Embracing Tradition - with Tara Faughnan

The Rev Craft Biz Podcast

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Embracing Tradition - with Tara Faughnan

And fighting the traction of being underpaid

Sam Hunter

Oct 01, 2025

Transcript

#060: Tara Faughnan takes us on her quilting journey, through fabric design and a passion for traditional quilting blocks. She was recently the keynote speaker at QuiltCon 2025, and the attendees got to see her exploration of her maximalist traditional quilts in a lovely solo exhibition.

Tara talks about finding the rhythm in her color palettes, which I find to be very distinctive! We talked about collaborative processes, and Tara says that while she collaborated a lot when she was designing textiles, she doesn’t look for collaboration when designing her quilts.

We talk about how she researched the data she presented in her keynote about how poorly represented women in in museums, fine arts, galleries, and collections, and that despite occasionally thinking she should be come a painter to garner more art-world respect, she always returns to the women-driven lineage of quilting - and how much she values being part of that lineage. She talks more about all the feels around creating that keynote, but I’ll let you give it a listening her own words rather than my cliff-notes!

She also talks about figuring out the right things to do, industry-wise, that make money, and appeals to us to stop working for free (motion seconded!)