“Winter Star” by Mary Tyler of Chimacum.

“Cotinus” by Sue Gale of Port Townsend.

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No doubt, COVID-19 has tugged — if not torn outright — some of the ties that bind.

A new show by local textile artists is stitching those seams back together, with works that mend and blend the time some spent in splendid solitude forced for health’s sake.

“Pandemic,” an exhibit by 10 Olympic Peninsula artists in the Surface Design Association, was recently installed in Port Townsend.

The pieces on display show techniques ranging from hand-dying, resist, trapunto, embroidery, sashiko, paper collage and fabric collage to silk-dying origami, felting, beading, repurposing, quilting, fabric piecing and wire and wood sculpture.

All told, there’s 33 pieces in the exhibit, now on view at the Surface Design Association window at Tyler and Lawrence in Port Townsend. All were created by artists who were sheltering at home.

“In this case, the idea was a very simple theme: You had to have either completed it or created it during the pandemic,” said Linda Carlson of the Surface Design Association.

“It could have been a piece in progress or something completely new. It couldn’t be old stuff,” she said of the art in the show.

Carlson said reaction to the exhibit was immediate, with the variety of the pieces being noteworthy.

“We’ve had a lot of feedback already and it just went up this week,” Carlson said.

“People have cited the variety and I think another thing was that many of the pieces are priced very reasonably,” she said.

The Surface Design Association has members across the Olympic Peninsula. In normal times, chapter members meet regularly, with meetings rotated between Port Townsend, Sequim and Port Angeles. (Meetings are open to the public at no charge.)

Unlike previous exhibitions, the new show follows a more general theme. 

“It’s a very colorful and very eclectic group of pieces,” said Jeri Auty, a member of the group from Port Ludlow. The show includes paintings on silk, fiber pieces, origami cards.

One of Auty’s pieces was inspired by a black-and-white photo of two windows and the wood siding of an old home.

“I decided to see if I could do my own version of it,” Auty said.

Pieces of fabric in different colors were fused together, with some areas highlighted by paint. 

“It’s kind of my first foray into being an art quilter instead of a traditional quilter,” she said. “I’m moving from being more of a traditional quilter to doing more and more art pieces.” 

The show includes pieces from Port Townsend artists Sue Gale, Cherie Kopp, Debra Olson, Janice Speck, and Erika Wurm; plus works from artists Mary Tyler (Chimacum); Auty (Port Ludlow); Carlson (Sequim); and Evette Allerdings and Barbara Houshmand (Port Angeles).

The show went up earlier this month, and Auty helped put the Port Townsend display together.

“Everybody who walked by stopped to look,” she said.

One work that got much attention was a whimsical piece by Carlson called “Knit Wit,” Auty said. 

Auty has a number of pieces in the show. The pandemic has proven to be a productive time for her, she noted.

“It’s easier in some ways because I’m hunkered down. And I don’t have an excuse not to be going into my studio and doing things,” Auty said.

“For me, it’s  been great. I don’t think it’s been the same for everybody,” she added quickly.

“Some people have decided it’s just too hard to create things. But my experience has been really positive and I’ve moved forward as an artist,” she said.

Carlson noted the contribution of artist Mary Tyler to the show, and also pointed to the artist’s new pieces on the custom-fabric website spoonflower.com (search for tylerstudio).

“Mary has some very dramatic pieces,” Carlson said.

“These are not granny-type patterns. These are very dramatic and they do speak to the piece she has on display,” Carlson noted.

Tyler’s part of the show, “Winter Star,” is a dazzling quilt made of hand-dyed cotton. 

“I did it last summer,” Tyler recalled, and she used a kaleidoscope technique. Six sections were divided in half with each forming a mirror-cut image.

“You never know what you’re going to get; it’s always a surprise,” Tyler said. “You just kind of do it and hope it turns out well.”

Tyler has been doing fiber art for 50 years. She said she started when she was 25, and was a weaver for two decades but eventually had to give it up.

“Weaving is very hard on your body; my hands gave out on me,” she said.

She then dyed silk scarves for a while before taking up an interest in quilting.

“I had never quilted before. That was about
18 years ago,” Tyler added. “And so I started quilting and dying fabric to make quilts. It’s all just kind of evolved into that.”

“I love dying fabric and putting it into things. Dying the fabric is so much fun; you can see the colors come and run together,” she said.

The COVID lockdown, in some ways, have taken away some obligations outside her art. 

“I’m not going out; I don’t have any commitments and I can spend as much time as I want beyond the normal daily things I have to do,” she said.

“Pandemic” will be displayed through March. Most of the artwork that is on display is for sale, at prices ranging from $6 to $800. 

Information on the artists and their pieces is posted in the SDA display window and on the chapter’s website at https://sda-np.com/.