Meet Blair Stocker of Wise Craft Handmade

In this episode, Susan interviews Blair Stocker of Wise Craft Handmade, discussing Blair's unique approach to color and value in quilt making, her journey as a crafter, and her revival of the vintage stitching technique called "chicken scratch."

About Blair Stocker

Blair is known for her creative approach to scrappy quilts, focusing on value rather than strict color theory. She comes from a background in apparel design and fashion merchandising, bringing a unique perspective to quilt making.

Key Topics Discussed

The Ruby Ruler

• A multi-purpose tool Blair created in 2017
• Functions as both a cutting ruler and a value viewer
• Uses red film technology similar to what landscape painters and photographers use
• Helps quilters see value contrast (the "sunshine and shadow") in fabric selections
• Alternative to the black-and-white photo technique for assessing value

Resources Mentioned

• Wise Craft Handmade website
• Blair's Block of the Month programs
• The Ruby Ruler for color value assessment
• Blair’s first book - Wise Craft: Turning Thrift Store Finds, Fabric Scraps, and Natural Objects into Stuff You Love

Sponsor

The episode is sponsored by Susan's Free Motion Quilting Masterclass, an on-demand course fo

Want to try free motion quilting but don't know where to start? Here's 3 simple steps to get going.

Are you looking to ADVANCE your machine quilting skills?

Machine quilting can be very solitary, especially on a longarm. It's just not that easy to pack up your machine and head to a friend's house for the day, right? But it's important to have that community - that sharing of ideas and tips, encouragement and motivation.

For more information and to sign up, visit our website.  

Transcript

Susan: 0:47

Welcome to season five of Measure Twice. Cut Once. This whole season is an exploration into behind the scenes of not just quilting, but building a creative business that truly lights you up. As someone who's navigated the exciting and sometimes bumpy world of turning a passion into a profession, I'm excited to pull back the curtain and share my own experiences. Some episodes will be just me delving into my personal journey. While others will feature guests who are also navigating the world of creative entrepreneurship. We'll explore the nitty gritty of building a creative business, the lessons learned and the unexpected challenges that come with transforming your craft into a thriving enterprise. And don't worry, I'm not leaving storytelling behind. Instead, I'll be weaving them into the conversations about what it takes to grow a business while staying true to your creative spirit. So whether you're dreaming of starting your own business, or you just love hearing about creative entrepreneurship, this season is for you.

1:48

Joining me for a chat today is Blair Stocker of Wise Craft. Handmade Blair is an absolute magician with color when it comes to using scraps in your quilts. If the formality and quote unquote rules of working with a color wheel has kind of intimidated you. You really need to meet Blair. Rather than specifically focusing on color, she considers value in mixing up and mixing together scraps in a quilt. She has some remarkably simple but incredibly helpful tools that really aid toward that. Plus, Blair is reviving a vintage style of Stitchery called, and I love this-chicken scratch. So we're going to chat about that a little today. This episode is sponsored by my free motion quilting masterclass. This online on-demand course is a comprehensive training for mastering freehand quilting skills and navigating design decisions. It not only teaches over 25 specific quilt designs demonstrated both at the long arm and at a domestic sewing machine. But also it teaches the practice methods that advance your skill level and thought processes that enable you to create your own original designs with confidence. For more information, I provided a link in the show notes, or you can head to my website stitched by susan.com. And from there, click on the learn tab. Registration for a group of quilters opens twice per year. But you're welcome to join the wait list at any time, and you'll be the first to know when the doors open. So once again, the link is in the show notes or the learn tab on my website.

Susan mic: 3:39

Quilting friends today, Blair Stocker is joining me in the podcast virtual studio. Thanks for coming. Blair.

Blair mic: 3:46

Thanks for having me.

Susan mic: 3:48

We met in person recently at Quilt Con in Phoenix, and I have followed you and your work and your tools and your scrap quilts for years and years. It was really fun to get a chance to meet in person and right away I knew, I wanted to have you on as a guest so we could chat a little bit. Maybe give me first just a couple of your thoughts about Quilt Con and your experience there this year. It was a first for me. I know it was not for you, but what do you love about Quilt Con?

