About

Laura Wasilowski is a textile artist and creator of hand-dyed fabrics and threads. Her pictorial art quilts and hand embroideries are collected and exhibited internationally. 

Whimsical in nature, both textile art forms express her joy and love of creating art.

Laura is the owner of the dye shop, Artfabrik, and an instructor of online workshops with Creative Spark. She is also the author of Fusing Fun, Fuse-and-Tell, Fanciful Stitches, Colorful Quilts, Joyful Stitching: Transform Fabric with Improvisational Embroidery, and Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern, and Color.

I combine vivid colors and whimsical stories to create my artwork. Stories of family, friends, and home inspire the art and often chronicle my life. Each wall piece is of my own design and improvised with hand-dyed fabrics and threads.

Creating improvisational art allows my work to be joyful, organic, and more inventive. Working with textiles gives me the freedom to express myself and play at the same time.

My art quilts are made with hand-dyed cotton or silk fabrics. Using fusible web (a dry glue activated by heat of an iron), fabric shapes are glued or fused to other fabrics.

Improvising art is my favorite way to work. So I rely upon heaps of fused fabric scraps to inspire and trigger designs. Sorting through the fabric shapes, I pick a piece of fabric that reminds me of something like a roof, tree, or bird. That first fabric shape tells me what I’m making and leads to the rest of the elements in the picture.

Hand embroidery is very tactile. I find it soothing to create art by gripping fabric, working a needle, and drawing thread rhythmically through the cloth.

I also relish a challenge when making art. Like any art form, hand embroidery challenges you to use color, line, and texture to create designs. And as an improvisational stitcher, I enjoy the discoveries and surprises when using oddly cut cotton or wool scraps to make designs.