Artist’s statement
I am an artist who works in fabric and thread. I find great joy in creating works that draw people closer and invite them to savor color, texture and form. My art celebrates and documents the deep mysteries of the world that are to be experienced only by close inspection of the miraculous details of nature. Increasingly, my work explores environmental, political and social issues that affect our world.
While my core materials — cloth and thread — are those used in traditional quilting, I often employ substances such as acrylic fabric paints, dyes, Tyvek, Angelina fibers, and water-soluble wax pastels, to transform the cloth.
Most of my art is realistic/representational in style, and starts with original photographs of the subjects, or my ink drawings based on them. I use two primary techniques – wholecloth painting, and fused appliqué – and often heavily free-motion threadsketch the surface before quilting.
I am an artist, author, photographer, teacher, and host of “Quilting Arts TV.”
I started out as a traditional quilter, and still love hand quilting and needleturn appliqué, but I also embrace art quilting and innovative machine techniques. I started making art quilts in 2005. My work is in private and public collections, including the International Quilt Museum (Lincoln, NE) and International Quilt Festival Collection (Houston, Texas).
I have won national as well as local awards, and have been exhibited at national and international venues. My work was exhibited at Quilt National in 2023. I have won seven Best of Show awards at three different quilting guilds, with six different quilts. My work has been featured in several national and international magazines, Quilting Arts Calendars and the 2012 Quilt Art Engagement Calendar. It has graced the covers of five issues of Quilting Arts magazine.
I am the author of two books – Point, Click, Quilt! Turn Your Photos into Fabulous Fabric Art (C&T Publishing, 2011), and Appliqué Petal Party (C&T Publishing, 2009). I have also produced five DVDs with Quilting Arts: “Master Machine Quilting: Free-Motion Stitching and Thread Sketching” (2009), “Master Machine Stitching: Thread Sketching Beyond the Basics” (2010), and “Dynamic Quilt Design: Paint Meets Stitch” (2011), “Fabulous Finishes: Seven Techniques for Binding, Facing, Framing & Hanging a Quilt” (2014), and “52 Free-Motion Quilting Motifs and Fillers” (2015). My first series of six lessons on thread sketching ran in Quilting Arts magazine throughout 2010, and the second series ran in Quilting Arts magazine in 2014.
I appeared in four seasons of “Quilting Arts TV” with Pokey Bolton before taking over as host with Series 1400 in 2014. I am also the co-host of the Quilting Arts Podcast. In 2011 and 2015, I was featured on “The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims” (episodes 901 and 1709). And I’ve been interviewed by Mark Lipinski and Pat Sloan on their radio shows. In 2018, I became a Bernina Ambassador.
Previously, I created a graphic design and communications business, designing logos, corporate identity systems, newsletters, magazines, annual reports and brochures. I am an experienced writer, and have worked in corporate communications and also as a page designer for The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.) and The Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.).
I grew up in Mt. Lebanon, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh, and earned my B.A. in English at Allegheny College (Meadville, Pa.), spending my junior year at The University of St. Andrews (Scotland); and my M.A. in journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I lived and worked in New York City; New Jersey; Lexington, Ky.; Charlottesville, Va.; and Charlotte, N.C. I have two adult daughters, and now live in Chapel Hill, N.C., with my husband, Rob, a journalist.