I have a new article out in the Autumn 2026 issue of Art Quilting Studio Magazine, called “The Art of Surrender: Cyanotypes and Collaboration with Nature.” It’s about how I found this process and why I keep coming back to it.
I found cyanotypes almost by accident, looking for a workshop to take while my daughter was away at camp. A class in wet cyanotypes with Lesley Riley happened to fit the schedule. But after a year of trying to hold everything together through pandemic parenting, I didn’t realize how much I needed to do something I couldn’t control.
A cyanotype is made the same way a film print is, through a chemical reaction with light, except the light source is the sun instead of an enlarger. I paint the solution onto fabric in a darkened room, arrange leaves and flowers from my yard, and set it out in the sun. That’s the point where I lose control of the outcome. The strength of the light, the minerals in my water, the exact moment I bring the print inside, all of it shapes the final image in ways I can’t predict or repeat. I’ve come to treat that as the whole point rather than a problem to solve.
The article walks through the full process and six of my pieces, from the simple hand quilting on “Here Comes the Sun” to the fully improvised cutwork on “Growth,” along with a few things I’ve learned along the way, including why an overcast day often makes a better print than a bright summer one.
Download the Autumn 2026 issue of Art Quilting Studio Magazine
You can also see the pieces from the article in my Cyanotypes gallery.
