In case you haven’t had the opportunity to see or purchase one of Jill Butke’s works of art, in the form of a scarf, poncho, or cocoon, you’re missing out on some remarkable wearable art.

Jill Butke has been weaving her artful creations for more than 45 years, starting when she was an art major at Anna Maria College outside Worcester, Massachusetts.

Butke, who grew up in Ansonia, Connecticut, outside New Haven, went to work teaching art at an elementary school in Marlboro, Massachusetts immediately after graduating. During that time, she started taking a weaving class at the Worcester Center for Crafts.

“We touched upon a lot of things, including working with fiber,” she said. “My mother taught me to sew when I was young, and I had always sewn and made a lot of my own clothes, so weaving was something that I thought I’d find interesting.”

She did find it interesting, and continued taking one weaving class after another. She has been weaving ever since.

She met painter John Butke during that time, and after they married he suggested she buy a loom.

In the beginning, Butke was making less of the wearable art. “I did some wall hangings and place mats, and when we first started coming to Maine in 1974 I was making pillows with nautical flags designs.”

The Butkes, both teaching art at that time, Jill still in Marlboro, and John part-time at the University of Wisconsin, ended up on Sawyer’s Island by something of a fluke. “I used to come to Maine, as a kid, with my parents,” Butke said. “But we had never been to Boothbay.

“We wanted to go somewhere in Maine for the summer, but had no idea where. John got a map out and we looked at Wells, and Owl’s Head, and then came to Boothbay.” They looked at a small garage apartment on Sawyer’s Island. It was $800 for eight weeks, and they spent that and the next two summers there.

By the third summer, Butke was pregnant with their first child, and she persuaded her husband to move out of the one-room apartment for the next summer.

But they didn’t want to move far. “Sawyer’s Island was a great community, mostly a summer community. It is still a great place to live, but most of our neighbors are year-round now.”

There was a place nearby, a farmhouse with a cottage that had been transformed from two chicken coops, with an addition. They spent the next two summers there. Then the owners, Ed and Ruth Malcolm, told them they wanted to sell it.

By then the Butkes had become close friends with the Malcolms. “They were kind of like our summer parents,” Butke said. “Ed had had a loft built in his barn for John to use to paint.”

As time went on, Butke’s weaving started evolving more toward clothing: Scarves, jackets, ponchos, and cocoons – similar to ponchos but with a kind of open sleeve for your arms, so it stays in place.

Butke uses mostly acrylic yarns, with some wools and cottons mixed in. She weaves three scarves at a time, with three different color combinations, side by side, on her good-sized loom.

She said she likes yarns with variations in color, texture and thickness. “Weaving can be a pretty repetitive activity, just going back with the weft, or filler, being woven through the warp, so changes in color and texture keep it interesting when I’m working.”

In 2005, the Butkes retired to their year-round home on Sawyer’s Island, and in 2007 they opened the Butke Gallery, also on Sawyer’s Island. The gallery, at 33 Isle of Springs Road, is open from May to October, and features both John’s paintings and Jill’s woven art.

For inquiries about Butke’s woven items, email butkejj@gmail.com or visit https://www.thebutkegallery.com