Karen Payton

Karen Payton's passion for fabric began as a young girl watching her mother design and sew belly-dancing costumes. She studied Fashion Merchandising and Textiles at Northern Illinois University where she learned the art of stitching from Renie Brisken Adams, a pioneer within the genre of contemporary embroidered pictures. Since her first school project of taking a famous painting and turning it into an embroidered picture, Karen has become enchanted with the process of creating stitched images. Karen went on to work in the clothing industry and earned a masters degree in marketing. After the birth of her first son, she left corporate life to dedicate herself to family and art. After many years of finding her way through fabric, sewing and embroidery, Karen has developed a unique process to create her images. “My goal is to express feelings of love, harmony and joy, through stitches and fabric.” Karen works out of her home studio in beautiful Newbury Park, California.