2 20 204 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/5b07753809ac8fc9abe38b6e3abcd5ad.JPG d2353fa923aceb4553407a518c789f36 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/e4da861a9d8467895788adef697a0ba0.JPG 2262dc2b04e8f042c2bc0261cb3a1afe Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Helen Kamphuis Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Helen Ridgway OHMS Object https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-006Ridgway.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 Helen Ridgway TX77010-006Ridgway Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Helen Ridgway Helen Kamphuis TX77010-006Ridgway.mp3 1:|12(16)|25(8)|35(6)|46(13)|59(10)|73(13)|88(3)|100(10)|117(2)|132(14)|150(5)|165(15)|176(6)|187(16)|205(10)|220(7)|235(13)|255(1)|276(12)|292(10)|307(9)|327(4)|344(8)|357(11)|376(2)|386(8)|398(13)|411(13)|425(12)|448(2)|459(2)|473(3) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-006Ridgway.mp3 Other audio 2 Introduction This is Helen Campfis, today's date is the third November, the time is nine minutes past twelve, and I'm conducting an interview with Helen Ridgway. The interviewer introduces herself and the interviewee. International Quilt Festival 17 45 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. Helen will tell you about the quilt she brought today. Helen discusses her touchstone quilt, which was a collaborative quilt with her quilting bee. She explains the transformation of the quilt from one design to another. Art quilts ; quilting bee Art quilts ; Artistic collaboration ; Quilts--Design 17 325 Quilting Bees And why do you choose to work together? Helen describes the group of women with whom she quilts, and talks about how they came together. quilting bee 17 398 Art/Traditional Quilting How is that for you to be working in two different areas? Helen says that she is more inclined to create traditional quilts on her own, and that it is her quilting group that inspires her to take part in art quilting. Art quilts ; Quilt guild ; quilting bee Art quilts 17 440 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. When we retired and moved to the Texas hill country, I told my husband I always wanted to quilt. Helen talks about how she began quilting in her retirement. She says that prior to quilting she'd done various other types of handwork. Art quilts ; Embroidery machine Art quilts ; Retirement 17 642 What do you think makes a great quilt? What makes a great quilt, according to you? Helen talks about the important aspects of great quilts. She discusses the importance of precision, colors, form, and how quilts speak to her. piecing Workmanship 17 684 Colors in Quilts In your own projects, what's your inclination, what colors and fabrics do you use? Helen says that she enjoys quiltmaking in black and white, and also with bright colors and batik fabrics. Fabric - Batiks 17 707 Why is quiltmaking important to your life? Why is quiltmaking important for you now? Helen talks about the importance of quiltmaking in her life, especially following her husband's health problems. She says that quilting helped her cope with her husband's illness. Quilt Purpose - Comfort Health 17 804 Convincing others to quilt If you could tell somebody to become a quiltmaker, what would you tell them? Helen discusses what she would say to people who want to start quilting. She says that she would tell people to submerge themselves in quilting and think about the impostance of the practice for men and women in the world, as well as how they would like to be remembered for their quiltmaking. She goes on to say that she would like to be remembered in her quiltmaking as a generous, kind and sharing quilter. Gender in quiltmaking ; Quilt memory 17 865 How many hours a week do you quilt? How many hours do you spend quilting? Helen talks about how much time she usually spends quilting. She says that although she travels often to visit family, when she is at home, she may spend up to ten hours a day quilting. Generational quiltmaking ; Quilts as gifts ; Time management Time management 17 909 Are there other quiltmakers among your family or friends? Please tell me about them. ; How does quiltmaking impact your family? ; Have you affected other people in your family to quilt? Helen talks about people in her family who quilt. She talks about two of her granddaughters who have taken up the practice. She goes on to talk about quilts she has made for family. She says she also attends quilt festivals with family members. Embroidery ; Generational quiltmaking ; International Quilt Festival ; Machine applique ; Quilt Purpose - Wedding ; Quilts as gifts ; Teaching quiltmaking Heirlooms ; Quilts--United States--Exhibitions 17 985 Which artists have influenced you? Which artists have influenced you? Helen talks about both traditional and art quilters who have had an impact on her quilting practices. She mentions the work of Carol Doke, Alex Anderson, and Esther Reed Austin. English paper piecing Art quilts ; Quiltmakers 17 1113 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? What's the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? Helen describes the misconceptions about quilting and quilters, and the struggle the quilting community has gone through to receive recognition as artists. Textile crafts 17 1183 Tell me how you balance your time. How do you balance your time? Helen says she has trouble keeping track of time while quilting, and that she has had to train herself to keep track of the time. Time management Time management 17 1214 What are your plans for this quilt? What are your plans in the future for your quilt? Helen says that she uses her quilt as a wall hanging. She goes on to discuss the quilts she keeps stored in boxes, as well as the various quilts she uses for her bedcovering. Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration 17 1316 Do you use a design wall? If so, in what way/how does that enhance your creative process? If not, how do you go about designing your quilts? Do you use a design wall? Does your bee use a design wall? Helen talks about her process and her bee's process for using design walls. She says this and digital photography help especially with collaborative quilting processes. Design Wall ; Photography/photo transfer Quilts--Design 17 1503 What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or special collection? What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or a special collection? Helen says that she believes those quilts which win high awards at quilt shows may be appropriate for museum display. Awards ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition Quilts--United States--Exhibitions 17 1630 Quilting Bee Dynamics How do you work as a group? Helen discusses the dynamics of her quilting group, and the effects of member turnover in the bee. quilting bee Membership 17 1752 Collecting Quilts You said that you collect and sell quilts? Helen talks about the quilts that she collects. She says that she collects her own quilts, her friends' quilts, and antique quilts, as well as antique quilt tops. Antique quilts Heirlooms 17 1807 Tell me about an amusing experience that has occurred from your quiltmaking? What is an amusing experience that you've had? Helen recounts an amusing experience with her quilting bee. She says that they named a collaborative quilt hot flashes, because the whole group was experiencing them during a particular retreat. Log Cabin - quilt pattern ; quilting retreat Artistic collaboration ; Log cabin quilts 17 1871 Final Thoughts Is there something that you'd like to be documented for ever? Helen talks about the over all importance of quilting, including the importance of touching fabrics looking at threads, and relationships, which she says is a huge part of the art of quilting. fabric selection Quilts in art 17 Oral History Helen Kamphuis (HK): This is Helen Kamphuis. Today’s date is the 3rd of November. 12:09 pm. I’m conducting an interview with Helen Ridgway. Hello, for the quilters S.O.S., Save Our Stories at Project of the Alliance for American Quilters and am I allowed to call you by your first name, Helen? Helen Ridgway (HR): Please. HK: Helen and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Helen will tell you about the quilt you bought today. Could you please explain? HR: Well, what I want to talk about because my quilt that is in the book, The Lone Star Legacy , is a group quilt and this reminds me of that quilt also. I want to talk about our bee and how our group works together. This quilt is called “Fairy Frenzy” and it started as a quilt with five balloons and a big bow at the bottom. And since you’re looking at it, you can tell it looks nothing like that with a big bow at the bottom. HK: No, No. [laughing.] What part is the balloons? [more laughter.] HR: Well we were all charged to make a balloon and there are 8 of us in the group. We came up with the idea just by drawing out ideas and one of our members drafted this pattern with these balloons. We thought that would be cute and we’ve always made a quilt together. And we’ve been together about ten years. We go on a retreat every year for four days in a B&amp ; B,. and we kind of come up with ideas to start our quilt together. So we all went home from this meeting and we were all supposed to make something that looked like a balloon. So we were just doing little ideas. I remember well that I only did a quarter of mine because I thought, ‘Gosh, that got pretty big,’ and it was going to be round. I was going to have four of those. They call me the anal person in our group, because I like good points and everything to work together. Some of them are way more artsy than I am. I consider myself a traditional quilter. I did that one with all those pieces at the top. I’m exhausted by the time I get around to this, but I brought mine and a couple of people made little ones that you see down here. They really do look like small balloons. Then I think the rest of these were made later. When we brought them together we thought, ‘I think those look like flowers, not like balloons. Why don’t we make a garden?’ So we scrapped the bow, we scrapped the balloons, and we decided to make a garden. We still didn’t have fairies in it at all but we all started using--I hate to tell you--ugly fabrics that we had in our stash and we put all these fabrics that we thought were ugly fabrics together and made all of these flowers. They are all paper pieced and then appliquéd onto the background. We had a hard time coming up with the background and somebody had this green batik in their stash so they gave it to us so we did that and then we started putting stems on the flowers, we started fraying some of them, we thought that was cute. We turned one of them upside over at the leaves, and then we decided what were we going to do with the bottom of this thing. Then somebody said, ‘If it’s a garden, we probably need some grass.’ So we took all of those greens and we put fusible on the back of them and then we kind of swirled them and put all of that green there. We still didn’t have a way to stop it. So we must have worked on ending this quilt at the bottom for three months. We did different things, we came up with different fabrics, we came up with different ideas, and then you see this one right here is something that I had and it was definitely old fabric. We cut out pieces of it and put it down there. Then we decided to scallop the bottom and then we decided to put all of this in there. HK: What made you choose the ladybugs? HR: [laughing.] Then somebody said, ‘I think I see the fairies poking out. I think that would be a good idea.’ So she handpainted all of these fairy faces. Then we made the wings and we put those behind the grass. And then she put this one flying off the edge over there. And then somebody said, ‘Well I have these ladybugs and we put some of those on there. Then somebody said, ‘I think we should do these mirrors, and we put those on there. It was just a conglomeration that took us about 18 months to make. HK: Why do you choose to work together? HR: Because we love each other. We’ve been together all this time. We meet once a month and then we go on this retreat once a year. We’ve just had a bond, you know? There were eight of us originally, and then one of our members died. And then we got another one, somebody in her place. And then we’ve had two other members move away. And we’ve gotten new people over the years. But we all seem to get along, we all have different talents, strengths. We decided to put rickrack on. We thought that was cute. And that’s how we have done quilts together over the years. HK: And you always choose to do projects together or do you also make your own? HR: We definitely all make our own quilts. And we bring them to our meetings for people to help us and to critique and say ,‘You know, you might want to do this,’ or ‘That’s how to do this.’ HK: You just mentioned that you’re a traditional quilter, this is a little bit more arty. How is that for you to be working in two kind of different areas? HR: Well, it’s really fun and exciting. They have stretched me to be more artsy. I don’t think that I have any talent, I can just make seams correctly. I never sewed on a sewing machine in my life until quilting. I was a hand quilter, I mean a hand sewer. I made all of my daughters clothes by hand, I did the rolling and whipping and all that French sewing by hand I also did counted cross stitch. I did needlepoint, I’m a knitter. I did all of that. But when we retired and moved to the Texas old country, I told my husband that I always wanted to quilt. I saw a little thing in the newspaper about quilting and I went and these women just took me under their arms and taught me everything. HK: What made you go for that transition? I mean this is a lot more artsy, you were making a bit more traditional things but that also can be used-children’s clothes, and now you’re doing very art kind of projects. HR: Well but I’m still doing traditional on my own. However, I did do one small art quilt that got accepted into Houston. It blew me away. HK: Wow. HR: I’m thinking how in the world did this happen? I just did it and then it happened. And so, that happens. But if I were choosing something to make, I would go for either machine embroidery or traditional. HK: How did you enter those quilts? Was it your idea to enter the quilts or was it a group decision? How did you decide? HR: Our group decides whether or not to enter it. At the end of making a quilt, we enter it in our quilt show, and then we draw names and then one person wins it. If you won one, you can’t win another one until everyone has won one and we’re back at the beginning again. We’ve all won one, so we can start over. HK: Congratulations. HR: And I have Hot Flashes the one that’s in Lone Star Legacy. HK: Okay, okay. So that one is yours? HR: And this one another friend owns. HK: Why are you interested in quiltmaking? What made you choose quiltmaking? HR: My grandmother was a quilter. I really loved being with her, she was a stabilizing agent in my life. When I was in the 8th grade, I was having some difficulty at home and so she got me to help her make a quilt so I cross-stitched a quilt. And then I quilted the whole thing with the punch and poke method, and I still have it. But of course I never ever quilted again, but I did make little cross-stitch things for my children. Then I just thought, I’m tired and my mother had died and that was what I had wanted to do. HK: And you did. [laughing.] HR: Yes I did. These women just surrounded me, carried me along. HK: You say that you are self-taught, and if I listen to you, it seems that you are also developing your techniques. How do you learn? HR: Well, I go to a lot of classes. Yes, I’m self-taught in that it came from within me, but I’ve taken classes and classes and classes all over. I take classes here in Houston, I’ve been coming here for about 15 years. I take classes in California, I take classes in Texas. Any excuse to travel, I take it. HK: What makes a great quilt according to you? [laughing.] HR: The precision of the piecing and the way it is pieced. Even in this artsy quilt, if these points were lopped off, that would not be a great quilt in my eyes. It needs to be precise, it needs to hang straight. It needs to not weigh a whole lot. But it needs to speak to me also ; the colors, the form, the way that it’s put together--they give a message. HK: And this is not a traditional quilt? The very bright colors in your other quilts, your own projects, what’s your inclination to what kind of fabrics you use and colors? HR: They all laugh because I love black and black and white. But I also like brights and batiks. So I do lot that combines all of that. And lime green is my favorite color. HK: Lots and lots of green in here. [laughing.] Why is quilt making important for you now? Because you chose to active as a quilter? HR: Right. My husband has been really ill since we moved to the country and was in a wheel chair for one year with many surgeries. Being able to quilt has been like my salvation. We built our home on a ranch and I didn’t sew or quilt at that point when we moved there. I joined the Guild in our town and started sewing on the dining room table - I didn’t even own a sewing machine. I borrowed my daughter’s sewing machine and finally I bought a sewing machine and my husband, after we had been there for a year wanted to add on a studio for me. I was just horrified because I thought if I do that, then I have to do it. It will become a job for me. I’ll have to do this. He talked me into it and we added on a studio off of our bedroom, and it’s just been wonderful. It’s just saved my life. The year that he was so sick, I made this silly quilt and I named it “She almost came undone” and used these crazy women who looked like their head was exploding. Quilting calms me and makes me happy and just puts a smile on my face. And my husband loves that. HK: I can imagine. It’s very important to have your own time when somebody is ill. If you tell somebody to become a quilt maker, what would be your emphasis? What would you tell them to go and quilt? HR: I would tell them that first of all to submerge themselves in the history of quilting and to see where it came from and how important it was not only in women’s lives but in men’s also. And to see what stories there are out there, and then to think about what their story is and how they want to be remembered for their quilts. HK: Now how would you like to be remembered for your quilts? HR: I think I would like to be remembered as someone who was generous and kind and wanted to share, not only my quilts but my love of quilting and my excitement for it. It just turns me on every day. I get so excited I can hardly stand it. HK: How many hours do you spend quilting? HR: The only problem with that is that I also travel a lot, 11 grandchildren, so I might go and visit my grandkids because none of them live where we are and I don’t want them to forget me. So of course I make them all quilts too. I can’t find time to stay in my room, but when I’m at home, I’m out there 4, 5, 8, 10 hours a day just depends on the day. I spend a lot of time out there. And right now I’m out there making a silk table runner that’s embroidered, we have an embroidering machine, for our daughter-in-law for Christmas. I’m just hoping that I’m going to get it finished. I’ve done five blocks and I have to do 44. Can’t believe that this is the first of November, I’ve got to hurry. [laughing.] HK: You do. Have you picked other people in your family to quilt? HR: Both of our oldest granddaughters have made quilts. One, the oldest one just got married and she made a quilt for her fiancé for Christmas last year and when she finished she said, ‘Never again.’ Now the second one is making a quilt for her fiancé and she loves it. I think I’ve infected the bug in her, and I’m really excited. I did make that granddaughter a quilt for her wedding and I made our daughter one also. I had everyone sign squares at the wedding. That was the back of the quilt. I did the top of my daughter’s called “Steps to the Altar,” it was very traditional. And then the top of this granddaughter’s was all machine embroidered appliqué. So it looked very traditional also, even though it’s done with the new methods. HK: You mentioned that you were in a quilt bee together, do you also go together to the quilt festivals? HR: Yes, there are three of us here together this time. Everybody, no four of us here together. HK: Which people have influenced you, which artists? HR: I have certainly been influenced by Carol Doak, I love paper piecing. In fact, I’ve taught paper piecing. I really enjoy that a whole lot. I’ve been influenced by Alex Anderson ; I’ve taken classes from her. I’ve been influenced by some art quilters, too. Esterita Austin is my absolute favorite and she is so different from me. And I just love her techniques and the painting, which I never thought I was a painter at all, and I’ve learned to paint on fabric. It’s amazing. I think those would be my top three. HK: Will you be incorporating those techniques maybe in your next quilt? HR: Maybe so. In fact, I’m doing one right now for my husband that’s totally not traditional. It’s an outhouse ; he wanted me to make him an outhouse. HK: I’m sorry I don’t know what an outhouse is. HR: An outhouse is a place you go to the bathroom, that’s a hole in the ground and it has a little wooden structure over it. HK: Okay, I understand now. I thought it was a technique [laughing.] HR: I have glued this whole outhouse, I have cut out strips of fabric and made them look like boards with different shadings and I have glued the whole thing down. Now I’m getting ready to quilt it down. Okay, so it’s totally out of my box because I didn’t like gluing when I was in kindergarten, and I’m not sure I like it now because it gets on my hands and I don’t like that. But I thought this would be a fun technique to try. I’m always up for trying something new. HK: Will you be showing other people this outhouse? HR: Oh yes. HK: Do you have your own website? HR: No. HK: How do you share your ideas? HR: With our bee and guild. We have about 250 members in our guild in town. And we have a great show and tell. HK: What are the biggest challenges confronting quilt makers today? HR: I think we are being taken seriously now, but I think it wasn’t being taken seriously. I think it was like the little old lady sitting around quilting and people didn’t really understand what a quilt was and how expensive it was to buy the fabric, how time consuming it is to make the quilt to dream up the idea, how it is an art. I think Kerry has done an amazing job letting the whole world know that quilting is important. I think the Japanese women have done an amazing job. I think there were some Australian quilters that are way top notch, seriously. I think that all of these people gathering together have made us be recognized in our field as artists. HK: It’s a sharing thing, is that what quilting is? HR: Yes. HK: How do you balance your time? You already described something that you spend a lot of time in your studio but you have other important things. HR: I do. I burned many a dinner because I would forget. I asked my husband for a timer for Christmas last year, an old fashioned timer. That’s how I’m balancing is with a timer. [laughing.] HK: I can image. What are your plans in the future with this quilt? HR: Well this quilt belongs to Linda so it hangs in her home. My quilt that’s in the booth belongs to me and it hangs at my house. HK: It hangs? HR: That’s the problem with my house because I have no walls. I mean it’s a real open plan and everything so it’s in my living room. But it looks great there too, it’s wonderful. But we did learn to make them not quite so big so they would hang on people’s walls, because mine is bigger than this even and it’s hard to hang something that size. But my friends wanted me to be sure to tell you that I have lots of quilt boxes with all of my quilts stacked in them because I just keep making them and I do give away a lot but I have a lot that I want to keep and so I just have them folded up in my little quilt boxes. HK: Do you have quilts for your bed for example? HR: I have quilts for my bed for every season. I made a huge Christmas quilt. We have a king sized bed and I love that. I have one that has stars on it. I also have another one that’s red and white that’s not Christmas. HK: What do you use for material to make your quilts? HR: They’re all cotton. I’m a traditionalist. HK: What do you think makes a great quilter? HR: I think we talked about that. HK: Did we? Then we’ll skip that. Do you use a design wall? HR: Yes, I do. In fact, I have two design walls in my studio. We used a design wall to make this quilt. You cannot do something like this without a design wall. HK: How do you, for example, when you are laying it out together, how do you go home and do your own thing? How do you manage to keep the ideas? HR: We take pictures when it’s on the design wall, then that helps you also see if something looks right. When you look through a photograph or a digital image, you can really see where something is out of place or you want something a little bit different. And I do that a lot, at home also. I’ll have stuff up and I’ll think it looks good, and then I’ll take a picture and go, ‘Oh, that’s not right.’ HK: You’re incorporating different technologies to improve your quilting? HR: Yes HK: What other things do you use to get it across, to experiment? HR: We do not try to make something and make sure it ends up in the quilt. You can make things and it won’t be in that quilt, it could be somewhere else. We also made a quilt together of a woman, we call it “Woman interrupted.” It was a Van Gogh painting. We couldn’t decided which one to paint because we brought together all of these different groups of painters and we voted on which one we were going to do. Then we chopped her up into eight pieces but not eight squares, and then we each went away and we could not talk to each other. We each made our piece however we wanted to. You could appliqué it, you could piece it, you could paint it. But you couldn’t talk to the people. Then we put it all back together. It was amazing, a couple of the people who were new to our bee, were traditional quilters. They panicked and said, ‘This will never work.’ I had half a hand and I painted my part, and then the other person with the other half of the hand painted hers. And it looked fine. HK: How do you handle that in a group? I mean if people want to have more structure-- HR: We just laugh at that and keep on going. [laughing.] You know, we are very passionate and care about each other. HK: Is it important that the number of people you have is eight? Would it work for you if you were becoming 10 members? HR: It wouldn’t work for us because the place we go on our retreat can only hold eight people. HK: So it’s restricted by the retreat? HR: Yes, and getting more than eight working in a home is hard. We also makes lots of charity quilts together and do lots of fun things. HK: What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or a special collection? HR: Maybe someone who has won top prizes, and by that I mean the big prizes in shows. I think one of those quilts would be appropriate for a museum. HK: You wouldn’t consider this quilt that you brought today good enough for a special museum collection? HR: Well, good enough? Probably, yes. I think we did an excellent job. I think our quilting is wonderful, our design is great. I think it makes you smile when you look at it. But, I really want our art to be recognized and I think the people that are making the quilts that are winning the 5,000 or 10,000 prizes are incredible. So that’s the kind of quilt I think belongs in a museum. HK: What’s the function of the museum for you as a quilt maker? HR: To go and to see the top of the top quilts. HK: When you were invited to the interview, what did you want to bring across during the interview? HR: I really wanted to get across the joy and the camaraderie of working in the group because I really wanted to stress not just the individual quilt maker but how important it is to have a group and to be able to work together. HK: Besides sharing the ideas, how do you work as a group? How does that function? What’s important? HR: It’s important that we listen to each other and that we care about each other beyond the quilting. As I said, we have had one member die and it was very hard on all of us. We have had people that have been ill, husbands that have been ill, and we just share so much more than just the quilting. But, it’s really important that we share new ideas, new techniques, new quilting gadgets, so that someone can come in and say, ‘Oh look at what I found,’ and then we go running around to get it. One of our members is an amazing appliquer - two of them are, actually. And some of us really aren’t handy appliquers at all. So, they’ve been teaching us and working with us and doing things like that. Then somebody will go to a class and they will learn something and teach that technique to us, not in a formal way but sitting around saying, ‘You want to learn how to do this?’ and we’ll say, ‘Yes,’ and we’ll bring scraps and learn how to do it or whatever it is. HK: You said that some people left the group or moved away. How do you find the right person to join the group? HR: It’s very difficult, because we are very close. When Marilynn died, we had a really close friend in our guild and we asked her to come the next year. And then when we had two members move away, we waited a long time before we asked somebody. And we did, and when she went on retreat with us that year, she said, ‘Now I know that I am on probation here,’ and we laughed. But it’s worked out fine, we’ve been very fortunate. HK: I can imagine that it’s always a little difficult to get a new member. HR: Right, it is. HK: You said that you collect and sell quilts. HR: No, I don’t sell, but I do collect. I’m sorry. HK: That’s okay. HR: I don’t sell my quilts but I do collect quilts. But I collect my quilts, my friends quilts and I love antique quilts. I have several that were my grandmothers and they are very important to me. I love antique quilts and I love old tops. I have a whole bedroom that’s got antique quilts and antique tops just all over the room. HK: That sounds great. [announcement over loudspeaker.] HK: What is an amusing experience that you’ve had? HR: You know, I tried and tried to think of one but the only amusing experience I can think of is when we were making “Hot flashes,” it’s a Log Cabin quilt. We were all working together on the retreat ; we made the whole thing in five days that top. We were going to name it “Fire cracker” or “Fireworks,” and we have ceiling fans above the table where we work in this B&amp ; B. And somebody would say, ‘Turn the fan on,’ and somebody else would say, ‘I’m burning up, turn the air conditioner on,’ and we go in January so it was chilly. Somebody kept saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m have hot flashes.’ We decided to name the quilt “Hot Flashes” because we were all having hot flashes, so that’s what we named it. [laughing.] HK: Great explanation of the name. I’m going to slowly end the interview, is there something that you’d like to documented forever and ever? [laughing.] HR: No, I can’t think of anything except that quiltmaking is so important. The touching of the fabric, the looking at the threads, the relationships that you build with other people in your groups, in the world. I’ve met women from all over the world. We met a woman from England here about five years ago and she ended up coming back and staying with us. You just form relationships through this art, and it is an art. HK: So your message is quilting is sharing? HR: That’s right. The whole thing is relationships. HK: I think this is a nice end. I’d like to thank you Helen for allowing me to interview you today and for the Quilters SOS, Save Our Stories, and Oral History Project. Our interview concludes 9:44. Thank you. HR: Thank you. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Mary Persyn Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-006 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Helen Ridgway http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/572ccd621f13029101dab5becdbf92d2.JPG 3217e7604fe6268fd1db0c7e7e4ac7cc http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/0b2646a7683a3b54a13cc310626a60fa.JPG b0572f84ff4d2ef60d0638397afa1458 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jane Davis Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed EuJane Taylor OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-007Taylor.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 EuJane Taylor TX77010-007Taylor Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance EuJane Taylor Jane Davis 1:|16(6)|26(10)|42(10)|59(1)|73(4)|87(4)|106(8)|130(6)|141(1)|153(4)|163(12)|172(13)|189(8)|203(11)|218(7)|240(4)|252(14)|271(5)|287(10)|300(9)|324(11)|334(8)|347(15)|365(10)|377(1)|392(8)|404(9)|420(2)|437(12)|451(14)|469(13)|486(6)|504(8)|514(5)|533(6)|553(7) 0 http://quiltalliance.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-007Taylor.mp3 Other audio 6 Introduction This is Jane Davis, today's date is November 3rd, it's 9:17 in the morning, and I'm conducting an interview with EuJane Taylor. The interviewer introduces herself and the interviewee, EuJane Taylor. International Quilt Festival ; Quilt Alliance 17 33 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. ; Will you tell me about the quilt you brought today? EuJane describes her touchstone quilt, which she says reflects her Christian religious values, and she says this is the case for all her show quilts. She goes on to discuss the various religious symbols in the quilt.She goes on to say that the quilt is intended for shows, and that it has won awards. applique ; Awards ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition Christian art and symbolism ; Inking (Printing) ; Paper work 17 196 Quilt Theme Do you use this theme in most of your quilts? EuJane explains that while her show quilts all carry a Christian theme, her &quot ; user&quot ; quilts, those she donates or gives as gifts, do not. Quilt Purpose - Charity ; Quilt Purpose - Gift or presentation ; Quilts as gifts Charity ; Christian art and symbolism 17 222 At what age did you start quiltmaking? When did you learn how to quilt? EuJane says that she learned to quilt from her grandmother as a child, and that her grandmother had a profound influence on her quilting and handwork practices. Fabric dyeing ; Generational quiltmaking ; Home sewing machine ; Machine piecing ; Scrap quilts Dyes and dyeing ; Grandparents ; Knitting ; Patchwork quilts ; Spinning ; Tatting ; Weaving 17 282 Favorite Genres of Handwork Of all these different genres that you're involved in, which is your favorite? EuJane says that she enjoys the many genres of quilting, because they allow her to express what she wants to express. Aesthetics ; Design process Quilts--Design 17 315 Passing on Quiltmaking Have you passed your love for quilting onto other people in your family? EuJane says that she passed quilting along to her daughter, in addition to the people she's influenced in her many years of teaching quilting. Generational quiltmaking ; Knowledge transfer ; quilt shop ; Teaching quiltmaking Joy of quilting ; Quilting shops 17 360 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? ; Do you belong to any quilt groups right now? EuJane says that although she volunteers for a quilting group, she is not very active in the quilting community and she stays connected mostly by reading published quilting materials. Published work - Patterns 17 393 What are your favorite techniques and materials? ; Obviously, the needle turn applique is probably your favorite? EuJane talks about her process of free-hand needle turn applique. Needle turn applique Appliqué 17 440 How do you feel about machine quilting vs. hand quilting? What about long-arm quilting? ; Do you still do hand-quilting? EuJane says that she no longer handquiilts due to health problems. Hand quilting ; Long arm quilting 17 479 Extending Traditional Quilting What direction do you foresee quilting going in the future? EuJane discusses her concern for certain modern quiltmaking practices that she says do not respect the textiles. She prefers to use technology to advance traditional practices. Modern quiltmaking ; Quilt preservation 17 623 Published Quilt Tell me about the quilt that is in the book. EuJane discusses the quilt she created for a contest in 1992, which had a theme of American exploration. Published work - Quilts Quilt book 17 776 Do you use a design wall? If so, in what way/how does that enhance your creative process? If not, how do you go about designing your quilts? ; Do you use a design wall? Eujane says that she does not have a design wall in her home, but that she uses a wall at the church where she volunteers for that purpose. Design Wall 17 800 What do you think makes a great quilt? ; What do you think makes a great quilt? EuJane discusses what she believes to be a great quilt. She says that great quilts are aesthetically pleasing, display good craftsmanship, and have a message. Aesthetics Workmanship 17 868 Number of Quilts Made Through the years you've obviously made a lot of quilts, do you have any idea how many you may have made? EuJane says that she imagines she has completed hundreds of quilts in her lifetime, although she does not know the exact number. Quilt Purpose - Charity ; Quilt Purpose - Comfort ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration ; Quilts as gifts Charity 17 925 Influences in Quilts Can you think of people who've been an inspiration to you in your quilting? EuJane lists the people and things that have inspired her quiltmaking. She mentions her grandmother, as well as Christianity, nature, a quilter named Kerry from Quilters Inc., in addition to other people and things she does not know. Inspiration in art ; Nature in art 17 1003 User Quilt Styles When you make your user quilts, what are the styles mostly? EuJane says she uses various styles to create the quilts she gives as gifts. Needle turn applique ; Strip/string piecing Appliqué ; Strip quilting 17 1059 Whose works are you drawn to and why? ; Is there any particular quilt artist whose work your specifically drawn to? EuJane discusses the inspiration she draws from other quilters. particularly Nancy Crow and Carol Briar-Fallett, as well as 1850's era Christian quilters. Color theory ; Modern quiltmaking 17 1132 Fabric Stash Do you have a big stash? Eujane says that she has an abundant collection of fabric, and she goes on to say that apart from storing her own stash, her husband also has handwork hobbies. Fabric dyeing ; Fabric stash 17 1215 Quilt on Display You have one quilt in the exhibits here? EuJane says that she has a wedding anniversary quilt on display in the special exhibits section of the International Quilt Show. She says that she no longer competes in shows, because of her eye problems. Quilt Purpose - Exhibition Quilts--United States--Exhibitions 17 1257 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? ; What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? EuJane discusses the challenge of continuing the practice of quiltmaking in its traditional sense. She says that contemporary quiltmaking has branched into fiber arts, and is no longer the same artform as quiltmaking was. She goes on to discuss her definition of a quilt as something that comforts and also has an aesthetic aspect, but that many modern quilts do not meet that definition. Quilt Purpose - Comfort Fiberwork ; Textile crafts 17 1405 Quilts as Art Do you consider a quilt art? EuJane says that she believes quilts to be art. She discusses the role of amish quilts in the art of the 1920's and 1930's, and goes on to discuss quiltmaking as an art form done by both men and women. Amish quilts ; Gender in quiltmaking ; Military quilts Amish quilts ; Quilts in art 17 1440 Global Importance of Quilts Let's talk some more about how quilts fit into the world today. EuJane discusses social expression and social consciousness through modern quiltmaking. She says that quiltmaking is a way to engage with the problems of the world, and gives the example of church-affiliated charity efforts that incorporate quilting. Quilt Purpose - Charity Charity 17 1524 Fabric Choice What kind of fabrics do you like to work with? EuJane talks about her eclectic taste in fabrics. She says she particularly likes batik fabrics. Fabric - Batiks ; fabric selection Batik 17 1621 Teaching Quiltmaking Well, you do a lot of teaching? EuJane discusses her love for and experience in teaching quiltmaking. She says she has taught in various quilt shops, as well as in other venues. She goes on to discuss the techniques she enjoys teaching, including needle turn and reverse applique, dimensional applique, strip piecing, as well as a variety of other techniques. She delves into why she enjoys teaching needle turn applique, saying that she finds it to be the most organic applique technique. EuJane says that she has taught a number of students, but she doesn't know how many. Dimensional applique ; Knowledge transfer ; Needle turn applique ; quilt shop ; Reverse applique ; Strip/string piecing ; Teaching quiltmaking Quilting shops ; Strip quilting 17 1768 Whose works are you drawn to and why? ; When you go around in exhibits such as this, which quilts are you drawn to the most? EuJane discusses what she is drawn to in other peoples' quilts. She says that she enjoys those quilts that are aesthetically pleasing, that employ interesting color theory, and that have influences from various cultures. Aesthetics ; Color theory Quilts--India 17 1842 Color Trends Are you ever influenced by the color trends? EuJane talks about color trends over the years, and the cyclical nature of certain colors. She goes on to discuss similar trends with fabric choices. Color theory ; Fiber - Polyester ; Fiber - Silk 17 1942 Family Heirloom Quilts Do you own any quilts that your grandmother made? EuJane describes an antique quilt that she has that she believes was made by her grandmother as well as her great-grandmother. She says that although her great-grandmother pieced it, she believes her grandmother quilted it because of the techniques used. Antique quilts ; Generational quiltmaking ; Scrap quilts 17 1974 Eras of Quilts Are there any particular eras of quilts, do you enjoy using specific fabrics like that? EuJane says that she makes quilts that reflect techniques from various eras. She goes on to say that when she uses fabric from a certain time period, she tries to use techniques from that period as well. Quilts--United States--History 17 2049 Final Thoughts We're nearing the end of our time here, I wonder if there's something that we haven't talked about that you'd like to talk about? EuJane says that she finds preservation very important for the documentation of quiltmaking, and she says that when harsh dyeing techniques are employed or when quilts are cut up, that the documentation of that history is destroyed. Quilt documentation 17 2157 Conclusion Well I'd like to thank you, EuJane. The interviewer concludes the interview. 17 Oral History Jane Davis (JD): We see bars ; it’s all good, okay. This is Jane Davis. Today’s date is November 3rd ; it’s 9:17 AM. I am conducting an interview with you, Jane Taylor. EuJane Taylor (ET): Glad to meet you Jane. JD: Nice seeing you. We’re doing this for Quilter’s S.O.S.- Save Our Stories, a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. You, Jane and I, are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Will you tell me about the quilt you brought today? ET: Well this was an I.Q.A. [International Quilt Association.] finalist and made in 1995. My quilts reflect my values, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is number one in my life, and then my family, and then my country ; therefore, my quilts reflect that, the competition quilts, not the ones for the bed but the competition quilts all reflect my values. This one tells a story, this one has the tree of life in the center, a very old symbol of the light and knowledge of God. It has the bird of paradise and then it has the deceiver because we have the good and evil,We haveChrist, and then we have Satan. The shape of the pasture is self evident from the stories of the bible. The seasons of the Lord, surrounded by a grapevine, because “I am the vine,”John 15:3--” the truth and the life” in John 14:6. The seasons are depicted as the Lord commands around the cornucopias. It has much symbolism and I love the multiple genre while doing my own stories, it is not a depiction of a Baltimore [Maryland.] quilt but it uses much of the same techniques and I developed them before the books were written. The extensive inking and the extensive scherenschnitte and the dimensional appliqué were all things that I had been doing. JD: Go back and use that word again. ET: Which one? Scherenschnitte? Paper cutting, it’s just the German word for paper cutting. It’s the accepted word in the Baltimore [Maryland.] genre because it’s more expressive than paper cutting. JD: How do you use this quilt? ET: This is a show quilt. I made it for that, I made it for I.Q.A. [International Quilt Association.] competition and was very blessed in getting it in the show and it was a finalist and won an honorable mention. I showed about, oh, eight or nine quilts in various I.Q.A.s and this was my top winner, if you want to call it that. My major rational for showing was to get my message of Christ, you know this, there’s lots of Christian symbolism on the quilt, and there’s lots of scripture on the quilt and because of inking I had the freedom to say what I wanted to say and get it out in front of upwards of 60,000 viewers. You can’t get a much better audience than that. JD: That’s true. Do you use this theme in most of your quilts? ET: My user quilts, no, I make a lot of bed quilts and I call them user quilts and they’re given as gifts and I have been active in several volunteer organizations and we give like fifty a year to children for rescue and to give comfort to those who need, through a church. JD: When did you learn how to quilt? ET: I grew up with it in my genes. I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. We’ve been here for thirty years so you know as soon as we could we got to Texas. I mean [laughs.] but my grandmother was a quilter, her mother was a quilter. My grandmother lived with us and she taught me to sew on her Singer treadle sewing machine. One day when I asked too many questions, I must have been five or six years old, we went down to the chest of drawers where she kept the scraps and we got out a cardboard for a template and I drew around it and cut them all up and I got to go on the treadle sewing machine, and that was my first piecing experience. Since then, I took up weaving, spinning, dyeing, knitting, she also taught me to knit and crochet and tat. She was a wonderful inspiration, and really the model for what I’ve done in my life. JD: Of all these different genres that you’re involved in, which is your favorite? ET: Which is my favorite? That’s like asking you which of your quilts is your favorite or which of your children is your favorite, I mean, when I’m doing it, that’s my favorite, but quilting I always come back to because it allows me to express something that nothing else does. You get the aesthetics, the techniques, you get everything in one. I love the design process and that is probably my favorite part of quilting. JD: Have you passed your love for quilting on to other people in your family? ET: My daughter has done some of the contemporary mode, which is kind of interesting. I have passed it on to a lot of people through my teaching. I taught for several of the quilt shops, each quilt shop then closed and I’d move on to the next one, including Karey’s, Great Expectations and it’s been closed for several years now. I teach at a group, since my eyes are impaired, I teach as a volunteer at a church group and I’ve taught a lot of them, in fact one of my students has a quilt in the special exhibits, hanging right up there and I said, ‘Yes.’ When your students start to surpass you I think that’s the greatest joy [laughs.] JD: Do you belong to any quilt groups right now? ET: Well just as a volunteer. I no longer am really active, I don’t drive at night, and I stick pretty close to home and I enjoy most of all teaching, I get more out of books than I do anything else. I stay up with the quilt world partially through publications and of course the internet is an invaluable source, we’re all connected internationally these days. JD: Isn’t it wonderful? ET: It is indeed. JD: Obviously the needle turn appliqué is probably your favorite technique? ET: Absolutely and it is the only thing I do pretty much by hand now except knit and do baskets and tat. But yes, I have always done it. I like the organic approach. I simply cut a piece out freehand and pin it down and I proceed to do the appliqué and so I don’t really follow patterns. I don’t draw it out ; it’s whatever has let itself into my mind’s eye that I then express myself with this freedom. Yes it’s largely freehand pattern-less appliqué. JD: I see you’ve handquilted this also. Do you still do handquilting? ET: It’s a choice. How many things can one do with hands? I just had my 69th birthday and I’m so thankful that I can still see but I’ve had two cornea transplants and my hands would need surgery if I did much with them, so I stick to the needle turn appliqué and just love it. Then I have a Handy-Quilter, the midarm, which does my quilting for me, again freehand.. JD: Wonderful. ET: Which is great fun, you get to draw with a machine. It’s all freehand. JD: Again, that’s where technology-- ET: Absolutely. JD: Gives us a hand-- ET: Absolutely. JD: What direction do you foresee quilting going in the future? ET: That’s the question that I hadn’t really seen. I have recently completed documenting Karey’s, the Corporate Collection of Quilts Incorporated, and my real love is bringing the traditional forward, not jumping into a contemporary quilt,, what I would call fiber arts, because they’re mixed media. I really would love to see, and I think we see by the winners of the show, again, it’s tradition driven a step forward as technology, as abilities, as the vision increases, we take traditional and we extend them into the future and that’s what I see as being the longest lasting. Some of the techniques used by quilters today, in the contemporary mode primarily, using the bonding, which is a temporary and no telling how many tens of years it’s going to last because it’s a self-destruct. What they call resist, not resist dye, when you remove color from, discharge dyeing, they put terribly strong chemicals which is an instant destruct for the textiles themselves. If they want their work to last for the next hundred years, they’re going to have to show respect for the materials, for the fibers themselves and they’re not doing that. Sorry, I have a soapbox [laughs.] and I get on that soapbox. Everyone who loves fiber does. If you understand fiber and how fragile it is, and so many things can destroy it, but why destroy it at the beginning. Sorry, another piece of my soapbox. JD: Well, we do want our things to last. ET: We’re doing it with our preservation techniques and with the techniques we have for keeping the age of it at bay, why there’s no reason it can’t last for 100 or 150 to 200 years. We have the technology in science to do it. JD: Tell me about the quilt that’s in the book. ET: That was an interesting situation because I entered the fabric store challenge. Back in the days where the House of Fabrics was a national quilt or fabric store that had offices in California, they’re no longer around, but , I saw the contest and having a huge stash at home I could not use was an interesting design challenge to me. How does one design with this limited number of items, fabrics available in the store. I cannot remember the theme of the contest, it was 1992, I do remember that because Columbus was prevalent in the historic influence. I saw in my mind, this eagle with Earth and the whole history of the United States in our exploration, that to me was the early theme of the United States, exploring first with the water and then with the air and having NASA here was also an inspiration. Anyway, I took the fabrics that were available and I used the panel of Ducks and I made an eagle out of him [laughs.] and I found a batik fabric, and it’s the world and various other, I tye-dyed it, I changed that material as much as possible that one could do out of the kitchen cabinet. The ribbons that formed the banners, was a printed ribbon so it would not make curves, there was no give in that so I had to make little pleats. Therefore every place I made a pleat I made a flower [laughs.]. That’s a great way to design something, by necessity. Then one morning I woke up realizing, of course that I had to ink Columbus, the whole story of Columbus and then NASA and the Wright brothers and all of the achievements that America has been so famous for in our search for exploration. Those fill in the area around the ribbon. JD: Well it’s a beautiful book. ET: Thank you, it is beautiful, Kerry does a marvelous job in gathering together the finest ,she has the contacts and knows everyone in quilting. JD: Do you use a design wall when you’re working? ET: I don’t have space for it [laughs.] JD: Again necessity, the function. ET: One of the places I volunteer at is a church, we meet in the gymnasium. They have a carpeted wall, yes. I can get things up and save them there, so that’s my design wall, it’s at the church [laughs.] JD: What do you think makes a great quilt? ET: Of course, the immediate appeal. One glance sets it up, whether it is outstanding or just ordinary, they separate there. Then you go into the imagery, the design itself, the creativity involved is number one as far as I’m concerned. Number two is workmanship, is it top drawer, is it a fine exhibit of what the quiltmaker can do. Number three does it say something, does it express what the quilter’s values are, does it express something the quiltmaker wants to say. That to me is very important and if it doesn’t have that first appeal, if it doesn’t have that workmanship and the design and the aesthetics about it, then that’s not a great quilt. That’s a user quilt, that’s a Christmas present for someone [laughs.] JD: Right. Through the years you’ve obviously made a lot of quilts, do you have any idea how many you may have made? ET: No because in one charity, we used to give away fifty quilts a year and I did all of the finishing and cutting for them, and so I was dealing with the elderly, and so no I have no idea. It’s in the hundreds, my walls are lined with them just in storage and so no, I have no idea. JD: I imagine everyone in your family has a quilt. ET: They keep warm. Every Christmas they have a new one [laughs.] JD: Awe that’s wonderful. ET: I make at least seven of them to give each Christmas and then belong to a group at church where we make prayer shawls and comfort quilts and if a person has a serious crisis in their family, why they usually get something handmade, to know that people are praying for them. JD: That’s wonderful. Can you think of people who have been an inspiration to you in your quilting? ET: Besides my grandmother? JD: Yes. ET: That’s really really hard. I mean, you can’t turn off your visual imagery, I would say that every visual image I’ve ever had is part of the inspiration and everyone that I see that is created within me. I can’t say just people, it is the imagery, when I walk out in nature this is inspiration, when I think of the Lord and the blessings this is inspiration. As far as a person, there have been people instrumental in my life. Karey Bresenham for one, she has brought together such a marvelous collection of quilts with the Quilts Incorporated Collection and having the wonderful task of documenting them I got to see them up-close and personal and I’d have to say every quilt spoke something of the maker, of the times, of the technology, that’s my source of inspiration. There’s a lot of faceless inspiration points out there that I’d have to say inspired me a great deal. JD: When you make your user quilts, what styles are you using mostly? Are they-- ET: Everything, I do most techniques, everything. The only thing I don’t do is use bonding [laughs.] I’m sorry, I do not use bonding. I do everything from strip piecing to you know if it’s a user quilt it’s for the bed, it’s to wear out, and so I do it however I think that person would enjoy it aesthetically, cuddle under it for warmth and comfort. You’re thinking about the person while you’re making the quilt and so every bit of every stitch is love. JD: Do you do your labor intensive needle turn work for these user quilts? ET: Sometimes they go as medallions [laughs.] Sometimes they get a little accent [laughs.] But no. JD: Well I can’t blame you for that. Is there any particular quilt artist who’s work you’re specifically drawn to? ET: [pause 4 seconds.] JD: We can come back to that one. ET: Well it’s so hard to say. Nancy Crow was so instrumental in bringing the traditional in to the contemporary. I think that that type of impetuous is important to me. The visual imagery of some of Carol Bryer Fallert’s work is, I love her color sense and I love the freedom in some of her quilts, some of them are very structured but some of them have a life force in them that really appeals to me. Quiltmakers today, I’d have to go back to the ladies of Baltimore [Maryland.] in 1854-55, and the work that they put into their quilts and the imagery that they put into their quilts and the freedom they used in the symbolism of Christianity and the interest of life around them.. Those speak more clearly to me. JD: Do you have a big stash? ET: Huge. JD: How do you store it? ET: All over the house [laughs.] The house has unfortunatelyfilled with my interests, and my husband has a lot of interests too. He does plank on frame model boats ; therefore, most of my quilts have boats in them, tall ships I should say. I don’t speak boat so [laughs.] He has his interest now that he’s retired, why, he gets to do that and so yes he has seen me go through from the spinning and dyeing to the weaving and all the equipment and I’ve gone through a lot of things, throwing pots and doing the glazing and even firing pots in our fireplace [laughs.] not a good scene. JD: You’ve obviously led a creative life. ET: I have a great supportive husband who, we were able to manage and he gave me the freedom to do, follow my muse, if one would say that, the inspiration that the Lord has given me. I’m actually a cellist, I’ve gone back to it, I was a music major when I met him, and we’ve been married for fifty years.Our fiftieth wedding anniversary quilt is in the special exhibits touring with the show.. [laughs.] JD: You have one quilt in the exhibits here? ET: Yes, my Fiftieth Anniversary. I exhibit now in the traditional treasures, anyway, in the special exhibits and because I no longer do the competitive, I like juried shows but not competitive ones. As I say, I’ve eye problems and I’m just thankful to see. JD: Well you’re enjoying the quilting to the best you can enjoy it now. ET: Absolutely, as long as the Lord’s got for me [laughs.] JD: Nothing takes the joy out of it does it? ET: That’s right. Well, there’s always something more to express. JD: That’s right. ET: Or someone else needs to say more. JD: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? ET: Saying true to the inspiration that our grandmothers started. I think that it’s really a separate category, a lot of the contemporary quilts with the mixed media, it is fiber arts. I think that the quilting itself is vibrant, it’s progressive, and it will go a long way into the future. We’ve just started exploring where the quilting can go in the traditional frame. The fiber arts combine so many things and it has brought formally trained quote “Artists” into it, which is a wonderful addition to, say, other things and to do other things, but are they quilts? Are they going to give comfort, can you cuddle with them on a cold winter day? JD: Well that’s the question, what is a quilt? ET: That’s right. That is the question. What is a quilt? For me a quilt is something that can give comfort, express love, and provide some source of inspiration, aesthetic comfort, a means of expressing oneself, but it always has to have that three layers of backing, batting, top layer, quilted in some way, it has to stay together with techniques that are going to last for years. It can’t be a throw away, I mean some mterials are an instant destruct, I mean the minute you handle it, it shatters, is that a quilt? I’d like to see that on a bed. Quite frankly, I’m sorry I’m on my second soap box here. JD: But that’s what’s interesting. I mean we are interested in your input on this. ET: The traditional values of quilting are not only to please people’s eyes but to keep them warm physically. It warms the heart to see a beautiful quilt. The other’s are wonderful social statements. JD: Yes. ET: But that’s what they are, fiber arts. JD: Do you consider a quilt art? ET: Yes, absolutely. And it has been accepted in major museums as art. Yes finally. The Amish quilts were the source of inspiration for the hard edge graphics of the twenty’s and thirty’s. I mean, how much more accepted can you get? We are artists and we’ve always made art and not only women’s art, we are also a men’s art medium. There have been a lot of fine fine quilts made by men. A lot of the British army quilts were made by men while they were recuperating, they cut up uniforms and they made gorgeous quilts. JD: To continue, let’s talk some more about how quilts fit into the world today. ET: I think that social expression in some of the contemporary quilts is marvelous. They bring a lot of social consciousness that actually should be brought to the Earth. We as a church built and sponsored an orphanage in Kenya, we personally sponsor a child, I think very strongly that we have a social responsibility. The Lord has given a mandate to take care of the widows, the orphans, this is important to me. The world needs clean water, the world needs social awareness of vital issues. But quilting as an art can have a social statement as well. My values are in my quilts. You can see my statement in my quilts. It’s somewhat spoken without a word but with inking I can say the words too [laughs.] JD: Yes, and your quilts show a great deal of love. ET: That’s what life is all about. Love, God is love, love for all who believe in Him, and that’s what I try to express. ED: What kind of fabrics do you like to work with, speaking of the designs of the fabrics? ET: Everything. I am extremely eclectic in my taste. Everything from--, I love the marvelous Batiks of the Netherlands, a lot of them are sold in Indonesia, a lot of them are sold elsewhere, they absolutely fantastic pattern with explosions of color in the Vlisco fabrics and I have been blessed in traveling to the Netherlands. You see a Dutch flag down here, and that has a story. I was giving a class in dimensional appliqué to a class in the Netherlands and I, because I like to use actual flags on my quilts in small versions, I griped, yes I confess I griped to them that I couldn’t find any small Dutch flags because I wanted to put it on my next quilt. So I have a piece of Vlisco Batik forming the vase and I have their eagle, their rampant lion, and then one of the ladies sent me a flag in the mail, she had taken it off of her son’s army uniform, and told me to put it on a quilt, so that is a piece of Dutch army uniform [laughs.] JD: What a wonderful story. ET: And, she still makes the dimensional flowers I taught them to make and so we have a real feeling of kinship across the pond [laughs.] JD: Yes, well you do a lot of teaching. ET: I do a lot of teaching. I used to in the quilt shops, but I am one of those, I come from a long line of teachers and I love to impart of whatever knowledge, techniques, whatever aesthetics I can impart, my love for the Lord and for the art goes together, and yes I like to teach. JD: Do you teach specific techniques? Or what do you mostly teach? ET: My favorite is what I call the fun techniques. All the very esoteric, more needle turn, and reverse appliqué, you name it and then the dimensional appliqué. I will teach them anything from strip piecing as I do it, and I teach it [laughs.] So I tech beginners, I teach them how to draft a pattern, I teach them how to make their own templates and how to piece that pattern, and I teach them basics of course because it has all the elements that are best for learning to do needle turn appliqué, that’s what I teach. I tell them, “Go to somebody else who teaches the others.” There’s a hundred ways of doing appliqué, but I find it most organic and most satisfying to do needle turn because the fabric and I speak to each other while I put it down. JD: Now explain that, what do you mean by that? ET: You have a feeling for textiles, for fiber, and something intrinsic within the feeling of the tactile feeling, it goes to the brain and it speaks to you, as opposed to, I can’t, if I could explain it I would be a psychiatrist at least [laughs.] I’m a quilter. Actually I’m a home economist [laughs.] JD: Well obviously you’re a very good teacher. ET: Thank you. JD: How many people do you think you’ve taught through the years? ET: Again, I have no idea because, and I’m very bad with names. I don’t keep a record of students but its fun to see a student’s work up on the competition and you have the satisfaction of saying, “I had a little input to that,” you know, somehow I’ve passed on my love of quilting in, or whatever. That’s the joy of teaching. JD: When you come and go around in exhibits such as this, which quilts are you drawn to the most? ET: Ones that say something, the aesthetics, do they appeal to me, are there interesting techniques, do I have something to learn from that quilt, have they used color in a different way then I would normally thought? Because I have students from Japan, from India, and I get all of these aesthetics that are indigenous to those areas, and I really love the input from these other cultures. So, you play a guessing game of this, you’ll see a quilt that clearly is the normal palette of Japanese for instance, you can spot it down the road. Is it made by a Japanese from Japan or is it a Japanese-American? What influences have been there? You know it’s all of the influences that go into what makes a quilt, it’s an expression of everything that has gone into that person’s life, every image that they’ve ever seen has been an input into their quilting. JD: Are you ever influenced by the color trends? I mean were there years where you can only find these colors or those? ET: That’s why we want a stash isn’t it? JD: Yes it is. ET: That sort of evens out. Now, there are fabrics today available that we wouldn’t have dreamt of being available before. We have such a great great bouquet of cultures that are expressed in the fabrics that are made today. There are those favorites from the past that keep creeping up in the quilts because it was a special fabric that says exactly what you want it to say so you go back to it, you just keep picking at every little scrap. That’s the beauty of appliqué ; I find more appliqué pieces in waste baskets. We’re the recyclers ; nothing goes to waste [laughs.] JD: Do you ever use other fabrics besides cotton in your quilts? ET: Particularly for the dimensional appliqué because polyester adds it’s perkiness. It doesn’t wrinkle, it never fades down, it never really truly packs, it comes back. Frequently, if that’s the color, if that’s the fabric I want, I will use it. Silk? No because it’s too easily destroyed. JD: It’s fragile. ET: It’s very fragile. Temperature, humidity, everything affects silk and so I do not because I’m hoping that my quilts will be around in one hundred years. Those competition quilts, not the user quilts [laughs.] I want them used up. JD: And that’s a wonderful attitude. ET: Well, the Lord puts it into your heart to warm their bodies as well as their minds. JD: Do you own any quilts that your grandmother made? ET: Yes, and I have one that my great-grandmother made, a very old quilt, feathered stars, scrap quilt. I suspect my grandmother quilted it because she quilted it in a very usual way for hers, her quilting and the scallop boarder she liked to put on her quilts reflects so much of the twenty’s and thirty’s so I suspect that she quilted the quilt. It’s a generational quilt, which is wonderful, yes. JD: Are there any particular eras of quilts? For instance, when you look at quilts from the thirty’s and there’s particular fabrics that were used then, do you enjoy using specific fabrics like that? Like Civil War quilt fabrics, twenty’s thirty’s fabrics? ET: I love to. I love keeping the timeframe fairly consistent. I will stretch the imagery and the patterns to be more what I want to say, but if I’m using thirty’s fabrics, I try to stay within the thirty’s aesthetic, keep it consistent with the thirty’s, I try to keep the 1860s fabrics as 1860s and do scrap quilts from pretty much that time. I like to keep them consistent, because the styles fit the fabrics, and they speak with each other. But yes, as a matter of fact I’ve made quilts from all of the periods. My stash includes fabrics from all of the periods. I’ve said, “I’m eclectic” [laughs.] JD: We’re nearing the end of our time here, I wonder if there’s something that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to talk about? ET: I think I’ve said. JD: Do you have any other soap box things you’d like to mention? ET: [laughs.] No thank you, in fact, you could please erase some of them. I probably have offended someone and I did not mean offence, everyone has their own. I guess I’m prejudice, I’ve seen the effects of some of these things, this discharged dyeing, and the effects are drastic. To see an antique quilt that has been cleaned up with a strong stain remover, I just cry over it, because they’ve destroyed history, they’ve destroyed their family legacy. JD: What about cutter quilts? How do you feel about them? ET: If a quilt is totally beyond preservation, if it has no more documentation that can be taken out of it, no more history within that quilt, I guess, you know if it’s been the wrap for furniture, and eaten by rats and mice, and various human waste has been put on it, sometimes its time hs come, I guess. JD: It’s had its day. ET: It, yes, and I guess put into a picture frame and said, “This is great-grandmother’s quilt,” is better than throwing it in the trash. JD: Right. ET: But you know, they destroy a document, a document of our history. JD: Here we go. As a teacher-- ET: As a teacher, I try to stress some of these values and the legacy that they’re leaving and they’re giving their family, and the love that they express to the people who receive these quilts. JD: Well I’d like to thank you-- ET: Thank you very much Jane, it was a pleasure meeting you. JD: We’ve appreciated your allowing us to interview you here today and adding to the Quilters S.O.S.-Save Our Stories Oral History project. Our interview concluded at 10:54. ET: And please excuse anything that I said that was distasteful to anyone else, I did not mean to be, to step on toes. JD: But you haven’t, it’s a wonderful interview. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Karey Bresenhan, in honor of Jewel Pearce Patterson Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-007Taylor Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource EuJane Taylor http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/41c928163300340a2a34128c85383a13.jpg 06412d8df5b9488cb19600735decc647 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/dfe3636c635376e71012d8ac6994873c.jpg addc103940e17995788bbdd92883ea3c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Olga C McClaren Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Monna Kornman OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-038Kornman.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 Monna Kornman TX77010-038Kornman Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Monna Kornman Olga C McClaren 1:|21(3)|30(11)|48(12)|65(5)|77(3)|90(17)|103(9)|115(18)|130(6)|147(15)|167(2)|177(13)|189(14)|209(5)|220(13)|230(7)|241(12)|259(8)|273(9)|285(6)|299(2)|310(6)|320(1)|329(14)|346(2)|354(3)|367(5)|383(4)|396(6)|406(13)|419(3)|430(6)|446(7)|460(2)|469(12)|486(6)|498(2)|506(5)|527(6)|543(5)|565(10) 0 http://quiltalliance.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-038Kornman.mp3 Other audio 6 Introduction This is Olga C McClaren, today's date is November the 4th, 2011, and it is 4:30. I'm conducting an interview with Monna Kornman, for Quilter's SOS, Save Our Stories. Monna describes her touchstone quilt, which is a velvet crazy quilt. She talks about her inspiration for creating the quilt, and the awards it has won in the International Quilt Festival. Crazy quilts ; International Quilt Festival ; Velvet Quilts--United States--Exhibitions 17 182 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. Do you think people looking at this can tell anything about you? Monna says that her touchstone quilt suggests her love for handwork. She goes on to describe the types of handwork she employed in the quilt, particularly embroidery. Embroidery ; Fabric - Print ; Velvet Embroidery 17 234 How do you use this quilt? What do you do with this quilt in your home? Monna says that the primary purpose of her touchstone quilt is home decor. She also presents the quilt to school children on occasion, which she says is an exciting experience for them. Quilt Purpose - Gift or presentation ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration Education in art 17 301 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. I want to ask some questions now to get you to talk about yourself as a quilter, and about your interest in quilt-making. Can you tell me where that may have sprung from? Monna discusses her interest in quilting, which stemmed from her grandmother's professional quilting and seamstress work. Her quilting practice, she says, developed from her early sewing projects, and her high school quilt project, which she completed for her first child. She talks about the comfort of quilts, and organizations that make and donate quilts. She goes on to discuss the quilts that she has made for her family. Donating quilts ; Generational quiltmaking ; Patchwork quilts ; Quilt guild ; Quilt Purpose - Birth ; Quilt Purpose - Charity ; Quilt Purpose - Wedding Gifts ; Heirlooms ; Sewing 17 567 How many hours a week do you quilt? How long do you work on quilting every week or month? Monna discusses the time she spends on quilting. She says that she does not have a set schedule for her quilting, but that she works her projects often. She goes on to talk about quilts that she was working on at the time. Time management 17 679 Tell me if you have ever used quilts to get through a difficult time? Can you think of any times your quilting has gotten you through times in your life? Monna discusses quilting as a manner to relieve economic stress. She says that when she could not afford a store bought bedspread, she hand-made one from a sample book that her mother had. She goes on to discuss her practice of salvaging in quilting as a result of having been raised during the Great Depression. She says that apart from the sample book quilt, she also completed a number of quilts that her mother had started, many of which she says were patchwork quilts. Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering Depressions--1929 ; Quilts--United States--History 17 1029 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? Do you belong to any quilting groups? Monna lists the quilting groups to which she belongs. She discusses the importance of quilters' groups and guilds for maintaining public interest in quilting, as well as supporting charity organizations. She goes on to talk about the relationships that people have to their quilts, like her daughter, who was very attached to a childhood quilt. Quilt guild ; Quilt Purpose - Charity Children's quilts 17 1110 Personal Quilt Use I was going to ask you if you sleep under a quilt - can you tell us about it? Monna describes the quilt she sleeps under. She says the quilt was made by an ancestor of hers who was nearly blind, and goes on to talk about the style of the quilt. Antique quilts ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; Star quilts Cheesecloth ; Heirlooms ; Textile fabrics--Sample books 17 1168 What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking? What's one of your favorite things about the quilting process? Monna talks about her preferred quilting processes. She says that she prefers hand-piecing and quilting, although she says she also admires machine made works. Design process ; Hand piecing ; Hand quilting ; Machine piecing ; Machine quilting 17 1228 Describe your studio/the place that you create. Tell me about where you create your quilts. Monna describes her studio space. She says she uses a large room in her home, where she stores her tools and works. She talks about the sewing machines she uses as well. Home sewing machine ; Work or Studio space Artists' studios ; Quilts--Design ; Sewing machines 17 1484 What are your favorite techniques and materials? Are there any quilting techniques that you particularly favor? Monna talks about her favorite quilt-making techniques, which include needle-turn applique, embroidery, and hand piecing. Embroidery ; Hand piecing ; Learning quiltmaking ; Needle turn applique Appliqué ; Embroidery 17 1630 Have advances in technology influenced your work? If so, how? Has modern technology influenced your work in any way? Monna discusses the relationship between modern technology and her quilting practice. She explains that although she sees the good in technological advances that have been made, she herself does not employ them. She describes her disinterest in using computers or embroidery machines in her quilt-making. Embroidery machine ; Technology in quiltmaking Computers ; Embroidery, Machine 17 1701 Process Development Well, some things you've said have given me an idea of how you think about and design your quilts. It sounds like you're really influenced by the fabrics that you have. You talked about having the fabrics for an African quilt. How do you get an idea? Monna says that a large part of her process in creating a quilt is self-patterning. She says that she does not enjoy creating quilts from patterns, and that she prefers to develop her own ideas. Quilting--Patterns 17 1774 What do you think makes a great quilt? So, that kind of leads into: what do you think makes a great quilt? Monna talks about what she believes to be a great quilt. She discusses the importance of universal appeal in a great quilt. She goes on to say that a great quilt is attractive and does not have a political message. Art quilts 17 1845 What makes a great quiltmaker? What is your opinion of what makes a great quilt-maker? Monna explains what makes a great quiltmaker to her. She says that anyone can make a good quilt. She qualifies that by saying that there are instances when there are more expectations and specific requirements, like in competitions, but that outside of that, it is possible for anyone to complete a worthwhile quilt. Quilt Purpose - Challenge or contest entry ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition Art, Amateur ; Quilts--United States--Exhibitions 17 1920 Whose works are you drawn to and why? You've mentioned several quilters whose books you've bought ; are there any people you'd like to mention that you're drawn to? Monna talks about the quilters whose work she enjoys, particularly Paula Nadelstern and Kumiko Frydl. She goes on to say that she especially enjoys admiring the work of other quilters, but that she prefers not to judge or be opinionated about other people's quilts. Quilts--United States--Exhibitions 17 1999 Why is quiltmaking important to your life? Why is quilt-making important in your life? Monna talks about the importance of quilting in her life.She says that her daughter made a quilt when she was young, which Monna helped her with, and she said that was a treasure in her life. Generational quiltmaking 17 2078 In what ways do your quilts reflect your community or region? I'm wondering how you feel that your quilts not only reflect you, but do they reflect your environment, your community, or your region in some way? While Monna says she doesn't know how her quilts are a reflection of her region, she says that her quilting is largely dependent on the groups that she works with, where she teaches and learns from others in her community. She says that teaching. learning, and encouraging are important aspects of her quilt-making practice. Knowledge transfer ; Learning quiltmaking ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 2208 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? Have you ever thought about if there are any challenges that are facing we quilters today? Rather than viewing challenges to quilting, Monna describes how quilting is an escape from the challenges and turmoil of the world. She says that people are using quilting to respond and remedy some of the problems that we see in the modern world. 17 2288 Additional Anecdotes from Kornman Well, we're nearing the end, and I want us to leave time for you to tell some more stories, or anything else that you would like to say. Monna recounts her mother's thoughts on her quilting as a child, and she says her mother was very active, and wanted young Monna to be active as well, although Monna preferred to sit and embroider tea towels, she says. Embroidery 17 Oral History Olga C McClaren (OCM): This is Olga C McClaren. Today’s date is November the 4th, 2011 and it is 4:30. I’m conducting an interview with Monna Kornman for Quilters’ S.O.S. Save our Stories a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. Monna and I are at the International— Monna Kornman (MK): It’s not Mona, it’s Monna. OCM: Monna? MK: Like Donna. OCM: Like Donna, thank you for correcting me. This is Monna Kornman. MK: Kornman, Kornman. OCM: Korn— MK: K-O-R-N-M-A-N. OCM: Kornman, okay. Monna and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Let’s start Monna with this beautiful quilt you’ve brought. What can you tell me about it? MK: I was inspired to do a crazy quilt when my aunt left her house, she left a real old, old crazy quilt all wool, embroidered, and just in threads, but I was so fascinated with it that I wanted to make one. I started collecting velvet to make one and I’ve got velvet clothing and velvet from sample books and collected enough to make the quilt. Then just embellished it and I had more fun embroidering and collecting stuff to put on it and I put my signature on the corner and you know, in kind of traditional crazy quilt fashion. OCM: What special meaning does it have for you? MK: I just like to do that kind of thing. I got Judith Montano’s book which showed me kind of how to proceed and I took that as my instruction and went from there. Then I entered it in the quilt show here in I think it was ninety— OCM: Ninety— MK: 1997— OCM: 1997 I think— MK: I took second place on it and all my friends just didn’t, they just didn’t like it because I didn’t get first. I said, “You know, when you put something in a show, you put it in there for people to see,” and I don’t ever expect to get a blue ribbon or a red ribbon or anything, I just want to have people appreciate quilting. That’s my aim, is to let it grow. OCM: Do you think if people looking at this can tell anything about you? MK: Oh I don’t know. They might think I have a fetish [laughs.] I just like to do handwork. I love to embroider. A lot of those are just original designs, I just take the needle and thread and start. Some of them are kind of patterned to start with and I follow it, the design or pattern. A lot of the velvets were printed and I embroidered in the same areas, followed the print, and it came out real nice. It was fun to do. OCM: It’s just amazing. What do you do with this quilt in your home? MK: I just hang it. OCM: It is hanging. MK: I haven’t hung it in my new home yet. I have taken it and shared it with school children, they absolutely love it. I took it to my grandson’s daycare when he was about four, and the kids just went nuts, I almost couldn’t get it away from them. Then just yesterday I took it to my niece’s third grade class and talked to them about quilts and then I told them I was going to talk to them about a crazy quilt today and they asked, “Do you know what that id?” and none of them did. Then I said, “Well I’m going to show you one and we’re going to talk about crazy quilts and then you can come up and touch it,” and they were just so excited, I was just thrilled that they loved it so. It was fun. OCM: That’s wonderful. MK: Excuse me. OCM: I want to ask some questions now to get you to talk about yourself as a quilter, about your interest in quiltmaking. Can you tell me where that may have sprung from? MK: I’m 83 and I’ve been quilting about fifty years at least but I was inspired from about three years old. My grandmother was a quiltmaker, she was a professional seamstress and she made quilts all the time in her spare time and she had made beautiful quilts. She made one for me and gave it to me for a wedding present and it was all red and green patches, the design was all in red and green and I put it on my bed for several years. Finally, it got so I needed to launder it and I didn’t know any different and threw it in the washing machine, so it kind of was a sad thing and I couldn’t use it on my bed anymore so I put it away. Now I bring it out every Christmas and put it under my Christmas tree because it’s red and green. I still get to use it and it still gets to be very much a treasure to me. OCM: What age did you start quiltmaking? MK: I started sewing when I could barely walk. Threading a needle, trying to thread a needle from the time I was about three. I’ve always sewed doll clothes and made quilts when I was tiny, and I don’t know what age that was. Then when I was in high school I started a quilt of nine patches and collected old dress fabrics and everything to put in them. Finally then, about fourteen, fifteen years later, when I had a baby, I put the rest of it together and made a quilt for her. She passed away when she was twenty-three from a fall and I buried the quilt with her because it was so dear to her. That was one of the sad incidences but quilts are a comfort, quilts are comforting. The quilt guild in Dallas [Texas.] makes quilts all the time for children and they give them to the people at Vogel Alcove and they are where parents leave their children when they work and some people at Ronald McDonald, we make quilts for them when their parents have to come and stay and bring their kids to stay at the hospital, and they present them with a quilt. Those kind of things I think are very important, they’re comforting. OCM: Yes they are. MK: I made my grandson a baby quilt and then I, when he was about in junior high one Christmas, always gave him a great big box, usually a coat or jacket or something and this year he wanted to know what was in that package, “What was in that package?” I said, “You just have to wait and see,” and so I made a flannel three layer quilt with the fringe you know where you cut it and wash it, and it’s a good sized throw. When he opened the box, he was just absolutely amazed and he said, “For me?” and he won’t let it out of his sight hardly, he lays under it on the couch when he watches TV and everything. OCM: Still to this day? MK: Still to this day. Well he’s seventeen now. OCM: Oh. So your family has really been fortunate to— MK: They have been really supportive of me, yes. OCM: You furnish them with quilts? MK: Yes, I try. I try to make them for all my grandchildren then I got into the great-grandchildren and I’ve given up now [laughs.] I haven’t had time to make anymore. OCM: Maybe they can pass them on, the parents can. MK: Well, I’m hoping to the next, you know, I expect they will. OCM: How many, how long do you work on quilting, every week or month? MK: I just, sometimes I get a quilt I just don’t put down and sometimes I work from time to time. I don’t have any set schedule or anything. I don’t have, I don’t go much like I used to because, since I had my hip replacement. I just work when I feel like it. I have two quilts that are ready to finish. One is a hexagon quilt in the diamond shape all in Christmas fabric and it’s got each individual block is different, one has got ornaments in the block, they’re all fussy cut you know, and one’s got Santa Clauses, one’s got angel, and one’s got houses, one’s got trees, and it’s a big quilt and it’s about ready to quilt, I have to put the border on it and quilt it. OCM: Have you embroidered all of those designs? MK: No I didn’t embroider these. OCM: Okay, you didn’t. MK: Those are just Christmas fabrics. OCM: Just Christmas fabrics. MK: This is the only quilt that I have embroidered except my friendship group I was in charge of for a few years, and when I turned it over to somebody else, they all made me crazy quilt blocks at that time and they were little four inch blocks. So I put those together with a strip and then I embroidered the Texas Blue Bonnets in one corner between the quilts, the blocks I mean. OCM: You’ve mentioned one such experience, but can you think of any other times that your quilting has gotten you through times in your life? MK: Well not exactly gotten through times in my life, I suppose but it’s always been a comfort to me to be working on fabric. I guess you’d say I’m in love with fabric. When my children were little, I needed a new bedspread and I thought, “You know, I hate to go spend the money to buya huge bedspread for my bed,” and my mother had a big sample, several big sample books of polished cotton, and they were pretty good size and I said, “Are you going to do anything with those mother?” and she said, “No,” and I said, “Well why don’t you give them to me and I’ll make a quilt.” I took all of those and cut them out, you know, took them out of the book and cut them to size and made, just put them together. Then there were solid colors to go with them and I took all the solids and cut them into little strips and put little rail fence all the way around the outside of it. Then I quilted it in long stitch so I could get it done in a hurry and I put cheese cloth on the back so it was really light. I kept that quilt for years, then when I decided I’d get rid of it I said, my mother said, “Well, what are you going to do with it?” and I said, “Well, I don’t know you can have it if you want it.” So she took it home with her and she took it to an antique dealer and sold it [laughs.] I guess they paid her pretty good for it. OCM: That is an amusing story. MK: Well quilt stories are interesting, aren’t they? [laughs.] OCM: They are. This kind of reminds me of one of the things that a lot of quilters talk about is how our quilting compares to people, women, you know, hundred, two-hundred or so years ago and you are doing the same thing they did— MK: That’s sort of the same that they had— OCM: By using what you had. MK: Right. I was always taught to do that. I was born during the depression, so I was always told, taught to make the most of what you had. That came by me naturally. The other thing that I just did recently was my mother started to quilt. My mother was never really a quilter, m grandmother was the quilter, but mother started several. I finished two of hers, one was a Springtime in the Rockies that she was making when I was just a little girl and it was beautiful colors and I just could resist to use like red and green and kind of an orange and it was a kind of a fan pattern, it’s called Springtime in the Rockies, the pattern that came out in the Kansas City Star, and that was when they were, you know sending out patterns with the newspaper. So mother started it and she had in her drawer and in her house for years, and about twenty years ago I said, “Mother would you please finish that quilt, because I just love that quilt.” She decided that she’d hurry it up, so it’s got some little triangles between everything, she had decided to do