A Conversation With Allie Chamberlain, Textile Artist Reclaiming Forgotten Quilts
On learning to sew, finding inspiration in architecture, setting boundaries on social media, and becoming a creative human
Based in Knoxville, Tennessee, Allie Chamberlain is the owner of Reclaim Creative, an umbrella for her many creative business endeavors. Currently, she focuses on repurposing vintage textiles into garments for the body and items for the home. But over the years, she’s worked in many mediums including bookmaking, watercolors, reselling secondhand clothing, architecture, and remodeling houses with her husband.
Since I’ve started sewing, Allie has become a source of inspiration, and even more so now that we talked. In this interview, she shares about growing up in an environment that fostered creativity, being an architect without working in architecture, the controversy over quilted coats, refining her boundaries and business model, using social media intentionally for business, and making space to try new things.
What is your craft?
Ultimately, what I love to do is bring wasted, unwanted, neglected, or overlooked things back into the light. That includes communities, abandoned buildings, and forgotten textiles. At first, I thought Reclaim Creative was an isolated part of me, but then I realized that everything I do kind of falls into this pattern.
What are you doing with quilts at the moment?
In terms of my day-to-day work, I’m taking quilts and turning them into coats. It’s definitely a super controversial thing in the quilt world (more on that later). I work with textiles that are either on their way to the landfill or being shipping to a third-world country. I also work with quilts that are completely tattered, falling apart, super stained, and basically to the point where people don’t have them on display anymore in their homes or don’t use them for practical means on their bed. I try to mend and remove stains as much as I can, but if not, I use pieces to create something that is celebrated, loved, and tells a story.
Follow Allie’s quilted-coat-making updates on Instagram at @reclaim.creative.
When did you learn to sew?
All of the old ladies in my family have always been quilters and sewers. I would spend most of the summer at my grandma’s house, and I learned how to sew at a young age. But I didn’t like it. I thought it was dumb. I was like, this is for old ladies and I’m never going to do that. Then when I was working at a summer camp, they had me teach mountain biking and sewing. I was like, are you freaking kidding me? I hate biking and I hate sewing. But now I’m an avid cyclist and I sew for a living. How ironic is that? Through teaching little girls how to sew, I saw it was empowering for them, but also for me because I could make the things that I liked. I went back to my grandma, and she taught me a few more things and gave me all of her old machines when my grandpa passed away. The rest of it, I taught myself. There’s a lot of trial and error that has gone into it. There’s so much that you can learn on your own.
You posted something recently about incorporating architecture into your life even though you don’t work in the industry. How do you do that, and how does architecture inspire you?
Honestly, I appreciate architecture so much more not working as a full-time architect. I graduated architecture school in May, and I worked for three different firms across the country. I also worked for a sustainable clothing company in LA owned by two architects. That was the first time I met an architect who wasn’t practicing as an architect. A little subconscious seed was planted telling me that I don’t have to be an architect if I don’t want to be. It also showed me that architecture applies to so many other parts of life. Designing a space in a very intentional and specific way can bring people together. It can change the way humans interact and the way relationships are built. So really, I just try to implement that in every aspect of my life. I still work on some contract work for families and architecture firms on the side for fun. Doing a few projects here and there excites me, but doing it 40 hours a week sucked the life out of me. I’m also still involved in my university through sitting on some panels and design reviews.
How do you operate the business? What are your income streams and guiding principles?
It’s something I’m constantly refining. When I started Reclaim Creative on the side in college, it was painting watercolors and bookmaking. I quickly realized watercolors were not for me. I was just doing them because people wanted them. But it didn’t feel like what I was supposed to be doing. I decided to make a switch to textiles when I realized I wanted to have a “why” that drives me. I also realized the way I was operating my business was extremely confusing because I would have a quilt launch and then a new watercolor drop and then a bookmaking thing. It was way too much for me to keep up with, and I also think my audience was confused. I like to do a lot of things, but I learned that I don’t have to show everything I’m doing. I decided in October or November to focus on making repurposed quilted goods, so that’s my income stream right now. Well, in theory, that’s it. Of course I still get watercolor commissions from people. And I help friends build websites for their businesses. I used to market that stuff, but I narrowed down my offerings in order to grow my audience.
Right now I’m at max capacity doing as much as I can myself. I’m moving into a new studio space, so once I get settled in there, I would like to hire someone ASAP. And as far as broadening my income streams, I am hoping to do more educational stuff and more pattern sales. Really, I would love other people to make coats themselves and not have to pay me for it. I want everyone to do it. I don’t want to feel like the quilt coat gatekeeper.
What are some ways you set your own boundaries so that you still enjoy what you do?
I struggle with having a hobby that I don’t try to monetize. But I have started getting so much more into cooking and making things from scratch more often. That has been like therapy for me. I try to set work boundaries so that I have enough time to cook, and it doesn’t feel like a burden and it feels exciting. Then also, I love riding my bike. It’s not creating something necessarily, but if I’m at an all-time low, I hop on my bike and I’m happier than ever before. My husband and I also renovate houses and rent them out. I love trying new things, so I’m trying to create more room to do that.
