jude hill

cloth paper story

...64 years old ...born and raised in new york currently retired and financially stressed, residing on the north shore of long island in the woods with my husband , Soul-o(the cat) , a lot of fabric and a partial water view.

.....my love of sewing started with making doll clothes and then my own clothes.

..... studied children's book illustration at SVA ( school of visual arts) in new york city... quitting before completing in order to get a job and pay my rent... landed a job as a trainee hand weaver for a large manufacturer, the beginning of a love affair with woven fabric design.

.....designed woven fabric for the apparel industry for 25 years, a full time career that required commuting to new york city on a train, 4 hours in transit a day.

.....began sewing during my commute, made my first quilt in 1979. unplugged. queen size.

.....gradually, because of my access to fabric and my understanding of fabric structure, my drawing skills and fascination with story telling... i became obsessed with telling a story with cloth.

.....unplugged for convenience of portability and my dedication to energy conservation. i don't buy much of anything and i hate all the "gunk" that is applied to fabric art these days. it interferes with the nature of the fabric. i believe in recycling and re-purposing and my work is mostly given away but i have opened a shop for smaller pieces. hand sewing is meditative and beautiful. i do occasionally plug in but machine stitches are just not the same.

.....my pieces evolve through a process of thought catching and what-iffing. each one is a sampler of a kind, containing new techniques and ideas, each a study for the next. i use them as metaphors for change and life's journey. my style is based on layers, the nature of fabric, traditional techniques, unconventional cloth construction and the relationship of sewing to weaving. i call myself an alternative quilter and a folk artist. i would love to be a teacher someday.

.....started this blog to record the process of making a spirit cloth, which is always a gift and usually takes one or two years to complete. because these are such long term projects i thought that the process could be interesting enough for posting.

my work has been published in quilting arts, artful blogging, and art quilting studio where you can catch me what-iffing on a regular basis.

.....i enjoy comments although i am sometimes too busy stitching to catch up right away. thank you for visiting.

jude