Katie Raudenbush
Verses in Thread
Katie Raudenbush moves between textiles, photography, and poetry, layering materials like memories, stitching together time. "Poetry tells you when to pause, when to breathe," she says. "I think of the white spaces in my quilts the same way." Her process is intuitive and immersive, a rhythm of making and unmaking, of gathering and rearranging. She experiments freely, letting the work reveal itself.
At Hunter College, where she’s a graduate student, she is in an evolving phase, blending quilt-making with photographic processes and the structure of poetry. "Textiles are a newer part of my practice," she says. "But I want to get into quilting—all the history, the patterns—because there’s so much I still don’t know." This curiosity keeps her moving forward, deepening her connection to craft and lineage.
Quilting is embedded in her family history. Her great-aunt stitched a quilt for every life event—births, graduations, marriages. Her great-grandmother had visitors sign her tablecloth, later embroidering the names to preserve the moment. "Textiles hold memories," Katie says. "They carry history, whether it’s a family quilt or a scrap of fabric passed down." Yet, the tradition wasn’t passed to her directly. She is reviving it, piecing together fragments of a lost practice, discovering her place in it with every stitch.
Photography is her foundation. She got her first camera at four—a small pink 35mm Strawberry Shortcake camera—and began taking pictures of everything. "I wanted to capture the world the way I saw it—little moments of beauty." Her early obsession evolved into an interest in archives, cyanotype printing, and layering images onto fabric. The sun itself plays a role in her work, exposing prints onto cloth, leaving traces of time. "The sun is a part of the work," she says. "It brings things to life."
Writing is just as essential. She begins her day by putting words to paper, often sketching ideas through poetry before they materialize in textiles. "I write stream of consciousness, and then I come in here and try to sync with my hands while I’m making the quilt." The act of stitching, cutting, and restitching mirrors her writing process—breaking phrases apart, letting them breathe, allowing structure to emerge.
Much of her work contemplates lineage, especially the echoes of inherited habits. "I’m an eldest daughter of an eldest daughter of an eldest daughter," she says. "There’s something powerful in seeing yourself reflected in your family’s habits and gestures." She, her mother, and her grandmother all leave kitchen cabinets open—a small, seemingly inconsequential habit, yet a mark of shared experience. Her quilts are records of these repetitions, reflections of the past embedded in fabric.
Right now, she is experimenting—expanding her material vocabulary, pushing beyond fabric and paper to explore form in new ways. "It’s good to be a little bit scared of what you’re making," she says. "That’s when it’s exciting." She trusts the process, following her intuition, letting the materials guide her. Whether through fabric, photography, or poetry, she is building a language of touch and time, of remembering and remaking.
