Spolia Scrap Collection
At Vacilando Studios we are not only committed to creating beautiful, useful objects but doing so in a sustainable manner. This commitment informs everything we do, from how we design our quilts to our material and packaging choices, our made-to-order business model, and how we handle our fabric scraps. Since 2021 we’ve been giving new life to our scraps (and keeping them out of landfills) through selling scrap boxes to other makers and the release of scrap collections – small collections of one-of-a-kind pieces made by our production quilters using scraps they’ve accumulated throughout the year. Our production quilters have created hundreds of amazing pieces over the years, each reflecting their own unique style, and as a production quilter myself I’ve deeply valued the opportunity to get creative, to play and experiment, all within the constraints of whatever size and color scraps are available to me.
Last summer we didn’t release a scrap collection, channeling our energy instead into the Spolia Collection launch, but we’re delighted to bring back this popular tradition and share with you our fourth scrap collection. This collection is a special curation of pieces inspired by the Spolia Collection to celebrate the one-year anniversary of its release, and it’s both a look back as we close the Spolia chapter (though the designs are still available to order!) and a step forward, an exploration of new ideas and new shapes as we contemplate what comes next at Vacilando Studios. In the near term, this includes a new collection we’re excited to launch in October that was actually inspired by a beloved scrap quilt from years ago (share any guesses and/or hopes in the comments if you have them!).
In our fourth scrap collection you’ll find a wide variety of pieces – pillows, wall quilts, crib quilts, and even throw quilts – but a smaller collection overall now that our team is smaller. The work in this collection also spans a longer period of time, made from 2023-2025, and is even more cohesive and conceptual than past collections, each piece utilizing the Spolia Collection’s color palette of neutral tones paired with pomegranate, crimson, honey, and ocean blue, and fitting into one of two categories I created while reflecting on the collection: the drafts and the archives.
If you’re not familiar with the story behind the Spolia Collection, it was inspired by the archeological remains of a castle I encountered while traveling in Greece in 2023. The pieces I’ve categorized as “drafts” in this scrap collection are pieces I made from this source of inspiration immediately upon my return from Greece, before the Spolia Collection even existed as an idea, and pieces I made in 2024 as I worked through design ideas while developing the collection’s five core designs. Included in the “drafts” is the original Quarry Quilt, the scrap quilt that sparked the whole Spolia Collection (and is very bittersweet for me to part with) as well as a couple designs that never made their way into the collection but were still made in that deeply generative time period. Many of the “draft” pieces are more improvisationally pieced, not fully designed and calculated ahead of time, and more exploratory and loose feeling, a reflection perhaps of my desire to quickly capture the creative energy and inspiration I was experiencing.
The “archive” pieces, however, depart more distinctly from the Spolia Collection visually, conceptually, and temporally, made more recently as a bridge between Spolia and the blinding whiteness of a freshly turned page. After pouring so much of myself into the development of the Spolia Collection, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what comes next, the unending horizon of possibility both exciting and daunting, and the opportunity to make additional pieces for this scrap collection brought with it renewed energy and ideas. When I was initially thinking about this collection, I knew I wanted to create a few more quilts that felt more vibrant to contrast the largely neutral Spolia tones. I revisited my design archives, looking for old ideas to rework and reimagine, and found myself drawn to a series of amphora-inspired sketches I had been playing with but
ultimately abandoned when they didn’t align with my vision for the Spolia Collection.
Amphorae are Greek and Roman clay vessels in various shapes and sizes used primarily for the storage and trade of olive oil, wine, and grain but also in funerary rituals. I had seen them at various archeological sites throughout Greece and was always struck by their scale, simplicity, and mundane connection to my own life, having once contained simple materials I still use in my kitchen. And working with these forms, these containers, felt particularly meaningful as I’ve been working to formulate my thoughts around the foundational purpose of shapes, how they perhaps stem from the basic human desire and instinct to contain, to create order, meaning, and distinction in a vast and boundless reality.
I picked up the designs where I left off but decided to push them further, choosing a few of the most common amphora forms to study and distill into their most basic geometric shapes, which I then further manipulated through repetition, reflection, and the addition of other shapes. I found so much enjoyment in this process of modernizing classic forms that I had to cut myself off, but I would love to carry these ideas further, perhaps someday.
This process of distilling is core to our work at Vacilando Studios – each of our collections start with a place, an image or feeling, a moment in time, and seek to distill these acts of observation into simple yet dynamic shapes that embody the source material. We create collections deeply rooted in place and the human experience because this is what inspires and excites us, but I would like to believe it’s more than that. Observation is not just the habit of an artist looking for inspiration but a powerful act, one that attunes us to the world’s beauty and mystery but also its deficits and deep suffering. More than creating beautiful, useful objects for your life and home, I hope our work might cultivate a deeper dwelling in the world, an attentiveness, a tenderness, a tending to the wounds and wonders of our existence.
