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" Kathy Kansier",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-44,,,"Karen Musgrave","Kathy Kansier",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-44.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Kathy Kansier AFPBP-44 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Kathy Kansier Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-44 Kansier.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am conducting a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Kathy Kansier and she is in Ozark, Missouri and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is March 19, 2008. It is 11:11 in the morning. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview based on the exhibit " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Thank you Kathy so much for doing this interview with me and please tell me about your quilt " ; Dear Diary" ; which is in the exhibit. Kathy Kansier (KK): The quilt that I made for the exhibit was a hard quilt to make. I made it about my mother and about the process of having to put her into a nursing home when she started getting difficult to care for. KM: Is this quilt typical of your style? KK: It is and it isn' ; t. The quilt itself is a Crazy Quilt because it was a pretty crazy time in our lives. I do a lot of embroidery and beading on my quilts but the difference with this quilt was that it had to do with such a personal issue and a social and medical problem that we have in our world today. KM: How did you come up with the idea of doing a diary? Each block is a diary entry. KK: When I was a little girl I used to have a little pink diary that I would write in everyday and so I wanted to make the blocks as though I was entering into a diary. Each block on the quilt is a segment of something to do with my mother. It started out with learning that she had Alzheimer' ; s. Sometimes the doctor called it dementia. I never quite understood if there was even a difference between those two words. She was living with us at the time. She was okay some days but other days she would become very difficult to be around. She would argue about many things. Our children were in junior high at the time and it was hard on them. All my life I had promised my mother, ' ; I will never put you in a nursing home ; you can come and live with us when you get old.' ; When things got worse, it became a real struggle within me because I wanted to take care of her, but I found myself arguing with her. She was just difficult to care for. It came to the point that I had to decide which was more important - my husband and children or keeping my mother with us. The stress was becoming too difficult for everyone. So finally I had to put my mother in a nursing home and that was one of the hardest moments of my life. My Mother had always helped people during her life and here I was, her daughter, not wanting to help her anymore. I wanted to make the quilt to expose those difficulties in my life because I knew there had to be other daughters and sons out there that had to go through the same thing. I felt really alone at that time in my life and I want others going through that same experience to know that they were not alone. There really weren' ; t many places at that time in my life that I knew of that could help us to understand and take care of my Mom or knowing, just how to work through all of those feelings. I felt that I was a terrible daughter while others were taking care of their mothers just fine. [I felt very selfish and lacking in love, patience and understanding.] KM: Not an easy thing. KK: No it wasn' ; t and it brings a lot of guilt, a lot of really bad feelings within you. I made that quilt wanting people that were going through a similar situation to be able to relate to it and know I had gone through the same thing. That was my whole reason for making the quilt. It took me a long time to actually come up with what I wanted to say through the quilt and how I wanted to make it. I was really struggling because many of the other people that were making these quilts were just doing fine. Their quilts were getting done for being sent in to the curator. There was a deadline and I couldn' ; t come up with what this quilt was going to be, what it was going to look like. Finally I woke up one night at 2 a.m. with a vision of the quilt in my mind. It was as though the Lord had given the whole idea and picture of the quilt to me. I jumped out of bed and just started making the quilt. I had it done in a couple of days as far as piecing the blocks and borders together and writing the little diary entries that went on it. [My husband saw the diary entries on the ironing board and said, ' ; Now that brings back memories! What are you making and why?' ; ] KM: The diary entries, did you do those on the computer? KK: Yes I did. I typed them on the computer, made them into photo transfers and put a fusible web on the back of each one. The blocks were Crazy Quilt blocks that I had actually purchased at a quilt show in Florida. The guild had a boutique and there was a set of Crazy Quilt blocks that I had bought from them. When I started to pull the fabrics for this quilt, I saw the crazy quilt blocks in my sewing room and I decided to use them rather than making new ones. My Mother would have liked that. She had gone through the Depression and was always talking about ' ; making do with what you have.' ; So the blocks were already done for me over five years ago. I fused the journal entries on the center of each one and then put borders on the quilt. I didn' ; t really like the machine quilting that I was starting to do so I took that all out and put hand embroidered feather stitches on it for the quilting. I wanted it to have a Crazy Quilt look anyway so the feather stitches seemed appropriate. I felt that the long lines of feather stitches on the borders represented thoughts in our brain where we would go off this way and think for a while and then come back to the stem and go another way. As we get older sometimes those thought processes are shorter and sometimes they don' ; t make any sense. So the whole purpose of the feather stitches around the borders was to represent our thoughts. I like to work with hot colors and batiks so the words, " ; Dear Diary" ; and " ; Love, Kathy" ; (which is always how I signed my diary), were done in a hot pink on a dark blue. The hot pink represented my childhood diary and provided a good contrast of colors in the quilt. KM: Did you do this by hand? KK: Yes. I love working by hand. My mom taught me to sew when I was four. She really did. She started me out on those yarn cards on which you follow the numbers and make a picture. When I got good at making those, I progressed to stamped cross stitch and embroidery. I grew up in the fifties and we went to the dime store where we would buy these stamped little things. There were baby bibs, tea towels and pillow cases to make. So I was doing simple embroidery when I was five and six years old. I went on to sewing clothing and was in 4-H. I also took a required home economics class in eighth grade and learned more about sewing. During all stages of my life, I have enjoyed hand work. Today I do lots of beading and embroidery on my quilts and I love making hand appliqué quilts. I do a lot of counted cross stitch. I also make baskets and I hook rugs. So this quilt was just an extension of the type of sewing that I do. KM: What are your plans for this quilt when it returns to you? KK: I don' ; t know. It has been gone so long now. It has been traveling for over two years but I have been able to see it. I saw it at three different places where it was being exhibited. I will probably hang it in a bedroom, in a guest bedroom in our home and that will be hard too because my mom stayed in one of the extra bedrooms when she lived with us. It will be a tribute to her. It is a personal quilt. People will look at it when they come to our home and I will have to explain to them what that was all about. [I often wonder what my mother would think about this quilt if she was alive today. She had helped many people in her life time. My mom worked most of her life. She had worked in nursing homes and saw the sadness that often occurs in those places. During her later years, she worked for a social service department in Wisconsin. She helped to organize programs for the blind and deaf people in her community as well as for low-income families and the elderly. I think she would be pleased that I helped to raise money for Alzheimer' ; s research by making this quilt. I also wonder what my children think about this quilt. They have seen it but haven' ; t said much. I hope they never have to experience what I did as far as having to deal with a difficult mother and putting me into a nursing home. If you asked them today about me, they might tell you I' ; ve always been difficult. My mom was too but she definitely got worse toward the end.] KM: Tell me about your impressions of the exhibit. KK: The exhibit. The first time I saw it was in St. Louis and then I saw it at the AQS Show in Paducah and then at a quilt festival in New Hampshire. I then saw it at the Shelburne Museum. No, that' ; s not right. I saw a different quilt exhibit there. KM: That is okay. KK: It is. I believe the exhibit is going to the Shelburne and I want and go see it when they are there. The first time I saw the exhibit, it was real interesting to stand back and watch people looking at my quilt. I saw people actually crying as they read each diary entry that I had on there. Every time you have a quilt in a show it is good to see it displayed, but seeing people' ; s reactions with this quilt was really interesting. My husband drove me over to St. Louis to see it. It was at a guild quilt show. I kept going back to that row to look at the quilt up close and to also see it from a distance. Finally my husband said, ' ; You know, I think it is the best quilt in the exhibit.' ; And I said, ' ; Oh, okay now we can go home.' ; [laughs.] KM: [laughs.] Do you have any favorites? KK: In the exhibit? I love the one that is called " ; Leaving Us" ; . When I first got the CD that they had put out about the quilts, I watched it on my computer. There was a picture of each quilt with the artist reading their statement about their quilt. The one " ; Leaving Us" ; really impressed me. It had three trees and the leaves each had something to do with Alzheimer' ; s and feelings and thoughts. That quilt really impressed me. KM: That is Cheryl Lynch' ; s quilt. There is a CD and each one of us had to record our artist statement on the CD, because there is an audio component to that. Tell me about that experience for you. KK: We had problems recording that. Three times we tried to do it but my words didn' ; t get recorded. I' ; m not sure why. We live in the country between Springfield and Branson and sometimes we just have difficulties with our computers and our telephones. So Ami said, ' ; Why don' ; t you drive up to town and call me on your cell phone and we will try it one more time.' ; So, I drove to town and was sitting in our bank parking lot with my daughter-in-law when I recorded it. I had the whole thing written of what I was going to say and every time I started doing the recording, I would get to about the third sentence and then I would start crying. It was so hard to deal with what I was saying because it brought back all of those old memories. It is also the statement that has been the artist statement next to my quilt at the shows and is in the book. I kept saying, ' ; Scratch that Ami let' ; s start again.' ; It was such an emotional time to read that statement over and over again until I got it right for the CD. KM: It was tough for me too. Ami kept emailing me and saying, doing it again. KK: [laughs.] I thought I was the only one that had problems doing that recording. In fact, I thought I was the only one who put their mother in a nursing home. I guess I was not alone. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. KK: My quiltmaking started back in the early seventies. I was living in northern California and I had my first son, Joshua. He is now grown up teaching at a university in Michigan and doing really well in life. When he was born someone said to me, ' ; Well, you have to make your baby a quilt.' ; This was that time of the 70s quilt revival. I thought that would be easy to do because I' ; d been sewing all my life so I certainly could make quilts. I reasoned that they are flat and square and would not be difficult to make like clothing. I started making his baby quilt and it was a nightmare learning how to make a quilt. We didn' ; t have quilt shops back then. I bought poly-cotton fabric at Penney' ; s. I didn' ; t even know enough to use cotton. I used a great big thick batting because I thought he needed to be warm. I ended up tying the quilt rather than quilting it. But when I made that quilt, I wanted to make more quilts because I wanted to get better at it. I spent the ' ; 70' ; s and ' ; 80' ; s trying to teach myself quiltmaking. I had moved back to Wisconsin and my husband took me to visit the Amish in our area so I could see their quilts. We became friends with a real special Amish family that sold quilts. I would go up there every two weeks and look at the Amish quilts and talk to them about quilt making. That was my beginning stages of quiltmaking and I learned a lot from them. We left western Wisconsin in the mid-eighties. We had become Born Again Christians and we moved to Mexico to be missionaries. I brought my fabrics and my Quilters' ; Newsletter [Magazine.] with me. I didn' ; t have a lot of time to actually make quilts during that time. I made church banners and things for vacation Bible school for the kids. The 70s and 80s were my original quilt making training years. I' ; ve made every mistake that could possibly be made on a quilt. I could definitely write the book of how not to make a quilt. We moved to Missouri in 1992. Missouri is a real crafty sort of area. It seems that everybody makes quilts, baskets, rug hooking and all sorts of things. I joined a quilt guild. It was the first time I was ever in a quilt guild. I didn' ; t know anything about guilds but when I walked into that first meeting and saw all the quilts they had for show and tell, I was just amazed at how beautiful the quilts were. One of the ladies said to me, ' ; Well, do you make quilts?' ; I said, Oh sure, ' ; I have been making quilts since 1974.' ; She said, ' ; Why don' ; t you bring some for show and tell next month?' ; I was so naïve back then [laughs.] I brought some of my quilts and talked about my self-taught quilt making and my friendship with the Amish. One of the ladies came up to me after the guild meeting and said, ' ; You know we have a lot of workshops and you might want to take some.' ; [laughs.] I think it was a hint and what she was really saying was, ' ; Hey, you need some improvement here.' ; So, I did start taking a lot of workshops and I started going to quilt shows and learning to be a quiltmaker and my quilt making began to improve. All of that really helped in the process. I still make mistakes on quilts. I' ; ve always joked that when I die, I want my tombstone to say, ' ; I will never do it that way again.' ; Because with ever quilt I learned something and I always say, " ; I will never do it that way again." ; I always learn how not to do something on the quilt and what I could do better. As a result of all of my self-teaching and the workshops I took, I ended up teaching quilt making. I now travel all over the United States to teach at guilds and shows. I even went to Brazil this last November to judge and teach at a quilt festival. With my teaching, I get to teach my students how to avoid my mistakes and how to become successful quiltmakers. I often say, ' ; Don' ; t do it this way, do it like this instead.' ; That brings a lot of joy in my life. My mom taught me a lot of things of what to do and what not to do in my sewing, so I' ; m now able to pass a lot of things on to people just like she had passed a tradition on to me. KM: Tell me about Brazil. KK: It was really interesting. The hardest part of it was the traveling. My husband went along with me. We traveled over 15 hours on airplanes to get to our destination. I had taught at the Houston Quilt Festival just before that. I had stood for seven days teaching in Houston, which normally is not a problem while you are teaching. Teachers work hard. We do a lot of standing and walking in our classrooms. When we sit down, we feel the pain in our legs and feet. I got on the plane right after my last class. I sat down after seven days of standing and went to Brazil. That was stupid. Whatever was I thinking? The plane ride was very difficult. We had no leg room and I was really wishing I had a first class seat, but those were really expensive. We got to Brazil and transferred to another city in southeast Brazil. It was called Gramado. It was this quaint little town up in the mountains where a lot of people had moved from Europe after World War II. There were a lot of Italians, Germans and Swiss. It looked like the little European town in the middle of Brazil. The festival--I was a little nervous about having to teach using an interpreter. I had used interpreters when we lived in Mexico and worked with the churches, so I knew how to do that, but I wondered how it was going to work as a quiltmaking teacher. I had the best interpreters in Brazil. They were quilt teachers and so they knew what I was trying to say to my students as I was teaching. If someone didn' ; t understand something, the interpreters would just go on and explain what I was saying. It was good. The quiltmakers were wonderful. I also judged the quilt show. It was a very difficult show to judge because their quilts were excellent. There were many original designs and they used their colors well. They don' ; t have the two hundred year background of traditional quilt making that we have here in the United States. As a result, they are more creative. I' ; d say seventy-five percent of the quilts at that show were art quilts. It was a time when I wished that there had been more than one judge because it was difficult to pick the best of show and the blue ribbon quilts. They have really poor quality fabrics made in their country. The few fabrics that are imported into the country are expensive because of import taxes. In our country, we walk into quilt stores and have two to three thousand bolts to pick from. They may have a hundred. The vendors at the show didn' ; t have much to sell as far as batiks, Hoffman fabrics or Moda fabrics. What they did have was $24.00 a yard. We normally pay eight and nine dollars a yard for those same fabrics in our country. The fabric from their country is a real gauzy cheap fabric similar to what we had back in the sixties and seventies. So they do a lot of thread work over it. There really is a thing called Brazilian embroidery and they do beautiful things on top of the poor quality fabric to hide it. It was a really good trip, one that I will never forget. It was a special experience to go down there and see the country and to meet so many nice people. What is really interesting is this year, in 2008, I have a quilt that was accepted into the AQS Show in Paducah. I was reading the list of contestants for the 2008 AQS Show and I found one of my new Brazilian friends on the list. She was one of the ladies that had organized my trip to Brazil and had interpreted for me. I emailed her and she is coming to the AQS Show in April. I will get to see her and we will have dinner together. That is the beauty of quiltmaking you can meet people all over the world through the Internet, at guilds and at quilt shows and become friends for life with many wonderful people. How would I have ever come to know this person if it hadn' ; t been through quiltmaking? KM: You are also an AQS certified appraiser. KK: I do three things. My hobby turned into a business. My husband accuses me of being a nonprofit business because every time I go to shows I bring back a lot of things. I just have to have that fabric or that pattern or those beads so I tend to spend money at the shows. I teach quiltmaking, I judge quilt shows and I' ; m an appraiser. So, I get to see all of the neat quilts up close. It is a really neat career that I have. The three things all blend together and guilds and shows hire me because they just have to pay one airfare to get me there and I can multi-task for them. I travel a lot and spend a lot of time in airplanes. But, I get to meet so many wonderful quiltmakers. People often ask me what do you like the best of the three things that you do. Judging is the hardest for me because I don' ; t want to say something that is going to really hurt somebody in their quiltmaking. I want to be a judge that encourages people to go on and improve on their skills and to see the points that need improvement. But judging is hard because every word in every sentence that you say is going to have an effect on the entrant when they get their evaluations back. [To date, I have judged 39 shows and volunteered on 10 other judging floors as a helper. Recently, I had the privilege of judging at the Road to California Show near Los Angelos and the Appliqué Society Show in Tampa.] Appraising. I love appraising because I get to see antique quilts, I get to see new quilts, I get to hear stories about a great-grandmother that made this quilt and it was passed down through the family. [I also get to educate people regarding the care of their quilts. I want them to get their quilts out of the trunk and enjoy them. But I also want to teach them how to display them so they will last for future generations. It is a hard thing to appraise because we have to set a value on a quilt, and so it is a lot of research that we do.] I have lots of books on quiltmaking and quilt history. I' ; m on the Internet all the time checking prices of what quilts are selling for. That part of my work does take a lot of time, but it is enjoyable time. I' ; m not sure I make much money by the hour when I do all the work that I do on these appraisals, but I find that real fulfilling. I have always loved history. I watch the History Channel on TV and I watch news, I read encyclopedias, I read quilt books and so the appraising and doing lots of research on quilts and their values is a fun thing for me to do. The thing I really, really enjoy the most is my teaching. I can help people not to make mistakes in their quiltmaking or to teach them a new way to put a binding on a quilt or to insert piping into the binding or a new way to appliqué things, how to make perfect circles and I love to watch those light bulbs going off in the classroom when people start getting it. [I recently learned that I have been chosen as the recipient of the 2008 Jewel Pearce Patterson Scholarship for Quilt Teachers. This is sponsored by the International Quilt Festival and Market. I have been awarded a two week trip to the Houston Market and Festival to take an unlimited amount of classes. In return, I am required to develop new classes and hang an exhibit of work make by my students at the 2009 IQA [International Quilt Association.] Festivals. This is a very special award for me because I will be able to develop my teaching skills even farther than I have to this point.] KM: Describe your studio. KK: It is a mess right now, but it is always a mess. [laughs.] It has never been perfect like I would like it to be. But, neither are my quilts. I have this thing about wanting everything to be in its place, but when I sew everything comes out of its place and ends up in big piles. We live in the country on thirteen acres that are just really, really pretty. One of our intentions is that we are going have a quilter' ; s retreat center on our property and bring people here. I will have to get that whole studio cleaned up by then, but that is a couple of years off. My husband is a contractor and has been in construction for over thirty years. He is planning to build a large classroom for quilters to come and enjoy the peacefulness of the Ozarks. I was sewing in the house on the kitchen table and on his pool table. One time I cut the pool table with the rotary cutter and cut right through that felt. He wanted me to have a nice place to sew and so he built me this really nice room as my studio. I thought was so big I wouldn' ; t know where to put everything. Well, now I think it should have been twice the size that we built. It has cupboards and large closets with shelves are hidden when I close the doors. I like that because I have a lot of things in boxes. Each box is labeled so I know what is inside the box. They say " ; blue fabric" ; or " ; 1850 quilt," ; or " ; quilting stencils," ; etc. So when I open those doors I can find things immediately. I don' ; t have to spend hours looking for them. I just read the labels on the boxes. The problem is that things come out of the boxes and don' ; t get put back in. I' ; m in the Bernina National Teacher Program and I have a Bernina sewing machine that I sew on. I also have a couple of Viking sewing machines. I' ; m really blessed with good sewing machines. I have my computer out there because I write all of my appraisals on that computer. I also do all my quilt making business on that computer - things like contracts, advertising, my web site, contacting guilds, writing patterns etc. I have all of my books that are quilt related in that room. I have a short arm commercial sewing machine that I can do quilting on, but it is like the walking machine. It gets a lot of things piled on it. [laughs.] It is a good room. It is a functional room. It was designed specifically as my studio. I actually call it my sewing room because that is what my mom always called her room where she sewed and kept her crafts. We never called things studios back then. One of the other teachers said, ' ; Kathy you are going to have to start calling it a studio that is a much more professional thing to call it.' ; I replied that I like to honor those ladies back in the fifties that had sewing rooms. My mom didn' ; t get her sewing room until her children were grown and she retired. Many of the ladies in the 50s and 60s didn' ; t have special sewing rooms ; they just had the kitchen table. When my kids were growing up that is where I sewed. I was on the kitchen table if I was doing anything with a sewing machine. I had to learn to sew fast, because I had to clear the table off for supper. I think that is why I gravitate more to the hand work too because I can sit in the living room with my husband and watch TV and do my hand appliqué or do my beading or whatever it is that I' ; m working on. I like projects that I can take with me anywhere and I' ; m not stuck off at the kitchen table or in another room. KM: You are also an author. KK: Yes, I wrote two books a couple of years ago. [One is called " ; Protecting Tomorrow' ; s Treasures Today" ; and the other book is an appliqué book called " ; Ozark Varieties." ; You can find them both on my web site along with patterns I' ; ve developed. My web site is: www.kathykansier.com.] I helped to start an appliqué group in the Springfield, Missouri area that is an extension of our quilt guild. We average about thirty ladies that come each month. We meet on the first Saturday of each month, and it is called As the Needle Turns. I had been teaching appliqué at a local quilt shop in Springfield and a lot of the ladies would say, ' ; I wish there was some kind of group where we could keep meeting and keep learning more things about appliqué.' ; Finally I called a friend of mine and I said, ' ; Why don' ; t we start an appliqué group? They are all begging for this group and maybe there will be ten, twelve people but let' ; s go ahead and do it.' ; The first time we met there were fifty people that came. I was shocked that there were so many people that wanted to know about appliqué. We have been meeting for over five years now. Like I said, we average about thirty people now at the meetings. One year one of the ladies came up to me in November, and said, ' ; We should do a block of the month next year and have everybody make the same quilt in fabrics that they want to use.' ; I thought she meant that she wanted me to design a quilt for the group. I thought, ' ; when am I going to have time to do that?' ; I said to her, ' ; Well let me think about it.' ; I went home and the more and more I thought about it, I thought well I could do that. But then I couldn' ; t come up with what I wanted to design. I' ; m always very careful about copyright and not looking at another appliqué quilt and making a design that would in any way be a copyright infringement. So I was really struggling with what this quilt would be. I knew I needed a block for each month, so it would have to have nine to twelve blocks. I wanted the blocks to be symmetrical and fairly easy so the students would learn to accurately place the motifs on the block. I started looking through my antique quilt books and was really inspired by the traditional symmetrical look of the old appliqué blocks. Finally one night I got up again 2:00 in the morning and just started drawing out the individual blocks and overall quilt on freezer paper. I use freezer paper a lot for my designing and came up with nine blocks. I had them done by 6:30 in the morning of what I wanted to do. Each block was sketched out and I knew that the Lord had given me those blocks. I brought them to the group the next month, and I said, ' ; Here is the quilt we are going to start in January.' ; I told the group how much fabric they would need to make the entire quilt. Every month, I would make that month' ; s block so they would know what it is suppose to look like. I actually made two blocks in different colors. One was made with hand appliqué and the other was made using machine appliqué. They had to trust me that this was all going to come together okay because they were buying a lot of fabric. For some of the ladies, it was the first quilt they had ever made. Each month we would come with our blocks and lay them down on the floor and look at them. It was so inspiring to see all of the blocks. We would say, ' ; Oh look at hers she used the peach and the green in her block, I wish I would have used those colors.' ; Or ' ; Look she added beading and ruching on that flower.' ; Or, ' ; Look at the fussy cutting she did on her flowers.' ; The ladies were doing all sorts of things. Each block was individualized in some way and we were all inspired and learning from each other. While this process was going on, I thought, ' ; I might as well make this into a book and sell this pattern because the quilt was turning out to be a good quilt.' ; But it wasn' ; t even so much to sell the patterns in a book, it was to show the quilts that the ladies had made. I ended up self-publishing the book. I had a really nice publisher and printing company in Minnesota that I worked with and printed the book up. It was expensive to self-publish. My husband paid for the printing of the book. I still have it available and it has pictures of I believe there are eighteen or twenty quilts made by these ladies. There is a little paragraph next to each quilt that tells about the quiltmaker. The ladies wrote their own stories about themselves and their quilts. I was amazed because I didn' ; t know that for many, it was their very first full-sized quilt. It was really neat to learn this. When we exhibited the quilts together at our local quilt show, my husband came to see the quilts. He was walking and looking at all the quilts. It was fun to watch everybody look at them, because they would walk down the aisle and all of a sudden they would stop about halfway through and they would look back and forth and say, ' ; Wait a minute, these quilts are all the same pattern. This is the neatest thing because all of these quilts have the same pattern but they look so totally different. They have different colors and different things that they have added on to their quilts.' ; When my husband saw it, he was talking to one of the ladies about her quilt. She started to cry and told him, ' ; This was the first quilt that I made and if it wasn' ; t for this appliqué group I wouldn' ; t have done this. I have met so many friends.' ; After she left he looked at me and said, ' ; Well, now I understand why you had to write that book, why you had to do this pattern and why you had to create this appliqué group. I now totally understand what is going on here.' ; That is one of those neat things about quilt making and this appliqué group. It is nothing that I would have planned. I don' ; t look through life and know what the end result of some of the things that I do and what they will become or who they will affect. We meet the first Saturday of each month and there is camaraderie in this group. We have all learned from each other. Just little tidbits. Someone would say I' ; m really having trouble appliquéing inside curves, does anybody have any hints to help me. The ladies will jump up and say, here is what I do to get that to make it lay flat. So we really have learned from each other and our quilts, every quiltmaker in there is getting better and better as a result of that. [Last year, a husband of one of the ladies had an accident after an ice storm. He fell off a ladder and broke his leg. He had seven surgeries and finally ended up having his leg amputated. Our group, along with our local TAS chapter, made an appliqué quilt and raffled tickets to raise money for his medical bills. We raised nearly $4,000 for that family.] KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? KK: I used to think it was how it turned out, how it looks visually. I teach a class on color and design. I used to think that, along with perfect techniques is the most important thing in quilt making. Now I think what is important is the process of making a quilt. It is what we learn along the way that makes each quilt special. As I' ; ve gotten older, I' ; ve learned I don' ; t have to have that quilt done before supper when I had to clear the table off. Now I can enjoy each step of the way. Fixing things when they don' ; t turn out right and learning from them, I think that is what makes a great quilt. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? KK: I think one of the challenges is learning to be creative. As a Christian I know that God created everything. When we moved to Missouri, I used to sit and just sit out in the yard and look at the trees and enjoy how beautiful it is here. I would just marvel at the creativeness of God. I took time to smell the roses. One day I realized that if I am made in his image and that means I' ; ve got to have some creativity in me. Prior to that, the only type of quilts I made were from patterns and books. I would go to the quilt shop and see a sample quilt made and I would say, ' ; I want to make that quilt in those colors and fabrics.' ; I would panic if they were out of a certain fabric that was in that quilt. I didn' ; t realize that I could change things, that I could alter patterns. I still buy patterns and I still make Block of the Month quilts because there are some great patterns out there. But the quilts that are winning at the shows, even on a regional level, but especially on a national level are the ones that are original designs. They are not made from patterns. So that is the challenge for quiltmakers. It is hard to walk out of that box of just buying a pattern and making it to get to the place of creating their own quilts, picking out the right colors, learning what makes a good design and what doesn' ; t. One of the classes that I have developed is teaching people how to make an underwater scene. My students learn how to place rocks and plants and fish, how to add beads, how to pick out colors and fabrics. I love when I teach at the quilt shop in Springfield because my favorite time is when a student says to me, ' ; I' ; m really having trouble picking out fabrics for this quilt.' ; My instant response is, ' ; Let' ; s go to the shelves.' ; I know the clerks just cringe because they see me pulling fabrics off the shelves and laying them out for people. I try to remember to put them all back when we are done. It is a fun thing to teach people of how to choose colors and fabrics that work well together. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? KK: I like every quilt I see and that' ; s not a lie. It is the truth. Every time I see a quilt, whether it is traditional quilt or an art quilt, a crazy quilt, a pieced quilt, I just marvel at it because I know how much work is in it. I see a lot of quilts. When I go to judge shows I see hundreds of quilts. When I go to teach or appraise, I see a lot of quilts. I dream about quilts all the time and if I could just remember what I dream I' ; d be thrilled because I know I' ; ve got a Best of Show quilt in my dreams. The problem is that I can' ; t remember what it looks like when I wake up. As far as quilts that I enjoy the most, I' ; m most impressed with Hollis Chatelain' ; s quilts, because she has a God given talent that I don' ; t have. She really is an artist. She paints with dyes and takes her sewing machine and does incredible things with these images. So, when I see her quilts, for example the " ; Blue Man" ; quilt that hung in Houston a few years back or the new purple one that is called " ; Desmond Toto" ; that won Best of Show in Houston I am so impressed with her artistry. I stand for hours looking at her quilts. She is so talented. I like Ricky Tim' ; s quilts because Ricky is so likeable as a quiltmaker, as a pianist. He is always encouraging quiltmakers including myself. So I' ; m drawn to his quilts too just because I know that personality and that love of quiltmaking and for quilters that is in him. I could go on and on with quilters. I admire Judith Montano because she makes the most beautiful crazy quilts and silk ribbon flowers. Her talent amazes me. Diane Gaudynski is another quiltmaker that I admire. Each year I try to choose a technique that I' ; m not really good at and try to improve on it. I often tell quiltmakers it is like pole vaulting. When you jump over the pole and clear it, then they raise that pole to the next level. We need to do that too in our quiltmaking to attempt to get better as we go. Last year my goal was to learn how to get better at machine quilting. I drove to Paducah and took a three day class with Diane Gaudynski on machine quilting. I learned so much from her. I learned how to make the perfect feather and how to hold my hands on the machine to be comfortable and not tense and how to learn to stop when things weren' ; t going right. That was a hard thing for me, because I keep thinking, ' ; It is going to get better, I' ; m going to get these curves smooth and it is only getting worse.' ; Now when I do my machine quilting, I can hear this little voice of Diane' ; s in the back of my head saying, ' ; Kathy, just stop.' ; I really admire her work, because she really does do just perfect, perfect quilting. I like Sue Nichols from Michigan. Sue and her sister that made the Beetle quilt or there was another one they made, an astronaut quilt. They take a theme and just follow it through and do wonderful machine appliqué and machine quilting on it. I like quilts that make me laugh or smile. I like quilts that bring a tear to my eye, because all of those emotions when we see quilts are really, really important. I watch people at shows as much as I at the quilts. When I see a quilt that is being photographed a lot, I know that is a good quilt. When I see a quilt that nobody is looking at, a quilt that everybody is just passing by, I know that that quilt either has problems in color and design or it' ; s just kind of plain. But I also know that somebody made that quilt and really did the best that they could at that time in their lives. I do look at every quilt in respect of their makers, but I really look most at the ones that are being photographed a lot. They may not have a ribbon on them, but I know that is the winning quilt. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? KK: It is the people. Some day when I die, I want people to remember me as a quiltmaker that took the time to try and teach other people some things. I want them to remember me as a decent person and a Christian. I always share my faith when I' ; m giving a lecture. I don' ; t do it trying to offend anybody but to explain to them how God has caused me to try to be good at what I do in life and to treat people good. I explain that I do my quiltmaking as though I was doing it onto the Lord. That means trying to do the best that I can at that particular day in my life. That is why quiltmaking is important to me. It is also the friendships that I make. The quilts eventually will be gone, quilts get lost and stolen or used up but the friendships remain. I have quilt a few antique quilts in my collection. Some of them have holes or the binding is fraying. I can' ; t throw them away because I think somebody made this somewhere at a point in our history. Their family didn' ; t keep it for whatever reason. When I find quilts in antique stores or yard sales, I grab them up. I grab cross stitch up and buy it just because I know somebody put their heart in that thing. I love those handmade things. Back in the sixties and seventies and even to this day I have been somebody who we always have a garden. I can foods, make rugs, weave baskets and quilting is another part of that whole homemade process. We heat with wood. Everything that the early colonists did, I like to keep doing that. I meet young girls today that don' ; t know how to sew a button on. They don' ; t know how to cook a roast. They don' ; t know how to make a pie crust. Some of this is because our school systems have dropped home economics from their programs. Another reason is that we have a high divorce rate in our country and single moms have to work and don' ; t have time to pass on traditions to their children. Our economy is such that most moms in two parent homes have to work and our children grow up in daycares. That is so sad to me because we have become such a fast food nation. We go to McDonald' ; s drive through or pick up a pizza because we don' ; t have time to cooks supper. We are not taking the time to stop and enjoy handmade things, whether it is food or sewing or quilts. So it is important to me to keep trying to pass that whole tradition on to the next generation. KM: What do you think of the future of quiltmaking? KK: I think if we don' ; t keep trying to pass on the tradition, it is eventually going to go away. Although I see so many people into quiltmaking. I really have had this problem of not knowing just what is going to happen regarding the future of quilt making. I heard a statistic that there are twenty-four million quiltmakers. That is quite a few. But then I see the younger generation getting more into fashion and clothing, Project Runaway and all those sort of things. But I' ; m not sure what is going to happen with quiltmaking. It has been the one craft that has lasted the longest, although people are getting into rug hooking again. But many of the things that we did, macramé back in the sixties and seventies ; we aren' ; t doing those things anymore. Counted cross stitch and embroidery seems to have gone by the wayside a bit. Wal-Mart stopped carrying embroidery floss now. They are taking their fabrics out of their stores. That tells me that the future of this whole industry is a little shaky. The sewing machine companies--wing machines are so expensive today. When I graduated from high school, I got two things, I got a set of suitcases, what does that tell you, and the other thing I got was a sewing machine. I sewed on that one hundred dollar sewing machine for fifteen years before I got another sewing machine that was a better one with more stitches on it. Young people today, I' ; m not sure they can afford some of these expensive sewing machines. They may get into the hand work. I know that knitting is a big thing right now and it is hand work. I love when we have somebody that is under thirty that wants to come to our appliqué group or shows up in one of my classes. I had a nine year old girl come with her mother to one of my classes in Brazil. I' ; m really not sure where things are headed. Quilting has lasted because it is a social event. Back in the 1800' ; s it was the quilting bees where people would meet their friends, neighbors and would come together and quilt on a quilt. They would have a dinner afterwards and a dance and that is usually where you met your husband. So quilting has always been social, even in the Depression when we left the farms and moved into the cities, we had little groups that would meet in apartments, but it was often too small so they started meeting in churches and doing their quilting bees there. Today we' ; ve got the quilt guilds that are just wonderful things to belong to, whether it is a little guild of thirty people or a guild with five hundred in it. They have a lot to offer as far as friendships and education for the quilters. I think that quilt making is going to continue at least for the next generation and then we will have to see. I' ; m busy teaching my four year old granddaughter to quilt. She has an interest and I' ; m helping to boost it. The quilt shows--quilts are becoming an art form, although I' ; ve always believed that anything that is visual is art. Quilts are not just crafts, they are an art form. But there is a real artistic movement within quilting today. So when you walk in these shows and you see things that are just phenomenal as far as design. Every year when I see these quilts, I think ' ; Why didn' ; t I think of that? I could have won an award if I had thought of that design.' ; I' ; m always amazed how the quilts are getting better and better. Technically and design wise and color wise. If you look at the quilting magazines that we had say in the early eighties as opposed to what is on the covers of these magazines now, you will see a marked improvement in quiltmaking. That has to do with a lot of the teachers and with the workshops that people are taking. People are learning things in those workshops and then they are going on and just exploding with their creativity. KM: We have been talking for more than forty-five minutes. KK: I just rambled and rambled. KM: No you did wonderfully. I want to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and ideas, and we are going to conclude our interview at 9:00. KK: Thank you Karen. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-44.xml AFPBP-44.xml ",,,,"Karen Alexander, in honor of Barbara Gonce",,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/3998abfc7c2bf17a849f21aa3b564676.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Nancy Daniel",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-43,,,"Karen Musgrave","Nancy Daniel",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-43.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Nancy Daniel AFPBP-43 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Nancy Daniel Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-43 Daniel.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Nancy Brenan Daniel. Nancy is in Prescott, Arizona and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is March 14, 2008. It is 11:15 in the morning. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview, which his based on an exhibit called " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Nancy thank you for doing this interview with me, and please tell me about your quilt " ; Research Now There is Still Time" ; which is in the exhibit. Nancy Brenan Daniel (NBD): The quilt title came from a talk I had with Ami. We were talking about Alzheimer' ; s. I had known for some time that her mother had this form of dementia. We were talking about the need for research money and that there had been several promising results of tests and various treatments. I had firsthand awareness of some of the chemical treatments or drug treatments because two of my friends, the spouse of one of my dearest friends and a woman friend of mine. Both of them have dementia and have been diagnosed probably as Alzheimer' ; s. I have watched their families deal with this and I have watched Ami deal with both the tragic and the comical aspects of this disease. I thought what can I do? What can we do to raise money, to raise awareness while there is still time for these wonderful people who are still living and for the families of these people. Obviously the imagery for my quilt had to deal with time. The obvious imagery was going to be something like clocks. I thought as an art historian. As a trademark of an art historian, we deal with icons or images all the time. I thought, ' ; well, a clock is a little bit too obvious.' ; So I started sketching and playing around with sketches of other time pieces and thinking about artists who have dealt with ' ; time' ; or the images of time. How they may have portrayed time? As I played with the idea the sketches started taking forms of extremely realistic hourglasses--thinking of time sifting through the hourglass some memories sifting through that sort of thing. Those sort of images. I refined my drawings. I was pretty much drawing little thumbnails. Small-print kinds of sketches. I kept moving through the process until finally I was working on 24 inches by 36 inches paper. That was my ideal size. That is kind of the way I design, not patchwork, but that is the way I design appliqué. I had originally thought this would be an appliqué. I kept playing with that idea. Drawing it and drawing it and drawing it and of course as all quilters know, and artists know, we all work on deadlines. As the deadline approached the concept moved from appliqué which I love to do but I' ; m extremely slow at to patchwork. I' ; m not particularly good at machine appliqué. I have certain techniques that I like, as we all do. I moved it and abstracted the designs enough that I could piece it. It would still have the flow of what I wanted. I more or less designed it so that I could piece it and then stencil it and then use various modern products. For example instead of writing on the quilt, because I didn' ; t have time to make a second one in case I messed up on the handwriting, I used transfer silk through a printer for the comments that I wanted. The process was actually working through the whole idea of ' ; research now, there is still time.' ; My family hasn' ; t been directly impacted by Alzheimer' ; s, nor have we been impaired by dementia. I' ; ve asked my surviving aunts about this. I' ; ve asked my cousins about this. And within anyone' ; s memory none of us had been affected. You can not imagine the relief and the gratitude I felt for that fact. [laughs.] I haven' ; t watched Ami directly deal with her family conflict, but I have certainly watched friends and it is heartbreaking. It is something that I don' ; t want my family ever to have to go through and it hurts my heart when I watch my friends go through this, either as victims or as the survivors. It was a very easy thing for me to say, yes Ami I can do this and yes Ami I have an idea and yes Ami we need to make money for this thing. It is what quilters do and it is what friends do. So one thing let to another and eventually, very close--if not past deadline the quilt appeared and made it in time for the show thank heavens. That is always a miracle as far as I' ; m concerned. I always say if you don' ; t give me a deadline, whatever it is won' ; t get done. If something is open-ended, I' ; m very likely never to do it. That is what I tell my editors when I sign on for a book. If you tell me ' ; just finish it whenever,' ; you are doomed. You are never going to get the project. I was thrilled to do the work. I loved seeing the CD with all of the quilts and now that there is a book available that makes it even more special and will touch more lives. I have had the privilege of watching people walk through the exhibit and return many times and return with tears in their eyes and they want to touch the quilts. They want to. You feel like you want to wrap some of these folks up in the quilts. We can' ; t do that. This is one show that is having a very, very strong impact on lives one way or another. If it raises enough money to help one victim then anything anyone has done has been worth it. KM: What are your plans for the quilt when it comes back? NBD: Pardon? KM: What are your plans for the quilt when it comes back to you? NBD: Oh, I don' ; t know. I hope somebody buys up all these quilts. I hope somebody will even if not as a full collection. That would be wonderful for some quilt organization to say, you know, here is ten million dollars, five million dollars, ten thousand dollars or whatever. Some corporation could buy these things up and have that money go to research. If the quilt gets back, I don' ; t know. I don' ; t get very attached to my quilts. There are a few quilts that I have carried insurance on because I consider them working quilts. I don' ; t know how other quilt artists or artists who make quilts (I don' ; t call my quilts ' ; art quilts' ; ). Most of my quilts are what I consider working quilts. Since I do teach and I do write books I' ; m usually teaching a concept or teaching a process. The fact that " ; Research Now" ; is traveling means it is doing the work that it was meant to do. So when it comes home to me, if it comes home to me, I don' ; t know what I will do with it. Don' ; t have a clue. I do use quilts on my walls and in my studio. Well, not so much in my studio but around my house. I have a working studio in Prescott and I have a working studio in Tempe. I tend to travel out of Tempe because Prescott is one of those places that is not too easy to get in and out of. I don' ; t know, that is a curious question. I hope somebody buys the quilt and I never see it again. That is my goal. [laughs.] I don' ; t want anything from it because it is doing the work that it was meant to do. KM: Who is the woman on your quilt? NBD: There are two women, one is my mother and one is myself. KM: I thought so, okay. NBD: One is my mother and one is me. Those are two pictures that were made for my dad. They sat beside his bed for as long as I can remember. They were taken some time in the mid-nineteen forties I think. They were favorites of my dad and they were probably some of the last things he looked at before he died. So putting them on the quilt was one way of remembering my mother and dad. Mother was cogent until the very last hours of her life for which I' ; m so thankful. Since I' ; m an only child and I married and left the nest fairly young, we had not had a whole lot of time as adult women to spend time together until the last few years of her life. We became really good friends. I think that as my mother was dying or shortly after my mother died Ami made the first inquiries to the first group of participants and friends. It was kind of like when you are a kid, ' ; If I give a show will you come and help me?' ; When she made her first call out, I think that was shortly after my mother died. It was, also, shortly after I found out that my friend, Lucy, had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s. The timing for me was right on. I was, by the time my mother died, ready to totally celebrate her life. I was also devastated by Lucy' ; s diagnosis. Lucy is still alive as we speak. She is slipping further and further away. What has happened with Lucy is that she has become very, very quiet. She no longer can put up a front. She had wonderful coping skills in the beginning. But she is beyond that now. I don' ; t know how to say this. She wouldn' ; t know who you were, but she knew that she was supposed to remember you. It sounds strange but that is the way I felt and, now, she is not there ; she can not try to remember any more. She has forgotten the simplest things and obviously one of the things is the coping that she had adopted early on. Anyway, the timing was right for me to make this quilt. KM: Is this quilt typical of your work? NBD: I' ; m sorry. KM: Is this quilt typical? NBD: Yes and no. I' ; m known for [laughs.] strange sometimes. I have my twenty-first quilting book coming out in June of 2008. The name of that book is " ; The Art of the Handmade Quilt." ; This will blow the minds of some of my friends. They don' ; t realize that I am basically a fairly traditional quilter technique wise. Well, that is one thing and then the other thing is I' ; m kind of known for slice ' ; em and dice ' ; em quick quilting techniques. The early books were all about handwork and I' ; ve always included stenciling whenever possible. I have been trying to get quilters to include stenciling in their work especially those who do a lot of appliqué work and embroidery. I always tell them, ' ; Okay you don' ; t have to appliqué that little thing, you can embroider it or you can stencil.' ; So yes this quilt is typical and it isn' ; t typical. In the quilt " ; Research Now" ; there is appliqué, there is patchwork, there is stenciling, hand embroidery, fine hand quilting and decorative hand quilting - also machine quilting. In my own work there is much work that is not meant to lead to a book. Work that is not meant to lead to teaching a class. I make studio quilts that are meant for my private consumption - or viewing. I' ; m working through problems. I' ; m making personal statements about whatever it is that I do. I put my husband and myself through undergraduate and graduate schools as a practicing artist. I' ; ve been doing this a very long time. I move very comfortably through drawing and painting and quilting or embroidery or soft-sculpture techniques. I move through the technical part of these things seamlessly so that as I decide to make a piece of work whether it is painting or finished drawing or a collage or a quilt or a doll, I just work through it. If it is something for my own consumption that I really don' ; t care if anybody else sees it or there aren' ; t any constraints put on the work by someone, I play. If I' ; m doing a magazine article they will ask for something specific like an appliqué project. Then that is in my mind. It is a work that is only appliqué. If it is my private work, I will do anything that makes the art piece work. Drawing on it, painting on it, stenciling on it, gluing something down, whatever. So in my mind this quilt " ; Research Now" ; is typical. Someone else seeing that piece of work would say, ' ; Well where did that come from? That doesn' ; t look like her work.' ; They haven' ; t seen the whole body of my work, which includes dolls, includes painting, includes creating tile, painting sidewalks and landscape architecture. Yes it is typical. [laughs.] The work is typical. Meaning that it shows that there is a depth of information and technique that I rarely show in one single piece and it is not all shown in this piece but, more of it is shown in this piece. This is what I try to foster in my classes with students. I say that there isn' ; t just one way. There are a lot of ways of getting to a solution in your work. If you can' ; t get them all from me, go to somebody else. ' ; You will find your own way.' ; I wish quilters did more of that. People get stuck in a rut saying well, ' ; I' ; m an appliqué artist.' ; That is fine or ' ; I' ; m a patchwork quilter.' ; Well, that' ; s okay too but, you will have more fun if you learn more techniques. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. How did you begin? NBD: This is where I am typical. For a very short time we lived with mothers parents in Columbus, Indiana. My grandmother was a quilter and my grandfather a carpenter. They had moved from a large Victorian house when their family grew up. Grandpa and one of my uncles built a bungalow-style house in Columbus. I don' ; t think they had lived there long before my grandmother put her foot down and she also requested a sunroom to be built. In that sunroom she had her birds. She had canaries and parakeets and evidently they like sun. She had her winter flowers and then she had her quilting frames that my grandfather had built. A humongous quilting frame. It was a ratchet style. It had three bars and she could mount a quilt on it and roll it from one section to the next. I kind of think maybe that was it. I don' ; t know where they had gotten the plans for it but, I' ; ve seen similar plans since then. I grew up under it when she would baby sit me. I would play. I had my own box of fabric scraps. Of course there were buttons in there too. I would spend hours sorting fabric and playing along side her. Not planning a quilt. After my father closed hospital, in England, after World War II, he came back to the states and my parents eventually bought a house in Columbus. By then he was occupied in closing down Camp Atterbury, Indiana--closing down the hospital there. So we moved into the same town but not in the same house as my grandparents. My grandmother would still occasionally baby sit for me. I think I was the only grandchild who took interest in her quiltmaking. Eventually we moved on and moved out of Columbus but my grandmother and I remained very, very close. She had multiple grandchildren and I think we were all very close to her but I felt a special affinity for her. We had this common interest in quilting. Through the years I would write to her and I would send her pictures of quilts and scraps. Eventually I married and had children and started making baby clothes. I would send her scrapes and she would send me back quilts. We would talk and write about whatever we were working on. Usually I only made a quilt, at that time, for one of my babies, or a friend' ; s baby, or a friend of a baby and it wasn' ; t something that I did every day. I was busy going to school. I did go to nearby Indiana University. Whenever possible I would go home to Columbus and visit my grandmother. Her letters were always lively. She died at the age around eighty-six and until the very end we were comparing notes on quiltmaking and family and all of those things. The first large quilt she started me on [laughs.] was when I was about twelve. I think somebody had given her a cardboard diamond template she didn' ; t know what she wanted to do with it. She gave it to me and then she gave me some blue fabric and some white fabric to use. As I look at the fabric as an adult, and I look at those fabrics, I think to myself, ' ; Oh she didn' ; t know what to do with those either.' ; I started the quilt, a Five-Pointed Star quilt that is what this diamond made. It is a quilt that you can' ; t finish. I have a very large piece about 4 feet by 4 feet of rows of these diamonds in a Five-Pointed Star. It is one of those things that you think there is no way of finishing this other than appliquéing it down to a larger piece of fabric. I have no idea. The math was off to start with so I made adjustments. I haven' ; t pieced it for years, but I know exactly where that quilt is. I love looking at it and sometimes when I' ; m teaching a hand piecing class I will take that and I will show students how I started. She started me on that quilt at about twelve years of age. I show how I was using double thread because that is what she used to piece with and no knots. However, every time I left her house [laughs.] I always put in knots because I couldn' ; t make the little loopy thing that she did to make sure that the thing stayed together. Somewhere along the line I discovered the sewing machine--probably at one of my aunts' ; . My mother didn' ; t have a sewing machine until just about the time I married. She did not like to sew. At some point I learned how to sew on the sewing machine and, fortunately, I understood the seam allowance had to be the same between hand and machine work. Anyway it is kind of an interesting piece and one that I will never finish. But, I love to pet it. My grandmother would say, ' ; Well are you working on the quilt?' ; This is even after I was married and I would say, ' ; No Grandma, I' ; ve done another quilt, but I' ; m not working on that quilt.' ; The interesting thing is that years later, years and years later -- I think my grandmother was dead, and my father had died, my mother moved back to Columbus, Indiana to be close to her sisters and her brother. By that time my first books were out. People would ask my mother --my mother would go to church -- and one of her friends in Sunday school class would say, ' ; Your Nancy has written a book, she must have learned all of this quilting from you, Mary.' ; My mother would say, ' ; Well no she had never made a quilt. It was her mother.' ; After a few years of this, my mother finally said, ' ; Nancy I am tired of always having to say I' ; ve never made a quilt, let' ; s make a quilt together.' ; I kind of gulped and I said, ' ; Okay what kind of quilt do you want to make?' ; And she said that at one time when she and dad were first married she had started a Dresden Plate, but the pieces had gotten lost. She would like to make a Dresden Plate. I said, ' ; Great that' ; s easy' ; We can do that. We started. I think I was still teaching art history at the time but I also owned a quilt shop, The Quilters Ranch in Tempe, Arizona. I owned that shop with two business partners, Ann Dutton and Dorothy Dodds. I said, ' ; Well, next time you come down to Arizona we are going to go into the shop and you can chose the fabric.' ; Well this was great, great plan. Mom came down. We went to the shop and she chose three fabrics, a background fabric and two other fabrics for her Dresden Plate. My business partners and I suggested that maybe she might want to choose a few more fabrics for the plates or for the segments in the Dresden Plate. ' ; Oh no, no, no.' ; She didn' ; t want a scrappy quilt. Well, I said, ' ; It' ; s not going to be a real scrappy quilt.' ; We had chosen--actually she wanted to use one of the fabrics for the sashing and so it was going to be a very boring quilt and one that I just knew in my heart she would just never finish because she would make two of those Dresden Plate blocks and just say, ' ; Well then what else is there to do?' ; Anyway so we finally talked her into a few more fabrics. I didn' ; t do the talking, the business partners did. It took us three long years to make that quilt. We bought enough of the fabric so that it could turn into a nice bedspread. She had a double bed so the partners and I figured the drop and everything. Well, you know people who don' ; t quilt but who own quilts rely on what they have as sort of a standard. My grandmother only made quilts for warmth. As far as she was concerned the quilts fit the top of the bed. A quilt was not to be used as a spread. Mother and I had a communication problem. She was making a quilt to fit the top of the bed and I was making a bedspread. I wasn' ; t actually making it, but I was helping her with the bedspread. Mother finished the blocks and laid them out on the bed. She is in Indiana and I' ; m in Arizona. I get a frantic call saying, ' ; I have made too many blocks.' ; By this time I had the design in front of me and I said, ' ; I don' ; t think so. How big are the blocks? Were the blocks the correct size?' ; and anyway so she said, ' ; I' ; m going to sew them together, leaving some out.' ; She is doing all of this by hand, every bit of it by hand. So I said, ' ; Well wait I' ; m coming to Indiana to visit and we will play with them when I get there.' ; She did. Back and forth. This is why it took us three years to make that quilt. I don' ; t think I put any stitches in it other than just to show her the basics to get the Dresden Plate pieces together. Whenever there was a critical point in the quilt and any quilter knows that there can be many critical points, we would have long telephone conversations about the quilt. Frequently not making any sense to the other because in our minds she was making one kind of quilt and I was making a different kind of quilt. The only thing that we both understood was that each block was a Dresden Plate block. Eventually we got that straightened out. She finished the quilt. She hand quilted it. She hand bound it. It is a beautiful quilt. It has never been used. After she made it, she said, ' ; That' ; s it I' ; m never going to use this quilt. I have made this quilt.' ; The up shot of the thing is that she eventually made a machine pieced quilt for one of my books. I don' ; t remember the name of it or the book. It is a wonderful quilt that I had machine quilted for her. It was one of the last quilts on her bed before she went into nursing care. She never showed the Dresden Plate quilt that I remember because it was such agony to finish it. But the twin size quilt that she machine pieced and that I had machine quilted. She was extremely proud of that quilt. Maybe because it was the first successful one that we did together. Completely successful. Illustrated in one of my books and she was listed as the maker of the quilt. We were both very, very proud of that. My daughter has made a few quilts. I have a picture of my granddaughter piecing her first block when she was five. I don' ; t think she has done anything since but she had pretty good hand eye coordination at that age. That is sort of my story. I think it is pretty typical of a lot of quilters--how we got started. Usually it is an aunt who gets us started or a sister or a mom in my case it worked backwards. The funniest thing two years ago one of my mother' ; s remaining sisters, my Aunt Ruth, who still lives in Columbus, Indiana said, ' ; Nancy I want to make a quilt.' ; It was dejavu. So I said, ' ; Okay.' ; This is going to be her first quilt. She was about eighty-three at the time and I said, ' ; Okay we can do this.' ; So we trotted off to the fabric store and she elected to buy a set of kits from a fabric chain. I tried to talk her out of that, but she insisted, she didn' ; t want to leave anything to chance. She wanted to make sure that she had everything that she needed. She sort had little breaks along the way. She has completed the top, mostly by hand. It is an appliqué and patchwork quilt and it is sitting in my studio. Her arthritis is acting up so she doesn' ; t feel she can hand quilt it. It is a queen size quilt. I told her that there wasn' ; t a chance in-you-know-what that I would hand quilt it. [laughs.] So it is sitting in the Prescott studio waiting for me to machine quilt it. I machine quilt on a standard home sewing machine with a nine inch throat. I told her not to hold her breath-- but it would get done. I' ; m not looking forward to finishing that quilt but I do want to get it done. The unfortunate thing is I told my aunt that she has to start another one pretty soon because she has two sons and they are going to fight over this quilt. Either that or she is going to have to wait for a great-great granddaughter to give it to. KM: Describe your studio. NBD: Pardon? KM: Describe your studio. NBD: The Prescott studio is about six hundred square feet. It used to be a barn, an Arizona barn. The studio is separate from the house. I have about seventeen foot ceilings. It is well lit, I have a small kitchen. I have a bath in there. Oh gosh I have a humongous table that I made out of a 4 foot by 8 foot piece of plywood and then I have one of those big cutting mats on top of it. That table top rests on large storage cabinets underneath. I also have storage cabinets that go almost floor to ceiling on one end of the studio. Half of these have doors that you can close and half of them are open. I have a thing about being able to see all of my fabric at all times whenever possible. The things are in the closed storage areas are: the finished quilts, quilt tops, books, odds and ends, notions ; my painting paraphernalia ; tools ; things not in use. Anyway I have two sewing machines set up at all times. I don' ; t much like machine quilting but time and the economic necessity is that--I do anything that is fairly small. My aunt' ; s quilt will be the largest thing I' ; ve machine quilted myself. God willing I finish quilting it. I usually hire the quilting if it is over a twin size bed. I have somebody machine or hand quilt it. I know I love the Prescott studio because I can look out over the property. I can see my vegetable garden. I can see my rows of raspberries. I can literally watch the squirrels eat the almonds off my tree. I have eaten one almond off of my almond tree. The squirrels know when they are ready before I do. