Designer Profile: Meg Chobanian

One of the benefits of being a thread maker is that we get to meet creative people every day. To see what a designer, teacher, stitcher, or retailer creates out of our thread and their chosen medium…well, it excites, inspires and motivates us here at the Kreinik thread factory. 

We recently met fiber artist Meg Chobanian through a mutual friend, Pamela Armas. Pamela is an amazing, creative person herself, running a doll pattern and fabric business, Treasures of the Gypsy. The Gypsy Doll Challenge is a main, annual exhibit at International Quilt Market, and we have been a sponsor for many years. We love working with Pamela's doll artists and exhibit many of their creations in our booths. When Pamela put us in contact with Meg Chobanian, we immediately wanted to tell you about this unique fiber artist.

First, take a look at the photo galleries on the web site: http://qexpeditions.com/photo_gallery.htm where you will see playful imagination combining color with dimension. One of Meg's themes is to create designs that speak to some childlike part of each viewer, and you can see that wonder and delight in many of her creations.

“I began making doll clothes as soon as I could cut fabric and hold a needle," Meg says. Her grandmother was a turn-of-the-century couturier and her mother was an expert dressmaker. Clearly, she was bound for a creative, textile life.

"I was off and running when I found my first book about quilting. And that has led to art quilts, surface design experiments, teaching, designing and a thread oriented way of life," she adds. Currently she is focusing on using fabric and fibers to create tactile art "somewhere between painting and sculpture." That sounds exciting, and we can't wait to see what Meg creates next. 

Meg distributes her line of patterns through her web site, www.qexpeditions.com, and one of her Internet shops. She also teaches. “I get inspiration from teaching," Meg notes. "It’s rewarding to start a new quilter with the basics and see them so thrilled and caught up in this thing I can share with them.”

We are excited to show photos of these unique dimensional ornaments Meg created for our exhibit at Fall International Quilt Market. They feature Kreinik Iron-on Threads and fabric as a sculptural ornament, rather than a flat, pieced piece. Imagine the creations twirling on your Christmas tree, twinkling in reflection of the holiday lights, fun, playful, child-like. You can almost sense a blend of ages: a child's wonderment with a fiber artist's craftsmanship. 

“I believe there is an almost mystical quality in things created by hand.," Meg says in her Artist's Bio.  "A part of the maker’s spirit must remain in something that takes so many hours of work.  I want each one of my pieces to become someone’s heirloom, to continue the thread of creativity through the generations.  Art is food for the soul of humanity and from the soul of humanity.  Given scraps or hardship we can all still create beauty and goodness with what we have, and each of us can enrich our own corner of the infinite universe by the simple things we can share.”