Bluster

July 30, 2025

I alternate between being obsessed with the news and choosing to ignore it all. As a citizen, I feel an obligation to be aware and to speak up. As an artist, all of that information is stacked up in my memory. It will inevitably show up in the work if I let it.

This is teaching season so a lot of my time is in the classroom or preparing for the classroom. Except for the airports I do love it. A week at Quilting by the Lake quieted a lot of the political chatter I was listening to and made me focus on making art. My students were eager, talented and experimental. We found time to share our stories, appreciate the process and laugh when the work brought us joy.

When I returned I wasn’t counting on being able to work in the studio. I had too many errands and I had to prepare for next week’s workshop at the Woodland Ridge Retreat in Wisconsin. Nevertheless, while unpacking this quilt I laid it on the table next to the piece below that had failed earlier in the year. They were stacked on top of each other and I saw a way to combine them.

*Nonsense* is made with a printed cloth I designed based on my *Disruptors* series.

This collage kept getting more complicated. I liked the ingredients but not the result. so it ended up on the scrap pile.

What follows are some of the details and a semi-final reckoning of how it ends. I’m calling it Bluster after all of those politicians and tv commentators who buzz our ears with the same stories day after day after day after day.

*Bluster* is a tornado of texture and color. I need to finesse the warp of it and I might add some hand stitching.

People ask me all the time how I can possibly cut up these pieces to create new ones. This art is not a fast process. Each piece takes many hours of contemplation and stitching. After all that effort the pieces can become too precious. For me the process of discovery is the prize. I don’t really seek new finished pieces. Instead I focus on working with what I have to make and remake art. The transformation is the point. What is old becomes new. And, look, I end up with lots of really great scrap pieces that can be used for more explorations in the future.

The tip off

August 24, 2022

Here’s a quick post about a piece that came together this month. I had some precious moments between teaching and preparing for the show at Austin Peay. It was good to be back in the studio, surrounded by raw materials.

It starts with some of those raw materials—pieces of cut up quilts, some fabric from Pat Pauly, and a bird chirping a new tune outside my window.

That bird was blasting it out. It seemed like a warning cry or territory claim—something that couldn’t be ignored. I listened to it for quite a while and looked around to see if there was a snake or another bird infringing on its territory.

Designing is a series of choices. This not that. Maybe some of the other stuff? No not that. I add and subtract, growing the piece until it starts telling me what it needs. Nothing is sewn together until I feel like there is a right way to put two pieces together.

I thought maybe the bird needed a witness. So I built one.

I did like the silhouette of the human but did not like the bottom part of him. So I lopped that off and added a wider expanse. The swirly inkblot came from a piece I did last year that happened to be hanging near the design board—a perfect candidate for the warning cry coming from the bird on the left. You can see how I debut other pieces below the composition. Some make the cut, others go back in the raw materials bin.

There comes a time when I do have to commit. I reassemble the composition on a table to be able to pick up each section to connect them. They’re like puzzle pieces. ….I do love puzzles. Each piece is butted up to its mate and stitched with a decorative stitch or free-motion stitch. Since the pieces are already quilted it would be difficult to seam them so this butting process makes that a little easier. The decorative stitching can be more or less obvious depending on how I want the piece to look. In this case I used black thread to emphasize the connections.

All along the way I add some detail stitching. In the case of the image below I thought the background floral fabric was too bright so I painted it with some thinned fabric paint to allow for the detail stitching to stand out more.

This dialog between the bird and the human became a warning cry to me. Living in a city I am aware of how little green space we have and how much is being paved over. So I crowded in some buildings.

**The Tip Off.** 26” x 69”, found fabric, cotton thread, wool batting. Paula Kovarik

The final piece. Maybe. I’ll let it sit awhile before I decide if it is really done.

Want to take a workshop?

If you would like to learn by doing I will be teaching at a number of locations this fall. Check the listings at right for how to register. I will be teaching free-motion stitching in San Diego at the SAQA Summit Conference September 22-24 and an At Play in the Garden of Stitch workshop in Miami November 3-6. That one is a combination stitching and collage class.

Beastie Boy and His Pals

August 14, 2018

Sometimes pieces emerge out of my subconscious without warning. My task is to allow that to happen. That is what happened with Beastie Boy and His Pals.

I am appalled by the way our government is being run. The creatures that inhabit the power centers have changed the way I think about threats. As a citizen I vote in and pay attention to local, regional and federal issues. I read articles that discuss both sides of issues. I listen to the news from other countries. I try to sift out the skewed, embellished and outright outrageous to come to an understanding. And I feel helpless.

Solace comes in the work.

Beastie Boy and His Pals started with this scrappy composition. I have learned that scraps can talk.

The composition had two sides. A cool side and a warm side with static in between. Similar to the dialog being broadcast to us each day without rest. Like the two parties playing their he said he said game.

As mammals we are predisposed to see faces in inanimate objects. The instinct is a way to protect ourselves from potential threats. So as I added sections to the composition I started seeing beasts -- beasts with eyes, beasts with tails, beasts with goggles. I liked how the three beastie figures outlined in the pic at the right started to create a nest of a composition.