Hi, I’m Patti McQuillin, owner of Crowfoot Studio.  I’ve been designing and making handcrafted ceramic tile since 2003.  It started with a fascination with the colors you can achieve by firing glazes onto clay ... and has become my passion, my voice, my way of looking at the world.  I am mostly self-taught in ceramics, after retiring from a career in local government emergency management. 

Ceramics is definitely the meeting of art and science, a combination of logic and magic.  For me, it’s a tantalizing process of solving problems, learning from experiments, and combining techniques in different ways.  One of my favorite techniques is "sgraffito," in which color is applied to raw clay and the design is carved through it to reveal the natural clay color beneath.

The studio is located in Gig Harbor, Washington, nestled among tall trees and with a  fair-weather view of beautiful Mt. Rainier.  
A native of the Pacific Northwest, I deeply love and am constantly inspired by our natural surroundings.  Most of my designs are derived from the trees, plants, animals, and landscapes of this region.