‘Learning to follow joy’ helps Jen Broemel create vivid textile works

We love learning more about the Crafts community – who they are, what sparks their curiosity, and (perhaps, most importantly) what they enjoy making. So earlier this year we took to Instagram and asked our crafty readers to share a photo of our Spring/Summer 2024 issue in their studios, for a chance to be featured on our website and social platforms.

We selected three of our favourites – one of whom is Indiana-based artist Jen Broemel, who uses a number of different embroidery techniques to create intricate textile works that layer colour and pattern.

How long have you been a maker and how did you get to where you are today?

I’ve always been a maker, dabbling with many needlework crafts such as knitting, crocheting and cross-stitch, but really began to focus on my artistic practice about eight years ago when I fell in love with quilting and embroidery. It began with The 100 Day Project where I worked through an embroidery stitches book, making little compositions with just one stitch type. Around this time I also joined a friend whose mother was teaching her to quilt – I quickly learned I was not a pattern follower and began developing my own way of making, and have been following that thread ever since.

Which craft techniques are involved in your work and how did you learn them?

Most of my work is cloth and thread, quilted and embroidered. I am self taught, but have found a lot of encouragement and mentorship from local quilt guilds and sewing bees I have joined and been a part of. The greatest gift they gave me was the confidence and the freedom to make mistakes, to make and explore my own ideas in my own way. So there has been a lot of trial and error; learning to follow joy has led me to the methods I currently use the most.

Tell us about your studio and how you like to work.

I have two studio spaces: one at home, and one away from home. The away space is very new and I’m still balancing how I use it, but I love having the space to spread out and work undistracted; I do a lot of playing and experimenting and tend to work on more than one piece at a time. I’m a messy maker, so my home studio has the real mess and I keep the away space more presentable.

What’s the inspiration behind your pieces, and how does each one develop?

Process really drives the work. The current works are personal inner explorations of layers of colour, pattern, and texture. They are translations of what I see and feel when I look within. They are repetitive, meditative and deeply satisfying to make. Their development is ever changing, but paradoxically like a snapshot, a marking in (and of) time.

You describe your works as being ‘intuitively stitched’ – how much of your creative practice do you leave to instinct/serendipity?

The intuition is always there guiding the process. The colours in my work come to be as the layers of cloth come together, and then again when the embroidered pattern is overlaid. It takes some time to determine the overall direction the piece wants to take, and then the meditation begins; as the piece grows the process becomes quite planned and repetitive, this is when I begin contemplating what comes next.

You’ve been experimenting with paper weaving – will you be incorporating this more into your future work, and how else can you see your craft evolving?

Yes! I often participate in The 100 Day Project and this year I chose to weave paper. Doing these weavings also led me to start painting and sewing the paper. This is why I participate, it’s about playing without knowing where it will go, if it will go, and how it will turn out. I think this is important and keeps me from getting bored when the stitched works get a bit monotonous. I am definitely intrigued by sewn painted paper and have all kinds of ideas, but at this time I can’t really say where they will go – I am a true believer that this is how work evolves, grows, and gets better. You must mix in a little bit of not knowing.