those on the sewing machine and they didn’t come out very well [laughs.] so I said, “Well just give it to me and I’ll finish it.” I took all the fabric that she had and all the pieces that she had done and I took all of those machine stitched stuff apart, I went to a retreat and I just about got it done in that retreat. I did that all over and finished the quilt, and put it in the Dallas [Texas.] show and it won a blue ribbon [laughs.] Then I put it in the Paducah [Kentucky.] show ; I don’t remember I think it got an honorable mention or something there. I still have it. This year, the one that she started those hexagons when I was about, 1930 I guess I was just a baby. She got it, she got the quilt finished to the point where she didn’t know what to do with the edges and so she just put it away and never did any more to it. She died a couple years ago, she was 101, she never had finished that quilt and so I took it this summer and I finished it out with the red that was from the, you know they copied the colors now from the old quilts, and I took the reds that were from because there was red here and there in some of the prints. They were prints from my grandmother’s dresses and from my aunt’s dresses and some of them my baby dresses when I was a child, and all these memories of the family and so I finished all of those edges. But the fabrics were so fragile compared to what we have today, and the edges were a little bit more secure than the centers and I worked on it so long and I thought, “Well, I don’t think I want to quilt this,” so a friend of my mine’s quilting it for me now and she says she’ll get done in time for me to put it in the Dallas [Texas.] show because I don’t want to put it in the show for a prize, but I want to put it in the show because it demonstrates where quilts, how they develop and where we are with quilts today and just let people sit and compare you know. OCM: The history. MK: It’ll be interesting. OCM: When you mentioned the retreat you went to, do you belong to any quilting groups? MK: I belong to the Dallas [Texas.] Quilters’ Guild and the AQS and IQA. OCM: How do you feel that these are nourishing to your quilting? MK: I think they’re very important because I think they prolong the interest in quilts a lot. I know people that don’t know how much good they do, but we have all the charities that we you know, take care of too. A quilt is the most comforting thing in the world, they’re like a teddy bear to a kid, usually they’ll never let them go. I mean, my daughter’s quilts, she would, she was in college and I loaned the quilt to a friend’s baby one night when they came over and it was snowing, it was in Minnesota, and when she came home that night she said, “Where’s my quilt?” and I said, “Oh I let so-and-so take it home,” “Mother, you got to get that quilt back.” I did. OCM: She loved it. MK: She just wouldn’t, it was comfort to her. I even have quilts that I’m fond of and I sleep under one of the antique quilts that I’ve got. OCM: I was going to ask you if you sleep under a quilt. Tell us about it. MK: It was pieced by one of my ancestors, my aunt, my mother’s oldest sister who was quite old when I got it, told me that it had been pieced by a cousin of hers who was nearly blind and the colors were, it was a Lone Star quilt and the colors were in the right places but it had been washed and the pinks or reds had run and so now the whole quilt is kind of pink, but it’s still in good shape and the fabrics are still good. It feels so good to sleep under because we just in Texas throw a quilt over once and a while when it’s chilly. OCM: What’s one of your favorite things about quilting, the quilting process? MK: I just like the creative process. I like the design work and I like the, I don’t like to do like stars, that’s not my favorite thing. I like to do mostly traditional looking things, things that, but I want to add a little twist to something artistic to it if I can, like the Christmas quilt with individual cutting, I like to do that. I guess I like piecing, hand piecing, I don’t like sewing machine work, and I don’t like to quilt on the sewing machine and I don’t like machine quilting quilts when you hand do them. If you piece them by sewing machine then it’s fine to do them you know, with the machine. I think some machine quilting is excellent, it’s beautiful. I like all of it, I like all of it. OCM: Tell me about where you create your quilts? The room or the studio, or whatever you call it. MK: Right now I have a wonderful place to work. I always had a corner for my things and I’ve got three rooms of fabric I say, I’ve always gone to the shows and collected things. I’ve got a collection for an African quilt and I have a collection of feed sacks and I have a collection of silk and a collection of wool. I’ve got things ahead of me that I’ll never get done, but it’s fun. I told my friend who I came here with, I said, “Don’t let me feel any fabric, because I can’t resist it.” [laughs.] OCM: [laughs.] Too tempting. Well tell me about the space where you work. MK: I have now since we built our house, I have a room, a large room with high ceilings and I have an old table that was out of one of my husband’s old offices one of those old library tables with two little drawers which is wonderful for needles and all the little things that you need to store. I have also two sewing machines set up. I have a Bernina and a Pfaff and I have one of those little Singers that I think I’m not going to use anymore because I just take that on retreat. They have a retreat up to Lake Texoma [Oklahoma] from Dallas [Texas.] guild every year and I used to go to that all the time and drive and everything, never be stopped by anything. It was really lovely because my husband and I are very much independent, he’s a golfer and I’m a quilter. He does golf tournaments and he’s finally had to give up one that he did annually that was a big charity, because he can’t do it anymore, he had surgery last year. We are just rocking along in our new home out by Lake Ray Hubbard [Texas.] and I have this big room and then the bath is next to it with the laundry washer and drier in there with a sink and then the bath behind it, so it’s just a stool and the tub are separate you know, and the washer and drier and the big hutch is on one wall, and then for all the stuff I need to do. Then it’s got two closets in there that are stuffed with batting and lace and all that kind of thing and the two sewing machines and also another storage chest and a couch. When I take a nap during the days, which I do now often, I always go into my sewing room to sleep on that couch and then I have a little Chihuahua that always wants to be on my lap, so he’s a treasure. My husband goes to play golf so I can just do my own thing and then I have a big yard now and I can’t do my yard work anymore but we’ve got somebody to do all that now and I’ve got somebody come in the back and help which I never thought I’d ever do. OCM: Do you use a design wall? MK: No I don’t. I have a guest bed that I put everything on to look at. I actually put my quilts on the floor and stretch them when I baste them. I can’t get down there very well anymore. I think I’ve next what I’m going to have to have somebody baste. OCM: Sounds like it’s a wonderful space to work. MK: Oh it is, it’s just heavenly. It’s got windows all on one side. I have lots of windows in this house and its light and we just love it. OCM: Are there any quilting techniques that you particularly favor? MK: I use needle turn on appliqué and I’ve been doing that ever since I used to enter their contest for the block contest you know, and the first one I entered was an appliqué and I didn’t know how to do it, but I finally wound up just turning it under and sewing it down. Then I discovered later that that’s the best way to do it. Then I got Pat Campbell’s books and she uses needle turn and then I took one of her classes on the cruise I went on to the Caribbean. I learned quite a bit from her but a lot of it I figured out by myself, I’m just experimentation over time. She was a wonderful appliquér and fun person. Anyway, that was about that technique and then the embroidery and I guess hand piecing is what I enjoy most. I have awful trouble with the corners if I do it by machine, those sharp corners, I can do it but it’s tedious for me, I don’t enjoy it like I do just sitting down and working with my hands. OCM: Do you use a quilting frame? MK: I have used all kinds of quilting frames. When I was little my mother had the one from the ceiling and she had the women come in and quilt you know, for a day, and I played under the quilt. Then I got a quilting frame that sits on the floor and you roll it and that’s what I did the first quilt that I ever quilted on. Then I got hoops and I tried that, and I like that the best. Then I have one that’s on a frame with a hoop, and it’s got a magnifying light, and it’s great, but I really like to just take the hoop and go sit down on the couch, and work from that. If it spaced it really good, then that’s always fun to quilt from and I can sit there for hours and quilt. OCM: That’s great. Has modern technology influenced your work in any way? MK: Modern technology is wonderful, but I don’t think it’s for me. OCM: Okay. MK: I think a lot of people have just really progressed with all the things that they have to offer, but I don’t enjoy the idea of doing embroidery on the sewing machine, or doing design work on a computer, because I’d rather not sit in front of the computer, I’d rather just sit in a comfortable chair and daydream. I don’t like to look at the screen and work things out like an engineer. I like to play with it, but not on the computer. So I don’t use the computer. My husband does all that and he doesn’t use it much, but he uses it for what he needs and he’ll do anything for me that I need to do and I’ve got a son-in-law whose just a whiz and anything we can’t figure out or need to do, he’ll do it for us. That’s the way to go for me. I don’t even have one of those fancy phones, everybody’s got those fancy phones, but I can get along with just making a phone call. OCM: Now some things you said have given me an idea of how you think about and design your quilts, it sounds like you’re really influenced by the fabrics that you have. You talked about having the fabrics for an African quilt. How do you get an idea? MK: I do collect fabrics and that does help me influence the design because when you lay the fabrics out, then you start to you know, get ideas. The other thing is, I guess, I got this, I just like to have everything be a little bit off the beaten track ; I don’t like to use a pattern, it’s somebody else’s idea and I’d rather develop my own. I’d rather try to create something that’s a little different from what everybody else does, to me that’s the challenge. OCM: That kind of leads in to what do you think makes a great quilt? We’re all so different. MK: I think that a quilt, a really good quilt needs to have like, a universal appeal. I think it needs to be something that’s attractive, that’s pretty, that’s, it’s stimulating or it’s calming or it has an influence on your feelings. I think that sometimes we can go too deep. I think special exhibits can have things that are very strongly political but I don’t like to see that, it doesn’t generally appeal to everybody, it appeals only to a certain segment. A really great quilt to me would appeal to everybody, it’s like great art. OCM: Artistically powerful to you is? MK: Something that everybody appreciates, that everybody can enjoy. OCM: You are a great quiltmaker, what is your opinion about what makes a great quiltmaker? MK: Oh [laughs.] I think anybody that has a passion for it can make a quilt that is good enough, you know? It doesn’t have to be perfect. I think that detail is great for entry, entering in to competitions and I think it’s great for the fact that it will maybe endure longer, but sometimes it’s not in the details, it’s in the impression it creates. They say sometimes don’t use raw edges ; there’s a place for raw edges. When I made this crazy quilt, they said all quilts had to have three layers, so I had to put batting in this in order to enter it. OCM: Even though the fabrics themselves were so heavy? MK: Right, right. But that was a rule. So if you’re going to enter something you have to follow the rules. OCM: You’ve mentioned several quilters whose books you have bought— MK: Oh yes. OCM: Are there any people you’d like to mention that you’re drawn to their work or influenced? MK: I love Paula Nedelstern’s work. I think she’s just fantastic. I think Kumiko Frydl has done some of the most stunning things I have ever seen and her work is just beautiful. So I admire a lot of other quilters, and I like to go through the shows and admire the other quilting and what is submitted. I would hate to judge them. I don’t like to, I don’t like to be too opinionated about judging, it’s hard and I never feel bad if I don’t win. Some people come crying, “Well I think I should have won,” and I said, “Well, there’s a lot of things entered into that. If you’re putting your quilt in the show to win, that’s the wrong reason.” OCM: Have you ever judged? MK: No. I don’t want to judge. OCM: [laughs.] Why, this may be a redundant question to you but maybe you’ll think of something else to say, why quiltmaking is important in your life? MK: I think that it has just been the answer to what I like to do. I worked all my life and retired from the communications industry and my daughter’s now working in the communications industry and she is very creative too, she loves to cook, I hate to cook, but she just loves it and she likes to cater, she loves giving parties but she’s very talented in all of her sewing things, She can make something just like that, she can do anything, but she made a quilt when she was in high school and I quilted it for her because she wasn’t adept to doing thins but stitching in and out, but the quilt was Bright Hopes and she picked out some pretty fabrics and pieced it herself. She’s a treasure for me. OCM: Oh yes. I’m wondering how you feel that your quilts not only reflect you, but do they reflect your environment, your community, or your region in any way? MK: I don’t know. I don’t know about that. I think they do reflect me and I think, I hope they’re a comfort to other people and I do quite a bit of helping other people when they have problems. We have a group that, a friendship group that meets every week, and I don’t always go now but I used to go religiously, from ten to four, which makes a really good timeout during the week. There’s also an appliqué group that’s coming from the same group now that meets once a month but that’s such a great influence to help people get started and to do better things and I’ve helped some people get started that are just doing great now. That’s such a good feelings, that they’re getting the same kind of joy from what they’re doing and feeling really worthwhile to do. OCM: So you are a teacher in a way? MK: In a way— OCM: Yeah. MK: I don’t teach publicly but I taught in the school room the other day and I was kind of shy about that, I’ve always been kind of shy, but you’d never know it now would you? Anyway, it’s a real joy to be considered among the top quilters, it’s just thrilling to me to be noticed for what you do, I think it’s encouraging to everybody and I’ve always loved encouragement or the people and what they’re doing because I think it’s so great to keep encouraging, because that gives you stimulation to keep going. I think that’s been such a help to me. OCM: Have you ever thought about if there are any challenges that are facing we quilters today? MK: I guess the most challenging I think that people have right now. I don’t know all over the world is in such a turmoil and I do think quilting is a wonderful escape and I think people are wanting to do things with quilts that will be a benefit to some of these crises. I’m not sure that it works, I think there’s so much unrest and I don’t think that we can resolve that, if we can help one person at a time, that’s about what I feel my job is to help one person at a time, where I’m given opportunities to help one person, you know as we go through life. I think you do more good than if you try to do some big thing. I guess the quilting enters into it sometimes. OCM: Well we’re nearing the end of this and I want us to leave time for you to tell some more stories or anything else that you would like to say. MK: The stories is what’s interesting, isn’t it? OCM: Yes. MK: I trying to think what I told the people today at the museum. I went in the door and they grabbed me and made me go over and answer questions about my quilt. I told them several stories but they just come to mind, you know. I can’t think of anything offhand. OCM: You can’t remember what you said? MK: Told you just about everything that’s interesting. I can’t think of anything more. OCM: You’ve had a long and interesting quilting life. MK: Oh I have. I’m thankful for that. I’ve enjoyed it. Sometimes I have felt t hat I’ve been selfish in retreating into quilting, but that’s just my personality and it think everybody’s entitled to their personality and I have quit feeling guilty about that. My mother used to always want me to be up and busy and doing and she had lots of energy and she cooked and she was president of AWP and she sold real estate and she was very flamboyant and she always wanted me to be up and busy, and I wasn’t like that and I think it’s alright. I think it’s alright, I think everybody is entitled to be themselves. OCM: And quilting just happened to fit. MK: It fit my personality. OCM: Your personality. MK: I would sit and embroider tea towels when I was little, and she said, “Well get up and do something.” [laughs.] That’s not necessarily the thing to do. Every child is different. OCM: There’s always something that’s different in different people’s minds. MK: Everybody’s different. That’s about all I can think of that anybody would be interested in, maybe not even all of that. OCM: Well, I’d like to thank Monna Kornman for allowing me to interview her today for the Quilters’ S.O.S. Save Our Stories oral history project. Our interview is concluded at 5:08. Thank you so much. MK: Thank you. OCM: And I’m sorry I pronounced your name incorrectly— MK: Oh that’s okay. OCM: As we began— MK: Everybody does that, and it doesn’t bother me anymore. OCM: Well thank you for telling us the correct pronunciation. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Karey Bresenhan, in honor of Jewel Pearce Patterson Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-038 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Monna Kornman http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/bbda3fda76357dd94bb93aaebf684467.jpg 0b2ca87dca2df384e5163d693494c2ca http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/8dc1def1baac138adfbf69a65a6ffae0.jpg 6856074e998bd21120b867f7fdcf4306 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Clarissa Cox Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Margaret (Peggy) Fetterhoff Interview Keyword awards hand quilting quilt International Quilt Festival OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-040Fetterhoff.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 Margaret (Peggy) Fetterhoff TX77010-040Fetterhoff Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance awards hand quilting quilt International Quilt Festival Margaret (Peggy) Fetterhoff Clarissa Cox TX77010-049Fetterhoff-1.mp3 1:|12(3)|27(11)|37(3)|51(11)|65(4)|79(10)|92(4)|107(6)|121(4)|140(10)|155(1)|168(3)|178(2)|187(10)|201(13)|215(4)|225(14)|236(13)|250(10)|261(2)|274(9)|286(13)|299(1)|311(4)|326(2)|339(5)|352(8)|365(11)|380(2) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-049Fetterhoff-1.mp3 Other audio 0 Interview Introduction 17 26 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. ; This is my latest quilt that has been traveling in competitions. It's called &quot ; Transitions,&quot ; and the reason it's called &quot ; Transition&quot ; is because I recently retired Cox introduces Fetterhoff and begins the interview by asking Fetterhoff about the quilt she has brought in. Fetterhoff talks about its method of creation and its success in shows. The quilt, called &quot ; Transitions&quot ; , symbolizes her retirement and the transition she's been experiencing from working to retiring. Awards ; Hand applique ; Hand quilting ; Machine quilting ; Quilt shows/exhibitions 42.637332, -71.326691 17 Lowell, Massachusetts http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-049_fetterhof_01.jpg Margaret (Peggy) Fetterhoff and &quot ; Transitions&quot ; 102 At what age did you start quiltmaking? ; What is your first quilt memory? ; From whom did you learn to quilt? ; Are there other quiltmakers among your family or friends? Please tell me about them. ; Well, I think because I have a basis in sewing. I have sewn since I was 12 years old. I used to sew all my own clothes. Fetterhoff talks about how she got into quilting and her inspirations. A book called Watercolor Quilts by Pat Margaret and Donna Slusser was her biggest inspiration. She talks about her first quilt she ever hand quilted which won an award for color. She and her mother made their first hand quilt in the 60's. Fetterhoff also says she has one of her grandmother's quilts, but was not taught by her because she lived very far away. Fetterhoff states she learned from books and took a John Flynn hand quilting class one time but a woman name Jan Thompson was who taught her the most Deedra Amstead ; Donna Slusser ; Pat Margaret ; Texas Lone Star Three ; Watercolor Quilts 40.793, -79.181 17 Plumville, PA http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-049_fetterhof_04.jpg Detail of &quot ; Transitions&quot ; 344 Do you use a design wall? If so, in what way/how does that enhance your creative process? If not, how do you go about designing your quilts? ; What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking? ; As I said, I just play with the fabrics on the wall, or I'll take some concept like diamonds. And this one has diamonds Fetterhoff talks about how she goes about designing her quilts. She doesn't use design wall, but rather just plays with fabrics on the walls and tries do do something original with every quilt. Fetterhoff emphasizes that she likes to see movement in a quilt. Her quilts reflect her engineering type background so her designs are often most complicated. She doesn't like boring designs or colors. color ; design ; quilt 17 465 How many hours a week do you quilt? ; Are there other quiltmakers among your family or friends? Please tell me about them. ; Well, when I was working full time, I used to spend, and I had a project like this. I'd spend maybe 3 hours at night and maybe 8 to 10 hours on the weekends Fetterhoff discusses how many hours she used to spend on her quilts. She no longer quilts as much anymore because of hand and back pains. She taught her daughter how to sew, who now works in a garment factory. The two of them have made a small project together. None of her 3 sons sew. Lone Star Three book 33.768, -118.203 17 Long Beach, California 562 Cox asks where Fetterhoff is from and if her current location has inspired her quilting No, I was born in Pennsylvania, little town called Gibsonia outside of Pittsburgh, but I grew up in Niagara Falls, New York Fetterhoff was born in Pennsylvania in a town called Gibsonia, but she grew up in Niagara Falls, New York. She's been residing in Houston since 1974, which has played a role in her inspirations for her quilts. Gibsonia ; Houston ; Jan Thompson ; New York ; Niagara Falls ; Pennsylvania ; Pittsburgh 40.629, -79.970 17 Gibsonia, Pennsylvania 628 What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy? ; For me, sometimes I get stuck on a concept and trying to figure out where I'm going to go with it, and when I do that, I just have to walk away from it Fetterhoff talks about how she sometimes gets stuck during the design process and how she dislikes that basted 17 675 Cox asks what kind of quilts Fetterhoff makes No, i have a quilt on my bed that I made when I first moved in the house. I have made a few quilts for my family Fetterhoff makes various types of quilts, not just ones for wall decoration. in 15 years she's made 25 quilts. She has made a couple for her children, which she has put a lot of thought and care into. Each son has received a quilt with design elements that reflect their lives. Dallas Cowboys ; Robert ; Stefano 17 782 What do you think makes a great quilt? ; I think there's a lot of great quilts, so when you say what do you think makes a great quilt, to me it's a combination of things. Fetterhoff believes that great quilts are a combination of original idea and great workmanship. She is fascinated by all the various quilting techniques, but dislikes anything with poor workmanship. She says her own quilts are contemporary with a traditional basis, but have a lot of an art quilt look to them. They are artistic, very contemporary, and very bright Art quilts ; Hand quilting ; Machine quilting 17 917 What is your first quilt memory? ; Well, that was the one that my mother and I made when I was in my 20s, and had little kids. And it was a--I don't know Fetterhoff's first quilt was the one she made with her mother in her 20's. It had a combination of fabrics because they're what maternity clothes are made of. It was a very traditional style Fiber - Polyester 17 981 Describe your studio/the place that you create. ; Do you use a design wall? If so, in what way/how does that enhance your creative process? If not, how do you go about designing your quilts? ; That came with this house, which I bought this house ten years ago, despite the fact that I have sewn since I was 12 Fetterhoff has a custom designed sewing machine station made of oak which her brothers and one son made. It's all custom designed in there and she also displays all the ribbons she's won in competitions. Her creative process comes from the fabric that she sees. It is her inspiration Home sewing machine ; Work or Studio space 17 1137 How does quiltmaking impact your family? ; I'll tell you this story ; this is my favorite story. When you have three sons, two of them are in Dalls, and all of three Fetterhoff's favorite story is when her quilt won best of show in Dallas, and up until that point, her sons didn't fully acknowledge how amazing her mother's work was. They just thought of her as someone who sews for a hobby, but after that day, they respected her quilts and were genuinely impressed Dallas 32.782, -96.793 17 1214 Tell me if you have ever used quilts to get through a difficult time? ; I think &quot ; Transitions&quot ; is actually. I like to work, for me to stop working has been difficult. In fact, I just went back and took a job for four months Quilting helped her during the time period in which she experienced &quot ; empty nest syndrome&quot ; after her children had left home. Her quilt &quot ; Transitions&quot ; , reflects the impacts of her retirement on her life El Paso ; Houston 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-049_fetterhof_05.jpg Portion of &quot ; Transitions&quot ; 1269 Which artists have influenced you? ; Oh, there's lots of people that I admire in this industry. Hollis Chatelain's work just, I think, is phenomenal There are quite a few quilters whose works Fetterhoff admires. She would like for her work to become so well known that people can recognize its her quilt just by looking at it. She feels that is a sign of true accomplishment, when you know that your work is really respected Caryl Bryer Faller ; Deirdre Amsden ; Hollis Chatelain ; Libby Lehman ; watercolor quilts 51.506, -0.144 17 London, United Kingdom 1357 What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life? ; Oh, I think all quilters are inspired by what went on in the past. My quilts are that way. There's a traditional block Log Cabin Fetterhoff says that all quilters are inspired by what has happened in their past. Quilts have had a very utilitarian function, to serving no purpose other than to be displayed for visual pleasure Center Diamond -- quilt pattern ; Log Cabin - quilt pattern ; Quilt Purpose - Utilitarian 17 1420 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? ; Right now, I'm a member of the Woodlands Area Quilt Guild. I'm a member of IQA, I'm a member of AQS, and i have a quilt in the National Quilt Museum Fetterhoff belongs to a variety of quilt groups American Quilter's Society (AQS) ; IQA ; National Quilt Museum (Paducah) ; Woodlands Area Quilt Guild 37.089, -88.596 17 National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky 1452 What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or special collection? ; Again, I'd start with technique. I want to see the quality of the workmanship in a quilt in a museum. I would like to think that Fetterhoff emphasizes that technique and workmanship is most important on what makes something museum worthy. It has to be evident that a lot of effort has been put into the creation of the quilt Art quilts 17 1495 Have advances in technology influenced your work? If so, how? ; Oh, I think so, yeah. And I'm always looking for new tools, new ideas. I have a huge collection of tools, rulers Fetterhoff is always looking for new tools and new ideas for her quiltmaking. She has a huge collection of tools, rulers, and anything she thinks is new and useful. She expresses a desire to be a machine quilter, however, she's not good at it yet. She believes that to be good at something, one needs good tools. Machine quilting ; piecing 17 1543 What are your favorite techniques and materials? ; I pretty much sew with cottons swift quilts. I love silk, and I do have a collection of silk to make quilts Fetterhoff has used a variety of materials to make her quilts including cotton, silk, polyester, and wool. She sticks to mostly cotton because of it's longevity and better handling Fiber - Cotton ; Fiber - Cotton or polyester blend ; Fiber - Silk ; Fiber - Wool ; Silk quilts 17 1591 Cox inquires about how Fetterhoff preserves her quilts To begin with, most of my quilts are competition quilts. They're not even washed, so they're kept on a bed Most of her quilts are competition quilts so they aren't washed. the ones that were made for the kids are washable. The ones that are made for competitions stay in her home and under her supervision Quilt competitions 17 1637 Tell me how you balance your time. ; Well, when i was in IT, I used to build computer networks. Then, I traveled quite a bit, and I laughingly would say that this was cheaper Hand quilting was a source of relaxation for Feterhoff, so even when she was in IT, she made time for quilting. Hand quilting also allows her to multi-task while she's watching television Hand quilting ; Machine quilting 17 1693 What do you think someone viewing your quilt might conclude about you? ; I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. It hink with art in general, that peole look at things and base it on their own beliefs Fetterhoff believes the interpretation of art is subjective to the viewer, so each individual can take away different things. She hopes that it's all good. 17 Oral History Clarissa Cox (CC): This is Clarissa Cox ; today&#039 ; s date is November 5th, 2011. It is 1:40 pm., and I&#039 ; m conducting an interview with Peggy Fetterhoff for Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S--Save Our Stories, a project of The Alliance for American Quilts. Peggy and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston [Texas.]. Peggy, can you tell me about the quilt you brought here today ? Margaret (Peggy) Fetterhoff: This is my latest quilt that has been traveling in competitions. It&#039 ; s called &quot ; Transitions,&quot ; and the reason it&#039 ; s called &quot ; Transition&quot ; is because I recently retired, only I didn&#039 ; t stay retired, because I don&#039 ; t deal with it very well [MF laughs.]. But, it&#039 ; s machine made, it&#039 ; s all hand quilted. I personally consider it some of my best work. It&#039 ; s won a Best of Show in Lowell, Massachusetts, a first place in Georgia. It&#039 ; s won two hand quilting awards in Vermont and Dallas [Texas.]. CC: Was there any particular inspiration for creating this quilt? MF: No. Like I said, I laughed at your question, &#039 ; Do you have a design wall?&#039 ; I had my upstairs--my son and my brother took the wall out of a couple of bedrooms, and I have a very large studio with three design walls, and my inspiration is fabric. So, I just start putting fabric on a design wall and move it around, and that&#039 ; s how I create designs. CC: How did you get started quilting? MF: Well, I think because I have a basis in sewing. I have sewn since I was 12 years old. I used to sew all my own clothes. I had a very professional wardrobe, doing suits out of old patterns, and then at some point, I have four children. And I raised them, put myself through college while they were growing up, got into IT, and once the children were grown, I needed something to do, too much time on my hands. So, I took up quilting. The book that probably inspired me the most was a book called Watercolor Quilts by Pat Margaret and Donna Slusser, and if you look at the book here, you&#039 ; ll see there&#039 ; s two watercolor quilts in the Texas Lone Star Three. Deedra Amstead from England was the one who started it, and that really inspired me because it was like putting a Monet painting together for me. So, when I do quilts, there&#039 ; s hundreds if not thousands of fabrics. I have lots of fabric, very small pieces. I usually don&#039 ; t buy more than say, a quarter to a third of a yard, and I have thousands of fabrics that I&#039 ; ve collected. I started in &#039 ; 95, the quilt that&#039 ; s in the book called &quot ; Floral Fantasma&quot ; was the first quilt I ever hand quilted, and I hung it in the show here, and they gave me a special award for it for color. So that was my first award, my first quilt, my first quilting show. And I said, this one is the latest one to be traveling, the &quot ; Transitions.&quot ; So I&#039 ; m still quilting and entering shows. CC: Did anybody in your family particularly inspire you to start sewing when you were 12? MF: Not really. My mother didn&#039 ; t sew that much, she didn&#039 ; t make clothes. But I do have a grandmother who was a quilter, but she didn&#039 ; t live anywhere near us. I think my mother and I, the original quilt that we made in the &#039 ; 60s. I made one, and my mother made one. And I still have my mother&#039 ; s, and it&#039 ; s sort of pink, and it has my maternity clothes in it, fabric from them. But I believe we sent those quilts to Plumville, Pennsylvania which was where a group of ladies quilted, and my grandmother was a member of that. I have one of her quilts, but most of her quilts are gone, but she used to do a lot of handwork, but she didn&#039 ; t teach it to me, so. And my mother wasn&#039 ; t a quilter. She wasn&#039 ; t a sewer. CC: So did you mostly learn from books? MF: Yeah. I&#039 ; m pretty much a book person so if I want to learn something, I pick up a book and teach myself. So, I&#039 ; ve taken a few classes over the years, but nothing--I took a John Flynn hand quilting class one time, but the lady who was with me, Jan Thompson, really taught me more than anybody else did. I met her in a quilt shop, she lived in my neighborhood. So, she probably taught me a little bit about hand quilting. That&#039 ; s it, not so much my mother. CC: So, you would say that&#039 ; s more of your friendships that helped you build technique rather than your family or--? MF: I think it&#039 ; s more my own inspiration. I&#039 ; m very much like I said, if I see something that I want to learn, I&#039 ; ll buy a book on it, and I tend to buy books that are different, not your standard quilting books. Because my quilts aren&#039 ; t standard, they&#039 ; re very unusual, very original. They have a traditional basis, but they look more like art quilts. CC: How do you decide what fabrics to use in a particular spot in the quilt? MF: As I said, I just play with the fabrics on the wall, or I&#039 ; ll take some concept like diamonds. And this one has diamonds, but I try to make things more complicated and then break them back down, so that I can do something different with them. To do the standard traditional quorts with just little blocks is kind of boring. I just try and find something original in it that I can do. CC: What&#039 ; s your favorite part about quilting ? MF: Probably the color, design, and the movement. It&#039 ; s very important to me to see movement in a quilt. And if you ever see somebody standing in front of my quilts, their hands will be going in the circular directions because the designs are relatively complex, and I have a very logical, mathematical type of mind as I work in IT. I&#039 ; m more of an engineering type of background, networks. And I think my quilts reflect that, so I may see a design, and I usually like the most complicated designs. I don&#039 ; t like the simplest ones, and it&#039 ; s just the way I look at it. And I like very vivid colors ; I don&#039 ; t usually deal in blasé or beigey, browny colors, that&#039 ; s not my thing [MF laughs.]. CC: Do you work with any textiles outside of quilts? Do you still sew ? MF: No, no. Once I gave up sewing my clothes and started with quilts, that&#039 ; s pretty much all I do. I used to crochet at one time, but I don&#039 ; t even do that. I haven&#039 ; t done that in years, so quilting is still pretty much-- if I&#039 ; m going to be working on sewing, I&#039 ; m going to be quilting. CC: How many hours per week would you say you spend quilting? MF: Well, when I was working full time, I used to spend, and I had a project like this. I&#039 ; d spend maybe 3 hours at night and maybe 8 to 10 hours on the weekends, in each Friday and Saturday. I&#039 ; m not as dedicated as that, like this quilt took five years because I wasn&#039 ; t that dedicated. The two quilts that are in the Lone Star Three book, I did the one quilt in 18 months and the other one in 2 years. And that&#039 ; s a lot of work. I don&#039 ; t quilt that much probably anymore ; it bothers my hands, my back. So I don&#039 ; t spend as much time quilting as I used to. CC: So, have you gotten any of your family members to start sewing and quilting? MF: Well, my daughter. I taught her to sew when she was quite young. She actually works in the garment industry, she&#039 ; s in production and accessories. In fact, she just got a job in a uniform company here in Houston, and there aren&#039 ; t very many manufacturing companies here in Houston, and she&#039 ; s thinking about coming back to Houston. Right now, she&#039 ; s in Los Angeles, in Long Beach, California, actually. But she&#039 ; s worked in the garment industry, and a lot of that came from me, from the sewing. And she&#039 ; s a much better sewer than I am, and we did one small project together, which she has a wall quilt that we did together. She works a lot, but yeah she does, and I have three sons, so they don&#039 ; t sew. No. My daughter does, but not my sons. CC: So you&#039 ; re from Houston? MF: No, I was born in Pennsylvania, little town called Gibsonia outside of Pittsburgh, but I grew up in Niagara Falls, New York. But I had been in Houston since 1974. CC: Ok, so when you started quilting you were in Houston? MF: Yes, yeah. CC: Do you find that any part of your community here has inspired your quilting? MF: Well, I guess that meeting Jan, and then Jan introduced me to the quilt industry, where there was quilters&#039 ; guilds, and bees, and quilt shops. I didn&#039 ; t&#039 ; really know a lot of that before then, so it had a lot to do with my friendship with her, and then, of course, I know a lot of quilters now. I belong to a quilt guild. I was even president of one for a while. Yeah, I know a lot of people, and I travel to quilt shows, especially when I have a quilt hanging in the show. And I&#039 ; ve competed all over the country. I haven&#039 ; t gone to any international shows, but I&#039 ; m planning to do that since I&#039 ; m not working. I want to go to some international shows. CC: What parts of quilting do you find frustrating ? MF: For me, sometimes I get stuck on a concept and trying to figure out where I&#039 ; m going to go with it, and when I do that, I just have to walk away from it, leave it alone so it can sort its way out in my brain. Right now, I have a quilt top that&#039 ; s totally complete, basted, and I have started quilting it, but I don&#039 ; t have the quilting design down where I want to go with it, so it&#039 ; s sitting there right now until I figure out what my next step is. So, there&#039 ; s just times when you have to wait till you know what&#039 ; s the next step ; you just have to wait for that. It&#039 ; s the creative process [MF laughs.]. CC: Do you only make quilts for walls ? MF: No, I have a quilt on my bed that I made when I first moved in the house. I have made a few quilts for my family. I&#039 ; m not a fast quilter. So, probably in fifteen years, I&#039 ; ve made 25 quilts, if I&#039 ; ve made that many. I just don&#039 ; t make a lot of quilts. I spend more time on one quilt. I have made my three sons each a quilt. I made myself do that, I think the year I retired, I made myself do that. My oldest son used to have a love of Texas, so he got one with all the Texas things, and horses, and Indians and Western. The second son is very much into jujitsu, and he&#039 ; s married to a Brazilian, so his one had--I couldn&#039 ; t find very much jujitsu fabric, but I did put a Brazilian flag on it for his wife. Then the youngest son is single, so his had women, and cars, and coffee, and gambling, and things that young men do. And I have made a couple for my grandchildren. The last one I made was for Stefano, who is Robert--that&#039 ; s my middle son. His dad said he liked ABC&#039 ; s, and what was the other thing, some kind of toy that he likes, so that&#039 ; s what his quilt is in, yellows and greens. It has all his ABC&#039 ; s and lettering on it, but I had to put it a Dallas Cowboy thing on it, which was blue, which was really hard to do, but we managed a block of the Dallas Cowboys. CC: Let&#039 ; s see. What do you think makes a great quilt? MF: I think there&#039 ; s a lot of great quilts, so when you say what do you think makes a great quilt, to me it&#039 ; s a combination of things. I like original ideas, but I expect very good workmanship. I enjoy art quilts if they&#039 ; re done well, but if they&#039 ; re very causally thrown together, I don&#039 ; t enjoy them as much as one that&#039 ; s well done. I am fascinated by all the different techniques, just watching the show. Compared to what the show was when I first started in &#039 ; 98--completely different show. In &#039 ; 98, hand quilting still dominated. Now, art quilts, machine quilting dominates. Very different concepts and they do things with machine quilting that I could never do. I like it, I like all the aspects of it, but I just don&#039 ; t care for something that has very poor workmanship in it. And I do like to see original ideas, and new things because some things have been around for years and years, and I enjoy looking at them, don&#039 ; t get me wrong, but it&#039 ; s not something I would ever do. CC: What kind of quilt would you classify the kinds that you make? MF: To me they&#039 ; re very contemporary quilts, they have a traditional basis, but they have a lot of an art quilt look to them. When you say quilts to a lot of people, they think of their grandmothers&#039 ; quilts, and my quilts don&#039 ; t fit in that category. They&#039 ; re very contemporary, they&#039 ; re artistic, they&#039 ; re very bright. So, they tend to move more toward art quilts, and they tend to be large. I don&#039 ; t normally do very small pieces. I&#039 ; m trying to convince myself to do them, but I haven&#039 ; t been very good at it. Like one of the quilts that&#039 ; s in the book said 96 [inches.] by 96 [inches.]. This one&#039 ; s 86[inches.] by 86 [inches.], so I have gone a little smaller. CC: So, what was the first quilt you made like? MF: Well, that was the one that my mother and I made when I was in my 20s, and had little kids. And it was a--I don&#039 ; t know, what do they call it--like a dinner plate type of thing. [UP says &#039 ; Like Dresden plates?&#039 ; ] Yeah, something like that. Like I said, it has a combination of polyester fabrics because that&#039 ; s what maternity clothes were made of in those days. I was making my own maternity clothes, and the one I made was very green. It had lots of greens in it. And the one my mother made was very pink. And I still have the pink one, but the kids lost the green one. But it was a very traditional. Yeah, they were just very traditional, and I never made another quilt until &#039 ; 95. It&#039 ; s a long time. CC: When did you have a studio first, when did that-- MF: That came with this house, which I bought this house ten years ago, despite the fact that I have sewn since I was 12 ; I never had my own sewing room. When I was raising the children, they had to listen to a sewing machine in the background of the television because Mom was usually running a sewing machine in the background. But now, I have that studio was probably built maybe 8 years ago, and it&#039 ; s custom, it&#039 ; s got all these walnut -- there&#039 ; s 58 shallow drawers in it, the guy laughed at me when we bought the drawer fronts. It&#039 ; s all done in oak ; it&#039 ; s got a custom cabinet. All the tables are designed for a very short woman, so that everything&#039 ; s interchangeable, you can move it apart and take it. My brothers are very good carpenters, and one of them came from Florida and helped my son build it. But yeah, it&#039 ; s custom designed, my ironing table is 2 feet by 4 feet, and when you flip it over, it&#039 ; s a light box underneath so it&#039 ; s very well put together. There&#039 ; s something everywhere in that room, that&#039 ; s designed. And then there&#039 ; s a cabinet on the wall for all the ribbons that I&#039 ; ve won, so yeah it&#039 ; s a neat room. People are very impressed when they come to see it ; it&#039 ; s like you see in a magazine [inaudible.]