In 1986, Stacy Michell started a business venture called “Shades Textiles”. After visiting several large quilt shows, she was inspired to explore the options of hand dyed textiles in the quilting marketplace. With in her first couple of years in business Stacy started exhibiting at as many as 18 quilt shows a year from smaller local events to some of the bigger venues like The American Quilter’s Society Quilt Show in Kentucky or Quilt Market & Quilt Festival in Houston. 

In 1998, she made her first of many trips to Tokyo, and she can be seen at the Tokyo Dome international Quilt Festival every year. About this time in her career, her quilting style started to change from patchwork to appliqué as the studio developed a line of kits known as "Shades of Baltimore". Next Stacy took on the challenge of the Hawaiian Quilt. Part of her interest in the Hawaiian Quilt was to develop machine appliqué techniques for this style of quilt traditionally created by hand. Shades Textiles introduced the "All-Around Appliqué Patterns", over 100 block designs with diverse themes from cats & dogs to Christmas trees and Jack ‘O Lanterns or sports like surfing or golf, all folded and cut like cutting a paper snow flake. 

All of the creative energy flowing around her studio with the addition of the appliqué patterns helped create new dyed fabric techniques known as “The Hand Dyed Hula Hoop”. If you ever see Stacy in person, she will be happy to describe this technique in Hula! Then, she could teach you how to cut Hawaiian appliqué blocks so carefully you get 2 appliqués from 1 piece of cloth! 

If your hand is not so steady, or you just want a great fast project, this kind of appliqué is available pre-cut, in her product line known as “2 for 1 Hawaiian Appliqué”. Of course, all of the appliqué she creates uses her super soft paperbacked fusible web “Shades SoftFuse”, available in small packages, and larger rolls. 

In 2019, she made a big change and moved the studio to Griffin GA. Located about 30 miles south of the Atlanta Airport, to a small town. Not much has changed, except our address. The new building was built in 1935 and needed a lot of work to get it functioning as a new live/work studio. We have new studio pets and new staff helping cut and pack all the product we ship. We are looking forward to 2020 as a year to grow and have new ideas.