Photo: Qristyl Frazier

Three days before the crew of All On the Line, Joe Zee’s fashion-rescue series, showed up to her apartment this summer, Qristyl Frazier was virtually homeless. She had been floating from couch to couch for over a year and moved into a place of her own just in time to film the show. Thinking back to her submission tape for the Sundance Channel, she has to laugh. “I didn’t have a studio, I didn’t have a place to live; I showed them my U-Haul,” she said, as she got her makeup done for a viewing party of her episode at Lane Bryant, which airs tonight. She hustled to get her brand-new apartment into shape for Zee’s team, “When they came, it looked like I’d been there for years,” she said incredulously. She has, in fact, been building her design company, Qristyl Frazier Designs, for years. She appeals to curvy women and encourages them to feel comfortable in their skin—and her clothes, with dresses like “Shimmering Sultry” and “Bad Intentions.” Her custom-made jersey jumpsuits, leopard-print dresses, and lingerie are intended to help women stop hiding in the corner because they feel chunky. She’s gone so far as to coin the term “Plus Sultry,” so as to avoid the negative connotations of “plus size.”

Frazier, 42, has been sewing anything and everything for decades now, as well as working for other designers. “I would have made clothes for dogs if I had to,” she now says, thinking back to her first break, when BET’s Rip the Runway asked her to make plus-size clothes. She started to make her own clothes when she was a girl, so as not to put stress on her mother with the extra expense. Then, when she was accepted into an all-girls private college in Missouri, about an hour away from her hometown in St. Louis, she became known as the girl who could design party clothes for every size and shape. Even still, she whips up, on average, 40 pieces a month. When the orders come in, she picks up the needle and thread. And though she hopes to pass the sewing along to someone else and concentrate on the designs, she has stitched her way through the industry. When Janet Jackson needed her pants fixed, Frazier’s boss went to her. (“When I walked in the room—you can tell I didn’t come from much—I’d never seen fruit so bright,” she said about the strawberries on Jackson’s table) When Queen Latifah needed a skirt, Frazier was there to make it with her own hands. When Wendy Williams wanted to drape herself in leather, Frazier sent her a basket of clothing. “I work hard,” she says as a makeup artist transformed her into a glamorous designer for her big opening night. “I just want people to know I exist.” Find out if she gets the Lane Bryant deal that could give her the boost she needs, or whether she has to keep on sewing, on tonight’s episode of All on the Line on the Sundance Channel at 9:30.