Hi there! My name is Ava Chan. I'm a felt maker, dyer and seamstress living in Boston, MA. I love understanding how things work or how they are made, whether it's a material object, an infrastructure or a social subculture. I love color and texture. I adore wool. One of my dearest memories is of my mother teaching me to crochet early one day before she headed off to work. I was aged 7 or 8 and home on a school holiday, able to work through what she had just taught me.
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I also learned to embroider, sew, and knit when I was a child and have had a life-long love for textiles and these hand-working skills. I studied engineering in college and have had various careers in high tech and the non-profit sector. Now I'm circling back to making material objects.
My felts favor wool from sheep breeds that produce coarser wool, such as Jacob, Shetland, and Icelandic, because the resulting felt has rustic, nubbly, almost feral textures. About half of my wool comes from small farms in New England and New York, purchased at regional sheep and wool festivals. When I work with woven cloth, I try to incorporate recycled fabric as much possible.
Sugin is my middle name, and is the Toisanese pronunciation of xiăo zhēn, literally "small precious." It's the name by which my dad's parents always addressed me. They lived in NYC's original Chinatown, and my grandmother did piecework in a sewing factory. She was an elegant lady who learned embroidery as a young woman in China, and who started a new life in the United States at around the same age that I was when I began this current textile venture. The sole example of her work that I remember was a sweet baby bear traced out in bright blue thread. I think of my interest in fabric handiwork as a way to remain connected to my grandmother. On both sides of my family, I have members who are or were engineers, knitters, small business owners, makers and builders. Sugin Textiles is a way to connect to that history, and it's a name that, like my connection to textiles, was much more present in my formative years, and that I am now returning to a primary focus in my current life.
My felts favor wool from sheep breeds that produce coarser wool, such as Jacob, Shetland, and Icelandic, because the resulting felt has rustic, nubbly, almost feral textures. About half of my wool comes from small farms in New England and New York, purchased at regional sheep and wool festivals. When I work with woven cloth, I try to incorporate recycled fabric as much possible.
Sugin is my middle name, and is the Toisanese pronunciation of xiăo zhēn, literally "small precious." It's the name by which my dad's parents always addressed me. They lived in NYC's original Chinatown, and my grandmother did piecework in a sewing factory. She was an elegant lady who learned embroidery as a young woman in China, and who started a new life in the United States at around the same age that I was when I began this current textile venture. The sole example of her work that I remember was a sweet baby bear traced out in bright blue thread. I think of my interest in fabric handiwork as a way to remain connected to my grandmother. On both sides of my family, I have members who are or were engineers, knitters, small business owners, makers and builders. Sugin Textiles is a way to connect to that history, and it's a name that, like my connection to textiles, was much more present in my formative years, and that I am now returning to a primary focus in my current life.