Maker : Rachel Hauser of Stitched in Color
Enschede, Netherlands
Today I feature Rachel Hauser of Stitched in Color’s beautiful studio in Enschede, Netherlands. She’s the first European maker I’ve shared on the blog!
When we started planning our move to the Netherlands last year, I stumbled upon Rachel’s blog when looking into the Netherland’s DAFT visa. I was thrilled because I realized she is also a quilter! Rachel moved to the Netherlands six years ago with her family and thankfully shared her process in her Expat Chronicles blog series. It was so helpful for us in so many ways. Once settled, I was able to enjoy her blog posts about quilting and living in the Netherlands. And then in December, she moved into a new studio and I couldn’t wait to reach out to her to feature her new space.
Rachel is busy! Not only does she design and sell her quilt patterns through her website, she has a very active Substack where she offers a lovely community of quilt-alongs and challenges her followers to work through their fabric stash. All of this revolves around Rachel’s true love, color. Her book The Quilter’s Field Guide to Color: A Hands-On Workbook for Mastering Fabric Selection is a trustworthy guide for makers. And as you can see below, there is plenty of color in Rachel’s studio.
But I’m jumping ahead of myself. Let’s take a look at Rachel’s space, located in a thriving and hip office building, just north of Enschede Centrum, about a 2 1/2 hour train ride from Amsterdam on the German border.
Rachel is now happily settled into her new studio with clearly defined work stations for each step of the quilt making process. I would love to have this much space again.
Her work wall is constantly in flux with new patterns in development and process photos for her quilt-alongs. On the day I visited, she was busy working on a new version of her Pas des Deux quilt for her latest quilt-along.
With her knack for using color and smaller stash fabric as shown above, Rachel is a gifted quilt pattern designer. Her patterns are often derived from traditional quilt patterns, like flying geese or stars but reinterpreted with a modern twist. There’s a delicate balance between traditional and modern and Rachel has a knack for bridging the two. I’ve seen this done before in modern quilting but there’s something extra in Rachel’s patterns that makes them unique from others I’ve seen. I can see the patterns appealing to both modern and traditional quilters.
But on to where the magic happens, Rachel’s main work station. Her cutting table is small but efficient. Notice there’s not a crazy number of unique rulers or fancy tools? She said something interesting that I hadn’t thought about before. She designs her patterns using single tools that are easily accessible to her users. It makes a project less daunting.
Her work table is, of course, very tidy and organized. We’re very alike in that way!
We geeked out a bit on thread and fabric. She uses Superior Threads So Fine! as it works best with her long arm machine. I swear by my Aurifil cones but have had a hard time finding them here in stores. The hunt continues.
She does have some hand sewing threads charmingly displayed. My hand sewing thread collection would be busting out of these bowls.
Though we work with different materials, we do use the same machine! She decided to bring over her Juki and use a transformer and it has held up for the past six years. So now I’m kicking myself for having sold mine before moving as I was worried I’d burn the engine out .. but it went to a good home ;-).
Rachel works directly with fabric pattern designers and pattern companies to incorporate their fabrics into her quilts. 95% of her fabric stash is quilt fabric with a teeny little section of ‘unusual’ fabrics … like my beloved linen, ha. I love that we both make quilts but ours are so different from each other. Quilting offers lots of room for creativity.
Now let’s talk about the monster in the room, her long arm quilting machine. It must have been a challenge to find a space to house this.
She brought it over from the US in her shipping crate and I’m amazed it survived the boat ride! It’s enormous, at least to me, who relies only on my own hands to quilt my pieces. Ah, I do envy the speed but not that maintenance it must require! And that’s why other quilters bring her their quilts to finish. This beautiful quilt currently being quilted by machine is by Carly Potter.
It is a work horse machine but so functionally beautiful. This must have cost a pretty penny. I think Rachel has found a clever niche as there are very few long arm quilters that I’m aware of in Europe.
But the studio isn’t all function. Rachel has a lovely collection of her quilts on display. Most of the buyers of her finished quilts are in North America. We also geeked out about shipping abroad.
Rachel has set up a lovely corner in her studio for design and computing. It faces north and offers a charming view of a nearby church steeple.
She’s carved out a lovely little life for herself and her family. Her daughter goes to school just around the corner and she lives not far away from the studio. And of course she bikes everywhere.
After we talked shop, it was such a lovely sunny spring day so we decided to make the most of the sun (like every Dutch) and walk to a lovely lunch spot in the middle of a park. We had a lovely lunch and realized we have some funny things in common like me having left the Deep South for California and her having left California for the Deep South before moving to the Netherlands. Both of our partners are musicians too!
Thank you, Rachel, for letting me photograph your beautiful studio and pester you with Netherlands work and life questions! I do hope we will connect again very soon. It was a lovely trip to Enschede with lots of trains running all day! Be sure to check out Rachel’s website for her patterns and all of her past quilt-alongs. You can purchase her book here. Follow her Substack for inspiring quilt-alongs and a glimpse into her expat life.