Kelly Spell has been a creator her entire life. She acquired a sewing machine in 2014, made her first baby quilt and now makes award winning quilts.
How did you get started designing quilts? Always an artist, or was there a “moment”?
I come from a long line of artists and makers on both sides of my family. When I was a teenager, my mom turned our dining room into a lampwork bead studio and sold her work online during the early days of eBay. Currently, my dad sells metal artwork on Etsy, and my sister started her own business making handcrafted leather wallets and wristlets. My parents nurtured and encouraged my creativity from a very early age, and I have always loved making things with my hands.
As a young adult, most of my creative energy was funneled into writing and photography until I got my first sewing machine in 2014 at the age of 33. As a new sewist, I wanted to try everything: garments, bags, quilts, you name it. I devoured online video tutorials and was delighted to discover a large quilting community on Instagram.
Not long after I started sewing, my sister became pregnant with my first niece, and the news created the perfect storm of incentive and adorable projects for me to tackle. My first quilt was a baby quilt, and I was hooked immediately! Working with fabric felt very intuitive to me, and for the first time in my adult life, I could translate the visions in my head into tangible objects and feel pleased with the results.
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I moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2015 and eventually found a wildly creative group of quilters who shared their knowledge freely and inspired me with their incredible work. They called themselves “The Arty Girls” and they had a huge impact on my quilting journey. I wouldn’t be the quilter I am today without the influence of Mary Keasler’s design ingenuity, Jean Larson’s technical prowess, and Audrey Workman’s whimsicality, to name a few. By 2018, I stopped making other people’s patterns and started designing my own quilts.
Do you do series work? How does that affect your approach?
For a long time, the thought of embarking on a series was paralyzing, even though I admired series work by other artists. It created a weird sort of mental burden for me—like a giant elephant looming in the dark corners of my mind. I wondered how I would ever find “my thing” or even a thing I wanted to explore deeply. Instead, I dabbled in a bit of everything, slowly cobbling together a repertoire of skills and knowledge. That journey was valuable, but it was filled with a lot of fits and starts.
Then in January 2021 I took a virtual class with Patricia Belyea called Creativity and Complex Curves, and it was a huge a-ha moment. Suddenly, ideas for new work started flowing out at a surprising rate, and they came at a time when I had the technical ability to bring them to life. Now I think of series work as freeing. It helps me focus my creativity and refine ideas over time.
Where do you find your inspiration for your designs?
Everywhere! I’m a naturally curious person and I constantly observe the world around me. I often think about the extensive visual catalog that exists in my brain—it’s kind of wild to realize how many subconscious connections are made over time as the catalog of references expands and evolves.
Nature is often a jumping off point for my designs. For several years I had an ongoing series of improvisational quilts inspired by animals at the Tennessee Aquarium, where I served as a docent. Color and shapes such as circles and swirls are launch pads for much of my current work. I like to play with hue and value to influence the way a design is perceived. I also find it satisfying to chase down the answer to “What if?” and create several iterations of a single idea.
When it comes to creating, are you more of a planner or an improviser?
Much of my early work was improvisational, but these days I am a planner. The transition happened around the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but reflecting on it now I think I was searching for calm in the midst of broader chaos. I wanted a place where I could exert control; I found it in my artistic practice, which became very process driven and precision focused. Right now, I enjoy playing in that sandbox—it feels comfortable and I like the work I’m producing.
How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?
On average, I probably start sewing a new project every two or three months. My creative spurts tend to ebb and flow, and over the years I’ve gotten comfortable with the fact that some seasons of life are more productive than others. The thought of losing my sewjo doesn’t scare me anymore, and I’ve learned to lean into periods of rest and reflection.
Because of that seasonality, I enjoy working on multiple projects at once. On any given day, I can pick up the one that best suits my mood. For example, I might dye fabrics for a new design one day and attach a facing to a nearly finished quilt the next.
Are you a “finisher”? How many UFOs do you think you have?
Once I get to the actual sewing phase of a project, I tend to finish it relatively quickly (either in a few weeks or a couple months, depending on the complexity). Currently, there are a handful of UFOs in my sewing studio, but only one or two of them are likely to become finished quilts. The others have taught me everything they can, and I don’t feel the need to move forward with them.
Do you have a dedicated space for creating? If so, what does it look like?
I have a large finished basement that serves as an in-home studio. There are dedicated areas for my sewing machine and longarm quilting machine, bookcases full of fabric, a small bathroom where I can dye cloth, and lots of storage! The space has grown with me as my practice has evolved, and I’m always amazed by and grateful for how conducive it is for a wide variety of activities.
Do you use a sketchbook? How does that help your work develop?
I tried using a physical sketchbook for a while but eventually lost interest in maintaining it. Currently I use Adobe Illustrator to sketch all of my designs digitally. That process helps me distill ideas quickly and efficiently without cutting into any fabric. I even digitized my hand-dyed swatches, so it’s easy to audition color palettes.
Some ideas come to life rather quickly, but others spend a lot of time in the cloud, so to speak. Periodically I open an older file and immediately see a way to refine or finalize the design. When that happens, a project can quickly jump to the front of my Must Make queue! Other ideas are allowed to percolate slowly, with tiny tweaks made over time.
I may spend weeks or even months in a heavy design phase with little actual sewing happening. Once designs are finalized, I like to print templates for several quilts at a time, which allows me to move quickly from one project to the next when I finally sit down at the sewing machine. This helps me maintain momentum, which tends to sputter in between projects without a clear path forward.