Blair mic: 4:12

I have been to I think all but just maybe one or two Colt cons and only once as just a pure spectator I either taught. Yeah, most of the, I did a book signing there, so there was always like obligations at different booths and things, but this year was the first time I ever had a booth and I actually took a like. A 10 by 10 foot space in Denise Schmidt's booth. And so we just brainstormed in the months leading up to Quilt Con, how we could be a little cohesive and, and that sort of thing. So that was the first time I'd ever vended at Quilt Con, and it was so great. To just make connections with people who purchase what you make, who follow what you design. And yeah, it's just it's really I think it's so important. So much of our, day-to-day is virtual now, I do a lot of virtual lectures, I teach virtually. And so to make those in-person connections I think was probably the very best part of Quilt Con. So it was an experience that I may still be recovering from vending at Quilt Con, but it was it was definitely a really good experience.

Susan mic: 5:35

So essentially you were connecting with people like me. So I was a newcomer to that show, and quite honestly, I have not. Attended a lot of quilt shows over the year. I've always, over the years I've always lived, in remote locations and so forth. So I was on the consumer end of that experience, but found it equally valuable, like to be able to put faces to names and just to have a conversation with fabric designers and authors and tool designers like yourself and Denise and all these people, which just, it adds such richness to what I do.

Blair mic: 6:07

Yes. That's a good way to put it. That's a good way to put it. I'm glad you found it to be that kind of experience, because I always have, it's just a, it's so unique to be in a. In an environment where everybody is just talking about quilts, like that's your people,

Susan mic: 6:25

it absolutely is. No matter where you sit down for lunch or who you meet on the escalator, you share that common interest. Yeah.

Blair mic: 6:32

Yes.

Susan mic: 6:33

So you've been quilting, making quilts and crafts surrounding quilts for a lot of years. What kind of got you started in quilt making or maybe even in crafting? Pick whichever you like.

Blair mic: 6:46

I've always enjoyed making things, although I did not grow up with quilt makers. My the women in my family were amazing seamstresses for clothing and I. They did a lot of knitting and crocheting and they would try different things. I remember my mom was crocheting silver, elastic like cording to make little rings and things. I just remember her trying all these different things. So I always grew up with, like this whole maker mentality, try it, you can try anything kind of thing. And I went into the apparel design industry and fashion merchandising after I graduated from college. That's what I studied in college. And so I worked in that for my entire corporate life and worked for, I like Union Bay, different companies and approached my love. Of good fabric, through that lens. I always felt like this connection to fabric, and that's probably why I went into that sort of field. We were constantly looking at new fabrics. What makes a fabric great? What do people love about a fabric? What do we not like about it? And so when I had my daughter who's now 26, I. Was no longer I had, we had moved to Seattle, Washington from North Carolina. I was no longer working in the apparel industry. We've made the decision to try to have me stay home with her because we didn't have family around. And all those feelings you have when you have a newborn baby, and I wanted to make her a quilt. And the only thing I knew about quilts, like in my mind's eye, I just saw these patchwork quilts made with different fabrics, all kinds of scrappy fabrics, and I loved the idea of. That fabrics in a quilt, if they're all different, they can hold meaning like, I could make a quilt with her baby clothes or I could make a quilt with little scraps of curtains in her room and things like that. That's what the initial appeal of quilt making was to me. Was that it's a scrapbook. Through or a a photo album of some sort told through fabric. And so I made her. A quilt. We, when her son, when my son, her little brother came along I, and I knew that, I probably was, we were not gonna have any more kids. Two was probably enough, so I had all these girl clothes. So I made a patchwork quilt for her super wonky, there were a lot of things I did not understand about quilt making because I had never, been around it. There's wonky seams. I didn't really understand that. Quarter inch seam didn't really register with me. I, was always with five eighths inch seams and big seams because of clothing and I. Didn't understand how the three layers of the quilt go together. It's I finally, I was knitting back then, so I remember I took some wool yarn and just tied the corners of the little patchwork squares that I had sewn together when I was putting the layers together because I was like, oh, great, this will hold the layers together and it'll camouflage my wonky seams and, it's funny because in that quilt, the bottom third of the squares are not tied together. And the reason that they're not tied together was because I was pregnant with my son when I started making the quilt. And then I went into labor and never finished the bottom. And he's now, 23. So it's never been finished, but I loved the idea of storytelling and memory keeping through fabric. And then I think I was an avid Martha Stewart Living Magazine person and I saw an article of Denise Schmidt and her quilts in a 19, I don't remember, 1990. 6 97, something like that, or maybe even later. And I was like, I wanna make these, this is what I like. So that sort of started me into pursuing an interesting quilts, but it wasn't really until 2015 or 16. I started my business wise, craft handmade in 2015. So that was really when I began focusing on quilts in earnest. To backtrack a little bit, I was we were living in Seattle. My kids were young, and I was asked by a chain of thrift stores to, shop their stores for supplies and then create all of these DIY projects using things that you could find every day in the thrift store. In their thrift store. I did that for three years

