Cotton + Steel Collection: Mustang by Melody Miller

A: My collection Mustang was inspired by a wide variety of things. 2014 is the year of the horse, and the horse prints are the first time I've ever put animals in my fabric designs. I was very inspired by the look of vintage 3D photographs, and wanted to borrow a little of double-image overlapping color for the horses.  Many of the other motifs were nods to my previous collections, although re-scaled and re-imagined for my first collection on quilting cotton. 

A: My background is in Fine Arts. Through a long and winding road, I had an idea to manufacture a line of baby bedding at one point, and hoped to use some of my favorite Japanese fabrics in those designs. However, I wasn't sure of the rules about using other designer's fabric in small-scale manufacturing, so I decided to play it safe and make up my own fabric designs. After a few months, I had an entire fabric portfolio, and decided to shop it around Quilt Market in Fall of 2009. My work was picked up by a Japanese company, and my first collection came out in Fall of 2010. (I quickly dropped the manufacturing idea once I realized how much I loved designing fabric.)



Q: What projects do hope to see made with your collection?

A: When we designed our collections for Cotton+Steel, we knew people would be quilting with them, but we also wanted to create fabric for people who make garments, handbags, home accessories, and other projects.  I hope Mustang is used for all of those things! 

A: My style is vintage-inspired, sometimes nostalgic, with an occasional nod to artists in the pop art movement like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol.

A: Cotton+Steel is a culmination of all of the things I've been working toward for many, many years. I work in a collaborative environment with wonderful people who are my dear friends, I have positive and inspiring relationships, I am creatively challenged, and I'm able to work harder than I've ever worked for a project that means the world to me.