Sutured

January 29, 2025

I talk in my sleep these days. I think it’s all about watching and reading too much news and processing the insanity of our times. One night Jim said I sounded like a drill sergeant. I guess I am trying to fix things.

Let month I made this piece. I called it Disruptors in honor of the dialogue that is happening around disfunction and malaise. I intentionally made this chaotic and layered it with stitch and pattern.

I wasn’t happy with the results. It felt forced and cartoonish. (not that I don’t love a good cartoon) So I decided to cut it up.

The first cut is always the hardest. This practice has taught me that I can always find a way to a new solution. If I don’t it isn’t world shattering. There are too many world shattering things going on right now to worry about “ruining” a piece that I spent time on.

I decided to cut it into 1/2” and 1/4” strips so that I could stitch them back together to create a new pattern. What a pretty nest.

I looked around for more raw material so that I would have more contrasting colors to combine. I sacrificed a beast to this exploration.

I’m reading “The Women” by Kristin Hannah which is about nurses during the Vietnam war. There is a lot of talk about suturing wounds and mending broken bodies. Sewing these scraps together to create new shapes felt like triage to me. I think the world could use a battalion of nurses right now.

Click here to Tell me how you are inspired.

Second thoughts

December 16, 2024

I think I am done with this piece. Problem is I am not sure what side is up. While I was working on it I just let the stitch tell me where to go. It is a drop cloth that I stitched together to create a surface to respond to. I turned it East, then West, then North and South. Each time responding to what I had stitched in the former session. The composition was secondary but it did seem to hold together when I took a breath to look at it.

Zooming in

Each session brought new textures. The fabric is billowy and unstable. It was difficult to tame until I let it have its way with me—letting the billow billow. I think it might be an old poplin sheet. I used a wool batting and a cotton muslin backing to keep it light. The whole piece is 35” x 37” so it was easily finished in a couple of weeks. After free-motion stitching I added a tight textural filling with hand stitching to contrast with the open negatives spaces left unstitched.

When to call it done?

I might be done with the stitching part of this piece. Just not sure which end is up. Each configuration could be the right one. Here are the four for your consideration.

**Number One.** This one has a large face in it.

**Number Two.** This one looks like a vehicle of some sort with wacky wheels.

**Number Three.** Here’s a happy guy in the middle with his arm upraised.

**Number Four.** This one turns those two wacky wheels into two wacky heads.

Let's take a vote

Where to go next?

Another piece of fabric, some thread and a little batting.

Remember: It’s Process not Product.

fraud, fallout and fervor

December 5, 2022

I spent last week full of imposter-syndrome doubt. Looking around the studio I saw past efforts, early experiments and final failures. The cacophony of the surroundings not only confused me it also impeded my thought process. I kept staring blindly at the design board and finding ways to avoid anything at all having to do with making art. I walked out and sought solace in distractions. Database cleanup? yup. Instagram surfing? too much. Fabric folding and organizing? Ad nauseam. Asking questions like “what’s the point?” oh yes.

Fallout

I am a determined artist. I believe that process will bring insight and stalling is part of it. Though those gaps in activity engender a feeling of inadequacy I must try, discard, try, discard, try, discard. I have to be relentless. When I could find an opening in the doubt cloud I worked on this piece called Surge. It’s about deterioration as well as growth. Inspired by rotting wood, colonies of organisms and pathways of growth, it gave me a map to follow in my panic. Yes, it is a kind of panic for me. A feeling that I can’t come up with something original, something that transcends the obvious.

Fervor

Nature has it right every time. As an example I have this magical driveway. Every time it rains the cracks in the surface are revealed. They fascinate me. The organic shapes and fissures tell stories. It’s like the earth below is trying to burst out. They beckon me with the mystery of that transformation.

I have begun the process of interpreting these magical messages—it’s a start for a new map. I don’t know where it will take me but I feel the fervor again. Reminding myself that it is process not product that is important.

I will start again.

Second thoughts bring primary focus

December 8, 2021

I’m not known for my color expertise. I look fondly on work that bursts with saturated color and sigh most of the time. Rousseau, Gaugin, Pauly, Hilma af Klint, Butler and Kusama all stun and amaze me. As a designer I tend toward khaki, gray, muted pastels and black and white. As an artist black thread on light cloth just makes sense to me. If you are drawing lines you need to see them right?

Settling back into a daily practice after five weeks away turned out to be harder than I expected. My mind was so filled with inspirations that it was hard to sort through what my next step would be. I decided to just put colored pieces together. Primaries first.

Starting a piece without a specific idea is all about process. The underlying meaning doesn’t exist so I am only cutting, sewing, cutting, sewing and cutting again. I trust that at some point the compositions will tell me more than I think I know. There was a lot of cutting and sewing and cutting and sewing in these pieces. So much so that I thought that I might instead focus on this wonderful pile of scraps instead of the structured pieces that were being created.

As I started to put the scraps together nothing worked. The compositions were uncomfortable and the light yellow patchwork squares were distracting. It just made me feel weary. Though I wanted the piece to have a joyous exuberant burst it started looking like a carnival gone wrong. Blech! The next day I stitched the pieces together into random rectangles and then cut those into seven inch squares.

There is just something about cutting things up that clarifies things for me. New beginnings restart my thought process.

At all times I know that I am willing to throw it all into a bin if it doesn’t work out. It focuses me on the process rather than the product. And, sometimes, the pieces make more sense than the whole.

After reassembling the seven inch squares into a new composition I ended up with a stronger composition and a playground for stitch.

Second Thoughts, 32” x 25.5”, 2021, Paula Kovarik

There is color. There is energy and there is meaning in it (for me). I call it Second Thoughts for the way it made me doubt my direction. Second Thoughts for the way doubt can play havoc with progress. Second Thoughts for that moment in time that allows me to let go and start over.

Where do your second thoughts lead you?

Drop me a line

I wrote a book

July 16, 2021

At Play in the Garden of Stitch—thoughts that come while eyeing the needle.

Published! Available Now.

I put it on paper. It’s now in book form. This is not a quilt.

I spent part of my Covid year writing, analyzing and illustrating my techniques and artwork. After fifteen years of creating and teaching, it was time to tell my story and share my process in a more formal way.

This is a book of ideas and exercises for those who use stitch in their artwork. What seems like magic are merely (some simple) step-by-step exercises that will lead you to your own creations.

This is the story of how I work and think as I make new quilts. It contains both successes and failures as both results can lead to finished quilts. One of my favorite exercises is to chop up a finished quilt to re-arrange and re-imagine a new piece working with elements I like and scrapping those I loathe.

As the great Miles Davis says: do not fear mistakes; there are none.
As I like to say: Art is found in the process. And stitching can take you there.

The book contains lavish illustrations of quilts from my students and myself. For many of these, I demonstrate approaches to using stitch as an element of design and art. To understand my process, I include essays from this journal that reveal how I follow the thread or pursue an idea.

Order “At Play” from any number of bookstores including Barnes and Noble, Target, Indiebound, Discover books and more—such as Amazon. And, if you do find that this book has inspired you to try some new ways to create in stitch, please let me know by leaving a review or sending me an email. I would really appreciate it.

If you are interested in stitch and how to express yourself through free-motion quilting, this book will lead you gently down your own creative path. The secret is starting simple and staying at it.

I want to send out a bucket of thanks to my friend, Kathleen Loomis, for her help in making this book a reality. Her patient review of the content clarified my thoughts and made it a better book. Thanks so much Kathleen.

Tell me what you think!