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? NBD: How do you define quilting? KM: Anyway you want to. NBD: I am generally thinking about designing or quilting at least seventy-two hours a week. That is not counting teaching time or traveling time or anything like that. That is just work time. That doesn' ; t count the time that I' ; m in bed looking at quilting or other reference books or materials. Most of my own quilting books come from designs that are original in that any quilting thing can be original. I don' ; t usually refer to other quilt books for my inspiration. I just sort of play around in the studio a lot. I cut up fabric kind of willy nilly, or I sew together something funny. I sew it together funny to see what happens if I cut it up funny. I' ; m always drawing. In my studio the principle design tools I have are a large tablet and pencils and crayons (or something like crayons) and yeah I think probably - safely - easily - say actual working time either drawing or sketching or cutting, pasting or sewing, yes, seventy-two hours or something like that. That is not research time that is actually play time. If I had to sit at the sewing machine all the time and sew I would hate it, hate it. I would much rather sit and do the hand work. The reality is there aren' ; t enough hours in the day to finish all of the designs I have sketched or drawn or that I have played with on the computer, and I do use the computer. I use a CAD program but not the ones for quilters. I have a couple of the ones for quilters, but I don' ; t use them to design. I use them for the fabric swatches. Sometimes if I' ; m doing a design for a book or other project and I' ; ve already made my fabric selections I will go into one of the quilters' ; programs, the commercial programs, that have the fabric built into them so that I can put in different fabric choices to see if I want to change something. I always think and design in black and white. I' ; ve always designed, at first, as if I was painting or drawing in black and white or charcoal pencil on white paper. I add color later so the commercial design programs aren' ; t very useful to me. At the age of five I elected to follow a creative life. I think when you decide you are going to live a creative life whether as a quilter or anything else. There is not much that you do that doesn' ; t involved all creative aspects of your life. Your life is your work. Of course I have time for friends and family and reading and gardening and all of those things, but I work a lot. It doesn' ; t always show, but I do work a lot. KM: Believe it or not we have been talking for more than forty-five minutes. NBD: Well you have to do some editing. [laughs.] KM: No I don' ; t do the editing, you will. NBD: Okay. KM: I want to thank you for sharing. NBD: Did I give you enough stuff? KM: Of course, it was wonderful stuff, you did a great job. I am going to conclude our interview at 12:03. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-43.xml AFPBP-43.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/fddd9a10b0bf65b3b0334835e37c5c92.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Philomena Mudd",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-41,,,"Karen Musgrave","Philomena Mudd",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-41.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Philomena Mudd AFPBP-41 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Philomena Mudd Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-41 Mudd.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Philomena Mudd. Today' ; s date is March 11, 2008. It is 11:38 in the morning and Philomena is in Louisville, Kentucky and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Philomena I want to thank you for taking your time to do this with me. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories because this is based on an exhibit called " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Philomena tell me about your quilt in the exhibit " ; Silent Tears." ; Philomena Mudd (PM): " ; Silent Tears" ; talked about what for me what Alzheimer' ; s says to a person you know you love, or random people that you are aware of because everyone I know knows someone who has Alzheimer' ; s, or dementia. When I found out about this quilt initiative it was like, oh my gosh I love to quilt and here is something that I can take the whole spirit of what we are living through, because my mother-in-law, Mary Wohlleb was diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s. She was in the late stages and died from the disease. Making this quilt was a wonderful thing I could do, to talk about Alzheimer' ; s in the language of cloth and say in cloth what it felt like to be a part of Mary' ; s life and death with Alzheimer' ; s. Mary was my husband' ; s mama. I have been married to Michael Wohlleb for thirty-seven years, and I love him dearly. Together we worked with the family. There are eight children in Michael' ; s family and we were able to all do something to help mom. We had different days when it was our turn to be with her and then random days when we just wanted to go over to visit. It was very important to be able to, try to make this quilt and see what would happen, see if it would be accepted. It became a huge thing for us, working on the quilt together, telling stories the others may not have heard and repeating stories we all knew. It was like being with mom again. It was letting the world know what this disease did to her and us. KM: Tell me about the design. PM: I love batiks and I think batiks really give richness to a story that sometimes takes the place of pictures and words. The colors in the quilt that we made took us across the spectrum of life to death and what Alzheimer' ; s has done. One of us would look at a color in the quilt moving from left to right interpret it one way. Someone else would look from left to right and interpret other things about it. Looking in the middle of the quilt you could see that it represents the middle part of Alzheimer' ; s. Also I can just look at the quilt and say wow it stuns me still to see it. The beauty tells a story and it has a story that doesn' ; t need the words. KM: You did photo transfers on here. PM: Yes, my husband is a photographer and he has been making pictures for, well the whole time I' ; ve known him--39 years. So when I started doing my quilting it was just a wonderful marriage of his photography and me putting it on cloth and being able to make stories. That is why the pictures ended up on there, because I love to put pictures on my quilts and it adds a little more to the story than just the materials. It is a merging of it all. It enriches the story to see the pictures. You knew who Mary Wohlleb was, you could tell in the pictures, you could see her kids, her husband, you could see them grow and age. I like that, I like having pictures on the quilt. I let them tell the story with me so that I don' ; t have to put too many words on it. The words that impacted us about Alzheimer' ; s were on there, just little punchy words. KM: Like fragile, hope. PM: Yes. KM: Mom, support, grief, fear. PM: Yes, I don' ; t have the quilt in front of me. KM: Lost. I do. Laughter, family. PM: Yes. KM: Then there are leaves, tell me about the leaves. PM: I love poetry and a friend of mine who is a doctor gets a medical journal every month and there it was the poem " ; Silent Tears." ; She said she' ; d found something that I might really like in her medical journal. She told me to keep it and see what you can do with it. Sure enough it was incredible. Donna Pucciani is the woman who wrote that poem. She submitted her poem to the Journal of the American Medical Association. They accepted it and that is how it got to me Next I had to figure out how in the world to find Donna Pucciani. I started doing searches online and looking in phone books in the Chicago area, etc., etc. I have no idea exactly where I ended up finding Donna Pucciani' ; s phone number but I did. We had this marvelous conversation and of course you might guess that one of her family members has the disease. Donna was so happy that her ' ; poetry' ; could be melded into a quilt. She said I could use her poem, that we could honor the poem Donna wrote for her mother in law and have it on the quilt for my mother-in-law. It was just a beautiful merging of two artists coming together. I was so, so, touched by her poetry. It was just beautiful. I couldn' ; t believe it! There is a joke in the Wohlleb family that they call each other ginkgos. We like ginkgo tress and there was always laughter around the word ginkgos, so I went out and found a ginkgo tree in my neighborhood. I took some of the leaves. We made them the size we needed to fit the poetry on them. KM: Did you send Donna a picture of the quilt? PM: Oh! I sent her a picture of the quilt when she was in England. She wrote me back in tears saying how it looked with her poetry. I have chills right now thinking about it. It was just incredible. It is one of the wonderful things we can do with computers, her being in England and receiving the picture and all the information about the quilt that she is part of. We spoke on the phone and made plans to meet in Rosemont, Chicago where the Alzheimer' ; s Quilts were on exhibition. We met one another and spent the whole afternoon together. When she saw the quilt in its full regalia, hanging in the exhibit she burst into tears. We were both crying together and it was one of those incredible moments that you walk into. I knew it was Donna when I walked up to the exhibit area where the quilts were. It was another precious moment where people came together about this disease, loving the people who have the disease and mourning their deaths. It was just incredible making this quilt, I invited my sister-in-laws to come over and be a part of making the quilt. Moira, Rose and Chris, Michael' ; s sisters, and Angie, a sister-in-law came. We had an incredible time. It was so bonding and my husband feed us [laughs] which was wonderful. He made food and drinks for us while we were working. Then he would take pictures and see what we were doing. We were looking at some of his old family photos and laughing, and he would say you are not working. [laughs.] It was really a family affair! Then Easter came and the family was here. Everybody wanted to be at the party, the family gathering. Everybody wanted to walk up and see the quilt. I didn' ; t want anyone touching it, and I didn' ; t want them getting too close and all that kind of stuff. I would take groups up and my sisters-in-laws would do some of it too, so it was great fun. That was another adventure with the quilt. KM: How did you feel when you got in? PM: When I got in it was like, oh, oh! Well, number one I' ; m a nervous wreck deciding to do it and rah, rah, rah, all that kind of stuff that I do to myself. Finally the day arrived to email a small picture. Then you would know within three days. My sisters-in-laws were here when we sent the picture away. Then it was matter of waiting and waiting and waiting. Finally I got the email that we were accepted and I was in tears and speechless. This meant so much to me, to the family, to my loving sisters-in-laws and my friends who brought food and encouraged our quilting. It was as if we were having a wake again or an awakening because there was a lot of fun, but there was a lot of tears and mourning too. Then there was all that kind of stuff where people brought food while we were working [laughs.] and husbands were left and it was just an incredible time and that is what women I know do. We like to get together, we take our time and when the moment came to send the picture to Ami, we were all together. We punched the send button and then waited for the email. It was awesome. KM: What are your plans for the quilt when it comes back? PM: Initially I thought they were going to auction it and I was okay with that. But then there is another part of me that would like to see it as a traveling quilt here in my own town and also from family to family within our family. You get it for six months or four months or whatever and travel it that way, let them take it and show it to their friends and that kind of thing. That will be what I will do. It will do its traveling somewhere, but it will still be coming back to us. KM: There is a CD that Ami made that travels around with the exhibit and each of us had to record our artist statement. Tell me how that experience was for you. PM: Recording the statement? [laughs.] It was difficult, it was difficult, making my voice sound alright, wanting to be a perfect reader and all that kind of thinking, and so when I took time and just said this is who I am, this is the way I talk, this is something very emotional for me, so I can let all of that be in the vocal rendering of the statement. It will be myself and I won' ; t try to be too anal about it. I will enjoy it and love it and cry with it, and let it be. That is what I did. KM: Were you successful the first time? PM: No, because you have to do a few times. I think first I did it in my own recorder, played it back and listened, and then I made the call and recorded it for Ami. KM: Okay. PM: It was good for me, and then there was just that moment where maybe I choked up and I thought oh I have to record this again. Not wanting to have to be perfect but making it what felt good for me and that is what I did. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. PM: my Mom bought me a sewing machine when I was a senior in high school. I also had this wonderful teacher Ms. Dawers and [dogs barking and howling.] They are going to make me crazy, that is my dogs and the doorbell rang, so can we take a break. KM: Sure. [long pause while PM answers the dog.] PM: It was UPS and I have no idea what that is, but that will be fun later. [laughs.] Can you hear dogs a lot? KM: That is okay, it doesn' ; t bother me. PM: You can hear them? KM: It doesn' ; t bother me. PM: Okay good, they don' ; t bother me either, they are wonderful. [laughs.] Where were we? KM: You got a sewing machine your senior of high school. PM: Oh my gosh yes, so I was learning how to make clothes and this wonderful teacher I had, Sacred Heart Academy in Louisville, she said you know what, save every scrap of material you have, save snippets of clothes you are getting rid of, someday you will make a quilt out of all these things that we have done here and that you have been wearing during your junior year in high school and you will never forget. That became my first quilt but it was not made until I went to college and then got married. I saved my husband' ; s clothes also. We eventually merged those clothes into a queen sized patch work quilt. I wasn' ; t very skilled with my quilting at that time, so I sewed the quilt top and then put together the batting and backing. Next I took a heavy yarn and tied it off that way. We still have it (34 years) and we have washed it many times. I don' ; t particularly like to have too many quilts that are museum pieces. I want them to be used. When I make a quilt for someone I encourage them to be engaged with their quilt. I invite them to my studio to see the progress of their quilt and be sure that they feel good with their choices. I also encourage clients to use their quilt. Often they will put them on a wall. I really give them a good reason to keep it on their bed, nap with it, and put it on your couch, that kind of stuff. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? PM: I try to quilt a little bit every day, every day forty minutes, sometimes only thirty minutes, but just do something and I have a mentor, her name is Marti Plager and I can go to her with any problems/questions that I have. When I was finished with " ; Silent Tears" ; I brought it over to her house. The best thing that could ever happen was when she said, ' ; This is your best work.' ; You know she is cool, she doesn' ; t try to guide me in any particular ways or force me to do things, she just looks at a piece and talks about balance and color and that has really helped me because it is important in a piece to have a little balance and not everything be random, random. [laughs.] That was cool. KM: How did you come to know Marti? PM: We have a gathering here, it is called LAFTA, Louisville Area Fiber and Textile Artists [laughs.] and I belong to LAFTA and so does Marti, and we also have like adult ed and I took an adult ed class from Marti, probably eight years ago and that inspired me more to get into my quilting and do some different things. Then I could come over to her house and talk to her about it, she just trained me in so many things and was so patient with me and kind and I love to have her in my life and talk about quilting and help with quilting and all that. She has had a one woman show probably forty quilts were in it and they were absolutely gorgeous and it was like wow, so neat. She is the one who has kept me engaged and helped me stay connected to my work. Juanita Yeager was another woman who I had some, there were only four of us, we were in a small group with her every two weeks and that would be wonderful too, and then workshops with Juanite and she is quite a quilt artist and does big installations at business companies, large companies and things like that. That was another inspiration along the way, but Juanite left town, but she comes back and does workshops sometimes. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? PM: Whose works, well of course these two local women, Marti' ; s work I think is rather incredible and I have really enjoyed going any of the places where she is displaying and we have the Gee' ; s Bend ladies here right now. Gee' ; s Bend quilts, oh my gosh that is inspiring. What I really like about it is the randomness of it, everything is not, it is not always an 1/8 of an inch or it is not always ½ of an inch, sometimes it is an 1/8 and a ½ of an inch and the colors, it is so, it is so neat to look at them because I like randomness of colors and they gave themselves, any material they had they made something, and myself as a quilt artist a lot of people say well you have to match the colors and you' ; ve got to use the color wheel and I found myself a little stressed with using the color wheel and trying to make it perfect. I would see the bold, the light ones and dark, whatever, and I can get real itchy about all that stuff. I like to do it what is good for me, and so the Gee' ; s Bend coming here and looking at what they have done, I' ; m like oh good that gives me even more permission to just do what I want, if I don' ; t have the perfect materials when they are all patched together, they are going to look great. They are inspiring, those women are very inspiring to me. I can not think of her name right now, there is a woman that did the Kentucky who is an artist that I did a week long program with her. KM: You are not talking about Caryl Bryer Fallert are you? PM: Yeah, yeah that is it. You got it, and she is inspiring. Oh my her work is incredible. At the time that I took her workshop it was way over my head, way before I would ever think of trying to enter anything, but I learned a lot and even though it wasn' ; t a very successful at that moment. [tape comes to stop.] KM: Let' ; s continue now that we have a new battery. What advice would you offer someone starting out? PM: What did you say? KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? PM: To take a beginner' ; s quilting class so you can get the basics. I believe you have to get some confidence in how to cut the material, how to use the cutting boards, razor blades and wear machingers. The ones you wear that keeps the materials from being slick when you are trying to move it through your machine. KM: For machine quilting. PM: Yes, you know, if I didn' ; t have my Machingers it would be so hard. [laughs.] Little things like that. When people go to beginner classes and they have access to all the quilting tools, they need help to figure out what tools to start with.. I have people who come and consult me and say okay I just want to be a beginner, what do I need? One person ended up buying a Janome from Hancock' ; s and it was maybe two hundred bucks and then she got a few little razor blades, a rotary cutter, cutting board and guide ruler. She has ended up making a quilt now and it is in an auction for the Junior Achievement here in town. Wonderful. Quilting can be that simple, it doesn' ; t have to be complicated like with pictures and all those different pieces of colors that I used in mine, I' ; m looking at Silent Tears right now and it is like wow! I still like it. [laughs.] I like the pictures starting from the left with Mary when she was little, I guess her first communion dress, and her husband was in the Army and those pictures and it is a nice piece, I like it. [laughs.] I knew I did, but it is just funny to see it up here knowing that this is what we are talking about. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? PM: I think time, time and money. To have the equipment that really makes it easy for us, it is expensive and I bought a new machine. I upgraded my Janome to the one that you just have to push a button and you don' ; t have to keep your foot on the pressure foot, because I knew I was going to be having surgery and I can' ; t use my right leg a lot right now, but I can go up there and push that little button and I can put the material under there and all I have to do is have my Machingers on and just guide it through and I' ; m not doing anything with the pressure foot. It is wonderful, so I can still quilt right now. If something happened permanently with the leg, I' ; ve still got that, it is a wonderful tool. It is very expensive though. The blades that we use they are like six or seven dollars and they won' ; t last for a whole quilt when I' ; m cutting stuff out using the blades. People have to really look at that part of it. When you go to a beginner' ; s workshop they say, bring your machine, bring your cutting board, bring your blades, bring your cutting standards, and that is a lot of money, and then if you are using good material which we are encouraged to do then it is a whole other thing, it is eight dollars a yard, it could be ten dollars, fifteen dollars. Or you can go to, I don' ; t know, I don' ; t go to Wal-Mart but people go to Wal-Mart and buy material there and the material I have seen from there I sure wouldn' ; t want to do much with, but it is a way of getting to do it. KM: Describe your studio. PM: My studio is gorgeous. I have three large windows. I consider them large. I have hardwood floor up there. It was an old bedroom when the house was built, it was built to be a bedroom and it is quite large and it had carpet on it and just about three months ago I finally got the nerve to tear up that carpet and I got a cutting knife, whatever those rug knives are and I cut it up into pieces, piece by piece, because my husband was too busy with his studio, he is a photographer and he really couldn' ; t help me, so my niece came over and the two of us just tore it up, tore it up. Now I have a bright hardwood floor in there, I have a large studio, and a design board that has cloth over it and it has Styrofoam behind it and I can stick pictures up and cloth up and design right there if I want to, and I have wonderful lighting from the outdoors and at night I have wonderful daylight fluorescents all around the place. I have a large cutting board from one of the companies and the sides go down, sides go up if I want it to be bigger, it is a wonderful piece. I think it is a Horn piece and I just absolutely love it. It has doors and two drawers and it is just an incredible piece and when I' ; m only working on something small I can put one of the sides down just like you do a dining room table, and then I have the whole Horn set for my machine and that is wonderful and that is the one that has that little button where I don' ; t even have to use my foot. I' ; ve have a stack of drawers that comes with it and it is just beautiful in here. It is a green color, I love green and I have Tibetan Prayer flags draped all around my studio just to remind me to keep peaceful and I have a Peace banner with peace doves on it, and I am a peace activist, I guess you would gather that right now, and it is wonderful to bring that up here and have it in my studio. Other places may get chaotic in our house, but my studio stays as calm as I make it and that is the best time for me to do my work, and I like the way it looks up here, it is beautiful. I have a sixties poster right next to the wall by my machine and that is really neat, it reminds me of the seventies and the sixties. [laughs.] That is all part of it. It is just my room and that is what I really like. My husband' ; s stuff doesn' ; t get stuck up in here and my stuff doesn' ; t go downstairs. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? PM: What did you say? KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? PM: Because it is a way of expressing what is inside me instead of talking about what I do what I think, I do it on material and it comes out a lot easier sometimes than words and language. I was a language teacher, speech and language therapist for many years and helped people bring out language and I learned then about using material and language. I had forgotten about that until now. I would bring materials in and we would talk about them. I had some elephant material. I had some dog material, and I would bring that in and it would be a different texture and a different way of just looking at a book, so that was really neat. I enjoyed doing that. KM: I usually ask people-- PM: My phone is dying. I think. Something kind of went weird, but I was upstairs too so maybe that was part of it. Let me look and see. Nope I' ; ve got enough. KM: Okay, well we are almost done. I usually ask people if there is anything else that they would like to share before we conclude, so this is your opportunity. It can be about the exhibit, it can be about anything. PM: About anything. Ami Simms is an incredible woman and she is so inspiring and so vivacious and so focused and that is really incredible. She has put heart and soul into this and I love the little cards she has that her mother has made, are they BeeBe' ; s cards? KM: Yeah. PM: Yeah, I think that is so cool, engaging her mother in it. Wow, what an incredible thing to do. I think that is so beautiful. I have a stepmother and she has been diagnosed with lots of things. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s, but they have a very hard time of accepting it. She has five children and they really don' ; t want to accept that, and now she has been diagnosed with Parkinson' ; s and they are calling it Parkinson' ; s dementia instead of Alzheimer' ; s and the family--her family can accept that a little more. And that is the sad part of this disease, families really do have a hard time moving through the states of Alzheimer' ; s I hate to think of it, I hate to think that it could happen to my husband because it is in his family so much. We have to accept what is dealt to us and do the best we can, so I think it has helped me, not accept it completely, but to know that this is part of everyone. I don' ; t know a person in my life. I' ; m fifty-six that doesn' ; t know someone with this disease. We are going to be finding a lot of people in our lives who have this disease and I would like to see our government help more, I really believe that there are a lot of things that we could do with research that keep getting stymied by political stuff, and that is sad. Even though their big old friend Ronny Reagan had it, they still won' ; t let us do some things that might help. KM: I guess I haven' ; t said that all of the money raised between the exhibit and the other half, which is Priority Quilts of the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative goes to research. PM: Yes, absolutely and that is what we need and we are just stymied at every place we can be by our government and that is a whole other subject. [laughs.] KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to talk and share with me. We are going to conclude our interview and it is now 12:18. PM: Perfect. [interview ends.] 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-41.xml AFPBP-41.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/4f51c7bbc42df613f7bf33d0262e8565.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Melody Crust",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-40,,,"Karen Musgrave","Melody Crust",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-40.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Melody Crust AFPBP-40 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Melody Crust Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-40 Crust.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Melody Crust. Melody is in Kent, Washington and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is March 11, 2008 and it is 2:21 in the afternoon. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this with me. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories because this one is based on an exhibit called " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Melody, if you would tell me about your quilt that is in the exhibition, " ; Fade to Gray" ; if would appreciate it. Melody Crust (MC): " ; Fade to Gray" ; came because while I have very little history with Alzheimer' ; s, I' ; m aware that people forget things so I' ; m very much a colorist and most of my quilts are bright and beautiful and colorful and loud and almost gaudy, so when I started thinking about what I was going to do for the Alzheimer' ; s, I thought at least for a quilter much less for anyone else what it would be like to forget about color, forget what color looks like or try to imagine or not know that that is red anymore. " ; Fade to Gray" ; is black and white, it is all black and white with the exception of the quilting which is colors and the binding which is red which was my plan for hope for the future that they would find some way to cure or prevent the curable disease. KM: What are you plans for this quilt when it comes back? MC: I' ; ve already donated it to the Art Initiative and told Ami that she can sell it at the end of the exhibition to raise more money. KM: Have you seen the exhibit? MC: No. KM: It hasn' ; t come to the West Coast. MC: I haven' ; t been where it has been. KM: Okay. We had to do the artist statements, because there is an audio component to the CD that Ami produced. Tell me about that experience for you. MC: I have to say it was reasonably unnerving because even though you try not to say ands and uhs and thes and hums. It does come out and because my personal life has very little history with Alzheimer' ; s it was just different, just like doing this interview on the phone, it was just a different experience. KM: Have you listened to the CD? MC: Yes I have. KM: What are your thoughts? MC: It is very powerful, it is very moving, it is very difficult to listen to the whole thing all at one time. I think that Ami has done a great job and I really enjoyed listening to it. KM: Interesting that she used her answering machine, she is very clever. MC: It worked for her. KM: She is very clever. Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. MC: Oh my goodness, I have been quiltmaking for twenty-nine years and the reason I know I' ; ve been quiltmaking for twenty-nine years is that the child who got the very first quilt was twenty-nine last August. I started out making very traditional quilts. I tell people all the time that while I certainly consider myself to be an art quiltmaker, I' ; m a quiltmaker first and an artist second. I like, I like to silk oil, I used to like the sew cloths and then I realized that quilts always fit, so I started making quilts. In my twenty-nine years, the first ten or so I didn' ; t do much, I made a few quilts here and there but not a lot and in the last nineteen or twenty I have made a lot more quilts. I' ; ve lost track at how many for sure, but there is small, medium and king size and every size in between maybe six hundred and fifty quilts, that I finished. I don' ; t finish everything that I start, but I' ; m pretty prolific and I really enjoy the process. Once I' ; m done, I' ; m not as interested in the piece, but I do enjoy the process and the thinking about it and planning it and I don' ; t know the piecing and the quilting and the whole process, everything I like. KM: Are you self-taught or did you learn from someone? MC: I' ; ve taken classes over the years, not a lot. The last half a dozen years maybe or the last ten years even I' ; ve taken a few classes, often just to be sociable with my friends. I would say a little bit of both. I don' ; t have a family history with quilting at all. My mother didn' ; t quilt, I don' ; t believe and I don' ; t know that anyone in my family has ever quilted. I have my mother-in-law quilted but I didn' ; t learn from her so pretty much self taught I guess. KM: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups? MC: I belong to a couple of quilt groups. I belong to my local, small local guild, Every Piece Makers, I belonged there for about twenty years. It is where my friends are so I even actually go to meetings once in a while, and then I belong to a couple of the national organizations, AQS, American Quilt Society and one out of Houston, I' ; m struggling with the name. KM: International. MC: International Quilt Association. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? MC: How many hours a week, boy that is a hard question. I do a lot of other things that are quilt related so I try to sew every day and if I' ; m on a book deadline and I' ; m writing I' ; m not sewing so much, but if I don' ; t have some other deadline going on, I' ; m sewing every day so I would say if I' ; m lucky maybe twenty hours a week. Sometimes more. KM: Tell me about your books. MC: My first book was called the " ; A Fine Line: Techniques and Inspirations for Creating the Quilting Design" ; and it was about designing the quilting. I wrote it with my friend, Heather Waldron. It was an experience I have to say that I loved. I liked working with someone, I like someone to share the ideas with and that book is still in print even though it is seven years old now and people are, a man called and asked me about it this morning. My second book is " ; Quilt Toppings: Fun and Fanciful Embellishments." ; It is all me, I did it by myself. I wrote it, made all the quilts and I loved, I liked having the book but that process, quiltmaking is very solitary experience and I' ; m okay with that to a point, but the writing, making that solitary is quite a bit more difficult for me. My third book is going to be " ; Eye Candy Quilts: Focus on the Beads" ; I think and I have another writing partner, another Heather a different one. Heather Austerman is doing the writing and I' ; m making the quilts and we are just now to the tale end of that manuscript so hopefully it will be out by fall. KM: What are you favorite techniques and materials? MC: What are my favorite techniques? Well I suppose painting is my current favorite technique. I really like to paint on fabric. I like to embellish. I tell people if it will stand still long enough in front of me I will bead it, so I like that too. I think that I really enjoy the quilting process and I enjoy playing around with different kinds of threads to quilt with. I enjoy--I like cotton fabrics. I piece with commercial fabric and fabric I dye myself. I like to piece. I don' ; t know, I like it all. KM: Is there anything you don' ; t like? MC: Miniatures. Oh and piecing points, I don' ; t like piecing points and I struggle with piecing on a foundation because my brain doesn' ; t work that way, it is usually odd to me. I can do that but I struggle. Yeah, no I love most of it. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? MC: Heather Waldron, her work just fascinates me. It is very delicate, elegant and she was a traditional quiltmaker with an art background and when she moved out of traditional quilts and into the more art things I' ; ve really enjoyed that. I suppose the quilts I enjoy the most are the ones made by people that do things I wouldn' ; t do. Ruth McDowell is another one. Her beautifully pieced and quilted quilts are just spectacular, just really draw me. Like I said, they are things I wouldn' ; t do. KM: Describe your studio. MC: Studio, well my husband and I built our house twenty years ago and in the planning process, more than twenty years ago, if I would have known then what I know now my studio would have been different. However, I didn' ; t and I love my house and my studio is very small, I think I would like it to be bigger but I don' ; t have it bigger because it is not going to happen. It is different. It is eight feet wide and thirteen feet long, it is light and airy, it has two large picture windows, it is not a bedroom, it was never designed to be a bedroom so the windows start, they are picture windows so they start eighteen inches from the floor and come up. I store all of my fabric in my fabric cupboard which looks like pantry cupboards. I store--I have a thread rack with thread, I have a counter work surface that I work on and a sewing table and a bookcase. What I didn' ; t know all those years ago that I wished I would have known more than anything else was about a work wall. So my work walls are not in my studio because there is no place to put them, they are in the hall. There are two of them, one is on the hall as I sit at my sewing machine I look the long way out the door and it is a small work wall and the large work wall is on the other side and I sort of have to stand at the other side of the hall to see it. I sometimes wish that my studio was in a room where I could shut the door, but the truth is my friends and me too and my husband we all enjoy seeing whatever the heck it is that I' ; m working on, and when people come over they enjoy seeing the progress of the work, so I don' ; t know, I kind of like my space it is light and has lots of light. I live on a small fishing lake and I sit at my sewing machine and I watch the ducks on the water do their thing. We have a nesting pair of Bald Eagles and I enjoy them. My favorite time of the year to sit in there is fall because the first wind comes and the leaves all fall and land on the water and the second wind comes and more leaves fall and now they don' ; t stick to the water so they go up and down and sideways and sometimes I forget to sew, I really enjoy my space. KM: Sounds wonderful. MC: It is. April issue of Quilters' ; Newsletter Magazine is now doing the My Space feature and April has my studio, April 2008. KM: Very cool. What advice would you offer someone starting out? MC: Well, take a class, find a class, I don' ; t know about the rest of the country I just know about western Washington where I live and we have many, many quilt shops and they all offer really great classes on how to make a quilt and every aspect of quiltmaking. So I would recommend, if you are a person that can buy a book and follow it fine, if not take a class. I think one of the things I enjoy most about quiltmaking is the quiltmakers. It would be a really great place to meet them. KM: I agree with you about community. What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? MC: The biggest challenge. I suppose like everything else the cost of the materials for regular quiltmaker, especially the younger ones, the cost of quiltmaking is, it is not an inexpensive hobby by any means. The tools and the sewing machines and the fabric even are getting very expensive, so I would say probably the cost. KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? MC: I know that I like, I' ; ve educated myself to understand good design when I see it, so I really enjoy seeing a well designed quilt. The technique part of it, I think it is equally important, but on a really well designed quilt what I would expect is not to notice the technique, as in I don' ; t want to see bad technique. If I don' ; t notice it, it is well done and if it is well done I don' ; t think it is. Something that is well designed. I don' ; t know if I have a specific, can be anymore specific than that. KM: Now you have judged, is that correct? MC: Yes. KM: Tell me about judging. MC: In my other life before I became a quiltmaker, I was an inspector and you learned to make decisions, so I think I enjoy, I really enjoy the judging process because, and it is not a hardship for me like it is for other people because I' ; m okay with making the decisions. I think it is an education tool that people like because they get most of the time when you judge they get feedback telling them what they are doing right or what they are doing wrong, and I really applaud those people who put their quilts up to be judged because it can be a very personal thing. KM: You have also curated correct? MC: Yes. KM: Tell me about curating. MC: I' ; m a founding board member of the Association of Pacific Northwest Quilters who does a juried and judged show every other year in the Pacific Northwest called Quilt Fest. Early on like all other organizations we were looking to raise funds and awareness so Heather Waldron and I decided that we would curate a traveling exhibition, the quilts would be donated to APNQ [Association of Pacific Northwest Quilters.] and then sold at the gala and the proceeds all going to the organization. It was my job to solicit places to exhibit the quilts and I kind of, I guess I liked the challenge of doing something new and different, especially in the business side. We kind of selected who we wanted to solicit, we solicited, she solicited the quilts and I was the one who made sure the quilt got from point A to point B and figured out how to ship them and all of those kinds of details and it was a good experience, I enjoyed it a lot. KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? MC: My family, I have no children. I have step-children and a sister and nephews and grandchildren and all that kind of stuff, and I think all of them like it because they all get quilts. Some how or another it seems to work out that someone gets one every year for Christmas. I have noticed that it is usually one for somebody else and one for my sister, and one for somebody else and one for my sister. I' ; m not quite sure how she has managed that, but I think she has more quilts in her house than I do. So they all think it is great. My husband, he is happy if I' ; m happy. I like what I do and that makes me happy so he thinks it is great. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? MC: I' ; m not sure I can answer that question directly. It has become the way that I make my living, which is something I certainly enjoy. I like to travel, I like to meet people, I like the process, it engages my brain, the process of thinking about a quilt and making a quilt and just the whole process fascinates me. I think it is a new adventure every time I begin one and maybe it is that exploration part is what I like. KM: Why did you choice quiltmaking over any other creative endeavor? MC: I don' ; t know it ever occurred to me there was another creative endeavor. KM: Okay. Why fabric? MC: Why fabric, well I guess I can, I can remember my mother teaching me to make doll clothes when I was about five and she used to tell the story that she taught me to sew because she tried to teach me to crochet but I didn' ; t have the dexterity for that yet at five. I have always made clothes and I have always done stuff with fabric. I like fabric, I like the texture, I like the qualities of it, what is not to like. Like I said, I used to make clothes but someplace along the way figured out that quilts always fit. KM: Share with me some about your travels. Where have you been, where have you taught, what have you done? MC: I have been in a lot of states in the country. Recently back from Wisconsin, and I' ; m heading for Michigan this week. I' ; ve taught in Maine and California and Texas and Illinois and North Dakota and everywhere and Canada. I' ; ve taught quite a bit and I' ; ve traveled a lot. I' ; ve taught in Houston, just a lot of places. KM: Do you have a favorite? MC: Favorite? I like teaching at Houston. KM: Why do you like teaching at Houston? MC: I like the energy, I like the excitement, I like that there is so much to look at and so much to see and so much to think about and so many more ideas, I just think it is just a wonderful experience and I like, I like that energy I think that I get there. KM: In what ways do you think quilts have special meaning for women? MC: I think it goes back to taking care of a family and if we think about the history of the world cloth in some way shape or form has always been part of the history. I think it is a way to look back at our, the people who came before us and hopefully leave something for those that are coming some day. It is an opportunity to keep our families warm and to remind them that we love them. KM: Do you think that your quilts reflect your community and region? MC: I think that is just about always the case. I know that because I live in Seattle or in the Seattle area it is gray here a lot. It can be overcast a lot anytime of the year so that could be why my quilts are so brightly colored usually, so yah I would say probably does affect and I think that is typical. KM: Usually I allow people to add anything that they would like before our time comes to an end so here is your opportunity, is there anything else that you would like to share? MC: I just thank you very much for inviting me to participate in the [Quilters' ; S.O.S -] Save Our Stories, I think this is really interesting and really a great project, and other than that I think you have covered it all. KM: Cool. Thank you very much. We are going to conclude our interview at 2:45. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-40.xml AFPBP-40.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/7d44374e6dd6b7b2eb79f130b27f4b1f.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Karen Musgrave",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-38,,,"Carolyn Kolzow","Karen Musgrave",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-38.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Karen Musgrave AFPBP-38 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alliance QSOS Quilt Alliance Karen Musgrave Carolyn Kolzow 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-38 Musgrave.mp3 Other audio Oral History Carolyn Kolzow (CK): This is Carolyn Kolzow and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Karen Musgrave. Karen is in Naperville, Illinois and I' ; m in Beaverton, Oregon so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is April 2, [2008.] and it is 3:30 in the afternoon. I' ; m conducting a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview based on the exhibit " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Karen, tell me about your quilt " ; Shattered" ; that is in the exhibit. Karen Musgrave (KM): First I should say that my mother-in-law Dorothy has Alzheimer' ; s so when Ami Simms put out the call for a special exhibit based on Alzheimer' ; s, it really got the idea that I had in my head for a quilt for my mother-in-law to come to fruition. She put out the call for quilts, and I immediately started working. The quilt came together very, very quickly and I did it all in three days. I started by dyeing the background. The background is done using Mickey Lawler' ; s techniques [from her book.] " ; Skydyes." ; I wanted to have a grid to kind of show the normalcy of days, and yet there are areas where it is lighter or darker, which kind of to me represents the light of the good days and the dark of the bad days which comes with Alzheimer' ; s. My mother-in-law is dying the death she most feared. So to represent her fear, her hands are in the middle of the quilt, and they are shattered. They are crossed, and they are shattered. The hands of my husband, which is her son, her grandson, which is Nathaniel' ; s hands and my hands are reaching out to her, and this all represents love. I used a fabric from one of Lonni Rossi' ; s fabric lines, it has exclamation points on it, for the three set of hands-- for my husband' ; s, my son' ; s and mine because there are a lot of exclamations that goes along with Alzheimer' ; s. There is the realization day. There are the good times, the bad times, so I really liked that fabric to use for the hands. I was very, very worried when I cut fabric for the hands for my mother-in- law apart that I would lose the " ; shattered" ; parts. Lose the fingers--a part of it. Then when I started quilting it, my sewing machine started having all kinds of problems. The back of the quilt which--I usually have very, pristine backs, nice backs, has a lot of knotted threads because the timing of my sewing machine was off. But I could not stop. I just couldn' ; t stop, and I didn' ; t want to stop, and I decided the back represented Alzheimer' ; s too because Alzheimer' ; s is a mess. It is a terrible disease. Also on the quilt, I hand quilted little X' ; s. These kind of represented the periods of time when my mother-in-law would have panic attacks because she had an awareness that she was starting to become like her mother. She would have these moments of just real panic, and those little X' ; s throughout the quilt, some of them are red and some of them are in the brown color of the background, just represent those periods of panic that she had before she totally forgot everything. I was the first person to enter a quilt in the exhibition. It was less than a week after the call. Then I had to sit and wait to find out whether it got in because it was a juried exhibition. That was the worst, to have to wait. I think it was three months that I had to wait to find out whether or not my quilt would be accepted. I didn' ; t really care though, I just decided that this idea had been noodling around in my head. I just never had brought it out, because I guess I didn' ; t think there was a need. When I got accepted, it was just incredible--to be accepted into the exhibit. Another thing that I found--that I have found really interesting is that my quilt hangs next to Ann Louise Mullard-Pugh' ; s quilt which is called " ; Shattered Memories, Shattered Lives." ; She had originally also submitted the same name " ; Shattered" ; and was told she couldn' ; t because somebody else had it. She also used Lonni Rossi' ; s fabric in her quilt. CK: She did? KM: Yeah, and her image is a circle that she shattered instead of hands, but the similarities and in the exhibit Ami has the exhibit laid out--when you see the exhibit, it starts with the early stages of Alzheimer' ; s and then as you go through the exhibit the quilts represent the stages until you get to loss. So it has all the stages of Alzheimer' ; s. You start at the beginning stages of Alzheimer' ; s and then you get to the end where people have lost their family member or loved one or whomever. That was very interesting. It was just very interesting, Ann' ; s quilt is very red. It is just interesting that the both of us had a very similar idea and manifested it in similar ways but different ways. Ann wanted to use the same title. CK: That is fascinating. KM: It was. It was very cool to find that out, because I didn' ; t know that. I was always fascinated by her quilt when I saw the exhibit. The exhibit is a very powerful exhibit. I' ; ve seen it twice. I' ; ve white gloved in it twice, and it is just an exhibit that for me, I had to do in stages because I would always--once I started reading the artist' ; s statements and looking at the quilts, I would begin to cry. That was one of the things that I also did a lot while white gloving was passing out tissues because it is a very emotional exhibit. It is a very powerful exhibit, especially if you start at the beginning and work your way through, or even if you start in the middle and work your way through. The quilts are just very, very powerful. I haven' ; t seen my quilt in probably six months now, but it is always interesting to see my quilt in the exhibit and to watch people-- to be a fly on the wall and watch how people react to my quilt or anyone' ; s quilt and the comments they make. CK: What do you plan to do with your quilt? KM: I have no idea. I have thought a lot about it, and I don' ; t know what I' ; m going to do with the quilt when it comes back. CK: How did your family members react to the quilt when they saw it? KM: They liked it. I do a lot of things with hands, so that was not atypical. My son thought it was very weird when I went to him and said, ' ; You have to give me your hands. You have to let me trace your hands.' ; I literally traced everyone' ; s hands on the quilts. I was like, ' ; Okay you have to put your hand and your arm down. You have to let me trace it.' ; They are kind of used to that too. They haven' ; t seen the exhibit, unfortunately both times that it has been in the area, they all have had other responsibilities, but I think they were pleased that I made the quilt. It is part of their lives. I have always quilted since their birth, or I quilted before I met my husband. Matter of fact, the very first quilt I ever really made was for my husband' ; s niece. We weren' ; t married at the time. I was in high school. Quilting has always been a part of their [my immediate family' ; s.] lives. It is not like this is an unusual thing, or a thing that they particularly feel they need to comment on. CK: The quilts in the exhibit, did you find that they seem different from the book or what is on the CD? KM: I think quilts are always better in person, always, always better when you can see them in person. CK: Why would that be? KM: Because I think you can see more depth. You can see more detail. I had a very difficult time getting through the CD. We were all required to call Ami' ; s telephone and read our artist statement into her answering machine. I had to do it three times, because I would start to cry, or my voice would break and Ami did not want crying on the CD. The CD is very powerful because you can actually hear the person' ; s voice talking about her loved one. It was like revisiting the exhibit, and I could only do it in very short periods of time, because I would start to cry and become a wreck. Then I would just have to stop, so I would say it probably took me five or six times to get through the CD. What I like about the CD is that you can make the image very big on the screen of your monitor. On the screen you can make it as large as you want, so you can really see the detail of the quilt probably a little bit better than the book. But I love the book too because Ami incorporated information about Alzheimer' ; s, so you have the quilt, and you have a fact about Alzheimer' ; s included with each quilt. I thought that was a great education piece. I think Ami is a phenomenal person, first to undertake this and second in her marketing strategy, because everything has an education process/part. The other really wonderful thing is the money that is raised through the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative. All the profits go to Alzheimer' ; s research, and it is specifically marked for research. It doesn' ; t pay somebody' ; s salary. It goes to research on this disease. You lose a person with Alzheimer' ; s twice. First, you lose them when their memory goes, and then you lose them when they die. My mother-in-law is still alive, but she is gone. She doesn' ; t recognize anybody. She doesn' ; t know anybody, and it is the death she feared. It is a terrible, terrible way to go. CK: She had spoken about her fear of this before? KM: Yes, because it is exactly what her mother went through. CK: I see. KM: Exactly. She can' ; t hear. She can' ; t see. She spends her day in a wheelchair or in her bed. CK: How many years has she been diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s? KM: I think the diagnosis came before the actual realization, before it was really accepted within the family. There was a denial period. I' ; m trying to think how long my mother-in-law has had Alzheimer' ; s. It probably has been at least ten years. It is very sad. CK: It is definitely. KM: To have a quilt in the exhibit, traveling around, educating people and raising funds, I think is just amazing. I don' ; t think you can get much better validation then that. CK: Has the exhibit come through the Chicago area twice? KM: It was in Schaumburg at the Mancuso Show, and it was at a guild show [Faithful Circle Quilt Guild.] in Woodridge. When it was in the Schaumburg show, I went for half a day and white gloved. When it was at the Woodridge show--the guild is actually a Downer' ; s Grove guild, but their quilt show was in Woodridge. I was in charge of the exhibit. I went and sat the entire time and passed out literature, sold books, sold CDs and walked around white gloving. I could talk to people about the quilts and the quiltmakers. It was a lot of fun having interviewed quite a few people [who have quilts in the exhibit.] by the time it got to Woodridge. It was very satisfying to be able to share some of the back stories and give people a little more information about the quilt artists. That was kind of fun. CK: I bet it was. KM: I knew things about the quilts, like the back of the quilts or stories about the quilts. So when people would stand and look at a quilt, I would walk over and I would say, ' ; Let me show you the back, because the back has the full story of the quilt,' ; or ' ; Did you notice that the center of the quilt is perfect but when you look along the outside it is not?' ; Because a lot of the quilts are very subtle in their message like Becky Goldsmith' ; s quilt, the center is perfect and that is where your focus is. A lot of people would look at her quilt, and they wouldn' ; t be able to figure out why this quilt is in the exhibit. But when you really look at it, the design gets more and more catty wompus as you go out from the center. It is interesting to see how when people look at things, what they see and how they perceive them. " ; Jackie' ; s Chocolate Quilt," ; she [Joan Hailey Hanson.] wrote the full story about Jackie on the back of the quilt, so I love to be able to show people the back and show them the full story on the back of the quilt. CK: To get the most out of visiting the exhibit, if someone were to have the CD, would they benefit from going through that first before going to the exhibit? KM: Sure, I think having a little bit better understanding of the artists and the quilts would certainly enhance it. I don' ; t think it is necessary, but I definitely think it would enhance the experience. I would recommend taking several days to do it and not try and sit and go through the entire CD at one time. CK: How many quilts are in the exhibit? KM: There are fifty-two quilts. So there are fifty-four artists because one quilt was made by four people and one artist has two quilts in the exhibit. So there are fifty-four artists and fifty-two quilts, and they have been traveling now for two and a half years. It was suppose to be a three year commitment, but the exhibit is doing so well. It has moved beyond the quilt world, which I think is very, very nice. It is moving into retirement homes. It is moving into Alzheimer' ; s facilities. It is going to Alzheimer' ; s conferences. So it has moved outside the quilt world and into the Alzheimer' ; s world or into retirement homes where Alzheimer' ; s is very much an issue. I think it is very exciting. We all have, as artists, decided that the quilts can travel as long as Ami can find venues. It was originally a three year commitment, and now I think it is at least a three and a half year commitment if not longer. We have all decided that these quilts can travel as long as Ami can find venues. I think is great too, that more and more people are booking the exhibit and more and more people are seeing the quilts. I forget how many hundreds of thousands of people have already seen the quilts. I think this is a very interesting phenomenon. You don' ; t hear about exhibits of paintings traveling around educating people. I think this is a quilt phenomenon, and it says a lot about the quilt community. CK: It does. KM: I think that it is a good thing about the quilt community. I know that some people have decided to have their quilts auctioned off, because Ami does do auctions. My quilt is very personal, so I' ; m not sure I would want it auctioned, but by the time it gets done I might feel very differently. Once it comes home. I don' ; t get overly attached to many of my quilts. I' ; m much more of a process person than a product person. Once the product is done, I' ; m usually moving on. I think because this is so personal. It having to do with my mother-in-law, I think I would have a family meeting to make sure that no one in the family either close or extended would want to have the quilt before I would decide to do something to raise funds or whatever with the quilt. CK: That brings me to ask you about Priority Quilts for the Alzheimer' ; s project. Have you participated in those? KM: Yes I have. I have made the $1,000 Promise. There is a group of people--let me explain Priority Quilts which are small nine [inches.] by twelve [inches.] or smaller quilts that fit in a Priority Mail envelope. If you want to take one step further, you make a promise to raise $1,000 with Priority Quilts. There are a group of people who have decided to make a $1,000 Promise, and actually there are quite a few people who have already raised $1,000 and keep going. Betty Donahue has raised more than $5,000 with Priority Quilts, and again all the funds go to Alzheimer' ; s research. It took me a while to commit, I finally just said that I had to make the commitment to make quilts and do the $1,000 Promise. I have donated one quilt, and I think a few postcard size which are four by six inch postcards. I plan to at least raise $1,000 dollars if not more with quilts. Ami has an auction every month, the first ten days of the month where she auctions off the Priority Quilts. She has raised, with Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative which includes the CDs, the books, the auctions, fees that are raised from the traveling exhibit, more than $157,000 for Alzheimer' ; s research. CK: What a wonderful idea. KM: It is a wonderful idea. There is Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative gear too. You can get tee shirts and tote bags and water bottles, and I forget what else that you can buy in addition to the books and the CDs. Like I said, she doesn' ; t make any money off of this personally, and it takes up a tremendous amount of her time. A lot of us volunteer for the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative in different levels. There are a lot of people who are pulling together and dedicating a lot of their time, talent and treasure to this initiative. It is a good thing to be a part of. CK: I would think so. KM: I would certainly like to see--Alzheimer' ; s does not run in my family personally, but it does run in my husband' ; s family. I have a friend named Ron who has early onset Alzheimer' ; s. I really wanted to make a quilt for him, but I couldn' ; t come up with a way to express early onset Alzheimer' ; s. By fifty his mind was gone. I just couldn' ; t come up with an idea on how to represent early onset Alzheimer' ; s which still frustrates me. CK: Do you think of yourself as more of an artist than a quiltmaker? KM: Sometimes I call myself an artist and sometimes I call myself a quiltmaker. I guess it depends on my mood, the day and the audience. I do think quiltmaking can be an art form. I do think of myself as an artist. I don' ; t do the whole textile art thing, I' ; m very proud to be a quiltmaker. Someone who makes quilts and expresses myself through quilts. I don' ; t know if I make much of a distinction most of the time. CK: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups? KM: I belong to several organizations. I have started guilds and belonged to guilds. I don' ; t anymore. There are a lot of guilds in my area and when I moved back to the area, I decided instead of joining any one group I would play with them all. That has worked well for me. I think guilds are a wonderful thing. I belong to SAQA, Studio Art Quilts Associates. I belong to the International Quilt Association. I belong to the American Quilter' ; s Society. I belong to NQA [National Quilting Association, Inc.] I used to belong to PAQA which is the Professional Art Quilts Association I think it is, but they meet on Wednesdays and I found it very difficult to get to the meetings. I belong to a little group called the Divas, but I haven' ; t been in probably four or five months, due to weather and other commitments. I think belonging to groups is very important. I belong to two online groups. I belong to Postmark' ; s Art, which is a postcard exchange group. I believe we are in our ninth round of exchanges. And I belong to a group called Chooseaday, which on the first Tuesday of every month. Cat, the woman who organized this, pulls a word out of a hat, and we all have to interpret the word through a quilt. I have found that group particularly stimulating and interesting. I' ; m on the Quiltart listserve. I' ; m on the Quilt History List, because I do love quilt history and participating in things that deal with quilt history. I' ; m a member of The Alliance for American Quilts. I' ; m the chair of Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories, this oral history project. I do feel strongly in supporting and being involved in quilt groups. It is very social. Even though you create alone, it is a very social activity which I like too. CK: What are you working on right now? KM: I' ; m working on a--there is a balcony in Tbilisi, Georgia, in old Tbilisi. When I' ; m in Tbilisi and when I walk down a certain street, the balcony is on the corner. If I go one way I go to Mia' ; s house, and if I go the other way I go to the Georgian Textile Group' ; s studio. It is in the old part of the city. This balcony, I have absolutely, positively always loved it every time I' ; ve gone by it. I finally decided that I have to put it into fabric and recreate this balcony in a piece of art. I' ; m also working on a mask. I have been doing a lot of collage with polymer, which does has fabric in it. I' ; m trying to incorporate more and more fabric into the polymer collage medium and kind of make this more of a bridge between the two worlds, because I really enjoyed collage, the texture, working with color, manipulating paper. Also I' ; m a person who usually has multiple projects going on all at one time. I' ; m also working on a quilt for my great niece, Makayla, because Makayla doesn' ; t have a quilt from me yet. I' ; m doing an alphabet quilt for her. I like to do hand work. I have been making these little funky quilts that are seven [inches.] by seven [inches.] that are heavily embroidered, and I' ; m working on those because I want to donate more for the Priority Quilts. So I have multiple projects going on all the time, including things that I can pick up and put down. If I' ; m stymied with one thing, I find that if I go off and I focus on something else I will get the answer to whatever I' ; m stymied on. I can go back to that project. When I get too many things going on, my husband will say, ' ; You need to focus.' ; I will become very distracted and distraught if I have too many things going on, but I do like to have multiple things. I love to have hand work. I still hand piece and hand quilt and I love hand work appliqué and embroidery, so anytime I can combine all of those things I' ; m very, very happy. Although I do love my sewing machine, and I do love working with a machine. If I do too much machine work, I feel a disconnect. Also, if I stay away from my studio too long, I get very crabby and my family will say to me, ' ; You need to go create because you are very crabby.' ; I do get very, very crabby if I' ; m not creative for long periods of time. There have been times in my life where other things have gotten my attention, and I haven' ; t been creative, and I' ; m probably unpleasant to live with. CK: Describe your studio. KM: It is a mess. [CK laughs.] I' ; m a very messy creator. CK: That was my next question, are you neat or-- KM: No, I' ; m not a neat creator at all. I' ; m a very messy creator. When I create I just throw things. I will get things out, and I don' ; t take the time to put them away [until I am done.]