Quilts as Art

Jackie Berry

Jackie Berry began quilting in 1994, initially creating bed quilts. In 2008, she and a group of friends organized a collective focused on exploring art quilt techniques, an experience that helped her work be juried into international quilt shows and win recognitions and ribbons for some of her entries. Inspired by nature and nature photography, she often uses her own photographs to design original patterns for nature-inspired quilts. More of her work can be viewed at www.jackiequilts.com, where she also shares tips and insights to support beginning quilters.

Jean Brueggenjohann

Jean Brueggenjohann studied art and graphic design in college and went on to work professionally as a graphic designer for nonprofits, publishers, and museums, later becoming a university professor of art. In 1991, she took her first quilting class and discovered that quilting combined everything she loved about design, including problem-solving, structure, tradition, and hands-on making. Quilting soon became her primary artistic focus.

For the past fifteen years, her work has explored the natural and unnatural world, influenced in part by a love of science fiction. While conceptually driven and rich in narrative, her quilts remain grounded in traditional quilt making and often incorporate classic blocks. She is especially drawn to complex, process-driven projects that reward close viewing.

Through her quilts, she seeks to transport viewers to other worlds, times, and places. Landscapes, plants, insects, and animals frequently appear in her work, often rendered in mystical or enchanting ways. Layered with detail and texture, her quilts invite viewers to linger, explore, and immerse themselves in the stories they hold.

Through her quilts, she seeks to transport viewers to other worlds, times, and places. Landscapes, plants, insects, and animals frequently appear in her work, often rendered in mystical or enchanting ways. Layered with detail and texture, her quilts invite viewers to linger, explore, and immerse themselves in the stories they hold.

Patti Cantu

Patti Cantu is an artist with a deep love of nature and a strong interest in fiber and painting. Her work reflects her personal interpretations of the natural world, often drawing inspiration from her own photography, which frequently becomes the subject matter for her artwork. Many of her quilts incorporate fabrics she has painted or dyed by hand, blending realism with touches of abstraction to add visual interest.

Patti has a background is in fine arts, and has been taking art classes since a young age. She began creating fiber art around 2000. With her grandmother as an artist and her mother as a quilter, fabric art became a meaningful blend of Patti’s heritage.

Patti’s quilts have been accepted in juried international quilt shows and she has won recognition and ribbons for some of her entries.

She plans to continue her artistic journey.

Martha Eberhard

Martha Eberhand’s love of needle arts began at the age of thirteen, when she embroidered Disney and Muppet characters on the shirts and jackets she wore to Girl Scout camp. Over time, her interest in crafting expanded to include friendship bracelets, macramé, counted cross stitch, and eventually quilting. Her quilting journey formally began in 1996, when a friend taught her how to make a quilt for her Japanese exchange student.

She has been an active member of the Booneslick Trail Quilters Guild for the past thirty years, where she enjoys learning new techniques and teaching classes. Her true passion, however, is handwork, including appliqué, crochet, and cross stitch.

Karon Huggler

Karon Huggler is a fiber artist who uses a variety of surface design techniques to create mixed media art quilts. She enjoys both the creative process of developing original designs and the challenge of translating those designs using hand-dyed, commercial, and silk fabrics.

More recently, she has begun to explore the techniques of meditative hand stitching. This approach allows her to slow her mind, simplify her life, while remaining creatively engaged through intentional, mindful stitching.

Aisha Kareem

Recently retired after 30 years as a registered nurse, Aisha Kareem spent most of her career working in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Prior to nursing, she worked in several other fields, including as a flight attendant, before returning to school to pursue her nursing degree.

She learned to sew in middle school and has continued garment sewing since that time. After many years of exploring a wide range of crafts, she began quilting in 2018. She is particularly drawn to modern and contemporary quilting styles, while also enjoying embroidery, foundation paper piecing, bag making, fabric portraits, and other forms of textile art.

She participates in several craft fairs each year, works part-time at Appletree Quilting Center, and teaches quilting and crafting classes there. She is also a member of the Booneslick Trail Quilt Guild in Columbia, Missouri.

