Maryte Collard’s creative journey began in a small Lithuanian town where sewing, knitting, and embroidery were part of everyday life. Now an accomplished quilter, she blends tradition, bold colors, and global inspiration into her art.
Tell us a little about your childhood. Were sewing, drawing, or crafting always a part of your life?
I was born and grew up in a small Lithuanian town. As far as I remember I loved drawing. The best gift my mom could give to me was a thin sketchbook and a box of 6 colored pencils.
Life was hard under the Soviet regime, there were shortages of everything. Crafts were part of our lives out of necessity. Iremember my Mom spinning and weaving. I started sewing at a very early age. I made my own dolls and dressed them. I learned how to crochet and knit before I started primary school. I loved embroidery, but getting a variety of embroidery floss was a problem.
One of our neighbors was a prolific crocheter. She would walk from house to house, crocheting a curtain wrapped around her torso when it got too large and too heavy to hold it in her hands. She would only have a small part she was crocheting on in her hands.
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My best friend’s mother would get up early in the morning and sit by the window embroidering. I admired those women and learned from them.
Physician to quilter. What sparked your interest in fiber arts?
I became a physician, but I have never abandoned my interest in crafts. I was sewing, knitting, crocheting for my family and myself, sometimes even for my friends. I started making quilts in 1997 when Lithuania was already independent. Starting quilting gave me a chance to look at it not as at the necessity, but at as an art.
What is it like being a quilter in Lithuania, where it isn’t a traditional craft? What challenges do you encounter?
Patchwork and quilting have never been a traditional Lithuanian craft. The oldest quilt in Lithuanian museums is dated at around 1860 but there are only very few quilts in our museums. They are not considered as Lithuanian heritage.
I was wondering why Lithuanian women didn’t use scraps or worn-out clothes to make something out of them.
Recently I learned something funny. It was understood you were poor if you made something new out of something old. Nobody wanted to be poor (haha). A famous Lithuanian quilt artist told me the story about her experience with that. About 15 years ago she moved into a new apartment in Vilnius that was on the first floor. She needed her windows covered with curtains, and she made them using bojagi technique. One day her neighbor advised her to take those curtains down because other neighbors were pointing fingers at the poor neighbor’s windows.
You began dyeing fabrics out of necessity. Was that freeing or challenging at first?
Before moving back to Lithuania, I knew I would have to learn dying fabrics with procion MX dyes and I did. Procion MX were not available in Lithuania until this year, and I used to buy them from Dharma or from a shop in Germany. White cotton fabrics of good quality are also difficult to buy. I usually look for a good-quality white sheets at the second-hand shops.
The process of dying fabrics was very enjoyable and very freeing. I can play with different colors, mix them by plan or by accident, and look what happens. More fun happened after I took a breakdown screen printing class with Leah Higgins in the UK.
Where do you find inspiration for your designs?
Most of inspiration comes from nature, from the photos I take while traveling. And I travel a lot, I’ve been to more than 40 countries, including Iceland and New Zealand. I also extensively traveled in the US. Utah is my favorite state for its amazing, colorful landscapes.
How has working across two cultures influenced your designs?
It is really difficult to combine both cultures into one design because they are very different.
Lithuania is a rainy country where the sky is covered with gray clouds more often than there is sunshine. Our favorite textile fiber is linen, and the use of non-bleached linen fabrics as well as non-bleached linen yarn for crocheting is more common than the bleached ones. I love them!
I also love bright colors that fill me with joy. I can’t remember if I ever combined both in one quilt, but having two artistic personalities fits me well. My Zodiac sign is Gemini, and throughout my life, I always experienced that division in everything.
Describe your creative space.
When I lived in the US, I had a nice, big studio. I knew it wouldn’t be the case in Lithuania. When I packed boxes for moving back, I only took my tools, sewing machine, fabrics, and quilting books. I took very few household items, and what I took, everything was wrapped not in paper or bubble plastic packing material but in fabric. Every empty little space in any box was filled with fabric scraps.
Now I live in one bedroom apartment that is normal for retired people here. My bedroom is my studio, actually my entire apartment is my studio. I could rent a studio or have it in my daughter’s house but I love to get up early and start working while still in a nightgown.
This is my happy place that I share with my cat Albinas, who is very knowledgeable in textile art and knows that every black fabric and every black spot on my quilts must be embellished with his beautiful, long white hair. The lint remover roll is my favorite and most used tool.
What is always on your work table? Is there anything on there right now that would surprise us?
I can tell you for sure that a hand-stitching project is always nearby. I don’t watch TV if I am not hand stitching, or hand appliqueing, or hand sewing. Right now, I am working on a fabric book. Recently, I met with a group of women from Israel. They gave me 10 quilt blocks that represent Israel, and I decided to make a fabric book out of them.