. I' ; m a pile maker by nature, so I make piles anyway and my studio is just full of different piles. I will tell you that I do like to clean it up, I don' ; t like it to stay that way. Disorder really bothers me if it is too long. One of the things that I have been working on is going into my studio and spending an hour a day just kind of tidying up one little part of it. I' ; m easily extracted too, because I will look at it, and I will think, ' ; Oh this is perfect fabric for this project.' ; The next thing I know I' ; m creating a new pile. I' ; m easily distracted. I do, I do like to start somewhat neat. When I start something new, I do like to kind of clear away the old and clean things up. I am going through a process of purging and getting rid of some things and kind of deciding that I' ; m going to focus a little more in a certain area, so I' ; m letting other things go. Most of the stuff that I decide to get rid of I send to the Republic of Georgia. Magazines and books I will send to Kyrgyzstan. CK: Tell me about your travels. KM: At my first PAQA meeting, I heard Trisha Spitsbuller talk about her trip to Georgia which is in the former Soviet Union. It is in Eastern Europe. I was so moved by her talk that I went to her and I volunteered. I know that I wasn' ; t the only person who volunteered, but I told her that I really wanted to help the textile artists of Georgia because of her. She was a participant in the 2nd International Textile Symposium. I went home, and I put a twelve point plan together, which tells you about my personality, on how to save the textile artists of Georgia, and I sent it to Trisha. Nothing came of it. I finally just said ' ; Okay fine, I have released it.' ; A year later, Nino Kipshidze, who is the founder of the Georgian Textile Group, was organizing the 3rd International Textile Symposium, and she went to Trisha and said, ' ; Do you know anyone from the States that would like to attend?' ; Because to present a paper or teach is by invitation only so she asked Trisha to recommend people, and Trisha said, ' ; I think we need to invite Karen Musgrave.' ; There were five of us that were going to go. We started having meetings and planning and putting together grant proposals for money. Slowly by slowly everybody dropped out until there was just me. I knew that I had to go because the idea of going terrified me. So I got on the airplane and thirty-six hours later I was in Georgia and my luggage was lost. CK: All by yourself? KM: I was by myself. It was 3:00 in the morning. I hadn' ; t gotten any sleep, and I walked out of the airport not knowing who was picking me up and there was Nino and Daro, her daughter. We got into her Jeep, her very old, old, old Jeep and the streets were terrible. We would go down into these craters and up these craters and down into these craters and up because the roads were so bad. And the houses, old Soviet houses and I thought, ' ; Oh my, what have I gotten myself into?' ; There was no water. There was no electricity. I was there for three weeks. I presented my paper on art quilts. I did a presentation at the symposium on art quilts, and I taught and started the Georgian Quilt Group. Not knowing--I didn' ; t get a lot of information when I went to Georgia. I couldn' ; t get Nino to tell me anything, so I just had a suitcase full of supplies. Everybody in my group did a very atypical Georgian thing because at the end of the symposium when we all got together, my group had finished quilts. Everybody had finished at least one quilt, we had a group quilt and some people had done two quilts and it was all out of my suitcase, because there is nothing there. It is better now, but there was absolutely, positively nothing there. I announced to the group if they would continue working, I would come back, and I would send them monthly supplies. Doing this of course not realizing how much it costs to actually ship things a third of the way around the world, but I did. I have been back five times. I have started a lot of women in development and children in development projects. I had an orphanage project that I started to bridge the women of the community and the children in the orphanage. Because most of the children in the orphanage were not orphans, they were abandoned because their parents could not feed them. The relationship between the women in the village and the children in the orphanage was very bad. I stayed up all night, and I got a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to start a project. It didn' ; t work out quite as planned, but it is going strong now. It is beautiful and all the girls that I taught the first time I was there have graduated. Their project now has sewing machines and electricity and lights. It is in just a beautiful room now. It [the project.] got a World Bank grant and now sixteen girls every day learn a skill, the skill of sewing. Plus they sell their things and get the money, which is desperately needed there. I work with Nata [Burjanzade.] who is incredible. The greatest gift I think you can give anybody is to empower them so that they take what they have learned and do a greater good. Nata works with street children. Nata and Ira [Lavrinenko.] work with street children, former street children and they are teaching them quiltmaking. The last time I was there I spent five days with those children, and that was phenomenal. I also went to Akhalkalaki which is in southern Georgia in an area that is predominately Armenian and started a quilt group there. They are making baby quilts and working to bridge the world of the Armenian and the Georgian women there. That was a phenomenal experience. Very, very poor region, very, very sad place and now the women have something to do and colorful fabric to work with. My Georgian quilt group is still making quilts and I work with them, whenever I' ; m there. I will teach or talk to anybody I can about quilts. I have been to Armenia and I' ; ve been to Kazakhstan and I' ; ve been to Kyrgyzstan. My first trip to Georgia, the American Embassy, specifically the public relations officer, asked me if I could bring the quilts of Gee' ; s Bend, Alabama to Georgia. It was the only exhibition that I had a personal tie to so I spent a year making a proposal to take the quilts of Gee' ; s Bend to Georgia, and I was successful. I took twelve quilts of Gee' ; s Bend to Georgia. The agreement was that if I could bring the quilts to Georgia that at the same time, because I knew they were there, that there had to be quilts from Georgia also exhibited. So there were twelve quilts in one gallery of the quilts of Gee' ; s Bend, and then another gallery there were twelve quilts, both antique and new quilts, from Georgia. I attempted the same thing in Armenia but it didn' ; t work out, but I did take the quilts of Gee' ; s Bend to three different cities in Armenia. This happened because the Georgian American Embassy opened it up to any embassy that would like to host the quilts they could. I was asked if I could go to Kazakhstan, and I didn' ; t get out my map and didn' ; t realize how far away Georgia and Kazakhstan really are. Kazakhstan is half way around the world. So I went from Georgia then to Armenia, came back to Georgia and then went to Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan I was successful, in that they also agreed that it would be great to have Kazakh quilts. So we had antique and new Kazakh quilts also hanging with the quilts of Gee' ; s Bend. It is always interesting. You see the differences, but what you really see are the similarities. We have a lot more in common than not. They were going to have women from Kyrgyzstan come to the exhibit, but Kyrgyzstan had a revolution and they closed the borders. I was always very sad that the women of Kyrgyzstan did not get to come and see the exhibit, and for me to demonstrate and lecture and talk to them and share with them. I did demos when I was in Kazakhstan and demonstrated different techniques and showed people a personal technique of mine. I also met in Kazakhstan with the three different museums and that was the first time that was ever done, where the three museums actually got together and talked about textiles. There is a lot of competition. CK: How exciting. KM: It was very exciting because the embassy wanted to cancel the meeting because they didn' ; t think anybody would show up and we didn' ; t have enough chairs. It was the same way when I gave my lecture on the quilts of Geez Bend, the American embassy got one hundred chairs and they set up twenty-five and I kept saying this is not enough, because the one thing I know is when you talk about quilts people will show up and we ran out of chairs, there was standing room only for my lecture. The first country--the first city I went to in Armenia, Gyumri, I was packed in like a sardine. People were standing within inches of me while I was giving my lecture. We couldn' ; t fit anymore people into the gallery, into the museum gallery, that I was in. I always knew people would come. Two years ago, Kyrgyzstan invited me to come. So the agreement again was I would bring art quilts and that we would have the art quilts of the United States and we would also at the same time have the Kyrgyz' ; s patchwork. Again, the embassy was expecting about 100 people and had refreshments for 100 people and they were totally out of refreshments because there were so many people in less than ten minutes. There were people waiting outside to get in for the opening. Quilts draw people. In Kyrgyzstan they never had so many people. They had school groups come in with children and it was just constantly having people see that exhibit. It is very gratifying to bring everyone together and to have it there. In Kyrgyzstan, I also went to Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan and spoke at the art university in Osh. Again it was standing room only, faculty and students. You couldn' ; t sit anymore people in the room that I was giving my lecture in. I spoke for an hour. It was a brief overview of quiltmaking in the United States, so I started from our early history and went all the way to art quilts and what is kind of happening now. I passed around my quilted clothing and postcards and some of my smaller quilts that I had brought. My first question when I finished my lecture was ' ; Do all Americans hate Muslims like we have been told?' ; which was not at all what I had expected my first question to be. It was a male that asked--a male student that asked that question so I used logic with him, because that would be the best thing to do and I told him ' ; Why would I travel halfway around the world to share something I loved if I hated you?' ; And then I asked if all Muslims hated Americans. Of course he said, ' ; No.' ; My next question came from a girl which was written on a teeny tiny little piece of paper, because Krygyz women are generally very shy and it was--my next question was ' ; If you had to choice between your husband or your art, which would you choose?' ; CK: Oh my. KM: I thought, ' ; This is not at all what I expected.' ; I made a joke of that one, and I said that I was very fortunate because my husband never asked me to choose and it was good that he hadn' ; t, which got them all to laugh. CK: I have enjoyed this interview and I want to thank you for doing it with me. Is there anything else you want to share about either the exhibit or anything else? KM: I want to thank you for doing this because I know it probably wasn' ; t easy for you to do this interview. CK: The interview will conclude at 4:15. KM: Excellent. CK: Thank you. KM: Thank you. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-38.xml AFPBP-38.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/df0ccd048994af4d389c72547b98bf57.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Liz Kettle",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-37,,,"Karen Musgrave","Liz Kettle",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-37.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Liz Kettle AFPBP-37 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Liz Kettle Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-37 Kettle.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Liz Kettle. Liz is in Monument, Colorado and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview by telephone. It is March 17, 2008. It is 11:29 in the morning. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories based on the exhibit Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece. Liz thank you for doing this interview with me and tell me about your quilt " ; Tears Of--" ; which is in the exhibit. Liz Kettle (LK): I don' ; t know where to start. My great aunt taught me how to sew and she is my family member that had Alzheimer' ; s and while the illness is devastating of itself, I kept coming back to thinking about my uncle who kept her at home almost the entire time until the very end, way longer most people can keep their loved one who is suffering from this disease, at home. What was remarkable is that he was definitely not a family kind of guy. he was not the naturally the loving caretaking, he was the one being taken care of all the time until my Great Aunt got sick. It was an interesting turn of events. Right after I heard about the Alzheimer' ; s project I was visiting a friend who was a pretty new acquaintance and her husband had a short term memory loss trauma caused by a stroke and after talking to her and listening to what she had to go through every day to take care of this man who had no short term memory it was heartbreaking. He was just not functional and it was so similar to the Alzheimer' ; s caretakers that I started thinking about caretakers in general and one of the things that struck me so deeply is how they give more than anybody can possibly image and they are so much in the background. People don' ; t really think about how much effort it is to take care of somebody with a devastating brain disorder. Quite frankly this is one of the few times an image for a quilt has come to me almost fully intact, a vision for it, which is not usually how my stuff works. [laughs.] I usually have to work through process after process for my current work and this was like I was given a gift of the vision of how it should be. KM: Tell me about the quilt. LK: The central image is a big heart, which is also an image I never, ever use and I kept resisting putting this heart in. But I kept coming back to the whole idea that the caretakers give all of their heart and soul into taking care of their loved ones. I just kept wondering who fills their heart back up because it is a constant drain of energy and emotion and it never gets better, which has to be the most frustrating thing. You know going into it that it is just going to get worse and worse and worse every single day and I like I said I had this vision of this heart with all the blood dripping out of it, all the energy dripping out of it and the huge empty hole that wasn' ; t getting filled by our society, by our community. The heart is kind of similar to an hourglass where it is all beaded on the bottom probably third maybe a quarter with red beads and the beads are dripping out the bottom. The top part of the heart is covered in small X' ; s like cross stitch X' ; s in a heavy thread to be reflective of the wounds that they must have. Wounds every day, the little things you regret or if you lose your temper or the sadness because you can' ; t help or change what is going on with the person that you love. On the outside of the heart I stitched words in thread and I just adore using words in my work. I tried to balance the words between the deep sorrow and regret that the caretakers feel with the words reflecting the compassion and love that they are giving at the same time. I wanted the audience to have a balanced picture, not just a negative picture of how draining it is to be a caretaker, but also to know that sometimes it can be really fulfilling to do that kind of work even though our society doesn' ; t pay to much attention to it. The stitching that I did is all in variegated threads that go from red to black and I did kind of a wave pattern to simulate brain waves, the paths that our thoughts take in our brain and I tried to do synapses but I just couldn' ; t get those down. I have some of the stitching fading out into the black background so sometimes the stitching can hardly be seen and sometimes it is really there bright red and alive. The stitch lines cross each other reflecting the way our memories are all intertwined and the negative space show the big gaps of memories for Alzheimer' ; s patients. KM: There are beads coming off of the words also, right? LK: Yes, I used tear drop shaped beads coming off of the words to be tears, because I think that a caregiver just must constantly be close to tears, even if they don' ; t cry outwardly. I know that every day their heart is breaking because it is so difficult to watch your loved one fade away like that. KM: How did you feel when it got accepted into the exhibit? LK: I was really excited, I was really excited. I kind of felt pretty sure it would be accepted, which is also very unusual for me, every time I ever enter anything I' ; m always a nervous wreck but I had a peace about this that work. It would be accepted. So, I wasn' ; t surprised that it was accepted, but I was so excited because I knew that it would affect people and it has. I' ; m amazed at the feedback that I get from people, and not just people who are dealing with Alzheimer' ; s, because I kept it fairly generic and I didn' ; t address the memory loss very dramatically. It is more about caretakers in and their struggle so anybody who has done any kind of caretaking would relate to it. I knew someone who was going through a very serious, messy divorce and this man just started crying when he saw it--he didn' ; t even see the quilt he just saw a photograph of it. I' ; ve talked to some people who just started crying once they saw my quilt. I am not saying that I like making people cry, but at the same time I know I' ; m touching them even if they don' ; t have somebody close to them who is dying of Alzheimer' ; s. They may have been a caretaker for someone with cancer or somebody with a mental illness and it is very rewarding to know that people are being touched by my work. KM: There is a CD that goes with the exhibit and we were all required to record our artist statement. Tell me about that experience for you. LK: That was very hard for me because when you write your words you are a little bit removed from them, but when you speak your words it, you can' ; t help but connect with the emotion that is right below the surface. I had to record it quite a few times to have my voice not break too much during it because it made me want to cry just talking about my piece. I get emotional now when I talk about it and I haven' ; t seen it in two years. I don' ; t even look at pictures of it very often because it makes me cry. [laughs.] KM: What are your plans for the quilt when it comes back to you? LK: I' ; m not really sure. I would like it to be seen somewhere in a permanent collection, possibly in a situation where it can help those who are caregivers feel that somebody understands them, somebody knows, even if they never talk to me or know me. I just want caregivers to know that somebody understands what they have gone through and so I don' ; t know where it should go, but it should go somewhere that it can help people. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. LK: I just figured out the other day that I have been quilting almost thirty years and that was really scary for me. [laughs.] How did I get that old? I started quilting when I was a teenager. I came from a hand stitching background, cross stitch and embroidery, so my first quilt was a cross stitched pattern and I still have it. I show it very rarely because it is so bad. It had a printed diagram on it, the printed cross stitch pattern and the quilting pattern lines where you are suppose to quilt it and they were about a quarter inch apart. I thought that was where you were suppose to quilt on those lines, just like the cross stitch lines, so the stitches in the middle of the quilt are pretty big. Somebody clued me in that the stitches were supposed to be a lot smaller. It took me a long time to finish that quilt, but right at the time I finished it I was pregnant with my first son and started doing baby quilts and it just kind of snowballed from there. I' ; ve done just about every kind of quilting and have gone more into art quilting these days, but I also still do some traditional quilting because I find the rhythms and the peace of traditional quilting very calming and soothing when my life is filled with extra chaos. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? LK: It is pretty variable. I try to dedicate Sundays to quilting, the whole day. It is my day to do anything that I want. I have three boys, I home school two of them, they are teenagers and I have one grandson so I have kind of a crazy busy life with some part time jobs and teaching quilting classes thrown in. I don' ; t get a whole lot in, but I try and do probably get in about an hour a day. If I can' ; t get actual quilting done I' ; m at least working on a design or thinking about a process. So, probably an hour a day and then all of Sunday unless something else major comes up, a holiday or a class I take somewhere. KM: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups? LK: I do. I belong to Front Range Contemporary Quilt Group and it is the most unique group of quilting artists that I have ever heard of or been in. It is such a giving group. It is a huge group and the talent is amazing. They are so giving and they share their techniques, they share their work, they share their thought processes and we have fabulous guest speakers come in all the time. I am very fortunate to be in an area that is really focused on quilting. KM: Do you think of yourself as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you even make the distinction? LK: I think of myself as an artist. It took me a long time because I came from a totally traditional quilt background and it took me probably two years to be able to stop calling my studio a sewing room, but now studio comes off my lips as the norm. I think that the distinction between traditional quilting and art quilting is really a mote point. Anytime, art is about communication and intention, putting intention in your work so as soon as you put any intention into your work it becomes art and you are speaking in a language of fabric and color and design. Even if you are using a traditional design, putting your own pieces in, making your own color combinations, then it is art even if it is very traditional. I think that if you compare it to the paint world, anytime someone is doing a still life, that is not particularly imaginative, it is not something very out of the box, but that is still art even if it is a still life that they have been doing over and over again, so I think that we need to get away from thinking quilting is not art. If you are doing a kit that somebody else picked all the patterns and somebody else picked all the colors and all the fabrics that isn' ; t art. There is nothing wrong with making kits, one may just happen to go in your kid' ; s bedroom but that is not art. Anytime you are doing the choosing whether you realize it or not you are making art. A lot of people disagree with that, but it is just my opinion. KM: Works for me. You mentioned having a studio so describe it. LK: Disaster is probably the best word that comes to mind. I' ; m a piler by nature so my studio tends to be piles. I guess I like to nest because even my desk is piles of books and piles of papers, I just can' ; t seem to put those things out of sight. My studio is in the basement so I don' ; t have very much light, but it is a fabulous room because it is mine. I have a Pellet stove down there so it is toasty warm in the winter. It is incredibly crowded because I have gone from just traditional work to a more art quilt, mixed media format, I' ; ve been incorporating a lot more mixed media, so in addition to my fabrics and all my cutting mats and tools I have to have paints and all kinds of bazaar stuff for printing on fabric, and stamps and inks and dyes. [laughs.] I' ; ve got lots of metal doodads and old jewelry and just anything you can image, so my studio is kind of bursting at the seams and creeping into the hallway outside of it. I' ; ve gotten my family to the point where they know they just need to send me down there every once in a while to get some work done when I' ; m getting kind of cranky. KM: What are your favorite techniques and materials? LK: That is a hard question. I' ; m a Gemini and I truly fit that description in that I love everything, I love traditional and I love totally abstract work, I love to do just about every technique except maybe paper piecing that is not my favorite. Of course I' ; m in the middle of this huge paper piecing traditional quilt [laughs.] that is more difficult than I should have started. I don' ; t have a favorite technique, I love to learn all the techniques out there in mixed media as well as in traditional quilting and I like to mix them up. I like to pull from all the different tools in my box and say I need to appliqué this, or this needs to be pieced, just to get the effect that I need. The more tools I have in my box the better. As far as supplies, man I adore fabric, I have since I was a little kid, my mother couldn' ; t even take me shopping because I would have to touch every blouse, every fabric that we walked by in a clothing store and hide in the racks and just kind of revel in that fabric all around me. Fabric is my first love, but I love to paint on fabric, I love to alter it, I love to stamp it, I love fibers on top and beads, of my gosh I adore beads. [laughs.] I kind of like everything. I have a very messy studio. [laughs.] KM: I' ; m glad I' ; m not alone. Whose works are you drawn to and why? LK: Well, it goes along with saying that I love to do every kind of quilting and all kinds of mixed media work that I' ; m drawn to so many different artists. One would be Laura Cater Wood' ; s work. I love her work, it is so organic and abstract, I love that and if you look at photos of her environment you can see her quilts, how she is influenced in her pieces. Leslie Riley is another one and I like to work in her style also, I love that whole feel of vintage and layers in her collage type of work. So those are the two that spring to mind the easiest, fastest, but quite frankly I' ; ve yet to see a quilt that I don' ; t like. [laughs.] KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? LK: Find your own way. Learn the rules but don' ; t get so hung up on the rules that you are afraid to try something that is not perfect. Perfection is really not what our lives are about, learn what works for you, what ways you like to stitch. I' ; m a perfectionist by nature so it took a huge amount of time for me to be able to find my own style of quilting, my own ways, because I was always trying to be perfect. The traditional quilt world, the way their shows are judged, kind of lends itself to that. Don' ; t get hung up on that, perfection is all fine and good, but you have to learn how to just enjoy the process, quilting is a wonderful art form and it is so rewarding, just incredibly rewarding, so keep doing it. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? LK: I think it is probably part of what I just talked about, the getting away from all the rules to make it something that you can call your own. I think the more computerized our world gets, the more we need to get back in touch with art and self expression and if you get stuck in that world of perfection and perfect stitching and perfect points, you lose track of that communication aspect of art and so that is why I think the art quilt movement is so important and why it is growing so fast, because once you can start putting your own thoughts and emotions into a piece that you are working on, it is so much more satisfying and so much more rewarding. So I think that breaking away from, not tradition necessarily but from the structure that we have imposed on the tradition to be able to create your own is necessary. If you look at the Gee' ; s Bend work, they started with tradition but broke away from tradition because they had to make do so they have ended up with these beautiful works of art because they put their own thoughts, emotions, and intentions into the pieces and did what pleased them, not what was fitting a set of arbitrary rules. KM: I' ; m not sure they knew there were rules. LK: Well maybe not. KM: Which I think is also very liberating. LK: It is very liberating. I just took a watercolor class this weekend and we weren' ; t given a whole lot of rules and it was very liberating because it is very intuitive, you just keep trying things and if it doesn' ; t work out, oh well you put another layer of paint over it or put it away for another day and you will come up with some other use for it. I think you can learn a lot from other art forms where it doesn' ; t always have to be structured and it can be play. I think we don' ; t play enough as a society, we get too caught up in producing and consuming that we forget that art can be about playing. I think so many people are drawn to quilting in the first place, because it is functional, well most of them are functional, and you can start off making something functional because people accept that more than if we are just going to go play and make art, it is still a problem in our society. I don' ; t think art is valued as a process. KM: I think in the United States we are very product driven and not process driven. LK: Yes, we are very end result driven and that is how we got into this whole perfection dilemma to begin with in the quilt world. If you forget about the end product and just work on the process you will have so much more fun and you will take more risks and you will put more of yourself into your work. KM: Do you take a lot of classes outside of the quilt world? You mentioned the watercolor class. LK: I do, I do, I take quite a few, the watercolor one is a new one for me, it is a collage and watercolor class and that was pretty scary because I didn' ; t have a clue, thank goodness most of the class didn' ; t have a clue either. [laughs.] In the quilt world we don' ; t do a lot of experimenting, classes are very product oriented instead of process oriented. All the classes I' ; ve designed are process oriented. You may end up with a product and you may not, but they are not designed to teach you how to make this end product, it is designed to teach you how to go do it on your own with just the elements and principals of design, and we don' ; t get that very much in the quilt world, so I' ; ve gone to other media to find some of that. I take a lot of classes in mixed media, using metal and found objects, using all kinds of alternative materials, kind of altered art work. It is very freeing to work in something that is not your media and you can learn a lot and then sometimes you can bring that stuff into your chosen media and that is really fun. KM: You mentioned liking to use words. Tell me more about how you use words in your work. LK: A lot of times I will stitch words into my work. Usually on the surface where it is seen, not usually where it is hidden. Sometimes I will put words on fabric and stitch them down as a collage element because I make a lot of collage. I kind of work in two different styles, very contemporary and collage, old feeling. A lot of times I will use words to tell a story. I love to tell a story. I don' ; t tell the whole story in words usually, but I like to use a few words that suggest a story or suggest an emotion for a piece. There are a lot of people are using words in their work these days and there is some discussion whether that is making the work to obvious and therefore less significant in some esoteric art discussions. I think anytime you can increase communication with just a few words you add a deeper meaning to the piece. As a whole, our society isn' ; t used to thinking in art symbols and metaphor these days. I think you need to make art more accessible to people and sometimes some words can help them understand the piece, or understand what you are trying to say in a piece. KM: You signed on the front your name to " ; Tears Of--" ; Is that typical? LK: Yes, yes, I always sign my work right on the front. I don' ; t do the label thing on the back. One it is a security issue, somebody could take out all those little tiny stitches that I signed my name in but they aren' ; t likely to. You can easily take a label off the back of the quilt and put another label on and no one would know the difference. I think even if you are making a Log Cabin quilt for a bed, sign your name on it, it is your work and it also helps for remembering for posterity who did what when. You should be proud of your work ; you should put your name right on front. Now, I didn' ; t always do that, I used to put my labels on the back and hid my name, but now I automatically put it on the front of everything. KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? LK: I think that really the elements and principals of design are really important in making a great quilt, you' ; ve got to have good design, balance and rhythm, color value, texture, you have to have all those pieces there. Sometimes people make great quilts not knowing that they are using those elements of design, but once they look at it and you point out what they are they are all there. I think a piece that can communication, whether it is communicating, like a Log Cabin quilt made out of flannels, that speaks on its own, it speaks of warmth and caring and love and comfort, or maybe a real political art contemporary piece that speaks out about something. If it can communicate a thought or emotion, I think that makes it a successful piece. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? LK: I think that part of the reason I' ; m so drawn to fabric as a medium for expression is that it is so accessible to people. If you work in watercolors or oil paints or even drawing, most people don' ; t relate to that. Everybody knows about fabric, we know how it feels, we know how it smells, it touches all of the senses. It is so hard for people at quilt shows not to touch these quilts because that is part of who we are and I think that that is part of what I like about it so much, it is so accessible to everybody. We all understand the medium, as opposed to oil painting. I can enjoy an oil painting, but it some how is removed from me, I don' ; t understand it so I don' ; t relate to it quite as much as I do to a fabric piece. Fabric and stitching have been with us pretty much since man first started clothing themselves, so it is part of our history and I guess that is the best way I can explain it, it is I feel very connected to other people through that medium as opposed to paints or ceramics. KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? LK: My husband is an engineer [laughs.] and these three teenage boys, well one not a teenager any more, one young adult and two teenagers, so they just think it is something that mom does. They don' ; t really know what I' ; m doing. They will say, oh that looks nice, or that kind of thing, but they don' ; t really get what I' ; m doing. I' ; m kind of the balance for all of the left braininess in this house. KM: Have you ever used quiltmaking to get through difficult times? LK: Yes I have. Yes I have. Sometimes I can' ; t do it in the moment because the emotions are too raw, but I will very often work through something in quiltmaking. Sometimes it is a very small piece, you know postcard size even and that helps. Quilting helps because, number one it is a process where you are working by yourself and you are free to think and as you are working with the fabric it is so soothing and meditative that it really helps you to get closer to your brain and your emotions and understanding what you are dealing with and to let that stuff go, let it go, and sometimes it is obvious in my work, sometimes you can go wow this thing is a sad piece or an angry piece but it is really nice to have a place to let it go, otherwise if you keep it in your brain it just eats away at you and you worry about it and you' ; ve just got to let it out. KM: Have you sold any quilts? LK: No I haven' ; t sold any. I' ; ve given away an awful lot. KM: Do you sleep under a quilt? LK: No. [laughs.] That is funny, the paper piece quilt is for my bed, is really crazy complicated. I keep looking at this, why did I pick this complicated pattern? I' ; ve been working on it for seven years now. I can only do a little bit at a time. I told you I don' ; t really like paper piecing, why I decided to do a paper piece quilt for my bed, I don' ; t know. My kids sleep under my quilts, but not me. [laughs.] KM: Do you have a lot of quilts in your home? LK: Not a lot, well, you know when you start looking around you go, oh there is another one, there is another one. Yeah, most of my walls are decorated with my work and I' ; ve got at least one in my mom' ; s house and there are quilts here and there. Snuggle under quilts. Like I said I still like to do traditional snuggle up quilts just as much as I like to do art quilts. KM: Which I think is wonderful. That is one thing that I like about the quilt community. You can do it all, or a little part of it. LK: Yes, you can do all or just a little and you are accepted by the community. KM: Do you think that your quilts reflect your community and region? LK: In some ways yes, especially some of the work that I' ; ve been doing recently, they are not actually quilts. I' ; ve been doing some pieces that are fiber books, fabric books and some of those definitely reflect where I am, especially this time of the year. I am at 7200 feet so we get a lot of snow but we have these incredible blue skies and it is very dry so our grasses and trees are olives and browns so I tend to use those colors a lot in my work this time of year. I' ; m very influenced by the time of the year. KM: I find that in the winter my work gets very colorful. LK: That happens sometimes too. KM: Because I crave color. LK: Yes. I do, I kind of go back and forth between these very muted pale pieces in the winter and very bright flowery things, which are not my usual style, but sometimes it is like I just need some bright color. [laughs.] KM: Usually before I end, I like to offer people an opportunity to share anything that we haven' ; t touched upon that is important to them, and so this is your opportunity. LK: I think I got in most of the things I' ; m really passionate about. Be free in your quilting, don' ; t let the rules stifle you and just play, we don' ; t play enough. Sometimes I will just sit down at my machine and stitch on a piece of fabric with no premeditation or thought or anything and it is sounds bizaar but its so soothing and it can get me ready to work on a bigger piece or it can just satisfy that need to create something now and I' ; m always surprised what comes out from under my needle, it is usually something pretty interesting, shapes that I didn' ; t know I was thinking of until I see them and go, oh well there it is right there, what I' ; ve been thinking about all along. KM: Now you write. LK: I do. KM: Tell me about your writing and the relationship to quiltmaking. LK: Right now I' ; m writing for Quilters' ; Home Magazine. I write articles with my partner, Debbie Bates, she is in Canada and we have been friends for about twenty years now, and I taught her how to quilt and she taught me how to have fun. We write a smattering of different types of articles, but no matter the topic, we are always trying to get quilters to think a little differently, to think that they can have fun, they can play and it doesn' ; t all have to be work. Try to have a little fun with it. We are working on a book about creativity for quilters because a lot of the creativity books out there really don' ; t address the differences in the quilting genre from other genres like writing or painting, they are very specific to those art forms. Our book is designed to help traditional quilters, move to the world of art quilting. How do you let go of all those rules, especially if you are a pacifist or I mean a perfectionist. Sorry not pacifist, perfectionist. How do you make that leap and it is such a smaller leap than you would think. KM: Who wants to be pacifist too, you need help. [laughs.] LK: That is true, that whole negative self talk it is hard. KM: Exactly. LK: Really hard to get out of that. We do that to ourselves. To help break that habit, I teach a journaling class for fiber artists, for quilters, which his a lot of fun and I teach them that they don' ; t have to journal in words, you can journal in fabric, you can journal in textures and the harder the whole process of going into that more art quilt world, it is really learning about yourself and I think every traditional quilter should be an art quilter and I think every art quilter should be a traditional quilter too because both worlds have so much to offer and they shouldn' ; t be separate. KM: Where do you teach? LK: I teach at my local quilt shop which is a fabulous little shop called Wild Heather Designs Heather Thomas bought out our traditional shop about a year ago. Unfortunately for my pocketbook since she has lots of great mixed media things to add into your quilts and paints, and she teaches all kinds of different surface design and other different quilting techniques. KM: Where do you think quiltmaking is going to go? LK: I think it is here to stay as an art form. But, I read a lot of quilting forums and there is always a lot of talk about quilting dying or not and I think that as a community, we have got to embrace those younger people coming in and we need to encourage them and we need to accept that they are not going to quilt like we quilt, they don' ; t really want to know all those rules, they just want to know how to make what they see in their heads. I think that we need to really encourage young people, from middle school up and maybe even younger to learn how to sew and to quilt because being connected with fabric and thread and needle is centering. I think it really balances the whole computerization of our society ; it is so tactile where the computer world is so non-tactile and I think it helps you to always have to have something that centers you, that balances you. So I' ; m hopeful that this next generation of quilters coming up is accepted. I know I' ; ve talked to a few that have not had good results in quilt stores. They feel like they are watched for shoplifting more than viewed as the future KM: I used to manage a quilt shop and I would say that when the younger people came in the owner was very nervous about that, but I always embraced the younger people. The tattoos and the piercings and all of that stuff never bothered me. LK: I' ; m like, come on in I want to. KM: Exactly. I was always fascinating by why are you here you know. LK: I want to understand you and there are some great stuff going on out there, it is all kind of underground though. I try to look at the Threadbangers' ; website pretty regularly because they are doing some really fun stuff. I think they have a Discovery or Learning Channel show. I' ; m not even sure where it is from but it is some kids doing really fun stuff with fabric, altering clothes and making it their own, so I think it is good for our industry. KM: Do you think the move toward really quick things, things that can be accomplished quickly, do you think that is a reflection of trying to get younger people involved? LK: No I think that is more of a reflection of the product focus that we have, rather than the process focus. Most of these quick things are still designs with the traditional world I mind and not necessarily appealing to the younger kids coming in. As a society we want everything fast, we want it done now, we want it done yesterday, quilting isn' ; t like that, it is probably the most labor intensive art form out there. In my watercolor class over three days we were working on two separate projects. Most people had at least one finished piece, sometimes two or three, totally finished, ready to frame. That doesn' ; t happen in a quilting class, it just takes so much longer because of the medium and that whole get it done quick, fast and easy, I don' ; t think that is going to help society, I think we need to realize there is value in slowing down and doing hand work. I am so excited about the new embroidery coming out. There are a couple new books on modern embroidery, hand stitching and I think it is great, because that slowing down gives us time to think and if everything is fast and easy and quick, then we don' ; t have any time to think. But if it gets people in the door sometimes that is good too. KM: We have spent forty-five minutes together. LK: That goes fast. KM: Yes it does go fast because you are having fun. I want to thank you for taking this time to do this interview with me, and we are going to conclude our interview at 12:15 p.m. LK: Thanks Karen it was a lot of fun. KM: You are welcome. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-37.xml AFPBP-37.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/017765800acfe92f273322a60c46f3b2.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Linda Dunn",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-36,,,"Karen Musgrave","Linda Dunn",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-36.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Linda Dunn AFPBP-36 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Linda Dunn Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-36 Dunn.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Linda Dunn, and Linda is in Cambridge, Massachusetts and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois, so we are doing this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is March 7, 2008. It is now 9:15 in the morning. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories that is based on the exhibit, " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; I want to thank you for doing this interview with me and tell me about your quilt " ; Trying to Remember." ; LD: I made this quilt specifically in response to Ami' ; s call for quilts about Alzheimer' ; s. My father had died recently from Alzheimer' ; s disease. I' ; m still sorting through that loss. This piece was a chance to make those thoughts visible. KM: Tell me about the techniques used in the quilt. LD: I worked intuitively. The process tends more towards collage and away from traditional quilting. I manipulate fabrics a lot. I dye them and print on them using thermofax images. I use text. I use photographs. Then I start with one particular piece that seems most evocative. I look for companions to expand the piece and the impact of its message. In this piece, the starting point was the large orange and purple piece slightly right of center. It was an old table cloth I had dyed and then scribbled on with paint. The text is illegible, and somehow the combination of that scrawl and the colors - they remind me of the sky above a forest fire - evoked the confusion and helplessness I remember my father feeling as his memory began to desert him. I didn' ; t see my father often. He lived across the country from me after I left college, so his decline for me was like stop-motion photography. I would see him once every six or eight months and what he had lost would be so sharply visible. My mother lived it every day, but didn' ; t talk about it. I just have these memories of him, these huge snapshots in my mind. I remember him when my daughter was a newborn trying to figure out how to open his camera to take out the film. That was a shock, because he had been an engineer and photographer from when he was a child, but suddenly this box was too complicated for him. All of a sudden it was a mechanism he' ; d never seen before. I remember him two years later going through paperwork, trying to unpack a box. One of those nasty little magazine inserts fell out, the kind you just throw them away. It fell out and got his attention. He tried to figure it out: what it was ; what was he suppose to do with it. He was completely lost. The illegibility in my piece - the blurry photos and the indecipherable text - testifies to those incidents. The blurred text repeats and repeats because I imagine that is how my father felt: daily encountering more that he could not understand. There are photographs in this quilt, but they are very hard to " ; read." ; Even I' ; m not sure which is my father. It doesn' ; t matter: what matters is that you can' ; t figure it out, because that was the hell that my father was sucked down into. KM: How did you feel when the piece got accepted, when you heard from Ami? LD: I was thrilled. I was thrilled and I was grateful. Work like this is made to be shared. For me the work of sewing and painting comes from the same impulse that to write a play or make a movie: it is the urge to communicate. I think visual art tries to push right along that edge where words stop working. I look for that edge of communication. So for a finished piece to be in my house, in the back of my closet, is a kind of silencing. To be out there going from place to place, and being seen: that is its job. Having this quilt on tour means that part of what I have to say is alive and is out there being responded to by other people. I was very excited when I saw the exhibit. First I saw the catalogue on CD (which by the way I found it very hard to look at. It is so moving that I could only look at one or two pictures at a time). I was struck by how my piece was way out there in terms style. The exhibit goes right through the whole range of quilting techniques and textile art, from my piece right through the most exquisite traditional techniques, and every piece is moving, for all that they are visually different. Then I got to see the exhibit in person in Vermont. Besides the thrill of seeing my piece on display - it' ; s like seeing yourself in the mirror with nice clothes on - after I got over that, it was just so amazing to have this whole exhibit of moving pieces all doing their jobs. We were in this huge barn of a building. It' ; s noisy. It' ; s loud. There are all these people selling hot dogs and cloth and threads. In the center, Ami' ; s exhibit created this solemn space: a place of stillness and focus. People came into it and stopped ; they stopped rushing and started to see and feel. I saw huge men taking the time to examine each piece. Women I didn' ; t know wanted to talk to me about who they knew with Alzheimer' ; s. It is a very powerful, successful show. I' ; m thrilled that the show is out there, going from place to place to place. KM: Do you have any favorites? Are there any quilts on exhibit that speak to you particularly? LD: I remember one with a window, a sunset, and a silhouette of her father against that window. I also remember the one with the extreme traditional quilting: it' ; s all about the quilting. It' ; s nearly monochromatic and then has these images of mourning, very subtly quilted. KM: That is Diane Gaudynaski. LD: Oh my gosh, it is tour de force technically. But it is not just about being technically exquisite: it is beautiful and full of meaning. KM: The other quilt is " ; Sundown" ; by Beth Hartford. LD: Those are the two that stayed with me. I' ; m sure if I was paging through the catalogue, there would be others. One more that stays with me is the one with the image that is fading away, block to block. I thought that was brilliant, the way it combined the image' ; s story and the quilting style. KM: " ; Nevilyn" ; by Linda Hoff. LD: I would say those were my favorites. Actually I think the exhibit requires multiple viewings because there is too much to swallow all at once. KM: You mentioned the CD where we had to read our artist statement, because there is an audio component. Tell me about that experience for you. LD: [laughs.] It was humbling how awkward one feels in the presence of a tape recorder! Ami did it all over her answering machine. You wouldn' ; t believe how many times I got things wrong. I' ; d pause, or do it again, and then I wasn' ; t following the instructions. So I had to keep calling back. Ami was incredibly patient through the whole thing. I' ; m amazed how she took an everyday technology and used it to this purpose. We were calling her answering machine for crying out loud and she had no editing abilities, so we just had to keep calling until we got it right. KM: I haven' ; t yet made it all the way through the CD and listened to everybody. LD: Neither have I. I can only take the whole exhibit in visually, in person. With the CD you get all those different voices and all those different accents. You feel yourself traveling around the country, listening to individuals, because of the aural differences. It is one thing to read people' ; s words and another to hear them spoken. Think of difference between reading a play and seeing it performed, or listening to music on a CD and being in the presence of the musicians while they play. On the CD, the immediacy of grief pierces you. We can handle one or two sad stories, but on this CD is one sad story, then another, then another. It is very powerful. KM: What are your plans for this quilt when you get it back? LD: Before it left it was hanging in our living room and I think it may go back there. It feels like family. It is a portrait of my Dad. I might enter it in other shows to get it out. Or just hold on to it. If I ever had a solo show, that piece should be in it. Some pieces that are too personal to sell ; this would be one of them. It would be amazing to donate it somewhere, some day. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. LD: I always loved art. From the get-go, I was always making something or drawing something. My mom was great: she kept paper, paint, and all kinds of odds and ends around where I could work with them, and she hung up what I made. I used to live for the clay-time in grade school, and I got in trouble more than once for drawing in class. I drew right through office meetings, and whenever I traveled. At the zoo, people would stop looking at the animals and watch me draw. ' ; Harold, come here! She' ; s drawing the polar bears!' ; I felt like I was on exhibit, but I felt proud too. On the gurney before surgery once, I calmed my fears by imagining how I would draw the telephone I could see from where I lay. I had a grandmother who was a great needle-woman, but I was very scared of the sewing machine. I actually flunked a sewing class in sixth grade. I hated every minute of it. I was sure the sewing machine was going to sew my fingers to the fabric. My mother had to finish the absolutely hideous dress that was our homework assignment. Sometime in high school I had this vision: I just suddenly knew how to make something I wanted. Hobo bags were in fashion, but I couldn' ; t afford to buy one. Suddenly I saw how I could cut up a pair of pants and make one, if I could only run a sewing machine. So I went to my mother. To my surprise, she said she used to love to sew. She stopped sewing when we were babies. So I had never known she had been a seamstress. I started sewing clothes with my mother' ; s guidance ; that was exciting. In my 20s, I got more interested in fabric piecing. I' ; d get so caught up in embellishing a garment, it would be two years out of date when I was done. Fortunately, in the 70s, the women' ; s movement and feminism intersected with the rediscovery of quilting and traditional patterns. Suddenly there were books about quilting. I remember the Kaleidoscope Quilt book and the Folkwear patterns. There actually was a quilt supply store right in Harvard Square. I used to go there every Saturday and just Goggle the fabrics. But I was still trying to be a successful career woman. I had stopped dreaming I could ever be an artist. I worked my way out of the clerical pool into the lower ranks of publishing and then technical writing. I assumed art was something I would do on the side. In the 80s I went through a real change where I--well, first I left my poor attempt at a marriage, then I left the computer business. I married again, and then I went to art school - which I didn' ; t have the guts to do when I was 18, but when I was 32, with a home and a wonderful husband, who supported me in all senses of the word. When I got into the Rhode Island School of Design I felt like a sunrise. I got a second undergraduate degree. That was a harrowing time, because they really make you stretch. I don' ; t know how eighteen-year-olds survive that process. But it was great, and it permanently changed me. One of the undergraduates said to me, on the last day of school, " ; You have, like, aged in reverse since you got here. It is so weird." ; She was absolutely right. I' ; ve been away from art school almost two decades, and I still draw strength from what I learned and who I knew there. When I graduated, I tried to be a professional. I worked briefly as a knit designer for a crazy company, and I dreamt of working a craftsman, of making products that I could sell. In this age of international production that sets you up for competition with India and China: not a fruitful endeavor. You have your personal ups and downs. I went through a protracted period of wrestling with infertility, and then explored profound depression. When I came out the other side, I had a child and a little tiny business that paid for itself and not much more. We' ; d left the suburbs and moved to the city: another new learning curve, parenting a baby, at 40, in the city! But I kept sewing. I' ; d sew in the middle of the night, after nursing, I was that hungry to make things. The best day was when we hired a woman to come and be with my girl while I went to the studio. However, I always found, when my girl was little, it took at least an hour just to remember how to be alone, each time I went to the studio. So I was took care of my girl, and kept making products, I did craft shows, and peddled my stuff to small stores. Then we went through the next storm of personal stuff: my dad' ; s illness and death, my father-in-law' ; s death. Then my mom collapsed and I was diagnosed with breast cancer, about two weeks apart. Suddenly it didn' ; t seem nearly as important - it didn' ; t seem important at all - to be making purses or sellable products. I was still sewing, but what came out of my hands was no longer " ; useful." ; I took a class with Laura Cater-Woods, looking for answers. It was totally by chance I wound up with her. I actually signed up for a different class, one of those where you just learn how to copy the teacher. But Laura Cater-Woods is one of these guides who listens and tries to figure out what you are trying to say and then helps you say it. She did that for every person in the class. So I not only began to reach out, I watched others reaching out too. I brought something I had made. I said, ' ; I don' ; t even know what this is. It isn' ; t a purse. You can' ; t use it.' ; She said, ' ; Well, it is art. You are suppose to put on the wall.' ; That was four years ago, but it feels like a lifetime. That was the moment that I began to believe I could make art. I could make work that spoke, that wasn' ; t about temporary consumption. That my work could make a soul sing again. The quilt about my father is one of those pieces. KM: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups? LD: I am, directly as a growth out of that class. The core of that class was a group of people who met weekly to work on that intersection between art and fabric. They invited me to join them. Within two years we became the Lowell Fiber Studio. We wound up renting studio space together in Lowell. Sometimes you are blessed by synchronicity. Sometimes what you need is there when you need it. Doors open just when you happen to be knocking. At that same time Lowell Fiber Studios was forming, a developer in Lowell bought an old mill building and then lost his industrial tenants. When he couldn' ; t find new ones, he decided to turn it into artist studios. Lowell Fiber Studios was one of the first renters to sign on. Now that building has upwards of one hundred and fifty artists in it. It' ; s a thrill. I live about thirty-five minutes away ; getting there can be hard. Like going to the gym, it is easy to put it off. But we meet every Tuesday, and I try to get up there once a week in addition, to do messy wet work or work that requires space. At home I have a studio, where I work on smaller pieces. So I can work everyday and only travel a couple of times a week. I' ; m also part of a local quilting guild, The Quilters' ; Connection. They host wonderful lectures every a month and have a member show in the spring. Back in the 70s, back when this group was young, I tried to get into it but was told they had a two-year waiting list. I thought ' ; oh my god I won' ; t be a member until I' ; m 27,' ; so I never put signed up. Then, suddenly, I was 35, and I thought ' ; shoot: I could have been a member for eight years now.' ; But by then the waiting list was five years long, so I still didn' ; t sign up. When I was 40-something, the women at Lowell Fiber Studio got me to sign up, and now, here I am 50 and finally a member. I also belong to the Surface Design Association (SDA) and the Studio Art Quilts Association (SAQA) [Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc.]. They have very active online memberships and do annual or bi-annual national conventions, which I hope to get to attend some day. I eagerly read their publications. I subscribe to Fiber Arts Magazine, too, which is right out there on the wild cutting edge of the fiber art scene. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? LD: I don' ; t actually " ; quilt" ; at all if I can help it! [laughs.] I' ; m finding that the actual stitching together of three surfaces irritates me. I' ; ve started collage fabrics. I can glue everything that I can. I use stitch more to draw than to attach. I also have begun to stretch my pieces on stretchers, like a painting. I want don' ; t want my pieces folded up and put on the couch or into the closet. I want them on the wall. I also don' ; t want people worrying ' ; s this going to fall apart? Is this going to disintegrate?' ; I want folks to understand: this is art, and it will last. I do use old materials - some of my fabrics are disintegrating when I get them. One of the very first indications of where I was headed was my passion for old linens. I love fabric that has been part of other people' ; s lives. I can' ; t bear to see old linens tossed. Dresser scarves, with embroidery ; hankies with hand-tatted edges ; linen napkins that used to be ' ; for the very best.' ; I couldn' ; t bear the thought that they are getting thrown away. So I scarfed them up at yard sales and church bazaars, horded them, and tried to figure out what could I do with them. I tried putting them in pillows for decoration, and they just wore out. Now I can over dye them and work them into a larger art piece. They still have this frayed, disintegrated quality from being old, but then I couch or stitch or fuse or overlay, and they come alive again. They can continue their lives with even more meaning than they had when they came to me. I try. I try. I try. An artist' ; s life: there is a lot of paperwork, a lot of business work. Then there is just the wool-gathering: wandering on the Internet, going to galleries, getting out books, looking at other people' ; s ideas. I would say I put in now five or six hours a day altogether, but how much is " ; productive?" ; Maybe thirty minutes. On a good day, I' ; ll spend three hours in the studio pushing something forward. But then not all of that is creative work ; a lot of it is the last " ; ten percent" ; to finish something. The creative act is wonderful, but for every act of creation there is a whole lot of maintenance afterwards. Marge Piercy has a great poem about it, " ; The Sabbath of Mutual Respect." ; She uses the image is of gardens. She says every seed planted in springtime represents hours of weeding and hoeing before you can make the harvest that you have to be selective if you are going to be fertile. KM: She is one of my favorite poets also. LD: She came to the RISD while I was there, to speak and read. At the end, she looked up at her audience - all these kids - and said that she was talking especially to the young women. She wanted them to know that it was the women who choose their partners. She said, ' ; All that splendor in the bird world, all that glorious plumage you see, and all that song: that is product of female selection. It is you. You are the ones with the power. You are the ones who choose who you are going to sleep with. It is in your hands.' ; [laughs.] It was going right over their heads, but it is true. [laughs.] KM: It is true. LD: This poem about creativity and choice, I actually have it up on my studio wall, to remind me I' ; m not crazy: ' ; Fertility and choice:/ every row dug in spring means weeks/ of labor. Plant too much and the seedlings/ choke in weeds--. /The goddess of abundance Habondia is also the spirit of labor and choice.' ; When ideas are blossoming, to me it feels like I am a plant and the art is rushing up through me. It feels like idea is throwing out limbs and branches and leaves in time-lapse photography. But because I am one soul, with one life, I can only trace one line, up through one branch and down one twig to one leaf. By the time you' ; ve get to that leaf, you can' ; t double back down to where it branched off. You are already off on another tangent. So you try your best to capture and assess ideas as they come, and then you must choose the path most worth following. KM: Describe your studio. LD: It is where the extra bedroom ought to be! My work seeps out into the rest of the house. We have a very small, city condominium, in an old house, and we are a family of six mammals, three of them humans. Under the circumstances I' ; m very grateful to have a 10' ; x 10' ; x 10' ; space, but I practically throw the monitor across the room when I run across when people on the internet saying, ' ; I' ; m in my new studio and here is the wet area, and here is the dry area, and here is the library, and here is the sitting area.' ; These people that live in Nebraska and they bought their house three decades ago, and their kids are grown [laughs.] they have room! Oh, for more room! But be that as it may, I have wedged in as much as you can wedge. I have to go in sideways to get through the door. I have a table. I have an industrial sewing machine from about 1930' ; s, and a bottom-of-the-line home sewing machine, the first one I have ever bought new for myself. My earlier ones were: a new Singer from my in-laws (God bless them), a second-hand White I bought, a 1930' ; s sewing machine a friend found in the basement, and a 1950' ; s machine my first boyfriend/husband bought for me for five dollars at a yard sale. I wore every one out, except the 30' ; s one. It' ; s solid metal, and I love it too much to give it up, even though I don' ; t use it any more. I have an ironing board and I buy a new iron every year because I get so much glue and paint gunk on it, plus I knock it off onto the floor at regular intervals. I have a six-foot table up on supports so that I can work at it standing up. That' ; s where I cut and collage, print, paint, meditate. Under and around it are drawers and boxes filled with vaguely sorted fabric. I have a wall of windows with an eastern exposure. The squirrels run up and down the tree and onto the roof. Sometimes a nuthatch comes to call. I have two walls of very tightly spaced bookcases, packed with supplies, plus another bookcase kiddy corner (which is why you have to go in sideways) that hold paints, glue, batting, and fabrics. I try to keep it under control. On the bookcases I hang sheets so I have a sort of design wall. Also the sheets cut down on visual noise. All that fabric saying ' ; Use me!' ; I have to walk a fine line between visual stimulation and quiet. I tend to get very chaotic very quickly. My New Year' ; s resolution this year was to clean my desk off every day at the end of the day. KM: Have you been successful? LD: Not with the business desk, no, but with the sewing desk, yes. The act of cleaning up slows me down: it helps me focus, and when I focus, I discover I actually have lots and lots of half-finished ideas worth giving attention to, worth bringing into completion. Since January that is all I have been doing. Well, new work keeps popping out the sides, but I have been trying to finish pieces that were just sitting there waiting for me, saying, " ; When will she get to me? I' ; m right here, but she has forgotten that I exist because I have fifty-two piles on top of me now." ; [laughs.] If I' ; m not careful, my sewing desk turns into an archeological dig. I interrupt a project, and just shove all the pieces over to the right. Then the cat would nap on them. Then I would put another project on top. Repeat. Eventually I would need room and I' ; d clean up, finding amazing stuff, along with mysteries, as I went down through the pile. Worse confusion: whoa whoa, this was important, but what is that? I' ; m trying to do better on that score. KM: Do you work on more than one thing at a time? LD: Yes. Always. For example, I have something pinned on one of the idea boards that has been there since I almost finished it last year. I thought: " ; I will finish that next week" ; and there sits, looking at me. Things get to that ' ; only ten percent to go' ; stage and then they stay there for a long time. Meanwhile, ideas sprout ; they germinate. I have these fantastic fragments all over the place. They need to be bigger pieces. Lots of that goes on. Plus, in between the active development, I spend some portion of my time churning out products. Yes, I still make purses and notebooks and stuff. They pay for my " ; habit." ; They buy the art supplies and pay the studio rent. But I always have artwork that I' ; m trying to finish. So I am constantly circling between those different points and then dipping down to catch up with paperwork and pay taxes, and trying to see people, because it is kind of a lonely life too, in the studio. Nobody pays me for socializing. But it' ; s an important part of being alive. KM: What is the typical size of your work? Do you have one? LD: I have in the past worked very small and I think part of it is the function of working in a small space. Until Lowell Fiber Studios got a studio space, I had no place in my house to see anything from far away. My house just doesn' ; t have those sight lines. I also don' ; t like the finishing work, and there is a whole lot more finishing to a large quilt. Nor do I have the equipment for it. I' ; m working on a bigger piece, (for me), about 40 inches by 36 inches and it is a good education in what I don' ; t know about physically handling a larger textile piece. It has been humbling, but it has also been eye-opening, because I have images I want to do large and I' ; m thinking that they may not be quilts, they may actually start on canvas, so that I don' ; t need to learn how to quilt. The interesting thing for me is when you start with a canvas you know what size you have and then you work within that size. With fabric, the piece can grow outwards. I always start with a little kernel, and the piece grows. I start with the image, and then pieces accrue. It grows until it is the right size. Well, that works if your finished piece is 24 inches by 18 inches. But the physical reality of sewing pieces onto each other is that, if you work randomly, the piece buckles. It is uneven, and in the traditional quilting world, that' ; s bad. I suppose it could be an advantage. Nobody frowned on the Gee' ; s Bend quilts because they were raw, but it is a choice that I need to make. Also if you are working larger you need to work with larger marks. You are responsible for larger patches of light and dark. At school, in an introductory sculpture class, I was taught to make a little model, and then a medium model, and then a half-size model, and then the big thing. I didn' ; t get it. I still just dive in. But twenty years later, I' ; m realizing: if I want to make a big piece, I need to plan. I' ; m turning another corner. As an artist, I think, you feel more keenly that life is never really about arrival. We mask this in our lives with promotions and birthday parties and annual job reviews. But nobody gives me a job review anymore. Nobody even cares what I do. I just go up to the studio and say, ' ; Well what am I working on today?' ; Sometimes I get to see something I made four years ago and I' ; m think ' ; Wow, my work really has changed.' ; A friend looks at my latest piece and says, ' ; Your work is really going somewhere.' ; Then I know. But still, I finish something and it' ; s done. I move on. I don' ; t actually get to the top of the mountain. I just get pull myself up another edge to the next plateau. Ahead is that horizon, the one Tennyson' ; s writes about, that ' ; untraveled world, whose margin fades/ Forever and forever when I move.' ; KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? LD: [long exhale.] That question has always stumped me. I try to squeak out of it by saying I like best whoever' ; s work I had seen most recently. I' ; m terrible with names. So I can have a whole visual catalogue of pieces that I have loved, but I can' ; t tell you who the artist is. For example, at the opening yesterday, I loved somebody' ; s work. (I still haven' ; t learned her name.) I wanted to say how her work reminded me of Andrew Wyeth' ; s. But I couldn' ; t remember his name. I could only think, frantically, ' ; Who is that artist that paints those pictures, that my painting teacher didn' ; t like because he said they were too illustrative, and one is called Christina' ; s World.' ; And he worked in Chad' ; s Ford, and his father and his son were illustrators?' ; But I couldn' ; t say all that at an art opening ; I would have felt like an idiot. Andrew Wyeth - jeeze. KM: Yeah, Andrew Wyeth. LD: So I said how her work had an empty quality, the feeling of people who had just left the room. It had that openness and clarity and used harmonics on a neutral scale. I love just about every part of any art museum. I have a hard time with some of the really contemporary stuff, but I suspect, often, that' ; s the goal. I love old stuff: medieval furniture and Middle Kingdom animal sculpture. I love oriental art - scrolls, ink painting, kimono, old and new. I love Piranesi, Giacometti, Matisse, Gaugin, and other artists whose works I can see in my mind, but their names escape me. I love fashion. Not for myself to wear (I wish!) but to see and study. I think my alternate self went into costume design. I' ; m just fascinated by how people have draped their bodies and made textiles an extension of their self image, their religious roles, their culture. I think an embroidered dish towel with a little dancing kitty on it from 1930' ; s is great. Actually one of my favorites is a " ; Days of the Week" ; towel that I found, with an elephant vacuuming. I think that towel is just as exciting as something from the cutting edge of Paris design. I think runway fashion is as exciting as traditional Tibetan dress. One of the most satisfying classes I ever took at RISD [Rhode Island School of Design.] was about African art. For me, the exciting part was the textiles: how they were made, who made them, what role they served in the society. These costumes were meant to be danced in at night, to be danced in at night by sanctified people, so when you saw the people dancing in these clothes at night, you would be seeing the gods: they had come to visit you and give you instruction about who shouldn' ; t be messing with whose wife, and who ought to return that thing that he stole and who--[laughs.] I just love that ; I love that. I don' ; t get out much, but I love it when I do. [laughs.] KM: Believe it or not, we have talked for forty-five minutes ; I always give people the opportunity to say anything else that they would like to add. She is speechless. LD: Yes and no, no and yes. I could go on forever. KM: You were wonderful and I truly want to thank you for taking your time to talk to me and share. We are going to conclude our interview at 10:00. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-36.xml AFPBP-36.xml ",,,,"Karen Alexander, in honor of Barbara Gonce",,,"http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/04c4aee462e9e9d0d54b5e2ea676046f.jpg,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/d12ddec20c0ab6d26d1c72a139c99bce.jpg","Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Marsha McCloskey",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-34,,,"Karen Musgrave","Marsha McCloskey",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-34.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Marsha McCloskey AFPBP-34 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Marsha McCloskey Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-34 McCloskey.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Marsha McCloskey. Marsha is in Eugene, Oregon and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is March 13, 2008, and it is 11:10 in the morning. We' ; re doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project because it is based on the exhibit " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; So Marsha I want to thank you for doing this interview with me. Tell me about your quilt " ; A Day with Beebe" ; that is part of the exhibit. Marsha McCloskey (MM): This quilt was made after a request from Ami Simms, mastermind and curator of Alzheimer' ; s quilt project. Her mother, Beebe Moss, has Alzheimer' ; s. Ami and I have been friends since the early nineties through our quilting and traveling. I' ; ve known Ami from before the time her mother was diagnosed, and through all the heartbreak that has gone with it. Before Ami' ; s mom, Beebe, was diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s, she was a vibrant, funny, quirky woman who grew orchids and traveled all over the world. She painted wonderful silk scarves. She designed this fabric line, I think it was for Marcus, probably two years before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s. There is such energy and power in the images in the fabric that it deserves to be recognized. For a long time as a quilter, I felt that if you worked with somebody else' ; s pattern, for instance copying an antique quilt, you would learn something about that person and what they were thinking by doing the same process that they did. I feel the same way about using somebody else' ; s fabric. The fabric design, especially when it is original, tells something about the creator. So, when Ami asked me to make a quilt for the exhibit, I asked her for any pieces of Beebe' ; s fabric that she might have left from the collection. She sent me a huge box of fabric, and I just worked with it. I let the fabric tell me what it needed to be. I spent a long time thinking about it, but when I finally sat down to make the quilt, I let the fabric and Beebe tell me what to do. I had a great time. I could see the humor and the vibrancy of this person through what she had chosen to put on the fabric. KM: Let' ; s describe the fabric and what you decided to do with it. MM: One of my favorite images in her collection is of dandelions. You don' ; t see this lowly flower on printed fabric very often. You will see the iconic roses and peonies and tulips and the more romantic flowers, but Beebe chose dandelions. So that particular image is prominent in this quilt. KM: Those are the ones that are inside the stars? MM: Yes. Right, the little squares. There are four of them. Those are the dandelions. Then you have the marching or running giraffes. They go one way and then the other. It was printed that way on the fabric. All the animals are from Africa. Let' ; s see, there are herds of elephants, giraffes, Guinea hens all in a row, and dandelions. KM: Some of the giraffes are upside down. MM: Well, that was me. When you are taking the pieces of the fabric from the design wall to the sewing machine and then back again sometimes they get turned. When I realized that the giraffes were upside down, in keeping with the theme " ; forgetting piece by piece," ; I thought, ' ; Well, I messed up on this one and I' ; m not going to fix it.' ; The star right next to the upside down giraffes also has a mistake in it. I lost one of the corner squares and couldn' ; t find it anywhere. So, I cut a very plain gray square and put it in that place. Those two things in the quilt represent very real forgetfulness. KM: There is a CD that accompanies the exhibit and the artists were all required to record their artist statement, because there is an audio component. Tell me about that experience for you. MM: Something like this. I think it was recorded on a recording machine. KM: Her answering machine. MM: Ami' ; s answering machine. KM: Which is very clever I think. MM: Right. You just had to figure out what you were going to say and record it. Kind of like taking a digital photograph only by voice. You could listen and decide if that is what you wanted to say or not, and record it again if you didn' ; t like it. It was like recording your greeting on your own answering machine. KM: In your artist statement you have a quote from " ; Blade Runner" ; [a 1982 film.]. MM: Have you seen the movie? KM: Yes, I have seen it. MM: And, at the end of the movie when Roy who was--what did they call them? He was a " ; replicant" ; scheduled to die after four years. " ; Blade Runner" ; was set in the future. They had a whole class of cloned beings that weren' ; t considered human. Programmed to only live for four years, they were workers and soldiers sent to do jobs that were too dangerous for real humans. So, Roy was one of these non-humans, but very human in his biology and outlook. Before he died, he described some of the things that he had seen in his short life that nobody else would ever see. Then came the quote, ' ; All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.' ; It brought to mind Alzheimer' ; s patients, their memories, and how fleeting they are. KM: Very poignant. What do you plan to do with the quilt when it comes back? MM: I don' ; t know. [laughs.] It is a wall piece, not very large, and it will probably stay with my collection until it finds a home. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. MM: I started making quilts when my daughter was one. A lot of quilters make quilts for a child as their first quilt. My neighbor, Grace, was making utility quilts. She had a cardboard triangular template and let me borrow it. So the first quilt I made was a design called Broken Dishes, and it was just very scrappy. I had never seen anybody but Grace make quilts and she did it all on the machine, so I did too. I used my little Singer sewing machine that I had gotten as a graduation gift from high school. I pieced on the sewing machine, quilted and even put the binding on completely by machine. I only learned later that, at that time in the late sixties, real quilters only make quilts by hand. Machine work was not widely accepted. Once I made the one quilt, I was just smitten. I was so excited about colors and the fabrics and the visual impact of what was happening. My first quilt was a scrap quilt for a baby, but it got me started. I just kept going and that was thirty-nine years ago. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt now? MM: I' ; m in kind of an interim right now. We are in the middle of a pretty extensive remodel of the house we moved in to. My husband retired and I' ; m not quilting much at the moment. But, I know I will get back to it. KM: Is it difficult not to be quilting because of your renovations? MM: It is. I got to make a quilt top in January, when the house project was in kind of a lull. It is wonderful to to be able to remember what it is you were doing before you got so completed interrupted. KM: Someone else quilted Beebe' ; s quilt? MM: Yes. KM: Is that typical of you now? MM: It is. Quilting has been my business and for many years. I travel, and have spent a lot of time teaching. I design fabric. I write books, I have a website. Frankly, I never learned to machine quilt very well. What I do, I want to do well. Other people have taken the time, and have the machines and the skills to do machine quilting very, very well. I simply don' ; t have the skills. KM: Was this done on a longarm? MM: Yes, it was. KM: I remember a time when longarm quilting was really considered another of the taboos. MM: It was a taboo. But, it is the skill and artistry of the operator that is important, not the machine. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? MM: The advice I would give to someone starting out is to choose a small section of the craft and become very, very good at it. To find your passion within the broad spectrum of quilting. Find what you truly love doing. Hopefully, you can create your own expertise in that particular niche in quilting. Mine has been Feathered Stars. I became fascinated with the design in the early eighties. At that point there were no books on the subject and I ended up writing the book that I wanted to read about the design. The book was called " ; Feathered Star Quilts" ; and was published by That Patchwork Place in 1987. Nobody else has taken on the subject to the extent that I have. It has served me very well. With all of the designs and everything that goes on in patchwork and all of the different techniques, I am the person quilters go to for information on piecing and designing Feathered Stars. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? MM: I think choosing what to do. There is just so much out there. You can dabble in all sorts of different techniques and styles and fabrics. I think I need to live a very long time to be able to make all the quilts that I want to make, and use up all this fabric. Again, it is finding the place to concentrate your efforts that will be the most rewarding. KM: Where do you see quiltmaking going in the future? MM: I think it will go in cycles the way it always has. The current quilting revival has been going since early in the seventies. Right now the marketing trends are towards simple, easy quilts, in an effort to corral the younger generation, people who perhaps have never even used a sewing machine. Eventually those people, if they stick to it will get hooked on quilting and graduate to more complex patterns and techniques. KM: Describe your studio. MM: Oh, my studio. [laughs.] It is a brand new room and it is over the two-car garage so it has that same footprint. It has natural light on three sides and it is the second story and I can see a lot of trees that are just beginning to bud. I have a design wall that is eight feet wide and eight feet tall. I have about four different projects on it at the moment, just ideas that are not quite ready to be done. Right now I have a lot of stuff stored in this room that isn' ; t going to be here eventually because of the remodel. This will clear out. Right now it is kind of junky looking, but I have everything I need. My sewing machine and a cutting table. My fabric is in clear plastic boxes that will eventually go on extensive shelving that isn' ; t in place yet. I' ; m sure if anybody looked at my studio right now they would wonder how I can get anything done in such a mess. But, I do have great plans for furniture and shelving. Right now, I just need to make sure my work space doesn' ; t get covered up with all this stuff! KM: Are you a neat creator or a messy creator? MM: There is something in me that tells me that I have to have everything neat before I start. I like to clear the boards, get the visual clutter out of the way, and make sure the room is clean. Then, I can concentrate. Once I start working, all bets are off. [laughs.] KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? MM: In the quilting world? KM: It can be any world. MM: I really like Judy Matheison' ; s work. Like me, she is known for variations of one design. She has just taken Mariner' ; s Compasses further than anybody else. Gwen Marston' ; s work has a depth of knowledge and humor, that if you know quilting is always--I enjoy looking at what she does. I like my friend Judy Martin' ; s work. She does intense piecing, some amazingly creative variations within the confines of traditional-looking designs. For the last few years, I have worked with the very talented, Sharon Yenter, on what we are calling Blended Quilts. For inspiration, we go back to the quilts of the 1790' ; s to 1840' ; s. Probably the largest, the most important influence on my work is the work of quilters who came before us, (in the 1790' ; s to the 1920' ; s) the designs they used and how they put the pieces together, There is just amazing variety in the color and design of quilts from earlier times. KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? MM: Just because it is a quilt doesn' ; t make it good, that is one thing. A great quilt holds your attention, it has enough going on in it that you want to look at it for a long time, and you find something new every time you look. KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? MM: I think they take it for granted. I mean they think it is a pretty neat thing that I' ; ve been doing for all these years. It is not new. I' ; ve been doing it my kids' ; whole lives. My husband loves to come in my room and just sit and look at all the stuff and activity. They don' ; t participate, but I think they pay attention. KM: What are your plans for your quilts? MM: My quilts? Like the quilts that I have? KM: Yes, the ones that you have. MM: The ones that I have. Well, that is an issue. I have not sold my quilts, I give some away, I have some that I use as samples for teaching. I have a core group of quilts that I really don' ; t want to let go because every once in a while I' ; m asked to do an exhibit of my work: maybe fifteen to twenty quilts that are really good examples of what I have done over the years. What to do with them? Well, first, when we finish the remodel, I' ; m going to get them out of the boxes and lay them all flat on my bed and hopefully get them stored properly. There are some pieces that I would like to move to new homes, sell. There are some that should be in museum collections. I have one quilt at the MAQS [Museum of the American Quilter' ; s Society in Paducah, Kentucky.] museum that they bought as a one of a group of ten quilts for their tenth anniversary. I would like to see more of my work in that situation. But, it is always a question: What happens to the quilts? KM: Do you think of yourself as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you even make the distinction? MM: I really don' ; t. I have moments that are very artistic, and moments when I just enjoy doing the craft as well as I can. I really like precise piecing and all the technical elements that go into it. I' ; m also a business person. Many of my quilts are designed not for me, but for other people to make, which is a different than making " ; knock-your-socks-off" ; quilts that nobody else could make. KM: Do you like the writing? MM: Yes. I enjoy it. Most of it is technical writing where the goal is to write instructions that other people can follow. There is a certain art to making instructions perfectly clear. I have an advantage because I teach so much. Students teach you how to tell them what they need to know. Just by all the times you have to repeat, you find the right words. The teaching is then translated into the writing. KM: Do you belong to any quilt groups? MM: I do. I belong to the local quilt guild in Eugene, but I' ; m out of town so much I very rarely get to go. I get the newsletter,and pay my dues, and do those things that one needs to do when you belong to a guild. I haven' ; t been here long enough or had the time to get into a small group. I' ; m still nominally a member of my small quilt group in Seattle, where I used to live, called The Monday Night Bowling League. I miss them a lot. KM: The Monday Night Bowling League? MM: Yes. [laughs.] KM: How did you come up with that name? MM: It was a group decision. Some of the ladies went to a sewing circle where they never sewed, all they did was eat, so we decided that we could go to a bowling league and never bowl. It got to be pretty funny because the families got to wondering about what we actually did on Monday nights. KM: Why was that group important to you? MM: That group included Sarah Nephew, Nancy Martin (who started That Patchwork Place), Mary Hickey, Joan Hanson, and more whose names I can' ; t remember right now. These were people who were authors and serious quilters. Most of them wrote and designed for That Patchwork Place. Nancy Martin became tremendously influential locally, nationally and internationally. She provided an outlet for the talent that she saw in people around her. In that time and place there was a level of, I guess, expertise and maybe professionalism that you don' ; t find in most quilting groups. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? MM: That is hard to answer because it is just such an integral part of my life. I' ; ve been making quilts for forty years and I can' ; t image not making quilts. KM: I usually allow people to give them an opportunity to share anything else that they would like to share that I haven' ; t asked them, so here is your opportunity. It can be about the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative or it can be anything. [MM long pause.] Or it can be nothing. [laughs.] MM: I think that I would like to talk about finishing projects. KM: Cool, okay. MM: There seems to be among quilters, a huge guilt about unfinished projects. Most quilters have multiple quilts in progress at the same time. There are a few quilters that start a quilt, finish it: start another quilt, finish it and don' ; t have unfinished projects. I think those quilters are in the minority. Most of us have a lot of projects going at the same time. I remember one quilter in California who said that she made a quilt in two days, seventeen years apart. Meaning that it was in her unfinished project pile for seventeen years. I have a quilt that I started and put away, and then come up with a design idea to finish it literally years later. Sometimes you start a project and it is going so well you don' ; t want to wreck it. You don' ; t want to proceed before you have confidence in the design idea to finish it properly. It is important to know when to stop and wait. Sometimes you just don' ; t know enough or have the right skills. Sometimes the right fabric to finish the project won' ; t be produced for a couple of years yet. You have to be able to recognize when a project isn' ; t ready to be finished. I wrote my Feather Star quilt book in the eighties and in that book was a triple feathered star: that is a feathered star within a feathered star within a feathered star and the smallest pieces in that block design were finishing at one quarter of an inch. I was just enthralled with the thing and I wanted to make it so badly. But I didn' ; t know how to draft it, and I couldn' ; t really make it without drafting it. It sat in my head, that I wanted to make a triple feathered star. Seventeen years later, I figured out how to draft it. I now had the computer. I had computer skills. I knew a lot about how feathered stars fit together and what had to happen to make a viable pattern, and it just clicked. So it took me seventeen years to figure it out. It gives me great hope that all of these designs that are sitting in the creative part of my brain will eventually come out. They can' ; t be forced and they can' ; t be rushed. If I' ; m working on a project that doesn' ; t seem to be going anywhere, I will put it away and work on something else, but it doesn' ; t mean that the problem goes away. I keep mulling it over and eventually it all falls into place. That is when the project should be finished. KM: I think this is a great note to end on. I do believe personally that we are much more product driven than process driven. Do you agree with that? MM: It certainly seems that when the classes that are scheduled in shops or at conferences, the organizers want to know that students are going to come out with a finished or nearly finished quilt or a small project. The classes that are purely process, learning how to make a certain design or do a technique, don' ; t fill as well because stuidents want to know that they are going to have something finished to show for their effort. KM: Hopefully it will change. MM: Well, it is not getting better. KM: No, but I always remain hopeful that it will change. MM: You have to be sneaky as a teacher and give students the option to do a project while they are learning the technique and l the process. Hopefully you give them much more to chew on and to think about then just one quilt. KM: Thank you so much for taking your time to talk with me and to share. MM: Thank you for pursuing this and for the work you are doing: both with your larger Quilters' ; S.O.S. [Save Our Stories.] project and for helping Ami with " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; That is great. KM: Thank you so much. We will conclude our interview at 11:52. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-34.xml AFPBP-34.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/3065c96bb77d1d920d445ca5f576bc07.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Peggy Mages",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-32,,,"Karen Musgrave","Peggy Mages",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-32.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Peggy Mages AFPBP-32 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Peggy Mages Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-34%20Mages.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Peggy Mages, and Peggy is in Lake View, New York and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are doing this interview by telephone. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories based on the exhibition " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Peggy, I want to thank you for doing this interview with me. It is March 7, 2008 and it is 1:12 in the afternoon. Please tell me about your quilt " ; Puzzling Memories" ; which is in the exhibition. Peggy Mages (PM): I have always liked Ami [Simms.] Oh, I' ; m boring already. [laughs.] KM: That is okay. PM: I' ; ve always liked her website but I don' ; t really remember how I found her before the Alzheimer' ; s Initiative began. I was drawn to her sense of humor and when I saw that she had this contest for people to enter for the Alzheimer' ; s exhibition, I thought that would be kind of interesting. But I really didn' ; t have any idea what to do. I like to go through the quilt shops and things online looking for new ideas and I went to the eQuiltPatterns.com and found Liz [Schwartz.] and Stephen [Seifert.] had a pattern there that was called " ; Quilter' ; s Puzzle." ; Right away it hit me that this would be a great Alzheimer' ; s quilt. I bought the pattern online from them and I took a look at it and it was too big, so I had to sit down and figure out what I wanted to do as far as making it fit within Ami' ; s parameters. Then I emailed Liz and Stephen, being a former librarian I knew you needed to ask permission to do these kinds of things, so I emailed them asking permission to change their pattern and telling them what I was intending to use it for. They wrote back thanking me for asking permission and giving me that permission to use their pattern for the Alzheimer' ; s Quilt Initiative. I started making the puzzle. I bought really bright fabric knowing that I wanted to dye some pieces. They started out really nice and bright and then as I dyed them different shades, put brown in and they got a little darker and some got darker still, that is how the memories would be fading with Alzheimer' ; s. I put in some black squares, or pieces as well. That was memory that had already disappeared forever and was gone. I decided that I didn' ; t want a square quilt, or a rectangular, or a bound one, so I took the sides and just zigzag, cut randomly all around it so it was very uneven. Then I just took and fringed and cut the border so that it was no longer bound, it looked like it was kind of coming apart. That is the way I see an Alzheimer' ; s life as just kind of disintegrating, kind of coming apart and there is nothing that you can do to put it back together again. By using the " ; Quilters' ; Puzzle" ; pattern, how I finally ended up with my " ; Puzzling Memories" ; quilt for Ami. KM: Have Liz and Stephen seen the quilt? PM: I don' ; t know. I don' ; t know if they have seen it, I think they did receive a picture. KM: You did send them a picture when it was finished. PM: As far as the show, I have not seen it, because I live south of Buffalo, New York and it has not come around here. I see that it is going to Cleveland, which is not too far away. I have not seen the exhibit myself. One of my friends had seen it in California at one of the longarm quilters' ; conventions and of course she was very moved by it. But I have not been able to see it myself so I am looking forward to that. KM: What do you plan to do with the quilt when it comes back? PM: I don' ; t know. I was going to ask Ami if it might be possible to auction it off online or whatever in order to give additional money to the Priority Quilts or to the Alzheimer' ; s (AAQI) [Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative.] because it is really not a quilt I would want hanging around my house. It is not a happy quilt. I like happy things. Right now my mother does not have Alzheimer' ; s thank goodness, but she has been diagnosed with dementia and she recently had an accident and had broken her jaw. She fell down the steps and broke her jaw in three pieces and she ended up now living in an assisted living home and doing well there, but I have seen her dementia. I have seen what happened to her and it is not as bad as the Alzheimer' ; s is, but I don' ; t think I would want this quilt around the house truthfully. So I don' ; t know, I don' ; t know what to do with it. That is a few years away so we will worry about that. KM: It is nice that it is traveling longer than the original three year agreement. PM: An extra year so far. KM: I hope it keeps traveling. PM: I do too. There are so many--as I said there are so many venues and we could use. I don' ; t know how we could get it to western New York here, but I would be willing to work on trying to get it here if we could, that would be a great venue. KM: There is a CD that goes along with the exhibition and it has an audio component, it has the voices of each artist reading their artist statement. Tell me about that experience for you. PM: It was very nerve-racking to me because as a former librarian I want things to be--what I always read to the children and things like that I would always try to make sure that I put the right punctuation in and the right emphasis and all of that stuff for them to get the most out of the story, so it was very hard for me when I was doing the recording. As this is now for me, to make sure that I had exactly the right words, was saying things the right way, saying things the way I wanted, it was coming across the way that I wanted it to be. One thing Ami did say is that she could listen to my voice talking for a long time, which was very nice because we had to redo the second half another time and by that time I had just about had it with my own writing and my own explanation of the quilt. It was interesting. It was something again that I had never done, having my voice recorded for a CD and that was kind of fun. KM: I don' ; t know of any other CD that has an audio component like that. I thought that was very clever of Ami. PM: Yes it definitely was. She has so many wonderful ideas. KM: I think to use the technology of her answering machine and we just spoke to her answering machine. PM: Yes that was the thing, you go, ' ; oh, oh I' ; m sorry I made a mistake there,' ; and then you realize you are not even talking to a person. You are talking to the answering machine. [laughs.] Very interesting. KM: The other thing from the exhibit, I know that you have looked through the book. PM: Yes. KM: I am assuming you went through the CD, although I found that to be very difficult. PM: I couldn' ; t do the whole thing, but I have loaned it out to many of my friends. In fact the nurse at the home where my mom is living, I was talking to her about the project and I had given her all of the information. When you called to set up this interview I had to get all of the stuff back from her because she wasn' ; t letting go of it. She said, ' ; I have to keep looking,' ; and I said, ' ; Well I need it back.' ; [laughs.] She was very interested as well in the project. KM: Do you have any favorite quilts in the exhibition? PM: Pardon me. KM: Do you have any favorite quilts in the exhibition? PM: I do like, I tend to like ones that have pictures in it. I do many photo quilts myself and I liked the one, in fact it is right in front of mine in the book. It is by Beth Hartford, " ; Sundown" ; , that has just the silhouette of her dad that is quite a poignant one. I did a silhouette quilt of our family. In 1983, Christmas of 1983 when we were all together and it turned out that my dad died in February of 1984. That is quite a memory for me. I don' ; t know why I decided to do it at that time because dad had not been sick but he was diagnosed with lung cancer and passed away within six weeks. KM: I am sorry. PM: So that was when I saw that quilt it did remind me of something I had done. Of course the other one is " ; Nevilyn" ; by Linda Huff, again with the pictures and just her mom kind of dissolving away there is quite poignant too. There are art quilts that I find amazing. They are so different, like the " ; Mimi Has Squirrels in Her Attic." ; That is one is just fantastic. You can look and look and every time you look you see something completely different. KM: That is Sue Lemmo' ; s. PM: Yes it is. There are so many, it is hard. Every single one of them obviously has something to portray that is different. KM: They are all very different. PM: Yes they are. KM: You can' ; t really. They are very broad spectrum of styles and techniques, although they are all pretty small because she did have a size limit. PM: Yes she did. That was one of my problems, as I said, because I was using a pattern. KM: How much smaller did you have to make it? Your quilt is 36 inches by 46 inches. PM: Right. I can' ; t remember. KM: I can' ; t either, it is really funny I can' ; t remember what the size limit was. PM: No in fact I was looking to see if I had the original email of Ami' ; s rules of what the size the quilts needed to be and I don' ; t have that. I do have the acceptance email. KM: How did you feel when you got accepted? PM: I was ecstatic. This was first thing that I had ever tried to enter and it was accepted. When I saw the names of the other people and how experienced and well known they were in the quilting world, I kind of felt like I was a little leaguer playing in major league baseball, you know. [laughs.] That I wasn' ; t sure I belonged where I was. It was very, very humbling and yet kind of, oh what is the word that I' ; m looking for, very encouraging and uplifting that my work might be good enough to stand with these other professional quilters. KM: Another part of the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative is the Priority Quilts. Tell me about your involvement with Priority Quilts. PM: When that first came out I had sent in ten quilts. I had made them. They were to look like the viewer was looking out some windows. I had bought all of this really neat landscape type thing, one was a campsite, one was, all different pictures of farm scenes that type of thing, one was those ones that look like Monet settings with the watercolor things. I used them, cut them just to the right size and then I made a black like a window frame to put on top of them. I made different shapes, some were oval, some were rectangles, some had windowpanes, some have a rounded half of a skylight on top of it, and I made those and they worked out really well. My first quilt was like number five. Ami numbered them in increments of five. So I was five, ten, fifteen, twenty, all the way up. So it was right at the beginning of the Initiative that I was able to get those in. KM: I should explain that those are auctioned off. PM: Yes. KM: They used to be on her website and now they are on eBay and the money goes to Alzheimer' ; s research. PM: One of my first ones appeared in I think pretty much the first write up magazine article about her initiative in the Bernina publication Through the Needle and that was in May of 2006. Ami sent me a copy. First she emailed me and told me that she had used a picture of mine. She had eight quilt pictures there, eight little quilts pictured there and the article was telling all about her Initiative. It was trying to get people interested in it and giving the website that they could look at. Someone saw that and told me, ' ; Hey it was in there,' ; and I said, ' ; Yeah I know, Ami sent me one.' ; I went out and bought a few copies myself from the local Bernina store and that was fun. Last summer Alex Anderson came to town. She gave out bags from Bernina and that exact magazine with included in each bag. Every person got one and there were a lot of my friends from the quilt guild and other places that opened it up and said, ' ; oh my gosh Peggy you are in here.' ; Of course that that was printed two years before, but they didn' ; t know that. [laughs.] It was kind of fun again to relive it again. KM: What else do you do for Priority Quilts? PM: I also do all the registration. KM: How did that come about? PM: I volunteered. [laughs.] You know when they say ' ; Just say no.' ; It didn' ; t work. [laughs.] No actually I had retired after thirty some years as a school librarian in June 2004 and I had said that I was going to find myself a project that I felt was worthwhile, a volunteer not a paid position that I could work on and really feel like I was being useful in getting things done. When this came along and Ami asked for a person to do this, I said I would. She asked me if I was sure what I was getting into [laughs.] and I said, ' ; No but I' ; ll try.' ; I have been doing it, well this summer it will be two years that we have been doing this. KM: Tell me about the process. PM: My name is the registrar on Ami' ; s website. Quilters fill out the form that is posted there. I just emailed Ami that I' ; m a little frustrated right now. Since she has gone to non-profit, the form has changed and some people are not using the correct form. She mentioned pictures should go to Diane Petersmarck, but they are being sent to me. I' ; m getting everything and am trying to figure out what goes to whom. Then the fair market value is one that has really been a stickler for me. That is only, it says in about five places on the website that the fair market value is just the price that you figure you paid for materials. So five dollars is a good starting point, give or take a few dollars. Then people write in $140 or $150. They are still talking about the selling price, and then I have to write back to them. So there is so much more communication back and forth and so much more waiting for them to get back to me again with the corrections that I find the process is really slowing down. Hopefully people will get used to using the new form and they will read the instructions as to where the pictures are to go to and to whom and to send one quilt per email, and we will be back to [laughs.] some semblance of order anyway. KM: How many Priority Quilts? What number are you up to now? PM: We are up to 2199. I just did number two thousand one hundred and ninety-nine yesterday. KM: Wow. PM: We also have over to 200 Little Treasures. I recently registered number two hundred and twenty-eight. KM: Tell me about Little Treasures. PM: Little Treasures are quilts that are bigger than 9 inches by 12" ; inches. They don' ; t go without cramming into a Priority mail envelope, so Ami created a new category for those. They are a little bigger, maybe a 12 inches by 12 inches, maybe, whatever, if they are bigger than 9 inches by 12 inches even by a half or quarter of an inch, they go to the Little Treasures and they are handled basically the same way. They are put in there for auction. Many times Ami takes things to the different venues that she goes to, she takes quilts with her and often times people are concerned as to where their quilt is since they don' ; t see it up on the website as being ready for auction or anything like that. Then they write me asking ' ; where has my quilt gone' ; and I have to track down what Ami is going to do with it. There is a lot of recordkeeping and a lot of going back through the records I have. I have twelve notebooks full of all my printouts from the Priority Quilts and I have three of the Little Treasures so far. I keep everyone that a person sends me, so I have had them for two years now. Two years worth of notebooks accumulating. [laughs.] KM: How much time do you spend on this? PM: Hours, hours and hours. I was just on vacation for two weeks and Ami had put that on the website - don' ; t send anything. This was the beginning too of the changeover, ' ; Don' ; t send anything yet, Peggy is on vacation.' ; Well we did take my husband' ; s laptop and had the wireless access and I did miss my emails so I would go on and during that two weeks when I wasn' ; t supposed to be doing anything [laughs.] I got forty-four quilt registrations sent to me. I had to begin the process because I couldn' ; t be coming home and doing everything. I put the quilter' ; s information into an html form, which takes a while, then I have to email the quilter with the new number and the directions that Ami wants them to follow. Then I email my html form to Niki who is doing the actual posting on the website and sending them to Ami. Any pictures, as I said, go to Diane, so there are all different places to send things. There is another form, a post registration form to send to the quilters saying ' ; I just registered your quilt, did you get it?' ; because we are finding that sometimes, and this was interesting, the very first one that I sent, the woman had not gotten the quilt registration but she did get my follow up email. KM: I think unfortunately the Internet is not as reliable as it once was. PM: As it gets more and more used, you know, then things get lost in cyberspace somewhere, I don' ; t know where they go, but that is at least we are hoping one of them gets through. People will say, ' ; Well I sent mine in two days ago where is it?' ; So did fifteen other people. I just do them as they come in. Sometimes it is frustrating, but it really is very rewarding to know that I have helped. I don' ; t know how much we are up to now, $180,000 was the last figure I think I saw. KM: I am assuming it is more than. PM: I' ; m sure it is now. Yes. KM: I' ; m trying not to quote any numbers anymore because I' ; m always one step behind. PM: That' ; s true. KM: I think it is incredible the amount of money that is being generated going to Alzheimer' ; s research. PM: Yes. KM: Let' ; s move on and let' ; s talk about your involvement in quiltmaking. Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. PM: I' ; ve always been interested in things from the past. No one in my family quilted, so quilts never were part of my life. I have enjoyed sewing since I was in school and took my first home ec class there, you know where you had to make your pair of shorts and whatever, and so mom bought a sewing machine and I did a lot of sewing. I made my wedding gown and we made the dresses for my bridesmaids as well. A lot of clothing at that point, but no quilts. Then, when I was teaching at this one school one of my fellow teachers came in and she said, ' ; Look at this book I got.' ; It was a beginner' ; s book on how to make a sampler quilt. I said, ' ; hum.' ; So she and I started working together on these different things and then I found some places that I could take some lessons from and I really got into quiltmaking. I do enjoy doing non-traditional things as well as picture things, family. I' ; ve done many. One was for my mother' ; s seventy-fifth birthday. I did her one for her eightieth birthday. I made her a quilt, a wall hanging that hangs in her room now at where she lives and its looks like a closet or a cupboard. I mentioned that my dad passed away in 1984. He was a volunteer fireman with the local fire company and she still had his fireman' ; s jacket and his American Legion hat and other things. I said to her, ' ; Do you mind if I take this?' ; I had gone through a lot of her pictures and had taken pictures that I was interested in and I took my dad' ; s jacket and I told her I would give it back to her, but it wouldn' ; t be in the same condition. She said that was okay, so I had to cut--I cut it in half and I cut the back off and I made it look like it was hanging in a closet with the door half open. Then I cut the back off his American Legion hat and I put that on a shelf above the jacket and a used wood grain type fabric. On the other side I put all pictures, like a bulletin board, all pictures of my parents, my mother and her twin sister who recently passed away, and all their special different occasions. I included their confirmation and their graduations and different things like that. I put her confirmation Bible. I made what looked like a little shelf and I put my glasses from college. I took those lenses out. They are just plain wire frames and I glued them on with the arms of the glasses crossed so they looked like someone had just been reading the Bible. The glasses sit right on top of the Bible. I put different things, mementos all the way through it and we had a heck of a time moving it when she moved in there because it' ; s kind of delicate. I put beads as being on the hinges. Those were the nails or screws that held the hinges in, so we had to be careful nothing fell off. After a few minor repairs we hung it up and said it won' ; t be moving again until mom moved out of the place. Those are my favorite things to do. Gifts, I give most of my quilts away. I have very few to show. With the people who live in the facility, I' ; m in the middle of putting a quilt together of squares that they have done. We took pictures from a nature coloring book and printed them out onto paper, because we figured that the residents would not be able to color right on fabric. It would be easier to color on paper, so we got the fabric crayons and they colored them and they really did a beautiful job. I transferred them, but it had to be on to one hundred percent polyester so that was something I haven' ; t done, quilted with polyester and then I did the transfer. I made one myself, my own picture to see and it really transferred well. KM: I will tell you that was my very first quilt I ever made. PM: Was on polyester? KM: Well it was a cotton polyester blend with the fabric crayons and the pictures are still fine thirty plus years later. It has been laundered to death because it was a baby quilt that I made. It has been laundered to death and the cotton fabric I used in between the crayon blocks is almost gone but the cotton polyester with the drawing is still perfect. PM: I did have to put like interfacing on the back then because of the shifting. I cut one square and it ended up looking like a diamond, it just shifted way out of position and I went, ' ; oh my gosh.' ; [KM laughs.] It is always a learning experience, so before I did my cutting out of the other ones I had already ironed the light interfacing onto the back and then of course they held their shape beautifully. I made each square in an attic window, so each one is seen separately. I just yesterday put the strips between the windows and now today I will be working on the sashing that goes between the rows and then putting the border on and quilting it, because people are wondering, well they don' ; t realize how long it takes to make a quilt either. What they are going to do, they are going to hang it in the building for a while and then they are going to auction it off for some one of the local charities, probably for what they call The Variety Club for handicapped crippled children. That is a big project in the western New York area to raise funds. And the director told me that she thinks that is what they will be doing with this quilt as the donation from the residents of the home. It is a project--again it is something that I enjoy doing and I always seem to not be able to say no. KM: Is it safe to say that making charity and gift quilts is what gives you the most satisfaction? PM: Yes, definitely, it very much is. People say ' ; show me what you have done,' ; and I say ' ; you will have to go to so and so' ; or ' ; you have to see this person' ; or ' ; come to my mother' ; s room' ; because that is where things are, they are not in my house. KM: What does your mom think of your quiltmaking? PM: She loves it. Now with her dementia too sometimes she tends to repeat over and over, and I say ' ; Mom don' ; t say anything else.' ; [laughs.] She invites everyone and their brother down to her room to see her quilts that are hanging up. There is that cupboard one and then there is one on, well I made one when her sister passed away, her twin sister. I made a small wall quilt with her picture on it and a saying that was on the card from the funeral home. It is a Native American prayer ; don' ; t grieve for me I' ; m on the wind and that type of thing. It was a beautiful saying so I included that and Mom has that little wall hanging in her room. Then she has the one on her bed that was one of the first picture quilts I did. It has her mother and her mother' ; s family ; a picture taken in 1913 and they of course are all in their Victorian garb. The females are in the white, no matter how old they are, except for their mother who is in black and the father and all the boys are in black suits. There were thirteen children so it is quite a picture. Then I went up chronologically, mom' ; s picture she sent to my dad in the Navy and my dad' ; s Navy picture and then pictures of my sister and my brother and myself as children and then her family, because she had a lot of family, sisters and brothers, and finally it ends up with mom' ; s three children and the families we had at that time. It runs a long gamut of years. It is on her bed and she always is looking at it. I think it brings a lot of happy memories of her family and she is the only one left. She is eighty-six. She will be eighty-seven soon and she was the youngest one in the family and the only one left so this is a good reminder for her. KM: Describe where you work, describe your studio? PM: I' ; m sorry, what did you say? KM: Describe your studio. PM: [laughs.] It is a mess. [laughs.] Actually it is funny that you would say that because we, about a year and a half ago we moved from a larger home when my sons were home and needed space for their friends and everything else, now that they are both in school but they are on their own. They have apartments and are not living with us permanently. Anyway, so we moved to a smaller more comfortable home for us with the bedrooms downstairs. I don' ; t have any place to sew as of now. I had a studio in the basement in my other house with there was room for the boys and all of their friends down there and then I had my sewing room. Now we are talking about getting a sewing room down in the basement here all made up, but as of now I don' ; t have it. I just have stuff down in the basement, stuff in the extra bedroom and it is a mess. [laughs.] As I say to my husband, ' ; How can I do anything? My stuff is all over the place.' ; Now I' ; m working on the dining room table which is not a good situation because that never gets cleared off then. KM: How often do you use your dining room table? PM: Never. I don' ; t cook. KM: That is a good use of your table. PM: [laughs.] In fact there is a funny story when we were building this house and the builder' ; s rep said ' ; You might want to add three feet to the kitchen, people have done that.' ; I said, ' ; Are you kidding? Do you make the house without a kitchen?' ; She said, stuttered, ' ; I don' ; t think that would be very sellable.' ; Well I was only kidding but we never use the kitchen. I was thinking of a big window, a take-in window where people could pull--trucks could pull up and just drop things off and the woman was looking at me like, what a kook. I also have a UFO [unfinished object.] wall hanging and it says ' ; I only have this kitchen because it came with the house.' ; That was one of those sayings that I found so I put it into a quilt that will eventually hang in the kitchen. I took it to the quilt guild the other day and they all got a big laugh out of that. They all know I don' ; t cook. KM: Do you belong to anything other than the guild? Do you belong to any other groups? PM: No. My friend, Laura, actually started it. There was not a guild. This would be in the former town where I lived, which was Orchard Park. There was no quilt guild there and she worked in a fabric store in town and decided, the mayor had come in often so she was talking with the mayor of the town who was a quilter and the mayor said, ' ; You know we have no guilds in Orchard Park, what about starting one up.' ; The mayor even joined the guild for a while until she left office and went out, I think went out west because her sister had passed away and she went out west to care for her sister' ; s grandchildren. So Laura started, my friend and I and a core group of people started this guild just about four years ago. KM: What is the name of it? PM: It is called Quaker, which is the mascot of the town, Quaker Quilters. In the high school there, the teams are The Quakers and there is a Quaker Cemetery in town and an original Quaker house of worship there. So we are the Quaker Quilters. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? PM: Don' ; t be intimidated by other people' ; s work. Don' ; t look for the faults in yours ; although I always look for the faults in mine. I don' ; t look for the faults in others, you know how that is. [laughs.] I think I have learned that from teaching. I' ; m very open to whatever people do because you can' ; t be the judge. Whatever they do is their best and that is how it is and that is the way it works out. We have had a lot of people who joined our guild who really were not quilters who have since gotten enough nerve and enough confidence in themselves to try projects and that is what we want to do. We are not, some groups I think are, they limit their membership to people who are really productive and good quilters because that is what they want to show. But we are more of a group who wants people to have fun quilting and to let people know what type of people quilters are and what we do. Anybody who comes and who has enough initiative and drive to want to start, that is what we like to look for. We are not looking for the best quilters, we are looking for people who are willing to learn and who are willing to participate in whatever we do at whatever skill level they have. KM: How many people are in the group? PM: We now have, we started out with a number of, it was about thirty-five and then we raised it to fifty and now we have topped it at one hundred and we said that is the number. We have a waiting list for people to get on. We don' ; t want to get too many. We get about probably sixty people at an average meeting. We meet monthly and we are doing our first quilt show in July in conjunction again with the town. Orchard Park has what they call Quaker Days. They have a very nice quaint little downtown area and all the shops have sidewalk sales and have a lot of different specials going on. So we are going to be in the Fire Hall that is right there and we are going to have our first quilt show there. We are in the process of organizing it. One of the woman--a few of the women--have participated in quilt shows before so they are really like our guiding lights, we are just following along and hoping that everything goes well with that. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? PM: I think it is getting people to really appreciate the work, the thinking and the design that goes into making quilts. If people have not done, and I think this is pretty much true with any type of art or craft, if you don' ; t do it you don' ; t realize what goes into it. When they see the price of some of the quilts they think oh my gosh that is outrageous, but a person, a quilter could never be paid like by the hour for how much they worked on something, because the prices would be so outrageous that no one would pay for it. I think people need education as to what comprises a quilt and how much work it does take in order to put one together and make it something that is admirable and that people will want to look at it. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? PM: It is my way of expressing myself and again whenever there is anything special I think, I have to make a quilt for that. One of the ladies in our guild who is a relatively new member announced that she is retiring as an administrator at one of the local colleges and the first thing I thought of was, ' ; oh we have to make her a quilt.' ; She did a very nice presentation on her quiltmaking journey, she is very, well her position is as the director of online students and so of course she is very savvy with the computer and she did a wonderful PowerPoint presentation of the first quilt that she made and why she did it. Most of her things, too, she gives away to family and friends. My thought was, well now we have another project that we need to do and that is to get a retirement quilt made for her with our signatures on it. I have made quilts for both my sons' ; graduations from high school and from college with their friends' ; signatures. I had someone go around and get the signatures of their friends and incorporated the signatures and various pictures in the quilts. Now I have a project from another friend of mine, all of her daughter' ; s tee shirts, which I don' ; t know how I' ; m ever going to fit on. I told her that this would make about four quilts, we would have to see, but her daughter is graduating in May from college, so she has just tons. She is in musicals and things like that in high school and very active in the religious part. She goes to St. John' ; s University. My friend has gotten signatures and things too so she asked me to put them all together. I said, ' ; Well you are going to help me design this?' ; I had them put the fabric interfacing on already and cut them in multiples of three, six, nine, twelve inches, whatever, but some of these are just huge, so we will see. That is another one of my projects where I volunteer. But sometimes I tend to be too exuberant! I don' ; t ask for payment, the fun and the satisfaction is in doing something for someone else that they really enjoy and that they will treasure, hopefully, for the rest of their lives. KM: We have almost been talking for forty-five minutes, so I always give people an opportunity to share anything that they would like before we conclude, so here is your chance. PM: I don' ; t really think I' ; ve anything more to say. I told you my quilting life [laughs.], but just to say that I think quilting is wonderful and I' ; m so glad to see that people are, that more and more people are coming back to it. As I said, I had no prior knowledge from my family. I wasn' ; t lucky enough to have inherited any quilts or anything that a grandma or great-aunts had made. But my mother-in-law had a quilt that she did give me, a flower garden quilt. She had no idea where it came from or who made it, but at least I have one thing that was an antique quilt. I' ; m really glad to see so many people getting into quilting again, and that there are so many new techniques. It is so exciting to see all the new techniques that are coming out and every time I see something I want to buy the book. Being a librarian, I have thousands and thousands of books. [laughs.] My husband says, ' ; You spent your whole life working in the library and now you go to the bookstore and you buy more books.' ; Some people just don' ; t get it! That is what I have to do in order to keep up with new things that are coming out. There is always something new to do in quilting, I never do the same thing twice. KM: Thank you so much for taking your time to share with me. PM: Thank you, I did enjoy it. KM: Excellent, we are going to conclude our interview at 2:58. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-32.xml AFPBP-32.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/85e31aca792d1b2a6eb3583ed95bb89b.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Mary Andrews",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-31,,,"Karen Musgrave","Mary Andrews",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-31.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Mary Andrews AFPBP-31 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Mary Andrews Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-31 Andrews.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. -Save Our Stories interview with Mary Andrews. Today' ; s date is March 6, 2008. It is 12:21 in the afternoon. Mary is in Grand Blanc, Michigan and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois, so we are conducting this interview by telephone. We are also doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. -Save Our Stories, which is based on the exhibition " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; and Mary' ; s quilt " ; Violets for Irene" ; is in the exhibition. Thank you for taking your time to do this interview with me and tell me about your quilt " ; Violets for Irene." ; Mary Andrews (MA): When I first heard that Ami [Simms.] was going to do this project, I immediately thought of my mother. My mother had a form of dementia back in the late ' ; 60' ; s and early ' ; 70' ; s. They didn' ; t have a name at that time and all I was told was that she had hardening of the arteries. When I think back to the symptoms that she had, it was very similar to what people with Alzheimer' ; s have today. I wanted to do something that was a tribute to my mother because she taught me how to sew. She started me out very young, teaching me how to use her treadle sewing machine. She also taught me how to knit and do embroidery. Everything that she had available to her she taught me how to use. She always encouraged me to try every kind of art or craft. She took me to art classes and bought me art supplies. She was the inspiration behind all of my work. In doing a tribute to her, it had to be purple. Her favorite color was purple. She had purple clothes, purple hats, and even a purple room. She loved violets, so the idea came to me right away, it had to be something purple and with violets. I doodled a couple of designs and came up with one of violets. She had lots of fabric and scraps in her stash so that is why I did each pedal of the flower in a different fabric. The outside border of crazy quilting was inspired by a beautiful crazy quilt that was made by my great grandmother. My mother and I would ask to see the quilt many times when we visited the aunt who owned it. I was lucky enough to inherit the quilt. KM: You have fiber running through it also. MA: The fibers and the quilting is what I have brought into it from my life, along with my hand dyed fabric for the background and cording. I love to hand dye my own fabric and play with color. This is where I tried to intertwine my life with hers by adding a part of me to the quilt. KM: Is this typical of your work? MA: Sort of, I guess. I like to try everything. People say that you develop a style in your work. I don' ; t really know what my style is because I' ; ve tried so many different things and I don' ; t always do the same things over and over. I don' ; t like to work in a series because I get bored working on the same things. I always have a new idea to try even before what I am working on is finished. What is typical in my work is the use of bright colors and hand dyed fabric. KM: What are your plans for this quilt when it comes back to you? MA: I haven' ; t really thought about that until recently and I think I would probably like to donate it to a place that has something to do with Alzheimer' ; s. Maybe to an Alzheimer' ; s care facility where other people can enjoy it. It is kind of personal but yet I would like it to remain out in public. I think my mother would like me to do that. I' ; ll see if Ami knows of a good place for it to go. KM: Have you seen the exhibit? MA: No I haven' ; t. I' ; ve seen some of the quilts in the exhibit because I have gone over and helped Ami a couple of times with them. When she was getting it together I helped sew some sleeves on the back of some of them, she wanted a sleeve on the top and the bottom. I haven' ; t seen the entire exhibit hanging because it has not been show in our area yet. I live in the same area as Ami and we have been friends for years. I am sure we will find a time and place to show it around here before it is finished with the tour. KM: It is a very powerful exhibit. MA: I have typed up the comments that people have written after seeing it so I can just image what it is going to be like. KM: I do hope you get to see it, because it is worth seeing. There is a CD and there is an audio component to it and we all had to read our artist statement, tell me about that experience for you. MA: I thought it was kind of hard to do that. It was hard to read the artist statement over the phone. It is much easier to just talk than actually read what I wrote. Knowing that it was going with the CD I had to practice it over and over to make sure that I got it right. I still had to do it over. This interview is easier. KM: I had to do it three times. MA: I think I did it three times too. KM: I kept getting emotional. MA: It was hard to do. KM: I found it hard to do too, definitely. Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. You talked about it being in your family. MA: Yes, there was a quilt in my family although no one in my family taught me to quilt. My grandmother crocheted and I didn' ; t know my great-grandma, who made the quilt. My mother did not quilt that I know of. She made people clothes, doll clothes, aprons, Christmas stockings. She made all kinds of things. What got me started in quilting was finding some Sun Bonnet Sue quilt squares in her attic after she died. The fabric on them was from the 1930' ; s and even her sisters didn' ; t know where they came from. It looked like her work. I decided that I would put them together and make a quilt out of them. I was working as a dental hygienist at the time, so I got one of my patients that I knew was a quilter to show me how to put them together. Someone else showed me how to quilt them. I did a terrible job quilting them, [laughs.] because I had never hand quilted before. It took me five years to make that quilt and I thought I would never make another one since it took so long. I went to buy one and saw how expensive they were and thought to myself, I can make this. I made some for my children and then started taking some quilting classes. I joined a quilt guild and got hooked. KM: What are your favorite techniques and materials? You talked about hand dying. MA: Yes I love to hand dye my own fabric. I have taken a lot of dye classes from different dyers. I' ; m more of a serendipity dyer. I don' ; t follow recipes precisely. I just did some snow dyeing because I read on the Internet that someone tried snow dyeing. I thought that sounded like fun. We had lots of snow this winter to experiment with. KM: Tell me about snow dyeing. MA: I went outside in my back yard and squirted dye all over the snow then buried a couple of pieces of fabric in it, stomped on them and left them out all night. Another time I squirted the dye in the snow and then scooped that snow into a bucket and brought it in the house. I plopped it on the fabric and let it sit there overnight. They all turned out really good. I showed them to some of my friends, they tried it and we had fun comparing results. I don' ; t know anything about the chemistry of dyeing, but do know you need heat to get good color. It seems like the cold would do just the opposite, but it worked just fine. I think it turned out just as nice as anything that I' ; ve dyed in the summer. KM: Interesting. What are some of your other favorite techniques and materials? MA: I like any kind of surface design. I' ; m more an art quilter than a traditional quilter. I started out as a traditional quilter, but didn' ; t like all the rules. I do make an occasional traditional bed quilt, but I don' ; t quilt them myself, I send them out to someone who has a longarm quilting machine. KM: You mentioned belonging to a guild ; do you belong to any other art or quilt groups? MA: Yes, I do. I' ; m in a couple of art quilt groups where we critique each others' ; work and get inspiration from one another and one other group of artists where I am the only fiber artist. I also curate a traveling exhibit each year. It started out about twelve years ago, when a friend and I decided we wanted to show people that quilts are art rather than just something that you put on the bed. We started the first year with twelve quilts and showed them in a couple of different places around town. Now, twelve years later, have around fifty quilts in the exhibit. We get quilt artists from all over the state of Michigan, including the Upper Peninsula and we show the quilts in libraries and hospitals throughout the state. It is a lot of work and sometimes I wonder why I am doing it. I do it because every time we go to take them down from one place to take them to another, we get so many wonderful comments. Recently a librarian told me that she thought everyone was happier in the library when the quilts are there. The staff was happier. The people who come in and look at them are happier. I thought that was one of the nicest compliments that we have received as quilters are that we are making people happy with our art. KM: How did you come up with this idea? MA: My friend and I were talking one day and we both wanted to show the public that quilts are art. We knew that most people think of quilts as something for the bed, and we wanted to show that a quilt can go on the wall as a piece of art. We went to our local arts council and they helped us to get our quilts into a few of the venues around the city where they had a continuous rotation of art work. From there we found more places in other cities near by. KM: Do you think you have changed people' ; s minds? MA: Oh, yes. (That is evident from comments we receive.) We have a theme every year and everyone does such beautiful work, every one of them is different. It is like the Alzheimer' ; s quilts. Everyone did a quilt about Alzheimer' ; s but each one is so different and they each have their own story. These quilts do too. We call it the Michigan Quilt Artists Invitational. I make up a notebook that has a picture of the quilt, artist statement, a short bio, and a little bit about the description of the materials and techniques the artist used. KM: You consider yourself an art quilter? MA: Yes. KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you make that distinction? MA: I see myself as an artist. It took a while to be able to call myself an artist, but I think being around other artists has changed my attitude. [dog barks.] The mail girl just came. I don' ; t have any trouble saying that I' ; m an artist now. I say I' ; m an artist and I make quilts that are art that you put on the wall. If you say you' ; re a quilter only, people think that you make quilts to put on the bed. When you say you are an artist, then they usually say, ' ; what kind of art do you do?' ; Then I tell them the kind of art that I do. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? MA: I' ; m not really sure. Maybe it is that there is so much out there to try and there is not enough time in the day or days in the week to try all the new things. I think it was easier years ago there wasn' ; t that much, it is almost overwhelming how many things there are to try. You just can' ; t try them all. With art quilts, I think the biggest challenge is the competition because there are so many wonderful quilt artists out there making really good art quilts. Depending on your goal of what you want to do with your art, if it is entering shows and winning prizes, the competition is really, really tough, the same thing with selling, there is a lot of competition today. KM: Describe your studio. MA: My studio is in my bedroom. I have a huge bedroom, but a small condo. There is a wall of shelves with fabric, most of it filled with hand dyed fabric. There are shelves of traditional fabric and lots of book and magazines. I have a big table with 2 machines set up all the time. I always have three or four projects going at once. I also have another studio in the basement where I do my dyeing and the messier things. That studio is extremely messy and cluttered. I' ; m not an organized, neat worker, but do try to put some things away when I finish a project. KM: Me neither. How many hours a week do you spend? MA: I don' ; t know how many hours I spend because I never have timed myself, but I do something with art almost every day. Some days I will have more time than others, and depending if I have a deadline I have to meet I let other things go and get things done to meet my deadline. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? MA: I' ; m drawn to any kind of art quilt. If I go to a show I look for the art quilts. I think that traditional quilts are very nice, but they tend to be similar and art quilts are all so different. I don' ; t know that I have a particular famous artist that I really like. I love to go to Quilt National and like the special exhibits in other quilt shows. KM: How about if I phrase it a little differently. Has anyone influenced you? MA: Yes. Ami has been a great influence on me. I think Ami was my very first influence. I remember reading an article about her in the newspaper a long time ago and knew she lived in the area. When I was in the quilt guild when I first began quilting I wanted to take a class from a famous quilter. When someone suggested that we have Ami come speak and do a class at the guild, I raised my hand to volunteer to take care of the workshop so I could meet her. After that workshop I got to know Ami. It was shortly after that that she put out her book on classic quilts and she was looking for people to help her make quilts for the book, so I volunteered to make a quilt for the book. I took two patterns to make and was really in the beginning of my quilting at that time. She was such a big help and such an inspiration. I did get both quilts in the book and was so happy. I went over to her house one day and saw that she had photographs on fabric and I was completely enthralled. I also had done a lot of genealogy. I had tons of family photographs, so I worked with her with the photographs and made a photo transfer quilt. (That quilt is in her " ; Creating Scrapbook Quilts" ; book.) She encouraged me to enter it into the AQS show. I quickly sewed the binding on so she could photograph it. The quilt was accepted into the AQS show the very first time I ever tried to get in. I was always willing to help Ami with her projects so learned a great deal from her. She is a very creative person and full of ideas. I like being around people like her. I think the other person who has influenced me later on is Nancy Crow. I have taken two classes from her. She gets you to take your art very seriously. KM: Is there anything about quiltmaking that you don' ; t like? MA: I don' ; t like machine quilting bed quilts. KM: Yes you did say that. MA: [laughs.] I like all aspects of it. I usually have a hard time thinking of how I' ; m going to quilt something once I get it made, but if I look at it long enough, something will come to me. I enjoy all aspects of quiltmaking. KM: Before our time runs out, let' ; s move back to the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative. Tell me about your involvement in Priority Quilts, which is the other half of--the exhibit is one part and the Priority Quilts are another part of the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative. MA: I don' ; t know how many I have sent to her, maybe five or six. I have a few more here that need the paperwork done on them. I make a lot of journal quilts. I like working small so I have a lot of them. I am amazed at how much money those little quilts have brought in for Alzheimer' ; s. Actually I' ; m amazed at how much quilters have done for Alzheimer' ; s. I am happy to be part of it. KM: The money goes for Alzheimer' ; s research, which I think is another wonderful thing. That it is earmarked specifically for research. MA: Yes, it is not going to pay for someone who works there like so many other charities. There is definitely a need for research, as the baby boomers are all getting older. I think there is a big fear as you age that you don' ; t want to get Alzheimer' ; s. KM: Do you fear it? MA: Oh yes. I think that I' ; m at the age that my mother was when she started getting her dementia. Every time that I forget something, which is quite often, I hope I' ; m not getting it. When one of my children or grandchildren forgets things, then I don' ; t feel so bad. [laughs.] KM: I think we are on so much overload with information. MA: Yes, I think we have too many things on our minds today so you can' ; t possibly remember everything. KM: That is my story and I' ; m sticking to it. [laughs.] MA: [laughs.] KM: What do you think makes an artistically powerful quilt? MA: First of all, if there is one that makes you say ' ; Wow.' ; If the quilt makes you look and look and look some more and you walk away and then you want to walk back and look at it again, I think that is an artistically powerful quilt. When you go to a show and are walking around looking at quilts, there are certain quilts that draw you in. Maybe it is the colors, or the way that they put the colors together, or the design, I don' ; t know. It might be a number of different things, but if it draws you in and keeps you there looking, I think that is an artistically powerful quilt. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? MA: I would tell someone starting out to take a lot of classes, join a quilt guild, find other people that have the same interests. The more you are around other quilters, the more you are inspired. Look at other people' ; s work and it will inspire you. Get involved. Make a charity quilt, it is great practice. The more quilts you make, the better you get, so keep working at it. Learn as much as you can. Read books. One of the things that I have really liked, besides being in a small critique group, is going to quilt retreats. You are surrounded with other people with the same interests. You don' ; t have to cook. You don' ; t have to clean. You don' ; t have to do anything except work on your art. KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? MA: There have always been quilts around ; their houses are full of quilts. My house is full of quilts. Occasionally they will see something that they like, and say, ' ; Oh I would like to have that,' ; I almost always give it to them, if it is not promised to someone else. KM: Why is quilting important to you? MA: I think it is important because that is what I like to do. If I couldn' ; t make quilts I think I wouldn' ; t be very happy. Making quilts makes me happy. I have always done crafts or sewing of some kind. When I go on a vacation I don' ; t go to the beach and lay around, I want to go to a quilting retreat where I can be doing something with my hands and learning something new. KM: Why do you think fabric, of all the mediums that you could have chose, why fabric, why quilts? MA: I' ; ve tried a lot of different things and I always come back to the fabric. I love fabric. I can remember when I was a child I would go to the fabric department with my mother. You know how the fabric hangs out so you can touch it, I would walk through the bolts of fabric and feel all the fabric. I was always looking over my mother' ; s shoulder when she was sewing and I wanted to learn how to do it. I have always been around fabric and I love working with it. KM: I always give people an opportunity before we close to share anything else that I haven' ; t touched on. It can be related to the exhibition or personally, anything. MA: I think I would like to say something about Ami. She is a truly creative, energetic person. She gets an idea and acts on it. I thought the " ; Worst Quilt in the World" ; contest was her biggest endeavor until the Alzheimer' ; s project. I don' ; t know if she anticipated it to be as big and as successful as it has turned out, but I can tell you that she has put a lot of time and effort into it. She took a big chance when she published the book of the exhibit and may have spent a few sleepless nights worrying about if she would sell enough to get her investment back and then make money for Alzheimer' ; s. I had no doubt she would sell enough, but I didn' ; t lay out any money to get it going. I just know how quilters love books. She has shown how caring quilters are with their thousands of donations of small quilts to the auction and their purchases to raise so much money. Her mother may not be able to benefit from this now, but many people will be able to thank her someday when a cure is found for the disease. KM: Now it is a nonprofit. MA: The non-profit status will help Ami in that she won' ; t have to use her own funds to run it. She will still have a lot of work to do though. We should thank her family, her husband who supports her work and her daughter, Jenny, who is always willing to help. I don' ; t know if there is anyway that we can thank her, but we do appreciate what she is doing. KM: Do you have any favorite quilts in the exhibition? MA: I looked through the book again and I think my favorites are the ballerina called " ; Unforgettable." ; I really like that one, and I also like the " ; Alzheimer' ; s Thief." ; KM: That is Sonia Callahan' ; s quilt. MA: I really like that. It is so sinister in a way, but yet the pink background lightens it up. KM: The ballerina was done by Tammy Bowser. MA: Yes. KM: Great quilts. I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to do this with me and to talk about the exhibition and Ami especially. We are going to conclude our interview, and it is now 1:04, so thank you. MA: I want to thank you too for doing these interviews also. KM: I think it is a nice way for me to be able to contribute, so support Ami and what she is doing and to broaden the stories behind the quilts. If you go to Sonia' ; s interview and read her interview, she talks about her inspiration for that thief and where it came from. You wouldn' ; t know that by just looking at the quilt. I think it is a good way to have a little bit better understanding of the stores behind the quilts. MA: When you do see a quilt that you really like, you want to know what is behind it. KM: Hopefully this is exactly what it will do. Thank you very much. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-31.xml AFPBP-31.xml ",,,,"Karen Alexander, in honor of Barbara Gonce",,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/a93a055ba84b2bf96d5fe0e47d3ca42e.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Cindy Cooksey",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-30,,,"Karen Musgrave","Cindy Cooksey",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-30.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Cindy Cooksey AFPBP-30 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Cindy Cooksey Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-30%20Cooksey.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Cindy Cooksey. She is in Irvine, California and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois, so we are doing this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is March 5, 2008 and it is 1:11 in the afternoon. I am doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project based on the exhibit " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; and Cindy has a quilt in the exhibit called " ; Gaps." ; Thank you for doing this interview with me, and tell me about your quilt. Cindy Cooksey (CC): I was kind of sitting on the fence about whether to participate in Ami' ; s project, and what got me going was she said we are going to try to be on Oprah. [laughs.] That is what got me going. I only had a few months. I had some leftover hexagons from a Grandmother' ; s Flower Garden project, not a traditional project, because I' ; m an art quilter, but anyway I had some hexagons left over. I thought, well, I could do Grandmother' ; s Flower Garden flowers except with gaps in them, to be a metaphor for the gaps in memories of Alzheimer' ; s patients. That is what I did, and I have a little picture of my grandmother in it because she had Alzheimer' ; s, and she had a flower garden, so Grandmother' ; s Flower Garden blocks all kind of ties it together. After I did the quilt I was surprised: it got back to Ami that somebody thought that I was depicting brain cells. These were like brain cells of Alzheimer' ; s patients. I hadn' ; t really thought of that. I was tickled that somebody had that interpretation of the quilt. KM: I have to agree with that actually. CC: I do now that I look at it. [laughs.] KM: Is this typical of your work? If somebody were to look at this, would they think that you made it? CC: It is typical of my work in that it is colorful. I like bright colors. Most of my work is not really traditional, so I wouldn' ; t want people to think that I do a lot of traditional blocks. I mainly like appliqué. But I did get hooked on making hexagons, so I do have a kind of series of contemporary type hexagon quilts. KM: There is also stitching on here, was that done by hand? CC: Yes, that was done with pearl cotton thread. That is something I have in most of my quilts for the past maybe ten years or so, I' ; ve been doing that. KM: Using the quilt-- CC: The buttons too. KM: It is machine quilted? CC: Yes it is. KM: And you have buttons on it too. CC: Yes, just a few. KM: Is there any significance to the buttons? CC: No not really, I put a lot of them in my quilts, just to add a little texture I guess. KM: Have you seen the exhibit? CC: Yes, I saw the exhibit in I believe it was 2006 in Ontario, California. I think that is the only time it is scheduled to be in southern California. Even though it is an hour and a half drive from my house, I had to go see it. I actually worked at it for the afternoon. It was a really moving experience, because I talked to a lot of people. I' ; m kind of shy, but these people felt the need to talk. I noticed some people just kind of whizzed by it like they didn' ; t want to see, just didn' ; t want to face this Alzheimer' ; s topic, but for the ones who did stop, there were tears. We had a box of Kleenex handy. There were people talking about ' ; my neighbor,' ; ' ; my father,' ; ' ; my sister.' ; One person in a wheelchair even said, ' ; gosh, I just found out that I have been diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s.' ; What do you say to somebody like that? It runs in my family too, so I tried to say something sympathetic like ' ; Oh gosh, I understand. I may be going that way myself.' ; It was a beautiful exhibit. Beyond the interaction with the people who saw it, the quilts are just beautiful. There is a wide variety of styles, and quilts from all over the country and I' ; m just so glad that I got to see it. KM: Any favorites? CC: Favorites, well the one with the fading photographs of the woman, that is a favorite, and that seemed to be the one that a lot of people commented on. Another one was the bleeding heart. KM: The beads? CC: The beads, yeah. KM: Liz Kettle' ; s. CC: I' ; m not sure of the name. KM: It is Liz Kettle' ; s quilt. CC: That is a nice one. Beautiful. So many of them are really great. KM: Have you participated in Priority Quilts? That is the other part of the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative. CC: I did participate in that I bought a quilt near the beginning, at one of the first couple of auctions that she had. I bought a little quilt by Betty Donahue from Talladega, Alabama. I just liked it. In a way it reminds me of what I did for the Alzheimer' ; s project in that it starts out as a traditional star block in miniature, and then it' ; s got a couple of points missing. There are six blocks that steadily are deteriorating so at the end you only have a couple of little triangles left. I just liked it, and I have it hanging on my refrigerator. KM: What are your plans for your quilt when it comes back? CC: I hadn' ; t really thought about that. It seems like a long time from now, 2009, 2010. I hadn' ; t thought ahead. KM: That is okay. CC: I' ; ll exhibit it locally if anybody wants to see it around here, because it really didn' ; t get shown much in southern California. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. CC: I have been quilting since about 1989. During a trip to Hawaii I kind of got hooked on the Hawaiian quilting. I started with pillows, and then somebody gave me lessons, taught me how to really do it, [laughs.] so I got hooked on the appliqué and the hand quilting. The person who taught me from the outset, she showed me a book of other kinds of quilts besides Hawaiian, and I thought wow, it really excited me. It was like another world out there that I wasn' ; t aware of. And I saw Michael James' ; quilts ; wow, I hadn' ; t seen anything like that before, back in 1991 I think it was. She told me about the local guild, and I practiced my appliqué and my quilting for about six months, because I wanted to be good enough. I was worried they might reject me if I wasn' ; t good enough. Of course it didn' ; t matter, that was not the case, but anyway I did join the guild and I' ; ve been a member ever since, and since then I' ; ve--sorry to stop and start. KM: That is okay, that is how we talk. CC: [laughs.] I started out exploring the different kinds of quilting available, some piecing and some appliqué, and I just figured out I really liked the appliqué. I' ; ve always designed my own quilts. I don' ; t really do patterns or too much traditional. I like to do my own designs. I have an artist background so I think I have evolved a lot since I began with the Hawaiian quilting. I do mostly machine quilting now. I like the hand quilting, but it is bad on my joints. I' ; m getting arthritis. The good thing about machine quilting is you get more done faster. I don' ; t know what else you want to hear. KM: Whatever you want to tell me. Do you belong to any other groups besides the guild? CC: Yes, I joined a lot of other groups, there is Quilts on the Wall, that is a southern California art quilt group, and I belong to Cut Loose Quilters: that is a group up in Orange that is a little more local to me ; we do a lot of collaborative things. Right now we are working on mixed media collage journals or books, that we are passing around and everybody adds a couple of pages, so that is a lot of fun. I' ; m enjoying that. It is really different from the quilting, although I' ; m using some of the same skills. I' ; m having a lot of fun with that. I belong to SAQA [Studio Art Quilts Associates.] I' ; m a PAM [Professional Artist Member.] member, and I belong to Quilt Visions. I was in Visions in 2002, that is one of the things I' ; m proud of, and in 1996 I was first runner up for something called Artistic Expressions, it was sponsored by Quilter' ; s Newsletter [Magazine.] and I got to go to France to accept my prize, so that was exciting. KM: Tell me about going to France. CC: The prize money kind of paid for my trip, so that is how that worked out, and I never really done much traveling by myself, so it was scary but exciting, although one of my friends met me there. She said ' ; why don' ; t you go to France and I will room with you.' ; That is how that worked. It was in Lyon, France. I had been there once before, I had been a couple of years previous to that, and the Quilt Expo [Patchwork and Quilt Expo.] was in 1996, I think I mentioned. It was very exciting. I met some quilters from all over the world and saw a couple of people that I already knew. Lura, she won the prize that year. She was first prize and I was runner up right behind her. I knew her because she was also from California and we had a mutual friend. I also met people from Germany and France and Japan, I got to meet a lot of people. It was really exciting. I got to go up on the stage and get my prize and shake somebody' ; s hand. It was great. One other thing I might mention about my quilting in general is that I have sold some patterns. I think in the mid-1990' ; s a friend of mine said ' ; that would make a really great pattern' ; and so she did the business part of it, and she still has the business, Jukebox. Her name is Kelly Gallagher- Abbott and she still sells my patterns. I' ; ve done maybe ten overall, but there are maybe five or six that are still selling. KM: You are not doing that anymore? CC: Off and on. KM: I think it is probably true of all of us. CC: I think that there have been a couple more things that she says, ' ; oh yeah that would make a great pattern,' ; but she hasn' ; t gotten around to it. So no, I haven' ; t done many patterns lately, although I was in a book that came out late last year called " ; Embellished Mini Quilts" ; and it is sort of like doing a pattern, because I did the directions for the two quilts of mine that were in it. The book was by Jamie Fingal and she wrote it. Wrote the copy and there were maybe ten artists in it, so that was a lot of fun. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? You mentioned Michael James. CC: That was back in 1991.That was when I was unfamiliar with anything. Yvonne Porcella because she is so colorful. KM: She also has a lot of humor. CC: Yes, and that is the thread that runs in a lot of my quilts, not all of them but I think most of them have some sort of humor or whimsy in them. I am drawing a blank. KM: That is okay. Describe your studio for me. CC: It is a mess right now. [laughs.] I have actually a very nice space upstairs in my house. When we first moved here, we moved here in 1985 and originally it was an art studio. I wasn' ; t quilting then, I was an artist, I was doing pen and ink drawings at the time, so it was a pretty spare little room with a drafting table desk and a little tiny set of drawers for my supplies. And since then with the quilting [laughs.] it has gotten very full, I also have a computer in there and some computer stuff too. I have a Bernina machine, and it is a real mess right now, because I' ; m in the middle of a project which I' ; m trying to get done by the end of March so I have fabric all over the place on the floor, little scraps of it. I' ; m doing something for the " ; Surf' ; s Up" ; special exhibit that is going to be at the Quilt Festival in Long Beach in July. That is what I' ; m doing right now. KM: Why the move from fine art to textile art? CC: Because several years I was a pen and ink artist, mainly black and white art, and I think after maybe fifteen years of that I got really tired of no color. I really, really needed some color in my life. I tried ceramics and that was good, I enjoyed that too, but I really wasn' ; t good on the wheel, I was kind of limited to doing things by hand, and things didn' ; t always turn out the color that I wanted and things like that, and I sort of fell into the quilting after that trip to Hawaii. At first I didn' ; t really plan on getting into it, it was just sort of a mindless activity. I was having a little stress in those years because my kids were both teenagers and I found that quilting was very soothing and kind of calmed me down. [laughs.] That is really how I got started. I really wasn' ; t thinking about the art, applying art to my quilting right away. It just evolved. [laughs.] KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you even make the distinction? CC: Yes, I consider myself a quilt artist. I considered myself to be an artist for a long time before I was a quilter, and I' ; m still an artist, and right now I guess I' ; m a quilt artist. KM: What advice would you offer somebody starting out? CC: In quilting? Well, I actually have some friends who are starting out. The great thing about quilting is that it is a smorgasbord. There is something for everybody for sure. It seems like a lot of the friends I knew in high school or college or when my kids were little, they' ; ll say, ' ; oh we quilt too,' ; and their quilts are really different from mine. They are all traditional, and I just kind of say ' ; oh, that is lovely.' ; I think quilting includes everybody, and there is something for everybody. I think I would be bored if I was just doing the traditional stuff, I think I would have left a long time ago. That is why I' ; m still doing it is because it is a great outlet for my creativity, and I can still paint and I can draw and the skills as I had as an artist, a lot of them I can use in my quilting too. When I make my art quilts. There are a lot of skills I' ; ve tried over the years with the quilting and some I keep up and some I really haven' ; t, like fabric dyeing. I' ; ve done some stenciling with the paint with those dry oil sticks. KM: Shiva Sticks. CC: Yeah, and I used to always work in regular cotton fabrics but now I' ; ve got a lot of silk, dupioni silk and velvets and lace and toils and all sorts of stuff. I' ; m having fun with all of it. There was a fabric store that was open for a while near me, but it has moved on, it' ; s too far for me to drive to. But it was around for a while and it had all these silks and all these fabrics that were really exciting, and they had remnants of them so they were cheap. You could come home with a huge bag full quite inexpensively, so I built up a stash of non-traditional quilting fabric, and I have been having fun with those ever since, even though that quilt shop has moved on. KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? CC: [laughs.] I' ; m not sure. I think they, in a way they are proud of me, my husband is proud of me and he' ; s saying, ' ; when can we retire' ; and things like that, he sort of jokes about it. He is very appreciative although he is not really an artist himself, so he doesn' ; t really understand everything, but once in a while he will give a critique which is helpful to me, so that is useful. My kids, I don' ; t know if they really understand it. My daughter, I don' ; t think she really understands it, but they are all pretty tolerant of it. My daughter at one point was going to make a quilt out of shoulder pads. This was back in the ' ; 90' ; s when people had leftover shoulder pads from the ' ; 80' ; s, and she was going to make a whole quilt of those. And I thought it was such a clever creative idea, but when it came down to it you can' ; t really make a quilt out of those because they are kind of three dimensional, they are not flat at all, so that never happened. I think we may still have a stack of them in her closet, because I thought it was a great idea. KM: It is a very interesting idea. CC: Yeah, I thought so. Maybe there is a way to do it ; I haven' ; t figured it out yet. I have a son too, who is a surfer. I wanted to put him in this surfing quilt and he said ' ; no mom,' ; so he wouldn' ; t let me do that. I did make a quilt of him when he was a little boy ; maybe he is embarrassed from that. They are tolerant, but I don' ; t think they really understand it. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? CC: The challenge that pops out initially is being respected as artists. For those that want to be artists, because not everybody understands, a lot of the public doesn' ; t have the faintest idea that quilting is anything beyond the traditional blocks that their grandmothers put together. I think the biggest challenge is raising public consciousness, and getting appreciation would be nice. I' ; m going to be in, and I have been in some galleries the last few years and that is satisfying to me. Once in a while something even sells, to somebody I don' ; t even know, so that is very exciting. We have a couple of galleries in southern California, at least that I know of, plus there is a third one up in San Pedro where I' ; m going to be in the spring, later this spring. These experiences help me feel that my art is getting out there, and hopefully that people see it and have more awareness of what quilt art is all about. KM: Let' ; s return to " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; You were talking about different experiences and there is a CD that Ami put out and we all had to read our artist statement, tell me about that experience for you. CC: Reading? KM: When we had to read the artist statement for the CD. CC: Oh yes, well, I explained what the quilt was about, basically the gaps and how they grow and spread so memories become unrecognizable. The rest of what I talked about in the tape was about my family. Both grandmothers had it, my father had it and my mother has it. She is currently in a board and care home that cares for Alzheimer' ; s patients, so it is very much part of my life, and her sister had it. I' ; m not sure who else in the family, but it is something that I think about all the time because it is in the family, and because I' ; m someone who takes care of a lot of the affairs of my mom, paying her bills and running to the store and buying some more of her lotion or aspirin or diapers or whatever it is that she needs. For me it is very important that they find a cure. KM: I think it is wonderful that Ami has the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative and that the drive is for money for research. CC: Yes, it is a wonderful thing and it makes me feel like I' ; m doing something instead of just being helpless, it makes it feel like ' ; I' ; m doing this' ; and maybe that will make a difference. KM: I sure hope so. Tell me what you think makes a great quilt. CC: What makes a great quilt? It is kind of in the eye of the beholder, and you know it when you see it. What I think makes a great quilt is probably different from the next person, so it is hard to say. For me it is color and impact. Something that just grabs you. I like humor in quilts, it is not necessary for me at all, but that is something that I appreciate, like if there is a joke to be found in the quilt. I guess I have wide tastes ; I appreciate a wide variety of quilts. I' ; m just thinking, Pam RuBert, that is somebody, she has a-- KM: A lot of humor, a lot of humor. CC: Yeah, a lot of humor, so that comes to mind as somebody that I admire. My quilts aren' ; t anything like hers, but just the sense of humor. I don' ; t know what else to say. KM: Is there anything else you want to add before we end. I like to give people an opportunity. CC: Nothing that I can think of. KM: I want to thank you for taking your time to do this interview with me and to help people understand a little bit more behind the quilts and the exhibition. We are going to end our time and it is now 1:43. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-30.xml AFPBP-30.xml ",,,,,,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/a534a9f856d3bdd44022bcda994fbf0c.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Sonia Callahan",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-25,,,"Karen Musgrave","Sonia Callahan",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-25.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Sonia Callahan AFPBP-25 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Sonia Callahan Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-25%20Callahan.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave. I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S.-Save Our Stories interview with Sonia Callahan. Sonia is in Piedmont, California and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are doing this interview over the telephone. Today' ; s date is February 22, 2008. It is 2:54 in the afternoon. I am doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S.- Save Our Stories project based on the exhibition " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece," ; and I want to thank you for doing this interview with me. You are kind of unique because you have actually two pieces in the exhibit. So let' ; s start talking about " ; Women Who Were." ; Tell me about your quilt, " ; Women Who Were." ; Sonia Callahan (SC): " ; Women Who Were" ; was something that was in my mind for a very long time. My mother had " ; dementia/Alzheimer" ; and was in a care situation for seven years. I would go and visit her and as I sat there I got to observe the various people who were there and recognized the fact that some people were more advanced in this disease than others and some people really still cared about themselves. Basically I tried to capture that in the quilt. I also saw my mother fading and I saw her go through the stage where she wasn' ; t quite sure who she was and I had hoped to capture that. She was in a ward with men and women, but I observed the women more than anything. Some were ready to give into it and some were still fighting. Some had pride in their hairdos, some just let it go. So that is why there is this sundry of things that are there. Of course time of the day is determined by meal time, and so there is an eating experience going on and that is basically what I tried to capture in that. It is a memorial to my mother, because those seven years were difficult years. She was not able to communicate at the end, but she could squeeze our hand and we knew that she was saying that she loved us, and that is the one thing. Her first language is Czechoslovak, so when she got really bad she only lapsed into that language, so that was the way we were able to communicate to her, but the English that she kept was I love you, and whenever somebody would do something for her, she would say, ' ; I love you,' ; and it really made her one of the favorites because people responded to her and took really good care of her. Well it was sad when she didn' ; t recognize her children, but one by one it happened to us and we were together. I have two older brothers and we oversaw her care after my father died and that is where the quilt originated. What I really wanted to do was to capture the various people that I observed for the many hours that I sat with her and also recognize that there is a world outside that window, that there is a whole world that these women don' ; t access. So it is kind of hazy and I meant to do that intentionally so that you would get the feeling that you were enclosed in this room and that the outside is no longer available, which is true to a degree. We did bring my mother out and have her for half a day or a day, but she always went back to her home. One of the characters in there is a woman called Olga and when my mother first came in she and Olga made a wonderful twosome. They developed a great relationship and they would often sit in the lounge and hold hands. So one of these people has a name, but the rest of them are just sort of people that I have observed. That is where that quilt came from and I used materials that I had at home. I tried to get dresses and robes and all that kind of stuff out of the material that I saw people wear and plastic trays which is indicative of this place she was at. She was in a place in Minnesota which was one of the best places she could be. My two brothers are there. I live in California, but I made yearly if not twice a year trips back to stay with her. This was her life and this is the life of many of the women who were very distinguish women and were in the same situation that she was. I have to commend the care that she got and it is in a way a tribute to the caregivers who take care of the elderly, because that is a special talent and a very, very special way of giving. I hope that that has sort of told you why I made the quilt and how I made the quilt, it was raw edge appliqué and actually I had at one point I had a nurse in the thing and I took her out. I had to rip out, because she just didn' ; t fit. Nurses there didn' ; t wear uniforms. They were very much in casual attire, so I substituted a person standing and I felt better about the situation, because it really becomes their home whether they want that kind of home or not, but the residential care does become their home and most Alzheimer' ; s patients do eventually want to be where they are at. I guess that is about it. KM: Was this the first or the second quilt that you made? SC: This was a first quilt that I made. KM: " ; Alzheimer' ; s Thief" ; . SC: " ; Alzheimer' ; s Thief" ; , well when I heard about this challenge I interviewed my friend who is my age who was diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s, so I told her that I wanted to honor her and I needed to know more about it. When I did my mother, I was just honoring my mother, so this one I really wanted to do it right and so I said to her, ' ; Her name is Claire,' ; ' ; What is it like? What is it like Claire?' ; And she said, ' ; Well I can' ; t drive anymore.' ; This was when she was still fairly articulate, and so she started telling about some of the things that had happened to her, the disbelief that she had when she was told that she had Alzheimer' ; s. All of those things that sort of got the juices going, and then I realized I really didn' ; t know enough about the technical stuff about Alzheimer' ; s. I went online and I read about some of the characteristics that they actually know. Some people have certain symptoms and others don' ; t, and so it is a very, very broad spectrum of behavior and I guess you really can' ; t say it is Alzheimer' ; s unless they have a brain scan and sample tissue. I did the research and I kept finding qualities that I was either, ' ; ah ha, that is mom, that was mom.' ; I did that and sat on it awhile and then I said okay the thing that comes to my mind is that your quality of life is just being stolen away from you and that is when I thought of this image of a thief stealing parts of one' ; s personality and parts of one' ; s life. Then after that I started thinking of images and what they could do and I was reading a children' ; s book about a cowboy to one of my grandchildren and I said, ' ; That guy sure looks sinister,' ; and so that was inspiration for the--well not the hat, but for the mask and then it just went from there and I started drawing and I got some velvet. I knew I wanted to put the image in a cloak and so I got this wonderful velvet and stewed about how to drape it, and then quilt it. You can' ; t even see that I stewed about that, because you can' ; t even see the quilting because it is so, so dark. That is what I did. I had a terrible time making presentable feet and I think I did a pretty good job on this one. I was pleased with the feet on the thief. Let me see, how did I do the image of the words? What we did was we typed them out and then we ran them through a photocopier onto cloth and then I fused on the back and then fused them on and that is how they are sticking on. I think I did stitch around the outside of them, but I remember oh thinking this is a lot of work. I needed a background for this character, so I was looking around and I found something, if you can believe at a Long' ; s Drug Store, and I brought it home and was showing it to some of my friends, and they said, ' ; Wow that is fantastic fabric, that looks like the tangles that one sees in the brain of Alzheimer' ; s patients.' ; I was very pleased that I had made that choice for the background. I didn' ; t intentionally know that that was how the tangles looked but that is what they represent now that I know. It is a very simple, simple image and he is running and it is like Alzheimer' ; s, it just runs with what it wants to take from you. KM: " ; Alzheimer' ; s Thief" ; is very colorful. SC: Yes it is. It is orange and black. KM: The other one is very subdued. SC: Yes, because that is how that place was, very subdued, there were mellow colors and it was almost gray most of the time. It is the contrast between stages of Alzheimer' ; s and this is really addressing the disease as much as it does anything else. It is the fact that people begin to lose things. I don' ; t know if you read this or heard this, but when the show opened we didn' ; t know how it was going to be received and evidentially somebody was looking at the " ; Alzheimer' ; s Thief," ; a couple and they started crying and so one of the people that was helping with the exhibit walked over to them and said could we help them with something, and she said I have just been diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s and this is exactly how it feels. That was a hit I think, it really touched what it needed to touch. KM: Have you seen the exhibit? SC: Yes I have. I don' ; t know, I looked at the exhibit and I see, oh I should have done that, I could have done that better, this is not the best, so I was kind of critical but people were stopping and looking and it is a powerful exhibit. I do have friends, who would not go because they did not want to be sad, and those were some of my close friends who ' ; I can' ; t, I don' ; t want to deal with that.' ; There are people who are willing to look and people who are not willing to. Anything else? KM: How did you feel when you got two quilts in the exhibit? SC: I would have been happy with just one. I thought I would submit two just in case they didn' ; t like one. I didn' ; t think they were going to like either one of them to tell you the truth. As the " ; Alzheimer' ; s Thief" ; started coming together and people looked at it and I said are you getting the message and they said absolutely, then I felt better about that and I thought that one had a chance. I didn' ; t think the other one had a chance in the world. I actually wrote the poem that goes with the Women quilt. I couldn' ; t figure out what really to say. KM: Do you have it in front of you? SC: What? KM: The poem. SC: Excuse me. KM: Do you have the poem in front of you? SC: No, but it is in the book. I don' ; t remember but it is about. It kind of addresses the thing of who am I, what am I doing here, and who are these people, are they my friends, were you the one who stood by when I gave birth, were you the one who taught my children. I know things are not the same, but this is where I' ; m at. That is the paraphrasing of it, but it has better words than that. KM: Would you mind if I read it? SC: If you read it? KM: Yes. SC: I will send it to you. KM: No, I can read it right now. SC: Oh, you can read it right now. KM: Yes. SC: Oh great. KM: ' ; Who are these women sitting here? Do I know you? Are you the one who taught the kids? Are you the ones I saw at the bank? Did you stand there when my babies were born? I do not know. I do not know about many things. This I know, I am not who I was before. I am here. Like the window view, I am hazy, Not a part of that world out there. My world is here. I sit, I nap, I dream. Time is meals, medicine and bed. My days are planned. I am with others, they sit near me. Yet, I' ; m alone, they do not know who I am. These are my days. One day and then the next. I am here. This is my world.' ; That is very wonderful. SC: Thank you. KM: I can' ; t believe I was actually able to read it without crying. SC: I didn' ; t think I could write it, and some how it just came out of me. KM: Let me ask you, the CD, we were all asked to read our artist statements. Tell me about that experience for you. SC: Doing the CD? KM: Yes, having to read our artist statement. SC: I didn' ; t have any trouble with that. I thought it was great and it was part of the whole picture and I had a compliment from Ami [Simms.] that she thought I had a good speaking voice. KM: Very nice. SC: It was a positive experience for me. KM: Have you listened to the CD? SC: Yes I have. Yes. KM: I think it is a wonderful way to, it think it is a nice compliment, the CD and the book. The CD we get to hear our voices, the book has pictures of the quilts, just like the CD does, but then it has the information on Alzheimer' ; s that I also think is wonderful. What are your plans for the quilts when they come back to you? SC: What are my plans for the quilts when they come back to me? Well, I' ; m not so sure. I have a hard time parting with my work and the house is getting so crowded. I don' ; t sell my work. I give my work away. I will have to find a venue where this might work, and I will give it to maybe a residence, I may give them to residences where they will do some good. I don' ; t really know, I haven' ; t thought that through yet. I was just lucky to get them in. I did a quilt when we had the California firestorm and it was about a cat, it came back after many, many weeks and it came home. The owners found it and then the cat died with a lung problem and I gave that quilt away because they were still mourning and they needed someone to validate what their experience had been. A lot of animals were killed, but a lot of animals did come back, but this one came back six to eight weeks after the fire stopped. I will find something to do with them ; just don' ; t know what it is. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. SC: My interest in quiltmaking, well I am a teacher and I was assigned to teach English as a Second Language to a group of refugees from the Vietnamese war and they are Mien people, The men are slash and burn farmers and they were scheduled to be annihilated and somehow these people succeeded in surviving and then they were brought over here without any help. I had a student come in the classroom and they had pulled her teeth and then had no plans for what was going to happen next, so I sort of became a bit of a surrogate mother to this beginning class. Many people had never been to school. Never had a written language, only oral, and so I started figuring out ways that these women could some how support themselves or help themselves to find some dignity in this country. They do a very, very fine counted cross stitch, just impeccable little stitches, and I thought what on earth can these women do with that, so we have a session where they made necklaces and then I thought they could transfer their field to quilting because they can use a needle really well. We held class after the regular ESL [English as a Second Language.] class. We held class and taught quilting. For a while we were kind of brokers for people who wanted hand quilting. As I was working with them, my neighbor said, ' ; Sonia you have to make some quilts.' ; I said, ' ; Oh no I don' ; t have the time,' ; and so she said, ' ; Well I' ; m coming over. You bring out your stash of fabric.' ; She said, ' ; Alright, this one, this one, and this one, and cut it up.' ; I made the longest quilt in the world, which went to college with our son. I kind of got hooked on it, and so from there I just started doing things that interested me. Then I went through the traditional stuff, I was interested in antique, I did restoration of some of the old quilt tops and put them together. Then I started taking some classes. I went to a symposium here and I was in a class, I think I shook through the whole thing because I didn' ; t think I knew what I was doing, and then somebody else next to me was even worse off then myself, so I thought I could do this. Then I joined the East Bay Heritage Quilters which is a very large guild here and one of the things they have is that they subsidize workshops, so I have taken a lot of workshops, and then --I took a class with Penny Sisto down in the Monterey area, she was teaching the human figure. When I brought my piece home, the kids looked at it and said that is grandma, so I thought to myself, ' ; If they know who it is and I haven' ; t said anything I must be able to do this.' ; Actually Penny Sisto got me started on images and not being afraid of making them and adjusting things and using strange fabrics or hair or whatever. I would have to say that my imagery ,which is often prominent on my latest quilts would have to have started in the Penny Sisto class, which was really an experience outside of quilting, because she is a very spiritual person and she shares this element with our class. KM: Let' ; s give a timeframe. SC: My Penny Sisto class? KM: What years are we talking about? SC: That has to go back probably twenty years. Maybe, fifteen, twenty years. She was doing a lot of teaching. I don' ; t think she is doing as much now. She told us about her son who was going to be an actor and now he is a very famous actor, so we say, oh we know whose child that it. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? SC: Whose works am I drawn to and why? Whose works? I guess I am very drawn to Monet because of the softness and the vagueness of the colors. Are you asking about a specific artist? KM: No. It is artists, quiltmakers, I don' ; t-- SC: You don' ; t care. I am drawn to quilt makers who convey some kind of message. It can be an art message or it can be a personal message or whatever, so I' ; m drawn to those artists who can tell me something. Either through pieces of fabrics or colors or whatever, so those are the kinds of quilts that presently I' ; m drawn to. As I said, I started out in the beginning making all kinds of block quilts and block quilts, and I still like to use the block quilts, and I have a stash of Indonesian batik. We lived in Indonesia for a year and a half and fabric is one of my treasures. If I feel low I go and look at the batik, and I love to iron it because it smells of the tailor shops, smells of Indonesia come out of the fabric even though it is washed. One of my goals is to keep focusing on getting the world to see different people' ; s cultures in representative cloth. I work towards that. I admire the people who can take other people' ; s cloth and make them into interesting art and I' ; m trying to think of her name right now. I took a class, she does the circles. Who am I thinking about? Anyway, it was a class where you bring the fabric you can' ; t cut into, or you don' ; t want to cut into and she really set me free, so now I do a lot of that kind of stuff. Just take the fabric out and say, ' ; What it is saying to me?' ; And then I go from there. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? SC: How many hours a week do I quilt? It depends. Some weeks I don' ; t quilt at all and other weeks I may spend twenty hours maybe, thirty hours. I' ; m always doing something. If I watch television I always have a quilt project that I' ; m doing so that I can double use my time. I dovetail a lot. I do a little bit. It is hard to stay in the creative mode and when I' ; m doing the creation part, I have to have time and space, but when I do the mundane stuff, the bindings and sometimes the quilting, I can manage pretty easily with something else going on. KM: What are your favorite techniques and materials? SC: I like the block forms of some things, and I will use any material that fits the job. Right now I' ; ve got something on the board, which is kind of a fade job, but my daughter gave me one of her duvet covers that had faded and I painted over it and. I guess I don' ; t really have a specific thing that I use. I do raw edge appliqué and I do some satin stitching. Let me see, I just do quilting. I guess I have a lot of diversity in what I' ; m willing to do. I' ; ve dyed fabric. I like to do that. I have done stamping. I don' ; t do it consistently. I get bored if I do something too consistent. I like to change styles and work with different materials. KM: Describe your studio. SC: My studio? I have a guest room that is full of fabric and I often use the dining room table when the weather is not so nice. That room is very cold so I don' ; t go up there. I have a CD player and I play it when I work, but basically you would say my studio is all over the house. KM: Good for you. SC: [laughs.] I have a very tolerant husband. He should have kicked me out long ago for making such a mess. There are only so many hours of the day and if I want to find quilting time and time to do the grandchildren, something has to go and so this is what it is. KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? SC: What does my family think? Mostly they were just tolerant at first and our daughter just says that I produce quilts like chewing something and spitting it out. She said you have something on the board all the time and it is always changing. My husband is kind of proud of me now. I had four pieces in the last Houston show. I think he takes pride in the fact that I got that honor. I haven' ; t won any great, great prizes. I had a first place and a third place. I don' ; t really want to deal with the quilt Nazis. I want to do my thing and enjoy it. If somebody likes it, that is fine and if they don' ; t like it, that is okay too. I have done solo shows and again if somebody likes it fine, if they don' ; t, I don' ; t think the quilt is devalued by the padding or the binding or the smallness of the stitches that is not an important element for me. So I don' ; t really compete in that way. I will never be a grand prize winner in any way, shape or form and I just hope to keep quilting for the enjoyment and the mental stimulation which I find that it gives me. It keeps those creative juices going and exploring. KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you make the distinction? SC: I think of myself as a good teacher, good parent. That is how I look at myself. Parenting first. I did a self portrait and really had difficulty. As a quilter or a quilt artist, I just work at quilts and I would not say that I put myself in the artist category, no, but maybe I' ; m just a quilter. KM: I don' ; t think " ; just" ; a quilter though is a good definition either. Not " ; just." ; I think the word just-- SC: Then take out the just, and you can say I' ; m a quilter. KM: Cool. What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? SC: One of the things that I have observed that has happened, is that artists who are artists, are now into quilting . They have gone to art school and that is their major or their doctorate or whatever and then they come into quiltmaking. I think that is very intimidating to those of us who have not had a single bit of training in that field, and so I kind of feel that there is some--somewhat of a take over in terms of artists moving in maybe from other art mediums in and being very successful of it. The other thing is that our society is so fast moving that there isn' ; t time for hand quilting. It is all about showing. It is all about showing, the more glitz and the more fancy that you can get, the better the piece is suppose to be, and I don' ; t hold to that. I think a person knows when the quilt is finished and if it doesn' ; t satisfy other people than that is their opinion. I think that what has happened with society moving so fast is we do not having time for creative art or craft or whatever you want to call it. There are a lot of true artists moving into the quiltmaking arena because it has not yet been challenged as greatly as say watercolor or oil painting. KM: Do you know why they are moving in? SC: Why are they moving in? KM: Yes. SC: As my husband would say about bridge games where there are not very good players, it is a berry patch. I think quilting is still a berry patch. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? SC: Enjoy it. Just do what you can enjoy and don' ; t worry about the quilt Nazis. They are there for a purpose, they have to have some standards for judging and that is fine. First of all, get some techniques and listen to your inner self about what you think is wonderful and take classes so you can grow. I think enjoyment, just enjoy doing it, if that isn' ; t there then what is the point. Repeating one block after another after another, you have to enjoy that. You have to enjoy some part of it to do it. That would be what I would say. KM: Good advice. What do you think about the importance of quilts and women? SC: Very important, very important. What do I say, I say that women were artists long before they were recognized and I think they are still that today. If I see a challenge that will support the women issues of any kind, I will try to take on that challenge rather than anything else. In fact I have been shown in a couple of multimedia shows with my quilts that have been for women. We have an architect that was a woman in our area that left quilt a legacy of beautiful, beautiful homes, so I made a quilt in tribute to her because she was a forerunner. She was the first woman to take that career. I think it is an important thing. I think the heritage that women have given us in terms of their art through their quilts is amazing, just amazing. I think that times are very reflective of how busy or what the women are doing. No I think women should put their hands up and wave and make people notice them and I think quilts can do that. KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? SC: It isn' ; t tiny stitches. [laughs.] What makes a great quilt? A great quilt is a quilt that draws me in. An example of that I can say is when I was at Houston and at a reception and they had several quilts by an Israel quiltmaker and they had them well lit and I was just drawn to those quilts, I couldn' ; t stay away from them, and so part of it was color and part of it was the dispersing of the color in various ways. Unique patterns of quilting. What else? It didn' ; t have to have a large of garbage on it, it just has to draw me to it and believe that there is a certain purity in the idea that is coming across. KM: I always ask people if there is anything they would like to add before we close, so this is your opportunity to. SC: Well no, I don' ; t know what else I can really say except that my husband was an engineer and we traveled and we lived in Australia and Indonesia and we were in London for five years and I think having lived in these places has given me a different perspective of life and I think sometimes that comes through in my quilts. KM: How does it come through in your quilts? SC: How does it come through in my quilts? I love to work with ethnic fabrics and if I go to a garage sale I will pick up an ethnic fabric, you know somebody buys it because they had been on a trip and then they don' ; t know what to do with it, so I love to do that. I love to preserve textiles from other countries as well as making people aware of different fabric in different countries. I just really like that. KM: Did you know any quiltmakers when you lived in these places? SC: No, I didn' ; t in London and in Australia it was a very young Australia and I had a new baby born there so I didn' ; t really have time to research that kind of stuff. When I was in Indonesia, labor is so cheap there that one of the community centers had women quilting so I had several quilts quilted over there. Also I would go to the tailor shop and ask for the scrapes on the floor, and most of them they would just burn them, but they would save them and give them to me and I would sort through them. People wear batik a lot. It is interesting because when I first saw batik, I thought this was the ugliest fabric I have ever seen, but when you see it in the culture and how it is used, they will have formal dinners and on the invitation it will say batik required, so a man has to wear a batik shirt. The batiks that we have here that are being made, that is well and good, but the authentic batiks that are made by hand with dye process is very unusual and very special. I think the travels in my life have greatly influenced me as a quilter because I do have a greater appreciation for diversity of fabrics. I rarely go into the quilt shops and buy a fabric ; my stash is where I build from. KM: You must have a nice stash. SC: I do. I have to figure out ways to use it. KM: Have you participated, I would like to come back to the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative before we conclude. Have you participated in the Priority Quilts? SC: Yes. KM: Tell me about that experience. SC: Let me see, I' ; m trying to think of something. I just wanted to do it, and it felt good, but I have not been a generous, generous donator, I think I have donated two. It just felt good to send them off in the mail and think that somebody else might put some money out for them and that money will go to the cause. I have been more active in getting people to buy books and getting people to buy the CDs and advertising at the guilds, and making [laughs.] making up an order form so people could order the book straight, directly. That is more of my involvement, how I have been supporting this movement. KM: That is a good way to support it. SC: Yea, I think so. I think so. Every time I get a chance, I carry these order forms and everybody in my exercise class pretty much has ordered a book. [laughs.] KM: Good. SC: That is how I have supported. I haven' ; t done a lot of the small quilts. I find it hard to make the small quilts to say what I want to say. I' ; ve got some that are cut out, but just haven' ; t been finished. [laughs.] KM: That is okay too. SC: The intentions are there. KM: You have two quilts in the exhibition traveling around, so you are a good ambassador. SC: Well yes, it is going to be in my home state of Iowa in Cedar Rapids, and I don' ; t know anybody that is in Cedar Rapids anymore. [laughs.] KM: Now it is going to go more than three years. SC: Yes, which is fine. KM: I agree. SC: Just as long as there are venues they can have it. I don' ; t really, I just think it is a wonderful cause and when I heard about it the first time I thought it was a wonderful cause and I wanted to be part of it. That became a priority. KM: Do you worry at all about getting Alzheimer' ; s? SC: Yes I do, but you know what there isnothing you can do about it. I try to stay active. My father was clear to the very, very end as he was giving out orders when he died, and so I have a fifty/fifty chance that I have got his genes in that department, and I think quilting is one good way of simulating the brain and that is all you can do, and if it comes it will come and there is nothing that I can do about it, but I certainly am going to try to utilize the brain in as many ways as possible. Like the exercise class, changing the way that I stand challenges the brain, there is a lot of good information out about keeping the brain young, or trying to keep the brain young. The body wears out and I just want to do as much as I can while it is still running and doing what it is suppose to do. I think it is a terrible disease. KM: It is. SC: My good friend who was the inspiration for the " ; Alzheimer' ; s Thief" ; she is in a totally different situation than she was when I talked to her about it. It can go very fast for some people. KM: And painfully slow in others. SC: Painfully slow in others, yes. KM: Thank you for taking time out of your day to share this with me. I really truly appreciate it, and our interview concluded at 3:38. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-25.xml AFPBP-25.xml ",,,,"Karey Bresenhan, in honor of Jewel Pearce Patterson",,,"http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/7382c82f582ac3bb0c19d256d05162ce.jpg,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/c7b2058d543638d1da9e5a55be51738a.jpg","Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Marla Ferguson",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-24,,,"Karen Musgrave","Marla Ferguson",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-24.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Marla Ferguson AFPBP-24 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Marla Ferguson Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-24%20Ferguson.