A Stitch in Time

  Colorado Homes & Lifestyles, August 199

By Janna L. Graber

For many people, quilting is a pleasant hobby or a way to create treasured heirlooms. But for Patty Hawkins of Lyons, Colorado, quilting is an obsession. “For me, a quilt is like canvas is to a painter. It’s a way to play with colors and to be expressive using fabrics,” says Patty, an accomplished fiber artist. “Art can be most powerful. It makes us see things with new eyes. So often we see but don’t look.”

Although the medium may be unusual, the results of Patty’s work are stunning. Her contemporary quilts have been exhibited in numerous international juried and invitational exhibits such as Quilt National and Visions.  They have also published in several prestigious art publications.

As a former watercolor artist now using fabrics as her palette, Patty strives to create beauty through contrast. A small note Patty has posted in the her studio quotes Cezanne, who said, “These are not contrasts of light and dark, but the contrasts given by the sensation of color.” 

To add to her repertoire of colors, Patty began hand-dying her own fabrics seven years ago. “Creating the fabric is so much fun,” she says. “There is no control and it’s so unpredictable. You never know what you’re going to get. The ugliest fabric can turn out to be the most beautiful.”  

Most of the fabrics Patty uses are hand-dyed silks and cottons, but other fabrics include canvas that she has hand-painted with acrylics, or materials that have been bleached using numerous patterns. “You could buy fabric with perfect design,” she says, “but you don’t want that. The marvel is when you neighbor differing fabrics to each other. That’s the turn-on for me. It’s an addiction.”

Patty is able to find beauty in the most unusual places, as is evidenced by her unique array of art tools. “I use contractor fencing because it has a great pattern,” she admits. “And this is one of my favorite tools,” she states, pulling out a square grout scraper. Other treasured tools include playground flooring, drain spout strainers, and bubble-wrap. 

Finding unique ways to create art is a norm in the Hawkins household. Patty’s three grown children, who all have an artistic bent, are always on the lookout for new art tools for their mother. Patty’s husband of 43 years, Wes, is a retired aerospace engineer, but he also makes handcrafted children’s chairs.  He is very supportive of his wife’s art. “Wes always helps me square the corners,” Patty says, laughing. 

Wes also helped Patty design and build her light-filled studio in the couple’s house at the base of Steamboat Mountain near Lyons. Because the couple had designed and built several houses before (including their current one), they were eager to put those skills to use creating the perfect workspace for a quilter. The resulting 24’ x 20’ room has 14’ceilings so Patty has plenty of room to pin-up her quilts. She installed double-pane windows so that she would have the isolation she needs to create. 

But although that sense of isolation helps, Patty says, she still struggles to find that perfect balance between devotion to her art and spending time with her family. “An artist’s life is solitary in many ways, but we also have to have people. There are some people who can be focused and uninterrupted, but that’s not real life. I have a husband I adore who makes time for me, and gives me time to work.”  Still, she insists on spending time hiking with her husband near their home, or playing with her three grandchildren.  

Patty draws inspiration for her work in all areas of life. She is fascinated with lines and reflections, and carries a camera with her everywhere. Wes teases her about shooting at least one roll of film a week. On a recent trip to San Francisco, she was thrilled with the rhythmic patterns she saw reflected in the windows of skyscrapers. The result of those images became a contemporary quilt she titled, Basically Scribbles, as well as another work aptly titled Reflections. 

“From watercolor painting, I learned the tricks of getting a viewer’s eye to come into a work, be interested, and stay there and not want to walk past it,” Patty says.  

Solstice Fragments, a piece which uses the Rocky Mountain fall colors, was actually inspired by a vintage 1970’s bathroom tile floor that Patty saw in her son’s office building. “It was a distorted log cabin pattern,” she says. “Some traditional patterns like log cabins are a definite inspiration for me to then go in a new direction with the shapes and play of colors.”  

Although Patty doesn’t hand stitch her quilts, she does use a regular sewing machine to piece them together. Often that stitching is part of the art design as well. 

Quilts have three layers, but stitching can add another layer of visual depth, says Patty. “It gives the piece peaks and the valleys.” She especially enjoys what is called free-motion stitching, where the artist moves the fabric in a free-flowing design to create unique stitching patterns.

During the past decade, Patty has become a master of her craft. She teaches seminars nationally as well as for the Front Range Contemporary Quilters group, where she is a founding member.  However, she hasn’t always been a quilter. 

The oldest daughter of a geophysicist and a home-economics teacher, Patty grew up all over the country. Her family moved 52 times before she even graduated from high school. Ever since childhood, Patty has used sewing as a creative outlet. “My mother was a beautiful seamstress and she taught me the value of color,” she says.

Patty was just 16 years old when she met Wes, who was then a freshman in college. The pair married four years later, and after a few years of living in Texas and Utah, they settled in Colorado. 

“I love Colorado for the sense of individualism people foster here. You can be your own person,” says Patty. While her children were growing up, Patty began struggling to find her artistic self. She was drawn to watercolors, but often ended up with an artistic form of writer’s block. “I tried so hard, and bought books and attended classes,” she says. “But I could only paint skies, and then I’d stop there. Artists struggle. We have to cajole inspiration sometimes. It seems we can’t have the good times and creativity without low-ebb times.”

Then in 1985, when the couple finished building their current home, Patty decided that she wanted to try her hand at quilting. “I had realized that quilts were like big paintings for walls, but they didn’t have to fit a frame. I found I could express myself with fabric,” she says. “Then I attended the Denver Art Museum exhibition in 1987 of Craft: Poetry of the Physical. I walked in and saw the wonderful works of revered quilters like Nancy Crow and Michael James hanging tall in the building. They were like stained-glass windows to me. They were so colorful. I was just overwhelmed, and couldn’t talk or move. I just knew this was for me.”  

Patty is thrilled to have found an artistic medium that gives her freedom to express herself in beautiful ways. That beauty is appreciated by anyone who views her quilts. Although she wants to challenge herself by pursuing drawing as well, Patty’s plans for the future are simple: “I want to keep on quilting, because I enjoy it so much.”