The New York Artist Embroidering Knicks Merch on the Street

On Saturday night, the New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs to win the team’s first NBA championship in 53 years. As the Knicks celebrated on the court in San Antonio, the city that never sleeps lived up to its name, partying in honor of the Knickerbockers.

Amid the melee in the streets was Ramell-Correen Frederick, known to his friends as “Cheeks.” He was sitting outside the Habana Outpost restaurant on Fulton and South Portland in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, working away on a vintage embroidery machine. Cheeks, a textile artist and denim tailor by trade, spent all night making custom championship gear for anyone who happened upon him. Requests ranged from the simple “2026 Champs” to slogans like “Send the Spurs to the Knick-U,” his fee starting at a modest $20.

Photos and videos of Cheeks and his work soon began making the rounds on social media. New Yorkers took off their hats, their jackets, their jerseys, or anything else they happened to have on and handed them over for Cheeks to embroider, as a way of marking the occasion.

“I want to go wherever the people are,” Cheeks told Vogue of his decision to set up a tiny table outside the local watch party. His embroidery is artwork, it is community work, it is care work, all at once.

Cheeks’s embroidery company is called Tattoo’d Cloth, and people commission him through DM, email, “or honestly, just finding me in the streets,” he says. A Queens native who has lived in Brooklyn since 2008, he has been in the fashion industry for 23 years, working in operational jobs before he taught himself to sew and learned about garment construction. “I found embroidery in 2007 and once I found it, I was able to really just go with it.”

On Sunday, Vogue spoke to Cheeks about his work and the experience of helping New Yorkers celebrate the Knicks’ big win.

Vogue: Can you tell me about what you do, and how people generally encounter you?

Ramell-Correen Frederick: When people find me outside, I call that my “going rogue.” It’s a small 3×2 table with my embroidery machine on top of it. I put it on the dolly and literally just push it through Brooklyn or Manhattan and set up on any corner that seems appropriate. I have a power setup that travels with me, and it’s super convenient. People can either give me something that they’re wearing or get something that I might be carrying on me. When you see me outside, I’m honestly just taking this moment to use my surroundings as inspiration and as my current art studio.

My machine is a 104-year-old hand-crank, chainstitch embroidery machine. The version that I was on last night is my Singer 114w103 model. Her name is Jessica. I’ve been using her for nine years now. I have two other ones: a longarm model from France—she’s 124 years old; her name is Bertha, because she’s huge—and I have an international model, an Indian-made model. Her name is Story. I got her last year.

I love working on them. The process is analog. From me designing, whether it be [with] pen and paper or using my digital creative devices, then to drawing it onto the article of clothing or printing it out, and then stitching it literally one stitch at a time. The process is very therapeutic. It can take anywhere from 60 seconds to write a name to my longest piece being 48 hours, which is a 24×36-inch tribute to Chadwick Boseman.

What made you want to “go rogue” outside the Habana Outpost last night for Game 5?

I wanted to do it for a few different games, but I was busy working on other projects. But last night I didn’t have anything planned—plus, after seeing the excitement of what was happening in front of Habana for Games 3 and 4, I was like, yeah, Game 5, it’s time to be outside. And the weather lined up perfectly. It’s literally half a mile walk for me, if that. So it was set up to be great. I got outside when it was still light out, so I pulled up around 7:00 p.m., and I went home at 1:30 in the morning.

What was the vibe like last night after the Knicks won?

“Fandemonium” with a capital “F.” I’ve never seen anything happening in the streets like I did last night, and it was such an interesting sight to behold, and be a part of.

Do you keep track of how many garments you embroider when you’re out there?

I do my best to keep track of it through photos and videos, but I don’t take a photo or video of everything. I do know that I woke up and I had made 15 different Knicks things, and I don’t have any of them left. But then people give me their items to embroider.

I tell people that all the time, “You don’t have to get anything from me. I would prefer you give me something that you own and let me just embroider it, because that’s the beauty.” One of the reasons why I do what I do is I don’t want you to have to buy something, I want you to take what you have and give it new life and make it something that’s even better than what you originally bought it for, because now it’s one of one.

Do you have formal training or are you self-taught?

My LinkedIn profile says one thing, but I am 100% self-taught. The only education that I got outside of being in my house doing it myself was I took a sewing class at this Brooklyn collective years ago. It was one sewing class, it was literally just to take the fear out of sewing because I spent years just being afraid of a sewing machine and not doing it. I grew up with a sewing machine in my basement [because my grandma was a seamstress]. So after that class it was literally about doing everything myself.

The next “training” came from my grandmother. After I took that class, I sewed a seam because I wanted to make hats, and I was really happy about it. I showed her and she was not happy. She was like, “Look, this is not good. Look at the way your lines are, look at how this and the third looks.” I went back immediately, took that out, redid that seam, pressed it, showed it to her again, immediately proud of what I did. And she was like, “That’s how you put a seam together.” So I always keep that in my mind from then on; that’s how I put a seam together.

The last “formal” training was when I took an internship with a patternmaker named Shilo Byrd, and she literally connected the gaps that I didn’t see. I could understand the sewing machine, I could put things together, but I didn’t understand why things were made the way they were, and she helped me a lot. I started out getting formal training because I was in an art high school, and unfortunately I was unceremoniously expelled from that art high school so I decided that formal training was no longer for me, and I went rogue. It took me a lot longer to get to where I’m at, but I did something that came naturally to me.

You mentioned that you were going to set up outside the Liberty game. Do you regularly set up outside different sporting venues?

Not necessarily. I like to go where the people are, at minimum. It doesn’t have to be anything specific. The very first time I ever went rogue, I walked from Vanderbilt and Atlantic to the Brooklyn Bridge Park and I sat outside Brooklyn Bridge Park, and people were really excited to see me and talk to me and get some stuff done. There’s been times where I’ve gone into the city just because, and it seems dead, but when I go to something that there’s people at and people can see me and they get excited about what I’m doing, it’s crazy. So it can be anything, as long as the people are there and they are receptive of what I do.

Is there anything else that you want people to know about you and your work?

I don’t do this embroidery stuff with the intention of being in the fashion world, I do it with the intention of being an artist. I try to bridge the gap and let people know that embroidery is art, and fashion is a way for people to get into my stuff. But honestly, my wall pieces, my big-scale stuff, is what I really strive to make.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.