Their quilts speak of family dysfunction, the effects of war and animal extinction. They layer their images with dyes and stitching that go far beyond conventional patterns. And they inspire each other to take their art even further.

Soul Stories unites 24 artists – including three Canadians – to address some of the greatest questions facing our world. The brainchild of An Marshall of Florida, the collective presents dramatic, emotional textile art far beyond most art quilts. These artists span a wide range of evocative topics from the human experience to the health of the planet.

The group includes well-known names in the art quilting world, such as Paula Rafferty (Ireland), Sue de Vanny (Australia) and Luana Rubin, Betty Busby, Hollis Chatelain, Phyllis Cullen and Susan Brubaker Knapp of the United States. It also includes three Canadians: Susan Avishai, Sue Sherman and Maggie Vanderweit.

Soul Stories debuted its first exhibition “Threads of Existence” at the Houston International Quilt Festival in 2025. It will appear at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Mass. until July 18. Next, it travels to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, UK from July 30 to Aug. 2.

Each artist aims to create a new piece each year since a second exhibition is underway. For now, each Canadian talks about her own work.

Maggie Vanderweit

Maggie started doing traditional quilting in 1981. She switched her focus to art quilting 15 years ago and fell in love with creating more original designs.

“I found my people,” she said of connecting with members of Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA).

Her involvement with began after she met An in a breakout room at an online SAQA conference in 2023.

“I want deep, personal soul stories,” Maggie said. “I want to support and encourage others on their journeys. And I want to provoke discussion.”

Decidedly apolitical, she explores the complexity of family dynamics via her series F**ked Up Families. “You’re not alone,” she said to others in similar situations. “I’m not the only one with a brother I never talk to.”

Spirit Chairs

Her Spirit Chairs series grieves those no longer sitting among us. With ghost-like images, it leaves the viewer to interpret the absences in their lives.

The iconic chair outline represents one of dozens her late father rescued from a dumpster and lovingly restored for others. In one piece, a small bird rests on the seat as if ready to listen.

“I miss my dad and I like honouring him,” Maggie said. “Who knows who has sat on these chairs? Each one of them could tell fascinating stories – if they could talk.”

Maggie recently started enlarging and digitally alerting her photos before printing them commercially for whole-cloth quilts. She uses techniques like photography, stencils and surface design with paint and thickened dyes as a form of art therapy.

“One of the most things to do is to give the work a title,” Maggie said. “All my quilts have a story and a reason for being there.”

She finds inspiration alongside some of the most important art quilters alive.

“We seek to offer big, challenging stories for difficult things,” Maggie said. “It’s time in my life to make quilts that are important to me. If they turn out to be important for others, that’s good. We need this because the world is changing and we all have souls.”

Sue Sherman

This former engineer came to art quilting after retirement from an engineering career that required constantly tracking millions of tiny details. She retired on a Friday, and the following Monday started her first original art quilt design.

“It was amazing how instantly creative I felt once I could direct newly freed brain capacity towards things I wanted to do,” she said.

As a novice, she tried several techniques and styles to portray realistic animals and their lives in the wild. In 2018, she found the solution in a class by Hollis on painting with thickened dyes.

“I haven’t met many other quilters who actually use exclusively this technique in their work,” Sue said.

However, four out of the 24 members of Soul Stories do. “It’s telling that this serendipity occurred in a group where members are trying to portray deep ideas,” Sue noted.

Regardless, it took many baby steps to build her confidence to make bold statements about climate change, biodiversity and habitat loss. Thanks to fellow art quilters, she went from stitching tiny messages to the dramatic statement of Where’s the Tipping Point?

“Each member of the group was already creating pieces with strong messages before they joined,” Sue said. “As a member, it only gets better.”

Deep conversations

At the Houston Festival, she talked with Phyllis Cullen about her work as a doctor in a refugee camp. Next, she chatted with Luana about the plight of wolves in the American west then, with Hollis about endangered vultures and how losing them can lead to human deaths.

“These conversations shape my own art, indeed my life experience, and I am so thankful to Soul Stories for making these interactions possible.”

Susan Avishai

Susan first learned of the group while chatting with Sue at the opening of Renewal, a SAQA traveling Canadian juried quilt show.

“I mentioned how I wanted to say more in my work about our current state of the world and how difficult that might be to accomplish using textiles, Susan recalled. “She told me about a wonderful international collection of women who are doing just that: creating quilts that document, bear witness and hold up a mirror to the important issues we live with. And she invited me to join.”

For the past 15 years, she had been making fibre art from rescued or deconstructed clothing. She aimed to raise awareness about the paradoxical cycle of exploitive garment manufacture and the enormous problem of textile waste.

“We over-buy and discard quickly,” Susan said. “Eight five percent of it ends up in landfill. I thought I could say something about mindfulness, reimagining and reclamation with these familiar worn items.”

‘We are artists first’

She also wanted to speak out about the changing climate on our fragile planet and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

“I was appalled by the devastation and loss of life on both sides, especially the civilian mothers and children,” she said. “Thinking how to make art about this subject was an even harder challenge. I had lived in Israel for several years. These people were real to me and my despair was for both the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre and the Gazan population.”

Rather than tell viewers how to feel, she set out to have them feel what she felt. Therefore, she chose an abstract scene of bombed out buildings, which could have easily portrayed Kiev, Tokyo, Dresden or even 9/11.

“In a sense, we at Soul Stories are retracing the worn footsteps of women who came before us,” Susan said. “Women who worked with their hands to create necessary and beautiful textile work for their homes and families. But we are artists first, choosing the medium of fabric for the specific purpose of social reflection, personal expression and healing. It is an intentional and thoroughly contemporary collection of work.”