I live in Western Massachusetts, an area full of artists and academics. I love that there are painters, writers, actors, and “experts-in-their-field” all in this little valley. It makes for an easy place to live. My studio is located in Holyoke, across the river and just a mile from my home in South Hadley. One mile is the perfect distance for commuting. When it’s nice out I can walk over to the studio and when I forget something in one place or the other it is easy to go back to retrieve it.
There are lots of quilters in my family history. My mom is a quilter, my grandma was a quilter, and my dad’s great-grandparents were quilters. Great-Grandpa would cut out the pieces and Grandma would sew them together. My mom taught me to sew when I was 5 or 6 years old. I made some clothing while living at home, and hated every minute of it. I also did not have any desire to sew or quilt as I was growing up. I could think of nothing more boring than looking at fabric. But I have always made stuff. When I was a kid I cross-stitched and embroidered. In high school and in college I cut out pictures from magazines and made many collages.
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
When I was in my twenties I started my first quilt with my then-husband. He wanted to make a quilt to talk about geometry with his middle school math students. Quilting was not for him, as he gave up partway through the process, but I was hooked. I didn’t read a book, or take a class, or ask my mom how to make a quilt, because I needed to figure it out on my own. I didn’t want my mom to know that I might be interested in quilting, so I borrowed my friend’s mother’s sewing machine to keep my quilting interest secret.
That first quilt is not pretty, and it definitely has some technical issues, but I learned so much about how to quilt. I also learned that I needed to make a second quilt and a third quilt because there were so many ideas running though my head. I really learned to quilt over the next decade by trying new techniques and styles. One can never underestimate the value of putting in your ten thousand hours of work.
Photo by Lexi Monesson-Olson
In 2001 I started longarming quilts for other quilters. I loved that work for many years because I love quilters. They are my favorite people, so collaborating with them was really fun. But while I was working for other people I considered myself a craftsperson, not an artist. When I stopped quilting for hire a couple of years ago and started spending more time working on my own projects I was able to make the mental leap to “artist.” Really, not that much has changed in my process, except I gave myself permission to claim the word.
My creative style is “more is more—until it’s too much.”
I have been a quilter for 20 years. At first, I made traditional quilts. Then I made those same traditional quilts, but used color in non-traditional ways. Now I tend to make more contemporary quilts, using traditional techniques. I suppose that is a standard arc of an artist—to learn the technique and the process and then spin it in a new direction to keep oneself interested. I have found that if I am interested in the process, the finished product is much more compelling to both myself and the viewer than if I “phone it in” and do what is easy.
A couple years ago my grandma showed me a photo that my cousin took of his three-year-old daughter, Keira. The photo made me laugh so hard that I knew it needed to be a quilt. I had never made pictorial quilts so I really didn’t know how to go about it. I went back to what I learned in my college art history classes and thought about how artists throughout time have made large paintings from small drawings using grids. I had the photo blown up to the quilt’s finished size and printed on vinyl. I then marked a grid over the picture using a permanent marker.
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
Every big thing is done by doing lots of tiny things. I knew that if I could construct one 2-inch square I could make two hundred 2-inch squares and sew them together. That is not much different than making traditional quilts where you make many of the same block multiple times and sew them together. I am also a huge fan of photorealistic painter Chuck Close’s work, so I spent time looking at his paintings and reading his books and interviews for inspiration. Even though gridding out a composition is an ancient technique, I love that Close keeps the grid visible to the audience, he doesn’t hide it behind the paint. It took several months to complete, but I was pleased with the finished quilt featuring Keira, which I call Up Close and Personal. When she saw a photo of the quilt she gave it the highest compliment by saying, “That looks like me!”
I learned so much making Up Close and Personal that I wanted to try my hand at another realistic quilt. This time I made a portrait of my friend’s chickens. I learned more of what works and doesn’t work in my process from the chickens. I then applied those lessons to a pig, and then I used what I learned from the pig to make a cow, and then a cat. All of a sudden I had an accidental barnyard! I am currently working on my twelfth quilt in the series. Each quilt is a close-up of the face and is approximately 37″ × 37″. My goal was to finish a dozen
animal quilts so that I can have a full barnyard to exhibit. They will be make their exhibition debut as The Noble Menagerie at MQX Quilt Festival in Manchester, NH in April 2020.
Photo by Linda Warren
This is the first time that I have consciously created a series of pieces to be hung together. Most of the animal photos are pictures I took with my phone camera. The one exception is the photo of my sister’s dog, Teela. Teela is a gentle and happy animal whose personality my sister captured beautifully.
