Polly Dressler Bech

I've been making stuff most of my life, in one form or another - paintings, clothing, collage, computer graphic art - but I didn't actually try to make a quilt until I was almost 30 years old.. It took me awhile to get the hang of it, since I was raising my children while working on quilts a few hours a week. Something about the whole process of constructing a quilted art piece just worked for me, so I kept working at making them.

Most of my recent pieces have started with solar printing my own fabric. I collect leaves in my yard, or on my walks through town, and take prints of them on fabric. These prints capture the essence of nature for me, because this is my natural world, being surrounded by trees.

A love of, and respect for, the natural world has been a theme in my life, and can be seen in my work. I also just love playing with color schemes, light and dark, mixing this traditional art form of quilting with newer surface design techniques. And I love to hand quilt while listening to a good book or podcast. While I relished the pioneering aspect of working in the computer graphics field in the 1980's, I also love the connection to the past that I feel when working with my hands, creating with cloth, needle, and thread.