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Marla Ferguson. She is in Palisade, Colorado and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois, so we are conducting this interview by telephone. It is February 26, 2008 at 8:09 p.m. I am doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories, which is based on the exhibit of " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Marla has a quilt in the exhibit. Marla, thank you so much for taking your time to do this with me. Marla Ferguson (MF): You are welcome. KM: Please tell me about your quilt " ; A Tribute to Man and His Family." ; MF: The quilt I made because I belong to a quilt guild in Grand Junction, and there happened to be a girl in the guild who would send out emails to all these different things and websites to go to and find this and that and so forth. Usually I delete those because I don' ; t have time to look at them all, but she sent one that said, Ami Simms is asking for quilts for an Alzheimer' ; s exhibit. I looked at that and I said, ' ; what?' ; because I hadn' ; t been married too long, maybe a year and a half, if that, to my husband, Daryl, and his father, who I never met, died of Alzheimer' ; s. In the short period of time that I had actually been with his family and met his family, of course, I never had a chance to meet his father. But in talking with his family, they told me many stories about his dad and during the time that he was at home with Alzheimer' ; s and how he wouldn' ; t remember things and they just had all of these horribly sad stories. My husband came from a very large family and his father was extremely beloved. You could just tell he was just the most wonderful man in the world, and so then this email came by that said, ' ; You know, Ami Simms.' ; And I didn' ; t even know who Ami Simms was! That is terrible! I know now she is a famous quilter, but I didn' ; t know who she was! So I went to the website and I downloaded the information. I figured out what it was we needed to do and I said, ?Well this is something I really, really wanted to do, partly because of the connection with my husband' ; s father who died from Alzheimer' ; s and partly because in my quiltmaking over the past number of years, I have made so many quilts that I have given as many away to family and others that really want them and need them or whatever, so I would like to give them to organizations that will be able to use them either to raise funds or, well mostly to raise funds. This was a perfect combination to be able to do that! As soon as I read about it and got more information, the idea for making the quilt came almost immediately. Since it was " ; Forgetting Piece by Piece," ; of course the first thing that came to my mind was puzzle pieces and there were so many synchronistic things that happened with it. I had decided it would be great if I could get all of these photos of my husband' ; s family and I wanted to put them on the quilt. But in order to show what Alzheimer' ; s does, I wanted to put them so they got darker and darker and darker, and then I wanted to cut puzzle pieces out of the quilt so that each layer, as you got towards the bottom of the quilt, it got darker and then the puzzle pieces went through further, like into the batting. When you finally got down to the end, the puzzle pieces were through the pictures which of course were supposed to be symbolic of taking the memory away. It went all the way through the quilt, so there are actual holes in the quilt. I travel a lot with my work and I kept thinking how am I going to find a puzzle piece? I don' ; t know how to draw a puzzle piece. I happen to work for a medical company, and of course at the trade show I was at they give away tons of different freebies to all of the physicians, so I walked around and I was on my way to the bathroom [laughs.] because I needed to take a break. One of the physicians at one of the tables where they can rest or have lunch or whatever had left one of these giveaways from one of thebooths, or one of the pharmaceutical companies and it happened to be a puzzle! It was a little five or six inch puzzle and it was Plexiglas and the back of it was a magnet so you could put it on your refrigerator. No one was there and it was just sitting there by itself and I said, ?Oh my gosh! here it is! It' ; s like it was from heaven! Here are my puzzle pieces!' ; I picked up this magnet thing that had the perfect, absolutely perfect size puzzle pieces for the quilt. I came back home and I used those as the drawing templates for the little puzzle pieces that are on the quilt that have been cut out.. Once I cut through all of the different pieces, those got tacked on to the end so they were just dangling at the bottom, so it was like they were sort of out in the middle of mid air. That is my understanding of what happens with Alzheimer' ; s is that you just lose all of those pieces of memory. And there it is, they are gone and they are dangling in space and you don' ; t understand them, and they don' ; t make any sense anymore and that is the whole thing. One of the things that was interesting in picking the background is that I wanted something that was bright in the colors of the background and my husband always kids me about this huge amount of stash of fabric that I have. Whenever I go to a quilt shop I always have to buy more, of course. He says, ' ; What are you going to use that for?' ; I say, ' ; I don' ; t know, but at the right time it will show up. It will be the perfect piece for the right quilt. I just love this fabric so I will put a little bit of it away.' ; Well, that is exactly what happened with the background of this quilt. I had bought it a long time ago and I didn' ; t know exactly what I was going to use it for. But when I looked for a background for this quilt it was the absolute perfect background for it because it was bright and it had all these beautiful landscape kind of things, lots of color in it and it just needed to have a lot of color and brightness to go with the pictures. Of course the pictures get darker and darker, and it gets kind of sad, but my feeling on that in using that bright colored background was that even though people are dealing with Alzheimer' ; s and it gets so--it takes so much time and so much energy and it becomes sadder every day, that the rest of the world keeps going. The sun still shines and it rains occasionally and the flowers bloom and all of those same things happen. But when you are involved with Alzheimer' ; s with a loved one, it is really, really hard to see all of that. Anyway, this perfect fabric for the background showed up too. It was in my stash, and it was also kind of funny because when I asked--I actually asked all of my husband' ; s family for permission to use the photos because they weren' ; t mine, they were his family' ; s and I was a newcomer. I mean I hadn' ; t been married very long and I didn' ; t want anybody to be mad at me because it was going to take these photos and cut pieces out of them. Well, they were transferred to fabric, but I was still going to cut these pieces out of them. Actually my brother-in-law, my husband' ; s brother, Doug, he was very familiar with the process of transferring photos to fabric and so I sent him four different colors of fabric that were light to dark in kind of a cream to a gray- dark gray, and asked him to put all of these different pictures onto fabric, divide them into four pretty much equal parts. It was funny because I got an email or a call from him and he said, ' ; Well, you realize that the ones that are on this dark gray fabric aren' ; t going to come through very well. You are not going to be able to see them very well.' ; I said, ' ; Yes I know, that is exactly what they are supposed to do. You are not supposed to be able to see the ones that get darker.' ; His family actually hasn' ; t seen the quilt in person because once I got it done I had to send it off right away. So they haven' ; t seen the actual quilt itself. They have seen pictures. Each of them has one of the books. Each one of them has one of the CDs and so they have been able to do that, but I keep hoping that the actual quilt exhibit itself will get up to the Seattle area or somewhere very close so they can each see it in person. Especially since his mother is, she is in her eighties now. I want to make sure she gets a chance to see it in person if at all possible. That is kind of out of my hands though. KM: Have you seen the exhibit yourself? MF: I DID see the exhibit! Actually it was in Denver at the first showing, or the first time that the Denver National Quilt Show, the Mancuso Show, was in Denver a couple of years ago. It was there and Denver is only about four hours away from me. So I drove up that weekend and stood with the quilt and got to see it in person again. I actually got to see all of them in person, which is absolutely overwhelming. It is just amazing. I partly went for that and I partly went to take a class and learn some other quilt techniques and shop, but while I was there I volunteered to spend some time with the quilt show. My gosh, I have forgotten her name now, the gal who is in charge at that time for that show. Ann Louise Mullard-Pugh. Anyway she was one of the people who had made a quilt also and she was giving me my instructions and I got to put a little sticker on people that says " ; I Saw the Quilts." ; She also said, ' ; Here is the box of Kleenex. You know if you need to give out Kleenex here is where you get it and I can get you more of anything and don' ; t be afraid to give people hugs.' ; I hadn' ; t really been around the quilts and hadn' ; t spent that much time with them. I was really good at passing out all of the little stickers because everybody I saw I would say, ' ; Have you seen the quilts?' ; and ' ; Here they are and if you have any questions,' ; and ' ; Would you like to wear a sticker?' ; and of course most everybody would. But then there were a number of people, I was just amazed at how many people when I would do that, they would come up and you could see they were trying so hard to hold back their tears because, any one of them--the quilts, emits mixed emotions. You could tell that people, they would just kind of start crying and then I would start crying and I felt really bad about that. I would go get the Kleenex and we would sit there and cry for a little bit. I didn' ; t know these people from anybody. It is such a universal feeling, and all of the quilts evoke that emotion. It is really kind of funny too because I didn' ; t get to stand by my quilt. I was standing by all of these other ones that I had never seen, so it was like ' ; WOW.' ; Every single one of these quilts has such an emotional impact on people. There were lots of people that I would give them the Kleenex and then I would give them a hug or I would just hold their hand and say ' ; I' ; m so sorry.' ; A bunch of them said, ' ; I just can' ; t, those quilts are wonderful, but I just can' ; t look at them anymore.' ; I said, ' ; I know. And if you want to take more time at some point, you can get one of the CDs or you can buy one of the books, because the books are coming out soon.' ; It just touched so many people, you just don' ; t realize how wide spread the disease is and how many people it touches. I think--it almost seems to be like kind of a silent disease because I don' ; t know, you can' ; t really tell on the outside. You don' ; t know when caregivers--who the caregivers are unless they are in a group of some sort or that kind of thing and it just touches so many people. It is just an amazing project. KM: Do you have any favorites from the exhibit? MF: Oh golly, I love the " ; Brain Cramps." ; KM: That is Mary Stori' ; s. MF: Yes, Mary Stori' ; s " ; Brain Cramps" ; , and I just have such a great deal of respect and love for Mary Stori and all her work. One that is called " ; Tears Of?" ; by Liz Kettle. KM: With the beads? MF: Yes, with all of the beads and they just kind of drop out of the heart and it is just like? KM: Don' ; t you think that quilt is so much better in person? MF: Oh, it is. KM: While the book and the CD are fabulous, the quilts are so much, that is universally, better. I think specifically that quilt in person is just so much better. MF: Well actually they are all better. KM: That is what I said, I didn' ; t cover that well, but I do believe that all of them are better in person, but that one in particular. MF: It just has such a stark impact between the black and the red and the beading, and of course a lot of the beads look like tears and yes, that one is amazing. One of the other quilts that I had an opportunity to see up close and I didn' ; t know whose it was at the time when I was looking at it, but it is Ami Simms, and it is the one where she has all of the breaks in the cord and then she has all of the typed things in the little squares. Even if you just sit and read those, I mean, your heart just breaks for all of the things. It is like, she doesn' ; t know who her daughter is, she doesn' ; t know who her son-in-law is, they are just, it is just, I don' ; t know, sad. It is just horribly sad. One of the other ones that I think is so impressive too is the " ; Nevilyn." ; They did kind of a similar thing that I did with the photos in that they started out with a nice photo and it just keeps fading out and fading out and you go, ' ; oh my gosh.' ; The real people, it is just sad. KM: You mentioned the CD and we each had to add an audio component to it, we each had to read our artist statement, tell me about that experience for you. MF: Actually I had fun with that. I think that I had to call in and just leave a message and I goofed it up so many times I had to call in about four or five times and kept saying ' ; okay this is the real one, no I' ; m sorry, I goofed that up, this is the real one.' ; [laughs.] I wasn' ; t very good on it but I did enjoy being able to do that, and I think that is probably one of the things about the CD that is actually even different from the book and seeing them in person. You get to hear the actual person who made it and what they had in mind and a little bit of the background, and lots of different things. When you actually have to hear or talk to somebody, it makes it more real. Sometimes if it is just in a book or just a picture, it is like ' ; oh, okay, yah, but that would never happen to me or " ; I don' ; t know who that person is, they are not really real' ; , but when you hear somebody' ; s voice like that, I think it makes it even more real. KM: What are your family' ; s thoughts, your husband' ; s family' ; s thoughts on the quilt? MF: Actually they like it. I think they don' ; t--didn' ; t completely understand. I think they were overwhelmingly pleased that I would want to do that and that it is traveling. I think they don' ; t have a complete understanding of it because they haven' ; t seen it in person. That is one of the reasons why I really would like them to be able to see the whole thing in person at some point, but I know they won' ; t travel to see it, so hopefully we can find some place in the Seattle area that will be willing to show it before its over. And my husband is SO proud of me! Everywhere we go he tells people that I have a quilt traveling with the Alzheimer exhibit. He' ; s such a sweetheart. KM: How did you feel when you were told that the quilt was accepted into the exhibit? MF: Well you know, actually that is kind of funny. Well, sort of funny, because I was waiting and waiting and waiting and I was out of town at the time. I knew what the deadline was when they were going to make a decision and I had given my email address. I kept checking email and I kept checking email and I would call home and I would ask my husband if there is any message on the answering machine. No there wasn' ; t any message, so I thought ' ; oh my gosh!' ; Well, I was really hoping that it was going to get in because I just felt like it really spoke to the theme and everything. But I also knew that there were probably twelve gazillion other quilters who had entered something and of course I have entered things before and some things have gotten in and some things haven' ; t, so there was never any guarantee on that. I think it did say that you would know one way or the other, so I waited for about a week or so and I still hadn' ; t heard anything and I still hadn' ; t heard and I finally looked up Ami' ; s email address and I sent this email off. I was really nice and said something like " ; you said this was the day and I was just wondering if you guys were delayed in making your decision or whatever, I hadn' ; t heard anything. Just wanted to know if it got in or not.' ; I finally got this email from Ami and she says, ' ; Yes!, yes!, yes!.' ; I' ; m in! ?You did get in! We have been trying to get a hold of you!' ; Apparently I was so excited or something at the time that when I had put down my phone number I goofed up the numbers and gave half my work number and half my home number. [KM laughs.] So she kept trying to call that and it ended up being somewhere in Ohio or something. She said, ' ; I don' ; t think you live in Ohio?' ; or wherever it was. KM: That is funny. MF: I don' ; t know if she even connected with anybody, but it obviously didn' ; t get to my house. When she wrote back and said ' ; yes you are in!, we have been trying to find you!, I' ; m so glad you called!. Oh my gosh! [laughs.] I was thrilled! I was so excited! This was a big, big deal for me. Very excited. KM: Very cool. Let' ; s broaden out a little bit in talking about the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative, which is one of the other things that Ami does is the Priority Quilts which are quilts that are auctioned off, tell me about your participation in Priority Quilts. MF: I have made, oh golly, I think only about ten or so. I kind of make them in spurts. They are kind of fun because they are small and so they go fairly fast and they are easy. Since I travel so much, I like to take hand work of some sort with me and I usually don' ; t do any hand quilting because ?hand' ; is a four letter word to me. [laughs.] I do all my bindings by hand though and so on the little Priority Quilts I have taken those along on a number of trips and then they are easy because they are small and then I can finish the binding and put on the little backing, or the hangers. KM: The sleeve. MF: Yeah, the sleeve that' ; s it, I knew that was what it was called. [laughs.] You know, sometimes when I forget simple little things like that I wonder if I' ; m not getting Alzheimer' ; s myself. It' ; s scary. So I like to take those with, but since I do travel so much I have to prepare that stuff ahead of time. It seems like all of the different quilts that I want to get done or get entered into something, they are all due at the same time. And I have to prioritize when I' ; m going to get things done and so I try and get all of that, as many of those things done at one time as I can and then I have a big lull. Then I can' ; t get anything else done because there are other things that take priority. Right now I' ; m working on about another sixteen to put on to the website to get sold. Actually, I think all of the ones that I have made so far have actually been sold. Some of them went to Houston, this last fall. They took a bunch to Houston and so some of them went to that, and I' ; m working on more of them now. KM: Excellent. Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. How did you get started? MF: Actually the very first quilt that I made was in high school and I have been sewing clothes ever since I was in about the fourth grade. So I have always loved to sew and I had all of these scrap pieces from all of these clothes that I had made all these years. Then in high school before I went to college I decided I wanted to make a quilt. Of course, some of these were pieces of polyester knit and [laughs.], they were corduroy and they obviously weren' ; t all cotton and the only thing I knew how to do at that time was to cut them all into squares and then sew them back together, which was horrible. It was absolutely horrible, and it was kind of funny because I thought I had enough squares, and I probably did, and I decided, okay I will put them on the floor and decide what color I want where, and so I put all of these squares out in the living room or dining room or something and then company came over and I had to pick them all up. Then they got all out of order and I ended up just taking them and putting them in a bag and pulling them out one at a time and they came out fine. Well, I didn' ; t know really anything about quiltmaking and I put in some kind of batting or something, although I know it wasn' ; t real batting, and all I knew how to do was to tie it. So I tied it about every foot and a half or something so it would stay together, and it was so ugly. KM: [laughs.] MF: I was really proud of it though and I took it to college with me and it was on my bed and then there was a gal at college who she had this beautiful denim quilt made out of jeans on her bed and it was in this cool design., Now I know it had to be half square triangles or something, and I said, " ; Wow that is really cool. How did you make that? Or where did you get that?' ; And she said, ' ; I made it.' ; I said, ' ; Oh!' ; and she said, ' ; Yeah it took me about a couple of days or something.' ; I just looked at her and thought, ' ; You are the biggest liar I have ever heard of in my life!' ; [KM laughs.] Because I had just spent practically the whole summer trying to put this stupid thing of all of these squares together for mine, and I was like, " ; oh right, there is no way in the world you could have done that in a few days!' ; Well, the years went by and I saw this class on " ; Trip Around the World: Quilt in a Day" ; , and I said, ' ; Oh I have to take that class!' ; I had to take it because it was telling about all this strip pieced thing and doing it in a day and everything. Then after I took that class, because I actually did, except for the binding, finish my little baby quilt in Trip Around the World in a day! I was hooked, and then I realized, ' ; oh, that gal from college probably knew all about that kind of stuff and was using those kind of techniques before I even had a clue that you could do that!' ; Once I did the quilt in a day, the Trip Around the World, I had to take every class that I could possibly think of and I would stay awake at night dreaming of all of these different colors of fabrics and how I was going to make this quilt and how I was going to make that quilt and all of these tricks and techniques. Of course, that first year, everybody in my family got a Trip Around the World whether they wanted one or not. So I just kept taking classes and learning more. I just loved to do it all by machine and of course, all the first ones were all tied still because I didn' ; t know how to machine quilt. Then I started to venture off and decided " ; I' ; m going to learn how to do the machine quilting" ; and took classes on that and kept going and then I realized that I want to do something more than just these strip pieced things. Then I went to--well actually I also figured out that you could use quilting in clothing and so I started making wearable art. That was like heaven!, Oh my gosh, I thought I had died and gone to heaven! You mean I can quilt things and wear them and do this wearable art stuff? That was so much fun. I got a piece, an outfit, in the American Quilter' ; s Society Fashion Show in the amateur division and when I went down there, I volunteered to white glove at the show. I was at the small wall quilts and so I was sitting here with the winners and in my white gloves so I could see everything up close and one of the wall quilts that won like first or second that year was, oh golly, now I' ; m going to forget her name. She was just here. She is the Chicago School of Fusing. KM: Is it Laura Wasilowski? MF: Yes, Laura Wasilowski. She was just here in Colorado too. I looked at her quilt and it was just so fun! Everything. I looked at the back label and it said " ; Chicago School of Fusing." ; I' ; m going, what? I asked questions to somebody else and I looked and said, ' ; Oh my gosh, she fused that!' ; Because I had gotten this totally wrong idea in quilting that there was a right way to do things and there is definitely a wrong way and Wonder Under was definitely the wrong way to do things is what I thought. And here she won! She won this major award in this national quilt show! And from that time on I said, ' ; Okay, Wonder Under is my friend. I can fuse appliqué.' ; Then I got away from all of just strip piecing and stuff and said this is fun! I can cut out any shape and any fabric with this fusible stuff!' ; So I do a lot of fusible appliqué and that kind of thing now and do lots of embellishments. I like to embellish things. KM: What kind of embellishments do you like? MF: I like to couch different kinds of threads on. I like the little glue on crystals, those are really fun. I love the beads, but I just don' ; t have a lot of patience for all of that back stitching beading thing. I did take a class from Mary Stori one time on the beading and I' ; ve done it before, but man it is tedious. You have to do all that hand work again. KM: That is a four letter word. [laughs.] MF: Yes it is! KM: [laughs.] I remember that. I remember you saying that. MF: That is right, and I did take a class one time on doing beading by machine, but that seemed to be almost as tedious, so you know I like these little glue on, iron on crystals and those work pretty well for me because I don' ; t do enough beading. Although I have a bunch of beads because I like them, so maybe one day I will change my mind and I will end up sitting around and sewing by hand. It will be fine. I do love all sorts of different threads and sequins and stuff like that, they are all fun. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? MF: First of all I would tell them, yeah there are certain rules for different kinds of quilting and stuff, but end up doing whatever you want because one of the things that I remember from Robbie Joy Ecklow. She does all that fusing stuff too and she is the first person that I had heard that fused her binding on. She did a little decorative cutting on it and fused it from the front to the back and that was her binding. She had entered it into a competition and the judges didn' ; t know what to do with it, they said, ' ; Oh, this is interesting!' ; She won an award for it. I thought, ' ; I wouldn' ; t have done that. I would have been scared to death! They are going to mark me down because I did something wrong or something different.' ; And if there is one thing that I have learned with quilting, you know, just do what you want to do and you can' ; t really make it for somebody else. Whatever you are making you really need to make it for yourself. If you like purple bunnies, then I don' ; t care if no one has ever seen a purple bunny in their life, make a purple bunny! It needs to be what makes you happy. That' ; s one of the things. I like to try different color combinations. There are certain ones that work. I just, just go out there and do it! Just start on something, it doesn' ; t have to be perfect. I look back at some of the first quilts that I made and I just go ' ; oh my gosh! I thought that was good?' ; It is all a process. Some of the first machine quilting that I did was really atrocious. It wasn' ; t very good but you know it is a matter of practice. KM: Do you still have your quilt that you made from college? MF: No, I don' ; t. I actually ended up throwing that away, but this is kind of funny because there was a good friend of mine that I had gone to high school with and we lost track of each other and a couple of years ago I found her. I had gone to a reunion and she ended up being there and we connected again. She reminded me that I had made a quilt almost exactly the same for her and she had it all these years and it had a bunch of holes in it and she wanted me to fix it. I looked at that thing and I said, ' ; Oh my gosh, Beth, please, why don' ; t I just make you a brand new one? Because I quilt a lot better now and it would be really pretty.' ; She said, ' ; No, I have had this one forever and I love it and all of these fabrics. It means more to me.' ; I actually took her quilt and I found fabrics that were still kind of old and sort of matched and [coughs.] I fixed it for her. I did more machine quilting on it. Actually I machine quilted the whole thing so it would stay together better this time. She has hers and I need to get a picture of that because I was just--it was so exciting to reconnect with her in the first place and then I hadn' ; t even remembered that I made her that quilt and she still had it! Now she' ; ll be able to have it a lot longer. KM: That is wonderful. That is a great story. MF: It was really funny because I remember someone telling me at one point that your thread will last longer than the fabric in the quilt. I' ; m like, ' ; what? You' ; e kidding! No!' ; But it was true because there were strings of thread that were still in that quilt and the fabric was gone. Maybe it was polyester thread which probably never dies. [laughs.] I thought that was interesting. KM: It is interesting. Describe your studio. MF: [coughs.] I' ; m sitting in it right now and it is a total mess. KM: I always love hearing that. MF: It is almost to the point where I have to clean it up again because I can' ; t find anything, but it is the second to the largest bedroom in the house and it is all mine. It' ; s full of fabric. I don' ; t have a design wall so all of the stuff that I work on is usually on the floor. So the floor--well there is just barely a walking space in the room right now because I have been working on a couple of other things that are close to a deadline to have to have done. All of the little pieces that got cut away or whatever are still on the floor. I' ; ve got a big giant ironing board, one of those big Bertha things or something, but it was a homemade one and both of the closets are full. I' ; ve got boxes of fabric. Half the time--well it is interesting because every once in a while I have to go through those boxes and I will look and say, ' ; oh I love that piece of fabric! I forgot I had that one! Oh yeah, I want to use that, I want to use that one some day.' ; Sometimes I will end up using it for whatever project I' ; ve got, but most of the time it goes back in the box and then I will look through it again and go, ' ; oh, I love that fabric! Oh, [laughs.] I forgot I had that one!' ; [coughs.] So it is always kind of a fun exploration again when I look at the fabric. Most of the fabrics are on shelves and I have tried to color code them so I can see, but once I start working, I pull out different fabrics. If it doesn' ; t work then it doesn' ; t always get back onto the pile easily and then I will have to redo that pile and all of that, and I don' ; t like to do that very often. I don' ; t like to clean up my sewing room very often either because it is always just, it is work to do that. KM: It is time away from creating. MF: It is away from creating, and then, of course, every time I clean it up I decide, ' ; oh yeah I will put this in a place that I for sure will remember where it is and it will be easy for me to remember and find it.' ; And sure enough, as soon as I change something, I have no idea where it is the next time I try to find it! In fact, there is a special pair of scissors that I had, I know it is in this room somewhere, but they have been lost for over a year and I have no idea where they are, so I went out and bought a new pair. [laughs.] KM: Good for you. We have almost talked for forty-five minutes. MF: Oh my gosh! KM: I know, is there anything else you would like to share before we conclude? MF: Oh golly, not that I can think of. KM: You did great. MF: Thanks, it was fun. KM: I' ; m going to ; we are going to conclude our interview. It is now 8:54. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-24.xml AFPBP-24.xml ",,,,"Karey Bresenhan, in honor of Jewel Pearce Patterson",,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/40280a4f49a671f28c87b45144a27502.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Dona McCready-Lewis",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-21,,,"Karen Musgrave","Dona McCready-Lewis",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-21.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Dona McCready-Lewis AFPBP-21 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Dona McCready-Lewis Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-21 McCready-Lewis.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I' ; m doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Dona McCready-Lewis. Dona is in Sun City, Arizona and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois, so we are doing this by telephone. It is February 18, 2008. It is 8:11 in the evening. Thank you so much for doing this interview with me. Please tell me about " ; Shattered Lives," ; which is a quilt that is in the traveling exhibition, " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; Dona McCready-Lewis (DMcL): Alright, this was a project instigated by my youngest sister. I am the oldest of four girls who all quilt. Timi, the youngest, was going through the Internet and discovered Ami' ; s website. Timi emailed all of us saying, ' ; Hey, I have a project for the four of us. There is a call for quilts for an exhibit for Alzheimer' ; s.' ; Her instructions to us were that we each make a block, twelve inches by twelve inches that would represent the impact Alzheimer' ; s has had on us individually and/or as a family. Our mom had been diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s maybe two, possibly three years before. So we each, all four are in different parts of the country, did our twelve inch blocks and sent them to Timi. She then put them together to meet the qualifications or the specifications of size that Ami wanted. In the meantime, Timi had been talking to Ami because she wanted to find out if a group quilt, by the four of us, would qualify for the exhibit or for consideration in the exhibit. Ami' ; s reply was, ' ; Well, if you can figure out how to split the sewing machine four ways, I don' ; t have a problem with it.' ; [laughs.] That is how we started. We had a deadline we had to meet. We sent them all in, Timi put them all together and she sent it off. The amazing thing with the blocks as they came back and Timi started putting them together, all four of us in four different parts of the country without collaboration had used the same color scheme of grays and whites and blacks. The blocks lent themselves to a unified piece. They all four went together. The only problem Timi had was that two of us are more artsy and two of us are more traditional. So there are two rather traditional blocks and two that are a little more off the wall. Timi had to figure out how to put them together. She did a very good job, the blocks compliment each other. When we got word that it had been accepted, it came to us through Timi, we all four were just absolutely astounded. We were just flabbergasted by its acceptance. All of us feel very honored and privileged to be chosen to participate in the exhibit. We all four have seen the exhibit in different parts of the country. My two sisters, Cherile in Missouri and Sandy in Florida, were able to get together and see the exhibit at Paducah in spring of 2007. Timi saw it in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 2006, and I was fortunate enough to see it at the Road to California January 2007 when it was shown there and also to do some white glove time with the exhibit then. Last spring, June2007, when friends were visiting us in upstate New York, we went to the Vermont Quilt Festival to see the exhibit with our husbands. My husband got to see it and I was able to see it again. Doing the white glove was really a very, very moving experience. People would come up and talk to you or you would start talking to people. The stories that they told were just as amazing. Many of them told me, it was their second time back because they couldn' ; t look at it all at one time, or I had people tell me they could only look at the quilts and not read the stories, or they had to view the exhibit in bits and pieces. The exhibit had a profound effect on the audience viewing it. It was the same in both California and in Vermont. I could overhear comments that were made because I was listening. It was very moving and it made me very, very proud to be a part of the exhibit. I think it is an outstanding exhibit. Then, I' ; m trying to think how long it took. I know I made the deadline of March 2006. My sisters laughed as I' ; m always the last minute person. The theme, " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; made me think of a jigsaw puzzle and the missing pieces. That' ; s what we used to do as kids. We built jigsaw puzzles all the time. That was the inspiration for my piece of the quilt. It is a photo of our mom, I believe it is her high school picture, reproduced five or six times, each time with a different exposure so it got fainter and fainter. It is arranged in a little semi-circle on black fabric. The first picture is whole of course. The next picture has one piece missing and the next has a couple more pieces and it goes on around until the final picture you don' ; t even recognize as a face unless you really study it. The puzzle pieces that were pulled out actually used various jigsaw puzzle pieces as patterns or templates to cut them out. The missing puzzle pieces are floating around on the background. They comprise the background for the photos with the pieces missing. It was a very difficult quilt to do because once I got the pictures all made, the picture is as you would expect a high school picture to be. Mom is very, very youthful. There is a sense of expectation, the whole world is in front of her, her whole life is ready to unfold, and cutting the photos up was very, very difficult for me emotionally. I have since tried to do another one with a different but similar theme using a different technique and haven' ; t finished it yet. Again it was very difficult for me to take the photos and cut them up. Our mom is now approaching the final stages of Alzheimer' ; s. Our Mom and Dad stay with my youngest sister since dad had a stroke about twenty years ago. I think they have been with my sister probably eighteen or twenty years. KM: Which sister is she with? DMcL: The youngest, Timi. There is myself, then Sandy, from Sun City Center, Florida, then Cherile, from Macks Creek, Missouri, and then Timi who is in Salem, Connecticut with Mom and Dad. I would go out every summer and Timi and I would go to the Northeast Quilt Festival together, take some classes, sometimes together, sometimes separately but we always had a great three or four day weekend. Now we go up, the three of us take turns, we try to make it about every six to eight weeks. We go up and stay anywhere from a long weekend to about ten days, so that we can give Timi a break. She is at the point now where she does the cooking, as well as administering all of the meds and taking care of all the personal hygiene, at least overseeing it. It is coming to the point where Timi is going to have to make some very difficult decisions. Not being there, not being involved with the agreement and relationship between Timi, Mom and Dad, what the other three of us can best do for Timi is simply support her and support whatever decisions she has to make. That is difficult for all of us, but that is what it is coming to. I think this is now Mom' ; s fifth year, but the last time I was there, in January, she still recognized me and knew who I was. At this point you are thankful for little things like that. What other things do you need to know or want to know about the quilt? KM: What are your plans for the quilt once it comes back? DMcL: That is interesting. Of course we got the appraisal and again we were all very pleasantly surprised with the appraisal of our quilt. We all recognize the fact that the whole is greater than the individual pieces, so if we take our pieces back, we would devalue it greatly. Therefore, we have kind of been bouncing ideas around. I think the one that everyone seems to be most in favor of is donating it to either the Alzheimer' ; s headquarters, either regionally, maybe state, or perhaps nationally. Something like that. I don' ; t think we have started the process of finding out where and how, etc. etc. We don' ; t know if there is an auction that would utilize a quilt of that size or if somehow we could do a fundraiser. Again I don' ; t know whether or not an auction would bring a price close to the appraisal or not. That is kind of an up in the air thing, we haven' ; t decided. I for one think it would be a shame if we each took our pieces back and took it apart. That would be unfortunate, but again I' ; m one of four, whatever the other three decide I will go along with. I would like to see it put someplace or used where it would continue its message. KM: Did your mom quilt? DMcL: Mom has always sewn. She would make clothes for the three of us. Timi is nine years younger than the youngest of the older three, so whenever the first three were little girls Mom would have us all dressed alike. There would be three dresses in different sizes or three identical outfits. When we were about nine, ten years old, we started to do our own ironing during the summer and also learned make our own shorts and halters, our work clothes for out in the garden. We would usually make them out of either feed sacks from our grandmother or from our mom. So we have all sewn since we were very young, with the exception of Timi. Because of the age difference, she came along at a time when Mom wasn' ; t sewing or doing only a little of it. Mom was more into crafts rather than sewing so Timi never started sewing until she was grown, I guess, and in fact did not quilt until a long while after the three of us were quilting. A number of years ago, probably early nineties, mid-nineties I organized a trip. We lived in Chicago, at the time. My husband and I came to Phoenix from Chicago where we lived for fourteen years. I worked at O' ; Hare with United Airlines until I retired after 32 years of service. Anyway, I organized a trip with my mom and my sister Sandy, who is now in Florida, to spend some time with me in Chicago then drive down to Paducah, Kentucky, to the quilt show, all three of us. Well, Mom was with Timi at that time and Timi said she would like to go with us just to keep us company. So the three of us, the three daughters and our mom went to the quilt show. Timi was walking around and looking at all the quilts saying, ' ; You are nuts, you all are nuts. Cut up all these little pieces of fabric and put them back together, you are all nuts.' ; [laughs.] They go back home and a couple of weeks later Timi says to our mother, ' ; Do you want to take a quilt class with me?' ; So they went out and got some fabric and started with the quilt class. Timi would take mom with her and they would be fabric shopping, and as Timi would be going through these fabric shops or quilt shops she would be saying, ' ; Darn that Dona. Darn Dona.' ; Actually she wasn' ; t that nice. [laughs.] Pretty soon Timi had her own stash and she has been quilting ever since and does it very well. Timi started out traditional as we all do ; but, Timi has always been a little bit left of center as it were, our free spirit, and now does art quilts, very nice ones. Kind of off the wall ones, but I' ; m very proud of her because Timi really does a great job. She has had a number of quilts in various exhibits, galleries and so forth. Timi is doing well with it. I started quilting probably late eighties, that' ; s not true, probably early eighties, late seventies. I discovered that instead of needing two, three or four yards of something as in sewing, I could get by with a half of yard of everything so it just kind of fit in. I started out making very simple quilts and then got into the more pieces the better which has evolved into doing more of the art type quilts mainly due to Timi' ; s influence. What I particularly like is to take a photo and translate it into fabric as a landscape quilt. That just seems to fit my personality well. It doesn' ; t matter if your points don' ; t match, you can even do a raw edge. It is just, it is just less complicated all the way around and I enjoy that. I have had a couple of quilts in various shows. One here in Chandler, Arizona at an art gallery in an exhibit called " ; TIMELINE," ; a juried art quilt show. I was pleased to be able to have a piece there. I' ; ve had quilts in our local Arizona quilting guild shows and have taken some awards there. One year Sandy, another sister, decided that we should do a round robin. The four of us each made a center square, then passed it on to the next one in chronological order. They added a border, sent it to the next one and so forth until eventually the center block came back to the original owner as a completed top. About a year or so after we had finished these four projects, the Northeast Quilt Festival theme was family. Again Timi rounded up all our round robin quilts and entered all four in the festival. (Do you see a pattern here?) One of our quilts took a second in the theme category and another took a third. It was a lot of fun and very enjoyable. It was good to see the collaborative work of the four of us working together win awards. It has been fun. I enjoy putting things in shows because of the judges' ; critiques. It is amazing how much you learn from those. I also have a collection of antique quilts. I have become very immersed in all aspects of quilting. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? DMcL: I used to do it about eight to ten hours a day, about four or five days a week, but since I have been in Arizona and since I' ; ve retired I fight for time to do it. [laughs.] Our recreation centers are the hubs of our retirement community. That is where all the clubs and the groups meet and everything runs from. We have seven rec centers in our community. We had one quilt group, but it was, it was a very traditional one and although it was fun and the camaraderie was great, there was dissatisfaction in that we were doing the same things over and over again. A group of us got together and I was chosen to spear-head the organization of another quilt group, which was chartered in, let' ; s see, it must have been about 2002, we are about six years old now. It started out with a group of people that wanted to get together to meet in our homes and just kind of explore different ideas and avenues of quilting and try different things. Everybody was excited when they heard about this group that was starting. They would say, well I want to come too. Pretty soon we had a group of twenty-two people, which fit in no one' ; s house! So we had a meeting to see if there was enough interest that we could sponsor a group for a separate charter. We were expecting about twenty-two, there were thirty-two that showed up and we now have a membership of over one hundred and sixteen, one hundred and twenty, somewhere in there. We have had two and are now planning our third quilt show. We have a show every other year. In the first quilt show we had one hundred and seventy-five quilts. The second quilt show we had two hundred and forty-four quilts, I think. The first show we had an attendance of five hundred two years ago our attendance was seven fifty. We are hoping this time to hit one thousand attendees. With the number of quilts we' ; ll have, that will make us, I believe, the third largest quilt show in the state of Arizona. The show will be February 6 and 7, 2009 and I am the chairman. KM: Very cool. DMcL: Yea, the show is a lot of fun. We have been able to have national teachers come in and give a lecture and class. We also have a quilt appraiser that comes in. This time Sharon Schamber will be our featured guest. She is from the area, local. Sharon and her mom are both out in this direction so we are excited about that. The last quilt show we had Janet Jones Worley as our guest, she also has a quilt in the Alzheimer' ; s exhibit. Janet was great fun. There were four of us who went with her to the Grand Canyon. Janet said that if you got as far as Arizona you couldn' ; t go home without seeing the Grand Canyon, so we all took a trip up there. KM: What do you find most pleasing about quiltmaking? DMcL: What do I find most pleasing about quiltmaking? I think the challenge, the creativity, I like the idea that you give something to someone and whether it is your grandson who says this is way cool, or your granddaughter who just loves being the princess, why it just makes you feel good. It is also nice to know that perhaps in some small way you are leaving a piece of you behind, it may not be there three hundred years from now, but two or three generations is nice. That and I' ; ve always found sewing and working with my hands to be very relaxing and very de-stressing. You just feel all the tension and stress moving out. I like the challenge of it. I also like to do wearables, where you take something that is plain and create whatever you want. I like the fact there aren' ; t any rules, after all it is your piece. [laughs.] KM: What kind of wearables do you make? DMcL: I do jackets, vests, shirts, whatever. Right now I' ; m working on a coat that is wool felted and it is made with color blocking using old sweaters that I' ; ve felted. I want to do the trim around the border, the collar and cuffs in felted flowers and vines to have it look as if it is appliquéd. Appliqué is not something that I do. I have taken a couple of appliqué classes and its like hand quilting, I can do it, I just prefer not to. What I learned was it wasn' ; t something I wanted to do. [laughs.] I want to get the coat done for Road to California, 2009. Actually, next January we will be at Road to California with our opportunity quilt for our quilt show. At least those are the plans, what we have been told so far. That is something we are looking forward to. KM: Are you involved in the quilt? DMcL: In the Opportunity Quilt, no, because they did the quilt last summer and I was gone. KM: When you were in New York? DMcL: Yes. This last summer was the first full summer we spent there. KM: Do you quilt when you are in New York? DMcL: Yes. [laughs.] When don' ; t I? [laughs.] KM: Just checking. DMcL: I take a piece with me when I travel, like on the plane, there is always something stuck in my bag. I quilt in New York. The problem I have is trying to figure out whether to make the projects there and finish them here, or make them here and finish them there. [laughs.] I' ; ve discovered that whatever I seem to need is in the other place. [laughs.] I understand from my friends who go home to other places during the summer this is a common problem. In the mountains we are an hour from the nearest JoAnn' ; s and there are few quilt shops. They are very far and few between. I have gotten much better at doing online shopping. KM: Do you have a studio in both places? DMcL: I have a sewing room here, and if I concentrated on it, the space I use in the mountains is above the double garage, it would make a really great studio. It would qualify as a studio. You look out on the water and it is beautiful. I am waiting to get back. We split our time six months and six months. KM: Do you transport your sewing machine when you go? DMcL: I lug my favorite one back and forth. I also have two sergers. I' ; ve got one up there for the sewing. I take my sewing machine with me. I have an old Singer. In fact it is one of the first electrified Singers, the one with the wooden case. It has the hump back and that is in the mountains. It' ; s often what I use for piecing because it has such a great balanced stitch for piecing. I' ; m set up well. There is enough space that I could put a quilting machine in there. KM: Are you interested in getting a quilting machine, a longarm? DMcL: Only to fill up that space. [laughs.] Timi has one, so whenever I go up to visit, I watch her work on it. I think that is a little more involved than I am ready for. What I' ; m thinking of is the mid arm. That is probably a little more practical and I won' ; t have to re-mortgage the house. KM: Exactly. What do you think makes a great quilt? DMcL: For me what makes a great quilt is when you first see it, it just really, the visual impact makes it stand right out. That is number one. The second is the more you look at it the more there is to see. You wonder how did they do that, or why didn' ; t I think of that. It just draws you in and keeps talking to you. I' ; m trying to think of, I know that you have seen this quilt because it has been published in a number of magazines I think it must have been at Houston. I was fortunate a group of us went to Houston three times. Two years in a row, we skipped a year, and then we went back. The quilt was a snowy winter landscape of a meandering stream through snow covered trees. All done with thread painting over the entire surface. It was a huge bed size quilt and it just captivated you. The more you looked at it the more there was to see, the colors just seemed to be moving, it was just an amazing quilt. That is really what started my interest in landscapes. That quilt looked just like a photograph. I think that is what really makes a quilt. I also like a quilt that makes you laugh. It could be just a funny whimsical type of thing that just makes you feel good looking at it. When you read the story you understand perhaps what the artist was trying to say with the quilt. What they were hoping to accomplish. The humor brings a smile to you. [laughs.] KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? DMcL: Not to be afraid, just do it. Don' ; t worry about all the rules and regulations. I think it is important to learn the accepted way of doing things. To learn to cut things that are to be straight, straight and match what is supposed to match. I think it is important to learn these things so you can get rid of the rules. That way you can evolve beyond them if that is what you want to do. We have a lot of 101 beginning classes with our quilt group. They are always very timid about starting. They ask how you do this and that. My advice: look, everybody started some place. We all started with a first quilt, I don' ; t care who it is or how many books they have or whatever they do. They all started with step one, that is all you have to do, just do it. The next one is simpler don' ; t be afraid of it. It will work. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? DML: I would say it was the old cronies who complain everything is machine stitched today. But, there are so many quilts using machine stitching, wonderful machine quilting being done today, I don' ; t think that is a valid objection anymore. I think as far as the challenge it is probably to just keep all of the new things coming and keep the involvement going. The idea of quilting as an art form, is pretty standard now, I think we have worked, they have worked through that. People were resistant to this suggestion at first, but I think it is very accepted now. One thing I find very interesting is the exposure quilting has brought to our younger people. Our quilt makers seem to be getting younger and younger, these young people, as a bi-product of quilting, are developing an interest in sewing. Sewing seems to be growing right along with quilting, just hand and glove. I think that is great. It gives everybody more facets, it rounds them out. KM: You talked about making art quilts, do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker, or do you even make the distinction? DMcL: I don' ; t think I make the distinction sometimes I start out making one and end up with the other. I' ; m now working on a landscape I first saw as a photograph someone had taken. I asked if I could use the photograph for a wall hanging and they gave it to me. It is a picture of an Adirondack chair sitting on a little piece of a green grass spot, a little point. In this chair there is a hat, an open book and on the arm a coffee cup with steam rising. When you look past the chair you are looking across the water and into the trees on the other side reflecting in the water. I started the quilt, had all the background done and I actually got the chair done, put it up on the design wall and decided I didn' ; t like it. There wasn' ; t enough contrast between the white and the gray of the chair. I took the chair off, took it all apart and it is still waiting to be put back together. That is an art piece, yet at the same time I have a couple of bed quilts that I' ; m working on as well. So it is, it just kind of goes with the mood. I usually have a number of projects going at one time. People tease me about that. [laughs.] I used to read two or three books at the same time, so what is the difference? [laughs.] KM: It is kind of nice to be able to go from one to one. DMcL: It is. It gives you a break when one starts to become work you can switch to the other. Particularly if it is something like the one that I' ; m working on that is paper piecing, you just have to keep the colors in the same sequence. It gives your mind a chance to worry about something else, another problem on another quilt and work it out. KM: What are your favorite techniques and materials? DMcL: I really like the fusing, particularly with Esterita Austin' ; s Mistyfuse. Timi and I took a class with her a few years ago in New England. We used the product in the classroom. Esterita at that time was trying to get it out on the market. It is now available, I have been using it because I like the way it finishes, the hand of it after you are done. It is so flexible. It' ; s not like the board finish of fusibles that were available four or five years ago. I like paper piecing, which is really strange. When Timi first introduced me to it, I thought it was the most bazaar technique. Inevitably mine always came out mirror image I found that very frustrating. But, I decided that as long as they were all mirror image, it really didn' ; t make a difference which way the cat' ; s head was looking. [laughs.] I have learned to accept that. I like the precision that paper piecing creates when you are doing work that requires precision. I like the looks and the techniques for the Mariner' ; s Compass folded paper piecing and also Karen Stone' ; s New York Beauty, those types of quilts. I like those techniques. Now what really fascinates me is the painting, the stamping and the inking being done with oil paint sticks. I' ; ve got the materials, I' ; ve got a couple of books, but I haven' ; t yet gotten up the nerve to try it. I have been watching. Timi does it and says it is easy. You just do it. I should follow my own advice. [laughs.] KM: I would like before we end to kind of go back to the Alzheimer' ; s Forgetting Piece by Piece exhibit. Are there any quilts in the exhibit that you are particularly attracted to? DMcL: I think my favorite was the martini glass with the red or the heart. When I first saw it I thought it was a martini glass but I think it is a red heart. It is done with all of the beading. KM: Yes it is a heart. Liz Kettle' ; s quilt. DMcL: When I looked at it, when I saw it in person I looked at it closely and studied it, I realized there are designs within the beads as well. There are little circles and stars and bursts I found very fascinating. I also think the one with the ballerina was very, very good. At both shows where I saw the exhibit, the ballerina garnered a lot of comments from the audience. KM: I think Liz' ; s quilt is so much better in person. DMcL: You mean the beaded one? KM: Yes. DMcL: Yes, I agree. KM: So much better in person than the picture or on the CD you know the book with the CD. I think all of them are better in person, but in particular. DMcL: I know it also makes a difference on how they are displayed. At the Road to California, the spokesperson I talked with while doing white glove was a little upset because the space they had been allocated wasn' ; t what they had been told they would have. I do know the exhibit as hung was crowded. Some of the stories were overlapping other quilts and other stories. Yet, in Vermont it was spread out, each quilt had its own space and it did show better. KM: I white gloved two times and had similar experiences. DMcL: I' ; m sure every show it goes to is different. How they hang it, the space allocated is probably very different from site to site. You were talking about funny things, in Nashville, no, I' ; m sorry in Paducah, I have a friend from our quilting group who had a quilt accepted into Paducah. She and her friend went to Paducah and I told her, she is one of seven girls, I said to her as she was leaving, ' ; Well if you see me there say hello. It will be my sister.' ; [laughs.] As things would happen, she was at the Alzheimer' ; s exhibit looking at the quilts. As I had told her we had a quilt in the exhibit she was looking for one that had my name on it. Two other women standing there were talking about the same quilt. My friends were talking about the quilt saying, ' ; Well, you know that is Dona' ; s quilt,' ; she said [that.] it was here. The two girls turn around and say to her, ' ; Excuse me, do you know Dona?' ; They were, of course, my sisters. [laughs.] So my sisters had run into my friends at Paducah. KM: At the quilt show. DMcL: At that exhibit, our quilt. Out all of those people it was kind of funny they managed to be at the same place, same time. KM: It is a small world. DMcL: It really is, especially among quilters. KM: You know there are, what, twenty-seven million of us, is that what they are saying now? DMcL: I know I had. [coughs.]. When we were organizing our group I had done some research to support our need for two quilt groups. It just amazed me. One of the statistics stated quilting was over a 2.5 billion dollar industry at that time. I' ; m sure it has gone way over by now. KM: don' ; t remember, it is big though. DMcL: It is huge. KM: Which is nice. DMcL: Yes it is very nice, and [coughs.] you know, with Alzheimer' ; s the number of people that it affects is huge. I mean as victims, it is just mind boggling. But when you consider all of the surrounding people and families that it affects, that too is mind boggling. What I really find alarming is the other side of Alzheimer' ; s. The number of early onset victims that are becoming more and more. People need to be made aware of, because there aren' ; t programs to help and assist them as there are for older people. They have their private insurance which often has a million dollar cap. That doesn' ; t take long when you have a family of four or five that you have been insuring for a while and you come down with a catastrophic illness like this. They go through their private insurance ; they go through their retirement. One family I heard of had two sons in high school and one in college. They are trying to educate three kids and the mother comes down with Alzheimer' ; s. Had to give up her career and stay home. The father was trying to cover her, take care of her, take care of the income etc.,etc. What do they do once the savings and the pension plans are used up, the 401Ks are used up? What do they do? KM: I have a girlfriend whose husband had Alzheimer' ; s at fifty. She had a fifteen year old son at home. She lost her house. She had to go to court. She had to go to court to get help. DMcL: It is not only an old person' ; s disease anymore and that is what is really frightening. When you talk to people, they aren' ; t aware of that aspect, that fact hasn' ; t made a big impact. My husband is in pharmaceuticals, has been for years, he gets a pharmacist newsletter. I often read the articles. He will highlight those he knows I will be interested in. An article appeared in one of the publications regarding research being done with blood products and Alzheimer' ; s. In the article they referred to early onset Alzheimer' ; s and how the numbers were swelling. It was very interesting. I think Alzheimer' ; s is one of the ugliest diseases we see. Not necessarily only because there is no cure, but because it takes our dignity away. Or as our dad says about Mom, ' ; You live all of your life and then you lose your memories. What a dirty trick.' ; You can' ; t even sit and enjoy the memories of your life, and that is just very heartbreaking. It' ; s a very heartbreaking disease and it is scary. It is scary from the aspect of the family member suffering from it, but it is thought there is a genetic link. That is scary when you look around at four of you and think, ' ; okay, which one of us will it be or will it be all four.' ; It is frightening. KM: Hopefully with the money we are raising. DMcL: I' ; m sure. I' ; m hoping. [laughs.] I know from the research there are a couple of promising areas. I think there is a Japanese firm that is working on a vaccine. At least, they now understand how Alzheimer' ; s works. There is research being done with the blood product called IVIG, the part of your blood that carries antibodies. It has been found injections of IVIG reverses the accumulation of amaloyd plaque and cognitivity increases. Take the IVIG away and the dementia comes right back. There may be some light on the horizon, but I don' ; t think it is going to happen soon enough. KM: Probably not. Believe it or not our time is up. DMcL: [laughs.] I' ; m sure it is. KM: You did very well. I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview with me, and it is concluded at 8:58. 2020 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-21.xml AFPBP-21.xml ",,,,"Karey Bresenhan, in honor of Jewel Pearce Patterson",,,"http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/9aa43146d5818338a46954de8def8e75.jpg,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/b381fd1b311e0159901cb8dc0ef588a8.jpg","Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