When I construct each animal, I start by picking a general color palette for their fur, feathers and/or hair. Then I am often overwhelmed, so I make what is easy for me; the background that is behind them. By the time I have the background made I am brave enough to start on the animal itself.
Making a quilt is like anything in life—pick a place to start and move along from there.
If you spend too much time worrying about where to begin you will never get anywhere. The one superstitious part of my process is that I leave the eye for the very end. I feel like I get to know the animal while I’m sewing it together and I cannot make the eye until we are quite intimate. All of the soul is in the eye. In some quilts I capture it better than in others.
One thing about my process is that I need large chunks of time to get into the creative flow. I would rather have a whole day in the studio than four two-hour chunks of time. That is not always possible when one has children, other work, and commitments. I also really like to have a schedule and a plan, so the biggest challenges to my creative flow are snow days, half-days, and summer vacations from school.
I like collections of small things. Rows of small, repetitive blocks with hundreds of different colors and patterns are exactly my jam.
How does one find inspiration? I find inspiration while I work. If I’m not feeling inspired, I start cleaning my studio, or folding one of my many piles of fabric. Doing mundane tasks might remind me of a fabric I had forgotten about, or I see color combinations in the pile that are new to me which may start my brain working in a different way. Artist Chuck Close said, “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” That’s true. Creative work is work, it’s rarely divinely inspired.
Photo by Lexi Monesson-Olson
I live in Western Massachusetts, an area full of artists and academics. I love that there are painters, writers, actors, and “experts-in-their-field” all in this little valley. It makes for an easy place to live. My studio is located in Holyoke, across the river and just a mile from my home in South Hadley. One mile is the perfect distance for commuting. When it’s nice out I can walk over to the studio and when I forget something in one place or the other it is easy to go back to retrieve it.
There are lots of quilters in my family history. My mom is a quilter, my grandma was a quilter, and my dad’s great-grandparents were quilters. Great-Grandpa would cut out the pieces and Grandma would sew them together. My mom taught me to sew when I was 5 or 6 years old. I made some clothing while living at home, and hated every minute of it. I also did not have any desire to sew or quilt as I was growing up. I could think of nothing more boring than looking at fabric. But I have always made stuff. When I was a kid I cross-stitched and embroidered. In high school and in college I cut out pictures from magazines and made many collages.
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
When I was in my twenties I started my first quilt with my then-husband. He wanted to make a quilt to talk about geometry with his middle school math students. Quilting was not for him, as he gave up partway through the process, but I was hooked. I didn’t read a book, or take a class, or ask my mom how to make a quilt, because I needed to figure it out on my own. I didn’t want my mom to know that I might be interested in quilting, so I borrowed my friend’s mother’s sewing machine to keep my quilting interest secret.
That first quilt is not pretty, and it definitely has some technical issues, but I learned so much about how to quilt. I also learned that I needed to make a second quilt and a third quilt because there were so many ideas running though my head. I really learned to quilt over the next decade by trying new techniques and styles. One can never underestimate the value of putting in your ten thousand hours of work.
Photo by Lexi Monesson-Olson
In 2001 I started longarming quilts for other quilters. I loved that work for many years because I love quilters. They are my favorite people, so collaborating with them was really fun. But while I was working for other people I considered myself a craftsperson, not an artist. When I stopped quilting for hire a couple of years ago and started spending more time working on my own projects I was able to make the mental leap to “artist.” Really, not that much has changed in my process, except I gave myself permission to claim the word.
My creative style is “more is more—until it’s too much.”
I have been a quilter for 20 years. At first, I made traditional quilts. Then I made those same traditional quilts, but used color in non-traditional ways. Now I tend to make more contemporary quilts, using traditional techniques. I suppose that is a standard arc of an artist—to learn the technique and the process and then spin it in a new direction to keep oneself interested. I have found that if I am interested in the process, the finished product is much more compelling to both myself and the viewer than if I “phone it in” and do what is easy.
A couple years ago my grandma showed me a photo that my cousin took of his three-year-old daughter, Keira. The photo made me laugh so hard that I knew it needed to be a quilt. I had never made pictorial quilts so I really didn’t know how to go about it. I went back to what I learned in my college art history classes and thought about how artists throughout time have made large paintings from small drawings using grids. I had the photo blown up to the quilt’s finished size and printed on vinyl. I then marked a grid over the picture using a permanent marker.
