by hand, freehand.

I’m terrible at following pre-designed patterns—always have been, ever since I first learned to do needlework as a kid. (The ADHD signs were there, folks!) I’ve turned this into a strength by adopting a fiber art process that moves with the moment. Just as with my oil and mixed-media pieces, I build in layers, back to front, with each successive layer adapting and responding, pentimento-like, to the one beneath it. The entire time, I am constantly experimenting with how I can bend the physical properties of my materials and techniques toward the essence I am trying to capture.

Some of you have heard me call what I do “needle painting,” and this is why.

This is also why each SometimeSophie fiber original is quite literally one of a kind. Each piece is the culmination of thousands of decisions made in the moment, all of them unplanned and unrecorded. Even if I recorded and published the patterns and thread colors used (which I rarely do), we’d probably need an X-ray machine to even begin reverse-engineering the interlocking strata of stitches that give the pieces their depth and texture. They are pretty much impossible to reproduce. Even I couldn’t tell you how to do it!