Painted Stitches
Temperanceville, PA
Website

Donna Stufft was born in Philadelphia in 1951. She grew up in western PA, and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a degree in elementary education. She moved to Harford County, Maryland after college where she taught for twenty years. Donna learned to sew when she was 12, making much of her own clothing. In her 20’s, inspired by the quilts made by her Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors, she began to make traditional baby quilts and bed quilts for friends and family. In 1997 Donna started to explore painting and other ‘surface design’ techniques in fiber and to incorporate them into her quilts, resulting in art quilts: quilted wall hangings that from a distance look like traditional art, which she calls “Painted Stitches.” Each piece starts as an original acrylic painting on a canvas of cotton fabric which will become the center of the piece. After adding borders to the “top,” it’s “layered up” with batting and a backing. Free-motion quilting, using rayon threads, adds to and enhance the colors and details. This stitching also creates highlights on the resulting loft and subtle shadows in the valleys, which add texture to the piece and depth to the picture. Using brightly bold colors or softly muted shades, Donna loves to interpret the beauty that she finds in nature. Small pieces are matted and framed, while the edges of larger quilts are bound and hanging bars are added to the back so that they hang on a wall like traditionally framed paintings.

Fifteen years ago, Donna and her husband, Derry, moved to the Eastern Shore of Virginia where the natural beauty of the Chesapeake Bay to her West and the Assateague National Seashore to her East provide endless inspiration for her work. She lectures and teaches classes to quilt guilds and sewing groups in the mid-Atlantic region. She also exhibits her art quilts in two local galleries and participates in art/craft events.Donna’s quilts have 5 ribbons in national quilts shows, including Best of Show in the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in 2012. In 2022 one of her quilts was featured on the cover of Art Quilting Studio Magazine. Early in 2024 two of her quilts were selected by the Art in Embassies program to be displayed in the Sierra Leone US Embassy and the Ambassador’s residence there.