" Mary Stori",,,,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-18,,,"Karen Musgrave","Mary Stori",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-18.xml,,,," 5.4 Interview with Mary Stori AFPBP-18 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Mary Stori Karen Musgrave 0 https://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-18%20Stori.mp3 Other audio Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave. I' ; m doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Mary Stori. Mary is in Clyde, North Carolina and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are doing this interview over the telephone. Today' ; s date is February 20, 2008 and it is 10:13 in the morning. We are doing a special Alzheimer' ; s Forgetting Piece by Piece Q.S.O.S., which also has an exhibition with the same name [Alzheimer' ; s ; Forgetting Piece by Piece.] Mary, tell me your story about " ; Brain Cramps" ; , your quilt in the exhibition. Mary Stori (MS): This quilt was already in progress when Ami [Simms.] contacted me about a fledging idea she' ; d conceived to raise public awareness and funding for Alzheimer' ; s disease research. At that time she even wondered whether an exhibit could be developed in a short period of time. Knowing Ami' ; s dedication and energy, I had no doubt about its success. After describing the piece to Ami, sight unseen she invited me to participate in the Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece project. My mom, Dorothy Theobald, who passed away in October 2007, was diagnosed with Alzheimer' ; s in early 2001. However, I saw the signs long before the doctor' ; s official report. Denial is typical, not only for the patient, but family members as well. So, instead of acknowledging that she was having any difficulties she would say, ' ; Well I' ; m not forgetting, I' ; m just having a little brain cramp.' ; It made me smile through my tears! We were the process of building a house during this time period and every time I' ; d scrunch up my face in puzzlement when faced with yet another decision about something silly like ; placement of an electrical outlet my husband would ask, ' ; Are you having a brain cramp?' ; [KM laughs.] Almost every quilt I create is based on a lighthearted view of a theme or subject. I guess this piece was an attempt for me to deal with her failing memory, her inability to process information, and the worry that I felt about my own future. KM: Tell me about the design process. MS: In terms of the construction you mean? KM: Yes. How did you come up with the concept? MS: The phrase, " ; Brain Cramps," ; was the initial inspiration for the quilt. My specialty is embellishing, figuring out how to use found objects is a challenge I enjoy. A friend had given me a bag of old watches that no longer worked. It occurred to me that they' ; d be perfect to incorporate into my piece since that' ; s what Alzheimer' ; s does ; it steals time, not just the patient' ; s, but family members as well. I set about trying to disassemble them by removing the back with a screw driver and realized how dangerous one slip would be. So, I resorted to securing them into my husband' ; s vice, turning the handle just enough so the pressure would pop each one apart. Naturally, parts flew everywhere. I gathered up the pieces, and using only the face and the hands, attached them to the quilt with the aid of beads. The focal image is a face, made to vaguely resemble a clock face. The upper portion features knotted rickrack to illustrate brain cramps. Various colors of fabric, rubber stamped with words, have been reverse appliquéd to create arrow motifs which vibrate from the head. Lettering illustrates everyday life expectations or concerns which an Alzheimer' ; s patient may no longer have any memory of as these slowly disappear, fluttering out of the brain and until they are gone. I selected items that occupy my mind, such as taxes, retirement, quilts, etc. Some of the quilt' ; s visual impact is derived from the black and white print background fabric which looks warped and off kilter, giving the impression of seeing it through a ' ; fun' ; mirror at a carnival or the confusion an Alzheimer' ; s patient might have. The piece is hand appliquéd, hand embroidered, machine quilted, and embellished. KM: Did you mom ever see the quilt? MS: She did. But sadly, she couldn' ; t make the connection. However, if she' ; d could have comprehended the quilt' ; s purpose, I know she would have been very supportive of our goals. In one of her clearer moments one time she sighed and said, " ; I sure hope you don' ; t have to go through this." ; Hopefully, our children can be spared. KM: What are you plans for this quilt when you get it back? MS: I don' ; t know. The quilt may be too personal for somebody else to be interested in owning it, but I' ; d gladly part with it if it could continue to comfort others. Perhaps our organization will consider either auctioning the quilts or finding a permanent location for the entire exhibit. I would like to see as much money raised as possible. KM: I suppose that we should explain that the Alzheimer' ; s Art Quilt Initiative is now a nonprofit organization, which I think is pretty cool too. MS: I think it is too. It now may be possible to extend the life of our exhibit and achieve our goal to help find a cure for this horrible disease. We are thrilled to have raised $157,000 to date, which goes directly to research, no stops in-between. Hopefully someday, other families won' ; t have to know its heartbreak. KM: Have you seen the exhibit? MS: I have and was able to help hang it at the Pacific International Quilt Show in 2006. KM: Tell me about the experience. MS: It' ; s was very moving, and in a way, even more so since I know so many of the artists. They are my friends, I know their stories, and yet seeing the pieces in person was overwhelming. You would think during the rush of hanging a show, there wouldn' ; t be time to reflect, but as each quilt came out of the shipping crates, it was examined with reverence by all the volunteers. One of my favorites is " ; A Porsche Problem" ; by Georgia Bonesteel for two reasons. We are Porsche enthusiasts, so naturally the subject got my attention, and secondly we also had a very difficult time getting the car keys away from my mother. She was angry for a long time, well, as long as she could remember to be mad about losing her independence! We siblings had all agreed this was necessary, but my brother Chuck who lived in the town actually had to physically remove the keys and sell the car. He is a saint, no parent could have gotten better care than she did and he handled everything with love, compassion and without complaint. KM: Tell me about people' ; s reactions to the exhibit when you were there. MS: Ami often warns viewers to bring a box of Kleenex and I definitely agree because it' ; s an emotional experience. Still, it' ; s heartwarming to watch as viewers move from tears to smiles and sometimes downright laughter as they recognize situations they' ; ve experienced with their loved ones, often similar and amusing as a child' ; s prank. I think each artist wanted to elicit emotion, thought, and a moment of reflection. Advances in medicine are allowing us to live longer and it' ; s usually in the later stages of life when Alzheimer' ; s develops ; a whole new generation will be dealing with these issues soon. This exhibit is emotional to view and that' ; s the point, because it also helps to generates action. KM: There is a CD where each of the artists had to read their artist' ; s statement. Tell me about that experience for you. MS: It was actually fairly painless due to my experience taping numerous HGTV shows and my instructional beading DVD. I wrote my own artist statement and narrated it, trying to avoid a flat monotone voice by keeping some spontaneity as I read. Afterwards however, I felt somewhat drained. I didn' ; t realize how hard I was trying to keep my real emotions under control to avoid crying. Ami' ; s insight that viewers would benefit by hearing the voice of the actual artist was right on target. KM: Have you listened to the CD? MS: I have, and not without a lump in my throat. I also enjoy the book which came out in 2007. I ordered books for everyone in our family as Christmas gifts, encouraging them to place it on their coffee table or to bring to work to share with their friends and associates. The book also features quilt photos and artist statements pertaining to each quilt, but the highlight in my opinion is the ease of which the reader can educate themselves about the disease by reading the facts that are presented on each page. So with the CD, you see and ' ; hear' ; the emotion of the exhibit, while the book offers photos, thoughts from each artist, and the additional educational benefit as well. KM: We should say that below each artist statement is a fact about Alzheimer' ; s. MS: Which is very helpful, even for myself who was somewhat knowledgeable on the subject, but there is really a lot to learn. Not only did my mother have Alzheimer' ; s, we' ; d already experienced the same issues with my mother-in-law' ; s dementia. Because she had reached the point of not always being aware of her surroundings, and still being somewhat mobile and headstrong, she took a terrible fall which resulted in a brain injury. Safety issues top the list of reasons why some patients may need 24 hour care. KM: Let' ; s move into your involvement in quiltmaking. Tell me about your interest. MS: I didn' ; t come from a family of quilters, as a matter of fact the only sewing experience I had was in junior high when I made that required gathered skirt, and I thought ; this is something I never want to do again. I was pretty humiliated and embarrassed. I just didn' ; t like the process at all, nor the end result, it looked very homemade. Time marched on and no one is more surprised than me that quilting has become my career and that I' ; ve authored seven books and one DVD. I' ; ve been lucky enough to travel the world presenting workshops and lectures, meeting wonderful folks everywhere. I' ; m a late bloomer though, as this is my third career. First I worked for an airline, next I ran a cooking school, but after the back surgery I had to have a lifestyle change. My mother-in-law was the one who put a needle in my hand. She wasn' ; t a quiltmaker, but she' ; d always stitched. Living in California she was influenced by the wearable art movement in her area. She started incorporating patchwork into her clothing and it was with her encouragement and help that I make my first little patchwork pillow. Soon I began making small quilts, very traditional patchwork. But when I discovered the freedom of making original work, I was hooked. It' ; s funny, my favorite part of cooking was the garnishing, making those little tomato roses and butter curls. My favorite part of quilting is the embellishing, so really what I have done is just change the medium that I work with. Instead of garnishing food, I' ; m now embellishing quilts! In truth though, the reason I began embellishing was because I didn' ; t have the proper sewing skills to accomplish what my creative side desired. For instance, instead of taking the time to practice hand appliqué to achieve a perfect round circle for the center of a flower, I' ; d use a button instead. Attaching found objects to my work provided the fun, funkiness, and personality that I found appealing. Embellishing can add color, texture, and of course beading can add sparkle as well. Over time, I' ; ve honed my skills, but I still choose to incorporate embellishments into my work because they help tell my quilt' ; s story. KM: Describe your studio. MS: After living a lifetime in the Midwest, we recently moved to the mountains of North Carolina where the climate is temperate, an easier place to grow old! We found a home that suited us. The husband has a ' ; man cave' ; in the lowest level which is perfect. Our main living space is on the middle level and then I have a loft studio on the third level which measures about thirty-two feet long by sixteen feet wide. At times I feel like I' ; m in a bowling alley when I' ; m charging back and forth across the studio, but I have plenty of room to multi-task on different projects at one time. Lighting is such an issue for quilters and it' ; s one problem I' ; m still struggling with. Our beamed wood tongue and grove ceiling is very steep which doesn' ; t reflect light well and made hanging fixtures difficult. Thanks to my husband' ; s research, we installed museum lighting that hang from nearly invisible wires. I regret not having skylights installed during the building phase, because I have to cope with more shadows than I' ; d like, but like so many quilters, we adapt. Heck, my first sewing space was in a dark, damp basement.....this is luxury compared to that space!! KM: How do you divide your bowling alley? MS: [laughs.] At one end there' ; s a little nook for my desk, computer, photocopy machine, printers, files etc. I enjoy a breathtaking view of a forested mountain out of a large window. Several steps away are a square unit of cabinets that contain my machines and an iron station at one end. Next, down the bowling alley there is a 40" ; x 72" ; cutting table, with storage underneath. Because my studio loft overlooks our great room, I prefer to keep the clutter somewhat invisible with creative storage solutions. All my scissors are stored safely in knife blocks which keeps them accessible on shelves below my cutting table. I love wooden boxes, big and small and have found many with dividers which work great for pencils, marking tools, and many other small notions. When I need something, I just pull out the whole box, set it on my table, pick out what I need and put it back out of the way. It works really well. I also have an old ladder with wide steps, propped against a wall for more storage. It holds 7 baskets where I keep items I want to have on hand, but not necessarily look at them. Luckily, I work better when things are pretty tidy, which is helpful when dealing with such an open space. KM: Where are your beads? MS: My beads are stored in an enormous walk-in closet that is in a guest room, just off my studio. I literally have kilo after kilo of beads in boxes on the floor that I use to make kits for my workshops. Most of my personal stash of small beads is stored in divided plastic embroidery floss containers. I' ; m waiting for the shelves to collapse under the weight one of these days! [laughs]. I avoid purchasing containers with removable dividers, because pretty soon the pink will be having a party with the red ones as the beads slide underneath the removable sections. Larger beads are kept in stacking storage units that contain small drawers. They are designed to hold nuts and bolts, etc., and can be found at any big box store. Because it' ; s difficult to see what' ; s in each drawer, I glue a sample bead on the front of each one so I know what type of bead is inside. I advise my students to find a workable storage system for their beads, because if kept in a shoe box underneath the bed, they won' ; t use them. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? MS: That is a real good question Karen. The most common response I' ; ve heard from others when asked that question is, ' ; because I must.' ; I' ; m not sure that answer describes my thoughts. I am creative, I don' ; t know where that came from but I think the problem solving aspect is what keeps me motivated. It' ; s a kick trying to figure something out, and yes, I have moments from time to time when I stamp my feet and say, ' ; I can' ; t do this. I don' ; t want to do this,' ; but I surge along and finally figure it out. Then, even if I' ; m all alone I can have my own little happy dance. Another more thoughtful notion I' ; ve deducted after thinking about this very question for years, is that traditionally, women' ; s duties include raising children, grocery shopping, laundry, preparing meals, cleaning house ; all those tasks which need to be repeated day after day after day. What' ; s great to me about quilting is that once I' ; ve made my stitches, made my mark on the quilt, nobody removes them except me, and then only if I want to. It' ; s a real and tangible way of looking at how I spent my time. Frankly, that' ; s far more satisfying than scrubbing the toilet for the second time in a week! Additionally, the creativity keeps my mind active and of course as a child of somebody who has had Alzheimer' ; s, in the back of my mind, I can' ; t help but worry about my future. I' ; ve learned the importance of keeping the mind happy and agile. So, at the end of a day, I can look at my quilting and smile. KM: How has quiltmaking impacted your family? MS: I will share a real cute story. Our son had been living in Portland, Oregon when my dear mother-in-law who I just adored, passed away. A friend who worked for an airline gave us an employee pass to help defray the cost of purchasing a last minute ticket. He flew standby, but luckily on the return trip, got upgraded to first class. He called to report he' ; d arrived home safely and told his Dad to put me on the phone. He began explaining how he was sitting in his seat, watching a lady across the aisle stitching and goes on to say that finally he realized she was probably a quilter......so on his return from the washroom, he stopped at her seat and asked if she was a quilter. She replied, ' ; Why, yes I am. How would you happen to know about quilting?' ; He said, ' ; Well my mom is a quilter.' ; I' ; m sure she has heard this a million times, but she said in her gracious manner, ' ; Oh well that is just wonderful,' ; yadda, yadda and as the conversation continued she said that she was a quilt instructor. My son said, ' ; So is my mom,' ; and I' ; m sure she has heard that many times too. They chatted a little bit more and she finally reached out her hand and she said, ' ; Why don' ; t I introduce myself to you? My name is Jinny Beyer.' ; Now my son knew exactly two names in the quilt world, Doreen Speckmann a fabulous friend, mentor, and quilter, and Jinny Beyer. The only reason he knew of Jinny Beyer is because I dragged him to every quilt shop when I first started quilting as I searched for her indigo blue fabric. Anyway, he was aware of who Jinny Beyer was and probably her importance as well. Jinny then asked him ' ; I wonder if I know your mother?' ; He replied, ' ; I don' ; t know, but her name is Mary Stori.' ; She says, ' ; Of course I know Mary.' ; Now what I think is so cute about this is that at this point I probably had four book already published but [laughs.] naturally I' ; m still just Mom to him. Yet, now suddenly, because Jinny Beyer knew who I was I actually think his view of my quilting life was somewhat elevated! [laughs.] KM: It is cute. MS: Yes, it' ; s way cute. [laughs.] KM: What about your husband? MS: Thanks to him, I' ; ve now gone techie in my classroom. He encouraged me to take the plunge and purchase equipment that allows me to present live digital feed demonstrations in my workshops. Our quilt world is definitely changing and with that our personal lives need to keep adjusting too. So, now ' ; the husband' ; and I have a marital contract that I only go out once a month to teach. However, it' ; s not in writing and I do get special dispensations from time to time. For those of us who really love to teach, it' ; s very difficult to say no when you are invited to a group. But now that my husband has retired, it' ; s important to spend less time away from home. Trips are getting a little bit longer these days because as the cost of bring instructors in has arisen, many guilds have become proactive and are working together to coordinate teacher' ; s visits, which is a win, win for everybody. It helps bring down the cost of the travel expenses and it reduces the number of airplane trips I need to take. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? MS: The Sesame Street mentality. The quick, easy, got to get it done NOW sometimes with less regard to quality attitude. Quilting has become very sophisticated. All the new tools has given us the ability to do things quicker, with more professional results. But, that comes with a price as many quilters are feeling pressured to churn out quilt after quilt or to produce that award winning quilts, or get juried into a prestigious show. I think this thought process is our biggest challenge, because there is nothing wrong with quilting being just a hobby. Years ago in class if I asked how many students also taught, maybe one or two would raise their hands. Now three quarters of the hands go up....it' ; s like quilters feel they need to justify their reason for sewing. Quilting doesn' ; t have to be a sprint, it can be an enjoyable marathon too. KM: Don' ; t you think Americans are very product driven and not very process driven? MS: Yup. Back to my Sesame Street remark. It' ; s all about quick and easy, fast, fast, fast. KM: I think that, I really think what we are seeing reflects the society very much. MS: Absolutely. KM: It is no different. MS: You watch a news program on TV now and your eye has to go to about twenty different things to take it all in. It drives me nuts! Or course quilters desire an end product that is satisfying and worthy but often the process is forgotten. To become really good at your craft, you must understand the process. It isn' ; t just blindly piecing things together, there should be thought involved too. I think you are right ; it' ; s the nature of our society. We are all multi-tasking too much, rushing through life instead of enjoying the little things. This is a little bit off the subject, but I just started blogging, something I never thought I would do because I couldn' ; t imagine that anything I had to say would be of interest to anybody else. One reason I began however was because I have so many quilts ; sixteen years of travel teaching and writing books, it' ; s now time to find homes for them because I just can not store them all. I recently sold one of my favorite pieces, a quilt called " ; Party Animals" ; and it felt so good. It' ; s silly, I get attached to my work, which is not a good thing, it is so materialistic, and it' ; s hard to understand why. Blogging is one way I' ; ll be able to keep in touch with my students, friends and collectors. A surprising benefit to blogging is that I' ; m noticing small things that surely I' ; d have previously overlooked in the hustle and bustle of my day. For instance, yesterday I was outside taking some pictures for the blog. We have a lot of springs in the ground up here in the mountains in North Carolina, little tiny springs with trickling water. We walk every day and I' ; ve noticed various little ice sticks, they almost look like little, ah, spears of white asparagus, one right next to each other growing out of the ground. It' ; s frozen water which freezes as it' ; s pushed out of the ground. By the afternoon, they are melted, only to reappear overnight. I also spied tips of daffodils and day lilies peaking out of the soil, so spring is just around the corner up here at 3,200 feet elevation. Though it' ; s not necessary to post to my blog every day, I' ; m realizing that I' ; m taking more notice of my surroundings as I look for things to share. So, again back to the fast society and how we have to train ourselves to stop, think, look, and listen to enjoy different aspects of life. I' ; m also taking process photographs of my work and posting them on my blog in an effort to help the readers understand the process that I go through as I create original work. KM: How does someone find your blog? MS: You can Google me, Mary Stori - blog - and it will come up, but the actual blog address is marystori",,,,"Karey Bresenhan, in honor of Jewel Pearce Patterson",,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/73006c1354b7c195e1d4d68faa8bdb3f.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
"Becky Goldsmith",,"Becky Goldsmith talks about getting started making quilts and how it's grown into a quilting business, and offers advice for new quilters.",,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-03,,,"Karen Musgrave","Becky Goldsmith",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-03Goldsmith.xml,audio,,," 5.2 QSOS Interview with Becky Goldsmith AFPBP-03 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Becky Goldsmith Karen Musgrave 1:|13(5)|21(5)|32(17) 0 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-03-Goldsmith.mp3 Other audio 2 Introduction This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a QSOS Quilters Save Our Stories interview 17 30 Goldsmith's " ; Trying to Hold On" ; quilt Becky has a quilt called " ; Trying to Hold On" ; Goldsmith talks about the design behind her " ; Trying to Hold On" ; quilt which was created for Ami Simm's Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece exhibit. Her design began with a " ; perfect" ; and colorful center with the stitching, piecing and applique becoming more ragged towards the edges of the quilt. Alzheimer's disease ; Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece ; applique ; Art quilts ; children ; Design process ; Design Wall ; Fabric - Geometric ; Modern quiltmaking ; Quilt design ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Comfort ; Quilt Purpose - Disease/illness ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Quiltmaking style ; stitching 17 557 Goldsmith's interest in quiltmaking So tell me about your interest in quiltmaking Goldsmith explains how she came into quiltmaking and its importance to her life now. She began by making her sons comforters for their beds when they were very young and now does it because she finds the designing and stitching to be relaxing work. applique ; Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; children ; Children's quilts ; Design process ; Hand applique ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Quilt Purpose - Therapy ; quiltmaking process ; Time management 17 704 Goldsmith's business Piece O' Cake Designs Oh, I guess I should ask you about Piece O' Cake Designs Goldsmith talks about her business Piece O' Cake Designs which has published more than 30 books and hundreds of patterns along with partner Linda Jenkins. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Design process ; Fabric/Quilt shops ; Female quiltmakers ; friendships through quilting ; Published work - Patterns ; Published work - Quilts ; quilt design ; quilt shop ; Small Business 17 https://www.pieceocake.com/ Becky Goldsmith's Piece O' Cake Designs website 841 Art and quilt group membership So do you belong to any art or quilt groups now? Goldsmith talks briefly about her quilt group and guild membership. She explains that she travels and visits groups around the country at least once a month. Art quiltmaking ; Dallas Quilt Guild ; Quilt guild ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; quilting communities ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 977 Goldsmith's artistic identity/ challenges that quilters face Do you think of yourself more of an artist or quiltmaker or a business person Goldsmith speaks to how she identifies within the quilting community ; she hopes that her work lives on and is shared as a part of her legacy. She also addresses how not having enough time is probably the largest issue that quilters face. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; challenges within the quilting community ; Published work - Patterns ; quilt patterns ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; Small business ; Time management 17 1097 Personal significance of quiltmaking/studio space Why is quiltmaking important to you? Goldsmith speaks to why quiltmaking is important to her and how it has impacted her family. She remarks how her sons grew up with it and both them and their wives appreciate Goldsmith's art. Her husband is also very proud of her work, she explains. She also speaks briefly about her studio which is a part of her home. children ; Design Wall ; Fabric - Print ; fabric selection ; Fabric stash ; Quiltmaking for family ; Work or Studio space 17 1339 Inspirational artwork and quilters So whose works are you drawn to and why? Goldsmith and Musgrave talk about Nancy Crow and Ruth McDowell's quilts and overall design habits. Goldsmith is drawn to McDowell's work especially because of her tendency to have colorful, balanced and symmetrical designs. Antique quilts ; Art quilts ; Fabric - Geometric ; Learning quiltmaking ; Nancy Crow ; quiltmaking classes ; Quiltmaking inspiration ; Ruth B. McDowell ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 1595 Components of a " ; great quilt" ; / advice for new quilters What do you think makes a great quilt? Goldsmith addresses what, in her opinion, makes a " ; great quilt" ; which includes the artwork's ability to hold your attention after you've stopped looking at it. The advice she offers for new quilters is to work hard and not to give up when the work becomes difficult. art quilts ; Learning quiltmaking ; Quilt memory ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Quilt shows/exhibitions 17 1712 The best and worst parts of quiltmaking Is there anything that you don't like about quiltmaking? Goldsmith talks about her favorite and least favorite parts of quiltmaking. She dislikes the responsibility and accuracy that comes with calculating yardage for quilt patterns in her books but enjoys the hand applique and sewing she gets to do with the craft. She also talks about long arm quilting, which is a machine she would have herself if she had room for it. calculating yardage ; Hand applique ; Home sewing machine ; Long arm quilters ; Long arm quilting ; Long arm quilting machine ; Machine quilting ; Published work - Patterns 17 1901 Most important quilts that Goldsmith has made/ home decoration and use Tell me about the appraisal process for " ; Trying to Hold On" ; Goldsmith begins by talking about the appraisal for her " ; Trying to Hold On" ; quilt for the Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece show. She then lists some of her favorite quilts and patterns that she has made in her career. Goldsmith also mentions some of the quilts that she has in her home for decoration, and that because of her pets she does not sleep with any of her own quilts. " ; Quilter's Newsletter Magazine" ; ; Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece ; Ami Simms ; appraisal ; Design Wall ; everyday use ; grandchildren ; Published work - Patterns ; Published work - Quilts ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration ; Selling quilts ; Work or Studio space 17 2182 Traveling for quilt shows/ current projects Is there, um, I always give people an opportunity to, is there anything else you'd want to share Goldsmith begins by speaking about the burden and benefits from traveling as often as she does for quilt shows and group meetings. Although she enjoys being at home, she acknowledges that she has made friends all over the country and internationally because of the quilt work she does. On top of that, she briefly mentions the new book of patterns that she is working on putting together. applique ; Friendships through quilting ; Published work - Patterns ; Published work - Quilts ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Traveling for quilt shows 17 Oral History Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview Becky Goldsmith. Becky is in Sherman, Texas and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois, so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Today' ; s date is February 29, 2008. It is 2:08 in the afternoon. We are doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories based on the Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece Exhibit and Becky has a quilt called " ; Trying to Hold On." ; Thank you for doing this with me, and tell me about " ; Trying to Hold On." ; Becky Goldsmith (BG): When Ami asked me to take part in this exhibit and I said yes, it was not really because Alzheimer' ; s runs in my family but it was because it is a disease that really scares me. Just because you may or may not have it in your family, it doesn' ; t necessarily mean you won' ; t get it. But anyway, the way I approached the quilt was if I had Alzheimer' ; s, I wondered if I would stop quilting, and I decided that no, even if I had the disease I probably would keep on quilting, but I knew that over time as the disease ran its course it would take its toll on my skills. So I made the center of the quilt as perfect as I could and then as you move out from the middle the workmanship deteriorates, the color choices deteriorate, until you get out to the border and where it would be a typical vine and leaf border in appliqué, it is completely random and the pieces are not coherent. They are cut by scissors and just stitched down with heavy black thread. It goes from perfect in the center to completely, completely not perfect at the outer edges. I used pretty happy colors, the pinks and the light colors, pink and greens and there are some other things going on, and it is funny because when people see the quilt they don' ; t see the imperfections. I had this reaction, I would hold it up to people and they would say that is great, but I don' ; t see what is wrong with it, and it is because the perfect part, the dead center middle perfect part is the part of the quilt that is the most different and it tends to draw the eye. I think it has turned out to be a really good metaphor for Alzheimer' ; s and for what I would hope if I had Alzheimer' ; s. I would hope that people would remember me for who I was perhaps at my best rather than who I was after the disease had taken its toll. Does that make sense? KM: Yes it does. BG: There you go. KM: Is this quilt typical of your style? BG: Yes and no. Color wise it is very typical of the color pallet that I work with. I tend to use clear colors versus muddy colors. The appliqué block, certainly the one at the center is very typical of the kinds of, the kind of appliqué blocks that both my partner, Linda Jenkins and I do inside Piece O' ; Cake Designs. We do many patterns that draw from traditional sources that have a little bit more of a contemporary twist. It has had an impact on, this particular quilt has had an impact on what I have done since I made it in that before this quilt, I still like balance and I still like symmetry, but I was really seriously into balance and symmetry. Since I made this quilt, I have a lot more fun letting go of some of that in doing things that are just a little bit quirkier and maybe less perfect. KM: Was it difficult to do it so imperfectly? BG: Yes. Yes it was actually. Especially in the appliqué because I' ; m very used to doing invisible stitches and turning the edges under as smoothly as I possibly can. Working on the Alzheimer' ; s quilt, especially out from the center, and the center is a very small part of the quilt, so working on the parts that were less than perfect required me to let go of a lot and work in a different way, and it was funny because a quilt about losing mental function. I could feel synapses forming in my brain forcing myself to work in a different way. It was really an interesting experience. KM: What do you plan to do with this quilt? BG: Well, my younger son has claimed this quilt. It is really funny. He does not like many of the quilts I have made, I don' ; t know--too floral for him or something. But Jeff is the mathematician, he is working on a graduate degree right now at John Hopkins and this is the quilt that, as I was working on it and it was up on the design wall, he claimed it and after it was finished, he still claimed it. He wanted it. He will get it too ; I' ; m going to give it to him. He and his fiancée, my almost daughter-in-law, Celia, they both really likes this. KM: Did he tell you why he really likes it? BG: I think Celia likes it as much because of the colors as anything. She really likes things that are pink. But I think Jeff likes it because it is sort of balanced asymmetry. It is floral without being sweet. It is a little bit edgier than many of the quilts that I have made, and all of those things really appeal to him. KM: It has been mentioned as a favorite by a lot of people in the interviews that I have done. BG: Really? KM: Yes, are you surprised by that? BG: Well, I' ; m happy to hear that. I don' ; t know if it might be because it is not overtly depressing to look at, and let' ; s face it, Alzheimer' ; s is depressing and many of the quilts express that in a vivid sort of way. So it may be that people like it as much because it lightens the mood just a little bit and I' ; m happy with that, because I look at the body of the work that I have done, and I don' ; t make depressing quilts. I can' ; t seem to make myself make depressing quilts. I' ; m not really a very depressive sort of person. [laughs.] I am happy to hear that, I' ; m happy to hear that people like it. KM: Have you seen the exhibit? BG: I have not had an opportunity to walk through the exhibit. I have gone through the DVD, and I have certainly looked through the book, and this is an exhibit that I really, really would like an opportunity to walk through and I hope I get the opportunity before it finishes its run. KM: I hope so too. BG: I really hope I do. KM: You mentioned the DVD or the CD that is on this, and we had to read our artist statement, tell me about that experience for you. BG: It was, it was, this was actually the easiest artist statement I have ever had to write. In general, I' ; m not that keen on artist statements because I think the work should either stand on its own or not, but this is a quilt that surprised me in that people didn' ; t get it right off the bat. But the explanation fits nicely with the quilt, and so explaining it verbally or in the written word. I didn' ; t mind it. I enjoyed being able to explain it and not try to come up with some weird fluffy artist reason for why I did it. [laughs.] So many of those artist statements, they drive me crazy. Not only to write them and then to read them. KM: I agree. BG: [laughs.] KM: I often go, ha. BG: It is like give me a break. [laughs.] What can I say, this one was easy. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. BG: Actually I like to make quilts because it keeps me sane. I don' ; t make quilts for the finished product. I never really have beyond the very first ones that I made for my kids beds. I make quilts because I enjoy the process of designing them, both the drawing, the choosing of the fabrics, and the working with color. I like the process of hand appliqué. That is what I do in the evening, as I sew I can feel my blood pressure go down, so I do it for the work part. The finished product is a happy by product of what I do, and at this point, I' ; m really happy that both of my sons and their wife and fiancée, they want pretty much everything that I kick out. I know the quilts have a place to go and [laughs.] so I can keep making them and not worry about the closets exploding. KM: When did you start making quilts? BG: Let' ; s see, I' ; m fifty-two now, and I started making quilts, lets see my youngest is twenty-three, twenty-two years ago. Twenty-two years ago, yah about twenty-two years ago when Jeff was trying to crawl out of his crib and I thought he would kill himself. We bought these bunk beds and they didn' ; t come with comforters and I had to make something because we were too broke to go out and buy anything, and so I made quilts. That is how I got started, from an article in the newspaper. KM: How many hours a week do you quilt? BG: If that includes actually working on all parts of the manuscripts and the drawings and everything else, if it goes into everything it takes in getting a project into print and publication, I would guess sixty to eighty hours a week. It is pretty much all day and all evening. If it is just actually the sewing part, maybe half that. KM: I guess I should ask you about Piece O' ; Cake Designs, so that people can have context to all of this. Tell me about Piece O' ; Cake. BG: My business partner, Linda Jenkins and I were friends for eight years before we started the business. We both used to live in Tulsa, we were members of the same guild there, and when her husband retired and they moved to Colorado and my husband got a job at Austin College, which is in Sherman, Texas. That was when we started the business. We started small with just two or three patterns, and over the years, (I think maybe it has been almost fourteen years now) over the years we have published, I don' ; t know, we self published a bunch of the books and now we are with C& ; T Publishing, I guess we have a total of twenty-three or twenty-four books, and god knows how many patterns. I really don' ; t, in the hundreds of patterns. As I said, we self published for a number of years, and then moved to C& ; T when the, just the shear volume of handling all that inventory got to be too much. The way it works, because Linda and I live in different states and have since we started the business, anything that is pertaining to the inventory goes to Linda, so anything that, anything that has to be warehoused or shipped or any of that, employees, money that is all Linda. Anything that is related to the drafting of the patterns and the writing of the manuscript, writing instructions, ad layout when we were still self published, that sort of thing that is mine, because my background is more in graphics. That doesn' ; t mean that I' ; m the creative one and she is not, it means that I can draw and so when I' ; m drawing for myself it is pretty easy, but when I' ; m drawing for Linda--over the years we have worked out how it is she needs to tell me what she wants me to draw and then I draw it and she makes it. We each make our own quilts, but most people can' ; t really tell them apart. KM: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups now? BG: I' ; m a member of the Dallas Guild, but I' ; m far enough away that I rarely get to go to the meetings. I' ; m a member of the local guild, but I' ; m on the road so much that, there again, I rarely get to go to the meetings. I feel like I' ; m a guild member kind of universally though because I travel and teach at a minimum at one guild meeting every month, and guild meetings, let me tell you, they are the same every where you go. I do go to a lot of different guilds. Where I am in Texas, there is not a lot of opportunities to be a member of other art groups, although there is the critics group that I' ; ve just joined and I' ; m looking forward to going to my first meeting in April. KM: Tell me about that. BG: It is kind of a low profile group with a series of other artists, and to be honest I haven' ; t been to the meeting yet, but I think it is mostly fiber artists and the group contacts a person who is qualified in some art realm to come and everybody gets to bring one piece and the critic critiques the piece and then you get feedback from the group, so it is not necessarily a pat on your back kind of group, I have a feeling if they have bad things to say you will hear that too, they just do it, you benefit sometimes more from--well you need actual criticism, so it is the good and the bad, and I' ; m looking forward to it. KM: What made you decide to join the group? BG: I was invited to join the group. KM: Why did you accept? BG: Why did I accept, because the person who invited me. Since this person is pretty low profile I' ; m not going to mention names, but the person who invited me, I thought ‘damn I think I will do this.' ; [laughs.] This person who said it had helped her a lot and she is an individual that I didn' ; t think needed any help to begin with. [laughs.] I think this will be good for me. KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist, or a quiltmaker, or a business person, or do you really make a distinction? BG: I don' ; t make a distinction really. I like to hope that the body of work that eventually will be left behind is remembered and used as a resource for quilters who come after. That would be really, really nice if the patterns have life, life beyond just me. I' ; m a little bit hopeful, because people use our patterns. It is really, really nice. I don' ; t know about other people who write patterns and publish their work, but I' ; m always happy to see when people use what Linda and I have done and make it their own, make changes to it, but still acknowledge that we are the source. It means that they like what we do well enough to use it themselves and that is good. They use it themselves successfully. People have success with our patterns and that makes me very happy. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? BG: Time. Today I would have to say time. There are so many things in every individual' ; s life that make it difficult to find the time to spend doing whatever it is that particular person enjoys doing, and for most quilters it is finding the time to quilt. You can get by with less money, you can get by with a lot of things, but time is the big one. You can' ; t hardly get by without time. KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? BG: I think it is because I like to hold fabric. It is what I do. I could possibly work in paint or collage or paper or something else, but the fabric itself--I think it is the tactile quality of the fabric. I really enjoy holding it. I like working with my hands and I' ; ve come lately to understand that working with prints, colored prints is fundamentally different from working with paint. Paint is--you paint with blue you are painting with blue, you are not, like, painting with blue polka dots, and I enjoy working with the patterns, the individual texture in addition to the color. I find all of that pretty challenging and that is what I enjoy. I enjoy that part. KM: Describe your studio. BG: My studio is nine feet wide and about fourteen or fifteen feet long. It used to be a porch on the house and whoever had the house before us converted it. So where the patio doors used to be opens on to the living room. That opens directly into the studio and then across that nine foot width you can walk out into the back yard through a door, so that is across one narrow width of the studio. And then down the length wise length at one end is my design wall, closer to the living room, and at the other end is the doorway to our bedroom so my studio is actually part of the big traffic pattern in the house and I like it, I like that. It means it is a common area of the house. I don' ; t like working off by myself and it puts the design wall in easy view of pretty much of anybody who comes and goes and I find that people like that, they like to see what I' ; m working on and they comment on it and that is good too. My fabric is in the closet in one of the bedrooms and my books are in the dining room. KM: Are you neat when you create? BG: Pretty much. We don' ; t have that big of a house, we don' ; t even have an eighteen hundred square foot house and because my studio is in such a visible area of the house, I can' ; t let it get too crazy. It is not perfect, but there is an order to the chaos. I think better when it is not complete chaos around me and stuff. I can' ; t deal with stuff piled up on the floor and everywhere, I just can' ; t go there. I can' ; t think, so it is moderately tidy. KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? BG: They are all happy. My husband brags on it. He really enjoys telling people what I do and both of my sons, they grew up with me quilting and so I don' ; t know that they could image it any other way. They are both now out of college and they have their own families and now they enjoy it because they are benefiting from it. My daughter-in-law, she really loves it. The quilt I made for her is called " ; Lorna' ; s Vine" ; , her name is Lorna and it was on the cover of one of our books and it makes her happy. And Celia is very pleased as well, my almost daughter-in-law. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? BG: It has been a series of people over the years, but I have to say that probably I' ; m drawn more to quilts that have been made anonymously by people in the past. Very quirky antique quilts are the things I find myself going back to and inspired by the most. The quilts that are not quite perfect that were made with the fabrics at hand and that were obviously drawn from somebody' ; s very vivid imagination, I enjoy those a lot, a whole lot. Nancy Crow, I' ; ve always enjoyed looking at Nancy Crow' ; s work, and Ruth McDowell. I really like Ruth' ; s work as well. KM: They are very different. Nancy Crow and Ruth McDowell. BG: Yes and no. KM: Alright then tell me the differences and the similarities. BG: I think that they are based, they both, I know Ruth has an engineering background so what she does in her quilts makes a lot of sense if you know that. I don' ; t know about Nancy Crow, but there is a balance to her work that suggests an analytical mind. KM: I would agree with you, I would agree that both have that analytical mind. BG: It is evident in what they do in different ways. I enjoy it. I enjoy the way they both use color. I really enjoy the way that Ruth uses the texture of the fabric. In fact, I' ; m taking the first class I' ; ve taken in fifteen years. Since we started Piece O' ; Cake, I have not taken classes because I think it is, it is just weird when you are still publishing to take classes, but I' ; m going to take a class with Ruth next month, and I' ; m really looking forward to it. KM: Which one of her classes are you taking? BG: It is kind of a thing she teaches. She has a five day workshop, at an Empty Spools Seminar. I have heard so much about how good she is in the classroom and I want to experience it while she is still doing it. I have a feeling that I can learn from her and it is not so much the technique, because her book is very clear as far as how she technically does what she does, it is more the playing with the fabrics that I' ; m looking forward to. And I hope I have my pattern done so I can actually play with the fabric when I' ; m in class. KM: Let' ; s touch on Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece Exhibit, do you have any favorites within the exhibit. Any quilt that or quilts that have caught your eye. BG: No, I sort of, I viewed this thing as a whole--I really do and as a whole, it is so powerful. I think that if I have, when I get a chance to walk by and actually see the quilts in person, it would be easier to pick a favorite. KM: They are very different in person than they are in the book or on the CD. BG: When you look at something in a shiny format it changes it. You know what I mean? Pages are glossy and the computer screen it is glossy, it changes the whole thing. KM: I would agree with you. I would encourage people to go and see the exhibit because it is very, very different, although it is difficult. BG: I have never been where it is. KM: I do hope you get a chance. BG: I do too. KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? BG: Varies from person to person, because what I think might be a great quilt, someone else would not. I suppose a quilt that makes you actually stop and look and continue looking. Then maybe walk back and look at it some more, and then you think about it at night when you are sleeping. They are not always the quilts that you like the best that make you do that. The ones that stick with you for one reason or another I would consider great quilts, and the ones that have affected me that way are completely varied. It is not ever any one genre or color and it changes too. As I get older and my tastes change, I find this changes too. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? BG: Work hard. [laughs.] Work really hard. It depends on when you say starting out, starting out as a quilter, that would be do what you enjoy and learn your craft. Someone starting out in the business, you work really hard and know your craft and never think you know everything because you can learn something new every single day. Be willing to learn from your mistakes and admit it and move on. KM: Is there anything that you don' ; t like about quiltmaking? BG: I do not like calculating yardage. But I do it. There is always a lot riding on it, it is not like you are just calculating yardage for yourself and if you mess up you have only messed up for yourself. When you calculate those kinds of numbers, yardage, instructions and all that and it is going into print, if you mess up it messes up more than just you, so there is a lot of responsibility there. Plus it is not that much fun to calculate yardage and that sort of thing. But there again, it has to be done. KM: What do you find most pleasing about quiltmaking? BG: I like the hand sewing part. That is the part that pleases me the most. KM: Do you hand quilt? BG: I hand appliqué, but I machine quilt. KM: That is what I thought. BG: I tolerate the machine quilting. I don' ; t love it, but I don' ; t hate it either, it is not my favorite thing. KM: What do you think about longarm quilting and that whole phenomenon? BG: If I had room for one I might want one, but I don' ; t so I don' ; t even have to worry about that. The thing about longarm quilting is that when someone lets go of a quilt and hands it over to another individual to quilt it, they need to understand that the quilting can really change the quilt. I think the quilter, people give credit to their longarmer, but there are a lot of places where the longarm quilting is more important than the quilt top itself or better than the quilt top. I don' ; t know, it just seems to me like you are handing over a lot when you just hand it over and let somebody else quilt it. The day will come, I feel certain, when physically I will be one of those people who has to hand my quilt over and you just live with that decision, but I would encourage people while they are physically able to quilt their own quilts to think twice before just churning out the tops and letting somebody else quilt them, because the quilting is too integral part of the quilt to just let go of. KM: That is part of a life. BG: Yah, it is. If you intend to claim this quilt as your own, then just handing it over to somebody else to quilt, it is not really, its not part of the deal. [laughs.] It is not. If it is yours, you need to do both parts. KM: Tell me about the appraisal process for " ; Trying to Hold On" ; . Ami required each of us to get an appraisal before it went on the road. BG: Yah. I sent mine off and it got appraised and my younger son is going to own this quilt and he was very happy. [laughs.] It appraised a little higher than I thought it would. I have not sold many of my quilts. I hope at some point to sell more of them, but I think this one appraised at $3,600 and I thought that was pretty good. KM: It is thirty-six by thirty-six inches. BG: That quilt has had an effect on the quilts I have made since then. In that respect, when I look at this quilt, of the quilts I have made over the years, this one would rank right up there with one of the important ones I have done personally, that I think is important. It may not be what other people think is one of the important ones I have done, but I do, I would rank it right up there in the top five of the quilts I have made. KM: That is just because of the experience? BG: Yah, and I don' ; t know that the affect it had on me would have that much bearing on the value of the piece itself, but I place some value on that. KM: What some other, you said the top five, what are some of the other ones on your top five list? BG: " ; Simply Delicious" ; would be one. That was the very first, very successful pieced background I had ever done behind a quilt and that became a signature look for Linda and I. It is relatively common now, but it wasn' ; t when that quilt was made. " ; Stars in the Garden" ; would be another one. " ; Everyday Best" ; is one from one of the newer books ; I think that is a big one. KM: Why is it a big one? BG: That is one that I just really like the way it turned out. Color-wise it is pretty complex. The way the color and pattern all went together, there are lots and lots of dots, and it is very circular design and it took a while to figure out how to put the pieces together so that it turned out the way it did. I know, because I saw it in pieces that it could have gone south really quickly. This one was on the cover of Quilters' ; Newsletter. It' ; s still one of my personal favorites. Funny enough--sometimes I think about putting it in the top five and sometimes I don' ; t but " ; Welcome to the North Pole" ; , that is the book that we did with Martingale, I think that is the book that is one that has been in print the longest, and it would be funny that that might be the book that people remember us more for than anything else. That would be kind of funny. KM: It is interesting. BG: It is kind of quirky, whimsical, cute. It is a nice piece. KM: Are quilts hanging on your walls? BG: Only a few, mostly when I' ; m done with them I' ; m done with them. I' ; ve got " ; Empress Feathers" ; , a great big princess feather, that hangs in the dining room. I' ; ve got one hanging in the pink bedroom where my fabric lives. I want to hang the " ; Stars in the Garden" ; , the big pink quilt there, but until the grandkids get old enough that I can trust them with something like that on the wall within reach. I' ; ve got " ; Flowering Vines" ; up there and then " ; Everyday Best" ; hangs in my bedroom. Plus whatever is on the design wall, so there is always something up on that. KM: Do you sleep under a quilt? BG: One from Crate and Barrel. [laughs.] I' ; ve got cats. I' ; m not going to put a quilt I made on the bed because the cats would tear it up, or at least get it all hairy and dirty and I don' ; t have to worry about the Crate and Barrel quilt. KM: Is there, I always give people an opportunity, is there anything else you want to share, either about the exhibit or anything? BG: I don' ; t think so. Don' ; t eat airline food, bad idea. [BG had just returned from Australia and was recovering from food poisoning from the airline food.] KM: Do you like traveling? BG: Yes and no. I really like being home, but travel can be interesting. I wouldn' ; t have gone to Australia if it had not been for traveling for the job. There are a lot of people that I have met and places I' ; ve seen that I would not otherwise have gotten to do. So yah I enjoy the traveling. I do really like being home as well though. KM: How much do you travel? BG: On average, one to two weeks out of every month. Like this month I was gone two weeks and I will be gone two weeks in March, but then I' ; ve got some months off, so it balances out. KM: What are you working on right now? BG: We are working on a book that is, that actually grew out of the " ; Trying to Hold On" ; quilt. It is one of the things that I got interested in was the use of lines. That is one of the topics that came up when I thought of the " ; Trying to Hold On" ; quilt. If you draw, let' ; s say you draw with pencil, if you are using a very sharp hard lead you make one kind of line, and if you are using a softer blunter lead, you make a completely different kind of line. It is the line work in drawing that is so expressive and so interesting, and I got to thinking in quilts, we don' ; t have that same kind of capacity to do line work. You can do raw edge and you can do some other things but that is different. When you sew fabric together you get a harder line, so it is learning how to play with the line quality. What I decided was that so often we rely on rulers and it is that ruler-cut, straight hard line that reads one way and a line that is more freely cut, without a ruler, reads a different way. And so in these quilts, certainly in the backgrounds and even on the outer edges, no rulers have touched them so it is much freer line work in those areas and then as far as the appliqué goes. We have been playing with less precise placement, less precise balance. They are balanced ; the symmetry is maybe a little edger. It is fun. Anyway the tentative title is " ; Breaking the Rules" ; , so we will see, but I' ; m working on the manuscript for that right now. KM: How very interesting. It sounds like it was influenced by " ; Trying to Hold On." ; BG: Exactly. That was the beginning of this, so when I said that this quilt marked a real break in the quilts that I have been making, it did. I mean, I have spent the last year and a half on these quilts. KM: I want to thank you for taking time out and doing this interview with me. BG: I' ; m happy to have done this. I appreciate being asked. 2017 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net ",,,,"Del Thomas",,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/dc44c24a7a3bde405c904a0c3baa3777.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
"Georgia Bonesteel",,"Georgia Bonesteel shares the story of her quilt made for the ""Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece"" exhibit, inspired by her aging father, and her early quiltmaking years.",,,,,,,,audio,,"Oral History",AFPBP-33,,,"Karen Musgrave","Georgia Bonesteel","Flat Rock, North Carolina","**This transcript was created by QSOS volunteers and was reviewed and, in some cases, edited by the interviewee. It may not exactly match the audio recording. For citations and interview quotations, please refer to the audio-recorded interview.** This transcript was created by QSOS volunteers and was reviewed and, in some cases, edited by the interviewee. It may not exactly match the audio recording. For citations and interview quotations, please refer to the audio-recorded interview.
Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Georgia Bonesteel. Georgia is in Flat Rock, North Carolina and I'm in Naperville, Illinois, so we are doing this interview by telephone. Today's date is March 7, 2008 and it is 2:28 in the afternoon. Georgia thank you for doing this interview with me. We are doing a special Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories because this is based on ""Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece"" exhibit, so Georgia I would like you to talk about your quilt ""A Porsche Problem"" which is in the exhibit. Georgia Bonesteel (GB): Thank you very much Karen for calling me. My quilt is something that I was moved to do because of my father's situation health wise. I would like to tell you that he has Alzheimer's, but he had one of the forms of Alzheimer's. We never could quite figure out what he had, yet he died of congestive heart failure, but because we lived in North Carolina about thirty miles from my parents for about twenty years, I was able to have a close connection with my parents. Pete and I were raising our children close by, so I was very much in touch with what was happening day by day versus living far away. When my father first started getting ill he sensed that he was not right and so we went through that process and had many situations, especially with the car. My father actually loved that car and he had about four or five of those Porsches and drove quite a bit from Chicago to North Carolina because he had a hard time retiring. He was a lawyer in Chicago but wanted to be down on a golf course in Tryon, so he went back and forth with his car. When he got ill it was difficult to take the car away from him. We tried many situations, we even tried having a friend of his who was a policeman come over and talk to him and explain that because he was getting lost, well he wouldn't come home, he would lose his way and we knew it was time, and my father would say, ‘Well yes, I understand you need to take the license away from me because I live here in North Carolina, but South Carolina is just right down the line a little bit, so I will drive in South Carolina.' So he really didn't get it, and the only way we could handle it was that one day my sister just drove the car out of the driveway and took it to Pennsylvania. So in essence, we did take the car keys away from him and it was a sad day, but he got over it. When Ami [Simms.] asked me to do this, to participate in this exhibit it was a natural thing for me, I knew that I would have to do the car and I did this exhibit because I have a lot of admiration for Ami. I actually got to meet her mother one time at one of the Mancuso shows and Ami is a person with an uplifting personality so you enjoy being around her. I find her creativity stimulating. Her website is wonderful. Her stories about her dog and her family are just very good. She is just a welcoming spirit. I wanted to do that for Ami and I wanted to do it as for recognition for my dad also. I had to do the car. We had pictures of the car but it wasn't really a good picture so I went over and found a used car dealership here in town that had the same vintage year that he had and took pictures of it and that helped me to kind of get a sketch of the car. Then when I made the quilt, I did the yellow streaks in it just to kind of give the idea of speed. I hope that shows it, because he did like to drive fast. Then I used the car, it got larger in each of the blocks as it went down and I thought that, until it finally came into full view, and then of course the last block shows the circle on top of the key. KM: So the universal not. GB: The universal not. [laughs.] That is really the story of the quilt, and I'm proud to have it go around the country in different exhibits. I've seen it a couple of times. I did see it at one of the Mancuso shows. Like any exhibit, one of the most interesting parts I think of doing a quilt show is to stand next to other people and hear their comments, especially if they don't realize that you made the quilt, whether it is yours or someone else's, because you really learn the inside of what quilters are thinking. I have often thought that there should be a tape recorder in the back of quilts and then play it later. You would really get some interesting verbalization I think. I think it is a very poignant exhibit. I helped Ami out one year in Houston and stood at her booth. People are so moved by this exhibit. Anytime you have a health problem in your family, especially Alzheimer's and then you see these quilts you have to talk about the person in your family personally. I mean you want to share that story. It's either my aunt or my mother or my father, and then it is like it all happens all over again. That is really my perspective on the exhibit and I'm very proud for Ami and I'm very proud to be a part of it. KM: Tell me about the poem. GB: Oh gosh, yes, the poem, ""There once was a guy from Chicago."" That poem, my mother and father had a close friend, Dr. Graves and Martha Graves. In fact Martha just died last year, she outlived my mother by three years and they were very close and every birthday she would write a poem. She was just a poet and so I have a whole stack of poetry that she wrote about when my dad would have a birthday. One year she wrote a poem about the year he shot his score, his par on the golf course. Then she wrote this poem about daddy's car and so it was a natural to be stitched on top of his block. I was very proud to do that for Martha. KM: It goes: ‘There once was a guy from Chicago Who was quite found of making his ""cah go"" Just a smidgen too fast So he built up a past And is he wanted from Jax to Wells Fargo!' GB: He was wanted from Jacksonville to Wells Fargo. KM: But it is Jax? GB: Jacksonville, I just put Jax. KM: Okay. GB: From Jacksonville to Wells Fargo. KM: That is awesome. GB: [laughs.] Perfect. KM: It is wonderful. What are your plans for this quilt when it comes back? GB: I have to admit that it will probably slip through my fingers. My sister drove the car away, she ended up actually paying my dad for it, I think she got a good price. Then the car ended up going to her son Quinn who has it up in Boston, and when Jill saw this quilt, she said, ‘Oh I bet Quinn would love to have that some day.' So I will probably give that to Quinn. I'm not sure how long the car will last, but I will probably give that to Quinn. KM: One of the things that we had to do as artists in this exhibition was to do the audio part of the CD. Tell me about that experience for you. GB: You know, I will be very honest about it, I can not remember that. KM: It must have been easy for you, because it wasn't easy for me. I remember it. GB: Oh my, well I haven't played it in a long time so I must have just. KM: You probably did very well. GB: I hope so, I hope so, I can not remember, and. KM: Seriously I think that is a good thing because Ami would call me up and say, do it again. [GB laughs.] So you didn't have that experience? GB: No, I think I only did it once so I was lucky in that regard. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. GB: Oh, Karen it goes back to the Stone Ages now. My quilting started in New Orleans of all places, although as a little girl I have always done patchwork. I was gifted with a lot of energy and I think to keep me out of my mother's hair she would give me needle and thread and so I've always done stitching. I did the doll clothes thing. I guess I was always with a needle and thread going through cloth. It just always intrigued me, and I really didn't have any question about what I would do when I went to college. I went into merchandizing. I should have stayed at Iowa State. I went there for two years, one of the best home ec [Economics.] colleges in the country. I fell in love and then transferred to Northwestern, which was an equally good school, but they did not have a very good home ec department, so I simply graduated with a BA. I was able to get a wonderful job in merchandizing at Marshall Fields and so I've always stayed in touch with cloth and always have been sewing. When we did finally end up moving to New Orleans with the young children I had an opportunity to once again use my sewing capabilities at a department store in the French Quarter which led me into some quilt opportunities. I quilted little evening bags and sold them in the French Quarter for about three years and came into the necktie fabric because of some television work I did. Someone said to me, well these are great little bags that you have made, but they are flat, they don't have any body to them, they have no life and they said what about putting some batting inside, and before I knew it I was quilting with embroidery thread and I had batting in between layers of silk and batting and then fabric. That was basically opened my eyes to quilting because I had to search out little magazines and books that had quilting patterns in them and then we moved to North Carolina I started teaching quilting at our community college. KM: Give me a timeframe. GB: We moved to, we were in New Orleans from about 1970 to 1973, and in 1973 we moved here to North Carolina. Of course being in the Appalachian part of the country, I knew that quilts were popular here. So I just started teaching at our community college, but I was also quilting with a senior ladies group down at the Opportunity House and I learned a lot from those ladies. I learned my stitches weren't small enough, I learned that it was hard to quilt on a standing quilt frame, and then I learned that if you are going to teach twenty ladies how to quilt in an eleven week class, we couldn't make one quilt for each lady, that everyone had to work on their own individually and I realized then that if I broke the making of a large quilt down into sections we could have more satisfaction and see things grow faster. So that was when I started really teaching lap quilting and so those initial three years of teaching at the community college gave me enough samples that I had things to carry with me over to the University of North Carolina Public TV Station. I went over and made an appointment and suggested to them that I could do a How to Sew on Quilting, and I couldn't have done it without those classes that I taught. That was the meat of what I had and so I just did a little TV show. [laughs.] KM: Kind of an understatement there. GB: It was, that really is what it was though. As I look back on those first shows and we had a very simple set. They wouldn't stop the tape if I did something wrong because that cost too much money, and I look at those tapes and there are sometimes when I would pick up the edge of a cardboard if I couldn't find a ruler to draw a straight line [laughs.]. It was very, very crude to begin with but we did get a little more upscale as the years went on. KM: And, there is a lot more there. [GB laughs.] Share the Evolution. I think it is really important. GB: It was an evolution because I was just kind of secluded. I was just so inspired by my students, and after these eleven weeks we would have what I called a quilt in. We would have it at the auditorium, and people that had taken a previous class but hadn't finished would come, and we would spread out the quilts over the chairs and we would all, everyone would come up and talk about their quilt and tell their little story why they made it, and we would take pictures and we were just so happy in ourselves, and then pretty soon the guild started, and people realized, and I think this is happening all over the country, people were saying, ‘Well if classes can do it, then let's get the classes together.' Then let's reach out to the community of people that have quilted over the years and their grandmothers and their sisters came. All of a sudden guilds started emerging around the country. Then people would get wind of my TV show and they would drive up in my driveway thinking I had a shop at my house. We had not bought the hardware store yet, and I'd say, no I'm not selling fabric out of my house. Then I had my first invitation to actually fly out of town with a few of my quilts and talk about what I did. People weren't doing that, at least to my knowledge they weren't. I can remember being excited when Jinny Beyer won that Good Housekeeping Contest and then Hazel Carter had that first quilt show in Virginia and we went up there, and so things started to happen. Then I went to Houston for the first time, so it was a progression that grew, but it was gradual. I think once my shows started airing around the country and my books were published to go with the shows that is when I got really busy. Then we bought the hardware store, so then I was managing a store, writing books and doing TV and traveling. KM: We should really qualify the hardware store, because it was an element of the quilt corner in the hardware store. GB: Yes, right, it was, it was called Bonesteel Hardware and Quilt Corner [website is georgiabonesteel.com and her blog is georgiabonesteel.com/gablog.html.] and people loved that. It was all open; there weren't any walls in between. They would come in and their husband would go over and look at hardware and they would come over, and they just thought that was just wonderful. [laughs.] I was teaching there too, and it was a good thing, it really was. Our children were in college then and so they were pretty much on their own. Well they were, in the early years they were still in high school, because I can remember leaving and still dealing with that kind of situation. My husband was dealing with it also. All of a sudden he was Mr. Georgia Bonesteel and that was not easy for Pete for a while. He had been the breadwinner and then all of a sudden we were getting calls from Oxmoor House to come down for grand celebrations because of so many of thousands of books that had been sold. He dealt with it after a while, but it was hard at first. