about the author

J. Marsha Michler has authored 13 books on the topics of crazy quilting, jewelry, knitting, and needlearts. She has written many articles for magazines and has won quilt awards for her crazy quilts. She teaches, lectures, signs books, and shows her artwork in the New England area. She actively pursues quilting and crazy quilting, jewelry-making, fiber spinning, knitting, pottery, photography, website design, and runs two blogs. In her spare time she gardens, builds stone walls, travels, and enjoys sushi with her husband. She resides in the beautiful foothills of Southern Maine.

a statement of art

I love to create and I love to write.

There was no moment that I can recall in which I did not paint, draw, write, or manipulate nature in some way. At the beginning of my recollections was a small brook. A skinny little wisp of a brook, running from a cedar swamp into a river.

I observed it at first. In all seasons: running high in spring, near dry in summer, strewn with floating leaves in fall, bubbling beneath fantastic patterns of swirly, crusted layers of ice in winter.

And I began to work with it. Created dams out of sticks and forest litter. Scooped out sand and pulled up stones from the bottom to make deeper pools. All of this resulted in taller waterfalls; kinetic and musical. I studied this and pursued it further; deepening, damming and redirecting water. I never tired of this project.

I’ve always had a sense that my best education would come not from classroom and textbook, but from observing nature, people, and life in general. A little brook in my pre-adult years must have been a part of this, offering a firsthand sense of how human touch can impact upon nature. I’m sure some innate directives gathered themselves in my subconscious mind that now play themselves out in many ways.

I like to think about the little brook and the patterns of water and ice while I’m hand stitching with silk threads or twisting wire into patterns. It’s music to my soul.