On first glance, you might think you’re looking at a beautifully composed photograph, or perhaps a painting. Look closer, and the components of the image come into focus: small pieces of patterned fabric, carefully assembled to create a picture of rosy curtains blowing through an open window, the whole image meticulously stitched over with fine thread, giving it a three-dimensional look. The result is stunning art, by Kimberley Penney from Conception Bay South, N.L.
Penney didn’t intend to be an artist. Originally from Campbellton in Notre Dame Bay, N.L., she went to Holland College in P.E.I. to study photography and journalism. She spent a few years in Nova Scotia at a newspaper then returned to Newfoundland to work at a community newspaper. In 2000, she and husband Mark moved to Conception Bay South, where she worked with the federal fisheries department. She says she has “always been crafty” but for years focused on her career and raising her daughter Leah, now 22.
On a whim in 2019, Penney took a quilting class. It was a bargello pattern, (a style involving strips of fabric that give the impression of movement), which is fairly complicated for a beginner. “I didn’t even have my machine threaded properly!” she says. Despite that, she discovered she loved quilting. Penney’s mother had been a sewer who passed away in 2020, and Penney took all her fabrics and made quilts for her mom’s grandchildren for Christmas that year.
“Then it became, ‘What else is there?’ with quilting, and I started learning about appliqué, (a technique where pieces of fabric are cut into various shapes and glued or sewn together to make a picture or pattern), and then I saw a fabric collage by Newfoundland artist Ralph Jarvis.”
Penney did several courses with him. “I bought an easel and started buying batik fabrics, and some more patterns.” She got comfortable with the process of transferring the patterns to a piece of muslin, which forms the backing for the image, and wondered, “What if I could do some of my own images onto muslin?”
She asked a friend, watercolourist Christopher Peet, if she could use one of his paintings to replicate in fabric. He agreed, and the picture turned out nicely. “The process I came up with worked for tracing images onto muslin, so I started doing that with photos.”
“People say I must have some patience to create these pieces,” Penney says. “It’s the making that gives me patience. My job is stressful, and making art became something I would do to relax.”
Penney volunteered at the annual Bay de Verde quilt festival in 2023, doing demos under the name K. Penney Fabric Art. “I wanted people to see that there are different things you can do with fabric,” she says. “I sold the three pieces I had with me at the show, and I’ve been doing them ever since.”
Since each piece is original, she doesn’t do a lot of craft shows because she cannot maintain a huge inventory, especially while working full time. “I’m not in it to make my fortune,” she says. “I love Newfoundlandia but I don’t want to be a one-trick pony with just wharves and fishing boats … I have done some of the historical resettlement images that are quintessentially Newfoundland, but it’s hard to pinpoint what image will pique my interest. I approach an image firstly because I like it for its collage potential … I’m looking at what would challenge me.”
How long it takes to create one of her works doesn’t necessarily depend on the size. Many of her works are 20 by 25 centimetres, with the largest she’s created so far being 50 by 60. Kimberley says, “Often I have fabric on hand that is ideal for a piece, like one of the whales I’ve made, and it can be done in a couple of days.”
She glues the fabric in place, then treats it like a quilt. “You put a piece of placemat batting underneath the muslin, and then free-motion quilt the piece. Anywhere there is a strip of fabric, you catch the edge with your sewing machine, and that little bit of batting gives the work its three-dimensional look.”
Penney calls her art low-cost to create. “I have friends, fellow quilters, who save their scraps of batik material for me, and I have bins and bins of fabric, including a few with just the tiniest scraps because you never know when you’ll need a wee bit of pink … Magic happens when I start sifting through my fabrics and find the perfect pieces. It’s quite exciting when you start seeing things in fabric, which is how I purchase material. It has to have the potential to be a rock, or sky, or house colour, or quilt pattern.”
What is batik?
Originally from Indonesia, batik is a technique using wax to protect certain parts of the fabric from the dye. The artist draws patterns onto the fabric (generally cotton or rayon) with a special tool that paints with wax, and those waxed parts do not take up the dye. Multiple designs and colours may be used to create the finished fabrics, which are preferred by artists such as Kimberley Penney for creating fabric art designs.