Sally McQuillan, founder and designer of Raoul Textiles, passed away peacefully on Sunday, July 14, at her home in Santa Barbara. She was a beloved mother, daughter, sister, and artist. Her talent and ferocious determination drove her business from a Quonset hut on Salsipuedes Street to an international force, and her singular genius transformed American textile design.
Sally was born in Wichita, Kansas, to Harriett and Robert Grossman. She grew up in Virginia and Florida, then went on to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. Though she majored in painting, she found herself more interested in rendering the wallpaper and fabric behind her subjects.
In 1975, she came to Santa Barbara to visit her sister Peggy at UCSB. She returned to Chicago, stayed a week, then flew back to Santa Barbara and never left. She got a job at Little Acorn nursery and met her late husband, Tim, at his restaurant, the Rhythm Café. He took her order and slipped her his number with the check. They were married in 1981 and had two children, Madeleine and Gene.
Sally was an extraordinary person; full of ideas and grit, she and Tim started Raoul with a book on silk-screening from the library and a T-shirt screen. With their children quite literally strapped to their backs, Sally and Tim started printing development yardage for surfwear and apparel brands — Quicksilver, Billabong, Nike — and soon outgrew their tiny Quonset hut. They moved the factory to Parker Way and took on larger and larger jobs, with printers working in shifts and hundreds of yards of fabric hanging from the rafters in wild 1980s neon bleeds.
Around this time, Sally started designing her own line of prints — first for children’s clothes, then handbags, and finally for interiors, where she would leave her mark. She printed on linen, which she loved for its rustic elegance, and she insisted on always printing locally and by hand. Her designs were painterly, based on tradition but fresh, with a surprising sense of color and scale.
Sally never followed trends; she set them. When people asked how she began a design, she talked about the lines — she loved drawing, and the grace of her hand is unmistakable. She never used a computer for artwork; she drew every leaf and paisley with her stubbornly maintained Rapidograph pens. She took inspiration from the things she loved, and she loved so many things.
Sally brought the world to life; she spent hours in her greenhouse, starting seeds with her beloved dog Fergus at her feet. She was an excellent, ambitious cook and loved feeding people. She set her tables with astonishing flower arrangements and knew the name of every plant. She had an instinct for when things were right but also how to make them right; when to increase the scale, move a motif, brighten a color; and how to light up a space.
Sally created a magical world for her family and for the many, many artists and craftspeople who worked at Raoul over the years. Her children were always with her; Madeleine and Gene grew up in the factory, scrambling down 30-yard-long tables, causing chaos in the paint department, napping in laundry trucks piled with linen fresh out of the dryer. After Tim died in 2000, she took the business forward, printing only her own designs at the factory (now on Los Aguajes Avenue) and expanding into national and international showrooms. She printed fabric for celebrities, hotels, her children’s class projects, and — her favorite order — Obama’s White House.
She was warm, generous, curious, stylish, and tough as nails. Sally inspired everyone she met; her enthusiasm and creativity was expansive. She had an unwavering sense of possibility and believed that you could (and should) do it yourself. She felt so fortunate to have spent her life doing what she loved, surrounded by her family, and she was so proud when her children joined the business.
Sally continued working and designing as long as illness allowed — she would go from chemo right back to the light table, with a break for lunch and talking shop with her kids.
Many in Santa Barbara may have met Sally at the famous Raoul factory sale; many might have her fabric on their sofas, hanging in their windows, or piled in the closet, waiting to be made into a quilt. If so, you know the joy and life her textiles bring to a home. You can feel the integrity of the process, the sense of history and unique vision, the way they draw your eye and reflect the warmth and light of the room.
That was Sally.
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