attention span to effectively manage my ridiculously stressful life. She asked me what I was doing for exercise and I explained that I would leave work on my lunch break and go to the river, where I would swim against the current as hard as I could for 40 minutes or so, trying as hard as I could to stay in exactly the same spot as the water rushed past me. She just looked at me and said" Heather, maybe you should try to find an exercise program that is not a metaphor for your life." Now I work even harder, but I work at becoming better at what I am best suited for.

I do have a bit of a mantra when I am finding myself trying to procrastinate or subconsciously avoiding work. I tell myself to "just do it without thinking about how much you don't want to do it". This works for laundry as well, BTW.

Did you go to college or design school? Did you study art/design? Have you always known that you would be an artist?

HR: No, in fact I never really believed that I could support myself as an artist.... which is probably why I never could. I did study art after college in mexico,which was a wonderful experience, very classic and hands on and non-technical. I wish that I had known early on what I know now, which is that it is possible to live very simply if you are very fulfilled. I would have made decisions differently, in terms of an education.

I would also like to know how Heather got into the textile design industry and how difficult/easy it is.

HR: I wanted to design fabric because I loved to sew, and since my designs were very juvenile it made a lot of sense to design kids clothing. I can't say for certain how easy or hard it is, I know that there are a lot more of us than there were a few years ago, and a lot of fresh talent popping up all the time! I had my own fabrics printed by a small studio in San Francisco, but I think its easier now with Spoonflower and digital printing. My path was pretty tangential and unconventional, I would have ended up in the same place had I gone to art school, but maybe a lot more quickly!

Have you thought of creating a line of sewing patterns, separate to your book?

HR: I have, but I like the book format. I like that it is more of an opportunity to tell a story or to inspire, and that it makes more sense economically for a lot people, and that it can include a lot of other things like recipes and beautiful photography. I wanted Weekend Sewing to inspire people to find a personal style that felt easy and relaxed, I am not sure I could do that with a line of patterns. Maybe I just love to prattle on so much that I would never fit into a pattern envelope!

Possibly a children's book? With your drawings and stories, a children's book would be oh so much fun to experience!

HR: Oh hey, who let the lady from Psychic Friends Network into the chat room?

As someone who is very new to the blogging world, I'm wondering how blogging has changed your career? And do you think it will create way too many entrepreneurs or is it just the thing to motivate people to their real calling?

HR: Apart from making my mother extremely angry with me, its been tremendous fun. Why can't we all be entrepreneurs? Recently someone said to me, Oh, you want to be the Next (insert famus fabric designer here), and I said, nope, I just want to be the next Heather Ross. I managed it by the end of the day yesterday, so fingers crossed.....

Do you think it takes a childhood full of some degree of "unsupervised time" like you said to create slightly offbeat, creative kids?

HR: No. My sister is raising her three kids in a lovely California suburb full of people who work full time jobs and coach soccer, and her kids are just as adventurous, creative, and imaginative as we were. They spend a lot of time at the ER, but they are seriously happy kids. I would not want to pretend to have real advice here, because I have no idea, but it seems like whatever you value, your kids will value. My sister values bravery and imagination and independence, and so do her kids.

Thanks Heather, for being so generous. Congratulations on a wonderful book and best of luck with the book and blog tour! And Thea, you’re the lucky winner! Send me an email: kelly (at) makegrowgather (dot) com, and I’ll get your details.