Mary McCauley pushes the definition of “quilt” creating her 3D pieces and pop-up books with three layers just like a quilt. When she has an idea, she loves tapping into her fascination with mathematics to solve design challenges.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path?
I remember when I was a child drawing on my dog’s belly from nipple to nipple in a connect-the-dots pattern.
My English Granny told me to “use proper paper” – the best artistic advice I ever had. She encouraged me to make art and saw to it that my sister and I always had “proper paper” and any other art supplies we wanted.
I was always drawing in the margins of my school papers, doodling during staff meetings, and using the time on hold on the phone to do more art.
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I can’t NOT do art. My nickname is “She Who Must Be Kept Busy”, and art has always served that purpose in my life. It is what keeps me sane.

What inspires your art?
I took art classes whenever I could. I still do as I believe in lifelong learning. I have tried many, many materials and styles.
As long as I am learning something new in the creation of art I am engaged and happy.
Once I feel I have mastered a technique or material, I tend to extend that work, to push it further, or I move on to something that requires me to learn more.
I am inspired by all things in nature, especially the imperfect.
And I am constantly fascinated by the mathematics in nature – everything from Fibonacci sequences and golden ratio to geometry, tessellation, and fractals. I try to look for subtle ways to embed these math principles into my compositions. (More about Fibonacci later.)

The inspiration for any one piece of art usually comes to me in a dream. I often wake up with a full image of a new artwork. The trouble is that these dreams do not come with instructions.
I love the problem-solving part of art. I really enjoy figuring out how to make the components of a piece, how to assemble it, what materials and new techniques to use. I am definitely not one to use a kit with an instruction sheet.
I have also been strongly influenced by my work in theater.
I did costuming, set construction, and props for local theater groups. I learned how to create illusion, make everything “bespoke”, use whatever materials were in the props and costume storage from previous productions, work on a deadline, and always be ready to change things. This work is also “3D” and in motion – from walking on stage, to fight scenes, to dancing – and in lighting. After theater work, my fiber art seems tame!

What do you do differently? What is your signature that makes your work stand out?
I used to think it was because I made 3 dimensional pieces that my work was different. In fact, not too many years ago I dropped out of a well-known art association because for 2 years none of their Calls For Entry would accept 3D work. Then they actually got the message and sponsored a 3 dimensional only touring show. My piece in that show sold at the opening venue.
I don’t consciously try to be different. But I do think in my work I try to use textiles and fiber in ways that are unusual.
My pop up pieces are a good example. Everyone is familiar with paper pop up books. I thought why not make them in fabric?
Again, I loved the challenge of making a really intricate pop up out of fabric just to see if it would work. It did. Arpeggio was my first pop up, and it also sold almost immediately.


I want to note here that I do not ever create art with the purpose of selling it. Art is my therapy, and as a retired person I am blessed with not having to make a living from my art. I have found however, that whenever I make a piece to suit myself, something I would want to display in my own home, it usually sells very quickly.

What different creative media do you use in your work?
Mixed media fiber art is only some of the art I make.
In 2014 I completed a Certificate in Botanical Illustration at the Denver Botanic Gardens, earning a Sydney Parkinson Award for Excellence in Botanical Illustration.
Fiber art and botanical art are my Yin and Yang. My fiber art is experimental, rule breaking, often done without an end plan. My botanical art is exact, botanically precise, and detailed. The balance of the 2 styles keeps me centered.


In botanical art I use black and white, colored, wet, and dry media. The certification program requires competency in graphite, carbon dust, pen and ink, technical pens, pastel, colored pencil, watercolor and other media, and of course, proper paper!
In fiber art I use any textile I can get, papers, yarns, roving, ribbons, beads, buttons, and recycled and found objects – nothing is out of bounds. Every now and then I make a piece that uses media from both styles.

