From Quilting to Encaustic: A Visual Connection
I learned how to quilt back in college, when I took an adult education class at SUNY Buffalo. I was the lone guy in a room of seven women, all of us learning the rhythm of needle and thread, the geometry of piecing, the quiet satisfaction of creating something functional and beautiful. We were taught traditional patterns and hand piecing—no machines, just our hands and the fabric. I still have the very first quilt I made, every stitch by hand, a soft and slightly wonky testament to where it all began.
On a recent trip to Peru, I found myself noticing echoes of those same patterns—Flying Geese, zigzags, checkerboards—woven into traditional Peruvian textiles. It was a reminder that quilting patterns aren't limited to one place or culture. These geometric designs are part of a shared visual language that’s been passed down through generations, adapted to fit the materials and stories of different communities.
Traditional Quilting Pattern
100% Baby Alpaca Wool, Sol Alpaca, Cuzco, Peru
It’s no surprise, then, that quilting patterns continue to show up in my work. They’ve become a kind of visual language for me, appearing most recently in the wallpapers I’ve been designing as part of my encaustic paintings—layered backgrounds for my still life compositions that ground the work in both history and texture. There’s something deeply resonant about the structure of quilt blocks—the repetition, the symmetry, the way the eye moves through a grid.
Traditional quilt patterns like Log Cabin, Flying Geese, and Bear Paw aren’t just relics of Americana or craft—they’re design systems. And like all great systems, they remain endlessly adaptable. You see echoes of them in contemporary graphic design, digital art, architecture, and textiles. Their balance of form and function gives them a timelessness that speaks across disciplines and eras.
In my own work, these patterns serve as design elements—quietly anchoring the composition while providing visual contrast to the flowers, pots, and bowls that take center stage. I often overlay the quilt motifs onto fields of color and texture, my favorite being the coarse weave of burlap. There’s something about that interaction—the clean geometry of a traditional block set against a rough, tactile surface—that creates a satisfying tension. The patterns don’t compete with the still life forms; they support them, echo them, sometimes even challenge them.
The result is a kind of hybrid: still life compositions grounded in tradition, but brought forward through encaustic in layers of color, wax, and reference. It’s quilting—not sewn or stitched, but reimagined as a backdrop that holds space for the present moment.
