Michelle.

The Makers

Oct 16

Written By KOEL

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Started with a sardine obsession. Ended with a signature.

Michelle Maclise wanted to work for Walt Disney. That version never arrived. Instead, her creative life took a longer, more interesting route through textile illustration, graphic design, weaving, and eventually into the loud, colorful, faintly absurd world of tufting.

She lives on Bainbridge Island, a ferry ride from Seattle where her studio sits in Pioneer Square. The daily crossing can involve whales. Mt. Rainier. A Pacific Northwest sunset worth putting your phone away for.

Tufting arrived in 2022, suggested by a daughter about to leave for art school. Within weeks Michelle understood she had landed somewhere that connected an improbable number of dots from her creative past. She could draw again, except now the drawings turned into objects you could press your hand into. Animals, lips, flowers, foliage. And sardines. Many, many sardines.

The sardine pillows are her signature. Their origin: an inexplicable obsession, followed by the thought that turning one into a pillow might be funny. It was.

“Delightful, she says, is about the best compliment on offer. The sardines agree.”

Read the full KOEL Story with Sully here »»

The Makers : portraits in words

Tufting, whimsy, and a very committed fish. Send this to someone who needs more joy on their sofa… →

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Michelle.

Started with a sardine obsession. Ended with a signature.

“Delightful, she says, is about the best compliment on offer. The sardines agree.”

In case you missed these….

Estate sales. Charity shops. Online classifieds. Fiber arts communities.

Lanuginous. /luh-NEW-jih-nus/. Adjective. Covered in fine, soft down.

Brioche is a two-row repeat: knit, yarn-forward, slip. That's it.

That idea you keep talking about with your friend? It's time to do something with it.

The loom was done with them. They had other ideas.

Wine tourism built an entire industry on the idea that knowing where something comes from makes it taste better.

Charts aren't a different language. They're a shorter one.

Late, mid-story, already laughing. She's the reason you stayed. She derails everything. She makes everything better.

Start with what you already have. A glass bottle, a ceramic vase, a found object with a good silhouette. Yarn does not need to start from nothing.

You spent hours on it. The fabric is beautiful. The stitches are even.

It starts innocently. A pattern calls for DK weight and suddenly you're standing in a yarn shop holding a merino in one hand and a cotton in the other, wondering what you actually believe.

The most countercultural thing you can do right now fits in a project bag.

Every pattern you've ever knitted started as someone's hunch. A stitch combination, a silhouette, a color sequence that wouldn't leave them alone.

The pattern that works in every room and every craft.

When the forecaster talks, the fiber world listens. Wool is having a moment. The sheep knew first.

There is something almost comic about asking an algorithm for help with crafts that predate electricity by several thousand years.

There is a stitch that does not lie flat. It rises. It folds back on itself, catches shadow, creates depth where there was none.

Swiss darning goes by two names because it does two jobs. Call it duplicate stitch when you're adding a motif to a finished piece.

There is a version of this trend that starts with Pantone declaring white the color of the year and ends with everyone nodding politely.

Laetitia Dalbies makes fruit. Not as a metaphor. Her crochet tomatoes have weight and blush.

The cold rooms are leaving. Polished concrete, bare shelves, surfaces that echo... interior design spent a decade chasing the void and has now, quietly, reversed course.

In Amsterdam, someone decided that a listening bar was a perfectly reasonable place to knit. She was right.

There is a room that looks good in photos and a room that makes people cross it to touch something.

KOEL MAGAZINE

A digital magazine, reimagined… yarn and wool stories, published one by one.

In-depth interviews, original patterns, and ideas worth making.

Michelle.

Started with a sardine obsession. Ended with a signature.

“Delightful, she says, is about the best compliment on offer. The sardines agree.”

In case you missed these….

Estate sales. Charity shops. Online classifieds. Fiber arts communities.

Lanuginous. /luh-NEW-jih-nus/. Adjective. Covered in fine, soft down.

Brioche is a two-row repeat: knit, yarn-forward, slip. That's it.

That idea you keep talking about with your friend? It's time to do something with it.

The loom was done with them. They had other ideas.

Wine tourism built an entire industry on the idea that knowing where something comes from makes it taste better.

Charts aren't a different language. They're a shorter one.

Late, mid-story, already laughing. She's the reason you stayed. She derails everything. She makes everything better.

Start with what you already have. A glass bottle, a ceramic vase, a found object with a good silhouette. Yarn does not need to start from nothing.

You spent hours on it. The fabric is beautiful. The stitches are even.

It starts innocently. A pattern calls for DK weight and suddenly you're standing in a yarn shop holding a merino in one hand and a cotton in the other, wondering what you actually believe.

The most countercultural thing you can do right now fits in a project bag.

Every pattern you've ever knitted started as someone's hunch. A stitch combination, a silhouette, a color sequence that wouldn't leave them alone.

The pattern that works in every room and every craft.

When the forecaster talks, the fiber world listens. Wool is having a moment. The sheep knew first.

There is something almost comic about asking an algorithm for help with crafts that predate electricity by several thousand years.

There is a stitch that does not lie flat. It rises. It folds back on itself, catches shadow, creates depth where there was none.

Swiss darning goes by two names because it does two jobs. Call it duplicate stitch when you're adding a motif to a finished piece.

There is a version of this trend that starts with Pantone declaring white the color of the year and ends with everyone nodding politely.

Laetitia Dalbies makes fruit. Not as a metaphor. Her crochet tomatoes have weight and blush.

The cold rooms are leaving. Polished concrete, bare shelves, surfaces that echo... interior design spent a decade chasing the void and has now, quietly, reversed course.

In Amsterdam, someone decided that a listening bar was a perfectly reasonable place to knit. She was right.

There is a room that looks good in photos and a room that makes people cross it to touch something.

KOEL MAGAZINE

A digital magazine, reimagined… yarn and wool stories, published one by one.

In-depth interviews, original patterns, and ideas worth making.

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