The Fold: Red Map
Red Map started with a hole in a pillowcase and became a whole world.
Red Map
I started Red Map* in 2024, completed it in 2025, and exhibited it as part of my local quilt guild's October 2025 show. Here's her story.
*I am usually more creative with titles. My brain has been tired.
Red Map began as a pillowcase with a hole in it. (My day job is housekeeping, so I work with sheets and towels and stuff A LOT.) Rather than try to patch the hole, I chose to Make It Special. It became the focal point of an imaginary map.
Aside 1: Quilting and Mapping
Anyone who's been in an airplane has no doubt noticed how the landscape below resembles patchwork. Quilting and mapping have so many overlapping concepts that they're intrinsically enmeshed.
For a deeper dive, visit my Pinterest board on Quilting and Mapping.
Here are several artists who have influenced how I think about maps in textile form:
Valerie Goodwin: Architect turned Quilt Artist
Kathryn Clark: Foreclosure Quilts
Carolyn Friedlander: Architect turned Pattern & Fabric Designer
Ekta Kaul: Mapping Personal History
Pro Tip: I was able to take workshops with both Valerie Goodwin and Ekta Kaul through my membership in Zak Foster's Nook community. It's ten bucks a month, no long-term commitment, and once you join, you can access workshop recordings from ANY guest they've ever had. The lineup will blow you away.
Back to Red Map: The Long Way Around
As I said, I started with that hole. Instead of trying to hide it, I made it as visible as possible. Is it a sinkhole, a lake, a crater, a fence, a pit of despair, a road to nowhere? The viewer is welcome to make up their own story.
As the map grew, I kept imagining what might appear next. I didn't plan the composition at all. I wanted this to be a totally improvised landscape. I thought about different kinds of maps and how the iconography could be translated into thread.
I practiced stitches I learned from Valerie Goodwin and Ekta Kaul and executed them badly. Kind of on purpose, just to see what would happen. I explored shapes I could make by stitching too fast, making mistakes, or failing at traditional stitch patterns.
Aside 2: Is Red Map Quilting or Embroidery?
My relationship with embroidery is weird. I've taken several stabs (ha ha) at learning it. I greatly admire people who use it. In my hands, it just falls apart. However, I LOVE hand quilting. I like the structure, the texture, the repetition, all that.
For Red Map, I thought, what if I rethink that embroidery vocabulary as quilting (holding multiple layers of fabric together) rather than embellishing a single layer of fabric? Suddenly it made sense. Nearly every stitch in Red Map is both structural AND decorative.
One of my embroidery teachers is Darci Lenker, an amazing artist I have the pleasure of knowing here in Oklahoma. Check out her website here and her Instagram here. Last summer I took Darci's class on visible mending. She's an excellent teacher, so follow her to find out about her upcoming classes!
Red Map: In or Out of the Hoop?
I tried to work on Red Map using a quilting hoop. I've attempted to use a hoop with several quilts in the past. I've determined that it's not my cup of tea. I find it too restrictive. I like to hold a quilt in my hands so I can manipulate it at will, whether I'm stitching straight lines or other shapes.
Crunch Time
The last phase of creating Red Map was a sprint to meet a deadline. I'd like to thank Shogun and Game of Thrones for helping me through that last leg.
Predictably, I ran out of the red thread I had started with. Like, three days before the piece was due. So I visited every craft store in my area in the hopes of finding a good (not perfect) match. Many thanks to Nine Banded Crafts, Woven Thread, Stitch Society, Trove, and Bernina of Oklahoma City for helping me find replacement thread. (I settled on Wonderfil Spagetti in SP01 red.)
A GIF For Those Who Read This Far
Actual footage of me delivering Red Map for the show. Source
Thanks for reading, we'll chat again soon!
xoxo Sarah