Chandra Wu

I was born in Seattle and grew up on Whidbey Island around both fresh and salt water shores.  I began sewing and embroidering as a child while my mother taught me to sew on her great aunt's White treadle machine. I lived in Vancouver, BC where I got involved with the Modern Quilt Guild and attended my first Quiltcon in 2013.

 

I am inspired by the intersection of the natural world  with handcrafting in a modern post-industrial age.  Some areas of interest for me include the current climate crisis and the human, animal, and floral responses to this profound change to our planet's habitat.  This impacts my use of materials, including found and reusable textiles in an effort to think about sustainability.  My formal education in geology and physics impacts my view of the world and inspires a lot of the balance and design in my art.  

 

I have enjoyed making group quilts with students new to sewing to tell a story or simply build community. I find repetitive processes like stitching and sewing to be healing and meditative. I teach workshops in improvisational quilt block construction, making a stitched memory book from clothing scraps, and am a member of the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Arts Museum, Seattle Modern Quilt Guild and several online groups including Ekta Kaul's Soothing Stitch Circle, Zak Foster's Quilty Nook, and Sherri Lynn Wood's Brave Patch Community..