Close Knit

In Episode 60 of the Close Knit Podcast - the final episode of 2020, I spoke to Grace Rother, a lesbian quilt-maker and writer. I have long admired Grace’s practice - her way of making things accessible and her deep clarity on how she makes and shares. We talk about her quilt raffles this year, most recently culminating in her virtual quilting bee raising funds for Assata’s Daughters, an effort of more than 100 quilt-patch makers. Grace and I discuss the ways that textiles hold a softness for concepts and ideas that might feel a bit scary or out of our norm, like defunding the police and abolishing prisons. We talk about translating cozy sweater trends through DIY knitting, and how boundaries come into play when sharing online.

Grace has shifted her practice over this year to change how she engages with Instagram, a shift I have been taking notice of and wondering if I might find a similar path - and we talk about how that shifting attention feels and looks for her. This is the final episode of 2020, and I feel so grateful that Grace joined me for this chat!

Find Grace: Website | Patreon

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In Episode 59 of the Close Knit Podcast, I spoke to Carolina Jimenez. carolina is a mexican-american textile artist and designer living in brooklyn. she is currently the creative director at caroline z hurley and also maintains an art practice. she makes monuments - memory signifiers, vessels into which the past is poured, molded, or reshaped (woven, unraveled, or stretched). these monuments reference the body-my body and yours-they speak to the magnificence of our daily lived experience and the monumentality of the mundane.

Carolina and I cover a whole range of things you might expect in a conversation in 2020 - anxiety and learning to name it as such, voting (and the whole host of barriers that keep folks from voting or having information to vote), and learning to quiet the voice that tells you you’re “behind” in your career of life path.

Carolina remembers learning to embroider as a child from her grandmother and having an overall interest in craft and keeping her hands busy. She also decided at an early age that architecture would be her path - until she took a weaving studio class in college and immediately felt its magic.

She went on to study a masters program in textiles as RISD, and began working for Caroline Z Hurley, all while keeping her own textile practice going. We discuss the ways that colleges can be a source of a network, and also how we aim to practice ‘networking’ in a less extractive way than the term can imply. We both have noticed mutual aid networks growing this year and are excited by the opportunity to get involved at the local scale in our communities.

Carolina and I tie up our conversation with a bit of conjecture into Instagram culture and how we might subvert the influencer culture in our own ways of sharing our process & practice. She speaks to her current studio practice and the garments she is collaborating with Nayila Wright to bring it to life.

In Episode 58, I spoke to Aisling Camps, Trinidadian born, mechanical engineer turned knitwear designer hustling out of Brooklyn.

Aisling and I talk about her early days in NYC, working as an engineer on sustainability projects, and her desire to express more of her creativity, which led her eventually to a BFA program at FIT.

We chat about her relationship to NYC and Trinidad and how her business was born on a couple of knitting machines back home in Trinidad after a visa ran out. Her work is heavily influenced by the climate and her Trinidadian background, resulting in the ephemeral and striking pieces she makes today.

We discuss her in-home production and the necessity of bringing in outside help as she grows, how she built a relationship with a family in Italy to work on some of her pieces, and how beautiful that relationship is.

This year, in particular, has brought new challenges and peaks for her, and talk about both the heavier moments and the lighter ones - from George Floyd’s murder to the opportunities and mentorship that has resulted from the cultural reaction to racial injustice.

Aisling’s work can be found both online in her store, and in Oakland at McMullen.

Sonya Philip is an artist, designer and teacher. In 2012, she started a project called 100 Acts of Sewing, making dresses while documenting the process. Since then Sonya has made it her mission to convince people to sew their own clothes. When not covered in bits of thread, she can be found fermenting, knitting or baking things. Sonya lives in San Francisco with her family.

In Episode 56, I spoke to Catarina Seixas of The Olive Trees and the Moon. Cat is a homesteader, maker, folk herbalist and mother living in rural Portugal. She likes to spend her days exploring her local flora, photographing and creating magic. Together with her partner, they've built their house by hand and grow nourishing food.

