In 1986, Stacy Michell started a business venture called “Shades Textiles”. After visiting several large quilt shows, she was inspired to explore the options of hand dyed textiles in the quilting marketplace. At the same time, she was 21 years old, and in need of employment! Stacy was uniquely qualified for this job of textiles artist. As a child she began sewing at age 4, and received a Singer Featherweight at age 6 for Christmas. She made her first quilt in fourth grade at age 10, and taught a 6 week quilting class the next year at her school. Additionally, according to her mother, she was an avid finger painting artist, enjoying just the touch and feel of the paint and the swirls of colors as they would mix with each other on the paper, very much like some of the fabric Stacy produces today. Stacy’s parents are also in the quilting business. This family profession assisted in qualify Stacy for the textiles business she operates today.

With in her first couple of years in business Stacy started exhibiting at as many as 18 quilt shows a year from smaller local events to some of the bigger venues like The American Quilter’s Society Quilt Show in Kentucky or Quilt Market & Quilt Festival in Houston. In Stacy’s first year at Houston, she met a Japanese Textiles artist named Akio Kawamoto and she quickly entered the export market place. Today much of her fabric is sold in Japan and there are several very large private collections of her cloth in Japan. Also, Stacy’s Cloth has been featured in many Japanese how to quilt books written by Kathy Nakajima.

This international quilting coloration Stacy has developed has had a very synergistic effect on her career in recent years. Many of her Japanese customers started to make Hawaiian Style quilts using her colorful hand dyed cloth. These fabric choices broke the old design rule of Hawaiian quilts being made from 2 solid colors of cloth. This artistic movement inspired Stacy and her associate Toshiko Hashimoto to create a large line of appliqué designs inspired by Hawaiian quilts, but on any design theme, but Hawaiian. Hawaiian style quilts have a distinctive technique, where the cloth is folded and cut, kind of like making a paper snow flake, but the designs are of a Hawaiian theme. “All-Around Appliqué Designs” from Shades Textiles have over 100 block designs with diverse themes from cats & dogs to Christmas trees and Jack ‘O Lanterns or sports like surfing or golf. All of the creative energy flowing around her studio with the addition of the appliqué patterns has also created many new dyed fabric techniques and colors.

Currently, Stacy is living in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. Shades Textiles Studio occupies a 3600 square foot space. This studio is a part of a large complex of artist that occupy an old furniture factory. When Stacy moved in to this space, it was an empty hole lacking all plumbing or electrical work required for fabric dyeing and all amenities for living were also missing. After almost 15 years in the space it is fully equipped and very functional, colorful and comfortable. With a staff of about 3 people and currently 1 studio dog, Frannie, Shades Studio is a busy and fun place to be.

This site has been created by Stacy Michell All Images and content are property of Shades Textiles Copyright 2005. For the web pages we have used a great application called Freeway, and our shopping cart service has been provided by Earthlink & Miva Co. It has been created on an Apple Computer... the Mercedes of Computers! A special thanks go out to Cash and Victor in the tech support department at Earthlink. They have been very helpful and full of knowledge.

Please send your questions, comments, complaints and positive feedback about this web site to:

Shades Textiles by Stacy Michell

585 Cobb Parkway S. Artisan Resource Center Studio O,

Marietta, GA 30060-9302

Ph 770-919-9824 FAX 770-919-9854