I'm a Black Queer Feminist Dynamically Disabled Urbanist creating my own Kristpattern. I write stories, film films, and stitch garments as I defy gentrification and craft liberation in Baltimore, rooted in my Greensboro, North Carolina upbringing.

I will ride the MARC and Metro to the farthest Michaels’ and climb tiny DC Dupont Circle steps to view the finest hand-dyed and factory-produced yarns. I'll drive my Honda Fit to the furthest Howard County, Maryland farms for the right hand-dyed, hand-spun garment.

I've been reading and writing as soon as I was crafting, at the feet of my mom, a master sewist in her own right, who'd been dressing me in her designs from birth!

We made our first garment together when I was 10 in 1996, a bumblebear print vest with royal blue satin lining. Don’t ask me the pattern number, it escapes me, but I feel like it was a Simplicity. I've been at this fiber craft long before indie PDFs and projectors were the domains of home sewists.

I and my mom would have been considered seamstresses when we started. But one thing that’s still evident is my love what I call colorful, bold luxury: jewel tones, bold prints with anything from animatronic animals to mechanical objects, and solid wool , cotton and chenille blends that feel smooth to the touch.

I'm making what I need in my closet and as a plus sized maker, I know there are many clamoring for these sizes in their closet too.

We also should experience fiber joy, I took to heart the words of Ava DuVernay, to build a dream that is bigger than them and that's what this fashion artwork is for me, that big dream.

I join my fiber arts influence Joyce J. Scott, graphic design influence Lance Wyman, and contemporaries Toni Lipsey, Dr. Lisa Woolfolk, London Kaye, Aaronica B. Cole, Julian Collins, Xandy Peters, Dr. Brittany Cooper, and others who seek to use new media to center their fiber craft in public space and in the reclaimation of ancestral practice.