Susan mic: 12:05

What are a few of the things you made with upcycled bits? So you're saying things you can always find meaning the things that commonly are right, like blue jeans and what else?

Blair mic: 12:16

Yeah, so and then we would make seasonal stories like, we would style a room for Halloween or something like that. So there might be, I would take their Barbies that you would see every day in a thrift store, and I spray painted them white and turn them into zombies. And, that was a simple DIY project and, you wrap them in gauze and for their, or make a mummy or something like that. So that's just one example. I would take old t-shirts in like orange or black or gray or something and show them how to make, a bag for Halloween candy or something like that. Halloween was a big season for them, so I often did a lot of Halloween DIY projects, but it was all the things that they had in the store every day, not just, for Christmas or for Halloween. So I did that for a few years. I think three years. I would do, like a summer party theme, a Halloween theme. Christmas or holiday theme, something like that. And I kept the the intellectual property of all that content. I did not they were allowed to use it, but I owned it. So in the end when. We had compiled all of these projects. The photographer who took photos and myself compiled it into a book and pitched different publishers and published that into my first book. And so that was, but I told them when we were doing, and I said, I'd like to do one. So I divided all of the projects. I think there were 60. I divided them all into. Seasons like I had been doing for the photo shoot. So I asked them, I'm like, I'd really like to do one upcycled quilt for each season. And so that was a fun project to upcycle like men shirting and things like that into, I think the summer one. I used like a picnic blanket. As the backing and made a picnic blanket out of dad's shirts or, something like that. After I finished that book, I decided that I looked around one day at my house and I had literally DIY projects in some state of completion. Everywhere. And I was like, I think this might be the tipping point. And I decided, you know what? I really love quilts. I'd like to just focus on quilts. So that was probably when I began, when I started my business in earnest and just started focusing on quilts.

Susan mic: 16:10

I can see a strong thread running through here though when you first mentioned your, the first quilt that you did and this idea that it would be a memory keeper. I see that thread running through your quilts to this day. That idea that it's not heavily curated. It's, you think of them as building blocks, all the fabrics that you use. And so one of the things that I've seen on your website over the years and that I acquired at Quilt Con is your Ruby Ruler. And this is a way whereby you it helps you to sort and to use your fabrics like an artist would. So maybe give us a, two minute crash course in what your Ruby ruler does when making a scrappy quilt with all kinds of fabrics.

