Origin: United States
Year: 2015
Designer: Natalie Chanin
Materials: Cotton jersey
Natalie Chanin from Project Alabama in her first book: Alabama Stitch Book: Projects and Stories Celebrating Hand-Sewing, Quilting and Embroidery for Contemporary Sustainable Style, (Abrams: 2008) shared her personal story of a designer and the evolution of her own company. It all started with a T-shirt.
Natalie decided in the year 2000 to cut apart a T-shirt and hand-stitch it back together. This led her to go back home to Florence (Alabama) to work with the stitchers and quilters of her own community to produce a collection of one-of-a-kind T-shirts, as well as make a documentary film about old-time quilting circles, and then to found Alabama Chanin.
This first collection focused on the story of cotton in her own community and its early work using recycled T-shirts as a fabric source. Natalie’s stitching, stenciling, beading techniques and designs started with a simple T-shirt as well as the use of the fabric that still characterizes today Project Alabama, cotton jersey.
