MADE WITH LOVE
craftzine.com/06/kopacz
BY HANNAH
CRAFTER
B Y JENN Y RYAN
Upon visiting the website of Hannah Kopacz, madewithlovebyhannah.com, you might assume she lives a fairy-tale existence in an Alpine cottage somewhere, crafting the hours away with a songbird on her shoulder in a garden full of toadstools. You’re not too far off the mark, only swap the songbird for three cats, two fish, and a grumpy bunny named Bucky.
Her garden does feature toadstools, but they’re made of spray-painted concrete, and her cottage is a charmingly decorated shack she uses as a screen-printing studio. Also, she’s based in sunny Los Angeles.
Kopacz got her start in sewing by making a terry-cloth bathrobe (complete with pompom fringe!) at age 6, and spent her teen years restyling vintage finds à la Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. She then signed up for a high school silk-screening class as a way to meet cute punk boys, but discovered that she actually liked it — so much so that she ended up working in a screen-printing shop after graduation.
A customer offered her a job with his wholesale import clothing business, and by her mid-20s she was running her own clothing line. This was pre-internet, which made it a lot harder to earn a living as an independent designer.
She eventually moved cross-country from Massachusetts to L.A. and took a job working for a misses clothing line doing textile design for the mass market — think glittery snowman sweatshirts and the like. Despite the cornball imagery she
often found herself working on, the job gave her an excellent education in designing graphics and patterns, which she relished after spending a couple of short-lived semesters at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).
“School was not for me,” Kopacz admits. “I just like to take a class here and there if I want to learn something hands-on that I can’t learn from reading a book … like welding.”
Fortunately, once the urge to strike out on her own came over Kopacz yet again (and the web orders started rolling in), her employers allowed her to reduce her hours bit-by-bit until she was eventually working for herself.
Something that sets Hannah’s clothing apart is that she really and truly has a hand in every step of the process. She designs the folksy-sweet patterns herself, screen-prints (and often hand-dyes) the fabrics in her Cuckoo Cabin, then stitches up the skirts, dresses, and tops that have made her line synonymous with crafty cuteness. This attention to detail is apparent when you wear a piece of her clothing, but Kopacz herself admits it’s a bit of a stumbling block when it comes to growing her business — a concern many ambitious crafters share.
“I want to stay independent and handmade,” she explains, “but I have a problem with wanting to do everything myself. Not just business-wise, but also fixing the car, working on the yard, you name it. That’s my biggest problem right now: figuring out
Photography by Robyn Twomey
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