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
Every big thing is done by doing lots of tiny things. I knew that if I could construct one 2-inch square I could make two hundred 2-inch squares and sew them together. That is not much different than making traditional quilts where you make many of the same block multiple times and sew them together. I am also a huge fan of photorealistic painter Chuck Close’s work, so I spent time looking at his paintings and reading his books and interviews for inspiration. Even though gridding out a composition is an ancient technique, I love that Close keeps the grid visible to the audience, he doesn’t hide it behind the paint. It took several months to complete, but I was pleased with the finished quilt featuring Keira, which I call Up Close and Personal. When she saw a photo of the quilt she gave it the highest compliment by saying, “That looks like me!”
I learned so much making Up Close and Personal that I wanted to try my hand at another realistic quilt. This time I made a portrait of my friend’s chickens. I learned more of what works and doesn’t work in my process from the chickens. I then applied those lessons to a pig, and then I used what I learned from the pig to make a cow, and then a cat. All of a sudden I had an accidental barnyard! I am currently working on my twelfth quilt in the series. Each quilt is a close-up of the face and is approximately 37″ × 37″. My goal was to finish a dozen
animal quilts so that I can have a full barnyard to exhibit. They will be make their exhibition debut as The Noble Menagerie at MQX Quilt Festival in Manchester, NH in April 2020.
Photo by Linda Warren
This is the first time that I have consciously created a series of pieces to be hung together. Most of the animal photos are pictures I took with my phone camera. The one exception is the photo of my sister’s dog, Teela. Teela is a gentle and happy animal whose personality my sister captured beautifully.
When I construct each animal, I start by picking a general color palette for their fur, feathers and/or hair. Then I am often overwhelmed, so I make what is easy for me; the background that is behind them. By the time I have the background made I am brave enough to start on the animal itself.
Making a quilt is like anything in life—pick a place to start and move along from there.
If you spend too much time worrying about where to begin you will never get anywhere. The one superstitious part of my process is that I leave the eye for the very end. I feel like I get to know the animal while I’m sewing it together and I cannot make the eye until we are quite intimate. All of the soul is in the eye. In some quilts I capture it better than in others.
One thing about my process is that I need large chunks of time to get into the creative flow. I would rather have a whole day in the studio than four two-hour chunks of time. That is not always possible when one has children, other work, and commitments. I also really like to have a schedule and a plan, so the biggest challenges to my creative flow are snow days, half-days, and summer vacations from school.
I like collections of small things. Rows of small, repetitive blocks with hundreds of different colors and patterns are exactly my jam.
How does one find inspiration? I find inspiration while I work. If I’m not feeling inspired, I start cleaning my studio, or folding one of my many piles of fabric. Doing mundane tasks might remind me of a fabric I had forgotten about, or I see color combinations in the pile that are new to me which may start my brain working in a different way. Artist Chuck Close said, “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” That’s true. Creative work is work, it’s rarely divinely inspired.
Related Stories
Photo by Lexi Monesson-Olson
I live in Western Massachusetts, an area full of artists and academics. I love that there are painters, writers, actors, and “experts-in-their-field” all in this little valley. It makes for an easy place to live. My studio is located in Holyoke, across the river and just a mile from my home in South Hadley. One mile is the perfect distance for commuting. When it’s nice out I can walk over to the studio and when I forget something in one place or the other it is easy to go back to retrieve it.
There are lots of quilters in my family history. My mom is a quilter, my grandma was a quilter, and my dad’s great-grandparents were quilters. Great-Grandpa would cut out the pieces and Grandma would sew them together. My mom taught me to sew when I was 5 or 6 years old. I made some clothing while living at home, and hated every minute of it. I also did not have any desire to sew or quilt as I was growing up. I could think of nothing more boring than looking at fabric. But I have always made stuff. When I was a kid I cross-stitched and embroidered. In high school and in college I cut out pictures from magazines and made many collages.
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
When I was in my twenties I started my first quilt with my then-husband. He wanted to make a quilt to talk about geometry with his middle school math students. Quilting was not for him, as he gave up partway through the process, but I was hooked. I didn’t read a book, or take a class, or ask my mom how to make a quilt, because I needed to figure it out on my own. I didn’t want my mom to know that I might be interested in quilting, so I borrowed my friend’s mother’s sewing machine to keep my quilting interest secret.
That first quilt is not pretty, and it definitely has some technical issues, but I learned so much about how to quilt. I also learned that I needed to make a second quilt and a third quilt because there were so many ideas running though my head. I really learned to quilt over the next decade by trying new techniques and styles. One can never underestimate the value of putting in your ten thousand hours of work.
