I started sewing right after I graduated from college because I began to feel very anxious among all the uncertainty and I needed somewhere to put my energy. I started with quilting, and started dabbling in self-drafted clothing and bags. Once I started, I couldn’t stop! All Well, the sewing pattern company I run, grew from that passion. My collaborator Amelia and I produce sewing patterns that are made to be super hackable and intuitive, focusing on skill-building and encouraging confidence in sewists. It’s work I truly love, and it keeps me always learning! In my personal sewing practice, I still love making quilts the most.

What influence does music have in your life as a creative?:

When I work, especially when I’m sewing, I’m always listening to something — often podcasts or audiobooks, but also so much music. I’m constantly making playlists that rotate with the seasons. In the mornings and when I write it’s usually piano solos from artists in the eighties and nineties, then in the afternoon or when I’m doing more active work where I’m up and moving, it’s usually a mixed playlist of all sorts of music, usually pretty mellow music, lots of singer-songwriter and indie songs. When I’m settling into a long project where I want to really focus, I love to listen to full musicals and sing along, loudly. Throughout high school I did pretty intensive training in musical theater and planned to try to be on Broadway someday. Obviously that didn’t pan out, but I left that period of my life with an encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater, and dozens of full librettos memorized. My most focused and content state is definitely listening to a musical and sewing in tandem.

I grew up dancing too, and I really love to dance as a way to get back into my body if I’m starting to feel out of sorts. It’s a super personal and often private practice for me, to try to shake off bad feelings with movement. I have a mini project on instagram called All Well Dance Break (#allwelldancebreak) where I film some of then dances and note the song I’m dancing to. In almost all of the dances I’m wearing clothes that I’ve made. Music really informs this practice — often an All Well Dance Break will begin organically when I’m listening to a song that makes me want to move. Lots of my music is linked to dance for me, and the movement and the music inform and embroider each other with meaning.

Tell us about your playlist:

Like a patchwork quilt, this playlist is like lots of different fabrics cut into pieces sewn back together. Some musical theater (I went for the most neutral ones in my repertoire!), some indie, some piano, some Joni Mitchell, etc. Through all of the songs, tying them together, is a sense of movement. These are all songs I want to and do dance to, frequently. Even if it’s just a foot tapping or head swaying back and forth while I sew, for me movement and making are intertwined, and these songs reflect that connection — much like the quilting stitches in a quilt.

@allwellworkshop
http://www.allwellworkshop.com