Who is Kathryn Pellman?

Kathryn Pellman thinks of her quilts as contemporary folk art and herself as an artist, fashionista, quilter, sewist, cook, baker, gardener and storyteller. She has been sewing ever since she could thread a needle.

Her quilts combine fashion and quilting along with her passions and are a celebration and exploration of women and femininity. Commercial fabric is her paint; thread is her ink and the sewing machine her pen. Her quilts have a strong connection to traditional quilting making in their construction with the sandwiching of three layers that are stitched together and broderie perse, a traditional style of applique where images from commercially printed fabric are cut and appliqued on to a background fabric.

Kathryn is currently working on three series of quilts — Word Salad, Fashionistas and Girlfriends; Angry Women and Not So Angry Women; and Not So Mindless ScrapQuilts.

Word Salad, Fashionistas and Girlfriends, are whimsical, small-scale, playful, single and multiple frame cartoons featuring long limbed and knobby kneed Fashionistas that invoke fashion illustration and tell stories about women’s lives, friendships and romantic relationships, real and imagined.

Angry Women and Not So Angry Women are powerful, life-size and larger figures that express the artist’s thoughts and feelings about issues that impact all of us and/or reflect her love of fashion and connection to traditional quilting. Not So Mindless Scrap Quilts are made from traditional quilt blocks using fabric from her collection. Kathryn creates these to cleanse her palette and stay connected to traditional quilt making. And, she can say that she has used almost all of her fabric at least once.

Kathryn’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, most recently at International Quilt Festival Long Beach where she had a solo exhibit. — Word Salad, Fashionistas and Girlfriends. She lectures and presents workshops both nationally and internationally including International Quilt Festival Houston and Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, England as well as at quilt guilds primarily in the United States.

Kathryn is a Juried Artist member of SAQA (Studio Art Quilters Association), has a Certificate in Fashion Design and has been sewing ever since she could thread a needle. She was featured on three segments of Quilting Arts TV in 2019 and is the subject of Quilting the Odd & Unusual feature in the Spring 2019 Issue of Art Quilting Studio. She is also featured in Exploring Art Quilts with SAQA: Volume 2, 2022.