Melissa Quaal is a business owner, sewing instructor, feminist, creativity advocate and sells DIY shoe kits called The Espadrilles Kits.
Her work has been featured in BUST and Mollie Makes magazines and online at Uppercase, Spoonflower, Michael Miller Fabrics, and While She Naps. Melissa has brought the magic of making and sewing to students across the country and collaborated with a variety of sewing professionals including fabric companies, pattern designers and prominent bloggers.
She also joined her love of sewing with her passion for social justice by creating a mindful wardrobe consisting of only handmade or thrifted clothes. In short, she completely stopped buying new clothes. For the last five years her mindful wardrobe has served as a personal, radically simple effort to counter the waste and conformity of fast fashion with a more meaningful relationship to the daily effort of getting dressed. The project has brought attention to the ecological damage and human cost of the fashion industry since 2015. Read more here . Melissa believes we are all capable of building a more mindful wardrobe.
CREATING A MINDFUL WARDROBE
- I believe in the power of making. Within our two hands is the power to bring into the world whatever stunning, funky, lush, spare, devoted, or radical vision we might have and in doing so we make the world a richer place. If my humble stitches can make magic and comfort, encourage sustainability, decrease pollution and fight the exploitation of global workers then anything is possible.
- I want to live in a world where beauty, humor and design meet courageous, creative hands and together they make beautiful babies.
- I refuse to accept the rules written by the fashion world with its designated colors, sizes and shapes. I believe that armed with sewing machines and creative joy there is the potential to bust through into a glorious world of radical love. Love of ourselves, the planet and all the humans.
COME CREATE WITH ME!
- DECEMBER 7 & 8, BUST CRAFTACULAR, Industry City Brooklyn
- JANUARY 25, Warren, NJ Library – SEWING BASICS
- MARCH 21 & 22, STITCH SEW SHOP, Alexandria, VA
- APRIL 15-19 CRAFTCATION Conference , Ventura, CA
I’m available to teach across the East Coast region and beyond. If you are a group or an individual interested in booking me to teach, please reach out to ahappystitch{at}gmail{dot}com. Watch this video for an introduction to my teaching philosophy.
BE IN TOUCH
It’s an honor to hear from people. Email me @ ahappystitch[at]gmail[dot]com and be sure to add yourself to my newsletter list!
DISCLOSURE POLICY
This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact ahappystitch[at]gmail.[dot]com. This blog accepts a limited number of products, sponsorship, or other forms of compensations and abides by word of mouth marketing standards. I believe in honesty of relationship, opinion and identity. The compensation received may influence my decision to review content or present posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post will be clearly identified as paid or sponsored content.
I am compensated to provide an honest opinion on products, books and services. Even though I sometimes receive compensation for posts, I always give honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.
This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.
I am an Amazon.com affiliate, which means that when I link to something on Amazon if you click on it and buy something from Amazon, I get a few cents. Really, a few cents. So, if you want to do that it would be real nice. But, I strongly encourage you to first check with your local bookstore and support them first and foremost. I am also an affiliate for other companies I believe in including Hey June, The Confident Stitch, Craftsy and Creativebug. Thanks for supporting a small business!
PRIVACY POLICY
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