Margaret Cusack is an illustrator, graphic designer and folk artist – all in one. Her work is best described as “Realism created with stitchery and fabric.” It is rich with color, texture, and detail, made with machine applique and hand embroidery. Since 1972, she has created architectural-scale hangings, soft sculpture, portraits, and props. Her stitched artwork has illustrated greeting cards, decorative plates, ads, posters, magazines, billboards, and most recently, postage stamps – all in fabric.

Her interest in stitched artwork began with a series of explorations in texture, color and sewing-machine embroidery. This resulted in her fabric collage machine applique technique. Cusack’s first piece was a rather naive stitched portrait of her husband, Frank. Then, by applying the graphic design techniques from her work as an art director/ designer, she developed a portfolio of stitched images for corporate, advertising, and editorial clients.

Cusack’s fiber art career includes hangings for The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York and Brooklyn’s Mugavero Center. She has also created stitched commissions for both public and private collections. Her work has been exhibited at the Renwick Gallery and the Smithsonian Institute. Highlights of her stitched illustration career include: “We Give Thanks,” a United States postage stamp for Thanksgiving 2001; the soft sculpture cover of the 1999 Print Magazine Regional Design Annual; a 1997 Time Magazine cover; the 1986 Avon calendar; the Altman’s Christmas catalog cover in 1981, a twelve-foot bus poster for Brooklyn’s Fulton Street Mall; “The Christmas Carol Sampler,” a 1983 book of songs; and “Shenandoah,” the Broadway musical poster. Cusack is available for commissions, exhibitions, lectures and workshops. alike.”

In 1988, Cusack received the Alumni Achievement Award from Pratt Institute,”...in recognition of her unique creative abilities which have made it possible for her to weave her reputation into the very fabric of the field of illustration, and in appreciation for her fresh, spirited approach to the ageless craft of the quilt, thus enabling all of us to see the newness and beauty that she can create through the art of fabric collage.”

Cusack’s new book, Picture Your World in Appliqué was been published by Watson-Guptill in August 2005 and includes seven projects and more than 200 color photographs. Robert Shaw, author of The Art Quilt commented, “Margaret Cusack’s textile Americana combines broadly appealing subject matter with serious artistic skills. This book makes her techniques as accessible as her images and provides information that will be useful to amateurs and professionals