Photo by Lexi Monesson-Olson
In 2001 I started longarming quilts for other quilters. I loved that work for many years because I love quilters. They are my favorite people, so collaborating with them was really fun. But while I was working for other people I considered myself a craftsperson, not an artist. When I stopped quilting for hire a couple of years ago and started spending more time working on my own projects I was able to make the mental leap to “artist.” Really, not that much has changed in my process, except I gave myself permission to claim the word.
My creative style is “more is more—until it’s too much.”
I have been a quilter for 20 years. At first, I made traditional quilts. Then I made those same traditional quilts, but used color in non-traditional ways. Now I tend to make more contemporary quilts, using traditional techniques. I suppose that is a standard arc of an artist—to learn the technique and the process and then spin it in a new direction to keep oneself interested. I have found that if I am interested in the process, the finished product is much more compelling to both myself and the viewer than if I “phone it in” and do what is easy.
A couple years ago my grandma showed me a photo that my cousin took of his three-year-old daughter, Keira. The photo made me laugh so hard that I knew it needed to be a quilt. I had never made pictorial quilts so I really didn’t know how to go about it. I went back to what I learned in my college art history classes and thought about how artists throughout time have made large paintings from small drawings using grids. I had the photo blown up to the quilt’s finished size and printed on vinyl. I then marked a grid over the picture using a permanent marker.
Photo by Stephen Petegorsky
Every big thing is done by doing lots of tiny things. I knew that if I could construct one 2-inch square I could make two hundred 2-inch squares and sew them together. That is not much different than making traditional quilts where you make many of the same block multiple times and sew them together. I am also a huge fan of photorealistic painter Chuck Close’s work, so I spent time looking at his paintings and reading his books and interviews for inspiration. Even though gridding out a composition is an ancient technique, I love that Close keeps the grid visible to the audience, he doesn’t hide it behind the paint. It took several months to complete, but I was pleased with the finished quilt featuring Keira, which I call Up Close and Personal. When she saw a photo of the quilt she gave it the highest compliment by saying, “That looks like me!”
I learned so much making Up Close and Personal that I wanted to try my hand at another realistic quilt. This time I made a portrait of my friend’s chickens. I learned more of what works and doesn’t work in my process from the chickens. I then applied those lessons to a pig, and then I used what I learned from the pig to make a cow, and then a cat. All of a sudden I had an accidental barnyard! I am currently working on my twelfth quilt in the series. Each quilt is a close-up of the face and is approximately 37″ × 37″. My goal was to finish a dozen
animal quilts so that I can have a full barnyard to exhibit. They will be make their exhibition debut as The Noble Menagerie at MQX Quilt Festival in Manchester, NH in April 2020.
Photo by Linda Warren
This is the first time that I have consciously created a series of pieces to be hung together. Most of the animal photos are pictures I took with my phone camera. The one exception is the photo of my sister’s dog, Teela. Teela is a gentle and happy animal whose personality my sister captured beautifully.
When I construct each animal, I start by picking a general color palette for their fur, feathers and/or hair. Then I am often overwhelmed, so I make what is easy for me; the background that is behind them. By the time I have the background made I am brave enough to start on the animal itself.
Making a quilt is like anything in life—pick a place to start and move along from there.
If you spend too much time worrying about where to begin you will never get anywhere. The one superstitious part of my process is that I leave the eye for the very end. I feel like I get to know the animal while I’m sewing it together and I cannot make the eye until we are quite intimate. All of the soul is in the eye. In some quilts I capture it better than in others.
One thing about my process is that I need large chunks of time to get into the creative flow. I would rather have a whole day in the studio than four two-hour chunks of time. That is not always possible when one has children, other work, and commitments. I also really like to have a schedule and a plan, so the biggest challenges to my creative flow are snow days, half-days, and summer vacations from school.
I like collections of small things. Rows of small, repetitive blocks with hundreds of different colors and patterns are exactly my jam.
How does one find inspiration? I find inspiration while I work. If I’m not feeling inspired, I start cleaning my studio, or folding one of my many piles of fabric. Doing mundane tasks might remind me of a fabric I had forgotten about, or I see color combinations in the pile that are new to me which may start my brain working in a different way. Artist Chuck Close said, “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” That’s true. Creative work is work, it’s rarely divinely inspired.
The Women Create Foundation is a catalyst for small but significant strides to empower women creators through grants that help bring projects to life and foster innovation.
