Longer About

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I am a fiber artist and award-winning author living outside of Boston. My two boys live out west, leaving my husband and me to share our home with a slightly crazed mutt named Finn. Creative time is split between writing, quilting, and paper and digital collage. I’ve been leading writing workshops since 2019.

My mother was an art teacher and one of the greatest things she gave each of her children is the notion that everyone is a creative being. What a gift! She also had a mantra that I hew to more and more as I get older: beautiful work comes from beautiful materials.

In high school, I crocheted and kept journals. College found me making collages, learning to hand spin and dye fiber with natural materials, and writing — mostly poems. I enjoy drawing even though I’m not very good at it. I’m also not a very accomplished seamstress, but somehow got hooked on making quilts in the late 80’s. Tellingly, after passing the Massachusetts bar exam in 1989, I deferred my hoity-toity job downtown in order to make a quilt.

I didn’t start sewing in earnest until my first pregnancy, which coincided with buying a house. Curtains, chair pads, crib bumpers, pillows, tiny onesies were all imperative nesting activities. The job downtown was left behind and the next job with a non-profit serving inmate mothers was on its way out, too. I took a class with a Maine quilter familiar with Susan Carlson’s techniques. Her collage approach to quilting ignited me. A Ruth McDowell workshop followed and I learned that precise piecing is about as appealing to me as tax law — I cannot and will not do either. More recently, I’ve studied online, particularly with Jude Hill at Spirit Cloth. She’s helped me remember things my mother taught me long ago — about beautiful materials, about the value of process.

Over the years, I’ve sold my work — mostly at local, juried craft fairs, but also at galleries in Maine and New York and through Newton Open Studios (most recently in 2018). I sort of keep a small etsy shop going (clothcompany). I used to teach a fair amount and found third graders to be my favorite age. These days, I sew mostly small quilts, dolls, and pouches.

I’m a certified SoulCollage facilitator. Also, I’ve participated in the Paris Collage Club weekly collage challenge for most of the last three years. I’m enamored with layers and how the meaning created by juxtapositions can surprise me. I work with cloth, paper, and digital layers. The Diana Photo app is my go-to digital tool.

For over a decade, I’ve taken classes taught in the Amherst Writers and Artists Method (AWA) and in 2019 became an AWA facilitator myself. I’ve been leading a weekly writing workshop ever since. Also in 2019, I was granted a modest scholarship by The Fat Canary Journal to attend a writers’ residency in Assisi, Italy for two weeks. What an experience! I’ve also attended more than a half-dozen AWA writing retreats.

My blog has been up and running in one fashion or another for more than 15 years. My instagram account uses my middle initial — @deeamallon. Until recently most of my writing’s been fairly private. No more. I’ve written a novel, The Weight of Cloth, and it was published in September 2024.

For two years, I worked with a professional editor (process should’ve taken no more than four months, but never mind). Mostly, she helped me delete shit. Like 80,000 words? More? I then queried agents. They call that being “in the trenches” for a reason. Not for the faint of heart.

Then, like many others (particularly older female writers I’m told), I decided to self-publish. Also not for the faint of heart as it turns out. So many details! I went direct with KDP, Apple Play, Kobo, and am using D2D for everything else (if you don’t need to know what this means, you’re lucky).

ImageThe Weight of Cloth is set in South Carolina in the 1740’s. The story is told through four first person narratives: one historic white figure (Eliza Lucas Pinckney) and three invented enslaved characters. Occasionally, male bondmen contribute to the story, in particular to tell the events of the Stono Slave Rebellion since none of my female characters were there.

The research and travel associated with this writing project were life changing. For one thing, I fell in love with Southern cooking! Charleston is an amazing food town and if you haven’t been, it’s worth a trip. I went three times and I need to go at least once more because I still haven’t eaten at Husk.

More seriously, the research reoriented me to American history in significant ways.

The ongoing dialogues about cultural appropriation are challenging, difficult. What are the proper uses of the imagination? Do Black writers have a proprietary claim to stories about slavery? There are no easy answers.