Blair mic: 16:53

Yeah it's my favorite tool. I use it every day in addition to teaching classes for it. So I still, to this day, as you mentioned, I still like quilts with lots of different fabrics and I am minimal in the fact that I don't like to have a big fabric stash. I had a big fabric stash at one point. I don't anymore. And there was a lot of angst and like adjustment to not having a big fabric stash. But I really, when I think of the quilts that I like to see out in the world, they often have lots of different fabrics in them. Just like that quilt that I made for Emma all those years ago. And these. Don't always have to tell stories, but maybe they have some significance. Every quilt that I make, I look at it as an I spy quilt in the sense that you look up close, you're like, oh, we bought that when we, visited, my aunt and we went to fabric shopping or something like that. There's some tug of your memory, but coming from a design background, I also like to. Create some sort of shape and form with those fabrics that I'm using. And so I often rely on color, value and color. Color is something that I. Can be a source of confusion or frustration for some quilters because if you're used to buying like a fat quarter set from your favorite designer or something like that, those are often all curated beautifully in a bundle for you. All the colors go together, but what do you do if you. Literally are pulling all of your fabric from your stash and trying to create some cohesion. And so I was looking for ways to convey the ideas that I use about color value and how to make these sunshine and shadow shapes in your quilts. And my, the family I married into is very it's a very creative family. And my sister-in-law was here one day and she goes, have you ever heard of Ruby Lift film? And I said, no. And she said she said it's like a red film. And landscape painters, photographers people like that will often use. A red film over their eyes to distort the colors and to keep the focus of their eyes, not on the color, but on the shapes they're creating in their composition. And that's how they view color value they have. A lot of times in paintings or photography, you have the rule of threes. You want your three, areas to come through visibly. And a lot of times, if you're looking at it with your eye. It, you it's hard to get past looking at the actual color of the shapes, so a lot of quilters will take. And I also recommend this to, when you're making a quilt with many different fabrics or when you really are, trying to manipulate the color value successfully in your quilt layout. I look at it through my Ruby ruler all the time. I look at I use it because I'll pull all my fabrics together before I ever even cut any pieces at my work table. And I'll look at them through the ruler and I hold it. You hold it like midway between, your fabrics and your eye. you're looking at them and saying, okay, these seem like a lot of darks. These, it seems like a lot of lights. Let's, go back and pull some other things. And I explain to students when I teach them, this is a tool to help with color value. Just if you take a photo with your phone and change it to a black and white image. That's another way of looking at it. This is just another way of. Being aware of color value because there's that old saying color gets all the credit, but value does all the work. And that's very true when it comes to quilts. And these scrappy very busy saturated quilts that I make look very different up close than they do from far away. And. Perspectives are equally interesting, but it's nice to have tools in our toolbox to help us feel more confident about manipulating color and color value and things like that. So that I came out with that ruler in 2017, and it's a cutting ruler. You can cut. Five inch squares and smaller with it. I use it all the time to true up my half square triangle units. And then I also use it as a value viewer as well.

Susan mic: 21:53

It is definitely geared toward the quilter like me, who does not have artistic training, right? And I am your textbook classic student who looked, looks at a variety of fabrics and says, but I don't know how to choose. To get the effect that I want. And I learned the smartphone trick a while back too, that the black and white of a photo makes things come clear, but so does the ruler. So it's a filtering effect and it just takes away some of the distractions maybe, and helps you to make some more confident decisions and know what that end result is going to be. It's just a marvelous tool.

Blair mic: 22:30

Thank you. I'm glad that you like it. It's, I it's color and color value, as I said, is a. It can be a sticking point for quilters. And I think that they need just a little, like I just taught a group of students here in Santa Fe last week. They've got the color, they've got their likes. And the colors that they're drawn to, they just need maybe tools and strategies of working with them to create the quilt that they want

Susan mic: 23:04

I absolutely, I loved your phrase, sunshine and shadow. That's such a good description of that, the contrast that you're trying to achieve that makes it effective and interesting, and it's hard to do that by accident, and some people seem to have a natural gift for it. Some people are trained into it like artists and some people like me, go and get your Ruby ruler and use a tool.

Blair mic: 23:27

Yes. Yeah. And I tell people when I discuss with guilt and things when we talk about color I didn't. I never studied the color wheel. I didn't study it in college, and when I was in the apparel industry, the color wheel was irrelevant. It was all about what sells and what doesn't sell. And you I. The way that we would create color stories is we would put a piece of interfacing up on the wall that, or flannel or something, and stick little swatches of color to it. And if, a dark forest green sold really well. Last season, we needed to manipulate it just enough to make it feel new, but not look out of place when it inevitably would end up on sail rack somewhere. You didn't want your sail rack to be higgeldy, pty and strange, so those were the kinds of color decisions that we would have to make. And I think not having. Rules that I followed as far as the color wheel and things like that, probably opened my mind very early in different directions. I didn't feel pinned in by, oh, we have a warm color, we should use a cool color, and, that's we should use that tone or something like that. I wasn't hemmed in by that because I didn't really even study it, use it, and it never, I had many chances in the apparel industry to exercise that color muscle and that color value muscle and things like that. So it's probably a good thing that I did not take that one elective class on the color wheel that did not fit into my schedule because I had a part-time job. And, it wouldn't allow me to get to work on time if I took that one class. So that changed the trajectory of how I use color.

