Biography

Rosemary Eichorn is a fiber artist, teacher and lecturer with a lifelong love of sewing and fabric. Observe her passion for gardening and her appreciation of the splendor surrounding her coastal mountain home and you’ll understand the inspiration for her sumptuous collages and artwear. Rosemary’s sewing machine is her principal art tool and thousands of quarter-yard pieces of fabric are her palette. 

Rosemary has created 4 ensembles for theFairfield - now Bernina Fashion Show at Quilt International. This is an invitational show which premiers in Houston each October. She was featured in the Threads magazine designer challenge. Her book, The Art of Fabric Collage, was published by the Taunton Press in 2000 and has been reprinted twice. Her Sewjourner Patterns are designed to provide blank canvases for collage and other creative sewing and surface design techniques. Her work has been featured in various needle art and quilting magazines, has won awards including best of show and grand prizes in local & national shows. She has been a featured artist as well as juror and judge for quilt guild shows.
Educated at Iowa State University, she has a degree in Art and Textiles. Rosemary considers teaching a privilege and she’s committed to helping other sewers find their creative voices. 

 
Artist's Statement

Each time I write a new artist’s statement, it’s like taking off another layer of the mask of art babble. I hope someday I’ll get it ‘right.’ I think when that day comes, my statement will be something like this: I make art. I love making art because making it makes me happy.

(You can stop reading here if you like, because the rest of this statement just amplifies the above.)
My first sewing memory, from babyhood, is of stringing brightly colored wooden teething beads on a green shoelace with a plastic tip. I remember the tip wearing off—I supposed I chewed it off—leaving a bush that wouldn’t go through the beads’ holes. My mother then replaced the tip with cellophane tape, over and over again, so that I could push it through the chunky beads. My self-esteem must have soared, because I remember feeling happy.

Today when I teach sewers a new technique, I’m the one putting a cellophane tip on the lace. My students conquer the technique and I share their growing sense of self esteem. I believe that each of us becomes a better person when we do things that make us feel better about ourselves.  That’s my role as a teacher.
Vest Mandala
 In the second half of my life, I’m reaping the rewards of all those years of sewing.  I’ve let go of the lessons and the rules and now I play with the possibilities hidden in my sewing machine. I work with the textures and rows of stitches reeling from my machine as I layer bits of colorful fabric together. The process is much like that of a painter who works with a palette knife and beautiful blobs of color. I love the process, and if the results please me, which they often do, that’s a really big bonus.