. But I waited a long time for it [MF laughs, UP says &#039 ; You earned it.&#039 ; ], I earned it, [inaudible.]. I paid for it. CC: So what is your creative process like when you decide to create a new quilt? MF: With me, it&#039 ; s that you&#039 ; re walking around with ideas in your head, or you&#039 ; re making sketches, or you&#039 ; re doodling, and like I said, to me, fabric&#039 ; s the inspiration, like I don&#039 ; t create fabric, I don&#039 ; t dye fabric. I see a fabric that appeals to me, and I buy it. These days, I only buy for a project because I just have so much fabric. But, it&#039 ; s the fabric that&#039 ; s the inspiration most of the time. CC: Have you taught classes? MF: No, no. I don&#039 ; t teach, it&#039 ; s a great skill, but not mine, no. CC: Has your quiltmaking impacted your family in any way? MF: I&#039 ; ll tell you this story ; this is my favorite story. When you have three sons, two of them are in Dallas, and all of three them were in Dallas at the time. The other quilt that&#039 ; s in the book called &quot ; Sphere,&quot ; it won Best of Show in Dallas. And I had a hard time convincing my sons that they needed to go see their mother&#039 ; s quilt. Up to that time, Mum just sews ; it&#039 ; s just no big deal. And I walk in the door, there&#039 ; s your quilt hanging up for all the world to see, and it wins first place. My sons were very impressed. They now think of their mother and her quilts as more respected and more important, let&#039 ; s put it that way. The phrase they use probably should not be repeated [they laugh.], but they were impressed about their mother&#039 ; s quilt winning first place in Dallas [MF laughs]. And they had it walking in the show and seeing it ; they kind of got the message that Mom actually does pretty good stuff. CC: Have you ever used quilting to get through a difficult point in your life? MF: I think &quot ; Transitions&quot ; is actually. I like to work, for me to stop working has been difficult. In fact, I just went back and took a job for four months over here at El Paso in downtown Houston in IT. And my old boss called me up and said, &#039 ; Would you like to come back to work?&#039 ; I said, &#039 ; Yes. Absolutely.&#039 ; This is hard for me, the first time, and that&#039 ; s probably a lot of what the quilting--the first time when I realized the children were gone, you call it empty nest syndrome--that&#039 ; s when I took up quilting, and then this quilt is very much I finished it after I retired. That&#039 ; s why it&#039 ; s called &#039 ; Transitions.&#039 ; It does impact your life, there&#039 ; s things like this too. CC: Are there any particular artist who have influenced you? MF: Oh, there&#039 ; s lots of people that I admire in this industry. Hollis Chatelain&#039 ; s work just, I think, is phenomenal. She paints, she doesn&#039 ; t really piece. I love her work.That was a new step for quilting, and I think her work is just really spectacular. Libby Lehman&#039 ; s a very good quilt artist, Caryl Bryer Fallert. All the quilters that you know, that are just well known that hang in these shows. You get to so you recognize their work. I would love my work to be that, where somebody would look at it and say, &#039 ; Hey, that&#039 ; s a Peggy Fetterhoff.&#039 ; But my quilting&#039 ; s not at that stage. So, it&#039 ; s really interesting to be able to walk up to a piece and say, &#039 ; I know who made it,&#039 ; before I look at the--because then people really, really know your work and respect it, and I think that&#039 ; s neat. I would love to go see Deirdre Amsden&#039 ; s work in London, and I hope to get to do that, because her Watercolor Quilts was what inspired me, and I have the only book she ever published. So, hopefully one day I&#039 ; ll get to London and get to see her. CC: Let&#039 ; s see. So, what do you think about the importance of quilts in everyday American life? MF: Oh, I think all quilters are inspired by what went on in the past. My quilts are that way. There&#039 ; s a traditional block Log Cabin, there&#039 ; s a diamond shape, even though I don&#039 ; t make traditional quilts, I still like to look at them. And I like to see what somebody did in them that was original or different, and what their interpretation of it was. And, when you look at what quilts have been over the years, from very utilitarian, where it&#039 ; s keeping somebody warm, to the art quilts of today, it&#039 ; s quite a tradition. It&#039 ; s very interesting, it has a lot of history, and there&#039 ; s a lot to read and find out about people who quilted over the years. CC: What quilt groups do you belong to? MF: Right now, I&#039 ; m a member of the Woodlands Area Quilt Guild. I&#039 ; m a member of IQA, I&#039 ; m a member of the AQS, and I have a quilt in the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky that&#039 ; s traveling, that just got printed in that book, Orange Peel, so it&#039 ; s in a traveling exhibit for two years. So, I&#039 ; m a member of all those organizations. CC: You said you have a piece in a museum. What do you think makes a piece worthy of being in a museum? MF: Again, I&#039 ; d start with technique. I want to see the quality of the workmanship in a quilt in a museum. I would like to think that it&#039 ; s very well done, it&#039 ; s the best of whatever it is, whether that&#039 ; s a traditional quilt or an art quilt. But that it is well done, well thought out. The artist has put a lot of effort into making it. CC: Has technology inspired you in any way, influenced you? MF: Oh, I think so, yeah. And I&#039 ; m always looking for new tools, new ideas. I have a huge collection of tools, rulers, and anything that I think is new that I might like. All of the things they&#039 ; re doing with machines, I would love to be a machine quilter. I&#039 ; m just not very good at it at this stage. I&#039 ; m good at piecing, but I&#039 ; m not good at machine quilting. But, I&#039 ; m still trying to learn. And all the new things that they come out with the sewing machines, as well as the hand tools. If you&#039 ; re going to be good at something, you need good tools. So, any technology improvement in how you make quilts is a great idea. CC: So, what are your favorite techniques and materials to use? MF: I pretty much sew with cottons swift quilts. I love silk, and I do have a collection of silk to make quilts, I just haven&#039 ; t gotten around to it at this stage. I like natural fibers. Anytime when I had sewn when I was younger, it was cotton, silk, and wool. Well, I shouldn&#039 ; t say that because the first one was polyester, but that was the &#039 ; 60s. Today [MF laughs.], I wouldn&#039 ; t use polyester. Even the batting should try and stay with the more natural fibers. The longevity&#039 ; s better, the handling is better. But right now, mostly cottons. CC: So how do you preserve your quilts? MF: To begin with, most of my quilts are competition quilts. They&#039 ; re not even washed, so they&#039 ; re kept on a bed or they&#039 ; re folded up if the children are visiting. I don&#039 ; t have that many, again, I don&#039 ; t have a lot of quilts. Now, the ones I made for the kids are very washable, for the grandchildren or my children. Yeah, they&#039 ; re put in a washing machine, and they&#039 ; re washed. They have to be sturdy for grandchildren. You can&#039 ; t expect somebody to take [MF laughs.] care of it. So, but for these quilts, no. These quilts don&#039 ; t go anywhere, they&#039 ; re in my home. They aren&#039 ; t washed a lot, nothing like that. CC: How do you balance your time between job and quiltmaking? MF: Well, when I was in IT, I used to build computer networks. Then, I traveled quite a bit, and I laughingly would say that this was cheaper than a psychiatrist, because the job would be very stressful, and that&#039 ; s why I think I hand quilted, because I really find it very relaxing. And you have something quite interesting to show for it when it&#039 ; s done. So, I&#039 ; ve always liked that aspect--I will always hand quilt, even if I do learn how to machine quilt. I will always hand quilt because I like the relaxation that&#039 ; s involved and peace and quiet to it, and you get to keep your hands busy while you&#039 ; re watching television or something. I don&#039 ; t sit well without keeping my hands busy CC: So, what do you think somebody looking at this quilt might conclude about you? MF: I don&#039 ; t know. I don&#039 ; t know the answer to that. I think with art in general, that people look at things and base it on their own beliefs in life, rather than mine. Hopefully, it&#039 ; s all good, but art is a personal sort of thing. So, I think people can look at it and see very different things. CC: Well, I&#039 ; m out of questions. Do you have anything you wanted to add? MF: No, not in particular. I&#039 ; m kind of familiar with your organization, so I do know what you do. CC: I&#039 ; d like to thank Peggy for allowing me to interview her today for the Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S--Save Our Stories Oral History Project. Our interview concluded at 2:09 p.m. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Karey Bresenhan, in honor of Jewel Pearce Patterson Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-040Fetterhoff Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Margaret (Peggy) Fetterhoff http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/1673417a9c0fe093eeb8528937ed0aff.JPG 6a06cba3afd4852c852d4dc0e7b84eef http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/e5d9295431141fef25fc07abf4486a16.JPG 1bec7ad863ef7b5cb410081a15488101 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Loveeta Golightly Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joyce Saia OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-047Saia.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 Joyce Saia TX77010-047Saia Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Joyce Saia Loveeta Golightly TX77010-047Saia.mp3 1:|5(15)|12(14)|19(5)|26(13)|32(10)|40(8)|57(15)|66(13)|74(7)|86(5)|95(8)|103(12)|110(10)|117(15)|124(8)|130(8)|140(11)|150(3)|158(10)|163(11)|168(7)|176(9)|190(7)|198(2)|207(8)|217(13)|228(4)|235(16)|244(6)|251(9)|260(12)|274(5)|285(9)|294(2)|300(5)|310(2)|318(2)|329(6)|344(2)|355(7) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-047Saia.mp3 Other audio 4 Introduction This is Lavita Golightly, and today's date is November the 5th, 2011. Lavita Golightly introduces herself, the interviewee, Joyce Saia, and the project Quilters' SOS. International Quilt Festival 17 31 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. Joyce, will you tell us about the quilt you brought today? Joyce describes her touchstone quilt, which is called a logs and leaves quilt, and is a log cabin quilt. She says that she made the quilt while travelling with her husband. She goes on to describe her process for quilt-making while on the road, and the technical process of making the quilt. She then discusses the quilt's performance in various quilt shows. Fabric/Quilt shops ; Log Cabin - quilt pattern ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Strip/string piecing Travel 17 524 What do you think someone viewing your quilt might conclude about you? What do you think people say about you when they see your quilts? Joyce discusses public perception of her quilts. She says that the primary public interest in her quilts is for the colors she uses in her pieces. Quilt Purpose - Exhibition Quilts--United States--Exhibitions 17 557 How do you use this quilt? How do you use this quilt? Joyce says that her touchstone quilt is currently being kept put away while it is being shown at quilt exhibitions, and later she expects to use it as a bedcovering. She goes in to talke about how she uses other quilts she has made. She says she gives many to family and to various charity organizations. Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; Quilt Purpose - Charity ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Quilts as gifts 17 632 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. Tell me about your interest in quilt-making - how did you begin? Joyce explains how she began quilt-making. She says that she began quilting in 1991 following her retirement. She describes her do-it-yourself method of teaching herself to quilt, until she joined a quilting guild, where she says she learned the rules of quilting. She goes on to talk about the guilds and groups of which she is a part, as well as how her family supports her quilting practice. Home sewing machine ; Quilt guild ; Quiltmaking for family Retirement ; Women in guilds 17 969 Are there other quiltmakers among your family or friends? Please tell me about them. You must have a lot of friendships from all the quilting that you've done. Joyce discusses the relationships she has created through quilting. She talks about the organizations that she is involved with, as well as the quilting relationships she has built with her family members since starting quilting. Generational quiltmaking Interstate agencies ; Travel ; Women in guilds 17 1075 Awards You seem to have won a number of awards for a number of other quilts as well, tell us about that. Joyce describes the style of her quilts and her inspirations. She goes on to list some of the recognition she has received for her work. applique ; Art quilts ; Embroidery machine ; Machine quilting ; Quilt competitions ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration ; Quilt shows/exhibitions Art nouveau 17 1351 Describe your studio/the place that you create. You told us about where you sew on the road, can you tell us about where you sew at home? Joyce describes her home studio space, which she says is a converted bedroom in her home where she works and stores her materials. Design Wall ; Work or Studio space Artists' studios 17 1536 What do you think makes a great quilt? What do you think makes a great quilt? Joyce says that great quilts have an impact on viewers and judges, but that she enjoys a wide variety of quilts, and she is drawn to the colors of quilts. Quilt shows/exhibitions 17 1567 What makes a great quiltmaker? What do you think makes a great quilt maker? Joyce explains that for her, being a good quiltmaker requires practice, interest, and learning from other quiltmakers. Learning quiltmaking ; quiltmaking process 17 1602 Which artists have influenced you? Well have you been influenced or inspired by other quilters Who are they? Joyce lists quiltmakers who inspire and influence her work, including Hollis Chatelain, Diane Gaudynski, Caryl Bryer Fallert, David Taylor, and Pam Hall. Learning quiltmaking ; professional quiltmaker Quiltmakers 17 1650 Why is quiltmaking important to your life? Why is quiltmaking important to you now? Joyce explains the importance of quiltmaking for her. She says the importance can be tied in large part to the time she dedicates to quiltmaking. She says it is a primary activity of hers in her retirement. Retirement 17 1731 In what ways do you think quilts have special meaning for women's history in America? In what way do you think quilts have special meaning for women, and women's life in America in particular? Joyce talks about the significance of quilting for women in the US. She says that quilting fosters women's creativity and companionship. Women in guilds 17 1803 Have advances in technology influenced your work? If so, how? Do you use technology in your quilting? Joyce explains her relationship with technology in quilting. She says that although technology is not a major component of her quilting practice, she does use it for some things, such as embroidery. Embroidery machine ; Technology in quiltmaking Computers ; Embroidery 17 1852 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? What do you think is the biggest challenge for quiltmakers today? What is your biggest challenge? Joyce says that one of the challenges she faces in her quiltmaking process is deciding, planning, and carrying out the quilting process. Design process ; Design Wall 17 1920 Tell me about an amusing experience that has occurred from your quiltmaking? Can you tell us about something that has happened during your travels to various shows and shops, and quiltmaking that you felt was a really hilarious, amusing thing that happened? Joyce tries to think of a story that was amusing during her quilting experience, and she says she found it difficult to pinpoint a specific story, because there have been so many. 17 1972 Teaching quiltmaking Have you taught any of your daughters, or granddaughters, or grandsons, or other people to quilt? Joyce says that although she has not taught her family members how to quilt, she does make quilts for her family, particularly her grandson. She tells a story of how at a show someone tried to purchase a quilt she'd made for him, and when she told him, he revealed that he was less attached to the quilt than she was, and that he would have been willing to sell it. Generational quiltmaking ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Quilts as gifts ; Selling quilts ; Teaching quiltmaking Children's quilts ; Quilt dealers 17 2141 Guild Leadership You said you were in guilds, and you indicated that you had been on guild boards, and I wondered what kind of work you did with guild boards? Joyce talks about her experience serving as co-chair of her guild's boutique. Guild activities ; Guild leadership ; Quilt guild Women in guilds 17 2205 Additional Comments Is there anything that I have not asked you that you really want to share with someone who might be interested in your quilting and in quilting in general? Joyce talks about her traveling journal that she writes in when she takes road trips with her husband, and it is in these journals where she keeps many of her quilting memories. Diaries ; Travel 17 Oral History Loveeta Golightly (LG): Joyce, will you tell us about the quilt you brought today? Joyce Saia (JS): Well, my quilt is called “Logs and Leaves” because obviously I’ve got the Log Cabin blocks and the leaves in the corner. It’s 80” by 80” and I made this in Beaumont. Actually, I finished it in Beaumont Texas but I made it a lot while I was on the road. Every year my husband and I travel for about four and a half months in the motor home. I always take my sewing machine and my supplies and as much fabric as I can sneak on board. This particular year I made it in 2009 I knew that I wanted to make a log cabin quilt and I had a collection of cherry wood fabrics. Before we went on the trip, I cut a whole bunch of fabric strips. So I just took strips, I didn’t have to take a bunch of fabric with me on the road. I made myself a block and copied in on paper foundations and took that with me. On the road, anytime we would stop for a couple of days, I would sew. I just made blocks most of the summer. When I had them about done and when I got to Pascoe Washington, I have a daughter in Pascoe who quilts ; we went to her Bernina store or the one where she frequents. They happened to have this embroidery pattern that was with these leaves called “Colors of Autumn”. The rest of the way I embroidered. But first I didn’t have enough fabric to make the border out of. So we ran to Anacortes, Washington and I had the number for Cherry wood. I called c wood fabrics and talked to Carla there and said I needed some yardage quickly because we were moving. I couldn’t stand and wait for mail to come. I didn’t know for sure what color, but I thought chocolate brown was safe, I know what color that was. I asked her for chocolate brown. She shipped two yards of chocolate brown to me and by priority mail. She sent it that day and I had it about two days later and then of course went to a laundromat and washed the fabric in the Laundromat. I ironed it and then started cutting it into strips to make the border. The embroidery design I just made as I went along. I put one in the center and then I just made four corners the same. I couldn’t put it together on the trip because I can’t put a big quilt together in my motor home. I had it all ready to go for when I got home. Then I put the quilt together and did the border. For the binding I found a stripe that was the perfect coloring. I found the embroidery design that seemed to just match it perfect. It’s actually appliquéd but it has embroidery on it. It’s one of my favorite quilts. I got the best of show in our Golden Triangle quilt guild. Also in 2010 in March I think I got second place in Dallas. In May I got first place at the Denver National Quilt show with this quilt. I love the colors and I have had it several shows. I had it in the Houston show. I didn’t win there but I thought it looked good. LG: You said that you did your sewing on the road. Did you do your quilting on the road? JS: I did put the center of the quilt together on the road but I couldn’t layer it and quilt it until I got home because I don’t have any place that big in the motor home where I can work. When I was traveling I have gone to quilt shops where they would let me use a table or something but I just waited until I got home to do it. Actually I made two quilts on the road that year and put them together when I got home. I always have several tops done by the time I’m done on the road. LG: When you quilt the quilts at home do you do it on your machine? JS: Yes LG: Do you use a long arm machine? JS: No, I have a Bernina home machine. With the embroidery I used a 730. Everything was done on it. I quilted the log cabins in the ditch because I thought about putting a design on it like some leaves or something but I just like it plain like it is. Then I thought I did enough quilting in the border, free motion quilting besides the embroidery design. LG: You described your travels. Does this quilt have special meaning to you about your travels or something else? JS: It was serendipitous to happen to find that embroidery with it together. I traveled to Beaumont and Houston of course to see it when it was here. It was just fun to do on the road. The fact that I was able to get the fabric from Cherry Wood. I’ve only had it for a year or two. LG: You said you go to quilt shows and you go to see your quilts at quilt shows. What do you think that people say about you as a quilter when they see your quilt? JS: Mostly in the color, the comments most people make is about the color. They’re bright, that’s just the comment most people make. LG: How do you use this quilt? JS: Well right now it’s put in my armoire with my collection [laughing.] I haven’t put it on the bed or anything yet because I’m showing it places. LG: Any plans in the future to put it on the bed or the wall? JS: Oh yes. I will. Probably one of my daughters will get it. I don’t sell my quilts, but I make a lot of them. Mostly I give them to family or quite often I will donate them to auctions. A lot of them have gone to the quilt guild auction or to different charities. I just donated one to a place in Beaumont for a shelter where they feed people that are in from out of town that need help. I donated one to them recently for their auction. LG: Tell me about your interest in quilt making. How did it begin? JS: I retired and decided that this was what I wanted to do when I retired. I had sewed before, but I had never quilted before. I didn’t have anybody in my family who had quilted at the time but while I was still working my daughter’s family gave me a sewing machine for Christmas once. I thought ‘What am I going to do with this?’ because I hadn’t sewed in a while. But I had a grandson, a small toddler, and I started making clothes for him. I started with little Hawaiian shirts. Then when I retired in 1951 I decided I wanted to quilt and make a quilt out of all of the fabric leftover from the clothes I made for him. I tried to put a star together or something. I realized I was going to need a little more help or at least put a little more thought into it. So I went to a book store and bought something like “quilting in a day”. I thought I could make a quilt in one day. I just started by looking in the book and I made lots of quilts. For about five years, I didn’t know about the quilt guild. But I went to a quilt show in Beaumont and saw some wonderful quilts and decided that I needed to join the guild because I wanted to show mine. I joined the guild for the next show and put several of my quilts in it. But since I didn’t have any formal instruction or anything, I would’ve have entered them now. I did get honorable mention in that show. Then I joined the guild. The first time I went they had show and tell, where you got to show all of the things you’ve been working on. It was so much fun. I was really kicking myself because I hadn’t been doing that. Then I discovered that they have classes and experts come in from afar that come in and give classes. Then I just started taking a lot of classes. I had already about 25 quilts done before I ever took any lessons. But then I learned that you’re supposed to have really ___ seams. I learned kind of what the rules are even though they say that there are no rules. The guild was a revelation how good it was. Now I’m in several guilds. I’m in a bee. I have a bee. In Beaumont we live close to Louisiana, so our guild and our bee has people who are from both Texas and from Louisiana. In our bee, we meet at different people’s houses. We’ll go about 50 miles in about any direction to get to someone’s house to have these bees. It’s fun and our guild has a show every two years. We are having one in February and we have an auction every other year. Everybody donates quilts to the auction and that’s to raise money so we can have those instructors come from other locations. Between those two and traveling to Houston and Denver and other quilt show I can find, I spend a lot of time quilting. Everyday, probably for like four or five hours anyway. I get a lot done. People always wonder how I get so much done. Partly because I have a wonderful husband who cooks and is very supportive of my quilting. He doesn’t complain if I buy fabric. He teases me, but I don’t have to sneak it into the house like some people do. LG: You must have a lot of friendships from all of the quilting with your bee and your guild and all of your traveling. JS: I do. I have a lot of friends in the guild and our bee. They’re all pretty close. We keep expanding because so many people want to get in it. We have 30 members in our bee. That’s the one where some of them are in Louisiana and some are in Texas. I have two daughters. One of them lives near me. She doesn’t quilt, but she’s very interested. She comes to Houston to these classes. She takes classes in painting and dying fabrics and silk paneling. I have a daughter Linda who lives in Pascoe Washington. She’s a quilter. I didn’t teach her to quilt because I didn’t quilt when she was at home. I didn’t start until later and then I must have inspired her to start quilting. She’s quite an accomplished quilter too. We call each other and talk about quilting. My whole family really gets involved in it. Even though I never had anybody before that quilted in my family, now I do -- LG: When I looked up your information online to see what I could find out about you, I saw a number of other quilts. You seem to have won a number of awards from other quilts as well. Tell us about that. LS:I won quite a few. Most of the quilts I make could be called Art Quilts. I do this Art nouveau. It’s in the designs of Alfons Mucha. They’re all [inaudible.] I don’t know if you’re familiar with Mucha but he made beautiful women surrounded by flowers with flowers in their hair. There’s a lot of symbolism around it. I started doing those from pictures. They were very prolific. There are a lot of sources for his design and they’re hard to copy because they are so old. You can get them in some books that are copyright free. I just copy it. I draw it, I don’t trace it or anything. I draw the quilts. I try to do it as much like he did as I can and then I appliqué and machine quilt and machine embroidery. I am mostly noted for those because [inaudible.] I won at Sulky. The first one I sent, I was an amateur. I got the amateur grand prize in 2001. I won the appliqué division of the Hoffman challenge. In sulky in other years I’ve won a grand prize, first, second, and third place. I’ve had several of the sulky prizes. In Bernina in 2001, my Bernina dealer wanted to take one of my quilts to Bernina University where they have a convention every summer. She took one of my quilts and entered it. This was called “Nocturnal Slumber”. It won the grand prize in the Bernina contest in 2001. I thought it might be better to bring more traditional quilts. LG: You have a quilt here entered here at Houston in the Lone Star. Tell us about that. JS: That one is a pineapple design. The design was like a drawing from a Jane Hall and Dixie Haywood book, Foundation for Piecing. So from that picture I just figured out how to make this design. It’s blue and white pineapple. It’s kind of unique because it has a lot of spirals in it. I was kind of surprised when they asked me to set it for the book. It looks great in the book and I’m thrilled. LG: It’s a beautiful quilt. JS: Thank you. LG: You told us about your studio and where you sew your rugs, but can you tell us about where you sew at home? JS: Yes, I have a nice big sewing room that used to be one of my daughter’s bedrooms. They went away to college -- When they went away for good, I took one of the room’s for my sewing room. At first, there was a bed in there. I told my husband ‘Maybe we could put a table over the bed so I have this nice big cutting area and everything.’ He said ‘Why don’t we just take the bed out?’ We don’t need to have company. If someone comes they can stay at a hotel [laughing.] We just took the furniture out and now that’s my sewing room. It has book shelves all along one wall. I have lots of shelves. My daughter, Leslie the lawyer, used to have her law books on there. She’s long gone and she left her law books there. One day I just decided to move her law books out and put them in boxes. I put all of my fabric there. I just love it. I have it all folded up on those shelves so you can see. LG: Do you have a design wall? JS: I have a design wall. I have two big foam boards that are both 4” by 8” so together they’re big enough for a big quilt. I couldn’t do without a design wall. I put them up and put them together on the design wall. I put up the background and then I do a plastic sheet over it with a drawing on it. Then I put the fabric onto the background. I couldn’t do with a design wall. That’s one problem I have when I’m on the road traveling because I don’t have the design wall so a lot of times I just make blocks. I can work on these Mucha quilts because they’re smaller. I manage for four and a half months in the motor home. LG: I want to talk about a different aspect of quilting, the design aspects. What do you think makes a great quilt? JS: Of course, it has to be the impact. The most important thing that the judges think too is the impact. I like all kinds of quilts. But I think probably the colors are one of the most important things. LG: What do you think makes a great quilt maker? JS: Practice [laughing.] Real interest. Going to classes like Diane Gudinski. Quilting like Gudinski like a lot of them do. LG: Have you been influenced or inspired by other quilt makers? Who are they? JS: When I first started, I didn’t know any. But then I did get inspired by Hollis Chatelain, Diane Gudinksi, Carol Bryer Fallert. Right now I think David Taylor is terrific. I like to do his kind of work. Today I’m taking a class with Pam Hall and I think she’s terrific. I like about every aspect of it I guess. LG: Why’s quilt making important to you? JS: First of all, it’s what I do when I retired. I had to have something to do. I think that this is the perfect thing. You can do art, paint it, draw it and you can dye it. It’s such a pleasure to have something to do every day like that. I get up first think in the morning and the first thing I do is walk into my sewing room and look at what I’m working on. Then I go make some coffee and then I go back and start sewing. I’ll sew until noon, then I’ll usually sew in the afternoon. We go to the gym and then come back and I’ll be sewing again. It’s mostly because it just keeps me busy all of the time. LG: In what way do you think that quilts have special meanings for women in women’s lives in America in particular? JS: That’s a good question [laughing.] It’s something that is really ours. There are a lot of men in it and they’re really good, but I think that it’s something that women feel that they can really get involved in and get so much companionship from it. It’s all so exciting because you can all take the same design and every quilt is going to be different: Unless you’re just working from a kit or something. You just make wonderful friends, too. LG: Do you use technology in your quilting? A lot of people use computers. JS: I try. I’m not really computer literate but I use my computer with my embroidery and transfer designs to the machine and everything. I have all of the equipment I could do to design quilts on the computer. I don’t really do that. I leave that for people who really know more about computers. LG: What do you think is the biggest challenge for quilters today? JS: The biggest challenge -- LG: What do you think is your biggest challenge? JS: My biggest challenge is the quilting design. Once I get the quilt done, I don’t usually know how I’m going to quilt it until it’s done. Then I sit there and think. It’s like I’ve never quilted before because I’ll sit there and wonder what I’m going to do with it. That’s my biggest challenge. LG: Do you spend some time letting the quilt speak to you? JS: I do. Sometimes I put it up on the design wall and I have to wait quite a while before it says anything -- LG: Can you tell us about something that has happened in all of your travels to various shows, shops, and quilt making that you thought was a hilarious or amusing thing that happened? Maybe a conversation overheard or something else, anything that stuck in your mind over the years? JS: There have been so many [laughing.] I have so many stories that have been so exciting, but I’m blanking -- LG: Let me ask you another thing. Have you taught any of your daughters, granddaughters, or grandsons, or anyone else how to quilt? JS: I only have one grandson and I haven’t taught him to quilt, but I have made quilts for him. He loves them. They have a lot of cats and when he was about three, I made a quilt for him with a lot of cats called ‘Too Many Cats’. I had pictures of him with the cats when he was three looking all cute. When he was seven, I made him an X-Men quilt. His favorites were the X-Men and he used to have all of these little action figures so I made a quilt that had all of those action figures on it. I had it in our local show because I had just made it for him. I did some designs from a deck of cards and that had all of these X-men on it, but I never put it in a big show because I wasn’t sure about the copyright and it was just for him that I made it. That did win a prize in our local show. He was just so thrilled to get that. Also, I made him another one that was Indonesian batik designs. It was supposed to be a monkey dancer. The art museum had asked for some of our quilts during one of our shows so I had this in the art museum. There was a man that wanted to buy it. The museum told me that this museum really wanted to buy that quilt. I said I couldn’t sell it because I had already made it for my grandson. I told my grandson about this and said ‘Listen, this man wanted to buy your quilt’. He was silent for a little while and he said ‘How much was he gonna pay?’ [laughing.] So it didn’t mean as much to him than it did to me as much probably. LG: You said you were in guilds and you indicated that you had been on guild boards. I wondered what kind of work you did with guild boards. JS: I haven’t been a board member or anything because I’m gone so much of the year that I can’t spend the whole year doing this but I do co-chair the batik in our quilt show. I don’t have to be there year-round to do that. A friend of mine and I do batik for the quilt show, so that’s about the extent of that. LG: Is there anything that I have not asked you that you really particularly want to share with someone who might be interested in your quilting or quilting in general? JS: I really am a blank [laughing] LG: Okay. I think we have come close to the end of our interview time and you’ve answered a whole lot of my questions very nicely. JS: When I travel, I take a journal. I’ve been doing this for about 15 years. Every year I have a journal with all of the things that happened. When I first started it I told my husband to start writing a journal because we will never remember what we did on all of these trips. Every fall I get out a journal and start reading about what I did. LG: That’s good. This will conclude our interview. I’d like to thank Joyce Saia for allowing me to interview her today for the quilter’s S.O.S-Save our Stories Oral History Project. Our interview concluded a11:45. Thank you. JS: That is so wild. When you asked me that last question, I couldn’t think of a thing. LG: What’s your husband’s name again? JS: It’s Joseph Saia. LG: And you mentioned your daughters. How do I spell their names? JS: L-E-S-L-I-E Saia and Linda W-O-O-S-L-E-Y. She’s in Pascoe, Washington and Leslie is in Beaumont. Linda’s a nuclear engineer and Leslie is a lawyer. Her husband is an assistant district attorney. LG: You mentioned an artist in your design. JS: Alfonts Mucha. M-U-C-H-A. LG: You later on mentioned a book. Jane Hall and - JS: Dixie Haywood, and it’s Foundation Piecing but there have been a few of them so I’m not sure which one. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Diane Metts Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-047 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Joyce Saia http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/19fdbb5570bb3a98b4ba1118d7e68f65.JPG 75422d307adbb0df0b82421993460747 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/ae3074ac2dad6ed77c79becad5788db7.JPG fd6d2ccdcd0e7b7425adba39398e5b49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Mary McCarthy Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Julie Rushing OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-054Rushing.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 Julie Rushing TX77010-054Rushing Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Julie Rushing Mary McCarthy TX77010-054Rushing.mp3 1:|11(1)|26(2)|46(4)|65(4)|84(4)|103(4)|114(19)|126(4)|147(2)|172(3)|182(6)|195(11)|213(11)|228(1)|244(7)|260(5)|277(3)|288(5)|298(4)|310(8)|325(12)|343(5) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-054Rushing.mp3 Other audio 11 Mary McCarthy introduces Julie &quot ; Jules&quot ; Kinsey Rushing who speaks on her quilt &quot ; Sunflower with a Passion for color&quot ; This is Mary McCarthy, I'm here today on the fifth of November, 2011 at 3:40 pm, and I am conducting an interview with Julie... Julie describes her quilt &quot ; Sunflower with a Passion for Color&quot ; (SPC). She talks about the fabrics she uses, and that she hand-painted/dyed all her own fabric. The quilt has special meaning to her because she grows Mexican sunflowers in her backyard. This particular quilt was brought to the interview because it was one of the first where she experimented with hand-painting fabrics, and the quilt demonstrates the variety of quilting she does. Julie explains that the quilt is preserved on a wall in her home among many others, and is for sale. Art quilts ; Fabric - Batiks ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; fabric - handpainted ; Houston, Texas ; International Quilt Festival ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; sunflower ; Thread painting ; yarn 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-054_rushing_01.jpg 272 The personal qualities of quiltmaking for Julia, and how she began quiltmaking. What age did you start quiltmaking? Julia became interested in quilting when she &quot ; babysitted&quot ; her neighbor's quilts while the neighbor was abroad for a few years. Julia tells that she learned to sew when she was five years old, and figured she would probably be good at quilting, so gave it a try. She began quiltmaking in her mid-40's, and was self-taught aside from workshops that she attends. Julia spends 40 hours a week quilting. Design process ; self-taught ; workshops 17 355 More personal aspects of quiltmaking--family impact, and what she loves about quilting How does quiltmaking impact your family? Julia tells that her kids have moved out, and she has made baby quilts for each of her five grandchildren. The largest impact quilting has on her family is that her husband likes seeing her quilts. Her favorite aspect of quilting is that it is a creative mode of self-expression as well as seeing the progress in her quilts. Her most difficult obstacle in quilting is &quot ; [making] the first cut into the fabric.&quot ; baby quilts ; binding ; Machine quilting ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Quilt Purpose - Therapy ; Work or Studio space 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-054_rushing_02.jpg 536 Julia's techniques, materials, and studio Are they all about this size, or do they vary? Julia's favorite techniques in quilting are painting on fabric, dying fabric, thread painting, and raw edge applique. She explains that she likes to use cheesecloth because of its malleability and textural qualities. She also talks about her studio and her design wall. cheesecloth ; creative process ; Design process ; Design Wall ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric dyeing ; Painting ; raw edge applique ; Thread painting ; weave ; Work or Studio space 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-054_rushing_04.jpg 627 Julia describes her opinion on what makes a great quilt, quilters she admires, and her quilting process What do you think makes a great quilt? Julia describes what she thinks makes a quilt great, which includes: original design, use of texture and color, and artist intention. She also talks about her influences, of which there are many. She speaks about a few artists whom she admires for their use of texture, color, and originality. Julia talks about her daily quilting process. She is influenced by a variety of quilts and quiltmakers that she researches. This section concludes with a discussion about Julia's experience with traditional quilts. Aesthetics ; Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Color theory ; Design process ; Esterita Austin ; exhibit ; Katie Pasquini Masopust ; Sue Benner 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-054_rushing_03.jpg 868 More discussion on technique: Julia's most difficult piece, hand vs. machine quilting, and technology. What was the most difficult pattern/traditional piece that you did? Julia talks about her most difficult quilt, a watercolor, queen-sized nine patch that is preserved as a bedcovering. Julia shares that she never learned to handquilt, but has not yet acquired a long-arm sewing machine. Julia does not use a computer or the internet to assist in her quilting. Hand quilting ; Long arm quilting ; Long arm quilting machine ; Machine quilting ; ninepiece ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; watercolor 17 949 Julia's stance on how Quiltmaking is important to her, her community, and in the U.S. at large. Let's see here... Why is quiltmaking important to you? Quiltmaking, Julia explains, is her outlet of artistic expression, and it makes her feel good about herself. She also tells an anecdote about her collection of hand-dyed fabrics. Julia speaks on her quilting community at home, and how quilting reflects the diversity of the area in which she lives. She asserts that quilts are important in the United States because of their long history in the region. She says that although quilt popularity had dipped in the previous 20 years, it has been making a come back. commercial fabric ; diversity ; Fabric dyeing ; Fiber - Cotton ; Fiber - Silk ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; Quilt Purpose - Therapy ; traditional quilts 17 1139 Julia: the purpose of quilts, how to preserve them for the future, and the biggest challenges quilters face How do you think quilts can be used? Julia says that quilts are seen more as an art nowadays rather than being traditional or practical. She appreciates that organizations like the Smithsonian have been preserving quilts, and hopes that they continue to do so. To help preserve quilts, she believes quilters should only use fibers which are made to last. She explains that the biggest challenge for traditional quilters is that traditional quilts are losing popularity. And art quilters are faced with challenges from people outside the quilting community who do not view quilts as art. appraisal ; Art quilts ; museums ; piecing ; Quilt preservation ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Utilitarian ; smithsonian 17 Oral History Mary McCarthy (MM): This is Mary McCarty. I’m here today on the 5th of November, 2011 at 3:40 P.M. and I’m conducting an interview with Julie McKenzie Rushing, who likes to be called Jules for Quilters’ Save Our Stories, a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. Julie and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Julie, tell me about this quilt you brought today. Julie Rushing (JR): This is ‘Sunflower With a Passion for Color’. All of the fabrics are fabrics that I hand painted. They were hand painted then I did a mosaic style in the background. The leaves and the petals, after I put the fabric on, I painted on them again and then I thread painted. The fibers in the middle is hand dyed yarn and then I beaded on the center to give the texture and reflections of the seeds that are always in the middle of a sunflower quilt. MM: What if any special meaning does this have for you? JR: I have sunflowers in my garden and I love sunflowers and I grew Mexican sunflowers one year and wanted to do quilts with the Mexican sunflowers, so this is one of the one I did. I did a comparison in using the hand painted fabrics against batik fabrics and so I have another sunflower quilt with the batik fabrics just to see what the difference is in the intensity and the feel of the quilts. I got a very nice contrast between the two. MM: Do you have a painting background? JR: No but I just, I started doing painting on fabric several years ago and I just really like being able to do that. It gives a nice uniqueness and texture to the quilts. MM: Why did you choose this quilt to bring to the interview today? JR: Because it is one of my first quilts where I started experimenting on painting on fabric and all of the fabrics are ones that I hand painted. It also gives a nice show of the variety of quilting that I like to do and I experimented with doing different types of quilting where it’s not an allover quilting, it’s different little snippets of the sun and the breeze that are blowing through the air. I just thought that this gave a good representation of the style that I like to do. MM: Does this quilt hang in your home? JR: Yes it does. MM: Do you have others as well that hang? JR: Yes I do. My house is full of them [laughs.] quilts that I have hanging. MM: Is this like one of a series of quilts would you say? JR: It’s one of the two that I did the study of on sunflower quilts then I’ve started doing some smaller sunflower quilts and I have done some patterns of them. MM: What are your plans for this quilt in the future? JR: It’s for sale. MM: It’s for sale. Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking and how you started. JR: I have a very good friend that used to live across the street from us that collects antique quilts. She introduced me to antique collecting quilts and appreciating the workmanship in them and while they were in Germany for several years, I babysat some of her quilts because she did not want to ship them and she did not want to store them. I sat, I got to admire and love on her quilts and I started thinking, “Well, I’ve been sewing since I was five years old, I can do this.” So I started out making traditional quilts and then I found out about art quilts and I got bored with traditional piecing and so that’s what started me into art quilting. MM: Are there any quilters in your family? JR: Yes. My grandmother quilted and I have several doll quilts that my grandmother did. My mother’s younger sister also quilts and quilters go on into my mom’s family. MM: What age did you start quiltmaking? JR: I was in my mid-forties. I went and looked the other day and its only been about eight years that I’ve been quilting. MM: Did you learn to quilt from anyone or did you teach yourself mostly? JR: I was basically self-taught doing the traditional piecing. When I was getting into the art quilting I’ve taken some workshops to learn some techniques and I still like to take workshops to learn other art quilters’ techniques. I don’t want to replicate their work, where you could walk up to a quilt and say, “Oh that looks like so-and-sos quilt or no that person just is using their style.” I want to take what they use and take parts of it to go into my work. MM: Do you design your own quilts then? JR: Yes I do. MM: How many hours a week do you think you quilt? JR: Forty. I’m a full-time quilt artist. I have a nice studio at home and I get up and I go into my studio and when my husband comes home then he might pry me out and I might go down and make dinner. MM: How does quiltmaking impact your family? JR: We’re empty nesters and so he enjoys coming home and seeing what I’ve worked on during the day. My kids are not interested in quilting and they’ll appreciate what I do and say, “Oh that looks pretty,” then they’ll go on. I have made baby quilts for all five of our grandchildren and they probably have two each. I’ve made a quilt for our daughter, other than that it doesn’t impact them much in any way. MM: Have you ever used your quilts to get through a difficult time? JR: No, and knock on wood I haven’t had very many difficult times since I’ve started quilting. I did spend, our son and his wife lived with us and their three kids lived with us for a year, and I did spend a lot of time in my studio at that point. But at that time I didn’t have a window, and after that, we put a window in because I was claustrophobic [laughs.] MM: What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking? JR: It’s very self-expressive. Since I design my own patterns and do my own style, I find that it can, it’s how I’m feeling, it expresses me, it’s very satisfying to work for several days on a quilt then walk intro my studio and I walk in and the first thing I see if my design wall and just see what I’ve been working on and to see how it has developed from hand dyed fabrics or really white fabric that I have dyed then I have cultivated into something that looks three dimensional sometimes. MM: What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy so much? JR: Trying to decide what kind of binding to put on [laughs.] When my machine goes [inaudible.] but I really enjoy all the aspects. A lot of it is it’s hard sometimes to get started because I have the plan and it just sometimes it’s hard to make that first cut into the fabric, then to decide what, how to quilt it. Those are the two stopping points and sometimes a quilt has to hang in my studio for several weeks before I decide how I’m going to quilt it. MM: Do you quilt your own quilts then? JR: Yes I do. MM: Is this on a domestic machine? JR: It’s on my Bernina. MM: Are they all about this size or do they vary? JR: Right now most of them are about this same size, maybe a little few inches bigger, but my goal right now is to start working a little bit larger and see how far I can push it. MM: What’s your favorite techniques? JR: Painting on fabric, dyeing fabric, thread painting, raw edge appliqué. MM: Have you ever used any unusual materials in your quilt? JR: Cheese cloth. MM: Cheese cloth. JR: I’ve gotten into using hand painted or hand dyed cheese cloth. I like the texture and the versatility you can use with you because you can use it as it is and the weave it is or your can stretch the weave or put holes in it. I like using that. MM: Do you have a design wall at home? JR: Yes I do. MM: How does that enhance your creative process? JR: It’s wonderful because I have a studio that’s eighteen by sixteen and my design wall takes up one of the walls that’s sixteen feet wide. The wall is probably seven feet tall. I can see it when I walk into my studio, that’s the far wall from me and so I can stand back in the doorway and see what I’m working on and I get a good visual from a distance of what I’m working on. MM: What do you think makes a great quilt? JR: Being an original design, color, texture. That’s one of the questions I’ve been thinking about. Just the overall design and how the artist uses color and texture in the design. MM: What would you say makes a quilt artistically powerful? JR: Color plays ; to me color plays a large aspect. I’m a very colorful person, I love bold and bright colors and when I’m walking through looking at quilts, the ones that really catch my eye are the ones that have the vibrant rich colors in them. MM: Whose works are you drawn to? JR: Sue Benner. Oh there’s several that I like and their names are vacating me right now. A lot of the art quilters, I see their work, I’ve been looking at them all day long. I like Katie Pasquini Masopust and Esterita Austin and those are two of the artists that I’ve studied under some. MM: Why do like their works? JR: Because of their expression with color. Their styles are all different and I like taking from their techniques of how they work. I love their use of style and that not all their quilts look the same, they have a nice versatility in the way that they work. MM: Have you gone to any exhibits with their works, solely their works? JR: No I have not. MM: How do you balance your time with quilting? JR: It’s about from the time I get up in the morning until dinnertime. It’s, I look at it, this is my job and so I work from home so I go up and stay in there, I take my lunch break, then I go back into my studio and work. It’s, housework gets done little [laughs.] MM: Who has influenced you do you think? JR: Oh gosh. I don’t know if I can say any one person has influenced me. It’s been kind of an awareness of you know, doing the traditional quilts and then finding out about art quilts and then researching and looking for different workshops and retreats to go to learn the techniques. So I can’t say it’s been any one person or group of people that have influenced me, it’s kind of been a search. MM: You made traditional quilts then for a while? JR: I did. My first several quilts were traditional quilts. I did a star quilt and I took a quilting class to learn different traditional blocks. I have one large quilt that’s all traditional blocks done in batik fabrics that is hung way up high and probably will never come down [laughs.] Then I have a water-colored nine patch that is on our bed that I did several years ago. MM: What was the most difficult pattern in traditional piecing that you did? JR: Probably the water-colored nine patch because it’s a queen-sized quilt and having at the time the house we lived in, I didn’t have the space I have now and I had to move all the dining room furniture out of the dining room so I had room to lay it out [laughs.] MM: Where is this quilt now, hanging? JR: It’s well, the water-colored nine piece is on our bed. MM: How do you feel about machine quilting versus handquilting? JR: I never learned how to handquilt. Since my mom always did clothing construction, she never did handquilting. She tried to teach me how but I just didn’t get the hang of it. I appreciate people that handquilt and their patience to sit and handquilt and can see how their quilting’s going, but I never got the knack of it. I love doing machine quilting. I like being able to sit at my machine and have that rhythm going of the machine quilting and look forward to the day that I can have a longarm and can do it on a longarm. MM: Have you used computers in your quilting at all? JR: No. MM: Let’s see here. Why is quiltmaking important to you? JR: It’s my artistic expression and I, that is just what I strive to do, it’s what makes me feel good about myself and that’s, if I get grumpy, my husband sends me to my studio and says, “You need to go play with your fabric.” It’s just what makes me feel good. MM: Do you have a large stash of fabric? JR: Not as large as I used to. I went from using commercial fabrics to just my hand-dyes a year or so ago and so I’ve liquidated my commercial fabrics, but since I dye my own fabric, I have a large stash of hand-dyed fabrics. MM: Is it cotton that you’re dyeing mostly? JR: Yes, cotton and silk. MM: In what ways do you think quilts reflect the community that you live in? JR: It’s a nice variety. I have friends that are traditional piecers and do beautiful work and do beautiful quilting then I have a large group of friends that are art quilters. There’s a very beautiful variety of us that we all do something different. We all get to learn from each other and share with each other the techniques that we like to learn. We never, our work never looks the same. It’s all of our styles are different. I think that shows the environment that we live in because everybody is so different. Our neighborhoods are so different and so it just, it replicates the area being eclectic. MM: What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life? JR: Oh they’re very important. Quilts have such a long history in America from starting out being the traditional bed quilts for families and how quilts were generated just as a staple as a family life then moving into being quilts for the Underground Railroad and the messages that those quilts gave and how they have played a part in family histories being passed down. Quiltmaking has taken kind of a dip in later in the past twenty years, but it’s starting to have a resurgence in our communities now, but it’s really nice to see how they’re making another circle back in but they’re being so diversified and so different than what they used to be. MM: How do you think quilts can be used? JR: As art forms, I mean you’ve got your traditional quilts that can be used as utilitarian quilts but now art quilts are being seen more as art and not just quilts hanging on a wall. There’s such a big movement now to make quilts seen in the art industry as art but not a traditional quilt. MM: How do you think quilts can be preserved for our future? JR: I don’t know. I have thought about that and I know that the Smithsonian and other institutes are taking great efforts in preserving quilts and how they’re storing them and keeping them. I haven’t done much research on that but I hope that the people that are in charge of that keep up preserving our quilts and we are able to find that the textiles to use to make sure the quilts last and we’re not using things in them that are going to help them deteriorate quicker than they normally would. MM: What do you thinks the biggest challenge confronting quilters today? JR: Traditional quilters or art quilters? MM: Both. JR: Traditional quilters I think is to keep that part of the craftsmanship alive and looking through the quilts today, there’s such a small section in the quilt show of traditionally pieced quilts, where most of the quilts are art quilts are looked at as art quilts. There’s a nice section of traditional appliqué quilts, but the section of traditional pieced quilts is very small, so I would like to see that come back and be a larger part of our industry in being preserved and that history, family history, keep going. Art quilts, I would like to see more, seeing more as artwork and preserved and appraised as artwork instead of quilts because as artwork they have a higher appraisal and value then they do as compared to traditional quilting. MM: Well I’m about ready to wrap up, is there something you would like to expound upon or something you’d like to say? JR: I don’t think so. I just appreciate being able to have this opportunity for the interview and be able to show in the quilt show. MM: Well it’s 4:02 P.M. and this is the end of the interview. Thank you very much. JR: Thank you. MM: I have a little speech I’m supposed to read to you. I’d like to thank Julie for allowing me to interview you today for Quilters’ S.O.S. Save Our Stories oral history project and our interview is concluded at 4:02. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Nancy O'Bryant Puentes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-054 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Julie Rushing http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/10eebb7323bd8904478f78b7c305620d.JPG 6dceca00d392224a8f96e2b36b4686de http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/04392343ac32985f676af15ec2439ca0.JPG 8856136667f1f9c848aa0aab208bdd71 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/5b8c9a3ebc4495e55d72d33cd8182be0.JPG 408e59392743d35f9fe9682aeb13f051 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Erin Nesmit Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Tonya Littmann OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-061Littmann.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 Tonya Littmann TX77010-061Littmann Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Tonya Littmann Erin Nesmit 1:|9(3)|20(11)|39(7)|48(8)|65(5)|79(14)|94(7)|115(10)|130(8)|152(15)|175(5)|190(5)|207(2)|221(12)|243(7)|258(8)|276(7)|289(10)|306(2)|321(6)|352(15) 0 http://quiltalliance.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-061Littman.mp3 Other audio 0 Interview introduction 17 23 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. Erin Nesmit (EN): Tonya, will you tell me about the quilt you brought today? Tonya Littmann (TL): This was the first pictorial quilt that I ever did. “Berek at the Koi Pond.” Tonya shares her background as a graphic designer and how she learned to make a pictoral quilt, which won a blue ribbon. Awards ; Free motion quilting ; Pictorial quilts Acrylic painting ; Graphic arts ; Watercolor painting 17 &lt ; img style= onya Littman, &quot ; Berek at the Koi Pond,&quot ; detail. 165 At what age did you start quiltmaking? EN: How did you get started in quilts? TL: My great grandmother quilted during The Great Depression for 10 cents a spool. I have lots of her quilts in my family. Tonya describes how she became interested and learned about quilting from her grandmother, who quilted during the Great Depression. She describes how she learned to quilt through various classes and describes picture quilts as her niche. Fabric - Batiks ; Hand piecing ; Knowledge transfer ; Learning quiltmaking Grandparents 17 283 What is your first quilt memory? EN: What is your first quilt memory? Tonya recounts her first quilt memory, when her mother was explaining to her where each piece of a patchwork quilt that they had came from. Patchwork quilts ; Quilt memory Patchwork quilts 17 309 How many hours a week do you quilt? EN: How many hours a week do you quilt? TL: That really varies. I have a graphic design business. I sit in my studio at my computer and if I don’t have approval on a job, or I’m waiting for changes or copy approval I can go sew. It varies a lot. Anywhere from none to the whole week. Tonya describes her quilting process and how it fits into her schedule as a professional graphic designer, as well as her process for conceptualizing a quilt. Donating quilts ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Time management ; Work or Studio space Artists' studios ; Graphic arts 17 369 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? EN: Are you a part of any quilting or sewing groups or guilds? TL: Yes, lots. [laughing.] I’m on the show committee for the Quilters’ Guild of Dallas Tonya describes quilting as a social aspect. She names the guilds she belongs to and talks about why she enjoys being around other quilters. Guild activities ; Guild leadership ; Quilt guild ; quilting bee 17 380 test 17 431 Quilt Sizes EN: Is there a specific size that you typically work with? Tonya explains that she works primarily on a small scale, but tries to encourage herself to work on larger quilts. 17 475 Describe your studio/the place that you create. EN: Ok, so what's the rest of sewing area like? Tonya describes her workspace, which functions as her graphic design workspace as well as her sewing studio. Design Wall ; Work or Studio space Artists' studios 17 519 Stash EN: Alright, talk about your stash. TL: My stash is in the open ; it’s breaking the rules. It’s sitting on wrap-around shelves in the open. You can see it when you walk in the door and it’s color rainbow coordinated. It starts from yellow and goes all the way around to black. Tonya describes her fabric stash, how she displays it, how she got involved in fabric dyeing, and what dyeing processes she uses. She goes on to explain that because she dyes fabric, she does not purchase fabric often. Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric dyeing ; Fabric stash ; Fiber - Cotton ; Muslin ; Sateen Shibori 17 610 What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy? ; What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking? ; EN: What aspect of quiltmaking do you really enjoy and what frustrates you and you want to get better at? TL: I like the quilting. I like the free motion quilting. I use a home sewing machine- Tonya describes her sewing machine and why she enjoys using short arm machine for her quilting style. She talks about her piecing techniques like constructing a puzzle. Design process ; Home sewing machine ; Machine piecing ; Machine quilting 17 793 Why is quiltmaking important to your life? EN: What does quilt making do for you? TL: It is a creative process I can do for myself without having to please my clients. Tonya talks about quilting as her own creative process compared to working with clients, because she has more control in her design process. She talks about how she incorporates her background in graphic design into her design process, using Photoshop and an overhead projector. design process ; fiber - cotton ; quilt purpose - personal enjoyment ; thread painting Graphic arts ; Projectors 17 954 What do you think makes a great quilt? EN: As far as quilts as a whole, what do you think makes a great quilt? TL: Well, I'm excited by the image first. Tonya says that the first thing that catches her eye in a quilt is imagery, and then she is drawn to the technical aspects of the work. Embellishment techniques 17 996 What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or special collection? EN: What would you think would make a quilt appropriate for a museum? TL: Definitely technical quality. I think it needs to be beautiful just as an art form. It needs to be technically well done and use quality materials. Tonya discusses her opinion of quilting as an art and what she believes to be a museum-worthy quilt. She says that technical expertise is key, and that a museum quilt should be beautiful and use quality materials. She goes on to say that quiltmaking is both an art form and a craft. applique ; Art quiltmaking ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition Workmanship 17 1041 Location and Quilting EN: Why is quilt making important in your life? TL: It is a creative outlet and it is my social family. My blood family lives in another state so these women are my adopted family locally. EN: Where are you from originally? TL: Indiana. I grew up in South Louisiana and later Shreveport and Houston. Tonya describes the importance of quiltmaking in her life. She also talks about how the different places she has lived in her life has affected how quilting has been meaningful to her and her quilting style. Design process ; Social quiltmaking activities Art, Regional 17 1122 In what ways do you think quilts have special meaning for women's history in America? EN: Yes. They have some questions in here that I think are very interesting about women’s history and quilting because how so many of these quilts that you’ll see in museums or exhibits or books will say ‘maker unknown’. TL: Yes. EN: You have been quilting for a little while, but have you seen a change in the recognition for quilters? TL: Since I’ve been involved with it, everybody has always said ‘label your quilts’ or ‘sign your quilts’. We even went back while my grandmother was still alive, and labeled all of my great grandmother’s quilts. Tonya talks about the importance of recognition for quilters and how she and her family kept the quilting memory of her family alive by labeling quilts. She offers suggestion as to how use documentation as a method of keeping a quilting legacy alive and as part of her creative process. Antique quilts ; Collecting quilts ; Quilt documentation ; Quilt history ; Quilt memory ; Quilt preservation Quilts--United States--History 17 1255 Exploring New Things EN: What areas of quiltmaking are you excited about now? Tonya discusses her various ideas for new quilts and her UFO's that she currently has. She says time constraints are a barrier for her, because her interest goes in so many directions. Design process ; Time management ; unfinished objects (UFO) 17 1318 Favorite Quilt EN: Do you have a favorite among your quilts? Tonya talks about her favorite quilts that she has made. She says the one she likes best is called &quot ; Red Dragonfly.&quot ; She goes on to talk about her quilt-naming process. Quilt shows/exhibitions 17 1396 Have advances in technology influenced your work? If so, how? EN: Do you have a website? Tonya talks about the social aspects of technology in quiltmaking. She discusses her blog and the blogs that she follows. She says that this helps her connect with other quilters. She goes on to mention other social quilting activities she participates in. Blogging ; Social quiltmaking activities ; Technology in quiltmaking 17 1461 How do you feel about machine quilting vs. hand quilting? What about long-arm quilting? EN: It looks like you're doing primarily machine quilting on yours ; have you done any hand quilting? Tonya says that although she primarily thread-paints with a home sewing machine, she has also hand quilted and hand embroidered some of her work. Embroidery ; Hand quilting ; Machine quilting ; Thread painting 17 1525 Which artists have influenced you? EN: Whose work influences you? Tonya describes how others's work has influenced her quilting. She combines elements of many styles and has developed what has worked for her along the way. She does not want to teach quilting because she is nervous in front of other people. She does not want to make patterns because she feels her work is too individual for her. She names some of the artists she admires, including Deborah Boschert and Judy Coates Perez. Art quiltmaking ; Blogging ; Blogs ; Hand quilting ; Machine quilting ; Pictorial quilts ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 1693 Personal improvement EN: What areas do you want to grow in? Tonya talks about areas of her quilting practice that she'd like to improve upon. She mentions shading and fabric choice as areas that she wants to better herself in. Fabric dyeing ; fabric selection ; Pictorial quilts Shades and shadows in art 17 1742 What do you think someone viewing your quilt might conclude about you? EN: What do you want the viewer to experience when they're looking at your quilt? Tonya says that her primary hope for viewers of her quilts is the aesthetic aspect of her work. She hopes that people see beauty in her work. Aesthetics Art exhibition audiences 17 1769 What makes a great quiltmaker? EN: What makes a great quiltmaker? Tonya cites workmanship and good imagery as characteristics of a great quiltmaker. Quilt shows/exhibitions Workmanship 17 1800 Entering shows EN: Tell me about your show experience. What made you take the plunge and think, okay, I'm ready to start entering shows? Tonya says that she started by entering shows that did not have a judging component. From there she began putting her quilts in more shows throughout the state of Texas. American Quilter's Society (AQS) ; Awards ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Quilt shows/exhibitions 17 1908 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? EN: What do you think is the biggest challenge that quiltmakers have today? Tonya says the biggest challenge quiltmakers has today is time to do the art. People have less time for themselves because of other work and family commitments, as well as more time spent with media. computer ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Technology in quiltmaking ; Time management Aging parents ; Mass media 17 Oral History Erin Nesmit (EN): Tonya, will you tell me about the quilt you brought today? Tonya Littmann (TL): This was the first pictorial quilt that I ever did. “Berek at the Koi Pond.” The concept was taught to me by Cindy Walters, it’s called ‘snippets’. You take little hunks of fabric and fuse them onto a background and then thread paint all the edges down. I had wanted to do pictures instead of pieced things for a long time because I’m a graphic designer and I had done fine art, watercolor and acrylic in the past. I kind of know about shading and stuff but I wasn’t quite sure how to adapt that into fabric. Cindy taught me this method of fusing the hunks of fabric like little paint globs and that’s how it all began. This was the first one that I did. It was also my first blue ribbon. That was kind of a nice surprise. EN: Does this quilt have any special meaning to you? TL: It is my son when he was a little boy. That is our pond and the front of our house. Our fish are not nearly that big but it made a better quilt so I took some artistic license. This was when I was first learning how to free motion machine quilt and I hid some insects and a dragonfly in the foliage. I did a lot of shading with the hair and trying to make the body be curved instead of flat. It was a breakthrough piece for me. EN: I can see your background in graphics because you’ve got shading, you’ve got depth, and your perspective is wonderful with this. I just love how on his hair right here, the sun is shining a little bit more. Why did you choose this quilt? TL: Well, my most famous quilts are here at the show in the “Lone Stars III” exhibit and I couldn’t use them so I had to find something else that was important to me and this would be the next one. EN: What are the ultimate plans for this quilt? TL: It hangs at my front door. It’s the first thing you see when you walk in my house. EN: How did you get started in quilts? TL: My great grandmother quilted during The Great Depression for 10 cents a spool. I have lots of her quilts in my family. My grandmother made a few utilitarian ones. I was doing ceramics with a girlfriend at a community college and she was dying fabric – mostly for garments – and invited me to come with her. I had all of these gorgeous colored things and I had just gotten married. I wanted to make a quilt for our bed. I batiked some Japanese crests on white fabric. I waxed the crests and dyed them. I wanted to make a comforter for our bed. I called my grandma and said ‘How do I do this?’ and she kind of told me over the phone from Indiana. It didn’t quite work. I realized I needed a class. I still have it, it’s an okay quilt. I made the big mistake that every beginner does, I used big puffy batting. Then I took some classes and made lots of pieced quilts. I started doing a kind of create-your-own-quilt, not from a pattern. I took a class where you had to come up with a whole bunch of different sizes of the same quilt block. I picked stars. I did lots of sizes of different stars in the same color pallet. Then you had to work out how they were all pieced together and that got me designing my own quilts. That was probably the last time that I used a pattern. EN: Do you think that the picture quilts are you niche or is there another aspect of it? TL: I do abstracts once in a while, but I really like picture quilts. EN: What is your first quilt memory? TL: My grandmother’s quilt on Mom’s bed and Mom telling about the different fabrics. ‘This fabric was the dress that I made in 4H and this is your dad’s Wonder Bread delivery shirt.’ It was a four patch, kind of a crazy four patch, with darks and lights that had no rhyme or reason. EN: How many hours a week do you quilt? TL: That really varies. I have a graphic design business. I sit in my studio at my computer and if I don’t have approval on a job, or I’m waiting for changes or copy approval I can go sew. It varies a lot. Anywhere from none to the whole week. EN: When you start on a quilt, do you do it specifically for show or do you have an idea you are wanting to explore? TL: Some of them will be for a show and then sometimes it’s a technique that I want to learn about so I want to do something small and just practice. People are always asking for donations for auctions and I use those little test things to donate. EN: Are you a part of any quilting or sewing groups or guilds? TL: Yes, lots. [laughing.] I’m on the show committee for the Quilters’ Guild of Dallas. My home guild is the Denton Quilt Guild. I’m also in the Twisted Stitchers Art Group and an art quilt group in Denton called “Not Your Grandmother’s Bee.” And lots of traditional bees where we sit and sew. I work alone in my business. I’m a graphic designer with my own little building in my backyard so I have no colleagues. Quilting is my social outlet. EN: As a rule, how do you find quilters? I mean, what do you think of them? TL: What do I think of them? EN: Yes. TL: They’re so sweet and fun and interesting. They’re the greatest people in the world. EN: Is there a specific size that you typically work with, or does it just vary depending on what you’re doing? TL: This size (30 x 35”) just tends to be where I go. I try and force myself to get bigger because when you’re here at a show and you walk around the corner and you see something like this next to something giant, it’s gets kind of dwarfed. It’s like every time I come to the show, I always say I need to work bigger. I try to make myself work bigger, but I do have a pretty small studio and my design wall space is probably queen-sized. There’s inspiration tacked all around the fringes of it so if I need to design big I have to move a bunch of stuff. EN: What’s the rest of your sewing area like? TL: It’s an L-shaped building and my graphic design computer and stuff is in the front. The small part of the L looks onto an old antique drafting table that just happens to fit perfectly with one of those big cutting mats. The design wall is beyond that. The sewing machine is in the corner and then a wrap-around countertop that holds a light table/drafting table because early on in graphic design we needed light tables. Now there’s a big ironing board on top of it. The light table is still there if I ever need it. EN: Alright, talk about your stash. TL: My stash is in the open ; it’s breaking the rules. It’s sitting on wrap-around shelves in the open. You can see it when you walk in the door and it’s color rainbow coordinated. It starts from yellow and goes all the way around to black. EN: When you buy fabric because I’m assuming you might buy fabric every now and then- TL: Not much actually. EN: Really? TL: I dye about 65 yards every summer. EN: Okay. What are you starting with when you dye? TL: White cotton. It’s called prepared-for-dyeing or PFD. I use both muslin and sateen. EN: What kind of dyeing do you do? TL: Low-emersion, shibori, and just experimenting. There’s a group of us that have been dyeing together for years. The lady that taught me how to dye started in 1973. I got involved in 1986 and every summer we spend a week making a big mess. We pull out all our dyes and dye fabric. That pretty much gets me through the year. Traditionally, I’ll come here (to Houtson) and shop for a graduation of flesh tones or something that is harder to do. If I can’t get it done in the summer and I decide that I need it, sometimes I will go buy fabric, but not very often. I don’t use a whole lot of prints anymore, either. EN: When you are quilting, do you start with a very specific idea in mind or do you start with a concept and see where it takes you or how faithful are you to your original idea as you go through the process? TL: I pretty much have the image when I start. It changes sometimes but not often. EN: What aspect of quiltmaking do you really enjoy and what frustrates you and you want to get better at? TL: I like the quilting. I like the free motion quilting. I use a home sewing machine- EN: Just a short arm? TL: Yeah. EN: On a whole tiny little desk? TL: Yes, that’s another reason why it’s sometimes hard to make big quilts. This (30 x 35”) is the perfect size for home sewing machines. I want to get better at sewing in parts and then joining them later, like quilting in pieces and joining them in hunks later because it would make it easier to quilt then. EN: Are there specific products or are you loyal to your machine? TL: I am happy with the machine I have now. Want me to tell you what it is? EN: Yeah, I’m very curious. TL: Okay. It’s a Brother Quilt Club, I don’t remember the number but it’s probably five years old. Wonder under is my fusible of choice because live in a small town and I can get it locally without driving into Dallas or Fort Worth. EN: With the snippets method that you used in this quilt, do you put all of the little pieces on at the ironing board and then go ‘shhhh’ [makes noise of ironing]? TL: This one has lots of tiny pieces, and I don’t do much of that anymore. Now I’m doing bigger hunks of stuff. I have to work flat because of the wonder under. This one (the example) was done with a Steam-a-Seam 2 where you could stick it on the wall but now I work flat because I build chunks of the design on a Teflon sheet, peel it off, and then stick the bigger chunks together on the wall. EN: So you’re creating your puzzle? TL: Mhm. I’ve also started to cut the background from behind a big chunk so that it removes a layer of fabric because the quilt would end up being lots of really thick layers. This fusible, Steam-a-Seam 2 (in the example) is thicker and it was done with lots of fabrics that I built on a background. Now I kind of cut away behind the images – like the body or whatever. EN: Yeah, the big pieces so you’re not having that extra layer to quilt through. So you do your own quilting? TL: Yes. EN: You’re not weaving your cloth, but you’re dyeing it. It sounds like you’ve developed your own techniques for putting it together. It’s your images and you’re quilting and binding it. You’re like the whole package. TL: I try to be [laughing.] EN: What does quilt making do for you? TL: It is a creative process I can do for myself without having to please my clients. I sometimes have a great concept for my clients and they’ll wreck it. They’ll say ‘No, there’s some white space right there that we need to fill with words. Or, I don’t want to pay for empty space.’ Then I’ll lose interest in my original design. With my quilting, I have total control. EN: It’s all you. TL: It’s much more peaceful than working with a client. EN: Yes, it is. TL: I’ve done a couple of quilt commissions for people of their pets. I’ve done a few where I’ve printed inkjet onto fabric and then thread-painted the animals heavily. So far, those clients have been very agreeable and easy to work with, where advertising clients are harder. EN: Yeah. TL: Sorry guys, if they heard me [laughing.] EN: It’s your idea, your vision. I’m curious about this one with your background in graphic design. What are you pulling from there or what types of techniques and ways of looking at things? TL: I use Photoshop sometimes to help me see the shading in a photo that may not be there, because I use photography for my image inspiration. Photoshop can help me round out the shading. I use an overhead projector to draw my pattern on the wall and then sometimes I’ll combine several photos. This example was a combination of three photos, actually four because I didn’t like the background in the real photo so I changed it. EN: Did you dye the border fabric? TL: No, that’s cotton. I bought it. It’s commercial but it was perfect. EN: It’s great. TL: Cherrywood. EN: Exactly. It’s beautiful. As far as quilts as a whole, when you walk around and look at things, my jaw just drops looking at different quilts all time, what do you think makes a great quilt? TL: Well, I’m excited by the image first, that’s what grabs me. Then I go and look at the technique, the quilting, and the detail. But it’s the imagery that grabs me and makes me go in and look at details. EN: Do you find yourself favoring certain color waves or is it just whatever brings the image to life? TL: I don’t think I’m influenced by color so much as just subject and how it grabs you. EN: What would you think would make a quilt appropriate for a museum? TL: Definitely technical quality. I think it needs to be beautiful just as an art form. It needs to be technically well done and use quality materials. EN: Do you consider quilting to be an art or a craft or both? TL: I think it is both. There are definitely pieces that look like paintings and then some of these that are pieced or appliquéd are gorgeous and they’re art. EN: Why is quilt making important in your life? TL: It is a creative outlet and it is my social family. My blood family lives in another state so these women are my adopted family locally. EN: Where are you from originally? TL: Indiana. I grew up in South Louisiana and later Shreveport and Houston. Dad was in retail – we bounced all over. The Houston graphic design business is very industrial. I wanted to do retail graphic design, so I came to Dallas and still ended up doing industrial clients. I got married and opened my own company in 1988 and have been just doing freelance graphic design ever since. EN: Do you think your quilts reflect your area right now or do you consider yourself a Texas quilter? I know you’re living in Texas and have been there for a while- TL: I think that my stuff is universal because it’s more about people. EN: Yes. They have some questions in here that I think are very interesting about women’s history and quilting because how so many of these quilts that you’ll see in museums or exhibits or books will say ‘maker unknown’. TL: Yes. EN: You have been quilting for a little while, but have you seen a change in the recognition for quilters? TL: Since I’ve been involved with it, everybody has always said ‘label your quilts’ or ‘sign your quilts’. We even went back while my grandmother was still alive, and labeled all of my great grandmother’s quilts. At that time, my sisters and I put them all in a pile and we took turns picking one. On my great grandmothers’ quilts the labels say ‘Made by: Ida Mae Junkin. And then “Given to her daughter, Olive Pogue and to her daughter, Shirley Byers and to her daughter, Tonya Littmann.” Each quilt has the whole history up until now and grandma helped us pick a time frame when they were made. EN: That’s wonderful. TL: I found the quilt block names. I did research and found the names and tried to be true to the Indiana area if I could find out what the quilts were called in Indiana. My grandmother knew some of the names. EN: How neat. You’re already taking steps to preserve your family’s legacy of quilting- TL: Mhm. EN: And you’re doing this with your quilts- TL: Mhm. EN: How do you think other people should be doing this? Or what can be done to keep this knowledge? TL: In addition to labels, I keep a notebook of when I made a quilt, where it was shown, with a picture of the quilt. If it won a prize, I’ll Xerox the ribbon. [laughing.] EN: Neat. It’s like your brag book and your portfolio? TL: But nobody’s ever seen it. It’s in my studio. EN: Just for you? TL: Yeah. EN: I bet you can really see how you’ve grown as a quilter. TL: Yeah. This one from 11 years ago is different from what I do now. EN: What areas of quiltmaking are you excited about? What do you want to explore? TL: I just need more time. I have so many ideas and it’s hard for me to decide which one to work on whenever I do get a break. EN: You’ve got UFO’s and this is just what you’re feeling like right then? 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Nancy O'Bryant Puentes Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-061 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Tonya Littmann http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/503ae9b73ed43af15ac0b806e4fb1c94.jpg d55cbbc71d1ff30502d66840b3795381 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource California QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Janneken Smucker Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joe Cunningham Interview Keyword male quiltmakers Amish quilts Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=CA94129-001Cunningham.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 4 2007-08-18 Joe Cunningham CA94129-001 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories California QSOS Quilt Alliance Male quiltmakers male quiltmakers Amish quilts Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression Joe Cunningham Janneken Smucker Cunningham-recorded-interview-CA94129-001.mp3 1:|22(17)|35(1)|48(9)|60(5)|77(7)|85(15)|96(13)|111(5)|120(8)|135(9)|147(7)|159(1)|169(12)|191(5)|201(1)|212(7)|227(8)|236(9)|248(1)|261(10)|272(3)|284(1)|293(4)|307(10)|319(5)|330(1)|354(6)|369(12)|383(8)|397(6)|409(10)|418(7)|428(10)|440(2)|460(1)|483(14)|504(9)|520(7)|535(9)|555(3)|570(6)|583(3)|599(3)|610(13)|622(9)|634(2)|647(14)|657(4)|667(10)|679(1)|687(6)|698(10)|710(11)|729(9)|740(14)|747(11)|762(2)|777(17) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Cunningham-recorded-interview-CA94129-001.mp3 Other audio 0 Interview introduction Good afternoon, this is Janneken Smucker, I'm here with Joe Cunningham, who has graciously agreed to be interviewed 17 http://www.joethequilter.com/aboutjoe.html &quot ; Joe Cunningham, Quiltmaker,&quot ; joethequilter.com 40 Touchstone quilt Do you have one that you would like to talk about in particular? Cunningham describes the blue and white &quot ; Tree Everlasting&quot ; quilt in his studio, which he made in 2001 as part of his musical exploring the life of Joe Hedley from England, who lived in the early 19th century. He tried making this quilt without templates, but his eye was too precise and it did not look as wild as he wanted. He hand quilted elaborate designs that can no longer be seen on the finished quilt. Design process ; Hand quilting ; Joe Hedley ; Joe the Quilter ; Quilt Purpose - bedcovering ; Quilt Purpose - utilitarian ; quilting designs ; quiltmaking process ; Tree Everlasting -- quilt pattern 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/freshizer/d9a3822091b10e3b489df78ffd1001df_QSOS_Cunningham_CA94129-001-863-430-c.jpg Joe Cunningham, &quot ; Joe Hedley's First Quilt,&quot ; 2001. 328 On the role of hand and machine quilting Pennsylvania German quilt – Merry Silber, the great quilt collector. It was a crib quilt, Pennsylvania German. The bars were about three-and-a-half or four inches wide. Cunningham shares his passion for hand quilting, describing the process as well as how contemporary quiltmakers view it as a chore. He likes that quilting stitches are hidden. He also describes the process of sitting at a quilt frame rolling up the sides as one goes, ultimately unclamping the quilt to see the finished product. Design process ; flow ; Hand quilting ; Machine quilting ; Pennsylvania German quilt ; quilt frame ; quilting designs ; quilting in the ditch ; quiltmaking process 17 724 On the preciousness of quilting and quilters' efforts at perfection Because quilting, the other aspect of it to me, is that quilting is so precious. It’s so – I mean, if you’re going to do hand quilting, if you go to the show where there’s 300 quilts hung up in the big auditorium or convention center, Cunningham reflects on the pressure quiltmakers face when entering contests. He observes that competitive quiltmaking fosters unrealistic expectations. Judges critique corners that don't line up and inconsistent quilting stitch sizes. His Joe Hedley quilt attempts to critique this culture of precision. Hand quilting ; judge ; Quilt competitions ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; quilting police 17 945 Concept behind touchstone quilt and reflection on 19th-century quiltmaking ...that’s why I want to talk about this blue-and-white quilt, is I like the idea – see, this was a conceptual thing. I wondered, ‘What would it look like to make a traditional pattern,’ because I like to make a lot of traditional patterns freehand. He elaborates on the concept behind his blue and white Joe Hedley quilt. He contrasts nineteenth-century quiltmaking with quiltmaking today, noting how quiltmakers solved design issues in quite different ways. chicken quilt ; Design process ; quilt history ; Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression ; quilt software ; two-color quilt 17 http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=67-EC-529 Lucy Verity, Basket Quilt, 1852, Quilt Index. This quilt exemplifies Cunningham's description of a 19th-century approach to basket handles. 