Get Quilt-Happy with Chiyome
Girl is scrappy.
In addition to streamlined bags, Anna Lynett Moss is way into quilting and sells her creations under her so-good, so-sleek label, Chiyome. How’d she fall into this work? “Today, our will to piece together a blanket with scraps of old garments is deflated by the convenience of cheap commercial alternatives,” explains Anna in her always-thoughtful way. “I’m interested in the luxurious opportunity to manipulate this craft by choice and not necessity.” Get a taste of her inspo and work. —carly pifer
“When I was moving from L.A. to NYC last year, I couldn’t justify bringing my box of weird fabric straps with me. So I sewed them into my first quilt and by changing their context, elevated their value. Today, quilt-making exists in this tenuous space between pragmatism and luxury. It is at once utilitarian and celebratory. I’m not interested so much in the nostalgia of the fabrics as I am in this ritual of the handmade. It’s a very powerful act to make something from a few basic elements.”
“To me, making quilts is familiar because of the formal matrix and the distance between maker and form. It’s the same in printmaking, which I studied at RISD. The process is just negotiating within a set of rules—there is freedom in that structure. I was looking at Bauhaus textiles like this one when I developed my quilt series.”
“This series was kind of a visceral exercise in the push-pull of form. I would start by considering the whole size of the piece and sprinkle in a few layers of color, then build forward or backward on the quilt-plane until the form started to emerge. I admire the color restraint in the work of Anni Albers. She did ink drawings in preparation for textiles like this one.”
“I love how quilts have this specific place in American history that is occupied today by advocates for extreme craftsmanship. There’s a real method to it. My quilts are a little irreverent, to be honest, because they don’t adhere to these ingrained historical standards of structure and stitch. They are intended to be wall pieces, and I approached the process of making them like I would a painting or print.”
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