Tell us more about your design process. Do you start with a sketch? Or do you just dig in with your fabrics and start playing?
Very seldom do I make a sketch. Even if I did, I know I wouldn’t follow it so why waste my time? Haha. When I start a new quilt, I have an initial idea of what I am going to make, but the design develops when I work and play with fabrics. When asked where my designs come from, I usually answer:”from the ceiling”.
This applies to the quilts that I make using my favorite technique – machine piecing. When making fused quilts inspired by photos, of course, I have to make a sketch.
When do you know a quilt is “finished”?
If it is an abstract quilt where design comes from the ceiling, my intuition tells me when it is enough. It has to have some balance and I always think that less is more…
Can you share a time when a quilt didn’t go as planned? What happened?
I made a very nice water quilt, Tenerife, that measured 36×36 inches. I had two pieces of the fabric that I wanted to use for the back, but they were narrow and I sewed them together. It looked nice when I quilted it and had the quilt on my wall.
Only when I took photos and looked at the photos, I saw that the seam of the back fabric was showing on the front along the entire height of the quilt. What did I do? Luckily, the seam was at about 6 inches from the right side of the quilt. I cut that part off, making my quilt 36×30 inches big. From that time, I never piece backs for my art quilts.
Do you sometimes set a quilt aside and return later with fresh eyes?
To tell the truth I never work on one project only.
If I am machine sewing, all my attention is then on the sewing that involves a lot of moving around from the cutting board to the sewing machine, to the ironing board, to the design board. People think I am stuck to the sewing machine and feel sorry for me, but I am moving around a lot.
As to your question, yes, I have a few quilts that I set aside and wait for more inspiration or just for more time to work on that particular project. I also have a few quilts that, I believe, will never be finished. I just ran out of inspiration and don’t want to go back to revive those quilts.
What’s harder: getting the initial idea? Or making it come to life?
There could be obstacles in both — getting the idea and making it come to life. But when a good idea arises, it is such a pleasure to get over those obstacles. As P. Picasso said, “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” As you see, it goes both ways. Just keep working…
What advice would you give someone thinking about starting quilt making?
According to the persona my advice may go three ways. For someone it may be only a hobby and that’s OK. It is the way to make nice gifts for friends and family and to have fun way to spend free time.
Becoming a textile artist requires a lot of effort, but it may not guarantee making a good living in the country where quilting art has no tradition and doesn’t get admired. Would you believe that there aren’t any of my art quilts on the walls of my daughter’s house?
Supplies here are very limited. As I said, selling textile wall art in Lithuania is almost impossible. It’s impossible to make money giving classes because there is no market for that either.
I am lucky I speak English so I can apply to international venues. I can maintain my Etsy shop and my website myself. I can belong to international groups like SAQA and the Fifteen by Fifteen.
The third way is that I advised my young Lithuanian friend living in Vienna, Austria. She has three small children and wants to work from home, so I advised her to focus on original quilt patterns for making more traditional quilts. That also requires knowledge of the English language and having computer skills, but she has that. She makes patterns for children’s quilts and mostly sells them in PDF.
For makers who feel torn between perfection and play, what’s your best tip?
My advice would be to play with design, colors, contrast, balance, texture etc.
Perfection of those things can’t be measured in numbers, and you are your own judge when it is perfect. The technical things of your art piece have to be as close to perfection as possible: clean finishing, flatness, thread ends hidden, perfect square or rectangle, clean of lint (or cat hair, haha) etc. Here, the public is a judge.
Where can people see your work?
My website is marytequilts.eu.
Also my quilts are traveling around the world with SAQA global exhibitions, The Fifteen by Fifteen group exhibitions etc.
I will add more to this point too. This year was very successful for me. My quilt “Three Red Dots” got accepted into Quilt National 25 and is on display right now.
My other quilt „Voice from the Past“ is part of 9th European Quilt Triennial. I would always laugh that they accepted only ugly quilts. So I had a chance to make one. My daughter-in-law once gave me a pair of her father’s heavily mended woolen socks asking if I could make something out of them to keep his memory alive. They were ugly and I struggled with the idea of transforming them into a quilt. Then I took two scarfs, one of silk and another of linen, cut them in half and joined them for the background. Those scarfs were eco dyed by me when one time I was experimenting with eco dyeing. Attaching the socks was also troublsome. To show the entire mending I had to cut them open so I did. Then I heavily stitched the background by hand using all kinds of stitches. The quilt looks ugly. But it got accepted into the venue and I was told by one of my friends that my quilt was one of the pretiests of the entire 9th European Quilt Triennial You may laugh now…
Interview posted September 2025
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