James Reese

Jim Reese is an artist, designer, sculptor, and book publisher who grew up drawing and cartooning. His father, an accomplished artist, taught him perspective and foreshortening, and through both observation and instruction, Jim developed a lifelong love of drawing and, later, painting.

While attending university, Jim became interested in sculpture and bronze casting, shifting his focus away from drawing and painting. He graduated with a degree in art and sculpture and went on to work in freelance illustration, graphic design, and printing. Over the years, he created and maintained websites and produced photography, video projects, and television spots for KOMU-TV, as well as for Agricultural Engineering and Animal Science departments. He also taught graphic design software in the Graphic Design Program at the University of Missouri.

In 2015, Jim had the opportunity to learn welding and return to metalworking and bronze casting. While creating and exhibiting bronze and welded steel sculptures at the Columbia Art League, he accepted a challenge project interpreting a selected Tarot card. At his wife’s suggestion, he approached the project as a quilt—despite having no background in sewing or fabric. In 2018, he completed his first quilt, Stay on My Good Side, combining a pieced background with fused appliqué imagery.

His second quilt, Alaska 2018, was created entirely with fused appliqué to commemorate a trip. As his skills developed, storytelling, humor, animals, and a love of mid-century art and design became defining elements of his work. In 2019, Bora Bora Bird’s Eye won Best of Show at the Columbia Art League, solidifying quilting as his preferred medium.

Jim hopes viewers experience his quilts in a personal way, discovering layers of meaning that reflect his love of nature, mid-century art and design, and his sometimes offbeat sense of humor.

Carol Sexton

Carol Sexton is a longarm quilter, fiber artist, and fiber art instructor based in Columbia, Missouri, with more than thirty-five years of experience in textile art and mixed media. She is an award-winning artist, having received numerous honors across multiple media. Carol teaches creative workshops locally and throughout the region and operates a longarm quilting business serving the public from her home studio.

Marilyn Smith

Marilyn Smith, a Central Missouri resident, has been sewing since the age of six, after finally convincing her mother to let her use the family treadle sewing machine. Taught by her mother and through her involvement in 4-H, she has sewn nearly everything imaginable—though she is quick to note that hemming pants is not one of her specialties.

In 2005, Marilyn became interested in quiltmaking, immersing herself in books on the subject and creating her first quilt. Her growing interest in national quilt shows led her to submit her first show quilt to the 2007 AQS Paducah Show, where seeing her work displayed alongside other quilts proved deeply inspiring. The following year, she submitted a large quilt—adapted from a Karen K. Stone pattern—to the 2008 AQS Paducah Quilt Show, where it won first place in its category. The quilt was later featured in Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine and appeared on the 2009 AQS and IQA quilt calendars.

Since then, Marilyn has received awards at numerous AQS shows, the IQA Quilt Show, Road to California Quilt Show, and the National Quilt Museum’s New Quilts from an Old Favorite contest. Her work has also traveled as part of the Cherrywood Fabrics Lion King exhibition. One of her favorite quilts, 15 Warthogs, earned first place at the Road to California Quilt Show, along with a Judges Award and Viewer’s Choice Award at the IQA Quilt Show.

While she continues to make quilts, Marilyn’s focus has shifted toward art quilts, incorporating paint, thread painting, embellishments, hand dyeing, and improvisational hand cutting. She enjoys learning through workshops with nationally recognized instructors and sharing her quilts with anyone willing to take a closer look.

Mona Stevenson

Mona Stevenson has been quilting since the Bicentennial, though she was not able to devote significant time to it until retiring. Some of her earliest work that could be considered art quilts were paraments, or liturgical hangings used in church sanctuaries.

Her interest in pictorial art quilting grew after joining the Booneslick Trail Quilters Guild in Columbia, Missouri, in 2007, where she was invited to participate in a small art quilt group. Today, she creates a wide range of quilt styles, including both utilitarian quilts and art quilts.