Spotlight: Zak Foster, Fiber Artist

Zak Foster learned about quilting from YouTube and Instagram. His works tell stories that are important in his life. Used textiles he finds along his journeys, guides Zak to work intuitively and improvisationally to create his quilts.

How did you get started making fiber art? Why did you choose that medium?

I was raised in rural North Carolina but never met an actual quilter until I met my partner’s grandma in East Tennessee. I learned how to quilt much like anybody learns anything these days: YouTube and Instagram! I’ve been quilting over a decade now and working two jobs most of that time.

I taught in public schools for eighteen years, and I’ve recently quit that job to become a full-time artist. It feels nice to settle on one job! My earliest textile memory takes me back to my grandma’s house.

I was about five or so, just tall enough to peer up over her ironing board if I got on my tiptoes. There I saw blue cloth and pattern pieces from a dress she was making, and even at that young and tender age, I remember being impressed that MY grandma knew how to make her own clothes. She didn’t have to go to the store! She passed recently at age 107.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Read more about our affiliate linking policy.

As my aunts were cleaning out her closet, they asked me if I wanted anything for quilting. They handed me dresses, shirts, scarves… nothing felt right until I saw grandma’s purple velvet bathrobe. She’d wear it every morning to drink her coffee (black) during the last several years of her life, though she would always change out of it before company could come over. The quilt that I made from her robe introduced me to the beauty of the nap of velvet, and holds several stories, most notably two are embroidered onto the surface: one recounting the last time we heard her laugh (when I told her she was the strongest person I know) and the other the story where I made the quilt (sitting on my mama’s screened-in porch listening to Carolina wrens in the morning and katydids at night). The quilt now hangs on the wall of my childhood home where Grandma lived the last several years of her life, a velvet testament.

Grandma's Bathrobe by Zak Foster — Grandma’s Bathrobe

Grandma's Bathrobe detail 2 by Zak Foster — Grandma’s Bathrobe, detail

Grandmas Robe detail 3 by Zak Foster — Grandma’s Bathrobe, detail

Your work all tells stories. How do you decide which story is ready to be told?

I often start wherever my sense of helplessness sprouts up. It’s a way of reclaiming some of my personal agency while I work through towering uncertainties.

That’s how I started exploring questions related to history, memory, and whiteness in my collection SOUTHERN WHITE AMNESIA, as well as the unease I feel when I think about our future in THE NEW APOCALYPSE work. I treat working with fabrics as a crucible for transforming negative energy into something positive and actionable.

The New Apocalpse by Zak Foster — The New Apocalypse

How do you pick your fabrics?

Choosing fabric is a collaborative effort between my eyes and fingers! They each get a vote, and a fabric must get both votes to come home with me. I haven’t bought new fabric in years.

When I first started quilting, I’d spend stressful hours in fabric stores trying to pick the perfect colors and calculate the exact yardage needed. Once home, I was too anxious to cut into the fabric because I’d spent so much on it, fearing I’d ruin it.

Initially, my shift to repurposed materials was driven by economics. Thrift stores, yard sales, and the sidewalks of New York City became my favorite places to find fabric.

On road trips, I always plan my stops around finding good thrift stores. As I learned more about the textile industry, I couldn’t bear the thought of this artform I loved so much was causing harm to our planet. So, I committed to working almost exclusively with repurposed materials. This approach has sparked new creative avenues that I wouldn’t have explored if I’d stuck with fabric straight off the bolt.

Working with deconstructed clothing, for instance, introduces organic shapes derived from the curves and contours of our bodies. These curves push me to experiment with new angles and orientations in patchwork, something I wouldn’t have discovered if I’d continued using the geometric shapes typical of yardage cut from the bolt.

Southern White Amnesia series, Like Family by Zak Foster — Southern White Amnesia series, Like Family

Southern White Amnesia series, Like Family detail 2 by Zak Foster — Southern White Amnesia series, Like Family, detail

Do you plan your work out ahead of time, or do you just dive in with your materials and start playing?

My approach to quilting is intuitive and improvisational. I rarely start with a plan; I just begin cutting fabric and see where it takes me.

Quilts have a transformative magic that’s unique to them, and it’s this magic that continually draws me back. This magic is deeply rooted in the stories, history, and lives embedded in the deconstructed garments I use. Understanding these roots helps us preserve memories, keep stories alive, remember loved ones, and heal our grief.

How has your creativity evolved over the years?

A wonderful question, but what’s more interesting is what hasn’t changed. My very first quilt was a humbly wonky pinwheel quilt, but there are several through lines that run from that quilt in 2012 all the way to the quilts I make today: wonkiness, repurposed materials, and a deep-seated joy.

What’s your advice to quilters?

My number one piece of advice is don’t be afraid of the material. And if you change your mind, remember that you know how to sew it back together again. Nothing’s ever lost.

My second favorite piece of advice is to work with the stuff of your life, as opposed to someone else’s life or some theory about life. Our own individual lives are so profoundly rich with wells of experience that need exploring and mining that if we would just turn to those, we would find more inspiration that we know what to do with.

And please don’t worry if the idea is original enough or creative enough because that’s not the point. The point is: what are the questions you need answered for yourself? Work in that direction. If you’re not sure what your questions are, I would suggest thinking about what occupies the most bandwidth in your mind on a day-to-day basis. When you identify that, you have found where you are already placing a significant amount of energy into trying to understand, and in that you have discovered a very full battery to draw from in creating your work.

Flower Power by Zak Foster — Flower Power

What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?

The gap between what-is and what-can-be keeps me working.

I see so many ways that we can transform this world into a place where all eight billion of us can thrive, and I want that world so badly. While I have life, I hope to always be working.

Southern White Amnesia series, Our Children by Zak Foster — Southern White Amnesia series, Our Children

Tell us more about Nook and Seamside. What can people expect?

I feel so fortunate to wake up in the morning and have projects that all point in the same direction, that is: community, expression, world-making.

The QUILTY NOOK is an online community of 1000+ quilt-adjacent artists from around the world, and we offer monthly workshops and creative challenges, near-daily sewing circles, and so much more.

SEAMSIDE started as a series of interviews that I thought I’d turn into a book one day, but the more I connected with other artists, the more I saw that the podcast in and of itself was entirely rewarding. We focus on a central question: how does working with textiles make us more human? It’s what I call the “inner work of cloth.” We’re approaching our 100th episode soon, and I can’t wait to see where this project takes us.