Kitty Pippen remembered at quilt museum

Kitty Pippen once said she was first drawn to textile arts as a girl in China, watching the local women mend and design their clothes. She lived a life as a creative artists, but didn’t begin her quilting career in Japanese fabrics until the age of 70. In her last 25 years she gained legendary status as a textile artist, taught, and was author of several books. She spent her final years living at the La Conner Retirement Inn.

This month Pippen’s work is being exhibited in the “Remembering Kitty” show at the La Conner’s Pacific Northwest Quilt and Fiber Arts Museum until July 28.

Pippen grew up in China, where her parents were missionaries, and she would watch the Chinese women with their needles, mending and sewing quilt patterns into their padded garments She was home schooled by her parents, then moved to the U.S. during World War II and attended college, married and went to work as a draftsman in the biochemistry department at UC Berkeley.

Throughout her adult life she created art. She painted, braided rugs, silk screened, stenciled, always including her three children in the process, recalls her daughter Sylvia Pippen, owner of Indigo Stitch in La Conner.

Her daughter remembers her mom taking her to thrift stores to find wool coats to make braided rugs. “We were a whole family of artists, all with this creative energy.”

At UC Berkeley Pippen became a frequent customer of Kasuri Dyeworks and formed a friendship with proprietor Koji Wada. She bought a few pieces of yukata fabric and put them away for another time. Then after retirement, at the age of 70, in Lake Almanor Ca., she began a new career as a textile artist.

She gained a love for Japanese fabric and how it was designed, dyed and woven. The beauty and challenge of working with Japanese fabric is its quality – quilters today often work with the very fabric that was used decades and centuries ago for the finest kimonos. While Kimonos vanished into history, the fabrics are being preserved by some quilters into fine art. Pippen soon began making her first Japanese quilts. During this time she learned the art of Sashiko – an Asian style of geometric, white running stitch on blue fabric that she learned out of a book.

Her first major quilt “The Crane’ which incorporated those first pieces of yukata fabric she had bought, took the quilting world by storm as the first prize winner for Innovative Piecing at Paducah Kentucky in 1988.

Pippen drew from her drafting experience and was renowned for her flawless use of geometric patterns on expansive quilts, often employing challenging fabrics such as those used for the kimonos of early Japan.

She had a perfectionist’s sense when it came to cutting, designing and sewing for each piece. Once she began mastering the art of making quilts, Pippen started teaching. Her book (written in her 80s) – “Quilting with Japanese Fabrics” – has had 14 reprints. She then co-wrote “Asian Elegance” with daughter Sylvia.

When Sylvia Pippen moved from Hawaii to La Conner, she persuaded her parents, Kitty and Eldon Pippen, to move to the area, also. Her mother made contact with the Quilt Museum, and became an active visitor, supporter and contributor.

Pippen was an artist with endless creative energy. When asked how she kept her spirits up, her daughter recalled, she said, “I never get depressed, I just close my eyes and design quilts in my head.” She always had time for other fabric artists, even in her final years. If a quilter dropped by, Pippen would display her work to that person. “It gives me great joy to share my love for these fabrics,” she wrote in “Quilting with Japanese Fabrics.”

Pippen died in 2017 and was quilting until the final year of her life.

Visitors can see Pippen’s work, including her first, award-winning quilt “the Crane” this month at the Quilt Museum. Stop in at Indigo Stitch on First Street to learn more about Pippen’s work and the art of Asian Quilting.