1270 On losing control in his quiltmaking process So I’m always trying to do things that are – that I don’t control. I’m trying to lose control. I’m trying to shed control. Cunningham discusses his desire to lose control in his quiltmaking process. He strives for spontaneity, to be in the now, rather than feel that quiltmaking is work as he sometimes does with well-planned commissioned pieces. design process ; flow ; meditation ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; quiltmaking process 17 1413 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. ; So how did you begin quilting, quiltmaking? Cunningham describes his introduction to quilts, which he assumed were just &quot ; blankets.&quot ; His partner, Gwen Marston, whom he met when he had returned to his hometown of Flint, Michigan, introduced him to the quilt collector Mary Schafer. Cunningham fell in love with the quilts in Schafer's collection in 1979. He wanted to write, and found opportunities writing about quilts. Marston thought he should learn how to quilt in order to write persuasively about quilts. Barbara Brackman ; Carter Houck ; Dr. William Rush Dunton ; Drunkard's Path -- Quilt Pattern ; Flint, Michigan ; Florence Peto ; guitar ; Gwen Marston ; Knowledge transfer ; Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilts Magazine ; Learning quiltmaking ; Marie Webster ; Mary Schafer ; Mennonite quilters ; Michigan quilts ; musician ; quilt history ; quilt publications ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Quilters Newsletter Magazine ; Ruth Finley Brackman, Barbara ; Peto, Florence 43.013272, -83.689647 17 Flint, Michigan, Cunningham's hometown http://www.quiltindex.org/essay.php?kid=1E-B9-2 Mary Worrall, &quot ; Mary Schafer: Quilter, Quilt Collector, and Quilt Historian,&quot ; The Quilt Index. 1718 Becoming a professional quiltmaker ...it seemed to me that – I was so arrogant, but it seemed to me that people’s take on quilts was fundamentally unserious. There was something – see, they’re too serious and now I want them to be less serious. I’m serious. This is my life. Cunningham describes his early impressions of what it meant to be a professional, &quot ; serious&quot ; quiltmaker. He notes what &quot ; traditional&quot ; quiltmaking meant to him in the late 1970s when he first took quiltmaking seriously. He then goes on to describe how he and partner Gwen Marston became professional quiltmakers: making quilts on commission, lecturing on quilt history, writing books, and hosting a quilt retreat. American Quilter's Society (AQS) ; Beaver Island Quilt Retreat ; Dover Publications ; Gwen Marston ; Joe Hedley ; Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilts ; Male quiltmakers ; professional quiltmaker ; Quilt history ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income 17 http://www.gwenmarston.com/ &quot ; Gwen Marston's Liberated Quilting Page&quot ; 1988 Move to San Francisco And then we finally split up and I moved to New York City in ninety – at the end of ’91, early 1992. Cunningham describes leaving Michigan in the early 1990s after he and partner Gwen Marston split up, eventually moving to San Francisco for a writing gig related to the Esprit Quilt Collection. He has lived in San Francisco ever since. Amish Quilts 1880-1940 from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown ; Esprit Quilt Collection ; Faith and Stephen Brown ; Julie Silber ; New York City, New York ; San Francisco, California ; The Quilt Complex ; Vermont 37.765822, -122.442751 17 San Francisco, California 2094 On first seeing Amish quilts And to see Amish quilts – I went to see this show, it was the Holstein Collection and the van der Hoof Collection at the Detroit Institute of Art. Cunningham recalls seeing an exhibit of Jonathan Holstein and Gail van der Hoof's Amish quilt collection in 1979 at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He became obsessed with Amish quilts and tried to copy these designs. He was embarrassed once he worked with the Esprit quilt collection and realized his quilts were such pale imitations compared to real Amish quilts. A Gallery of Amish Quilts: Design Diversity from a Plain People ; Amish quiltmakers ; Amish quilts ; Center Diamond -- quilt pattern ; Center Square -- quilt pattern ; Detroit Institute of Art ; Doug Tompkins ; Elizabeth Safanda ; Esprit Quilt Collection ; Gail van der Hoof ; Gwen Marston ; Jonathan Holstein ; Lancaster, Pennsylvania ; Log cabin quilts ; Mary Schafer ; Phyllis Haders ; reproduction quilts ; Robert Bishop ; Sunshine and Shadow: The Amish and their Quilts Amish quilts ; Detroit Institute of Arts 42.359672, -83.064444 17 Detroit Institute of Arts, where Cunningham first saw Amish quilts in person. http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/LQTM.jpg Quilts from the Esprit Collection hanging at the Lancaster Quilt and Textile Museum. Photograph by Janneken Smucker. 2397 What Cunningham likes about Amish quilts What did you like about Amish quilts? Cunningham articulates his evolution of feelings toward Amish quilts. He first loved the very &quot ; serious&quot ; quilts made in the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Amish settlement, because they were minimalist and intellectual. He later became familiar with midwestern Amish quilts, and particularly became enamored with quilts from the Arthur, Illinois, settlement, which were much more free and uninhibited than those from Lancaster. Amish quilts ; Arthur, Illinois ; David Pottinger ; Lancaster County, Pennsylvania ; minimalism ; Sunbonnet Sue - Quilt Pattern Amish quilts 40.036933, -76.105748 17 Lancaster County Amish settlement http://www.quiltindex.org/search_results.php?pattern_name=&amp ; quilter=&amp ; quilting_group=&amp ; quilt_id=&amp ; overall_loc=&amp ; city_made=&amp ; state_made=Illinois&amp ; province_made=&amp ; country_made=&amp ; period=Any&amp ; start_year=&amp ; end_year=&amp ; owner_name=&amp ; qproject=Any&amp ; collection=Any&amp ; predom_color=&amp ; spec_color=&amp ; overall_color=&amp ; FiberTypesF035=&amp ; FabricTypeF036=&amp ; FabPrintF037=&amp ; publications=&amp ; religious=amish&amp ; Search=Search Illinois Amish quilts from the Quilt Index, www.quiltindex.org 2657 Transition from &quot ; serious&quot ; quilting to his current style So how has – how did you make that transition from the very serious quilting? Cunningham recounts puzzling over what what was traditional about quilts and whether he was obligated to stick to these traditional aspects. Mary Schafer, his early quilt mentor, was precise and created quilts as if she was first making a kit. Eventually, his aesthetic preferences became more free as he encountered wildly designed antique quilts. Antique quilts ; Charlotte Jane Whitehall ; Design process ; John Cage ; Kansas ; Kit quilts ; Mary Schafer ; Merry Silber ; pattern designer ; Quilt history ; Rose Kretsinger 17 http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-4 Mary Schafer, &quot ; October Foliage,&quot ; The Quilt Index. This quilt, inspired by a nineteenth-century pattern, exemplifies Schafer's precise, engineered approach to quiltmaking. 2908 On the relationship between quilts and art So that’s what happened, was at first I thought quilts were valuable insofar as they resembled art. I thought my job was to make art – was to make the quilts – was to make quilts legitimate by making them artistic. Cunningham comments on the belief that quilts are only artistically legitimate if they resemble paintings. He has grown frustrated with this perspective, and thinks 19th-century women quiltmakers should get credit for creating large abstract works of art fifty years before male painters did. He evolved into thinking that quilts do not need to look like art or be considered art ; they should just be quilts. abstract painting ; Antique quilts ; Gee's Bend quilts ; Gender in qulitmaking ; Quilt history 32.075450, -87.290907 17 Boykin, Alabama, home of Gee's Bend quiltmakers http://www.joethequilter.com/images/561_Some_Dumb_Old_painting.jpg Joe Cunningham, &quot ; Some Dumb Old Painting,&quot ; 2012, collection of the artist. 3374 Current work So you’re currently doing what? Cunningham notes that he is currently abandoning his philosophy of making what he has called &quot ; traditional quilts&quot ; or &quot ; community patterns.&quot ; He is forging his own way, as with the piece &quot ; My Own Fault,&quot ; pictured here. Art quiltmaking ; Hand quilting ; Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; San Francisco, California 17 http://www.joethequilter.com/images/569_My_Own_Fault.jpg Joe Cunningham, &quot ; My Own Fault,&quot ; 2007, private collection. Noted quiltmaker Joe Cunningham describes his evolving philosophy of the intersections among quilts, art, and tradition. He elaborates on how he began quilting in 1979, collaborating with Gwen Marston and learning from Mary Schafer. He discusses Amish quilts, a subject he has written about at length through his work with the Esprit Quilt Collection. Interviewer Janneken Smucker (JS): Good afternoon, this is Janneken Smucker. I’m here with Joe Cunningham, who has graciously agreed to be interviewed as part of Quilters’ Save Our Stories. Today is August 18th, [2007.], and we are in Joe’s studio in San Francisco, California. Thanks so much for agreeing to meet with me today. Interviewee Joe Cunningham (JC): You’re welcome. JS: I’m really happy to have met you this weekend, and I look forward to getting to know you better. JC: Yes. JS: We’re going to start our conversation today by talking about one of the quilts here in your studio. Do you have one that you would like to talk about in particular? JC: Well, yes, I think the blue-and-white one. JS: Okay. JC: It represents a lot of things that I’m all about. For one, it’s nice to sleep under ; it’s a blanket. For another, it’s a classic pattern. I get all of my ideas from quilts. I get really edgy – or not edgy, nervous when I’m not making a quilt. When I’m making a quilt, I don’t get nervous at all. I feel like, ‘Oh, well, I know how to do this.’ It’s the one thing I know how to do, is to make a quilt. So when I make something like this quilt over here, I’d ask, ‘Should I do this? Should I do that? What do other people think about it?’ et cetera. I have these endless insecurities. But making a quilt, like the blue-and-white one, I don’t have those kinds of insecurities. This was made in 2001. It’s a six-year-old quilt now. And I made it for my musical about Joe Hedley, Joe the Quilter, from England, who lived 200 years ago. And so I made six quilts to tell the story of his quiltmaking career. And I tell the story of his life and then sing songs that I wrote about him. So this quilt is a classic design. Tree Everlasting, it’s called, or other things. It’s just sawtooth-edged bars that I wanted to know, ‘What would it be like if I just used scissors and cut everything freehand?’ Because you know a lot of old quilts were made that way. You’ll see quilts – you’ve seen quilts that you wonder, ‘What kind of template was she using, anyway?’ The template she was using was no template, I think, sometimes. So, ‘What would it be like to just cut’ – well, you see the top row there, it’s disappointingly easy to do, it turns out. You can just – I wanted a wilder effect, so I started out on the top row just cutting triangles. Well, my eye is good enough at this point, I could just cut triangles and they all fit and everything was easy. That’s not the effect I wanted. So then I started deliberately messing things up and using scraps to sort of get it so that I could finally get wildness like I did eventually. You can see it as the bars go down. Then I evened it all up because I have enough of the quiltmaker in me – or the, what do I want to say, the prissiness or something in me from learning from old ladies how to make quilts that I want it to be square and flat. So I evened it all up, added borders, and then quilted it freehand. And so since I quilted it freehand – let me see, so I quilted in the letters down the white lines there. ‘Joe Hedley’s first quilt,’ it says, ‘made by Joe Cunningham.’ In the next bar, the next white bar, it says, ‘Blue and White 2001,’ and then on the bottom it’s just a kind of a vine with leaves, with background quilting. In the blue print there, there’s fancy designs. It’s – around the outside border, there’s this sort of a sunrise, then a half of a feather wreath, and then a swag with this sort of – so it’s this very fancy design. Then down the blue and white bars, the blue bars there, it’s a spiral that goes into a fleur de lis. JS: Oh, I see it. JC: See that? JS: Yes. JC: A spiral into a fleur de lis. And then here there’s the swag. Here’s the little bit of feather wreath. This is kind of a sunrise. It’s very complex. And I quilted it all freehand. And when I got it done, you couldn’t see it at all. It took me months. I mean, it was not months of quilting. As you know, it doesn’t take that long. For me, it takes about twelve days, twelve working days, to quilt a quilt, a six-foot-square quilt. But it took me months to get those twelve working days in. So it was months working on it, and then when I get it done, there I am with something that you can’t even see the hand quilting in it, which is one of my favorite things, actually. Because a woman gave me a quilt one time – it was a Pennsylvania German quilt – Merry Silber, the great quilt collector. It was a crib quilt, Pennsylvania German. The bars were about three-and-a-half or four inches wide. And I’m trying to remember, were they pink and yellow or red and yellow, that kind of – and it was the Ely and Walker print, the tiny little calico print that was in print for 130 years or whatever it was. So it was made sometime near the turn of the century, a little before probably, 1890 or so. It was so boring. It was just you couldn’t even – there was nothing. But it was nice and she gave it to me, and so, ‘Thank you very much.’ One day in my studio, it was lying in a certain way, and when the sun raked across it, all of a sudden I could see that in this bar were cables, in this bar were feather wreaths, cables, feather wreaths. But you couldn’t see ; they were invisible. Well, that’s somebody that likes to quilt. And I like to quilt. And quilting, hand quilting, the one element of its decline has been that people – how people view it. They view it as this enormous barrier between their finished piece. But all the effort goes into the top. This, ‘It’s surface design. We’re artists. We’re making this design. We’re making this artistic statement.’ And once the top is done, the artistic statement is over. They’ve done it, they’ve said everything they have to say, but, ‘We still have to quilt it.’ [spoken disdainfully.] You know what I mean? So they still have to quilt it, so either they will – what used to happen is they would quilt it perfunctorily. They would quilt it and you could see they didn’t enjoy that, did they? [laughter.] They weren’t too hot at it and they didn’t really like it and they got it over with as soon as possible by keeping the lines far apart and all that, quilting in the ditch, all of that stuff. Which is hard. It’s yucky to quilt in the ditch, you know? JS: I agree. JC: Who needs that? But they’re so ashamed of their quilting – oh, forget it. Anyway, so, therefore, when machine quilting came along, people were primed for it. The people, the women of this revival were primed for it because quilting had become just a chore. There was no joy in it. There was no artistic value in it. There was no – it’s just a functional thing. You have to make it a quilt by sewing the two layers together. And the last thing that – people will say many things about hand quilting, but the last thing that they’ll say is how great it is and how renewing it is and how rewarding it is. And as you know from being a quilter, when you have made this object and you have quilted it, when you sit down at the frame and it’s an ocean of fabric in front of you, it’s like, it’s the most unrealistic thing in the world to think that you’re going to quilt that, right? JS: Yes. JC: How are you going to do it? You do it a stitch at a time. You can’t see it ; it’s stupid. There’s no way you’re ever going to get it done, it just looks like. It’s so intimidating. And then you start quilting and then it’s six hours have gone, and you don’t know where they went, except you do. They’re all right there. And, furthermore, if you quilt on an old-fashioned frame so that you roll it up as you go, it’s really great psychologically because your finished stuff gets rolled up and rolled up and rolled up, until by the time you have it done, when you’re – however you do it, but it’s going to be twelve or fourteen inches down the middle is all that’s left that’s visible, you take that last stitch in there and then you unclamp and you unroll, and you cut that sucker out of the frame or unpin it, however you do it, and you get to see what you did for the first time. Whereas – and it’s great. It’s really, ‘Ah!’ what a feeling. Hang it up and get a glass of wine, is what you feel like. Whereas, if you quilt in a hoop, you have the whole thing dragging around. The whole thing is looking at you all the time, saying, ‘Partly done. Partly done. Partly done.’ [laughter.] And there’s no big deal when you get it done. It’s no different than when you first started, looks-wise. I mean, you got it done and that’s good. ‘Okay, that’s good, you got it done. And you can hang it up now.’ But you know what I mean? You don’t get that – because when I finish – I work spontaneously. I don’t make drawings and I don’t get on the computer, so I work spontaneously. And I don’t know what I’m doing – I mean, I don’t know what it’s going to look like until I’m done making the top, and then I go, ‘Oh, that’s what that idea looked like. Okay.’ This time. ‘Okay.’ So then I put it in the frame and then I quilt it. Lots of times, because it takes me so darned long to get something quilted nowadays, months, I don’t remember what it looked like. Not really, you know, because I only saw it for a little while and then I quilted it down, and so it’s a moment of glory for me, of existential glory, to pull a quilt out of the frame. So if you cannot see the quilting, guess what? Who cares? I know it’s there. I can find it. If we crawl around on our hands and knees when it’s on the floor, or you walk right up to it in a show, and you can see, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ Because quilting, the other aspect of it to me, is that quilting is so precious. It’s so – I mean, if you’re going to do hand quilting, if you go to the show where there’s 300 quilts hung up in the big auditorium or convention center, if you are going to hand quilt it, well, by God, those stitches had better be perfect and they’d better be – they better meet at right angles, and by God, they’d better be close and they’d better be – because you’re hand quilting it and you’ve got to put a lot of hand quilting. [sigh.] And it’s so precious because it’s just not done. And so you have to do all of this stuff. Well, I just hate the idea of making hand quilting so precious. I love to quilt and it’s part of my life. I’m a quilter. And so the idea that it’s so precious, that engenders, that fosters all kinds of unhelpful thinking, I believe. If it’s so precious, then, like I say, ‘By God, you better not make any mistakes!’ And so you’re – I mean, when I teach hand quilting, I’ll get these expert hand quilters in there whose stitches are much finer than mine, often, in my classes. But what they’re trying to do is perfect their stitches. And they want to know, ‘So, at the corner of the block, what do you do?’ You know, ‘You’ve got the seams. What are you going to do about the seams?’ ‘Well, I avoid them, if I can! If there’s any way I can, I avoid them.’ ‘Well, what do you if you can’t avoid them?’ ‘Well, my stitches get bigger.’ And as you can see, see how it ruins the quilt? See, over there, how it ruins the quilt because my stitches got bigger? You know what I mean? JS: [laughter.] Yes. JC: And I think there’s a lot of things that foster that kind of thinking. One is the competitions, because judges will actually say that stuff on their forms, that, ‘Stitches spread out in the corners.’ And you get marked down for that. So in a way, the people are right who say that, who think that, they’re right. If they’re entering contests, they’re going to get marked down if there’s the slightest – so I think contests foster a lot of it. But also, it’s just the general, overall preciousness of hand quilting. People then feel like it’s life and death, it’s life and death, it’s the furthest thing from an ordinary part of my life. It’s this, ‘Everything is coming together. A whole tradition is coming down on me right here in my frame or my hoop or however I’m doing it, and everything has got to be perfect!’ And so, what if there’s – what if you draw a feather wreath and there’s one fewer feather on this wreath than there is on that wreath? ‘How can I make these feathers line up?’ Well, they can’t line up because it’s a curve. There’s going to be more feathers on the outside than on this. ‘What do you mean, they can’t line up? They have to line up!’ Well, no, they don’t. If you line them up, it’s not a feather design ; it’s something else. ‘Arrgh, the tension of it all!’ And so, I like anything that militates against the tension in quilts and the overall, but specifically, that’s why I want to talk about this blue-and-white quilt, is I like the idea – see, this was a conceptual thing. I wondered, ‘What would it look like to make a traditional pattern,’ because I like to make a lot of traditional patterns freehand. ‘What would that look like?’ What would it look like to do a two-color quilt without any – without a plan? So, here we go, this is what it looks like. Well, guess what, Janneken, it’s not the greatest quilt ever made. It’s cool. I like it. I like it a lot. JS: As do I. JC: But it’s not the greatest quilt that ever walked. I mean, there it is ; it’s a two-color quilt. Two-color quilts don’t set me on fire, in the first place, generally. They’ve got to be really unusual, like that chicken the other night, which did have a third color but still, oh my goodness. They’ve got to be really something. And this one, it is what it is. Well, good. I accomplished what I set out to accomplish which was to find out what it would look like. Right? I found out. It looks like that. Well, great. And in my show that I made it for, it has a function and it’s very valuable and everything, but if it’s not the most successful quilt, if you can’t see the quilting, well, they’re not all going to be your first quilt, your best, your greatest quilt you ever made. And so – but I believe there’s something about this revival that has made many people feel, I don’t know, that their reputation is at stake or something. I mean, it seems to me that nineteenth century quiltmakers felt empowered to make quilts their own way. They were doing something so fundamentally different than what we’re doing that it’s hard to discern and it’s hard to define, but they were doing something, I believe, fundamentally different. For instance, there is a great deal of randomness with nineteenth century quilts. The women would be making pieced quilts, they would work along until they ran out of that fabric, and then they would start in with a new fabric. Well, that tells me that they had a wholly different idea of what they were trying to do. Women today, when they’re making quilts, if they run out of – well, they wouldn’t run out. You plan ahead. You’ve got your software telling you how much yardage to get, right? But if you were making the blocks and you ran out, then you’d have to do something clever. Then, ‘Oh, okay, I’ll use another brown and I’ll put it in the corners. I’ll arrange it symmetrically. Or I’ll put those in the middle to do the one composition that everybody knows,’ which is like an exploding sun or something from the middle. We have an area of lightness but then – so we’ll do something like that with it. Or we’ll – in any event, we have to indicate that it looked intentional. We must control every aspect of this process. We have to look like – I mean, ‘We’re artists.’ You can’t just let things happen, you know what I mean? Where nineteenth century quiltmakers just let things happen, a lot. They cut borders off. The border design is going along until they’re done with it and then they cut it off. You reach the end of the border. Well, now you have to resolve the corners, right? JS: Right. JC: And all this stuff. You have to control every aspect of it. And nineteenth century quiltmakers, there’s many things that they left out, that they left to chance. Lots of the great appliqué quilts, the majority of the great appliqué quilts, their abilities to replicate curves, exact curves, how about the handles of baskets? Something about the handles of baskets, so that if you see a basket quilt from the nineteenth century, every handle will be different. It’s because they were doing something fundamentally different. They were putting handles on the baskets, right? Quilters now are making a pattern, and you’ve got to [grunt.], and so you have the template and every single handle is exactly the same. Stuff like that. That’s what I’m – so because otherwise, if you just put handles on the baskets, it would look like, what? Like you didn’t control it. And the suggestion then, I believe, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but the suggestion then is that you didn’t know how to control it. And there’s a lot of angst around your ability to control your process. You want the quilt to lay flat. You want the quilt – and you want the stitches – and you want everything symmetrical and you turn the corner evenly and – you know what I mean? [laughter.] JS: Yes. [laughter.] JC: So I’m always trying to do things that are – that I don’t control. I’m trying to lose control. I’m trying to shed control. So when I do lectures, it’s the same thing. I want to provoke myself to use whatever happens in the room to make it now, to keep dragging myself into the now, and not into my outline. And so – and when I’m making quilts, I keep trying to drag myself into the now. I want – I don’t want to know – if I – in the past, when I’ve made commissioned works and I would draw them on computer or by hand and make a tissue overlay for the quilting designs and everything, and then I start making the quilt once I get my down payment, and we’re doing it and it’s all official for the designer or the architect or whatever, and I start work on it, I’ve already done – I’ve already done – I have already had all the fun. And all that’s left to do now is the work. I’ve done all the creativity. I solved all the problems. And now I just have to do the work. And there’s a certain journeyman’s joy in doing something that you know how to do. It’s a good thing, just to do a job that you’ve worked a long time at and you can do it. And there’s a certain amount of that. But I don’t have to do that anymore, really. I don’t – I’m not – that’s not what I’m doing. That’s not what I want to do. So I keep trying to come up with ideas. ‘Well, what would it look like if?’ And so, then, my quilts are an answer to that, ‘It would look like,’ they end up saying, ‘like this.’ That’s the message of my quilts, ‘Like this.’ JS: There it is. Yes. That’s great. So how did you begin quilting, quiltmaking? JC: I started making quilts -- [off-the-record discussion about the tape machine]. I’ve got a twenty-three minute answer. JS: That’s all right. That’s all right. I’m happy not to be talking. JC: I was back in my home town, Flint, [Michigan.], for the summer, after my one year of college in Colorado. I was going to go back to college that fall. I went home to work on an album, as a guitar player, with a friend of mine, and to write the lyrics on this album. And I was there that summer and a friend of mine said, ‘You should’ – oh, no, he told somebody else. He told this woman, folk singer, ‘You should hire this guy to play guitar with you on some concerts.’ Her name was Gwen Marston. And so Gwen called me up and I went over to her house for rehearsals for some – a series of concerts she was doing. At her house were these boxes full of blankets. They were blankets ; they were old. It turned out they were the quilts of Mary Schafer, who just died this winter. She [Gwen.] had gotten a grant to document Mary’s collection and to produce a catalogue. She had a bunch of boxes of quilts at her house, about a third of the collection, for the photographer to take pictures of. And I wanted to look at them, so she showed me a bunch of the quilts. Well, something happened to me, you know, I loved them. She made quilts. She had learned to make quilts from a Mennonite quilting group in Oregon, when she had been there on a sabbatical once, and so she was making quilts for her kids and what have you, but just working along as a quiltmaker. But she had discovered Mary Schafer, who was this great quiltmaker in mid-Michigan at the time. She [Mary Schafer.] was born in 1910 ; this was in 1979, so she was sixty-nine years old. And what I wanted to be was a writer, so – and I had just finished my one year of college studying English, primarily. And Gwen told me at one point as she was doing the documentation for this, she loved getting all the information together but she was dreading writing the catalogue because she didn’t feel like a writer and she didn’t want to become one just to do it. Well, I’d been studying English for a year. I could do almost anything, really, with the English language, you know what I mean? JS: [laughter.] JC: I was twenty-six. And so I said, ‘Well, I can write that for you.’ ‘Well, you’d have to know something about quilts.’ And I had heard a phrase that I loved in school, which was, ‘All the available literature.’ I loved that, and I thought to myself, ‘Know something about quilts? How about if a read all the available literature? How would that be?’ JS: [laughter.] JC: Which, at the time, this is 1979, there was about eight or ten books. JS: You could read all the available literature. JC: You could read it all. It took me most of the summer to read [Ruth.] Finley and Dr. [William Rush.] Dunton, and Marie Webster, Florence Peto. There was just not that many. These women, all of them became my heroes. And then Barbara Brackman’s stuff in “Quilter’s Newsletter.” So I just read everything that I could read. Then I met Mary, herself, and well, Mary was thrilled. Here was this young man that was interested in quilts. And one night, Gwen came over to my apartment with a little crib quilt, it was a Drunkard’s Path, and a big thimble that she had found someplace. And she said, ‘If you’re going to write persuasively about quilts, you need to know how to quilt. So here’s how it’s done.’ The rocking stitch, she taught me. ‘All right.’ I was already becoming very interested in her, so, ‘Fine. This will make a good impression.’ JS: [laughter.] JC: So by the time I finished that quilt, about a week later, my stitches were good enough that I could sit at her frame and quilt on her stuff. And then I wrote the catalogue and we put up this big Mary Schafer quilt show that year, to which an editor came from a now defunct magazine. Her name was Carter Houck from the – it was called “Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilts Magazine.” And Carter was doing a story on Michigan quilts. She asked me if I would write an article about Mary Schafer. Well, I wanted to be a writer. Getting paid to do an article about Mary Schafer, who I already had all the material, I’d already written about, ‘Well, sure, I’ll do that.’ And we went around and I started seeing what other people were doing in quilts, and it seemed to me that – I was so arrogant, but it seemed to me that people’s take on quilts was fundamentally unserious. There was something – see, they’re too serious and now I want them to be less serious. I’m serious. This is my life. JS: [laughter.] JC: And people would call themselves traditional, meaning what they do is make all symmetrical. ‘I use time-honored blocks and I use easily-blended colors and I arrange them symmetrically with a border.’ That’s what they meant by traditional, when the traditional will put hair on your toenails. Traditional is wild. It’s this realm of wildness, if you really look at what’s in the tradition. And it just – it always seemed insulting to me. Well, anyway, and I thought, ‘Well, I can do better than that. Come on.’ And so I wanted to make a quilt. So then we worked together on a quilt and sold it for like fifteen hundred dollars, the first quilt that we ever made together. JS: Wow! JC: Then one night, on the way to a gig I was playing, Gwen was going with me to Ann Arbor, and I said, ‘I know what to do.’ I got this thunderbolt of inspiration. I realized many years later that it was, I think, partly inspired by reading the story of Joe Hedley, Joe the Quilter from England, a man who was a professional quiltmaker. But anyway, I said, ‘Let’s go pro. Let’s get some business cards printed up that say, “Professional Quiltmakers.” And when we meet people, let’s tell them we’re professional quiltmakers.’ And, you know, what are they going to say? Like, ‘Where’d you go to school? Where’s your license?’ or something? They can’t prove that you’re not a professional quiltmaker. And then people started hiring us. The Antique Club there in town heard there was these professional quiltmakers and we would come and give a talk, so we’ll get paid fifty bucks to talk about the history of quilts, which that’s all I was talking about anyway. [laughter.] And we were also performers, and so getting up and doing a lecture, well this is a piece of cake. It’s easy. Whereas, at the time, this is late 1979, early ’80, when we’re getting started, ’80, ’81, most of the people who were doing quilt lectures were not performers. They were women who had become very good at quilts. And it’s two different things. And so many of the great, the early great quilt authorities that I saw were reading their lectures from an outline, and they were not that comfortable doing it. And so – and I was twenty-six, twenty-seven. It was so – I was this very tall guy, and it was very easy to stand up. It was very easy to get a lot of attention. Plus we worked like crazy. Gwen’s kids were in college then, and so we had no children to contend with, so we could just spend all day making quilts. Lots of times we had to play gigs at night, but we just quilted all day. And so we could produce a lot of quilts, quilt one at least every month and sometimes more than that. And so we had a lot of hand quilting done in a hurry and it was very impressive. And then we started writing. We got a book contract for Dover right away, and then AQS, and we wrote a bunch of books together, and then eventually got a column for “Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilts,” and wrote for them, how to make quilts. So we eventually built a house on an island in northern Lake Michigan, and had the upper part of it was a quilt studio, and we moved up there and started the Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, which still goes on, although not on the island. It’s someplace else now. And made quilts and traveled around the country and wrote books and made videos and all that sort of stuff, all through the eighties. And then we finally split up and I moved to New York City in ninety – at the end of ’91, early 1992. And I went back to music for while and was music director for a theater company, and then got a radio show in Vermont, a crazy series of things, and I worked for the theater company up there. And then eventually, I was hired by Julie Silber, who was then the curator of the Esprit Quilting Company quilt collection, to come out here because she was starting her exhibition business, The Quilt Complex, and needed a writer, quilt writer who knew Amish quilts to write all of her materials. So I came out here for a five-month job and then met Carol, and got married and stayed. So I’ve been here ever since. So that’s how I got started. [laughter.] JS: That’s great. Okay, that’s – I’m glad you brought in the piece with Julie Silber because that’s how I became familiar with you, is I read your essay in the catalogue of the Brown Collection [Amish Quilts 1880-1940 from the Collection of Faith and Stephen Brown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 2000)] JC: Oh, yes. JS: And that was when I first saw your name and I was really struck by that, that essay, because I was starting to study Amish quilts at that point and saw the exhibition. So did you do a variety of things with Julie and The Quilt Complex? JC: Yes. I mean, when I started, and let me just reiterate here it was 1979. JS: Yes, much earlier. JC: And to see Amish quilts – I went to see this show, it was the Holstein Collection and the van der Hoof Collection at the Detroit Institute of Art. Mary and Gwen and I went. So there we are, well Mary goes up to this Sawtooth Center Diamond, and she’s got her little cloth tape, you know, and she said – well, she knows not to touch quilts, but she’s there like this [indicating.], and so she’s measuring, ‘Those are inch-and-a-half on a side.’ Where I’m there taking notes and the guard comes over and says, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Making a sketch.’ ‘No sketching!’ ‘No sketching?’ ‘There is no sketching, no photography, no drawings.’ So, ‘Okay,’ so one of us would stay out in the hall and the other one would go in and [measure.], ‘It’s about six inches,’ and then go back out and tell the person, ‘It’s six inches,’ you know? JS: [laughter.] JC: So that was the first Amish quilts I saw in real life. But for the majority of Amish quilts that we – Gwen and I went through a phase when we first started, I wanted to be serious. Oh! JS: Well, of course. JC: And Amish – of course! And Amish quilts, you can’t be any more serious than Amish quilts. So I wanted to make these copies of center diamonds and center squares and stuff. So where could you see them? Well, Julie, I knew a little bit, and she – I had met Julie and she sent me pictures of quilts. There was the “Gallery of Amish Quilts” came out then by Bishop and Safanda, and was it Phyllis Haders had a book on Amish quilts then? [Robert Bishop and Elizabeth Safanda, A Gallery of Amish Quilts: Design Diversity from a Plain People, (New York: Dutton, 1976) ; Haders, Sunshine and Shadow: the Amish and their Quilts (New York: Universe Books, 1976)] JS: Uh-huh. JC: So we copied a bunch. We copied about twenty-five Amish quilts. Well, we’re making them out of cotton, but I learned a lot by trying to copy the quilting. And then I met some Amish quilters, and so I was just totally into Amish, Amish, Amish. We’d copy these quilts and meticulously copy the colors. When I came out here and saw the quilts that I had been copying, they were completely different. They were completely different in every particular. The colors were not right ; the proportions were off. I had copied them very closely but they were off. And then the quilting designs, which I was so good at copying, were embarrassingly more sophisticated and better done and, oh, it was embarrassing to see how I thought I was making these beautiful things [but.] I was making these pale imitations, these ugly – I mean, they were not ugly, but they were imitations of – JS: When you saw the – JC: – when I saw the real thing and was able to handle them a lot. And so ever since then, nineteen ninety—I saw them when I came out in the eighties, during the glory days of the Amish Quilt Collection there at Esprit. But ever since I moved out here to help with Julie, I’m the one that handles those quilts, so I’m the one that packed them up to send them to Lancaster when he [Doug Tompkins, founder of Esprit] finally sold them [Amish quilts] back [to Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s Heritage Center Museum]. And so I’ve lived with these quilts and I’ve breathed in their dust and I just love these quilts. And if I were to set out to make an Amish quilt today, I think I could do a lot better than the ones that I used to make. JS: Much more intimately acquainted with them. Those twenty-five or so quilts that you were making, painstakingly studying, what happened to those? JC: Well, when Gwen and I split up, she got all of the quilts that we had made. JS: So those weren’t ones that you had made to sell or on commission? JC: A lot of them got sold. Let me see here. This [indicating a photograph.] is not a copy ; this is just an Amish style Log Cabin. It got sold. They got sold or, ‘I don’t know,’ is the other answer. I got ten quilts when we split up, and I only have a couple of those left. I’ve sold them. JS: Right. What is the name of that book? “Sets and Borders” by Gwen Marston and Joe Cunningham. JC: Copy? JS: Yes, it’s a pretty good copy. JC: It’s pretty good. It’s pretty good until you see the real thing and see how – JS: Of course. JC: But then, of course, this photograph doesn’t really represent that quilt either. So now we’re in this middle ground. There’s these two quilts, and so that one’s pretty good [indicating.]. This one I was very proud of, trying to make a modern version of an Amish quilt. JS: What did you like about Amish quilts? JC: Oh, I mean, it’s very clear to me what I liked about them. Like I said, I was afraid of people – and especially, my guitar player friends, when they – and musician friends, when they heard that I was making quilts, I was deathly afraid that they would think that I was making “Sunbonnet Sue” things or little tea cozies and stuff like that. Well, the last thing I was ever going to do was something cute. ‘No thank you.’ I’m a serious – I’m an intellectual, and I don’t make junk like that. Little gifts for the grandkids and stuff like that, you know? Come on! JS: [laughter.] JC: I make serious things. And there’s nothing that could be more serious than a Lancaster County quilt. You know, it’s cold. Design-wise, nothing is more colder and icy and intellectual and seeming, at the time, to me, that’s what they represented. And so that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something that would look intellectually detached and cold and severe, severe, like that, and intellectual and minimal. And it resembled minimal art. And it’s so embarrassing, but that’s true. That’s true. And I really liked the Lancaster County stuff initially, but then that opened the doorway into the Midwestern stuff. And then, being in the – when the [David.] Pottinger Collection book came out and seeing all those, well, it was a revelation. And then when I got to actually see Midwestern Amish quilts, then I started having this whole series of revelations. And especially the Arthur Illinois quilts. JS: Oh, I’m with you. JC: You know what I’m talking about? JS: Yes, exactly. JC: Those, that’s it for me. And then when I saw, ‘Oh, you can be free. You can just be free.’ Oh! And so there was those, and it took me a long time – here’s a copy of an Iowa Amish quilt. I’ve never seen the original ; just a picture of it. There was a time – oh, I lost my train of thought because I saw this picture. I was trying to show you here, see, this is – in here, this is the last book that we did together [indicating.], and you can always tell, her quilts are playful and fun ; my quilts look ice cold. [laughter.] JS: [laughter.] JC: This is what appealed to me. I wanted to copy a very difficult quilt of the past. Oh, there’s this gallery section in here. Okay, here’s what we’re talking about. See? We’ll take the fundamental ideas of an Amish quilt and then we’ll alter it in a more intellectual way. Where she’s going much more free stuff. We did these together, but this is me [indicating.]. JS: [laughter.] JC: So it took me a long time to get over that, but gradually, that’s my train of thought. We did a book on appliqué quilts, but that was never my favorite thing. It really wasn’t. Appliqués meant flowers and all of that. Well, by golly, by studying these old quilts and then copying them, then I started to feel – I started to get an appreciation for all these different kinds of beauty and these different kinds of aesthetic realms that quilts represent. Any questions? JS: Any questions? What, I get to ask questions? [laughter.] So how has – how did you make that transition from the very serious quilting? JC: Once you see – what happened to me was I met Mary Schafer early on. Mary, one of the world’s great quiltmakers, where did her aesthetic come from? Well, I could show you where it came from. Kit quilts. Her whole idea of how to make a quilt came from kit quilts. She studied history extensively but what she copied was the symmetrical, was the engineered borders, was everything about kit quilts, the way they are engineered and designed, she learned to imitate, down to the way she marked quilts was with a brown paper sack. She would sketch the design and then perfect it on a brown paper sack and then poke holes with a knitting needle through, and then lay that on and put pencil marks so that she had a follow-the-dot pattern because that was the first quilts that she made, were kit quilts, and they had follow-the-dot patterns. Her whole aesthetic came from that. So I thought – one of my first original ideas that I took over to Mary’s, this quilt top, I said, ‘Now I want to quilt it like this. And then on the border, here’s what I’m thinking. Here’s what I’m thinking. Just bear with me. I want to put the binding on and then just inside the binding, I want to do this little piping, just like a little, oh, a little eighth of an inch edge of maybe yellow up against that red binding.’ And she said, ‘Well, it’s not traditional, you know.’ JS: [laughter.] JC: Oh, yes, I guess it’s not traditional so I guess I can’t do it. She was so serious about the tradition and there was something about that that appealed to me. And so, ‘Okay, I won’t do it then. Fine.’ It wasn’t that I kept myself from doing anything original, but, I don’t know, but anyhow, so then a couple of years later, Merry Silber showed me a quilt dated 1863, that had a little piping around that border – that binding. A little piping around the binding! Well, what would you know about that! And I mean, I’ll never forget that moment when I saw that quilt and I thought, ‘Now wait a minute. What is Mary [Schafer.] talking about that’s traditional and what’s not?’ and all of that. And then I really started looking at the tradition. And when you, like I say, when you look at old quilts, people think of old quilts as like this sort of mottled brown sort of things or something. But when you look at what’s there, it’s so wild and glorious. And it was from really starting to collect and to study old quilts that then the ones that appealed to me were the ones – then – okay, what happened was my idea of intellectual seriousness flipped. And I started thinking more like John Cage. You can’t get any more intellectually serious than that, but also playful. I started thinking of a whole different thing. I started seeing the other quilts. And you can find whatever you want. You can go to Kansas, mid-twentieth century, and get Charlotte Jane Whitehill and that whole crew, Rose Kretsinger and all of them. Well, you could get lost in that and do that for the rest of your life. But what appealed to me, as a musician and as a person, was not knowing what was going to happen next. And once I realized I could find that in quilts, that’s what I wanted. That’s what I wanted to seek and that’s what I wanted to do. So that’s what happened, was at first I thought quilts were valuable insofar as they resembled art. I thought my job was to make art – was to make the quilts – was to make quilts legitimate by making them artistic. At a certain point, my thinking changed because of what I actually saw in the tradition. When I actually realized – when I realized that, ‘Oh, guess what? Guess what, Dude?’ Women thought of large-scale, abstract compositions, with a great deal of randomness. In the mid-1800s, you can find utility quilts where she didn’t know what it was going to look like ; she was just sewing pieces together, and cutting them freehand, for that matter. Fifty years – and it’s a good thing I have a woman and a child in the room with me or my language would go terrible – fifty years before the painters discovered this, that you could make a large-scale, abstract painting and not know what it was going to look like ahead of time, you could just express yourself with the paint, women already were just expressing themselves with fabric, and they had already discovered this and they were already doing it. So now, then, eventually what happened was I realized that this was pissing me off that quilts still – look at the Gees Bend quilts ; it’s just the latest thing to happen. I love the Gees Bend quilts, but the reason that they got institutional credibility was because they resemble art. And so everybody – it’s so good, it’s like art. It’s so good, it’s a model of art. It’s so condescending, number one. It’s condescending to think – because the whole message here is that these uneducated women, these foolish, frivolous women, stumbled into this – they actually – it turns out they somehow accidentally made these things that we, sophisticates, can appreciate them for how artistic they really are. It makes me want to punch somebody. It makes me so mad that – and so, eventually, I got the feeling that quilts didn’t need art. Quilts exist in an aesthetic realm of their own. There is no art in a Nine Patch, a red-and-white Nine Patch. It’s a community pattern. We all make red-and-white Nine Patches at some point in our career, or we don’t have to, but we used to. All women used to make a red-and-white Nine Patch at some point, a green-and-white Nine Patch, make a two-color Nine Patch. That’s a community pattern. We’re not expressing our individuality with it. We’re not expressing an artistic concept that we invented. We’re using all community materials. And yet, and yet, you can look at a red-and-white Nine Patch and it can be so sublime in its proportions and in its composition that you just float away from it, it’s so beautiful. And is it art? To me, it’s doing something all different than art is supposed to do. But is it an object with some form of aesthetic power? Yes. So I started to have the idea that quilts don’t need to be made into art. And then I – but then, I see it’s just the opposite. [Sigh.] JS: [laughter.] JC: It’s just the opposite, is what’s happening now. Now, everybody thinks that in order to make quilts legitimate, to make them legitimate, we have to make them more resemble art. The more a quilt resembles a quilt, the less intellectually serious you must be. The more a quilt resembles art, the more intellectually serious you must be. It’s that way in the quilt world today. You know what I mean? JS: Yes. JC: So if you make a quilt, don’t – just don’t do it! Be creative! Express yourself! Just don’t make a boring Nine Patch ; just don’t do it. You’re told, ‘Don’t do it.’ Because that’s just what everybody does. You don’t want to just do – we’re Americans, for God’s sake. We have to go our own way. We have to be mavericks. JS: [laugher.] JC: We have to be creative. We have to be artists. And that – so, for instance, Joan Schultz is an artist. JS: Yes. JC: She’s an artist. And she’s primarily an artist, and she’s working in the quilt medium. She’s using quilts as a medium. JS: Right. JC: And that, I have like absolutely no problem with that. That’s what people who want to be artists, who make quilts – want to make quilts, that’s totally fine. I’m not against that at all. But what I’m against is the general feeling in the atmosphere that I just described, that quilts that are made as art are more valuable, are more serious. This is life and death to me. I’m trying to play as if my life depended on it. I’m serious, but I’m trying to play and have fun. And so that’s – so – but, I just keep coming back to all these ideas come right straight out of the tradition. You don’t have to – you can do – I mean, you can find whatever you want in the tradition, but the more you know about the rest of the world, the deeper you can see into what’s already there in quilts. And it doesn’t bother me at all that people are using quilts as an artistic medium, but what bothers me is that – the denigration of the tradition, that it’s not a worthy pursuit. I want to make it into a worthy pursuit, to make traditional quilts. JS: All right. JC: Of course, I haven’t thought about this before. JS: Not at all. [laughter.] So you’re currently doing what? JC: Right. I’m currently completely abandoning all those things I just said. [laughter.] No, my last hand-quilted quilt was eucalyptus leaves and I don’t have it here. It’s called “The Way Home.” It’s about where I live in the Presidio. And I feel like I finally have – I don’t have to do things that are using a quilt format any longer. I feel like now I can make quilts – at this point in my life, I feel pretty free to make whatever I want and to do whatever I want. And so, like this one here [indicating.], it’s called “My Own Fault,” and it’s about living in San Francisco. And when I’m done quilting it, it’ll be a quilt big enough to sleep under. That’s all I really know about it. But at this point, it feels to me like not doing community patterns. That’s what I feel like not doing. I feel like I just want to make my own stuff for awhile and see where it goes. But it’s very – so that’s what I’m doing. JS: Well, I think we are running to the end of our time together today. JC: All right. JS: I really look forward to continuing our conversation in the future. JC: Yes, I’m all for it. JS: Thank you so much. It’s now 2:49 [p.m.] on August 18[, 2007.], and this is Janneken Smucker signing off with Joe Cunningham for Quilters’ S.O.S. Thank you so much, Joe. JC: You’re welcome. 2016 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Quilt Alliance. 0 http://quiltalliance.org/projects/qsos/ 0 Interview Date 08-18-2007 Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Joe Cunningham Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Noted quiltmaker Joe Cunningham describes his evolving philosophy of the intersections among quilts, art, and tradition. He elaborates on how he began quilting in 1979, collaborating with Gwen Marston and learning from Mary Schafer. He discusses Amish quilts, a subject he has written about at length through his work with the Esprit Quilt Collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CA94129-001 Subject The topic of the resource Male quiltmakers Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007-08-18 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Joe Cunningham http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/b085eb78e4df4781a5146b393fbff29e.jpg 3c9d0160665f78edece28bf539c55f77 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/89fb908d642b81dbe5556ae7233a7dd8.jpg f8e37532406bf608e461e82982b82cdd Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Connecticut QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Meg Cox Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Denyse Schmidt Interview Keyword Quilters Take Manhattan quilt design fabric design graphic design OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 4 2012-09-15 Denyse Schmidt CT06607-001Schmidt Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories Quilters Take Manhattan QSOS Quilt Alliance Quilts in interior decoration Quiltmakers Quilted Goods Quilters Take Manhattan quilt design fabric design graphic design Denyse Schmidt Meg Cox QSOS_CT06607-001_Denyse_Schmidt_Q_A_removed.mp3 1:|8(4)|18(10)|29(13)|44(4)|57(13)|70(10)|84(7)|94(10)|108(5)|123(7)|134(13)|144(9)|156(1)|166(7)|181(7)|191(3)|207(12)|218(1)|231(3)|241(8)|253(12)|263(5)|272(11)|288(6)|298(1)|309(1)|321(5)|331(8)|340(16)|354(14)|369(12)|377(8)|391(3)|399(4)|413(7)|425(17)|435(6)|447(5)|457(11)|466(7)|475(6)|488(3)|495(4)|518(11) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/QSOS_CT06607-001_Denyse_Schmidt_Q_A_removed.mp3 Other audio 0 Introduction to interview from Meg Cox to Quilters Take Manhattan audience Ok can everybody here, can everybody hear ok? I want to get started Interviewer Meg Cox introduces the project and interview process to the live audience at Quilters Take Manhattan, a Quilt Alliance fundraiser held at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. She describes the format of the interview, and warns both Schmidt and the audience that interviews sometimes provoke tears. Caryl Bryer Fallert ; Denyse Schmidt ; International Quilt Festival ; interview process ; Library of Congress ; quilt celebrity ; Quilters Take Manhattan ; The Quilters Catalog Quiltmakers 40.748394, -73.995061 17 Fashion Institute of Technology, venue for Quilters Take Manhattan, where this interview in front of a live audience occurred. 230 Interview introduction I'm Meg Cox, and I'm here for the second annual Quilters Take Manhattan benefit. I'm interviewing Denyse Schmidt for Quilters' Save Our Stories, the oral history project of the Quilt Alliance. Cox introduces the interview, recorded live at Quilters Take Manhattan at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Quilters Take Manhattan 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/denyseschmidt01_cr-lane-du-pont_800wide.jpg Denyse Schmidt 264 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. Can you tell us about the quilt that's behind us, and why you brought this quilt today? Schmidt shares why she chose to bring the particular quilt called &quot ; One Big Square&quot ; as her touchstone quilt. She feels it is typical of her design and quiltmaking process, in that she pieced it in an improvisational way, basing it on what she describes as traditional methods. She notes that as a professional quilt designer, her work includes designing fabric, designing quilts manufactured in India, creating quilts for interior designers, and for gallery exhibition. &quot ; One Big Square&quot ; ; Art quilts ; Design process ; exhibition ; factory made quilts ; gallery ; Improvisational piecing ; interior design ; Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression ; Santa Fe, New Mexico ; touchstone quilt Quilts in art ; Quilts in interior decoration ; Textile designers 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/QSOS_DenyseSchmidtA.jpg Denyse Schmidt, &quot ; One Big Square.&quot ; 415 Techniques for touchstone quilt, &quot ; One Big Square&quot ; Now it's, was it machine pieced or–– Schmidt pieced this quilt by machine using &quot ; deadstock&quot ; from a fabric shop that was going out of business in Bridgeport, Connecticut, some of it vintage fabric from the 1970s, including the prominent striped fabric in the quilt. Bridgeport, Connecticut ; Design process ; exhibition ; Fabric - Striped ; fabric store ; Fabric/Quilt shops ; Hand quilting ; Machine Piecing ; Santa Fe, New Mexico ; Work or Studio space ; workshop Fabric shops 41.186243, -73.196603 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/14-31-ea5-1-denyseschmidtb.jpg Detail, Denyse Schmidt, &quot ; One Big Square.&quot ; 558 Background in art and design I want to talk a little bit about your background. What is the age you were when you started quilting and who got you started? Schmidt recounts tagging along with her older sister to art classes, but really absorbing the art and design process and ways of looking at the world. Later, when she went to Rhode Island School of Design she became interested in crazy quilts and other historic quilts, along with what she imagined to be the communal nature of the historic quiltmaking process, which served as an antidote to the mass-market world of graphic design in which she found herself after graduation. Antique quilts ; art school ; Barbie pink ; Connecticut ; Crazy quilts ; design process ; family ; graphic design ; life drawing ; needlepoint ; nine patch ; old timey music ; Rhode Island School of Design ; Scrap quilts Art schools ; Quilts--patchwork quilts 41.826280, -71.407609 17 Rhode Island School of Design, where Schmidt attended art school studying graphic design 836 On dancing and being photographed by Andy Warhol It's so interesting, all these different elements that would exert this pull on you. But I think a lot of people who know you as an iconic designer and a wonderful designer and kind of a modernist would be interested to know some of your background With Cox's prompt regarding being photographed by Andy Warhol for Paris Vogue, Schmidt recounts her background as a dancer, and how her dance connections led her to a community connected to Andy Warhol's Factory. Andy Warhol ; Andy Warhol's Factory ; Boston Ballet ; Carmen Beuchat ; Corey Tippin ; Delia Doherty ; Judson Church dance movement ; Mark Lipinski ; modernism ; Paris Vogue ; Robert Rauschenberg ; Twyla Tharp Andy Warhol Factory (New York, N.Y.) ; Modernism (Art) 40.753675, -73.970690 17 Andy Warhol's Factory http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111904537404576555050324870040 Meg Cox, &quot ; The Queen of the 'Neo-Hillbilly' Quilt,&quot ; Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10, 2011. 1002 Earlier career as graphic designer I think a lot people also don't know that for a while you considered that you might become… make your life designing fonts, doing typography Schmidt explains a bit of the process of designing typography ; she still receives royalty checks for designing a typeface named &quot ; Scamp.&quot ; She notes some similarities between quiltmaking and typographical design. graphic design ; Scamp ; typography Graphic design (Typography) 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/scamp_fat_characters_697733.gif Scamp typeface, designed by Denyse Schmidt 1122 Other jobs and inspiration to design quilts Oh, the tutus. So then I had, so I lived in New York for a while and did all this dance and performance things and then I moved back to Massachusetts for a while and I had a series of sewing jobs. Schmidt recalls that she did a variety of sewing jobs and pursued interests including cutting letters in stone. Eventually she attended the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and found her inspiration to make quilts, which no one was doing for the contemporary interior design market at that time. Boston Ballet ; dance ; ecclesiastical vesture ; graphic design ; headstone ; International Contemporary Furniture Fair ; monastery ; New York City, New York ; Rhode Island School of Design ; stonecutting ; tutus ; Worcester, Massachusetts Graphic design (Typography) ; Quilts in interior decoration 17 1388 On finding her niche in quilt design Well, it's interesting, you put this energy out and you had these different strands of skills and it seems like a lot of things came to you and I'm just wondering Schmidt describes how she discovered that no one was really making bedding at the contemporary design trade shows she began attending. After debuting a line of colorful quilts, she received great media attention and a contract to create stationary and sell quilts at Takashimaya, a Japanese department store, which began to give her antique kimonos to integrate into her quilts. Design process ; Dwell bedding ; kimono ; New York Times ; shelter magazines ; Takishimaya (Japanese department store) ; trade show Quilts in interior decoration 17 https://www.takashimaya.com.sg/ Takashimaya (Japanese department store) 1592 Describe your studio/the place that you create. Would you talk a little bit about your studio setup? What you're set up to do, what your studio looks like? Schmidt's studio is in Bridgeport, Connecticut, an old manufacturing city, in a factory building that use dot house the company American Fabrics. She notes that other artists and designers share the building. American Fabrics ; Apple Computers ; Bridgeport, Connecticut ; Brother sewing machine ; central Massachusetts ; Design process ; factory ; textile mill ; Work or Studio space 41.183104, -73.159397 17 Location of Schmidt's studio at the time of this interview. http://www.dsquilts.com/about.asp?PageID=95 &quot ; The Studio,&quot ; Denyse Schmidt Quilts. 1744 Design inspiration So you do teach a lot of improvisational workshops with the improvisational quilting Schmidt reflects on the various things that inspire her quilt design, including painting, fashion, flea market finds, and particularly historic quilts. She admits having a nostalgia for vintage design from earlier eras. Her fabric line, &quot ; Flea Market Fancy&quot ; reveals some of these inspirations. Antique quilts ; Design process ; Fabric - Feedsack ; fashion ; Feedsack ; flea market ; inspiration ; nostalgia ; painting ; Pottery Barn ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income Quilts in interior decoration 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/FleaMarket.jpg Denyse Schmidt, &quot ; Flea Market Fancy&quot ; fabric line for FreeSprit Fabrics 1929 How do you feel about machine quilting vs. hand quilting? What about long-arm quilting? One of the things that was interesting to me and I had interviewed before for the Wall Street Journal is this: I thought you would be very modern Schmidt shares her personal aesthetic preference regarding minimalist quilting, in both machine quilting and hand quilting. She rarely has time to make quilts for herself or to give to another person, likening it to the professional carpenter who always has unfinished projects at home. &quot ; quilt police&quot ; ; Hand quilting ; knitting ; Long arm quilting ; Machine quilting ; Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; simplicity Quilting--machine quilting 17 2102 Schmidt's book: &quot ; Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspirations&quot ; And let's give the title of your current book? Schmidt's recent book is &quot ; Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspirations&quot ; (Stc Craft / Melanie Falick Book, 2012). She says it pays homage to historical quilts that have inspired her work. book ; knitting ; Published work - Quilts ; simplicity ; Time management 17 http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/727126739 Denyse Schmidt, &quot ; Modern Quilts Traditional Inspirations,&quot ; (New York: Stc Craft / Melanie Falick Book, 2012) 2164 What do you think makes a great quilt? I just want to talk to you a little about aesthetics and all that. What do you think--impossible question alert!--makes a great quilt? Schmidt tackles the challenging question of what makes a great quilt, noting that she responds to a lot of different types of quilts, but ultimately it is &quot ; one that makes me kind of stop and pay attention.&quot ; aesthetics ; flea market ; Scrap quilts ; Whole cloth quilts 17 2256 Which artists have influenced you? As far as things, other kinds of artworks, are there particular artists who work in textiles or in any medium that you feel have influenced you, that you really respond to? And, or, they influenced you? Schmidt mentions several artists who have inspired her, including painters Louise Bourgeois and Agnes Martin and quiltmakers Heather Jones and Luke Haynes. She finds them to make work &quot ; true to themselves.&quot ; Agnes Martin ; Heather Jones ; inspiration ; Louise Bourgeois ; Luke Haynes ; Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression 17 http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/agnes-martin/who-is-agnes-martin &quot ; Who is Agnes Martin?&quot ; Tate Modern. 2313 On role in the modern quilting movement Now you have been called sort of a 'godmother of modern quilting' and you are looked upon as somebody who has helped birth this movement Schmidt reflects on her role in the modern quilting movement, led by the Modern Quilt Guild which will hold its first convention, QuiltCon, in February 2013. She does not take credit for this movement, but acknowledges that she began using &quot ; modern&quot ; as a reference point to her contemporary interior design market. Modern Quilt Guild ; Modern quiltmaking ; Modern quilts ; modernism ; QuiltCon Modernism (Art) ; Quilts in interior decoration 17 http://www.themodernquiltguild.com/ The Modern Quilt Guild 2461 Why is quiltmaking important to your life? Why is quiltmaking important to your life? Schmidt notes that quiltmaking has allowed her to earn a living doing &quot ; something that was uniquely my own.&quot ; She does not know where it will lead her next. Quilt Purpose - Art or personal expression ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/IMG_1257-1.jpg Denyse Schmidt at Quilters Take Manhattan, 2012 2508 What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life? What do you think is the importance of quilts in American life? Schmidt loves that quilts are both beautifully designed and useful. She also notes their symbolic role in family and community. aesthetics ; community ; family ; symbolism ; utility 17 2583 Upcoming events and future goals Looking ahead, you said &quot ; who knows where it will lead&quot ; but do you have some next challenges in mind? Some next things that you'd like to accomplish? Schmidt shares that she has an upcoming exhibition at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky. She also hopes to get back to actually making quilts herself. She also has plans for additional fabric design. exhibition ; fabric design ; Library of Congress ; National Quilt Museum (Paducah) Textile museums 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/IMG_1260-1.jpg Meg Cox interviewing Denyse Schmidt at Quilters Take Manhattan, New York City, September 2012. Oral History In this interview, recorded in front of an audience at the Quilt Alliance's annual fundraiser, Quilters Take Manhattan, journalist and Quilt Alliance president interviews quilt designer Denyse Schmidt about her background in graphic design and dance, her inspiration for her quilt design, her design process, and the role of quilts in American life. Meg Cox: Ok can everybody here, can everybody hear ok? I want to get started by, Amy talked to you a little bit about QSOS, Quilters Save Our Stories, which is a project that we’ve been doing for over 10 years, and there are over a 1000 of these interviews on our website and archived at the Library of Congress. And um I just want to talk about quickly a misconception I used to have. I was researching my book, The Quilters Catalog, for like five years, and I was interviewing, looking for famous people to interview for the book, and I was using the QSOS interviews to help decide which teachers I want to put in my book, and I came away the misconception which I think a lot of people have, that I’m adding to today, that only famous people are interviewed. And so, although, I am, we brought you hear to hear an interview with Denyse, please know that this is a project that is gathering the stories of all types of quilters, and if you have somebody you know who you think their story needs to be told, you can get involved in this project and we hope that you will. I also want to let you know that the way this is done, a transcription of, an exact transcription of what we say to each other will be, and all the other noises will be part of the transcription. So if we had a barking dog come through here, or you know a fire engine goes by or something, all of that will be on recording. So we’re going to have, open up when we are done with the formal interview, for any questions that you have, but that is not part of the transcription, not that you have to hold your breath or anything, but just so you know that this is how this is going to be. As Amy said, you got Kleenexes in your bags. I hope I don’t make Denyse cry, but uh, it does happen. I was interviewing Caryl Bryer Fallert at Quilt Festival uh last year and I made her cry and it really shocked me. I thought the one person I will never make cry was Carol Fallert. We were sitting, it was being videoed, we were sitting on these really high stools, and I had no pockets and no tissues. And here I am again, I have no tissues. So, does somebody want to throw up some tissues here? Here I am violating my cardinal rule here. So for sure I am going to weep. I’m serious. I’m actually serious. Yes! We’re so wired up here we can’t move. Ok, rip that sucker open. Denyse Schmidt: I have been very weepy lately, so you never know. MC: So, uh, the basic format of this is that the quilter brings a touchstone quilt with them to talk about during the interview. And there is a certain, we don’t-- it is not like set in stone which questions you ask, but a lot of the questions I’m using today are from the Quadrant Questions on the website, where all the directions are. And we have a certain format of what to say when starting and stopping. But here we go. Meg Cox (MC): I'm Meg Cox, and I'm here for the second annual Quilters Take Manhattan benefit. I'm interviewing Denyse Schmidt for Quilters' Save Our Stories, the oral history project of the Quilt Alliance. We're sitting in front of a wonderful audience at the Fashion Institute of Technology on Saturday, September 15th,, and the time is now 1:45 pm. So thank you so much, Denyse, for coming to do this. Can you tell us about the quilt that's behind us, and why you brought this quilt today? Denyse Schmidt (DS): Uhm, this quilt is called &quot ; One Big Square&quot ; , and when you asked me to bring a touchstone quilt, it set off a whole flurry of, you know, &quot ; what does that mean?&quot ; , and I don't always keep most of the quilts that I make, so I knew that it had to be a quilt that I had around too. But this is… this felt like a touchstone quilt to me mainly because it's made--the block is made in an improvisational way, which, to me, kind of represents what I do. The fact that I used one block, one big block in the quilt and set it off center said something about my approach to quilt-making, to sort of taking--working off the traditional methods--just thinking about it in a different way. And I made this quilt for an exhibition at a gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I just realized I forgot exactly what year, but I think it was maybe 2003 or something. MC: So it's typical of your process? What about your technique and your colors and all of that? DS: Well, I have a lot of, you know, I guess it's… I do a lot of different kinds of things: I design fabric and I designed quilts that have been manufactured in India. I designed quilts that are specifically for gallery exhibitions that are, to me, more like making art. I make quilts that I sell to interior designers, so I kind of have a broad range of work that I do. I think my process might change slightly for each thing that I do but this quilt, for example, was made for an exhibition, and so the process always starts with drawing. And actually, I did three quilts along a similar line for this particular exhibition, and they were based on sketches that I'd been carrying around--I had probably had done at least 5 years before--and never had a chance to kind of… figure out the idea? &quot ; Oh, I want to do this really intensely pieced square, that just is sort of attached to the side and the rest of it is all white.&quot ; So I knew that I had that certain idea, but the process of getting from that drawing, the pencil drawing to an actual finished quilt sometimes takes forever! MC: Now it's… was it machine pieced or–– DS: Yeah, I pieced it by machine and it has a lot of fabric. There was a great old fabric store in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where my studio is and it was one of those places that had the wall of buttons in the old cardboard little boxes and everybody that worked in there was bent over [audience laughter]. And like so many of those places it was going out of business. So I went and bought as much of the deadstock. S lot of it was from the seventies––that really bold stripe is one of the fabrics. For the exhibition in New Mexico, from the people I was working with there, I had a sense of where they wanted me to go, the color, and I wanted to do really hot, kind of intense colors but in very small, little, focused areas, and that stripe was kind of a key fabric, and it's… I also put that fabric in the bags when I teach workshops and a lot of people pull it out and are like &quot ; ughhhh&quot ; [disgusted noise and audience laughter]. I happen to like it a lot, but it's not for everyone. MC: Now the… it's hand quilted I see-- DS: It's hand quilted, but it's machine pieced. I pieced the square, I don't remember if I put the whole top together, and then the quilting also in this whole series was... You know, what I usually do in this kind of process for making one of a kind quilts, I'll photograph the pieced and finished top or even, just, you know, the fabric pinned up on the wall. I'll photograph it and then I print it out on an eight and a half by eleven. I kind of do everything to scale, and then I'll draw over it with pencil to figure out how I want it to be quilted. So this whole series--the lines too were kind of important in terms of, that they kind of continued the piecing but not exactly. MC: So you say that your quilts are--you don't keep all of them. So where does this one live? DS: It's folded up in my storage area, sadly. MC: I want to talk a little bit about your background. What is the age you were when you started quilting and who got you started? DS: Um… I came late to quilting. When I grew up, my sister who's 8 years older than I am went to art school and I remember going with her to drawing classes and stuff and sitting with my back turned to the life model [audience laughter]. &quot ; So embarrassed&quot ; [whispers]. But I think that real exposure to all the things that she was doing… I feel really fortunate that I had that exposure to art, artists, photography, sort of a different way of looking at the world, and I think that that was pretty important in terms of how I look at things, and I always made things when I was growing up. I had a dollhouse and I made little needlepoint rugs, I might have made a quilt for the dollhouse, I made curtains and all kinds of things but I don't remember, it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I made my first quilt, and actually it was before I went to RISD [Rhode Island School of Design.] I started messing around, I got really interested in crazy quilts. And the whole embellishment thing, and I was taking a drawing class and incorporating that feeling of using pieces of fabric and stitchery to add to the drawings. And then it was when I was at Rhode Island School of Design, I started looking at historical quilts more and then after I graduated and had moved to Connecticut and I was… I didn't have a network of friends there yet and I was working as a graphic designer and it was kind of a very mass-market mind-numbing job [laughter.] I became an expert in Barbie Pink and I was making a quilt for a friend and it was simple nine-patch. I got really interested in the whole, all the stories of quiltmakers and how--whether and how accurate it is or not--those stories of women coming together in a community and the whole barn-raising idea. I was longing for my own community and all my friends were kind of far away and I think I kind of latched onto that idea of quiltmaking, plus, at the time I got really interested in old-timey music, like, Appalachian string-band music and to me it kind of had the same resonance of people coming together, rolling it up, and you didn't have to be great at it. And I think the quilts I kind of fell in love with, they weren't about matching corners and being precise. There was a beautiful kind of happenstance and accidental quality in some cases to them. And so making--so I kind of fell in love with all of that and then I was making a quilt as a gift for a friend. I think having a tangible record of the amount of time I spent hand-quilting––you know, &quot ; here's 3 hours&quot ; as opposed to my graphic design work, which is in many cases, very ephemeral: it's printed matter, I'm spending hours kerning space between letters, no one ever notices. It's on a piece of paper that gets crumpled up and thrown away, versus this very tangible record of time that I had spent and then that it was also a lasting object that was useful and beautiful. So it had this graphic quality and a tactile and textural quality plus, you know, the bits of fabric my mother––I'm youngest of four kids and both my parents had careers but they were very handy makers of things and my mother sewed all her clothes and I grew up in central Massachusetts and we used to go to all the mill stores and stuff, so to me the whole collecting fabric thing was very connected to my mom and being with her. And so to make a quilt that sort of combined all of these things, to me it seemed really magical. So… that was a long-winded answer! MC: No, that's a great answer! It's so interesting, all these different elements that would exert this pull on you. But I think a lot of people who know you as an iconic designer and a wonderful designer and kind of a modernist would be interested to know some of your background: who you thought you were going to be, say, in your twenties. I know you were a theater major, right, and then you were kind of a downtown art chick. I think not everybody knows that whole part of your life where you… Now, if Mark Lipinski were here he would say–– DS: I was afraid of this-- MC: [laughs] &quot ; Denyse, tell the nice people about when you were photographed by Andy Warhol for Paris Vogue wearing very little&quot ; . So, I'm just inserting that for Mark, since he's not here. DS: Um… Well, I think like any… I had, I did a lot of different things through my twenties and thirties even and I was just kind of figuring it out. I did study… I danced my whole life, that was always a part of my growing up. When I went to college I started working with this one choreographer, Carmen Beuchat, who was part of the whole, she worked with the Judson Church dance movement, so she was very connected with Twyla Tharp and Trisha Brown and all those people and when I danced with her we used to rehearse at Bob [modern artist Robert] Rauschenberg's house. And, so I had a kind of––not really intense, but peripheral––sort of association with a lot of those people. And through… I got involved in performance art and met these really cool people and did these strange performance things that had to do with costume and sometimes… no costume. [laughs] And it was these two people, Corey Tippin and Delia Doherty, and they would make these fantastical things and they were both––or Corey was––part of the factory, or Andy Warhol's Factory. So that's how that, you know… And I was just this twenty year old kid like &quot ; hmmm… is that a guy? Or a girl? I don't know.&quot ; [laughs] So just one thing led to another, what can I say? MC: Well I think one of the things that interests me about your background, as I said, pulling from so many different things and I know as far as the dance thing you even at one point––another sewing part of your life––at one point you were sewing tutus for the Boston Ballet. DS: yeah. MC: I think a lot people also don't know that for a while you considered that you might become… make your life designing fonts, doing typography and probably not a lot of people know that she did create a font. It's called &quot ; Scamp&quot ; and it's still––people still use it? And you get the occasional royalty check? MC: I do, 30 dollars or something like that occasionally. But, I think I just, and maybe what I can say now is &quot ; well now I can say I have this patchwork past&quot ; . All my experiences are--even designing a typeface is--very detail--I'm all about the details and fine motor skills and designing a typeface, you know, there's the gestural, visual part but then there's the technical aspect where you have to create all the… Especially digitally, you have to create all the kerning pairs. Somebody's determining every time you type a capital A and a lowercase e or whatever the letter combination is--the thousands and thousands of combinations--somebody, the designer usually, is deciding how much space is between the letters so it's very tedious, but it answers a part of who I am. Both my parents are engineers so I think I have both right brain and left brain and certainly the quilting answers both aspects of that, the overall design and concept of it but then there's executing and there's a lot of math involved and it kind of satisfies both aspects. You said some other things I was going to talk about-- MC: The tutus? DS: Oh, the tutus. So then I had, so I lived in New York for a while and did all this dance and performance things and then I moved back to Massachusetts for a while and I had a series of sewing jobs. I worked for a clothing designer in Worcester, MA, I did a season at the Boston ballet and sewed tutus which is quite an experience. I worked--and during this whole time, it all sounds really interesting but I was also trying to figure out what did I want to do with my life, like I had gone off to college, I'd wasted my parents' money, what was it I was really trying to do. And it just took me a long--a while to figure it out. I worked at a monastery making ecclesiastical vesture which was really fascinating and had a lot of interesting experiences and then I went back to school and studied graphic design which I think was a really good decision and gave me a lot of confidence in my own skills. I actually, when I graduated from RISD I designed the typeface but I also took a class about cutting letters in stone. I got really interested in that and it also had this sort of this sort of old-timey feeling to it. And I was going to set up shop and carve headstones [laughs]. But then I got carpal tunnel so… MC: Wow. So what was it--what event or series of events moved quilting to the center and what did it take for you to say &quot ; this is my destiny, this is what I'm going to be doing&quot ; ? DS: Well, you know I don't know that I knew that at the time. I think it was, that all those things that I talked about before, kind of working at this graphic design job that I could make a good living with but it wasn't that interesting. It wasn't sort of who--it wasn't ever really an expression of my ideas and I think falling in love with the historical quilts and everything about that… I knew some people who were designed furniture for contemporary home furnishings and they exhibited at this trade show called the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and I went to that and there were all these cool people and so I started to have this idea that I wanted to make quilts that… What I wanted to do--and I loved these historical quilts--but what I wanted to do at the time when I looked around in the quilting world or in department stores or in quilt shows, nobody was referencing those quilts more, kind of, accurately or in the simplest, simple spirit that I saw. I felt that as a designer, if I was interested in those quilts, and to me they were, they had everything--they had pieces of fabric that reminded you of a dress you had when you were a kid, they had design that looked like a modern painting. And they were… It was sewing, it had the sort of idea of people coming together in a quilting bee. It had all those things and it was very appealing to me and I just thought if I could tell that story to this design community who maybe doesn't think about quilts, or they have a misperception of it. So my goal was to kind of pitch it out to the design world. So I started exhibiting at this trade show and doing quilts--it took a long time and all these other things happened along the way. Like doing stationery and books and the weird thing is that I've sort of come full circle. I'm designing fabric for the quilting industry, where I really didn't start out there. Again, I had a point I was going to make, but I forgot what it was… MC: Well, it's interesting, you put this energy out and you had these different strands of skills and it seems like a lot of things came to you and I'm just wondering, for example, Takishimaya, the Japanese department store used to give you antique kimonos and you would cut those apart and make quilts. Now, how does something like that happen to you. It seems to fit so perfectly with the kind of impulse you're talking about ; the thing that made you want to create. DS: Yeah, well it was from doing this one trade show so when I started exhibiting there, what was interesting to me was it was… everybody had cool shoes, number one. It was a crowd I wanted to hang out with. There were some really interesting things happening in furniture and floor coverings but nobody was doing anything in bedding. And if you walk that show now, there are a lot of companies that have come along--Dwell bedding and all these other companies but at the time that I started nobody was even thinking about bedding. So, you know, how clearly was I thinking about it, or not, I don't know. To me it seemed like it really fit in, but I also really stood out because nobody else was doing anything like that. The quilts were very colorful so they made a big impact. And the show was one that was got a lot of press coverage in the design press, so like shelter magazines and design magazines. And that got me out in front of people very slowly but, I think the first year that I exhibited there I had the New York Times shot a story called &quot ; Household Names&quot ; and it ran in their design supplement the following October and I had a full page. That doesn't really happen--and it's not like it makes you wealthy overnight, but it sort of accumulates and builds over time. The show led to just about everything that I ever did. The stationery show happened at the same time so I had--Chronicle Books asked me to do stationary and then a book and Takashimaya was one of the first customers that I had. I didn't even know anything about the story at the time and they gave me these vintage kimonos. It was terrifying to have to cut them up and then… I was like &quot ; what do you want me to do&quot ; and they were like &quot ; anything you want&quot ; which is very scary. The good thing is, I didn't have a lot of time and they were all hand quilted. I would get the kimono in July and they would want it in the store for the holidays, which is not a lot of time to second guess, which I'm very good at. And there were strong parameters which I like as a designer, I like solving problems. The fabric made for kimonos is only this wide and it had to be foundation pieced so there were clear parameters that I had to kind of design within and I liked that challenge a lot. They're mostly monochromatic and it's a huge body of work that most people have never seen that I do. I think I made at least 50 quilts for them over the years. MC: Would you talk a little bit about your studio setup? What you're set up to do, what your studio looks like? I've been to it and it's a wonderful work space but it's very interesting to see the mix of technology. You have all your computers and everything, and you have a 20 year old Brother sewing machine that just goes back and forth. So just talk a little about the setup and how you work there. DS: I think having grown up in central Massachusetts, which is an old--there was a lot of textile manufacturing and manufacturing in general and like so many of those cities, where I am now, Bridgeport, Connecticut, was an old manufacturing city that kind of fell on hard times so I've always been drawn to these places that have these empty buildings--it feels like there's so much possibility there, whether it's true or not. So my studio is in this old factory building and they used to make lace trims there. It was called American Fabrics, so it seems appropriate that our space is there. It's great light, really high ceilings, and there's a great group of other artists and designers in the building which makes it really nice. Having been a graphic designer, I learned graphic design at the time when the Apple Computer was becoming was becoming integral to that. So I was very well-versed in the software, the graphics--Illustrator, and stuff. So I still use that for designing my quilts and drawing my fabric, so of course I have computers. But other than that, I have a really old Brother industrial. I like things to be simple. Especially as quilter, it's embarrassing that I never really… I'm pretty much self-taught. I might have had some books that I looked at the pictures but I never really read and--I shouldn't admit that out loud but it's true--so I'm sure that I don't… In my own books I sometimes tell how to do things in the most roundabout or laborious way. But that's how I do it or how I learned, and from whatever angle I'm coming at it. MC: So you do teach a lot of improvisational workshops with the improvisational quilting, but you're talking about these designs that you do on your computer and that's improvisational, that's coming up a design and then how do you, where does your inspiration come from? How does that process and, what--I guess I'm also interested in the mix. You're doing things that are for exhibition, you're doing things that are for, for a while you're doing things for Pottery Barn so you were doing things to be reproduced. Where do these designs influences come and how does the process go? DS: I think I look at a lot of different things. I look at painting and I look at fashion. I look at design magazines or books or just about anything but always the historical quilts are also a huge part of the influence on what I do and whether it's… it always starts with an idea and a sketch, and the fabric, obviously is coming from feedsack types of prints, so I'm always looking at historical stuff as a starting place and then hopefully bringing my own imprint to it. What was the question? MC: Sort of about the process, but one of your fabrics, Flea Market Fancy, which was very popular-- DS: I saw somebody wearing a skirt-- MC: Are you still a flea market girl? Are flea markets still a source? Do you go buy quilts or do you look for fabric? DS: Usually quilts or it could be anything. It could be printed ephemera, it can be clothing or… But often, quilts. I just love going to the flea markets or just, I guess it's always that feeling of &quot ; ohhh&quot ; . You've discovered something, even though you obviously haven't ; it's there for everybody to see. And I love this nostalgia of a lot of that stuff from another era. Which the flea market has a lot of. I've always been interested in mixing things. All one note isn't that interesting to me but the right mixture ; it's a very particular balance of things. Everybody has their own unique expression and it's just a matter of finding it. I tried to find the right balance that's right for me. And fortunately, people respond to that. But I think we all have our own voice that we can figure out how to express that, whatever it is that we're interested in. MC: One of the things that was interesting to me and I had interviewed before for the Wall Street Journal is this: I thought you would be very modern, like I said, with your technology, and interestingly to me is that you do these great designs and a lot of your pieces you do machine piece them, but then you send them out to be hand quilted That really surprised me, number one, and number two, they're very simple patterns. A lot of quilts today, it's elaborate. It's machine quilting and the more stitches, the better. It's like, how many miles of stitches and thread are in YOUR quilt? Tell me a little about that. Does that surprise people? Is that part of the homemade-ness? DS: Yeah. It's also an aesthetic that, to me, especially with the machine-quilted stuff, I've stuck with this figure eight because it's even, and an even texture. It's not hard angles. I work with somebody who does my long arm quilting and I'm not interested in patterns that are telling a different story other than one the quilt is, like kitties and moons and stars. It's just not my thing. Doesn't mean it's right or wrong, it's just not my aesthetic. I think because I started out not in the quilt world because I was making quilts for a different audience, I didn't have--I didn't feel like I had to behave. MC: No quilt police! DS: I did things a certain way. And thank God for that, because however many years later, it's what I do and I feel like I've gotten this far already, made my living doing it, so it must be okay. MC: With all the business side of things that you're doing, do you ever have a chance to just say &quot ; I'm going to make this quilt for the pure pleasure of it, or for another person&quot ; or is it just so much now your business that you're-- DS: I don't that much free time and it's like anybody who does a particular thing. Like, the carpenter has all the unfinished construction jobs at home. I think the last thing I want to do is get behind a sewing machine when I have free time. One of the last projects that I made start-to-finish was one of the quilts in my book--and of course making a book is very labor-intensive. MC: And let's give the title of your current book? DS: Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspirations. In this book--and all the quilts that are on display here are from the book--and it was my chance to pay homage to all those historical quilts that inspired me in the first place. But one of the quilts in a book is a little doll quilt and I hand-pieced it and hand-quilted it. I got to watch movies while I did it and I enjoyed every second of it. It was really nice. And I knit, occasionally. But lately I'm just trying to do less. I'm trying to do less. It's really easy, in today's world, everybody's on devices and communicating all the time. I'm finding it exhausting these days. So I'm just trying to learn how to get back to something that feels simpler. MC: I just want to talk to you a little about aesthetics and all that. What do you think--impossible question alert!