Carol Ziogas has been sewing most of her life and became a self-employed artist at 17. She has been interested in Japanese textiles and Sashiko since she was eight years old. Her mother, a hand quilter, went through a Japanese phase in the 1980s and introduced her to Sashiko, a blue and white embroidery style. Carol began to learn about Japanese design motifs when she was in grade school, inspired by her mother’s collection of Shibori, Kasuri, and other interesting bits of Japanese textiles. When Carol started her own business, she promised her mother she wouldn’t sell them.

After leaving her mother’s legacy of sewing for a long time and working as a jeweler for 10 years, sewing caught up to her, and she’s been working with textiles ever since. In 2003, Carol bought her first bolt of kimono silk on eBay and started collecting vintage kimono. Working with textiles is meditative work for her in a way that jewelry and metalwork never was. Carol loves to collect textiles and books about textiles, and admits she is inspired by “everything” — her house, her garden … color and texture everywhere.