Susan Shie grew up drawing, painting, writing, and sewing. As a romantic teen, she thought she was very hip painting on stretched canvases on an easel in her bedroom. In college she started sewing on unstretched, painted fabric. She got a MFA in painting, sewing what she called Diary Quilt Paintings for her thesis in 1986, and never took classes in surface design or quilting. She was in Painting and enjoyed working differently. Since then her work has become more and more about diary, family, friends, events around her, and now political commentary, as we desperately need Peace, Kindness, and Love.


Ode to Julia Child
$1, 650

Cotton fabric, fabric paint, perle cotton thread, 1 shisha mirror, 1 green temple Buddha boy bead

Whole cloth painting using airpen for lines and writing, regular brush for color painting, all hand quilted

My work is a mixture of personal diary, social and political commentary, and healing-peace energy. “Ode to Julia Child” merges writing about Julia’s life and how it paralleled my Aunt Louise’s life in the Foreign Service. My daughter’s pregnancy is “in there,” too. I started Julia over a year before I had time to finish her, and it was good to sew on her while watching my granddaughter Eva.