But I struggle with other people’s perceptions of me in general. I have a hard time saying no. So historically, when people would ask me to work on a project that I didn’t feel like I had the capacity for or wasn’t in my current scope, I still did them. But I was doing the client and myself a disservice. So I’m setting so many new boundaries around that, not in a strict way but in a gracious way. What I will say is that saying no is a privilege. My business is finally in a place financially that gives me the freedom to do that. That has helped a lot.
What role does social media play in your business? How are you intentional on there and away from there?
I’ve had Instagram since the seventh grade, so for me, Instagram is like second nature. I’ve always been a big sharer on social media, so that has helped my business. I had 3,000 followers in December if that tells you anything. (Only a few months later, Allie now has close to 50K followers.) I have started to implement a few new social media boundaries at a time. For Valentine’s Day, I got my husband a sunrise clock, although I really got it for myself. In the mornings, we wake up to our lamp that mimics the sunlight and little birds chirping. My phone stays in the living room, so the first two hours I’m awake, I usually don’t get on my phone. I read, journal, and even sometimes start working before I look at my phone. Then in the evenings, I go on walks without my phone. Before bed, I’m not around my phone at all. I say all that, but that’s literally 4 hours out of my day that I’m not getting on my phone. The rest of the day is so long. I don’t have many rules and guidelines in terms of posting a certain amount of times because that feels really forced to me. It’s always been a natural resource for me to share. So to me, it doesn’t feel that exhausting and it doesn’t feel strenuous.
I have noticed that it affects me negatively when I start comparing myself. I’ll be super stoked about the things that I’m doing and then I’ll see what someone else is doing and feel like, I’m not doing that. Whenever I feel like it’s causing harm, I’ll unfollow the person to protect myself, which sucks because a lot of the people I compare myself to I look up to. I used to think something was wrong with me if I didn’t have a collection sell out in an hour. But I try to remind myself that we’re all uniquely gifted and doing different things. There’s so much to learn with social media. Sometimes I do challenge myself to do an activity and not share about it. If I’m building out someone’s website or working on graphics for someone, I don’t share any of that, not because I don’t want to share it but it’s just something I do that’s part of me and the world doesn’t need to know. Just because I do it, doesn’t mean I need to show it. And just because I don’t show it, doesn’t mean I’m any less capable.
You mentioned what you’re doing is controversial in the quilting world. What is that about?
I wouldn’t have known the extent of the controversy if it weren’t for social media. So there’s definitely two camps, and there’s always middle ground. The first camp feels it’s ok to cut up a quilt. And there’s the camp that feels, as one woman has said, cutting up a quilt is equivalent to murder, which is extreme. I don’t fully disagree with that camp. But I think it’s a huge sliding spectrum. Should one business be cutting up thousands of quilts a year to make fast fashion? Maybe not to that extent. But should we hoard every single quilt ever made in our cupboards and in museums for the rest of time? I don’t think so. There are tons of damaged quilts that are not going to be on display or stored in museums or in houses.
Not every perspective is an elitist mentality, but it can come across that way. My great grandparents were poor, rural Appalachian quilters. They used the scraps around their house and from clothing to make quilts. And once those were completely falling apart, they either added another layer of fabric on top of them or they made clothes for their family because they couldn’t afford to just store them in a cupboard. They used them until they couldn’t use them anymore and then they used them for something else. Every quilt, in my opinion, is not created equally. I have a few quilts in my family that are a good example of this. On one end of the spectrum, my grandma gave me a quilt she didn’t like to make a coat for my mom. It was just one sheet of green fabric, but as I was cutting it up, I saw these bits of orange and blue. I peeled back that layer of green fabric and below it was a mid-1800s quilt that was dyed with plant dyes. It was so fragile. Even if I took off the green fabric, you couldn’t see anything because it was literally disintegrated. So I still cut it up and made a coat. Then on the other end of the spectrum, we have a family quilt that has been appraised at $2,000. It’s a crazy quilt but every block has hand embroidered flowers and names. I would never touch that quilt. It belongs in a museum. My perspective on the whole controversy is that if you use discernment and intention, you can decide what is appropriate to do to a quilt and what is not.
What was your origin story to becoming a creative human? What was the environment that allowed you to do that?
I don’t remember a specific pivot moment, but I can see it completely woven in all of my life. Growing up, I was never pushed away or invalidated for making things. It just gave me an environment to try out anything that I wanted, which I’m really thankful for. I spent so much time with my grandparents, and at one house, we spent a lot of time painting and sewing and snapping green beans and shucking corn. At the other grandparents’ house, we mostly were working on the farm. My creativity comes from spending time with people I love who were creative in different ways, whether it was farming or making art with their hands. I think everyone is born creative and I don’t think there’s such thing as a non-creative person. It’s just whether you embrace it or not.
Before you go…
Bookmark: Affirmations for Artists, a few loving things you can tell yourself
Read: The Artisan Soul: Crafting Your Life into a Work of Art (recommended by Allie)
Listen: An interview with Lisa Congdon on making a late career change (Hello Monday)
I love this… we are all born creative, depends on us whether we embrace that or not!! Love your content!