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On Nantucket Toile, you’ll discover bikes resting against a wooden fence, an overflowing window box of flowers, catboats, and lifeguard stands. On Martha’s Vineyard Toile, there are beech trees, ferries, and the Flying Horses Carousel.
Charming with a fine quality of line and carefree movement, Peters’ drawings are different than the stiff, intricate copperplate etchings of traditional toile work. Her toile is masterfully rendered, but spare and sketchy, as if done quickly on a scrap of paper while lounging on the beach.
Of course, the reality behind her art is much more complex. Peters starts by going through an exhaustive, yet exuberant period of research, taking trips to places like Boston and the Vineyard to gather ideas. She collects armloads of sketches and photographs.
Once back in her studio, she begins to choreograph her response to places, people, and moments. Then, she slowly crafts a 54-inch long, 18 ½-inch wide pen drawing directly on cloth. This is a lengthy process of editing, revising, cutting, and pasting. When the compositions are just right, when the repeats are perfect, and when the negative spaces are just enough, she sends the finished drawing to a screen maker in Webster, Massachusetts, to be digitally scanned and transferred onto a screen. The textiles are screen-printed onto a cotton/sateen ground by Griswold Textile Printing in Rhode Island.
Separate screens, made for wallpaper, are sent to Geenwood Lake, New York, where they are printed by Barnaby Prints. Peters is quick to note how proud she is that the production is mostly locally done and entirely made in the USA.
As a celebration of a famous coastal world, Peters’ fabrics would make any New Englander proud. Of course for each vignette in her creations, Peters has a story—the kinds of stories that can brighten any Cape Cod day, rain or shine.
