Creating for Community

I came out as Trans/Non-Binary when I was 20, far after I had given up my dream of becoming a professional artist. In high school, I was made to believe by counselors and family that I would never be able to make it as a true "artist." However, my perception of what an artist was involved oil paints, a canvas, and million dollar paintings being auctioned at Christie's. Now, at 23, I have discovered the falsehood of everything I grew up believing about the art community. I have discovered quilting and the joy that it brings me. Since then I have seen incredible designers, quilters, and ship owners crafting beautiful creations, successfully monetizing what they love, and having fun doing it.

A year ago I made my first dive into Foundation Paper Piecing, a quilt piecing method that involves small cuts of fabric being sewn to paper designs to create incredible images. Immediately, I dove into researching how to create my own patterns. Quickly, I began to discover I had a skill and passion for this. Now, 6 months after opening my shop I have made 25+ sales, $500+ in revenue, and had countless 5 star reviews. This may not seem like a lot to a larger company but for me, I am successfully proving myself wrong in the best way. I am making money off my art and having fun doing it. It is like all of the pieces are coming together in the best way possible.

After releasing my first set of patterns in April I wanted to do something a little different. I drew inspiration from the Boris the Dragon quilt pattern by Prairie and Ocean. The creator of the pattern was releasing it for free to anyone who donated at least $5 to her Feeding America fundraiser. What an incredible idea!!

I immediately wanted to do something similar. Since 2019, I have been a member of the Executive Board of the Grand Rapids Trans Foundation. We are a grassroots, volunteer run organization which gives directly to our local Trans community via Academic Scholarships and Name Change Microgrants, as well as various programming. This is another thing that gives me immense joy to do, it is incredibly rewarding and fulfilling work. A majority of the money that comes into our organization is given directly back into the community. For all of these reasons, I knew that the Grand Rapids Trans Foundation was the organization I wanted to support.

I ran the idea past the rest of the board and they loved it! Next, I just needed to come up with a design. The difficulty with designing pride/LGBT related merch for charity is that you want it to be versatile enough that not only members of the LGBT community want to buy it. There is a redundancy in asking minorities to give their hard earned money to help themselves. It needed to be a design that anyone could use and love. This is where the idea for Pride House came in.

Pride House is a traditional piecing pattern which features a home with architecture typical of the Grand Rapids area with a pride flag hanging off the porch. You don't have to be Queer to fly a pride flag, right? The best part: the design would feature 12+ different pride flags that you could choose to hang on your house's porch! This allows people of the LGBT community to feel represented and give them the option to hang the flag which best suits them. People who have LGBT family members can do the same as a gift to show their love and support. Even people with no connections to the LGBT community, but who support us nonetheless, are able to fly their little pride flag with joy. As the cherry on top, the release was to take place on June 1st, just in time for pride month. It was perfect.

Next, the actual designing. Since, in the past, I typically only designed Foundation Paper Piecing patterns, this part was a challenge. However, after asking other pattern designers I was able to power through and after a week, I had my first draft of the pattern. I had put so much energy into creating this document, I was eager to share it with the world. After following the instructions and piecing it myself I made my posts calling for pattern testers.

My initial call for testers brought in over 20 people thrilled to test my pattern, inspired by the cause. With such a great response, I decided that I would pick one person for each pride flag and; after taking a few days to sort through emails and assign flag designs, they were off! Now the hard part had begun...waiting. Were they going to love it? Hate it? Was it impossible to follow, hard to comprehend? The fear of failure was all encompassing, this was a project which I had poured my soul into and was incredibly important to me personally. I wanted everyone to love it.

Love it they did! I received incredible response from the testers, they emailed me raving about the pattern. I was being tagged in Instagram posts left and right with people showing their excitement for the pattern and showing off their gorgeous blocks. I was getting comments from people telling me how excited they were for the release so that they could make their own Pride House.

Joy...that's what I felt. All of this was happening so fast and I imagined people all over the world with their Pride Houses, we were going to form own worldwide neighborhood full of love, passion, and support for the LGBT community. This was all happening because of my passion and my art.

Through the testing process I met many incredible people as well. One woman from New York was creating a pride themed quilt to auction off during pride month to benefit her local LGBT center, she wanted my design to be the centerpiece. Another woman, also from New York, loved the pattern so much that she wanted to create a small quilt using the design to donate to the Grand Rapids Trans Foundation. Not only was this pattern going to help raise money for my organization, it was also being used in a meaningful way which only increased my happiness with the response.

Currently, our organization does not have a paid Executive Director or a physical space. These two long term goals are what I have in mind to assist with for the money that I raise from the pattern. It only seems fitting that the small quilt being donated to us by the woman in New York should hang on the wall of this future space or serve as a comforting lap blanket for anyone coming to visit us.

Even if I only raise a couple hundred dollars from this project, I will see it as a success. Even if it won't shorten the time needed to obtain a space or a paid Director, I know that the money will go to help a Trans student get through college or a Trans community member update their legal name and documentation. This makes all the hard work that I have put into the project worth it, and I couldn't be happier with the end result.

I am now a few days away from the launch of the fundraiser and release of the pattern and I can hardly wait to see where this journey takes me.