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? GB: Oh my, I think traveling is difficult. I've slowed down my traveling, especially this year. Last year I was out every month and it used to be I would go out twice a month and then the last five years I've been going out once a month and even that is a challenge. I think that after 9-11, quiltmakers have had to kind of take a different look on not so much the quilts they are making, but how they are getting their story out? How they are dealing with being a professional? The fact that we have restrictions now in the amount of bags we can take and the amount of pounds we can carry, the fact that we have to ship things ahead of time, that has put a new challenge on our profession. Last year I was able to handle it. I think this year, because I have cut back quite a bit, I'm doing different things in the quilt world. My obligation now is with the [Quilters.] Hall of Fame. I am going to do that for two more years. I'm excited for what is happening there and I want to see that progress so I'm helping out once again this year in July. I'm going to teach a class and I'm excited that Helen Kelly is going to be there. That is going to be a very exciting thing for all of us. I'm changing the direction of my quilt life mainly because, I guess partly because of my age, but partly because we have seven grandchildren now and we live on a wonderful piece of property in North Carolina and I love working outside, so I now, I'm in the middle of a Master Gardener Program with Home Extensions people here in North Carolina, so I'm learning about our property and about the soil and about what grows in North Carolina. I have forty hours of volunteer work that is ahead of me with the program before I graduate. I'm doing some different directions in my life which is kind of fun. I still consider myself a professional quilter, but I'm not doing any more taping. My shows are actually being rerun in a different venue all over the country, so I spend a lot of time on the computer everyday because I get so many questions about my shows that are still airing around the country. They are on a new network called Create TV.com. That is the network, and so I have to quiz people as to what show they are watching because after doing twelve CBS series, I'm not sure what actual show they are looking at. However, I am actually thinking new quilt book. It is time. KM: You talk about your husband and his reaction to your quiltmaking, how about the rest of your family. How has it impacted them? GB: They have all been very proud. I think that they are at an age where they are all so involved with their children right now. They will of course someday wreak the benefits of all my quilts. They will have to deal with them. Some of them I am in the process of selling and moving on, but the quilts that I have made specifically for them, I'm going to let them deal with that someday, but they have been very proud. I guess of our three children, Paul our youngest because he is a video producer and helps me with my website and also helped to produce the documentary, ""The Great American Quilt Revival."" [www.quiltrevial.com.] He is the one that is the most involved in my quilt business. I share more with him I think than anyone else. My daughter, because she is a journalist has helped me I think in some of the writing things that I've done, but because she is not a seamstress, she doesn't really understand the actual technique and that sort of thing. I'm going to cultivate these granddaughters. I have four granddaughters and I plan to cultivate them into the next quilt world. [laughs.] KM: Why is quiltmaking important to you? GB: Oh my, because I don't think I'm any different than any of those people that love quiltmaking, I think we look at fabric and the results of what we do of fabric as an extension of ourselves. I think it is a creative outlet. It's a tactical thing that we can hold on to. I think it is something in our lives that we have control of. There are so many things that we don't have control of from the dentist bill to the price of ground beef. That is out of our field, but if you tell us to make a quilt for a reason or just because we bought this beautiful fabric and we know it has be to cut up and put back together into a design. We have control on that from the size to the design to how we make it, whether we hand quilt it or machine quilt it, and I think it is something that we own and that is ours and I guess that is why I think it is so valuable. KM: Tell me about the quilt groups you belong to. GB: Oh my, [laughs.] they are all unique, they are all different. I just met yesterday with a group that we call ourselves ""The Cover Lovers."" That group of ladies actually met through one of my community college classes that I was teaching in garment making and we have been together for twenty-seven years. We have lost three of them, but one of them, Francis Gardenia always said that in North Carolina we have called quilts Kivers. They were always called Kivers. I have always laughingly told them that we can't call our group Kiver Livers, so we will call our group Cover Lovers, so that group is called ""The Cover Lovers."" It is truly a self-help group, in other words we have lost three of our members, we still talk about them every once in a while their name will come up, we have gone through divorces, deaths of children, we have gone through everything together. Yesterday I showed them a quilt I'm doing for AQS [American Quilters Society.] that I have to get done in three weeks. [laughs.] So I took that and we quilted together and we are just all very close. Actually where we met yesterday is a lady that has moved into a retirement condominium and we meet at her house now once a month because she can't leave her husband. We have gone through all of these transformations together and we laugh, I looked at the slides of the group that we have watched our hair color change over the years. [laughs.] So that is one group, then I'm in another group, PTA, that is for Patchwork Talking and Appliqué and you might have heard some of those girls. Linda Cantrell is in that group and Barbara Swinea and Lynne Harrill, Connie Brown and other stimulating professionals. They are movers and shakers, and we have done challenges that have been in AQS. Right now we have an exhibit at the North Carolina Arboretum. Two of the ladies just got accepted for AQS and next Thursday we are driving to Pigeon Forge to look at an exhibit, so it is an invigorating group because they are younger and they are very much into making today's quilts. They keep very much on top of what is happening. I'm also in three guilds in the area, the Landrum Guild, the Ashville Guild, and the Western North Carolina Quilters Guild. I can't go to all the meetings because of traveling and other obligations, which is frustrating, but I do keep up with what is happening in the guilds. I think that the guilds are having a hard time across the country right now and I don't know why exactly, whether it is the size, whether they are going to large, or whether the new people that are being voted in are not listening to what is happening with what the people that have formed the guilds have done, whether they are not including them, I'm not sure what is happening. I don't know if you find that is true, Karen. KM: I do, I really do. I do think this is just, I personally have not been able to figure out what it is. GB: Right, I haven't either, but there are things that are happening and I think they are going to have to work a little bit harder on making it come out okay. Things are happening in the guilds. KM: What other changes do you see changing within the quilt world? GB: I guess, one of the biggest things that is happening today is the hand quilting versus machine quilting. I think everyone is talking about it. KM: You have the extension of that, which is longarm quilting. GB: Yes, and the longarm too, so there are the three things, and I don't--I'd prefer not naming names, but I know that one of the quilts that just got rejected for the upcoming AQS show, one of the comments was I can't believe this quilt was rejected because I spent so long hand quilting it. In defense of machine quilting, I think it is, it takes longer to hand quilt, but it is equally challenging to machine quilt some of these quilts and now to compete in the machine quilting you have to really go on another level, I mean it is difficult too, so I don't know why. I sometimes question where it is all going, because it is like, it is making it very different in the quilt world. KM: I think that technology is definitely impacting in a very big way. GB: Yes. KM: In the quilt world. GB: Yes. You have to understand that the people that are making sewing machines, they have put forth all of these opportunities for us and they realize that young people in schools today are very much tech people and so what they are hoping is that this will cross over to sewing machines and so then the new field of people coming out there are challenged to sew and make these things that are going to be awesome and then the people that have done all the hand quilting are saying, ‘well I can't do that.' Maybe it has something to do with the people that are crossing over from slide presentations to PowerPoint presentations. That has become challenging in of itself and now even the people that are doing PowerPoint are being challenged cause if they are taking all of their equipment with them and in many cases they can't take it on board an airplane anymore. They can't take their batteries anymore. I mean it is like where do we go from here, it is difficult. KM: It is evolving. GB: It is evolving. KM: That is what I keep saying to people, it is evolving. GB: It is evolving; right you have to hang in there with it. The bottom line is that it is still very exciting. I just came from an all day experience in a small community way up in northern North Carolina up near Sparta and Wilkesboro. I just had the most glorious day. I talked for four and a half hours and I took a carload of my quilts and to see those happy faces out there, to hear my story, and I have fun stories that went with all of my quilts and stories that related to my parents and to my mother helping me rip out things that were wrong and. My sweet mother, who has been gone now for three years, she spent a week ripping out the first quilt that we ever put on a longarm quilting machine because, and I can't remember whether we had the wrong color thread or the wrong pattern, but she ripped it out and when I picked it up from her, she told me, she was serious about this, she said, ‘I think you can give this sort of quilt to anyone that has been locked up in jail on drugs.' KM: [laughs.] GB: They would never do drugs again. [laughs.] KM: [laughs.] GB: I just loved it. Anyway. KM: Give me timeframe. GB: That was probably five years ago. My mother has been gone three. KM: Okay. GB: Three years, it was about five years ago, and she helped me in so many ways. She was just a good sounding board and oh I miss her so much. She was with it right up to the end and she happened to have a bad fall in her house and broke her collar bone and her shoulder and she gave up. At the end, the last two or three years, she knew it was a struggle to live. She was in a lot of pain, and she was on a lot of pain medicine, but it was a joy to have her close by, it really was, both of my parents. Getting back to my wonderful day in Wellsboro, the day was culminated by a wonderful thing that happened. I had designed a modern teapot quilt for their group. The Sparta Quilt guild pieced this quilt and then had it machine quilted. I had not seen the results and everyone was so excited. I hope this quilt will get some good visual coverage. I hope they will exhibit it in Houston and it will hopefully end up in the museum that they are building up in Sparta, North Carolina. It is a modern quilt and they learned to use my grid grip. I gave them a couple of lessons. They came down here to my studio and then we met in Hickory one day and I gave them lessons on how to use the grid freezer paper and that is how they pieced this quilt, and they said they couldn't have done it without that, and that was a really exciting thing for me to see the end results of that quilt. KM: Tell me about grid freezer paper. GB: Grid Grip. Years ago, I mean this was a long time ago, I would say probably about 1980, '82, someone came to one of my classes and said they read in Quilter's Newsletter that freezer paper with a dry iron will attach to fabric. I said, you have got to be kidding, I mean up until then we had gone from cardboard templates and window templates to plastic templates and I was always frustrated with drawing around a template and I knew there was a way to go a little bit faster in the quilt world. I went over to the hardware side of the store and got a roll of freezer paper. I started working with it and designing on it. It wasn't very long, a month or so, I realized what I needed to continual quarter inch grid on this freezer paper. I need something printed on this. I contacted James River Corporation up in, I thought this was always pretty clever, Parchment, Michigan. [KM laughs.] Isn't that cool? KM: Yeah, that is cool. GB: I bugged the president so long, and I would say listen I've got an idea for you, you've got to do this. He said, ‘Okay I've got a private jet. I'm going to fly down.' He came to our little hardware store and spent a couple of hours with me and I said, here is why, and I showed him why and so they printed a continuous quarter inch grid on rolls of freezer paper and we sold it that way. They would provide it and I would sell it and he would get a little bit of money. I would get a little bit of money and we sold it about two years that way and finally he called me one day and said, ‘Listen this is too much trouble. We are just going to give you the trademark and hand it over to you.' I said, ‘Are you sure you don't want to continue doing this?' I said, ‘You know the nice thing about it is that people still freeze their meat with freezer paper and now they could measure the amount of meat they are freezing.' [KM laughs.] He didn't think that was funny. Then we had for about five years, I had to, I had the rights for this, and then Pete and I would continue doing it, but instead of being on rolls we found a web press up in Waynesville, North Carolina where we would have it printed and it was difficult to do. It was not easy. We would have to order these huge rolls of freezer paper and then we would take it up there in a big truck we would rent and we did that for about five years and finally it is no longer done that way. It is done by Prym Dritz Corporation.. So I sell it and still have an interest in it, but Prym Dritz makes continuous freezer paper that has a quarter inch grid on it, so you can design on it. You have a design tool and a template at the same time, and you can, that is what I use and that is what a lot of people use. In fact, I just sold some to a lady up in Canada. Not everyone knows about it, but yet if you talk to people like Ricky Tims and Caryl Bryer Fallert, they are designing their quilts with freezer paper. The reason the grid for me is so good and for teaching is that the grid is synonymous with the grain line of fabric, so if you design a block with Grid Grip and you code it properly, cut it out and then you iron it on fabric, so that you always align the grid, the straight line with the grain line of the fabric so that you never have bias edges on a block or on a design that you are doing and that is the beauty in what you are working with if you have a grid on it. KM: How do you want to be remembered? GB: Oh my, I told my group in Wilkesboro, someone asked me that or I guess it came up in the course of my conversation, and I said I guess I will always be remembered for the full proof knot, it was one of the things I taught on one of the very first shows, my full proof knot for quilting and dog ears. I don't think anyone has come up with, when you cut off the extension of a triangle, those little things fall off and I have always called them dog ears, but that is kind of in jest, but I think what I would love to be remembered for is probably the comment that people say when they saw me doing patchwork on TV is like, well I can do that, if she can do that, I can do that. I guess that is what I would like to be remembered, that I'm really basically an ordinary quilter that was able to transcribe the fun, the excitement of doing it through a television screen and then many people can say, well I can do that. I guess that is what I would like to be remembered for. You are getting me all very emotional about this Karen. [laughs.] I guess the bottom line is that for many of us quilting is an emotional thing. I guess that is the bottom line. KM: I agree with that. GB: Yes. KM: I do. GB: For what you have done Karen is a wonderful thing. For you to bring that out of so many of us. There is another group that I'm in, it is called The Coffee Clutch group at my store, well I don't have a store anymore, but I do--I'm in touch, I have a little group, a corner down at--it is called My Quilt Shoppe, and there are a group of us that meet once a month and I've turned them onto the Alliance people, they have discovered the Alliance [The Alliance for American Quilts.], the website, and so what you have done is to open up a great window of people that have enjoyed quilting, not only professionally, but other people that have found that world of quilting is just a meaningful part of their lives and we thank you for that. KM: Thank you, it is a meaningful part of my life. It truly is a meaningful part of my life. I think we all have value to the collective. GB: I agree. KM: I don't have professional people who make a living at this, but we have people who don't belong to guilds and just make quilts, and I think that is a wonderful thing. GB: I agree. KM: I want to thank you for taking your time to share. I also want to give you the opportunity to turn to Ami and the ""Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece"" and Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Our involvement in this is a tribute to Ami. GB: Yes I agree. That is the way I feel. Half the reason I did this was that Ami would take this step and do this and go so far with it. We were all so impressed that one day it was the collection, then it was getting around the country, then it was the CD, then it was the book. KM: Now it is a nonprofit. GB: Now it is a nonprofit, I mean it is like there is just no end to it. She hasn't gotten on Oprah yet, but we know she will still be on, that is all there is to it, that is going to be her last step. [laughs.] KM: I think the whole thing is that this is a real tribute to what quiltmaking can do. GB: I agree. KM: Quiltmaking, I think quiltmaking is a changing force and that is what excites me. GB: Right, and even non-quilters who see this exhibit, then they can be turned on to quilting and say, well my goodness look at what that has been done and then they can make a quilt for a cause within their family. It works both ways. KM: It is a win, win for everyone. GB: That is right. KM: Thank you so much for taking your time. GB: You are welcome Karen. The best of luck to you. I hope our paths cross again one of these days. KM: I know they will because I will be at Quilters Hall of Fame again. GB: Okay, we will see you there. KM: Thank you.",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Kim Greene",http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-33.xml,audio,3/7/08,,,,,,"Meg Cox",,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/2277a49756878595e35d3dedc96902e4.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0
"Elsie Campbell",,"Karen Musgrave sits down for a phone interview with Elsie Campbell of Dodge City, Kansas. Musgrave and Campbell discuss Campbell's quilt entered for Ami Simms's ""Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece"" exhibit and how her son's time as a caretaker for a man with Alzheimer's inspired the design of her quilt. The two also discuss how quilting has allowed Campbell to travel and see the ways that quilting is taught and practiced in Brazil and France, which differ from the quilting in her region. Campbell also discusses the importance of practicing and self-critiquing in quilting, as well as how supportive her family is of her quilting career as her home studio spreads throughout her entire house.",,,,,,,,audio,,,AFPBP-39,,,"Karen Musgrave","Elsie Campbell",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-39Campbell.xml,,03/14/2008,," 5.1 Elsie Campbell AFPBP-39 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Quilt Alliance Alzheimer's Disease Ami Simms Dodge City, Kansas Elsie Campbell Karen Musgrave 1:|17(1)|28(15)|42(7)|54(12)|71(2)|81(6)|92(4)|114(13)|127(5)|138(11)|151(13)|164(11)|174(2)|193(4)|209(1)|221(17)|240(5)|251(7)|268(1)|281(13)|294(1)|309(2)|322(6)|337(13)|352(7)|363(3)|375(3)|387(13)|401(3)|416(5)|427(7)|442(2)|458(11)|470(2)|481(15)|492(13)|503(15)|513(6)|531(9)|541(10)|554(1)|566(2)|575(6)|589(5)|603(13)|613(7)|622(5) 0 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/AFPBP-Campbell.mp3 Other audio 0 Introduction This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Elsie Campbell. Elsie is in Dodge City, Kansas and I'm in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Musgrave introduced the subject of her interview, Elsie Campbell. Musgrave discusses the medium of how the interview is being conducted with Campbell. " ; Confusion" ; ; Alzheimer's ; Alzheimer's " ; Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; (quilt exhibit) ; Elsie Campbell ; Karen Musgrave ; Quilters' S.O.S. 37.76067,-100.017863 17 Dodge City, Kansas, where Elsie Campbell is located. https://www.amazon.com/Alzheimers-Forgetting-Ami-Simms-Curator/dp/0943079098 " ; Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; book by Ami Simms. 27 Tell me about your quilt that's in this exhibit Well, it's a small kind of quilt based on a lone star pattern, a variation on that. Do you want me to tell you a little about how I came up with the idea? Campbell describes the influences of her quilt, " ; Confusion," ; recalling how her son's time spent in France caring for a man with Alzheimer's helped her to gain an understanding of what Alzheimer's is like. Campbell then describes the reasons behind her color selection, design, and thought process while making the quilt. She discusses how she tried to replicate what Alzheimer's visually looks like. Campbell also discusses her plan to use this piece in a future trunk show. " ; Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; (quilt exhibit) ; Alzheimer's Disease ; Ami Simms ; caretaker ; Confusion ; France ; Lone Star -- quilt pattern ; trunk show Alzheimer's disease ; Campbell, Elsie 17 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-images/AFPBP-39-CampbellA.jpg Elsie Campbell, " ; Confusion" ; 296 Impressions of " ; Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; exhibit Tell me about your impressions of the exhibit. Campbell and Musgrave discuss their impressions of the " ; Alzheimer's: " ; Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; exhibit. Campbell recollects how moving the featured quilts and their accompanying stories were. She also discusses about how she has noticed new details in the quilts each time she sees the exhibit, as well as the importance of the coordinator of the exhibit, Ami Simms. " ; Alzheimer's: " ; Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; (quilt exhibit) ; Ami Simms ; artist statement ; Quilt Exhibitions ; quilt shows ; quiltmakers ; quilts 17 512 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. ; I’ve always had a needle in my hand. Mom said I was eighteen months old the first time she put a needle in my hand. I can’t remember not being able to sew. Mother was a dressmaker, she earned money by altering clothes and making clothes for other people. Campbell discusses how she got into sewing, and later quilting from her mother. She also discusses memories from her childhood, the injuries that have come from sewing, and the importance of quilting for her. Campbell also discusses her educational background and other interests such as teaching and editing, as well as the paid jobs she has worked. Awards ; background ; dressmaking ; editor ; education ; family ; framing ; injuries ; knowledge transfer ; learning to sew ; lifeguard ; mother ; needlework ; piano teacher ; Quiltmaking ; teacher 17 712 On the style of her quilt " ; Confusion" ; Now is " ; Confusion" ; typical of your style? Campbell talks about the style of her quilt " ; Confusion." ; Campbell talks about her admiration for art quilting despite that it is not typically a style she uses in her shows or competitions. Campbell also mentions how her best work is known for her craftsmanship. " ; Confusion" ; ; art quilts ; Awards ; Quilt competitions ; quilting styles ; style 17 786 How many hours a week do you quilt? You know what if I stopped to count the hours, I’d be wasting minutes I could be using quilting. [laughs.] You know, when you are enjoying yourself, and that’s what quilting is — it is a pleasure to do Campbell talks about the amount of time she spends quilting per week. While discussing the process of quilting and how there is no easy way for her to quantify the amount of time she spends quilting, Campbell also discusses her time spent teaching and the influence of Bloom's taxonomy. Campbell also discusses the similarities of Bloom's taxonomy and how Alzheimer's effects certain levels of Bloom's taxonomy. Alzheimer's Disease ; Bloom's taxonomy ; education ; exercise ; family ; quilmaking process 17 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-images/Blooms-Taxonomy-650x366.jpg Bloom's taxonomy, courtesy of Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching 989 How does quiltmaking impact your family? Campbell: Well, they have always been very tolerant and supportive also. I have two sons and now a daughter-in-law. For example, about five years ago I won one of the top awards at the AQS [American Quilter's Society.] show in Paducah, Kentucky. Campbell discusses her families support for her quilting and their involvement with her quilts. Campbell discusses how her family has supported her at quilting competitions, her husband's involvement with the business side of her quilting, and her son's involvement with quilting. American Quilter's Society (AQS) ; American Quilter's Society Week (Paducah, Kentucky) ; daughter-in-law ; family ; husband ; International Quilt Association ; Karey Bresenhan ; One hundred best quilts ; Paducah, Kentucky ; Quilt competitions ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; son 37.086678,-88.604050 17 Location of Paducah, Kentucky http://www.americanquilter.com/ Official website of the American Quilter's Society. 1178 Whose works are you drawn to and why? I love it all. Let me see if I can go back. You know, there’s a lot of people who are influential to my career. In 1992 I entered a contest, the AQS contest, and my quilt was accepted. Campbell discusses some of her biggest inspirations in quilting including Caryl Fallert's " ; Cosmic Pelican" ; , to an interesting run in with a young Ricky Tims who is now one of her closest peers. Campbell also discusses how Diane Guadynski's work has influenced her newest award winning quilt, " ; Aunt Mimi's Flower Garden" ; . American Quilter's Society (AQS) ; Awards ; Caryl Bryer Fallert ; Cosmic Pelican ; Diane Guadynski ; Favela ; France ; Machine quilting ; National Quilt Museum (Paducah) ; Pueblo, Colorado ; Quilt competitions ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Ricky Tims ; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil ; Social quiltmaking activities ; Teaching quiltmaking ; travelling 40.044437, -76.306229 17 Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Location of the Quilter's Heritage Celebration. http://www.elsiemcampbell.com/2009/04/ Elsie Campbell's official website featuring images of her award-winning quilt, " ; Aunt Mimi's Flower Garden" ; . 1426 Teaching quilting in foreign countries Tell me about teaching in a foreign country, how is it different? Campbell discusses her time teaching in foreign countries such as France, Brazil, and throughout Europe. She also discusses the differences between the countries she has visited and the ways interpreters were used in her classes abroad. architecture ; Brazil ; education ; Europe ; foreign countries ; France ; international quilting ; interpreter ; Portuguese language ; quilting ; RIo de Janerio, Brazil ; Spanish language ; teaching ; Teaching quiltmaking ; Traveling 17 1608 Quilts made in foreign countries What are quilts like there? What do their quilts look like? Campbell talks about the differences between quilts made in America and quilts made in the countries that she has traveled to. She describes how other countries make very similar replicas of quilts to American styled quilts. Campbell also tells stories of quilts and quilters that she has interacted with in other countries. bird ; Brazil ; quilting in foreign countries ; story telling ; urban folklore 22.9068, 43.1729 17 Rio de Janerio, Brazil 1825 In what ways do your quilts reflect your community or region? ; Dodge City is a cow town. I've made a few cowboy quilts, but that’s not me. I do them because they are ones that people like to see around here. Campbell discusses the impact her region has on her quilting, although as much influence has come from her Mennonite upbringing and Amish quilts, which inspire her use of solid colors. Campbell also informs Musgrave as to how she aims to master all skills in quilting. Amish quilts ; community ; cowboy ; Dodge City, Kansas ; Kansas ; Mennonite ; Mennonite quilts ; quilting ; quiltmarking process 37.76067,-100.017863 17 Dodge City, Kansas, Campbell's hometown 1946 Describe your studio/the place that you create. ; Well, it kind of oozes over into the rest of the house. Right now, I have a large bedroom on the second floor. I live in an old, very large house. I have four gigantic windows that stretch basically from the ceiling to the floor so I have lots and lots of natural light. Campbell discusses how her studio is set up at home. Campbell describes how her entire house has become one large location for her quilts through storage, workspace, and collection. Campbell also discusses her sewing table and the sewing machines used in her quilting process. batting/wadding ; Bernina ; Design Wall ; fabrics ; Home sewing machine ; shelving ; storage ; Studio ; Work or Studio space 17 https://www.bernina.com/en-US/Products-US/BERNINA-products/Find-and-compare/Machine-search?gclid=Cj0KCQjw09zOBRCqARIsAH8XF1YpFc2zzp2f-QMQZKgynCRIwTjdUbtj2Jck02UFUPBKwCH8RL83DakaAo5fEALw_wcB Bernina sewing machine's official website 2179 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? Quiltmakers in general? You know, I hadn't thought about it in general. For me, maybe it’s narrowing it down to something and, instead of being a jack of all trades, trying to do a something. Campbell believes that there are possibly too many showcases and quilting styles, which causes her to feel a little bit scattered. She also mentions that there may be too many quilt shows for new quilters to take in all at once. Campbell also discusses the Latino population in her area and their disinterest in quiltmaking due to the fact they may not have the time since they are raising families and cannot afford the expense of quiltmaking. challenges ; cultures ; Fabric/Quilt shops ; Hispanic ; Latino ; needle arts ; needle crafts ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; quiltmakers ; showcases 17 2327 What advice would you offer someone starting out in quilting? Read books, buy all — get the books — the how-to books, the pattern books. Start off slowly, go to the quilt shops if there is one in your area, talk with the owners and take classes, take all the classes you can possibly afford Campbell discusses advice she would give to people who would want to start quilting. She stresses the importance of reading books and taking classes, while also the monetary value of what new quilters purchase. She encourages new quilters to buy high quality fabrics and machinery for quiltmaking. beginners ; books ; classes ; fabric ; home sewing machine ; Knowledge transfer ; quilt publications ; quilting classes ; thread count 17 2429 What do you think makes a great quilt? Well I know when I'm judging — I know what happens when you’re judging in a large show, you’ve got to have something that’s attention grabbing, it has to be stunning first Campbell discusses what she finds to make a quilt great. Campbell stresses the importance of practicing and self-critiquing, while also discussing the importance of colors and workmanship. colors ; critiquing ; judging ; practice ; visual impact ; workmanship 17 2595 Are there any aspects of quilt making that you don't enjoy? I'm struggling with that one because every stage is… It’s kind of like falling in love. It almost makes itself because I can't put it down. Campbell struggles to find a bad thing about the process of quiltmaking. Campbell mentions how the process of creating three dimensional flowers that she particularly is not a fan of that she did and discusses how much she enjoys the process of quilting. " ; Petal Play" ; ; 3-d ; 3-D flowers ; Joan Shay ; quilt making ; three dimensional 17 https://www.amazon.com/Petal-Play-Traditional-Joan-Shay/dp/1574327704 Joan Shay's " ; Petal Play: The Traditional Way" ; 2693 Closing thoughts We have been talking for forty-five minutes believe it or not. I always give people an opportunity to share anything that they would like that we haven't covered, so this is your chance. Closing thoughts from Campbell on her interview. Campbell discusses the tiring effect that traveling has on her quilting career. Campbell also discusses how despite the traveling and strength needed to travel with quilting how much she loves it and how she has accomplished so much through quilting. bookkeeping ; quilting ; social aspects of quiltmaking ; teaching quiltmaking ; traveling 17 Oral History Karen Musgrave sits down for a phone interview with Elsie Campbell of Dodge City, Kansas. Musgrave and Campbell discuss Campbell's quilt entered for Ami Simms's " ; Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece" ; exhibit and how her son's time as a caretaker for a man with Alzheimer's inspired the design of her quilt. The two also discuss how quilting has allowed Campbell to travel and see the ways that quilting is taught and practiced in Brazil and France, which differ from the quilting in her region. Campbell also discusses the importance of practicing and self-critiquing in quilting, as well as how supportive her family is of her quilting career as her home studio spreads throughout her entire house. Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Elsie Campbell. Elsie is in Dodge City, Kansas and I' ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Today' ; s date is March 14, 2008. It is 2:01 in the afternoon and we’re doing a special Quilters' ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories which is based on the exhibition " ; Alzheimer' ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece." ; So Elsie, tell me about you quilt " ; Confusion" ; that is in the exhibit. Elsie Campbell (EC): Well, it is a small quilt kind of based on a Lone Star pattern, a variation on that. DO you want me to tell you a little about how I came up with the idea? KM: Yes. Please. EC: I was right on a deadline for this one and I couldn' ; t come up with an idea. I personally have never — thank God — had any experience with this disease other than second hand experience through my son, Kerry. He came back from Europe, from a year in Europe, and went back to university looking for a job and he found one living with and take care of some of the needs of a man who had early onset Alzheimer' ; s. In payment, Kerry received room and board and the use of a jeep, Michael' ; s jeep to run errands around town. Kerry did a lot of studying online, reading about the disease. He knew a whole lot more about Alzheimer' ; s than I did, having lived with Michael for a year. I called Kerry and said, ‘I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do. I think what I’m gonna do is make a Lone Star and maybe leave holes in it.’ Kerry stopped me right there and said, ' ; No Mom, Alzheimer' ; s is not holes. It isn’t like holes in your memory.' ; I said, ' ; Okay. How would you describe it if you had to, in one word?' ; He said, ‘I’m gonna think about that.' ; He called me back a little later and said, ' ; Mom, that word would be confusion.' ; That' ; s where the title came from. That’s where I started to think about how I would illustrate confusion in a Lone Star-type thing. And I did a little reading online too and talking with Kerry, and Kerry really helped me a lot to develop this idea. But, in the quilt, there is eight points in a Lone Star. The two top points, one is perfect, everything is in the right order and perfect. The one next if you go clockwise around the star, the next point has a couple of pieces that are transposed — they’re not in the right places, they’re mixed up. And as you continue to go around it, it gets a little bit more mixed up - confused, and some of the pieces are turned the wrong side out so that the seams are wrong side out, they’re all over. And then pieces start to fall away and become misshapen and at the bottom the piece begins to lose the color, I started using some of the more pastel shades to where it would kind of just fade away. And then the pieces come apart, and then I added some pieces at the bottom to kind of look like they are lying on a table like they did come fall apart. However, the center diamonds are purple if I remember correctly, and they remain until the very last diamond. They remain the same shape and just exactly right. They’re supposed to represent the inner — the long term memory which is the last to go. We remember our things from childhood more clearly sometimes than we do things from the day before. And with Alzheimer' ; s, I think that’s even exasperated to where the long term memory is the very last thing that a person can retain, so those purple diamonds which represent the long term memory. I’m not sure what else, you know that’s basically the description of it. I’ve also used some hand stitching embellishment, kind of primitive stitching — that sort of thing. It was a lot of fun and once I got the idea as to how I wanted to do this, it went together in an afternoon. So, that’s about the quilt, I guess. KM: What do you plan to do with the quilt when it comes back? EC: It will probably be part of my trunk show. I go around the country and lecture and teach about quilting, and stuff like that. And I will probably put it in one of my trunk shows and tell the story and spread the word about Ami' ; s efforts and the organization that she has started to raise funds for research for Alzheimer' ; s. KM: Tell me about your impressions of the exhibit. EC: Well, I have seen it more than once. The first time I saw it I barely got past the third or fourth quilt. It is difficult to go through the exhibit and read all the stories that go with them. And you better have a box of Kleenex' ; s with you. They’re heart wrenching. It was a very moving exhibit. I just think everybody should see it. The last time I saw it in person was at a quilt show last summer, I think it was. And I took a friend with me and we ended up having a lot of the similar feelings — that was like the third or fourth time I had viewed it but it still moves me every time. And I see new things every time I look at it. New ideas, new details in each piece. And there is so much thought — each piece — there was so much thought that went into each piece. You know, representing an abstract idea is really, in my opinion, a difficult thing. I usually make traditional quilts, things that are very standard I guess, maybe not standard what is the word I want to say, well they are not intended to be art or anything like that, they are just beautiful objects. But this, these quilts represent ideas that are abstract and in such a way that I think the meaning comes through even more than if you used words. Does that make sense? KM: Mhmm, it makes a great deal of sense. There is a CD that accompanies the exhibit and each quiltmaker was asked to call Ami up on her telephone and record their artist statement. Tell me about that experience for you. EC: Well, it was a long time ago already. KM: Mhmm. EC: I don' ; t know. It was nice. It was interesting. I have several copies of the CDs and I have given them as gifts. KM: I thought it was rather clever of Ami to have an audio component. EC: What’d you say? KM: I thought it was rather clever of Ami to have an audio component. EC: Absolutely. This whole thing was just like, I don' ; t know where the spark comes from, but Ami is amazing. There is no other way to describe her. And her sense of humor is so fresh and quirky. I' ; ve always enjoyed being around her and seeing her. This was just a unique thing and I know she was working through her own grief over the loss of her mother' ; s memory, you know, and her mother' ; s support. I lost my own mother five years ago. And my mother was my biggest fan and I’d get some award or I’d be make a new quilt, I would find myself wanting to call my mom. And then I would think, ' ; I can' ; t call her anymore.' ; I' ; m sure Ami has the same feelings only she is dealing with even more intensity, because her mother' ; s physical body is still alive. But, that lack of support, and missing the person is just really tough to deal with. And I' ; m sure that is what she has been working through. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. EC: Mhmm. I’ve always had a needle in my hand. Mom said I was eighteen months old the first time she put a needle in my hand. I can’t remember not being able to sew. Mother was a dressmaker, she earned money by altering clothes and making clothes for other people. She paid for, oh I have two sisters and we all took piano lessons, we all played clarinet, we all sang and we all did all of these things because Mom used her sewing money so that we could have those things that were not necessary but were nice. So, we always had several sewing machines going at one time cause we all sewed. And made quilts, and basically at that point it was dressmaking which was necessary for financial reasons besides being pleasure-able. Mom said that she’d be sewing and I would sit at her feet and scream until she put a needle and thread in my hands too in a piece of fabric so I can' ; t remember not knowing how. It’s like life blood I don’t think I could put it down. I’ve had several surgeries on my upper extremities over the last eight years, and I' ; m facing another one for a trigger finger here in the next month, and it’s probably one of my biggest nightmares not being able to use my hands or not being able to sew. So, these absences remind me that I am human and that I need to slow down and pace myself, cause most of my surgeries have been because of repetitive motion injuries. [laughs.] So, I’m learning, but it is something I cannot not do. I must sew, I must create something. Is that what you are wanting? KM: Yes. And tell me, okay so, expand upon this because you are an award winning quiltmaker. You are a teacher. You are a writer. You are an editor. Tell me about those experiences and how they all relate. EC: So one thing kind of feeds into the other. I mean, the writer and the editor is because I am a quiltmaker. I’m not sure, I mean there’s — I’m also, I also have a master' ; s degree in special education: My bachelor' ; s degree is in several other fields. I’ve got two — basically two master' ; s degrees in areas, but everything I’ve also been an insurance agent, I’ve been a custom framer, I’ve had a custom frame shop and needle work and cross stitch shop, I taught piano for thirty years, I taught swimming and (laughs) I was a lifeguard, I can’t tell you and a licensed daycare. I' ; ve done a lot of different things, but I always come back to needle work and sewing in some way, shape or form. I think I' ; m kind of like a closet artist. I would love to be able to paint and I' ; ve done some of that, too, some watercolor and acrylic fine arts, but, for me, there seems to be more satisfaction in the needle arts. KM: Now is " ; Confusion" ; typical of your style? EC: Is " ; Confusion" ; typical of my style? [KM hums agreement.] No. Not at all. However, I' ; ve done-- I will try everything at least once. I can’t say that. " ; Confusion" ; is not the kind of quilt I would put in a competition. There’s a lot of art quilters out there that make fantastic stuff. I aspire to doing art quilts — and I have made a bunch of them — but they are not the ones that would win the awards for. I win awards basically for craftsmanship because I' ; m very good at it and I’m very — I feel like I' ; ve developed a great sense of color and value, which are really important, but " ; Confusion" ; — as far as — it’s not what I' ; m known for, the art quilt type thing.But, it was lots of fun and I have done other work like that, commission work and so forth. But not, it’s nothing that I usually do to show for competition or anything like that, or teach. Is that, kind of what you’re looking for there? KM: Mhmm. How many hours a week do you quilt? EC: You know what if I stopped to count the hours, I’d be wasting minutes I could be using quilting. [laughs.] You know, when you are enjoying yourself, and that’s what quilting is — it is a pleasure to do — it doesn' ; t matter how much time or how little time you spend on it. That has nothing to do with anything. People ask me, ‘How many hours did it take you to make that quilt?’ And I say, ‘What?’ You know, it’s like to me that’s such a question like, ' ; Where did that come from?’ It has no meaning here. KM: Well, and I always answer that question by telling people whatever my age is at that time. [EC laughs.] How long did it take you? EC: How ever old you are that makes since, yah fifty-two or whatever. KM: Right, whatever it is and because, you know I think it is a process and it’s ongoing and, you know so it took me fifty-two years to get here to make this quilt. EC: Yeah, and I always say like, “oh, we don’t even bother counting UFOs anymore either, you know those unfinished objects, because that doesn' ; t matter either. The process — I learn something new from everything I do and I have to keep thinking and keep the wheels turning upstairs. Maybe I' ; m preventing Alzheimer' ; s because every time you make something new you have to rethink and think ' ; Did that work as well as I would like?' ; I teach gifted children at public schools. That is what I' ; ve been doing for the last fours years. Well actually I have been doing it about ten years, but off and on for the last fifteen years. And Bloom' ; s taxonomy there is all these different levels. And one — the first one — is Knowledge and that means that you can recite facts. Then there is Comprehension — you understand those facts and you can relate them. Then there’s Synthesis, Evaluation, and so forth. And when I' ; m working on quilting, I’m working in the upper level thinking skills of Evaluation and Synthesis you’re pulling everything you’ve ever learned together to make a new product. When you’re finished, you look at it and say, ' ; Oh, this went really well. I really like what happened here, but I think I could have done this part better. How could I do it better? Why would I do it that way?’And that’s Evaluation, and that’s the highest level thinking skills. I think probably with Alzheimer' ; s those are the first skills to go is the judgment and the upper level thinking skills. And I' ; ve heard that you can maybe sometimes keep your mental health or your brain working if you exercise, so I do a lot of exercising. I probably quilt — to go back to your original question — probably, I am working in quilting-related things probably sixty to seventy hours a week. Eight to ten hours a day at least. You know, if I' ; m not actively doing something with my hands quilt related, I am thinking about it or I am writing about it or I' ; m on the Internet or that sort of thing. So, if I had young children, I wouldn' ; t be able to spend all that time, but my kids are grown and my husband is very relaxed about the housekeeping and everything else. He does a lot of the cooking, so I' ; m kind of free right now to indulge in what I love to do. KM: How wonderful. EC: Yeah, it really is. [laughs.] KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking? EC: Well, they have always been very tolerant and supportive also. I have two sons and now a daughter-in-law. For example, about five years ago I won one of the top awards at the AQS [American Quilter' ; s Society.] show in Paducah, Kentucky. Big, big, big surprise to me. And my son and daughter-in-law were moving from Memphis, Tennessee to Ottumwa, Iowa the weekend prior to this show. And I called my sons up to tell them about this award. The first one, the quilt I just had told him he could have that quilt. I put their names on all of the quilts I make, and they’ll have that quilt when I pass on, not before (laughs). And Kelly said, ‘well that okay Mom,’ he says, ‘it’ll be in a museum Mom I can go visit it once in awhile.’ I said, ‘that’s right Kelly, now I’ll have to make you another one.’ So he was fine with that. And he understood how important that was. My youngest son told his wife of about six months at that time, ‘Pack your bag, we’re going!’ And my daughter in law had no clue what she was in for. She had never seen a quilt show, not like Paducah or anywhere else.And they drove eleven hours to get to Paducah so they could be with me and to witness — to see the quilt and everything like that — and see the show. And she — her mind was just totally blown away. She had never seen anything like that. She had no idea. I mean she comes from a quilting background, her grandmothers all quilted, her mom quilts, and all that — but she had no idea that quilts could look like that - the competition quilts, the art quilts and so forth. Kerry also go to hang the " ; One Hundred Best Quilts" ; [" ; The Twentieth Century' ; s Best American Quilts" ; exhibit and book. ] when they were in Europe with the International Quilt Association. And he was living in France at the time and studying Chemical Engineering in Nancy, which is near Strasburg. And Karey Bresenhan from IQA [International Quilt Association.] hired Kerry and five of his friends to come up, hang the show, and act as interpreters and help with the take down and all that. They were American kids in Europe and that was kind of a neat deal for him. So, you know, every little bit they — I think my son’s helped educate their friends about quilting and that quilts are art in a lot of ways. They are very supportive. My husband does my videotaping, he did my website, which now needs a little bit of maintenance work. But Ken also teaches public school, so summers are when he does his work on things for me. He sometimes travels with me, sets up my media equipment, hauls my bags around and stuff, packs up the car, and yeah, he seems to be very proud. He never exactly tells me that, but I hear from other people that he brags about me a lot, so it makes me feel good. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? EC: I love it all. Let me see if I can go back. You know, there’s a lot of people who are influential to my career. In 1992 I entered a contest, the AQS contest, and my quilt was accepted. I actually traveled to Paducah to see it there. I walked into the museum — “American Quilters Society” and there was all the spotlights on it and everything — was one of Caryl Bryer Fallert' ; s work called " ; Cosmic Pelican." ; This thing glowed. It brought tears to my eyes because at that point, I grew up with quilts on every bed and everything like that, I didn' ; t know quilts could look like that. And I was moved to tears and at that point it became an ambition I wanted a quilt in that museum also. I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to do this, this is a goal though. I’m going to work towards that.’ So, it’s a real thrill now I do have one in that museum. About that same time, I think it was in 1993, I was a church youth group sponsor. And I had my sons and several other teenagers and we went to St. Louis for a Church World Conference. And I dragged a quilt along and I would be sitting in the hallway and quilting , waiting on kids to get done with activities and such. And this young man came and just stood there quietly and watched me stitch. I thought this is interesting. He was just so intent on watching every stitch and he just got closer in, closer to my work, watching everything, but never said a word. All of a sudden, he looked at me and asked, ' ; Is that reverse appliqué?' ; I went, ' ; Oh my gosh!' ; He was kind of dressed like a cowboy with the string necktie and the hat and all that. ‘This cowboy knows quilts!’ We struck up a conversation. Can you guess who that was? KM: Ricky Tims. EC: You got it. He was not known in the quilting world, he had just begun to quilt and I had just started to enter contests and that is exactly who it was. [laughs.] We have been friends ever since. We run into each other at quilt shows and such, so it has been kind of a neat, neat way to watch his career skyrocket like it has. Matter of fact, we are going to Pueblo tonight and we’re going to have dinner with him and Justin tomorrow night in La Veta, so I' ; m kind of excited about that. He — in 1998 — we met in Paducah and he gave me his usual hug and kind of whispered in my ear, ' ; Elsie I have done it. I' ; ve done it, I' ; ve quit my day job. I' ; m quilting full time.' ; And you know, him doing that kind of encouraged me when my opportunity came about a year and a half later to do the same thing. So, in a lot of ways, he really has been influential in my career and my courage to do what I’m doing also. Another couple of people — Diane Gaudynski’s work has always inspired me tremendously. I had the privilege of taking a machine quilting class from her a few years back. I had never really machine quilted, I was not satisfied but after class with her and a little practice, my newest competition quilt Aunt MiMi' ; s Flower Garden is getting Best Machine Workmanship awards. It’s gotten — it’s been in five shows, come home with six ribbons so far and three of those awards have been Best Machine Workmanship awards. So I' ; m really thrilled. I' ; ve got to ship it out today to the Quilter' ; s Heritage Celebration in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I will be there with it in about a week and a half. So, my quilting — I never dreamed that quilting would take me to Rio de Janeiro but I taught quilting there a few years back, too. So, this has been an amazing thing to me. And France, I taught quilting in France. I never dreamed that my quilting would take me to these places so it is an incredible, incredible thrill to me. KM: Tell me about teaching in a foreign country, how is it different? EC: [laughs.] Well, probably each country is a little bit different. In France, I didn' ; t really have an interpreter, but it was amazing to me - see quilting — you don’t really need it. You can demonstrate and they get it. And, I was just amazed at how much — how little importance language is, really. A lot of it is demonstration and visual. And I think most quilters are visual learners. And it was amazing, Rio de Janeiro was another experience. I did have an interpreter there who was an avid quilter. And some of the time I felt like she was giving them how she would do it rather than telling them what I was saying. You understand. KM: Oh yes. EC: [laughs.] The best interpreter I had while down there was one who knew nothing about quilting. [laughs.] The one who knew something about quilting seemed to color it their way. [laughs.] KM: I have had similar experiences teaching in different countries. Very true. EC: Rio was, it was delightful, I just can' ; t tell you what a thrill that was. I was very, very, very surprised. Where we live — over half the population here in Dodge City — is Hispanic, Mexican. They speak Spanish, they don' ; t speak much English. Down there — and, you know they’re all black hair, brown eyes, brown skin all this — when I got there, the women that I was teaching were all European descent— they looked like me, you know? I was shocked to see — to learn that Rio de Janeiro and that area of Brazil was settled about the same time the US was with Europeans. The architecture looked like Europe, and the food was absolutely fabulous. I had not anticipated it being European in nature, and it is. The breads and the meats and everything were just like I had been transplanted to Europe. So I had not anticipated that. Another thing that fascinated me down there were the favelas, the shanty towns. Masses and masses and masses of people, millions of people in Rio live on the sides of the mountains down there in shacks that are basically just boxes. It amazed me though, you know, how innovative and how creative people can be and how they live with so few things. The needs of human beings actually need a whole lot less than we think we need to survive. KM: What are quilts like there? What do their quilts look like? EC: Their quilts were — some of them were pure and simple copies of American made quilts. There was a barn quilt that was a pattern quilt — there were different quilts. And for me it was difficult for me to see these people with their own cultures and their own heritages and stuff trying to imitate our country and folk art style. However, there were some very unique quilts and very much local lore. One quilt that fascinated me had — the lady she spoke limited English — but she wanted to explain to me the whole story, it was a group quilt. And they had different blocks, and it was from their provence or state of Brazil. And, about the only thing that I could remember or understand was she wanted me to definitely know about this little brown bird. He makes a little mud hut for his mate, they mate for life, and it has a little door in it she can go in and out of her mud hut and lays her eggs and they both tend to the babies and everything. However, if she thinks she’s been cheating on him, or sees another male bird, he’ll shove her in a little mud hut and close the door off with mud, and she will die in there. (Both laugh) The quilter wanted me to know the story of that little brown bird and that they mate for life. However, you know… There was one — another one — that had a snake on it. Kind of an electric white ghost snake, they called it. And the gist of the story is that this was an old woman who got lost in the Amazon Rain Forest. And she turned into this boa constrictor, this gigantic snake and she became the guardian of the forest. And there was a long story about the snake, but — and there was this beautiful quilt with a snake. Another amazing story for me was there was a Lone Star quilt — I’m drawn to lone stars anyway. Beautifully made, machine quilted, machine everything, little machine embroidered butterflies all over it, all these things. I ate breakfast with the woman who made it. She was a very plain and simple lady, no make up, clothes not so nice, anyway. She didn' ; t speak much English, but I got enough of it. She lives in the Amazon Forest. She loved birds, fed birds, parrots everything. She was telling me all about the birds. Then I asked her about her quilt. She said, ‘she has no running water and no electricity.’ I said, ' ; How did you make your quilt with no electricity?' ; You know, this is a machine quilted quilt that could compete in Paducah or anywhere else - it’s just fabulous. And I got the gist of the thing, she has a gasoline generator in her back yard and when she wanted to sew, she would fire up her generator so she’d have electricity to sew. And that’s the only electricity that she used. KM: Wow. EC: Yeah, even spirit, again, if we want to, there is a way. ' ; Where there is will, there is a way,' ; that old saying. There were some very unique quilts. The colors seemed to be brighter to me. Great sense of color - pure color. Not — there wasn’t any of the grayed-down, toned down colors you unless it was in quilts imitating US style. Fascinating to see. KM: Do you think that your quilts reflect your community or region? EC: Dodge City is a cow town. I' ; ve made a few cowboy quilts, but that’s not me. I do them because they are ones that people like to see around here. I think we have some regional differences in the U.S. I lived in the northeast for a while. They’re certainly different than California style. I haven' ; t even thought about that. I grew up Menninite and I' ; m totally drawn to the Amish the black and bright colors you know, paired with black. Black just makes colors glow and I' ; m draw to solids. I love to work in the solids because I found out early on my competition life that the thing the judges liked best were my quilting stitches. And for quilting stitches to show, you need to work in solid colors. So a lot of my award winners — matter of fact, nearly I think all but one of my award winning quilts — are made out of solids or hand dyes that read like solids. I use very few prints in my competition quilts. However, I dearly love to make scrap quilts with thousands of different fabrics in them. And those are the ones that I just have fun making and those are the ones that are on the beds and those are the ones that I give away, those are the ones that are in my trunk shows. My best trunk show I think, is my scrap quilts — Innovations and Renovations: Scrap Quilts talk. I' ; m kind of a jack of all trades. But if you go to a show and see one of my quilts, they are probably going to be solid colors with radial symmetry. Like a Lone Star, that sort of thing. But what I make for pleasure aren' ; t necessarily those. I don' ; t know if I have a regional flavor or style. It’s just — that I like to make quilts. KM: Describe your studio. EC: What? KM: Describe your studio. EC: Well, it kind of oozes over into the rest of the house. Right now, I have a large bedroom on the second floor. I live in an old, very large house. I have four gigantic windows that stretch basically from the ceiling to the floor so I have lots and lots of natural light. And I overlook the whole neighborhood so it is kind of fun to look at and see everything. I turned one wall — what I did was I took I took quilt batting, a very dense cotton batting, and glued and nailed it to some wooden slats. Then I nailed the slats to the wall and put trim around it and that’s my design wall. I have an old library table that I bought for ten bucks at a high school auction one time. It has a lot of ' ; nice' ; graffiti carved into the top of it. It is very portable. The legs you can remove them, they just screw on and it is very sturdy. It is solid oak. I cover that with a bunch of cutting mats. I have two very large cutting mats so I don’t have to look at the graffiti the teenagers carved into the top (laughs). I have a large ironing board with storage units underneath that I use. Lots of shelving, and I like open shelving. I know it is probably not the healthiest for my fabric, but I seem to thrive on visual stimulation. I want to see what I' ; ve got. I also have a large walk-in closet that I have lined with shelves. I’ve got a lot of — I do a lot of hand dyeing and I' ; ve got all my hand dyes starched and ready to cut hanging on hangers in that walk-in closet, then the walls are lined with shelves. What I really like is I have my own bathroom, a private full bath. The only time that bathroom gets used by other people is when we have guests in the house. My daughter-in-law particularly likes having her own bathroom up there so, she goes up to my sewing room — that’s her bathroom when she stays here. The sewing table. I have more than a few Bernina sewing machines. One is usually in my sewing table, and one I put up and down for embroidery. And then I got several old Berninas: an 830, 532, some of those models that are in my closet. That I get out for guests sometimes if we’re sewing together we can set those up on the tables downstairs, we work all over the house. My yardage fits in the walk-in closet and my fat quarters are all on shelves. All my books — my books are all spread out. I' ; ve got one whole wall lined with library books in my bedroom, another half wall in my office, and now I' ; ve started to fill up shelves in my family room, so I kind of collect things like that. I have a whole cabinet full of unfinished quilt tops and pieces — things like that — and ideas. In my office, I have another walk-in closet that I' ; ve lined with shelves where I put all my class supplies and teaching samples. My guest bedroom has another closet that is full of inventory that I sell online and books and such. That is where I store all my finished quilts for my trunk shows. And then I have a basement storage room where I' ; ve got two pallets of books that went out of print — I bought them all. So, you know it just kind of oozes into every room in the house I think. Is that enough of a description? KM: That is great. What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? EC: Quiltmakers in general? You know, I hadn' ; t thought about it in general. For me, maybe it’s narrowing it down to something and, instead of being a jack of all trades, trying to do a something. I haven' ; t quite figured out what it is that I do the best or that I want to I — I mean I want to do it all — sometimes I get a lot of scatter in what I' ; m doing, and I think maybe I need to be able to organize and narrow what I' ; m doing. I don’t know. Sometimes, I wonder if we are getting too many large shows all over because some of the shows are having a struggle now filling classes. Quilters seem to be able to travel and go to all of these shows, in this particular area, we’ve had trouble keeping quilt shops. We just had a new quilt shop that opened up about twenty miles from Dodge City, but this is the only quilt shop for probably a hundred mile radius. I have to drive one hundred and fifty miles to a quilt shop of any significant size at all. KM: Why do you think that is? EC: That is because we’re over half Hispanic and the Hispanic people, you know — it looks like we have a large population base, we do, but these people are young and they have ten and twelve kids and they are busy trying to feed those mouths and keep a roof over their heads. And they don’t — they have no interest in needle arts or needle crafts and if they did, they don' ; t have the time or the money to invest in it. Cause it is an investment. KM: And not a small one. EC: Not a small one and it is not part of their culture either. Whereas I grew up German Mennonite and it is a part of my culture. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? EC: Read books, buy all — get the books — the how-to books, the pattern books. Start off slowly, go to the quilt shops if there is one in your area, talk with the owners and take classes, take all the classes you can possibly afford and have time for. Buy the best. You pay for what you get. There is no sense in buying a hundred-dollar sewing machine at the ' ; W' ; store and being frustrated. You will give up immediately because the machine is so frustrating to use. Buy the best sewing machine you can possibly afford because you will be using that for years and years and years. It becomes your best friend. The same thing with fabric. Buy the best fabric you can afford and generally you pay for what you get. If you buy two-dollar-a-yard fabric at the discount shops, it may very well be that fabric is going to fall apart in a year or two or three, or it is so flimsy that it will fray and your seams won' ; t hold up or it will be difficult to work with because it doesn' ; t have enough thread count. It is important to use the best materials because you are going to be spending hours and hours making something beautiful. There is no sense in wasting a few pennies on materials and tools. KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? EC: Well I know when I' ; m judging — I know what happens when you’re judging in a large show, you’ve got to have something that’s attention grabbing, it has to be stunning first. It has to be a design with contrast and beauty. Colors are important, but I think value is even more important than color. There has to be value and there has to be an idea behind it. Something that at first glance is going to grab the viewer and draw them in. Visual impact: if you don' ; t have visual impact, they’re not going to bother looking at the workmanship, no matter how meticulous it is. The visual impact is all important. You must have an idea, you must carry it through with value and color, repetition, whatever it needs to be. Then you will be drawn in. Then it is important that your workmanship be meticulous if you are going into competition. If you are — I think a lot of people are their own best critics but they don' ; t know it. You know what went well with your quilt, you know what you did best, you know what you need help with and what you struggled with. If you struggle with appliqué, start taking appliqué classes. Start buying books about appliqué. Start practicing appliqué until you are satisfied what you are doing is good. Same thing with piecing — whatever. Quilting, the finishing process — the last quilt show I judged there were some gorgeous quilts with fantastic, meticulous workmanship, and they failed to bind it well. The bindings were askew and fat and skinny in places. They weren’t filled to the edge. If you have spent hours and hours and hours piecing and appliquéing a beautiful quilt and then spent more hours meticulously quilting it, don' ; t ruin it by doing a shoddy job on the edge. The edge is just as important. Every step along the way has to be as well done as all the others. It is very important that every step of the process be well done, and the only way to get better is to study it out, practice, take classes, and do the very best work on every piece you do. KM: Are there any aspects of quiltmaking that you don' ; t enjoy? EC: Mhmm. I’m trying to think if there is a part that is my least favorite. KM: Obviously you don' ; t have one. [laughs.] EC: I' ; m struggling with that one because every stage is… It’s kind of like falling in love. It almost makes itself because I can' ; t put it down. I can' ; t think of anything I don' ; t like. KM: That is quite alright. EC: I really, really enjoy every part of it. I' ; m trying to think. Oh, I do know one that I made that I had--I didn' ; t have problems with it, but I didn' ; t particularly enjoy making three-dimensional flowers. [laughs.] [KM laughs.] It was a commission work and she came in, she wanted 3-D flowers on it. I wasn' ; t going to do it quite the way she wanted, I did it my way. I ended up using Joan Shay' ; s " ; Petal Play" ; where you use Heat and Bond Ultra, and then you curl it around pencils or you shape it. They turned out beautifully and my client was just thrilled to pieces with it. She' ; s had it in a couple of private shows. I can' ; t remember what else she did, but she is always making sure that I know how much she appreciated it. But I didn' ; t particularly enjoy doing it. [laughs.] KM: We have been talking for forty-five minutes believe it or not. I always give people an opportunity to share anything that they would like that we haven' ; t covered, so this is your chance. EC: I' ; m not sure what else to say. I enjoy talking about my work. Traveling and teaching is a wonderful experience. However, I have come to the point where I love to teach people all the things that I know, but I do not enjoy the travel part and the travel… That has been a little tough. If anybody ever decides they want to do this, they really got to have stamina and believe it or not, physical strength to haul those bags and equipment around. Airports are not fun anymore. It is a real struggle. I understand the security and all that, but you never think about those things as being part of the quilting world. When you go into it as a profession, there is a lot of stuff that goes into this that you didn' ; t bargain for. You have to think about that. It is not all about making quilts. It is also about bookkeeping and making your arrangements for hotels and airline tickets and getting all your stuff there and seeing that you got everything you need in a suitcase. I think it is all worth it, though, because we make all our connections and we get to meet all these different quilters from all over. I' ; ve never met a quilter I didn' ; t like to twist a quote from Will Rogers. You know his old saying.So, I think that’s probably the best of the best here. Quilters worldwide are just eager, happy, busy, industrious people. I love them. 2017 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/ http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/collections/show/5 ",,"Alzheimer's Disease",,"Susan Quinn",,,http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/03d4b17b4cbc101cc0f74d209bac8af7.jpg,"Oral History","Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS",1,0