OUR STORY
My name is Christopher Hill, and I have spent my entire career in the fabric industry. While studying economics at university, I worked in my parents’ wholesale fabric company during a time when patchwork fabrics were still in their infancy in Australia. The business represented respected names such as Hoffman, Concord Fabrics (now Andover), and Alexander Henry, among others. I gained hands-on experience across every facet of the warehouse before moving into sales. Following my father’s stroke, the family business was sold, and I went on to work for a leading craft fabric wholesaler, first as a sales representative and later as an agent.
As an agent representing other people’s fabrics, I increasingly wanted to create products of my own. That opportunity began unexpectedly with an email from a fabric company in Indonesia asking whether I would be interested in buying batiks. Although I had no formal artistic background, I began designing my own batik ranges, which ultimately led to the creation of Batik Australia. Around the same time, I also became deeply interested in creating images on my computer, an interest that would later play a major role in shaping my next venture.
The foundation for Blockstar Fabrics began in September 2024 when I was experimenting with a repeat pattern on paper that would allow a circle design to be divided into four equal sections and then rearranged to form entirely new shapes. This became the catalyst for my new company, Blockstar Fabrics, where I developed a fabric design with a half-inch seam allowance between each of the four blocks. Once the seams were cut in half, four circle segments remained that could be sewn together seamlessly and manipulated to form a wide variety of patterns.
My wife Cathy and I then began a long and demanding journey to print this new design in batiks. Cathy left her much loved job of working with animals as a veterinary nurse to work full time in our business Chill Texstyles (Chill from C.Hill - Chris Hill and Cathy Hill). After many trials, we came to the difficult conclusion that the hot wax process used in batik could not deliver the straight edges our design required. We ultimately decided to print the design digitally in Korea, and that decision proved successful. Our new concept became the launchpad for Blockstar Fabrics, which we took to Chicago in May 2026. There, we achieved an exciting milestone by signing a worldwide distribution deal with Jaftex Fabrics, the company behind six major fabric brands, including FreeSpirit, home to designers such as Kaffe Fassett and Tula Pink.
We are now stepping into an exciting new chapter, and while much of it is uncharted territory for us, we are delighted to be doing what we love most: creating products of our own. We are committed to offering something truly unique, and we believe people will be pleasantly surprised by how beautifully these new designs are coming to life.