Even as my whiteness became more apparently problematic, for reasons I don’t entirely understand (perhaps loyalty to my characters?), I kept at it. Two ideas underpin my persistence. The first is that Southern history during the years of labor camps is American history and therefore, my history. This view comports with the idea that it’s incumbent on all white Americans to take responsibility for slavery and its long, ugly, and ongoing shadow even if our particular families were not slave owners and maybe not even on this side of the Atlantic during the critical years.

The second idea has to do with the imagination — its uses, its range, its entitlements. I’ll admit to wanting to live in a society where anyone can write a book about anything.

Having said that, I swear the next writing adventure will be about a suburban fuck up looking for redemption in all the wrong places.

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29 thoughts on “Longer About”

  1. Imagearlijohn

    What a delight to meet you online and how great to find another Susan Carlson fan. I am going to visit your website and will visit your blog often. Once again, glad to meet you!

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  3. ImageGinny

    Hi Dee!

    I started at the beginning and have worked my way (almost) through all your pages and all I can say is I want a quilt, I want a quilt, I want a quilt — and a collage! Your work is beautiful and inspiring. Once I am finished with the pages, I am going shopping!!

    I love the way that life is worked out and through in small pieces, little by little, piece by piece – into a wonderful whole.

    I think our parents did us a disservice keeping the cousins apart. I have a website and a couple of blogs too (I can send you the links if you are interested). I hope we get to know each other electronically at least!

    With admiration,
    Ginny

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  5. ImageGinny

    Hooray! Very cool 🙂 Already you have already given so much to think about with soulcollage,etc. and now the phenomenom of family schisms. Wild.

    I look forward to comparing family notes. I will send you an email soon.

    I have a blog http://www.Crabmeadow.blogspot.com and a little webiste with photography called http://www.OpenRoadCreations.com. There is another blog I will tell you about separately. 🙂

    Keep sewing and writing, you are wonderful at both.

    Ginny

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  6. ImageLesley Austin

    Hello Dee,
    I am glad to have been brought here by your thoughtful comment at The Bower. I see you have two sons and a husband, so now I know who you meant when you mentioned “caretaking”. : ) I also have two sons and a husband, tho’ one son is away at college…but the caretaking doesn’t stop, it is just more mental and emotional than physical, I find.

    I loved seeing your quilts and your dear face in the photo above, and wish you success and joy with all of your creative pursuits-quilts and raising a family and everything else!

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    1. Imagedeemallon

      Thanks so much Lesley — I find that mentioning the things that we as crafters/artists must ‘overcome’ or accept is very helpful — ESPECIALLY because the job of mother is so often invisible… I’ll be checking in on your site more to see more of your wonderful work.

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  7. Imagejafagirls

    I so enjoyed visiting your blog, and thanks for adding my pic to your mosaic 🙂

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  16. ImageSandy Donabed

    Glad you found my (short) message about the ICA exhibit. Wish I knew you, love your ‘Cloth Company’ and your passions, and hope we can stay in touch! If you get to the ICA, allow plenty of time for the bookstore- there is stuff there of all sorts. The exhibit won’t take long in itself- but do look at Xenobia Bailey’s crocheted tent, and see the direct line to Susan Shie’s story telling quilts. I love when I find these connections… Sandy

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  20. ImageRose Bosse

    Yours has to be my absolute favourite blog. Thanks Dee for sharing it with us. I love the photography (I am a very keen one myself!), the artworks and the stitching. I tune in every morning (from Australia), and am never disappointed. Thank you. RB

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  21. ImageBetsy Smith

    Hi Dee. It’s Kenny’s cousin Betsy.
    Kathy sent me your book and I’m just starting it. 🙂
    I look forward to chatting about it at Thanksgiving.
    FYI, I sent my old email address in error. Ignore [email protected]

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    1. Imagedeemallon Post author

      I got your other email by email and look forward to seeing you next month! And I’ll definitely let you know about future workshops. My one class is full right now but I could add another later in the year.

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