Uncommon Threads

As a child, Alison Bessesdotter would wander the wilderness near her home in Erwinna, contemplating nature—grasses waving in the wind, light filtering through the leaves, creeks bound in ice. Casting her eyes skyward, she would muse about what entities might live beyond our atmosphere.

 

In her adulthood, as she relocated throughout eastern Pennsylvania and then to England, her contemplation of River Towns landscapes continued to fuel her intuitive artwork: prints, painting, collage, and, more currently, art quilts.

 

“I’m not a traditional quilter,” Bessesdotter insists. “I do free motion quilting: I just let myself go without planning or waiting for inspiration. It sort of flows all over the place. I allow myself the freedom to create a piece of abstract work that then builds into nature scenes.”

 

Bessesdotter is standing in her Buckingham living room/studio, and as she talks she flips through a stack of fabric sections ornamented with intricately stitched designs. The fabric sheets are all works in progress. She simultaneously works on as many as ten or more pieces. Bessesdotter, who is self-taught, stitches both with a sewing machine and by hand. “There’s always one little thing that can be done,” she explains. “I could have a minute while baking bread or waiting at the doctor’s office.”

 

Once the stitching is complete, she hand-paints the fabric—vintage textiles, cotton, silk, and wool—to create compositions that often reference weather patterns or outer space. Sometimes she hand-colors the fabric first and stitches afterward. It’s part of her plan of having no plan. She recently started using alcohol ink and is pleased with the results. “Alcohol ink bleeds and flows,” she says. “You can pull it or lighten it.”

 

For some pieces, she incorporates collage with found objects—“like flotsam and jetsam,” she says—layering items like a Pellegrino label and candy wrappers to add texture. She prepares these items with a Japanese technique called momigami, in which the paper is scrunched and coated with konnyaku starch, giving it a fabric-like texture.

 

Bessesdotter’s home is tucked down a long gravel driveway and set among trees—a perfect spot to muse heavens and earth. “I draw inspiration from the woods and the gardens,” she says. “I observe everything from the color of the light to the forms and shapes. I look at where insects have attacked the leaves and the patterns they left. Backpacking across mountains and fields and living on a farm deepened my observation of the weather and my inability to control it.”

 

She holds up a stitching that is reminiscent of what you might see when gazing at the night sky through a telescope. “These are spacecraft disguised as nebula,” she explains. Her interest in space and spacecraft originated from watching the 1969 moon landing as a child. “Some of the quilts actually have UFOs in them. In quilting, if you have a UFO, that means an unfinished object.” And sometimes, it really is an unidentified flying object: Last year Bessesdotter’s quilt Diagram of an Alien Spacecraft was exhibited at the Juried Art Show at Phillips’ Mill Community Association.

 

Similar to how she creates her art quilts, Bessesdotter stitches together communities of like-minded fiber artists everywhere she plants roots.

 

“I have a strong belief in community-supported art and community-created art,” she says. “I create groups that would meet in my studio or elsewhere, and we would stitch together. I like the idea that we all work together to create this atmosphere and spread this creativity across our environment.”

 

From 2010 to 2013, Bessesdotter managed the New Bridge Group, a group of artists based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 2013 she became an artist-in-residence at the Banana Factory, a since-closed art center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and in 2017 she started Steel Wool: The Lehigh Valley Fiber Collective. Two years later she moved to Reigate, south of London, to participate in the area’s robust fiber arts culture. There, in 2021, she founded Bell Street Artists and allowed artists to sublet rooms in her studio to create a community that would work and exhibit together. Although she no longer plays a role, the group is still thriving.

 

While in England, images inspired by her time in Bucks County filtered into her work. She recalls a conversation with Janice Lipzin, then the director of the Banana Factory, when she was preparing to move to the United Kingdom. Lipzin, Bessesdotter says, could not understand why she would want to leave Pennsylvania. “You’re a Bucks County artist,” Lipzin told her. “What would possess you to want to leave it? It will never leave you, right?”

 

Bessesdotter’s answer: “I love Bucks County. It’s my real, true home. You see it in my work: all those browns, all those earthy siennas and umbers.”

 

After five years in England, Bessesdotter was longing for home. (One such symptom: She began painting Pennsylvania landscapes.) She returned to the River Towns in 2024 and quickly started laying the foundation for a new fiber arts community—based on both sides of the Delaware River, in Frenchtown and New Hope. “There’s something about working with your hands—any kind of knitting, stitching, crocheting, and hand stitching—that’s methodical and meditative,” she says. “It opens you up to listening. One of the main purposes of the groups is to be together, to have conversation, and to learn about one another. Artists need artists.”

 

Patti Zielinski is the chief arts writer for River Towns. She also likes to contemplate all the objects that can be seen in the sky.