fabric art Archives | Textiles & Text

The Ghost Tree

It makes me happy to see the ghost tree resembling the real trees of Ruffner Mountain.

Made of remnants of canvas from the curtains I made for Ruffner Mountain’s Nature Center, the ghost tree stands in the big room of the Nature Center. I originally made the tree as part of an installation for Naked Art Gallery. Stitched and sutured, pieced and patched, the tree symbolizes the connections between all living things. It serves as a reminder of fragmented forests and trees lost to urban sprawl and rampant development, but it is also a metaphor for hope and the power of nature to rebound if given a chance. A tree’s life is fragile. It is a building block in a forest of interconnected organisms. Tug on a string, and the entwined shifts and bends, branches break, and life unravels. Read more…

Quilt the Forest

Nature, whether a topographical scene, a forest, plant, animal, insect, bird, or an interaction between any of these living things, vignettes of wonder stop us in our tracks and appeal to our senses. As we stroll through a park, walk along on a trail in a nature preserve, or work in a garden, our experiences and observations affect us in ways we may not even be aware of. Lasting impressions, we recall and connect to these nature scenes to inspire, calm, motivate, and center our souls. To help people explore and tell their nature-inspired stories with fabric art, I developed a Quilt the Forest Workshop.

Textiles, Text, & Terrain

From time to time, I’ll write essays here on the blog. I’ll post and repost garden profiles and how-to articles, as well as explanations of my processes of making textile art.

I craft an essay much like I do my fabric art. I start with putting words and thoughts to paper in no particular order. Bits and pieces, quotes, descriptions, and explanations, I get everything out and onto the paper, and then transcribe the words to the computer. The next day, I begin crafting the piece. I open a blank document and begin plucking out phrases and sentences out of the pile. I copy and paste the words to the blank document, rearranging order and flow, weaving the pieces together, tweaking and stitching together the words until the piece is finished. I love that the same kind of approach works for all that I do. The process is efficient and streamlined. It works for me.