With nature as her pattern and fabric her pallet, she creates award-winning, luminous garden quilts in South Lake Tahoe.

Meet Paula Chung, textile artist.

At first glance, Aging Iris III and Aging Iris V shown here look like fine watercolor paintings with their graceful strokes and brilliant weave of color and abstract composition.

Realizing they are quilts stretches the imagination and fosters an appreciation for Paula’s immeasurable talent as a designer. She calls it painting with fiber.

An accomplished seamstress since the 1970s, Paula became uninterested with her traditional quilt making projects.  Following a set pattern with specific guidelines and a predetermined result was no longer inspiring after 20 years of quilt making.  She yearned for a more natural flow to her creative process.

In 2005 she found an endless source of inspiration in her backyard.

To this day, her garden’s boundless yield of new blossoms and plants nourish her creative spirit, and inspire her to convey nature’s handiwork in her intricate garden quilts.

“My gardens provide a never-ending source of inspiration and solace. Flowers especially speak to me. My pieces try to capture their essence, their energy and the awe I feel when experiencing their beauty.” – Paula Chung

Her garden quilts are made of hand dyed silks saturated with color to provide richer depth.  Fabrics are appliqued and quilted into undulating shapes to add texture and movement to the artwork.

To accentuate the abstract compositions, the garden quilts are large such as Wild Artichoke IV shown here, measuring 54 inches tall by 72 inches wide.

Paula’s garden quilts have appeared in several national and international juried quilt and art shows, and have won awards like the Japanese Anemone quilt below that received 2nd place at the 9th Quilt Nihon Exhibition in Japan ’08. The winning quilt will be exhibited at Art Quilt Elements in Pennsylvania during the spring 0f 2010.

Currently Paula is working on a 10 foot x 6 foot silk piece to hang in the Lake Tahoe Community College in South Lake Tahoe, where she enjoys taking art classes.

Paula’s garden quilts are available to purchase, or better yet, you can commission Paula to create a customized quilt just for you!  Click here to learn more and to contact Paula Chung.