It was such a joy hosting Cat - we talked about so many of the things that she and I have bonded over and questioned aloud on Instagram - from the “fast fashion mentality” and she so aptly puts it, that permeates our expectations of production and cost, even within the fiber community, to a discussion of access to knitting and the materials it requires.

We talk about knitting for others when knitting for ourselves is out of desire to make, instead of need to clothe - and how making for others means handing over some of the creative details we might otherwise do differently for the sake of ensuring the garment is loved, worn and cared for.

Cat and I took a rambling wander through these thoughts together and while we didn’t have any conclusive answers to the questions we posed, I think we touched on many topics that so many of us folks in the fiber community consider throughout our time making, and it was a really special joy to host Cat on the episode. I’m grateful to have gotten to share space asking and conjecturing about these topics with her.

This is Episode 54 of the Close Knit Podcast - today I am joined by Marcee + Hubbard Jones of Housework. With an obsession for manufacturing details and a strict set of material standards, the cofounding couple of Housework bring their unconventional backgrounds in fine art and health food together to bear a meticulously curated selection of clothing and home goods with care for every detail – down to things like the dyestuffs of garments, as well as the glazes of ceramics and finishes on wooden wares.

The Housework clothing catalogue is uniquely and strictly composed of truly natural fibers (no polyblends or pseudo-naturals like rayon), all undyed or naturally dyed with plants and minerals, with even commonly disregarded elements like the stitching thread being made of entirely compostable natural fibers.

This is episode 54 of the Close Knit Podcast, and this week I spoke to Sarah Nsikak of La Reunion Studio. I was introduced to Sarah’s work through a mutual connection a few months ago and I was immediately taken with her work. She centers stories of Africa in her work, bringing to life incredible dresses and tapestries that are full of color and made entirely of remnants & scraps. Sarah speaks to the ways in which COVID19 and social movements of this year have impacted her own work, and how it’s all helped lead her to invest completely in her La Reunion.

We discuss her journey from studying art therapy to moving from Oklahoma to NYC to intern for a fashion designer, to making the move to work for herself full time, during a global pandemic. She details her history upcylcing garments and how she’s worked to source remnants for this current collection, and we trade tips on how we’ve sourced materials and attempted experiments in natural dyeing.

Sarah’s work is beyond inspiring, in a realm unto itself, in my humble opinion, bringing together her personal life experience and heritage in a way that is so beautifully unique.

I was so delighted to speak with Sarah & I can’t wait for you to hear our chat. And if you haven’t already, you gotta go feast your eyes on her work - don’t say I didn’t warn you, it’s the most incredible.

This is Episode 54 of the Close Knit Podcast - today I am joined by Marcee + Hubbard Jones of Housework. With an obsession for manufacturing details and a strict set of material standards, the cofounding couple of Housework bring their unconventional backgrounds in fine art and health food together to bear a meticulously curated selection of clothing and home goods with care for every detail – down to things like the dyestuffs of garments, as well as the glazes of ceramics and finishes on wooden wares.

The Housework clothing catalogue is uniquely and strictly composed of truly natural fibers (no polyblends or pseudo-naturals like rayon), all undyed or naturally dyed with plants and minerals, with even commonly disregarded elements like the stitching thread being made of entirely compostable natural fibers.

This is episode 53 of the Close Knit Podcast and today I am joined by Geana Sieburger, who founded GDS in 2015. Growing up in Brazil deeply influenced her work, a place where in the 80’s, bakeries could be found every few blocks and skilled seamstresses still sewed a good portion of people’s everyday wardrobes. Community was the connection between everything, including food and fashion.

With both people and environment in mind, Geana's dream is for GDS to become a meaningful part of her community through products that excite consumers into learning about how their purchasing choices impact their direct neighbors as well as people on the other side of the globe.

Find Geana : Instagram | Website