About Elen's Studio

Hi!

My name is Elen Morell. It is a great pleasure to see you here!

I was born in Russia in 1974. After a year we moved to Ukraine, where I spent my childhood.

Good thing about Soviet Union was that every girl (and many boys) were taught to sew, knit, crochet, embroider, and do all kinds of needlework. We had 2 sewing machines: hand-crank Singer, made in Podolsk, Russia (Singer mentions those on its website), and treadle. My mom prefered treadle, because it was freeing her right hand. I loved hand-crank.

My mom's phylosophy about child development was that if I am old enough to want it, I am old enough to have it. I was her only kid, and it worked well for me: I am slow, thinking type. So, when at age 7 I requested sewing machine to make my soft toys (that's how I learned), I was immediately given one.

Of course, I was sewing doll's clothes. Patterns were not available (Soviet Union government had very interesting ideas of what people need) so I was making them up after my clothes. All dresses for my dolls had either wholecloth sleeves or were sleeveless (click for free doll's dress pattern). I tried putting set-in sleves on one of the dresses, and it seemed like was too much work.

I was very satisfied with my dolls dresses, until my mom had a minute to make one dress. She is not the most prolific, and when she does a piece it is perfect. She made a dress with properly set in sleeves, attached skirt and nice closure. She used modest fabric, black with colorful thin stripes intersecting. I could not appreciate it immediately - it was not too bright and shiny to take away my breath. But after playing with it for a month or two, I found myself choosing it for the doll more often then other, sparkling creations of myself. My respect for my mom's skills grew every day.

At that time there were virtually no nice-looking clothes produced in the Soviet Union. Motivation to sew was great, because fabrics were available in many colors. At the age 9 I made my first skirt (pink, with 3 rubber bands on a waist, click for free skirt pattern) that I wore for the whole summer. My first blouse was also pink, with black and red cross-stitch (traditional Ukrainian embroidery), with wholecloth sleeve.

I came to school home economics class with an attitude. "I make my own clothes, on my own sewing machine - what can you teach me?" was written all over my face. And I had the best teacher in a world. She never noticed my attitude (or maybe she did not show it), but was constantly challenging me. She taught me how to make my sewing nice and tidy. She explained tayloring to us and made it easier than geometry that it was based on. She let me do minor repairs of sewing machines in a class (there were 10). She taught french seams, double seams, bookstyle pockets and 100 other great things.

I continued making most of my clothes until 1996, when I graduated from Moscow State University and was admitted to graduate school of Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY. Sewing is USA is very different: fabric is expensive and not abundant, ready-to-wear clothes are nice and available. I could not make myself spend hours on something that was easy to find at the department stores.

In March 2003 there was a quilt show in 4H of Charlestown, Indiana. Quilts won over my heart very fast. There was so much personality in them. Every thought, every dream, every prayer that maker had is encoded somewhere in a pattern, colors, fabric scraps, or stitches.

On a day of a quilt show, I stopped at a public library to exchange books and saw ladies with sewing machines in a conference room. I just walked in and asked what were they doing, and they invited me to join. The group was Bag Ladies of Southern Indiana, that I belong now. My first quilt was free-style crazy quilt, made from eyelet fabric remnants. Bagladies explained me how to make sandwitch, and how to make binding (considering that I was motivated to have rainbow ribbon on all sides), and answered all other questions.

For a while I was very fascinated with art quilts. Unpredictable color play and transparencies of objects looked very intriquing. Then one lady brought her collection of antique quilts to Bagladies meeting. Simplicity of shapes and colors and softness of fabric created warm, cozy feeling, very different from visual enjoyment of art pieces. Old quilts showed me how every stitcher, every housewife was creating something very valuable. And that all they have done matters.

I am one very happy quilter. Usually I enjoy the process, but results fascinate me the most. I try to bring some sparkle into every quilt I design and make. I love to use modern tools, and I love to share those tools with others. I love to develop instructions that make quilting more enjoyable and stress-free.