Susan mic: 25:23

It's so interesting how you can look back on those little pivots and just wonder what would've been different. But I do love that viewpoint because I, that's how I approach quilt making is not so much academically, knowing color theory, for example, as just, does it please me? Does it satisfy me? And you mentioned earlier that quilters, typically, if they've been quilting for any amount of time, they already know. Their likes and their dislikes, their tendencies. But within that, still that idea, again, I come back to the sunshine and shadow that's so descriptive of that level of contrast that we look for, and that makes a picture out of our quilt. Another thing that you've done quite a bit of lately, you call chicken scratch. Would you tell us more about that? It feels like hearkening back to an old fashioned craft, but I just, I love it. It's so effective.

Blair mic: 26:13

So I think it was probably the last time I went to Quilt Festival, which was in Houston, which was probably 20. 17, 20 18 I found a quilt block at one of the booths that sold antique quilt blocks and it had all of the stitching on it in the shape of a star on gingham. And I thought, that's really interesting. I bought it and, at the same time I was creating my business and I didn't really have time to look at it any further. It of course got buried. And when we moved from Seattle to Santa Fe in 2020, we got rid of about half of what we had, of everything. We went through everything'cause we were downsizing. And I came across that block again and I, when we moved to Santa Fe we, what I'm in right now is my studio. We, this did not exist, so they were building the studio for me. So for. A little over a year. I did not really have any place to make big quilts, lay out big things. But I had found that block and I thought, you know what? I can take hand stitching to any room I'm in.

Susan mic: 27:30

I feel like this is one of life's little pivots again.

Blair mic: 27:33

Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. And I just went down this huge rabbit hole learning everything I could about chicken scratch. But it is a it's a vintage stitching technique. I'm sure that most of your listeners have seen some version of it at an antique store or a vintage shop. It's usually, stitching, hand stitching that's done on gingham aprons or napkins or things like that. It's a very utilitarian way to add little motifs and little stitching details to gingham. It's always done on gingham. You use the grid of the gingham to, to, put your stitches in. And so I started stitching it as they were building my studio. Fell into a rabbit hole. There's not a ton about it online. It's also been called other names like Amish Lace, snowflake, lace depression, lace, and. It's had ebbs and flows of popularity through the years. I think that, I have some vintage pieces from the eighties. I can't believe that's vintage, but it is. I have some from the forties.

Susan mic: 28:45

Clearly we are vintage too.

Blair mic: 28:47

Yeah. And, so I just went nuts for how relaxing and meditative it is to stitch this. I'm one of those people that I cannot sit down and watch a movie or anything at home without having something for my hands to do. My husband would not be, not appreciate me having some blinding light in the room so that I could see everything. And what I realized is that with the gingham, you don't have to have like super strong light. It's very easy to stitch, and you're doing this repetitive stitching over and over again. The stitches are a lot. Like they're reminiscent of counted cross stitch, but it's much easier than that. So that's in 2021 after a year of stitching it I, just put the word out to my followers and I said, Hey, if I do a block of the month, would you guys be interested in doing it with me? We'll learn together. I'm not, a hundred percent sure of what I'm working on, but I know enough to guide us and had, about 200 people join me. It was super fun. We learned a ton and I've been doing it ever since.

Susan mic: 30:04

It is very fun and there are some great photos of some of those projects and I think maybe a block of the month might have been that one on your website. So if people want to see what Chicken Scratch is, I love some of those other names too. What did you say? Amish Lace and what was the other one? Snowflake.

Blair mic: 30:19

Amish Lace, snowflake, lace depression, lace. Yes. And honestly, I think there's probably some version of chicken scratch embroidery in other countries under other names. So currently we're doing a brand new block of the month. We're just two months in called Gridline. And in that I've got people from Australia and from Mexico and different places. And so they're enjoying finding out what it's called, and learning little tidbits and facts about that type of stitching where they are. And so I, I'm always like, please share.'cause I wanna know, what it what do you see there? What do they call it there?

Susan mic: 31:02

It is always so interesting to see what. Quilt making or crafts in general look like in other countries. I'm planning a trip to England this summer with it on a textile tour, and that's part of what I look forward to is seeing it through different eyes in a different country, different shops, maybe different, supplies are available. Yeah. So that's fascinating. I wonder, do you, is that one of your favorite things about teaching or is there something else? What do you love best about teaching? I know you do a lot of that.

Blair mic: 31:32

Gosh, I love a lot about teaching. I feel as if I really like it when I feel like students' eyes are opened to what color value can do as far as quilts and things like that. I find that very exciting. I feel, I've been told by people who have quilted for years when they leave a workshop. I actually learned something new that I didn't really think of in the same way before, and that really pleases me and humbles me because Quiltings been around for a really long time. And, it's nice to feel like you can bring something new to a student's eye. And then with chicken scratch, just the pure delight that people experience when they learn. A, how easy it is, and B, how relaxing it is. I feel everyone should have some sort of hand stitching in their life just for the meditative benefits of it. And just, I feel like it just calms my breathing. It's just, it's such a simple thing, but I think that we're on computer screens and telephones so much. It's nice to be able to engage our hands and just clear our minds, which is what it does. So I love bringing that to people. People get really excited. I had one student jump up at the end of a class and she's I can't wait to teach my 10-year-old grandchild when she comes over this summer, how to do this. And I'm like, yes, she can do this. This is something that you two can do together. I love that. Yeah.

Susan mic: 33:18

I agree. So meaningful. I always like to ask my guests at the end of the show, and I didn't give you four warnings, so I always like to ask if there is a gem that you would like to leave for our listeners. It can have to do with quilting or learning or just life in general. Some little nugget that you'd like to leave.

Blair mic: 33:39

I think the best. As far as quilts, I will say this is my nugget.'cause I just repeated this during my workshop this past week. A lot of times we will do one part of a quilt, one small part, and we will, especially in a scrappy quilt, and we'll look at that and say, I'm not sure how I feel about that. And I'm always looking for a way to try to explain to them it's probably too early in the process to make that decision. And if you're not sure how you feel about that color combo or that half score triangle unit, how it goes together or something like that, I would encourage you to do a little bit more of it before you just rule it out completely. Because one of the things that I still get excited about. Quilting is these happy, accidental color combinations that come up when you just if you do it once, it could feel like it's problematic or a mistake. But if you do it more than once, then it's a des a design decision, which is, a totally different way to look at it. And I've seen that happen over and over again where somebody's I don't know if the scale of those two prints looks right, or I'm not sure if those two colors look right together, but if they repeat it maybe two or three more times around the layout, suddenly it's it a point of view, it's a design decision and a point of view and it means something different. So I would encourage everybody, and it's all part of that, don't overthink. And so let Chance be your guide. Go with it. If it looks strange, maybe do a few more before you rule it out completely.

Susan mic: 35:35

I love that. I feel like, honestly, Blair, that's a pretty good life lesson too. Yeah. Don't rule out the possibilities in this. Circumstance too early on. Too early on. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us and in the show notes we'll be sure and show all you listeners where you can go to find some of Blair's work to look at it. All of her scrappy quilt patterns are just wonderful. They're so imaginative and so freeing, so good. So be sure and check all of that out. So thanks for joining me, Blair.

Blair mic: 36:07

Thank you, Susan. Bye everybody.

36:09

Well, that concludes my visit with Blair. Again. Be sure to check out her website Wise Craft Handmade and her social media feeds as well. You'll find them such a treat. Blair offers workshops that are in person in a number of locations across the us and also she has several block of the month programs where you can join up and each month a new lesson is sent to you and those are on demand. Online courses, so you can do them at home, on your PJs, on your own time, but they're super, super helpful if you want to delve into working with your scrappy quilts and value as Blair does. And also of course, with the chicken scratch Stitchery. So be sure to check those out. Again, all the links directly to them are in the show notes. Well, my friends, until next time, may your sorrows be patched and your joys be quilted.