Sewing With Nancy

I know that we've all heard many times the old saying "It takes a village to raise a child" but it also takes a community of artistic people to bring us the fabrics, the tools, the books and supplies for us to sew and quilt. I'd like to introduce you to one of the members of that community. And that is Ketra Oberlander. Ketra, welcome back to Sewing with Nancy. Thank you so much. It's a joy to be here today. Some of you who were with us during our last program of Sewing with Nancy Ketra was our guest. Ketra started the organization, Art of Possibilities bringing together people who are disabled licensing their designs into, in this instance, fabric. Yes, what we did is I looked at the problem of physical disability and it's a problem of physics. It's not a problem of competency. Disabled doesn't mean unable. I realized that if I could skip the physics part of being an artist that my work could reach a broader audience. I work with fabric companies to put art and design by disabled artists onto their fabrics. Hopefully, that's a springboard for home sewers and quilters to do something truly inspirational for themselves. Your fabrics, I just gravitate toward them because of the color and the vibrancy of them. As a blind individual, you work in theory. How do you go about that? It's an interesting question. I am color blind as part of my vision loss. Of the people that are blind there are different kinds of ways to be blind. And blindness is a range of vision loss. Only 10% of blind people are totally blind which is like when your eyes are closed. The rest can see something just what they're getting is so compromised by the limits of their eyes, optic nerves or neurological conditions that they can't see what you're seeing. So, I work theoretically, work from a color palette and to try to bring colors forward. This collection is by a blind artist who has color perception. This is by George Mendoza, who designed this grouping. We worked off of three fine art paintings to bring this group to life for you guys. It does come to life. You work on canvas with oil pastels. I work with oil and acrylic paints, because they're quicker. But I like painting. I love the feel of the brush on the canvas. I like that grab, and the tactile sensation which is very important to me as a creator. Those images that you create are made into a digital image through photography or scanned and then put onto fabric. Right, we take the image. For fabric, it needs to be done into a repeat so that quilters and home sewers can use it effectively. I work with graphic artists to make the modifications necessary to bring it alive and to a fabric context. Ketra, earlier you gave me a great example of the graphic artists you work with. They're like Whitney Houston's-- Right, like the back-up band. It takes a lot of people's different gifts to come together to bring anything to life in the creative arts. No one does it alone. No, and I have a great back-up band here of about 12 people that are making this happen. We need those back-up bands! They're equally as important as the front person. It's important to remember that when those credits roll there are people attached to each one of those names. Absolutely. But now, back to your fabric. You design it, but other people sew it for you. And here's a quilt that is large, and bold and has black combined with some of these prints. Yes, this was designed by Angie Hodapp. When she heard what we were doing as disabled artists working in community she was quick to jump onboard and do a quilt design for her magazine subscribers that they could try on their own at home. A great combination. You could work smaller. There are some border prints in your line. There are. I think the good thing, as we create more lines we're trying to build-in different looks by each of our artists to create more opportunity for creative expression for home sewing and quilting. What I like about your fabrics is that they stand out. They're not going to hide in anyone's corner. If they're in the closet, they'll jump out at you. Right, just like with a disabled person where you know notice the assistive technology before you notice the person attached to it our fabrics really pop! They certainly do. With this particular design and with your other fabric lines, you see if the color-ways are correct, the prints and the size of the prints work very well together. It's a great hope of ours. I believe in cohesion. I believe in a world of inclusion. I believe that our arts and crafts should reflect that inclusion and cohesion in our daily lives. Ketra, thank you for being our guest on Sewing with Nancy. You can turn to the Sewing with Nancy Web site and click under Nancy's Corner. Under the 2400 series, you will find Ketra's name a brief description and a link to her Web site. This wraps up our two-part series on "Sew

Elastic

Stretch Your Options." I hope that you've learned some basic techniques as well as been inspired by Ketra. Thanks for joining me. Bye for now.