Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion - A Repeat Performance


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Text By Cathy Gordon • Photography Courtesy of Anna Maria Horner

The revelation happened in church, where Anna Maria Horner learned the divine truth about fabric. Eye-catching swirls, stripes, and florals do not randomly spread over a piece of cloth like clover in a field. They are repeated.

“My mom used to gently tap down my hand because, without realizing it, I was pointing at the women’s dresses in the pews in front of me,” recalls the Nashville designer. “I remember the exact moment when it hit me: ‘Oh, my gosh! There’s the same flower over there! This is how they make this stuff! They repeat it!’”

Horner’s enthusiasm for tantalizing textiles hasn’t waned through the years. With four lines under her belt for FreeSpirit Fabric, including the newly released “Drawing Room” and “Garden Party,“ and an upcoming, pattern-filled book, Seams to Me, destined for store shelves in October, she is as busy as ever at her craft. And she manages it superbly while balancing a whirlwind of activity at home with five children, ages 4 to 16.

(a) Anna Maria, all smiles, loves her work. “It reflects my feelings,” she says of this sprightly logo she created in hot and pale pink. (b) Her new quilting line, “Garden Party,” in a cast of bright colors. (c) No calories in this scrumptious pincushion caddy, one of 24 sewing projects featured in her book, Seams to Me.

(d) Every surface serves a purpose in Anna Maria’s Nashville home studio. Daughter Eleni flits past a table of fabric samples. Inspirational odds and ends are tacked to a 10-foot-long wall. (e) A needlepoint pillow for the designer’s “Peking Handicraft” collection. (f) More of the same in a sunny stack of fun, fresh colors. (g) Anna Maria pins up her home-décor-weight fabric, “Drawing Room,” for a closer look. (h) A detail shot of a festive, hand-hooked rug.

“With five kids in the house, I have a playful attitude,” she says. “But at the same time, I want to be taken seriously. None of my work is accidental. It’s all very measured.”

She caught the artistic bug early. Her father painted, her mom sewed. Grandmothers kept Anna Maria and her siblings warm in hand-loomed wool blankets and beautiful hand-knit sweaters. “My family was inspired by learning, doing, and making,” says Anna Maria, who dressed her Barbie doll in clothing fashioned from her mother’s fabric scraps.

“I made her wrap-around dresses before I sewed. Poor Barbie, she never went on dates with Ken,” she says, laughing. ”She stayed home on Friday nights so I could try out my latest fashions on her.”

Anna Maria received an honors bachelor of fine arts degree in drawing from the University of Tennessee, sewing clothes on the side and dabbling in nearly every medium from painting to photography. Soon after graduating, she and her mother opened Handmaiden, a successful clothing and housewares boutique in Knoxville that showcased her designs. “But duties started to overwhelm creativity,” she recalls.

Licensing her work offered a better alternative. She designed artful images for several companies’ existing product lines. The Anna Maria “look” began appearing on paper tableware, giftwrap, ceramic collections, and greeting cards. “I definitely took on some projects to
get a foot in the door,” she says. As her client list grew, so did her reputation for fun, punchy designs.

Destiny struck when FreeSpirit Fabrics came calling in 2006, requesting an Anna Maria fabric line. “It brought me full circle. I didn’t know at the time that it would push me toward a niche, but it has guided just about everything else I do now,” says the artist, recalling that well-received first collection, “Bohemian,” followed by “Chocolate Lollipop” in confectionary colors.

“When the first fabrics rolled in, I stared at them for the longest time,” she recalls. “I’m thrilled that people are creating quilts and clothing with my inventions. The permanence of that is a real inspiration.”
The next thing on the horizon? Perhaps clothing patterns. “Really unique ones. I’m not going to put it out there if it’s too watered-down and simple. It has to be interesting,” Anna Maria says.
Whatever her next step, she’ll have a fantastic time doing it.

“If I weren’t doing this for a living, I’d be doing it for fun. My work is my hobby.”

(i) A “Lollipop Kitchen” half-apron with rickrack trim. (j) Towels of the same collection embroidered with dairy delights. (k) Companion full-length baking apron. (l) In this mixed-media offering, Anna Maria’s signature textiles are sealed onto a canvas painting. (m) A giant jar of old wooden spools and needles.

Sew you want to start a business?
stitch together a plan:
- Peruse the internet for companies that create the type of goods you want to sell. Get a list of that industry’s trade shows.
- Do research by attending trade shows to see what products are out there. Ask yourself, “Do I have something different to offer?”
- There’s no such thing as a waste of time when pursuing true interests. Although there’s no guarantee of immediate income, there’s value in exploring for future career or personal benefit.

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