How do you manage your creative time?
Managing time to create was a problem back when I had a full-time corporate job and two daughters in preschool. As a friend once said, “there are only 24 hours a day, so sometimes you have to work at night.”
Now that I am retired, and my kids are adults, I can make time to create whenever I want. The husband and dog have learned to fend for themselves.
I don’t really have a prime time of day to work on art. Sometimes the art piece itself tells me when it is ready to be worked – or not.
I generally do finish my pieces, especially if there is a deadline to meet. And I do have a very few pieces that I have had to “put in time out” in my storage area because they refused to cooperate.
I don’t believe in UFOs. These pieces are works waiting to be rediscovered. Often they get cut up and the pieces reassembled into a successful piece… which is basically the heart of quilting, cutting up fabric to sew it back together in a different way.
Describe your creative space.
I have a Delft tile that says, “My house [studio] is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy.”
I know where everything is, and it doesn’t matter if other family members can’t find stuff in my studio. In fact, that is the strategy.
I have an area for sewing and ironing, a worktable for cutting and assemblies, a design wall, and a table and easel for illustration. There are plenty of windows, skylights and Ott lamps.
I love the 3 storage closets and a separate storage room. All of this is because the previous owner of our house converted the 2-car garage into his home office and built a separate garage with a storage room at the back. It’s why we bought the house.
But the real “creative space” is in my head.
With the right frame of mind, I can create anywhere. Botanical Illustration taught me how to observe – to see what is actually there and not just what I expect to see.
I try to look for negative space, shadows, how the light plays on a surface, how things move. To get into that right frame of mind for creating, I spend time practicing observation of wherever I am.
What are the indispensable tools and materials in your studio? How do they improve your work?
I’ve already mentioned proper paper. Like everyone else, I have the usual stashes of fabrics, threads, embellishments, paints, colored pencils… What things are indispensable – in that works stops cold without them – are truly sharp scissors and rotary cutter blades, a sewing machine in good repair, lots of empty bobbins, a clean iron, enough adhesive to finish the task…
The point is that “indispensable” for me means that everything works well and is ready to use. I spend some time at the end of each project putting stuff away, cleaning my machine and changing its needle, sharpening tools, cleaning the iron, and in general leaving everything in a state that is inviting for me to start up again.
A good place to stop is where it is a good place to restart.
Can you tell us about the inspiration of one of your works? How does a new work come about?
I mentioned above that most of my art comes from dreams I have.
But the truly “breakthrough” pieces – things that had impact on me, tend to be acts of rebellion on my part.
My first piece of 3D fiber art is a good example. I had attended my local guild meeting where the guest presenter was a quilt judge who lectured (scolded) us about what judges looked for in a well-done quilt. She noted truly flat quilts in perfect square or rectangle shapes, binding cut on the bias with mitered corners, points that pieced together perfectly… all the things that I struggled with in my own quilting. By the end of her talk I was agitated, embarrassed, and felt like giving up quilting.
I went home thinking about how in my 8th grade “Home Ec” class I had a similar teacher who made us sew blouses with set in sleeves. We had to wear them to school in order to get a grade for the project. It was so humiliating that I quit sewing for many years. I hated set in sleeve patterns.
That night I stayed in my studio making a “quilt” that had no binding whatsoever, wasn’t square or rectangular, or even flat, had points that went wherever I wanted them to go (in designs that had got me in trouble for doodling in class), and was styled after the sleeve cap pattern pieces.
I used the sleeve cap curve to design the sides of the pieces for my very first 3 D quilted vessel, “Shards: Self Portrait as Pottery” (a reference to that 8th grade teacher who told me I had a lump of clay for a brain). I have had many offers to buy Shards, but my daughters are fighting over who gets to keep it.

My second 3D fiber art piece was a spinoff of this same rebellion. After sleeve caps, my most hated garment pattern piece was the pant leg, specifically the crotch seam curve. Get that piece wrong, and your pants will never fit well. So with the same mind set, I stood the pants seam on its side and sewed the straight side instead of the curve. That resulted in “Protea”.

The lesson here is one I teach in my workshops: how to start with something that frustrates you, seems too hard, or whatever makes you dislike it, and then think of how to subvert it into something you can easily do to get unexpected results. Each time I do this it gets easier and easier to turn a problem into a fun success.
Do you have a process for creating a piece?
Most of the time I do follow a set process.
From theater sets and garment sewing I learned to start with a paper model. For 3D pieces, I use old file folders and painters’ tape to make a mock.
In illustration I make several sketches and studies. Once I have the paper model looking as I want, then I pick out the materials I think will best carry the concept I built. I use the paper model to make the pattern pieces, and then I plan the assembly sequence.
I try to do as much of the work as I can while I have individual, flat pattern pieces. That means I do any fancy free motion stitching, bead work, over painting, etc. on each small piece before I assemble them together into a 3 D piece.
Many of my pieces are mounted on a base quilt or framework to hold them in place or help move them as in the pop ups. I wait until after I have assembled the main piece to determine the size, shape, and style of the base. That way I always get a base that fits the piece.
What is a challenge for you?
Honestly, the biggest challenge in working with 3-dimensional fiber art is shipping.
Packing a piece up and shipping it is why the aforementioned art group didn’t want to deal with 3D works in exhibits for a long time. They thought it would mean making custom sized shipping boxes and be very expensive.
This is where my love of Fibonacci comes in. The Fibonacci sequence is simply the series of numbers you get when you add the previous two numbers together to get the next number in the sequence, 1,2,3,5,8,13,21, … It’s beauty and utility lies in the fact that if you make things in those dimensions, such as 2” X 3” and 5” X 8”, etc., (you can use metric if you want), you get a set of pieces that will always fit together in combination with no gaps or overlaps.
The packaging industry knows this. Many consumer goods are packaged in containers that follow a Fibonacci sequence so they that do not waste shelf or storage space – think of the shipping containers on cargo ship and freight cars – all standardized to a Fibonacci sequence.
What on earth does that have to do with my 3D art?
I make my 3D pieces in dimensions that will fit into my custom-made boxes in Fibonacci dimensions. After I make the piece, I sew together a box of foam board covered in scrap fabrics into which the piece fits exactly.
Sometimes I add a bit of bubble wrap or crunched paper to fill in. Then I can take my box to the shipping people and not have to pay for them to make a custom, very expensive, box for it. They are very good at shipping my boxes within their boxes at standard shipping rates.
Flower Box is a piece that is a folding pop up. It opens into a 34” X 44” X 16” flower garden. BUT – the whole reason I made it was to prove it could be done – it folds up into a 13” X 13” X 21” box.



What’s the best piece of advice you have received?
A quote from Oscar Wilde, “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” Works in life, works in art. Oh, and use proper paper.
See more of Mary’s work on her website.
Interview posted September 2023
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