My work as a fiber artist began at the age of five when I learned how to sew and make doll clothes. I then progressed to making my own clothes and costumes for plays, something I did for many years.

In the early 1990s I was introduced to quilting and have primarily been a quilter since that time. I love combining fabrics, colors, and patterns and the feeling of creative satisfaction as they all fit together. At first I did only hand quilting and loved the feeling and the sound of the stitches as I moved the thread in and out. Later, when I was exposed to hand-dyed fabric, I immediately fell in love with that look and wanted to do that specifically. The endless possibilities of surface design soon beckoned, and I was reading and researching to further my knowledge as I developed my eye for depth and complexity.

Launching myself into hand-dyed and hand-painted fabrics was a really challenging leap since it took me into an area I knew nothing about. I am almost completely self-taught, guided only by an occasional workshop on surface design or fabric printing. Now I do a lot of experimentation and allow myself to produce “duds” in order to grow and expand my knowledge and skill.

I use many different traditional and not-so-traditional surface design tools in my work and enjoy seeing what kind of outrageous and intriguing marks I can make on fabric. Some of the items I use for painting are turkey feathers, gutter webbing, dog grooming tools, kitchen utensils, bottle caps, credit cards, construction debris, jar lids, rubber matting, cut sponges, packing materials, bubble wrap, nails, washers, screws, and empty food and detergent containers. Nothing in our house is safe from studio experimentation!

More recently, I have been hand-dying and hand-painting all my own fabrics for wall art and small quilts. I relish the dying, painting, printing, monoprinting, stamping, and rusting of my fabrics and then combining them into one-of-a-kind pieces of wall art that I then heavily machine stitch. Sometimes I start with a machine-stitched piece and then paint over the stitching—whatever catches my fancy or produces an interesting texture or promotes the native beauty of the fabric.

I use 100% cotton, linen, silk, and canvas with fiber-reactive dyes, fabric paints, and acrylics. I also hand-dye and hand-paint silk scarves and have a line of note cards on which portions of my fabrics are stitched. In the future I hope to expand my line to include bags, belts, throw pillows, and clothing.

I am happy to consider commissioned work and have a photographic portfolio of samples for review.

Judy@judithmerrelldesigns.com