Stitch by Stitch: Christi Johnson’s handmade life

By Jillian Scheinfeld
Photography by Stephan Schacher

Christi Johnson exemplifies the coexistence of creativity and sustainability. From repurposing discarded treasures to nurturing a lush garden, the designer’s life upstate is a masterclass in the art of unhurried living, where each decision is sewn with intention and purpose. 

Christi Johnson has visions. Last week, she conjured an eight-armed deity with the flowing locks of a goddess. Yesterday, it was a boy emerging from a lotus flower. “A lot of the time, I see these images in my head, and then I go look them up. The process is sort of backward,” she tells me one late Autumn day at her house in Swan Lake, New York. 

A designer, embroidery artist, author, and educator, Johnson is a self-described figure-it-out kind of person. Be it repurposing an old scrap of fabric, fixing up a foreclosed house, or bringing a warped chair back to life, Johnson is perpetually engrossed in the act of creation. 

She greets me at the entrance of her home with her ridiculously adorable 8-month-old daughter, Juno, who is comfortably nestled on the makeshift edge of her fanny pack. Her house is drenched in a kaleidoscope of color, with various tapestries adorning the walls and plants bathing in the early evening sun. The house radiates an unmistakable warmth reminiscent of Johnson’s Mother Gaia-like energy. 

“We joke around and say we’re saving the world one piece of paper at a time,” she says after I ask if she knitted a seat cover to mask an old stool in her studio. “When people are getting rid of something, I can save it from turning into trash or make it into something better. We try to keep things out of landfills that are perfectly fine.”

That “we” refers to Johnson’s other half, Nicholas, a carpenter and musician she met at a yoga, African drumming, and belly dancing fusion class 8 years ago. Quickly after, they realized their shared desire to be together and live in a way that was closer to the earth. They wanted to have more space, time to make art and garden and be able to build their lives from rescued materials. It became unmistakably clear that their desires were intrinsically aligned with life in the Catskills.

“I just love that there is so much physical space up here that leads to having more mental space. In the summer, there’s so much going on, but come winter, I really enjoy having that time to just kind of dawdle,” she says. 

“When people are getting rid of something, I can save it from turning into trash or make it into something better. We try to keep things out of landfills that are perfectly fine.”

While Johnson happily leans into the empty expanses of time during the long Catskill winters, she’s much more of a doer than a dawdler. In 2021, she published her first book, Magical Stitches, a DIY exploration of embroidery as a tool for personal empowerment and transformation. Presently, she’s teaching online courses through a platform called Mixed Color, a portal into the many layers of her experimental textile studio. Her class, “Soft Work,” is a beginners’ course for learning intuitive garment construction based on zero-waste concepts. Eschewing the Eurocentric model of clothing design in favor of styles that move with the body (think kimonos, saris, and kaftans), Johnson teaches her students how to translate their own measurements into comfy, freely-fitting styles. Subsequently, she’s working on a second book full of sketch and stitching experiments to encourage budding artists to develop their own designs. 

It is no surprise that Johnson has designed her clothing since elementary school. “My mom was always making stuff. Every blanket I have in here she’s crocheted, like the one behind you,” she says and points to a beautiful blanket I’m resting my head on. While Juno plays happily with a ribbon on the floor, my eyes are besieged by color. Sitting on a ‘60s-esque floral couch, I mentally download the vibrant clutter of crafts and textures abound. There are myriad books, with titles like The Book of Symbols, Witching Hour, and The Fabric of Civilization. There are spools of thread in every color under the sun, shelves upon shelves of fabric, and a table showing off some of Johnson’s meticulously crafted works-in-progress, all ensconced by an embroidery hoop.

While creativity may be Johnson’s birthright, it was during the frenzy of designing for a brand called Coastwide in Los Angeles that she stumbled upon embroidery as her preferred medium. There, she was tasked to guide manufacturers in producing the illusion of handcrafted embroidery on denim shirts. “We were making these machine embroideries look like they were hand done. So while I was studying how different hand-embroidered stitches were made, I became obsessed with embroidery in such an intimate way,” she says, handing a new piece of fabric over to Juno to keep her occupied. “With embroidery, even if it looks funky or wonky, it doesn’t feel like it needs to be perfect.”

Knowing that Johnson is a student of slow living, I had to ask her if she ever buys clothes. Punctuated with laughter, she tells me she loves supporting independent designers, with an honorable mention of Mayer Wasner in Narrowsburg, New York. “Knowing how to make clothes means I understand what goes into an article of clothing.” Earlier in her career, she worked for veteran fashion designer Rozae Nichols when she first encountered the dark realities of fast fashion. “I would see the amount of fabric that would end up in a bin and bring them home. I still have yards and yards of fabric left. The smaller the scrap, the more time it takes to figure out how to repurpose it.”

“Knowing how to make clothes means I understand what goes into an article of clothing.”

Quietly playing for an hour straight, it seemed that her daughter, Juno, may have set a new record for the world’s chillest baby. Eventually, her patience waned, and it was time for a diaper change and a walk in the garden. Johnson gently guides me through the kitchen, where I spot a table lavished with a cornucopia of raw splendor: lemon balm, tomatillos, and strawberries. Naturally, when I inquire about the fate of the lemon balm, Johnson points to a rotating treasure chest brimming with botanical remedies. There’s apple mint, yarrow, chamomile, homemade passionflower, and elderberry tinctures.

With arms wrapped around Juno, Johnson carefully steps into her clogs with maternal grace. Her flowy checkered skirt animates against the breeze as she walks towards her own Eden. I follow, taking a visual inventory of the bounty that surrounds us, as she leads me to a lush and incredibly professional-looking garden with rows of leafy collard greens, cabbages the size of bowling balls, asparagus, rose bushes, zinnias, and so much more — a true garden variety. Bending down and snapping off a collard green stem, Johnson hands it to Juno as a teether and stashes some greens in her fanny pack for later. “We’re going to keep this and make bolognese for dinner,” she says declaratively. “Living upstate, there are so many things in my daily life that become like a meditation. You know, cooking three meals a day — I feel like I spend four hours of my day cooking.”

As we stop and sniff some lemon balm, I notice the garden’s pièce de résistance, a collection of bottle gourds. “We always have a few plants that we grow just for fun. There’s so much invested in ensuring we have enough food for the year, so it’s nice to have some fun with it. It doesn’t all have to have a purpose. It makes it more of an art,” she says. Still, I can see the cogs in her brain as she considers what lies ahead for the gourds. She pauses for a moment, mentally sketching the possibilities, and adds, “In the end, we’ll probably dry them out, poke holes in them, and turn them into birdhouses.”