A new name & a new chapter

Dear subscribers, makers, friends, and community,

Jacqueline Cieslak Designs is now Jaq Studio. It has been a long time since I have felt at home in the name I started my business with, and once it occurred to me that I could change it, it was like a shroud had lifted from my creative life. I now feel a spaciousness and an energy for new work that I have not felt in years, and I am so excited for what’s to come from this change.

I have been struggling to write this newsletter for weeks — not sure how much to share, what to promise, or whether I’m ready for the inevitable feedback. I do want to begin with the reminder that you are welcome to quietly unsubscribe if this change makes you feel that my work is no longer for you. But if you are here to stay, I will do my best to explain where I’m at and where I hope to go with Jaq Studio.

I did not start making clothes because I wanted to make a career out of it. I started making clothes because I could not find the things I wanted to wear in my size, and I began designing and teaching because I found a community of makers who shared this experience and needed patterns and classes to guide them. In this way, my work has always been a project of getting to know myself, again and again, through the process of attunement toward what I put on my body and how it makes me feel, and then sharing that with other people in the hopes that they too might find some part of themselves through my work.

Thus, a radical fat politic has always been at the heart of my project, and especially in the last few years, it has become increasingly clear to me that this project is also deeply entangled with my queerness. When I first started my business, I never considered that having a public identity also meant that I would have to grow and change in public — and if I am being honest, there have been times in the last few years when I wished nothing more than to be anonymous, to figure out who I was and manage my growing pains privately, without public surveillance or comment.

But I am writing to you now on what feels like the other edge of a deep ravine of self doubt, with a good deal of clarity and a renewed sense of purpose. This week, guided by the new moon in Capricorn and the promise of a new year, I announced on Instagram that I am now going by Jaq or Jaqi. This change reflects my evolving understanding of my own gender identity as a nonbinary dyke, while also opening the door for more gender-neutral work through my platform, my designing, and my teaching.

I have kept my last name, Cieslak, on my website and social media handles, for continuity and some degree of brand recognition. But the larger overhaul to my brand is that I am calling it Jaq Studio — a change that also honors my unwavering commitment to creating art and finding ways to both share it with the world and make enough money to support myself through selling it.

So what does all this mean for you, a subscriber and supporter of my work? Nothing will change for my existing pattern library. I have several new patterns — knitting and sewing — in the works for 2025, as well as ideas for new classes and workshops. I am also excited to share more of my creative process publicly again, which was something I did when I first started building my business and feels accessible to me again now that my public name is more aligned with who I have become. I am especially grateful for local support from community and friends in the bay, including my local yarn shop, Black Squirrel Berkeley, and I look forward to continuing to nurture new collaborations and share the art that comes from them.

I remain, as ever, a committed leftist, an abolitionist, and an anti-Zionist Jew. Again, I invite you to unsubscribe if you feel disinclined to support a person who holds these views.

If you choose to stay, I expect that you, like me, understand that we are facing a rising onslaught of hate, and that the only way to survive is to hold each other and be louder about it than ever before. I am here with you — fatter, queerer, freer — and I am so grateful for this chance at self-actualization and joy in the midst of a chaotic and often unwelcoming world.

With deep gratitude and fierce love,