Are there other ways you track projects?
I use large three-ring binders to store the templates for all of my designs, along with printouts of the digital mock-ups, fabric swatches from each project, and any handwritten notes I made during construction. At the end of every project, there’s usually several page protectors full of information, and I find this to be an invaluable resource. I generally don’t repeat a design, but I like knowing I could if I ever need or want to do so. I also have a binder that serves as a dyer’s notebook, where I record information about my hand-dyed and hand-printed fabrics.
In addition, I use several digital tracking tools. I share notes on many projects publicly via my Instagram feed and blog. I also keep a running Google Doc where I track details for each completed quilt, including start/finish dates, finished size, appraisal value, the fabrics/thread/batting used, etc. Finally, I track my submissions to exhibitions in a spreadsheet. It includes each show’s name, location, and dates, as well as information on categories and entry fees.
Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your works? How does a new work come about?
My Swirl series, which explores movement and energy, is inspired by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Racoon Mountain Pumped-Storage Plant near Chattanooga. The circles and swirls in that series’ designs are a nod to the facility’s massive turbines and the water they pump from the Tennessee River.
Each new work starts as a digital sketch in Illustrator. A lot of times, I start by drawing concentric circles and overlapping them in different ways to see what sort of shapes come forward. With my Candy Pop quilt, I wanted to explore the idea of water winding its way through a series of turbines. My sketch featured a long, serpentine swirl that snaked its way up, down, and around three columns of circles. As I was auditioning color palettes, I accidentally made the swirl the same color as the circles, and I loved the result.
Next, I had to turn the sketch into templates and figure out how to sew the pieces together. That took quite a bit of puzzling and some help from my friend Audrey Esarey of Cotton and Bourbon. She challenged me to cut the serpentine swirl from a single piece of fabric rather than break it up into smaller segments. It ended up being more than 18 feet long! To make assembly easier, I added dozens of registration marks to the templates. Those were eventually transferred to the fabric, which I dyed and printed with Procion MX fiber reactive dyes.
I printed a digital mockup of the templates and used it to map out the order of assembly. It ended up being very similar to the assembly of a double wedding ring quilt, with the added challenge of the long serpentine swirl. I sewed that piece inches at a time, working with a short tail and folding the rest into a sandwich that I secured with clips to prevent stretching and fraying.
Once the top was complete, I paired it with a coordinating hand-dyed backing fabric and quilted it with straight lines using my longarm machine.
Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?
Sketching and piecing are my favorite parts of the design process. It’s deeply satisfying to puzzle out a complicated assembly strategy—that really scratches an itch for the engineering side of my brain! The most challenging aspect is attaching facing strips to the front side of large quilts. My sewing table is very narrow and sits up against a wall, so there isn’t a lot of room for the quilt to move once it passes under the needle of my machine.
How is your work different than it was in the beginning? How is it the same?
My work is more intentional now than it was in the beginning—I have a clearer focus and perspective. When I started quilting, I wanted to learn something new with every project. That loose rule opened my eyes to the wide range of styles and techniques available, but it also meant I ping-ponged around for a long time as I developed my artistic voice.
Now, instead of exploring a breadth of ideas, I find myself focusing on depth. Over the past two years, I’ve gone down a rabbit hole learning various ways to dye and print my own fabric. It’s been a delightful journey and one that feels like it will never end (in a good way!). I’ve also been thinking of different ways to present finished quilts. Recently, I documented my process for mounting quilts on canvas and shared a tutorial on my blog. I have big dreams of making some three-dimensional works, but those ideas are still percolating.
Do you enter juried shows? Do you approach your work differently for these venues?
Yes, I started exhibiting quilts in juried shows in 2018. Sharing my work has helped me build confidence in my artistic practice over the years, and it’s a way to connect with other artists and forge bonds with viewers. I like to think of exhibitions as time capsules that document the wide variety of quilts being made at any given time.
While I have made a handful of quilts with a specific show in mind, that is not my preferred style of working. Instead, I like to make the quilt first, relishing the joy and satisfaction it brings me, and then figure out if there’s a place to show it.
Has rejection ever affected your creative process? Explain.
Rejection doesn’t influence the quilts I make, but it does sometimes encourage me to expand my horizons and seek opportunities elsewhere.
What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?
It sounds contradictory, but leaning into periods of rest and reflection really helps me maintain my motivation. In 2020, I read Katherine May’s book “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” and it had a huge influence on the mindset I cultivate around my work. It helped me understand and accept the seasonality of my creativity. I also realized that focusing solely on the production of finished work is a sure path to burnout.
When I’m not inspired to sew, I often putter around my studio. Cleaning, flipping through design books, and pulling out fabrics to curate palettes are some of my favorite puttering activities! And often, the simple act of being in my studio without a goal in mind is enough to ignite my motivation for a new project. When it’s not, I love to participate in workshops and virtual courses to learn something new or deepen my understanding of a subject.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received? What is your advice to others?
The best advice I received in regards to building a creative practice is simply to make, make, make. Lisa Congdon has a great post about the “skill gap” everyone experiences as an artist: the space between our vision and ability. As a new quilter, I didn’t have the skills or technical knowledge to execute all my designs in a way that was satisfying. But I did the best I could with the information I had at the time, and slowly but surely, the gap began to close.
My advice to others is: get involved in your local arts community, befriend other makers who inspire and challenge you, and attend as many quilt shows and exhibitions as you are able!
Where can people see your work?
I share my work on my website and on Instagram.
Interview posted December 2023
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