I Am GenQ: Kim Kight

When we think of Kim Kight, we don’t immediately think of her well regarded fabric blog, True Up, or her popular book, A Field Guide to Fabric Design (C & T, 2011). We remember a tired mama in the hotel elevator in Houston last fall, running back and forth from the George R. Brown Convention Center during Fall Market so she could nurse her then 3-month-old son, Theo. (Those who have never cared for an infant will not think this feat extraordinary. Those who have done so will be sure she’s a little loco or a lot dedicated.)

And she’s still on the run, but this time between her full-time job in Austin and the Hill Country home that she and Theo, now 8 months, Otto, 5, and house-husband Bryan just moved into last week. Kim works as a speech-language pathologist for an insurance company, but her heart is in blogging, especially about the q-universe of fabric.

She actually started blogging about her craft life in 2004 as Dioramarama, but as she found herself writing more frequently about fabric than anything else, she decided the stitchy world was ready for a blog dedicated to the warp and weft that keep us all so excited. True Up started in 2008.

“Every time I found something, I just wanted to blog about it and tell someone about it,” Kim says. “It just struck me one day that there could be a blog about fabric, and that I could probably do it as part-time income. And there were so many shops cropping up that they would want to advertise. I sort of meant it to be a commercial blog/magazine from the beginning.”

Kim sometimes has friends helping her write material for True Up, including Sarah Moon, Kim Steckler and Mary Beth Eastman. Mostly, though, she produces the content herself and keeps up with the fast-changing world of fabric. She covers modern and vintage fabrics, but confesses to a personal love for mid-century prints.

And she brings true writing chops to True Up (in sewing, “true up” means making a piece of fabric true to grain with a cut or rip). She worked on Austin’s alternative weekly newspaper, the Austin Chronicle, as a proofreader, listings editor and reviewer, covering fine arts, music and theater.

“I wrote about karaoke, and public access TV, heroes, and stuff like that. You know, quirky stories,” she says.

And you thought we just loved her for her fabric knowledge.

When you started blogging seriously about fabric, was it hard getting fabric companies to work with you?

No, it has never really been hard. I think it’s grown pretty organically. I think I was sort of early on Dioramarama in covering Denyse Schmidt and Amy Butler…and I didn’t really know at that time what big figures they would be or were becoming in the sewing and fabric world. Also Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr introduced me to RJR, and that got me into my first quilt market. I felt like I showed up (at Market) and people knew me.”

Do you have much time for quilting and sewing?

Honestly, I don’t! I wish I did…Otto picked out some fabric this weekend to make an elephant from Last Minute Quilted Gifts. He got the idea he could stuff cotton balls into something to make a stuffed animal! It was very fun to unpack fabric this weekend.

So, confession time: how big is your stash?

It’s pretty big. It’s kind of obscene. In my new house, the sewing room’s going to be sort of scattered. I’m not going to have a dedicated sewing room. There’ll be a little in the upstairs closet, a little in the garage, a little in the bedroom…

What’s the most interesting trend you’re seeing in fabric right now?

At the last Fall Market I was talking to Kathy Miller and I think she summed it up really well about the home dec world and the fashion world and the quilting world. I think the modern sewing and fabric fan just doesn’t understand why there are those divisions.  And I think that the companies that want to cater to this group, are saying, “Yeah, why? Let’s just make all sorts of fabric for all sorts of purposes. We all just like fabric and sewing… “

Will we see more collection redux, like Flea Market Fancy and Caravan?

I’m excited! I need to order some. I feel like that was the collection that really brought everyone together. There was so much demand for so long for it to be brought back. There were some prints I didn’t buy the first time. I’m actually excited to see it.

Some would say there is just too much fabric out there right now. Your thoughts?

(Laughs.) I think there are more and more tastes being fulfilled than there were 2, 5, even 10 years ago. But there are still a lot of different tastes that could be catered to. I don’t know how lucrative that would be, but I still think there are a lot of gaps out there.

Such as?

I ‘d still like to see a lot more fashion prints. There still aren’t a lot of fashion fabrics. I still feel like even with the voiles and lawns that are being printed, they don’t appeal to me. I just don’t want to make clothes out of them. I still think there’s something missing…There’s not a lot of simplicity, I guess, just simple classic fashion fabrics. They’re still kind of loud. There’s not a lot of fashion basics. I would love for that to be a thing.

What’s your current fave fabric?

I  love them all for different reasons, but I love how cotton-linen feels, and I love that everyone is starting to print on cotton-linens. And I love double gauze.

What do you do to relax?

Oh that’s cute! In our new house, we have a real grown-up adult bathtub. And I haven’t used it yet, but I’m going to. I just bought bubble bath. I’m gonna. I’m gonna take one.

So, you’ve done your first book. What’s next?

I need to–and I meant to have to one out before the book came out because I didn’t want to look like a poser–but I need to design a fabric line. I think it might be high-level, repro….I always come back to reproductions, ‘30s ‘40s ‘50s reproductions. Maybe I just want to be just like Denyse Schmidt.

One last question: dark or milk?

I like cheap old Hershey’s milk chocolate. I like trashy chocolate.