I started designing fabric about ten years ago.  Let’s back up:  First, I bought a little Bernina sewing machine in 2012.  I wasn’t using it much, which made me feel guilty.  Then, in 2013, I self-published a book called Growing Up Autrey, which all four of my sisters and both parents helped write.  I learned a lot I hadn’t known about my parents doing that research – including where they grew up.  It made me want to see those places for myself.  So, my sister Laura and I went, with our then nearly 94-year-old father, back to Indiana.  Leaving our father with his sister Reva in Rochester, Laura and I took a side trip down to Ohio to find our mother’s family.  In Gallipoli, we met a lot of relatives we never knew about, including relatives of Grandma Emma Gatewood (famous for walking about 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail at the age of 67).  Turns out Emma Gatewood was married to one of our Grandmother’s many brothers, although not the nicest one it turns out.  We stayed in Gallipoli with a cousin of our mother and went with him and his wife to see the annual national quilt exhibit at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio.  I was so impressed!  Now I was inspired to use my sewing machine for something I actually wanted to create – art quilts.  So, I joined a Bernina sewing club to improve my skills and learn how to quilt.  My previous sewing had been limited to clothes I made in high school on a Singer treadle sewing machine, and to a few baby clothes I made for my daughter when she was young.  During one of the sewing club lessions, the instrutor told me I could create my own designs and upload them digitally so they could be printed on many different types of fabric in whatever quantity needed.  I also experimented with printing smaller pieces I could run through my digital printer at home.  So, at the same time I was taking painting classes, I now had the ability to translate some of what I was doing on paper and convert it into fabrics that could be sewn into quilts or apparel.  My first two fabric designs were a collection of drawings of noses, mouths, eyes and ears, done in an art class taught by Chester Arnold, and a collection of lizards, gheckos and other reptiles I had drawn over the years.  These were uploaded to Spoonflower.com, printed on organic cotton knit fabric, then sewn into summer T shirts based on an old sleeveless T shirt I loved.  Since then I’ve created a lot more designs.  You can check them out in my design studio on Spoonflower here: