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Eileen Doughty

Personal Website: www.DoughtyDesigns.com

Inspiration for Eileen's work comes from nature, particularly her suburban surroundings. Something catches her eye. Something intrigues her about the composition or juxtaposition of elements. Turning the image into fabric pleases her tactile nature, and gives the finished work satisfying immediacy and accessability.

Eileen enjoys the challenge of pictorial quilting: modifying perspective, choosing details to include, selecting the fabrics, and determining methods for details and embellishments. Her favorite technique is "thread sketching": using her hands to freely move the fabric, sewing tree branches, leaves, flowers, grasses, and so on. Pictorial quilting is very expressive and personal, which is what attracted her to the quilt art medium in the first place. She often enhances the tactile nature of quilts by adding even more dimension when possible; for example, extra layers of fabric or woven (rather than pieced) borders.

Eileen's formal education background is in cartography. She was attracted to that discipline because of its mix of art and science. Perhaps that can be seen in her quilts, which on one level require some draftsmanship skill, but on a deeper level often show a relationship between the "natural" environment and our impact upon it.