--makes a great quilt? DS: Oh. Wow. Well, if something that… everybody's going to respond to different things and have different ideas about what a great quilt is. For me, it's one that makes me kind of stop and pay attention. It can be… I love everything from a quilt at the flea market that's just got 800 million prints in it and tiny little patches to something that's really simple, or a whole cloth quilt. So it really… Those kinds of absolute questions are kind of hard for me, but something that feels, that is authentic in and of itself, that has an honesty. Whether it's a quilt or anything else, if something has a quality to it, it's not trying to be anything bigger or less, it just has this particular quality that, to me, feels like it's authentic in itself. That's something that I respond to. MC: As far as things, other kinds of artworks, are there particular artists who work in textiles or in any medium that you feel have influenced you, that you really respond to? And, or, they influenced you? DS: There are a lot of artists that I look at. I love Louise Bourgeois and Agnes Martin and painters like that. There are--oh, I'm having… I knew this was going to happen [laughs.] I was gonna make a cheat sheet. There are people here in this audience. Like Heather and Luke Haynes, whose work I think is really amazing. And again, true. They're doing work that's true to themselves, which is always beautiful, no matter what form it takes. MC: Now you have been called sort of a 'godmother of modern quilting' and you are looked upon as somebody who has helped birth this movement, and in a sense helped build the aesthetic in this movement. And you are the keynote speaker for the Modern Quilt Guild's first quilt convention, QuiltCon, which is going to be in Austin, Texas, in February. How do you feel about that? Modern quilting, what does that mean? Do you feel like you are, that this movement sprang from you in some way? How does that feel? DS: No, I think like anything else, everybody in retrospect always tries to explain it. It's funny, these days it happens so fast that we're kind of finding the origins of things, which is kind of odd. I think, while it's flattering, I try not to take it too seriously because I think, I think I was in a place and a time and I was always presenting my work. It's great--on one hand I think, I kind of got my message out there. It look a long time but people noticed and that's really gratifying. And on the other hand, nothing is ever one person. It's a kind of confluence of events and things that happen. When I started out, I used the word 'modern' because I was talking to an audience that didn't have any other reference point and in some ways, was that the right word? I'm not really sure. I've never been very good at absolutes. I kind of recoil from them because to me, nothing is all one thing or another. However it gets defined, I'll leave that to someone else, to do the defining. MC: Just a couple things here. Why is quiltmaking important to your life? DS: I think for me, it gave me an opportunity to build a life and earn a living doing something that was uniquely my own. I was able to do work that is my designs and that's an amazing opportunity, to be able to have spent the last sixteen years doing my own work. And where it will go, I don't really know, but... MC: What do you think is the importance of quilts in American life? DS: Um… [Reaches for water.] MC: Today. You're allowed to have some water. DS: Thank you. I think it was always [laughs.]… I think what's great about quilts is that they're a beautiful design object but they're also a useful object. All the things that they represent--warmth and family and sharing and community. To have that embedded in a functional object is pretty spectacular. The love that is the quilting community, and how generous and responsive everybody is. I'm sure you all have friends that you quilt with or sew with, and today, online, that there's another kind of community I think is really amazing. And I'm just grateful to be part of it. MC: Looking ahead, you said &quot ; who knows where it will lead&quot ; but do you have some next challenges in mind? Some next things that you'd like to accomplish? DS: Well I'd like to start… get back to making quilts. I'm going to have a show at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah in October, 2013. They want 16 pieces, so I'll be working some quilts this year, which is really great. MC: That's wonderful. And you'll continue to design fabric? DS: And I'm going to continue to design fabric. MC: In your simpler life-- DS: In my simpler life. MC: That you have in mind here. Is there anything that I didn't ask that you would like the world to know, that you would like to have in the Library of Congress about you? DS: No? [DS and audience laughs.] MC: I want to thank you so much, Denyse Schmidt, for doing this and for being willing to do it publicly, because usually that's not how we do these. We're ending up this QSOS interview at FIT at the Quilters Take Manhattan event at 2:22 PM. I have no idea if that's correct. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Quilt Alliance. 0 http://quiltalliance.org/projects/qsos/ 0 OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=CT06607-001Schmidt.xml Interview Date 09-15-2012 Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Meg Cox Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In this interview, recorded in front of an audience at the Quilt Alliance's annual fundraiser, Quilters Take Manhattan, journalist and Quilt Alliance president interviews quilt designer Denyse Schmidt about her background in graphic design and dance, her inspiration for her quilt design, her design process, and the role of quilts in American life. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT06607-001Schmidt Subject The topic of the resource Quilts in interior decoration Quiltmakers Quilted Goods Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Denyse Schmidt http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/f9914c23348b437955e0de8585b3d802.jpg 9e3408a8e1bd3a312d739d5d39eb8d7e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pennsylvania QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Drew Politski Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Janneken Smucker Interview Keyword Amish quilts antique quilts Mennonite quilt industry OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=PA19383-01Smucker.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 4 2016-11-21 Janneken Smucker PA19383-01 Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories Pennsylvania QSOS Quilt Alliance Amish quilts antique quilts Mennonite quilt industry Janneken Smucker Drew Politski 1080p 1:|20(8)|31(10)|43(1)|58(12)|69(8)|81(11)|93(4)|107(5)|117(13)|128(12)|138(16)|148(11)|158(4)|170(14)|181(8)|192(4)|204(4)|215(3)|229(8)|240(1)|249(8)|263(3)|273(14)|291(11)|301(7)|313(1)|322(11)|332(5)|343(5)|353(9)|365(11)|377(6)|387(7)|401(5)|412(4)|423(9)|433(7)|444(1)|457(10)|468(13)|479(5) 0 http://youtu.be/DeivpYa7src YouTube video 0 Interview Introduction Welcome my name is Andrew Politsky, a student of history here at West Chester University. Andrew Politsky, a history major at West Chester University, introduces the interview with Janneken Smucker, assistant professor of history and president of the Quilt Alliance. The interview takes place at the Francis Harvey Green Library on West Chester University's campus. 39.950630, -75.598820 17 Francis Harvey Green Library, 25 W Rosedale Ave, West Chester PA 19383 http://www.janneken.org/ Provided is a link to Smucker's web page with background information and her work on quilt projects. 52 When did you first get involved with quilting? Well I grew up with quilts around my house. Smucker had grown up with quilts throughout her childhood. She grew up in a Mennonite family in northern Indiana. Her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother made many quilts, which her immediate family had in its home. She became interested in quilts as part of her cultural heritage. Mennonites learned quilt making in the 19th century once they lived in North America. When she was sixteen, Smucker created her own sampler quilt with the help of her mother and grandmother. She continued the hobby through high school and college. Amish quilts ; Home sewing machine ; Mennonite quilts ; Quilt Frame ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Sampler quilts 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/3-generations.png Smucker with her mother, Barbara McDowell Smucker and grandmother, Esther Beechy McDowell quilting her first quilt, 1996. 219 Do you see quilting as a family tradition? Sure I do see a real strong connection to my family heritage and I think that is where a big part of the appeal was. For Smucker, quilts are a significant part of her heritage and go back several generations. Her grandmother played an important role in introducing her to quiltmaking. Smucker's daughter (Calla) has shown interest in the hobby, helping shape designs and create patterns, as well as helping with the sewing machine pedal. Baby Quilt ; Generational quiltmaking ; Home sewing machine ; Quiltmaking for family ; Tradition 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/esther.png Smucker with her grandmother Esther Beechy McDowell. Esther is showing her granddaughter the first quilt she made. 310 Smucker's quilts, including the one hanging during the interview Well I would hesitate to even say that I have a quilt collection. Though her collection is not of substantial size, Smucker has made several quilts and still has her very first one she made as a teenager. In the past she has both sold and given quits as gifts. Smucker has also received quilts for different occasions and hangs on to antique quilts made by her grandmother. Baby Quilts ; Collecting quilts ; professional quiltmaker ; Quilt Collection ; Quilt Purpose - Gift or presentation ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; Quilt Research ; Quilts as gifts 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/JLS_sunrise_quilt.jpg The quilt Smucker displays in the interview. 455 On the relationship of quilts and memory Absolutely, I think that is one of the really distinct things about quilts as objects in material culture. According to Smucker, quilts tie us closely to our memories, sometimes due to family connections or an experience had with the quilt. Smucker sees quiltmaking as a convention of the young Mennonite women of the 1920s, such as her grandmother. Generational Quilting ; Material Culture ; Mennonite quilts ; Quilt Experience ; Quilt in the Community ; Quilt purpose 17 543 Where do your ideas for quilts come from? I would say the biggest inspiration for me in my quilt making is historic quilts. Smucker is drawn to historic quilts. As a graduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she worked as a curatorial assistant at the International Quilt Study Center &amp ; Museum, home to the largest public collection of quilt. Smucker was exposed to thousands of different kinds of quilts. Working with volunteers, her job included handling, creating object descriptions of, and re-folding historic quilts. Personally, she is drawn to geometric, patchwork designs. Antique quilts ; applique ; Art quilts ; Contemporary quilts ; Curator ; Fabric - Printed patchwork ; Folding ; graduate school ; International Quilt Study Center &amp ; Museum ; Museum ; Patchwork quilts ; Quilt history ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; University of Nebraska-Lincoln 40.829267, -96.673500 17 International Quilt Study Center &amp ; Museum, University of Nebraska-Lincoln http://quiltstudy.org/ International Quilt Study Center &amp ; Museum, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 700 Tell me about the quilt behind you This is one of the first quilts I made intended as a wall hanging. Smucker explains the quilt she brought today which is roughly seventeen years. Composed of various colors that represent different parts of nature, it reflect a sunset and landscape type of imagery. She made this particular quilt with leftover fabrics from other projects she had been working on. Color theory ; Fabric - Multiple scrap ; Materials ; Nature ; Stitches ; Symbolism 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/JLS_sunrise_quilt.jpg The quilt displayed in the interview. 835 Working with quilt oral histories Well as a board member and current president of the Quilt Alliance I've really been involved in our oral history projects. As a board member and president of the Quilt Alliance, Smucker has been involved with oral history projects documenting the stories of quiltmakers. Her primary goal is to make them accessible on the web. According to Smucker, technology has made this process easier but can be hard to implement due to budgetary reasons. Volunteers often help contribute to the sharing of these quilt stories. Transcribing has been difficult in the past since many interviews were recorded on cassette tapes, but new technologies today such as the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer allow for easier methods of creating access to interviews. According to Smucker one of the obstacles as a historian is adapting to these new technologies. Archive ; computer ; Computer Systems ; Digital History ; Indexing ; Knowledge transfer ; OHMS ; Oral History ; Quilt Alliance ; Quilt history ; Quilt Interviews ; Quilt Projects ; Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories ; Speech Recognition Software ; Technology in quiltmaking ; Volunteer 17 http://quiltalliance.org/projects/qsos/ About Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories 1131 On the significance of quilt history There is a lot of fascinating things about the history of quilt making. As Smucker explains, quiltmaking has been transformed by industrialization, including through the widespread use of commercial fabrics and materials. Adding to this, technologies such as the sewing machine, led to a real “democratization” of the art. The later portion of the twentieth century saw the biggest explosion of quiltmaking, transforming it into a multi-billion dollar industry. She also notes that since the early 19th century in United States history, Americans regarded quilts as “old timey,” and “something on the way out.” However, having stuck around as an art form, quilting has maintained that feeling of old-fashionedness and quiltmakers have embraced it the nostalgic aspects of the artform. American culture ; Fabric - Reproduction ; Hand quilting ; Home sewing machine ; Industrialization ; material culture ; Old fashioned ; Quilt culture ; Quilt history ; Quilt industry ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; Technology in quiltmaking 17 http://worldquilts.quiltstudy.org/americanstory/business/industrialrevolution &quot ; Industrialization,&quot ; World Quilts: The American Story, International Quilt Study Center &amp ; Museum. 1279 Technology and quiltmaking You mentioned technologies and how it advanced the art of quiltmaking. Do you think technology is taking away the art of quiltmaking or taking away this old fashioned approach? Smucker explains how technology has affected quiltmaking in that there is now a greater emphasis on precision and that this, in a way, takes away from the tactile quality of a more traditional quilt. She mentions her recent experience at the International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas, where she saw many technically amazing quilts. She notes that some of the creativity and idea of making a quilt for the sake of a quilt may be lost in the focus on technical excellence in competitions. To her it is more the “expression” and “symbolism” of giving a quilt that motivates her to create. Awards ; creativity ; excellence ; experimentation ; expression ; fabrics ; giving ; grandmother ; Houston, Texas ; International Quilt Festival ; meaning ; old fashioned ; precision ; Quilt competitions ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; symbolism ; tactile ; Technology in quiltmaking ; workmanship 17 1414 Her book: &quot ; Amish Quilts Crafting an American Icon&quot ; Why would you consider Amish Quilts an American Icon? She first explains how Amish quilts rose to an iconic status, becoming, in a way a, “cult objects” in the 1970s and 80s through New York art enthusiasts &quot ; discovering&quot ; these objects and appreciating their abstract/ minimalist characteristics. Smucker notes that these characteristics were similar to the works of notable artists such as Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, and Kenneth Noland. This discovery helped to launch the craze for Amish quilts. She cites their use in advertising. The Amish had distinct patterns that truly became classic after this movement, reaching an “elite status.” Absolute Vodka ; abstract ; Aesthetics ; Amish quiltmakers ; Amish quilts ; antique stores ; art enthusiasts ; Barnett Newman ; classic patterns ; countryside ; distinct ; elite status ; Iconic status ; Josef Albers ; Kenneth Noland ; Mark Rothko ; marketing campaigns ; minimalism ; money ; outdoor markets ; painting ; patterns ; postage stamps 17 https://www.amazon.com/Amish-Quilts-Crafting-American-Anabaptist/dp/1421410532/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp ; qid=1481761656&amp ; sr=8-1&amp ; keywords=amish+quilts+crafting+an+american+icon A link to her book &quot ; Amish Quilts Crafting an American Icon,&quot ; on amazon.com 1555 The Underground Railroad Quilt Code as folklore sure it's a great question it's become known now as among the quilt circles as the Underground Railroad Quilt Code this is a bit of folklore that's been perpetuated through several publications Smucker discusses the folklore of quilts as used in the Underground Railroad. She points to the books &quot ; Sweet Clara the Freedom Quilt&quot ; and &quot ; Hidden in Plain View,&quot ; which talk about the folklore that slaves secretly sewed hidden maps and codes into quilts that would help enslaved individuals find freedom through the Underground Railroad. There is little evidence supporting the Quilt Code because the Underground Railroad, while inspiring, only helped a limited number of slaves to freedom, and there is no other supporting evidence to verify the use of quilts. She does not believe that perpetuating the folklore is bad, but the Quilt Code should be viewed as folklore instead of fact. &quot ; Hidden in Plain View&quot ; (book) ; &quot ; Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt&quot ; (book) ; African American quilts ; Antebellum Era ; Betsy Ross ; Federal Writers Project ; folklore ; slavery ; Underground Railroad ; Underground Railroad Quilt Code 17 http://www.dentonquiltguild.org/images/Storybook%20Folder/Sweet-Clara-and-the-Freedom-Quilt_qb.jpg A picture of the cover of &quot ; Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt,&quot ; a schoolchildren's book about the Underground Railroad Quilt Code. 1858 On quiltmaking and gender Do you think that quilt making is confined to just women? Smucker discusses the role of men in the history of quiltmaking, noting professional male quiltmakers existed prior to the industrial revolution. She notes that there are many successful male quilt makers in the field in the 21st century. She then discusses how historically, while quiltmaking is considered a domestic craft for women, that men played a partnership role. Smucker also discusses why quilt making is gendered toward women and the phenomenon of celebrity male quiltmakers. domesticity ; Gender in quiltmaking ; home craft ; household ; Industrial Revolution ; men ; needle ; social media, quilt cruise ; tailors ; textiles ; women 17 http://manquilters.ning.com/ ManQuilters, an online community for male quiltmakers 2002 In what ways do your quilts reflect your community or region? ; I think historically quilts have indeed often had a very regional connection, its part of the pleasures of sitting star quilt making have been able to you know see in large numbers Smucker discusses the differences in quilts based upon regions where they were made. She then talks about the preservation of quilts through State Quilt Documentation Projects. She also discusses how the regional differences are less noticeable today and is more of a urban and suburban divide. Groups like the Modern Quilt Guild work to make quilts based on styles from the past like the Amish and African American quilts. African American quilts ; Amish quilts ; Antique quilts ; community ; consumer culture ; demographic ; grassroots documentation projects ; Modern Quilt Guild ; pattern ; Quilt history ; Quilt preservation ; Star quilts ; State quilt documentation project ; style 17 https://www.themodernquiltguild.com Website of the Modern Quilt Guild 2148 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? ; How do you think quilts can be preserved for the future? ; Today's quilt industry is experiencing rapid consolidation among many of the large publishing houses that publish patterns and magazines, among some of the fabric companies as well. Smucker discusses the expansion of quiltmaking through the large corporations and the competition that it creates with local small businesses and online stores. She cals on the leaders of these corporations to make an effort to understand the traditions and heritage of quiltmaking instead in addition to caring about making a profit. business ; companies ; consumer culture ; die cutter ; Double Wedding Ring - quilt pattern ; fabric store ; heritage ; Home sewing machine ; local ; nonprofit ; online ; Plastic templates ; Published work - Patterns ; Published work - Quilts ; quilt industry ; Rotary cutter ; Technology in quiltmaking ; tradition 17 2405 Quilts as symbolic objects I think we now associate quilts with all these very warm loving qualities of feeling safe, feeling comforted. When tragedy hits hard wide when the tsunami hit in Japan five years ago, to the aftermath of 9/11 , to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, to the Quilts of Valor Project that creates a quilt for every veteran following their stint of duty. Smucker talks about what she believes the purpose of a quilt is. She believes that quilts provide a sense of comfort amid situations like the tsunami in Japan in 2011, September 11, and the AIDS epidemic. In each of these cases, quilters immediately made quilts to comfort those suffering and to process grief. She believes that ultimately quilts are an outlet of creativity, but are also a representation of comfort and safety. 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami ; 9/11 ; AIDS Memorial Quilt ; Japan ; physical representation ; Quilt Purpose - Charity ; Quilt Purpose - Comfort ; Quilt Purpose - Memorial ; Quilts of Valor ; tragedy ; tsunami 17 http://www.qovf.org Website for Quilts of Valor, a group who makes quilts for Veterans returning from the battlefield 2492 Interview conclusion Thank you Dr. Smucker an honor listening to your answers and what perspectives you have called making and quilt history. Conclusion of the interview with Dr. Janneken Smucker 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2016-10-07-16.42.00-2-e1481079157606.jpg Smucker at an exhibit she curated: “Amish Quilts and the Crafting of Diverse Traditions” on Oct 2016, at International Quilt Center &amp ; Museum, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Students in West Chester University's HIS 480: Digital History course interviewed their professor, Janneken Smucker, for their final project. Smucker talks about her background as both a quiltmaker and quilt historian, weighing in on issues including the Underground Railroad Quilt Controversy, the importance of quilts in American society, and the iconic role of Amish quilts in the late twentieth century. AP: Welcome my name is Andrew Politsky I am student of history here at West Chester University. We are at Francis Harvey Green Library and with Dr. Janneken Smucker. Dr. Smucker is an assistant professor of history at West Chester University, president of the Quilt Alliance, a published author and co-curator of The World Quilts the American story which is a project of the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska. Her book featured right there Amish quilts an American icon provides an in-depth history of our schools and their growing business practices today. Without further ado Dr. Smucker how are you feeling? Dr. Smucker: Very well thank you so much for having me today. AP: You staying warm? JS: I'm trying my best. AP: Alright first question, when did you become interested in quilting JS: I grew up with quilts around my house my grandmother had made quite a few quilts on my mother's side of the family. And her mother have made even more quilts and there were also quilts that my dad's side of the family there a common thing and in my home I grew up in Northern Indiana in a Mennonite family this is the kind of modern Mennonite family that we drove cars and we had electricity and dress like everybody else. But we were part of the long greater Anabaptist tradition of Mennonites and Amish and many of my ancestors had come to North America as Amish in the 18th century but by the late 19th century had become part of the Amish Mennonite Church. Eventually just part of the Mennonite church, so it was sort of ingrained in my own cultural Heritage's quiltmaking tradition Mennonites didn't bring quilts with them from Europe but they learned in the 19th century. So I was used to always having quilts around me. As a child I slept under them there on the couches so forth. I learned just so when I was pretty young but it wasn't until I think I was around 16 one summer vacation kind of kid who always wanted a project to work on during summer. And I decided I was going to make a quilt. I pulled a book off my mom's shelf that was called “How to make a Sampler Quilt”. She had made I think one quilt already at that point in her life and a sampler is a kind of quilt where each of the blocks is a different pattern and so I took off this book and began to look at all the pattern options chose on my favorites and had so much fun going to fabric store picking out the fabrics I wanted to use and I knew how to sew so it was something I could easily figure out.  And I had a lot of help from my mom and my grandmother when I ran into stumbling blocks.  And after that first quilt I was really hooked I finished that quilt around the time I went to college and continue making quilts while i was in college even setting up a quilt frame in my college house when i lived off campus. And invite friends over to help quilt on the big frame was my great-grandmother's frame actually that I had my college house and but then after my friends would leave it usually take out there putting stitches because they were really bad developed that the person acuteness of a real persnikityness. AP: So quilting is definitely been a part of your immediate family do you see it as a family tradition do you want to continue that tradition, are you begin make sure your daughter's interesting cool thing is she interested in? JS: Sure I do see a real strong connection to my family heritage and I think that's where a big part of the initial appeal was that I was doing something that women in my family had done I didn't even know at that point until I started studying quilt a little more seriously in my talking to my grandmother a lot more of we know that I'm at least a fifth-generation quiltmaker and could go back further than that and my daughter has expressed a lot of interest in quilt and quiltmaking she really loves color and she loves pattern and design and she's helped I've had squares that were already cut and she you know it likes to arrange them into Patrick pattern and she's also help me with some sewing craft projects using a sewing machine my sewing machine has one of those foot pedals and social press on the foot pedal and i will they start and stop and that sort of thing and she's really interested in the last baby quilt I was working on we're late we laid out the pieces on the floor to try to figure out which block should go where and my daughter was really intuitive about you know figuring out how to space the different colors out how to make it look very nice and balanced and I think she maybe the gene has been passed on to her as well. AP: Well how how big is your quilt collection and can you tell us a little bit about the one behind JS: Well I wouldn't hesitate to even say that I have a quilt collection i have some the quilts that I've made myself for about 20 years I slept under the quilt my first quilt that sampler quilt that I made when I was a teenager and then I have I think about two other full-size quilt that I made are also around my house I've given quilts away I’ve also sold quilts there was a phase-in my life where I thought maybe I would become a professional filmmaker and I did some quilts on commission also own my grandmother's first quilts well as a quilt made by my great-great-grandmother also we have a few other quilts that are still at my parents’ house in Indiana that they say will go to me which includes the mid-nineteenth century crib quilt i'm lucky enough to receive quilts as gifts as well when my daughter was born I think there were three separate and baby quilts that were made for her which was great since I kept intending to make one for her myself but never got around to it so thankfully some other people beat me to it so I definitely live with quilts I don’t really have the sort of collector’s mentality that some quick collectors really have where they require a lot of quilts I also is part of my own scholarship and research have studied quick collecting and so I there's a certain amount of distance I think i have from that that realm i know a lot about the quilt market for antique quilts and just how over inflated it was particularly in the eighties and nineties and quilts for been far more expensive than i could own that market is deflated to some degree now but they’re still antique quilts are quite expensive even the materials that go into contemporary quilts contemporary quilts are also quite expensive if you consider the materials and the labor as well. AP: In your opinion do you think quilts leave lasting memories for you when you either make them or purchase one or have them brought down from previous generations they have lasting memories JS: Absolutely i think that that's one of the really distinct things about quilts objects of material culture is that they they tie us so closely to memories sometimes that's in like a very tangible form when you use when you use a fabric and a quilt that was left over from another project for making clothes or sometimes it's the experiences you've had with a quilt over the years or in the case of like owning my grandmother's first quilt she made i always think about the time when she first showed it to me and I actually did the first oral history interview I'd ever did about quilts was with my grandmother and I interview her about when she was in her early twenties and made that first quilt and it was very common among young women in her community in eastern Ohio to all make quilts of that age and and I learned so much sort of about quit making it's kind of a convention of the of the young men tonight women in the nineteen twenties when she was growing up when you're when you make quilts worry where your ideas come from there are they from your emotions your from from your experiences to design them from like a place you've been what you're feeling at that time I would say the biggest inspiration for me in my quilt making is historic quilts I worked as the curatorial assistant at the International Quilt Study Center and museum when I was a graduate student and textiles at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and they are home to the largest publicly held collection of quilts in the world largely in t quilts that they also collect contemporary art quilts and through that work I was exposed to literally thousands of historic quilts that I got to handle one of the regular activities I did was with our volunteers every morning we refolded quilts with a base toward quilts in acid-free cardboard boxes the state-of-the-art storage facility climate-controlled facility and a quilt should be aired out and fold along different lines so that they don't develop really harsh crease lines process so this was like an ongoing thing i would supervise our volunteers which were usually like retired women and we would unfold the quilt i would do an object report usually on them like get the measurements make notes about any damage notes about the fabrics that are being used in those sorts of things and then they would refold them making sure it was on new lines so they wouldn't develop harsh crease lines and so I looked at so many historic quilts that this is sort of like permeate my design sensibilities and and i can think of those designs when I'm making my own quilt and definitely drawn to a patchwork which is sewing and piecing where it's very geometric rectangles squares triangles and rather than applique quilt behind me has some applique as well as piece work on it but a lot of what i really was inspired by was the historic quilts and I am I like fairly simple patterns very geometric graphic designs but rather than for certain emotions into quilts I really I think I'm more of thinking graphically and really drawn to the the historic patchwork quilts joins me to my next question the court behind you what what what do you like about this quilt this quilt that what kind of styles and you like about it to be like these patterns and colors this one of the first like quilts i made as a intended as a wall-hanging sort of my first foray into kind of its sort of more of an art quilt and in that it's not a repeat block pattern patchwork quilt which is more that the historic quilts that i was inspired by usually are but i really liked the idea of kind of using this gradation of colors this sort of hasn't probably more symbolism the most folks that i would make and that we're going from the ground level to this sort of the earth the grass sure this guy fun saying so if anything this was kind of a study in color but colors drawn from nature and the quilting stitches that I used on this sort of AP: Were these materials lying around the house? JS: I would say probably a mixture of some leftover fabric from other projects that as I look at it now and remembering some of the other things i did with with these same fabric, which ties into the question you asked earlier about how a quilt can hold memory but some of these were a I think some of them were fabrics that i am not intentionally for this was probably maybe 17 years ago or so that I made this quilt. AP: As an expert in handling historical quilts and curating the project you are on as president  of the Quilt Alliance, when you work with these stories with people in their quilts was the biggest challenge and gathering these histories and curating them as hard to compile everything as managing the website difficult ones from the base difficulty ? JS: Well as a as a board member and current president of Alliance I’ve really been involved in our oral history projects became to document and preserve the stories of quilt-quilt makers and along with the documenting you know actually listening recording these stories where you become more and more determined to share them and make them accessible and that's simultaneously become easier with new technologies but also more challenging because of budgetary limitations access to the technologies so it's sort of this um at the challenge really isn't how do you have this mass of about 1,300 oral history interviews these are conducted largely with volunteers usually quilt makers themselves who are interviewing other quilt makers and just like we are sitting here with a quilt the interview would always bring a quilt with her or him and that would be sort of the touchstone of the interview so there's 1300 some interviews that are documenting a specific quilt maker yet these are fat largely untouched because it's hard to dive into an interview and know what's in them many times no one aside from the person who wrote the transcript has even or and the interview herself has read them perhaps or it's hard to even ay what kind of sticks we don't have good statistics on that and but there's new technologies that are making the words of an interview accessible as you all were working on some of using some of these technologies in class the oral history metadata synchronizer allows you to search the transcript as well as an index that's created to go along with an interview you can find an exact moment where the interview is talking about Amish quilts for example i think that is great getting to the point where you have a 1300 backlogs an interview to make them have that degree of accessibility is quite a challenge many of these interviews were recorded on analog cassette tapes so the first step for those is to get them digitized so that you have a digital audio file that can be synced up with the transcript and it's someone can create an index to go along with that it's a none of these things are have a terribly high learning curve but when you're talking about that kind of quantity it's a building up a bet you're really dealing with this large archive and moving towards greater access I think we can achieve it but it certainly is challenging AP: Sounds like the advancement of Technology are definitely helping distribute these histories and make it make it accessible for everyone with the ohms and texting and no other multimedia things that can help. JS: The technology absolutely helps and one of the obstacles as he is that we don't anticipate what the new technologies are going to be when we're creating these projects so the filters SOS save our stories oral history project was begun in 1999 and presumed at that time to be fairly cutting-edge digitally in that we publish the full transcripts of each of the interviews on our website yet we didn't really we archived the cassette tapes but didn't really think about a future for those of how those could be accessible and delivered to potential audiences digitally through the world-wide-web it just wasn't part of our thinking in 1989 I say our I was not involved in the organization then but um technology advances and so you kind of have to play this catch up well how can we take what we've already done and sort of upgrade it and convert it to the new technologies and we're doing that now playing catch-up but we don't even know what's going to be available in five years or ten years for example speech recognition software is improving rapidly right now it's not a place where if we have to transcribe an oral history interview with speech recognition software you can get a rough maybe eighty percent accurate transcript but you still have to have a human go back in and edit everything we don't really and can't know for sure what what technology with the technology technological landscape in another 10years AP: Is there anything unique in regards to the history of there is a lot of fascinating things about the history of quilt-making JS:  I think culture are really wonderful window into a lot of aspects of American culture culture of other societies as well though I certainly have studied American culture most in terms of quilts because they are this handmade kind of seemingly handmade object there they're using the factory made goods the fabric the thread often the batting as well and often using commercially published patterns so they have sort of this handmade quality and that's what we associate with quilt these ideas of tradition and simplicity and authenticity yet they also reflect this amazing history of industrialization quit making on the scale that we have now on the scale that we had in 1850 wouldn't be possible without the industrial revolution of generating lots of cheap abundantly available fabric that could be cut up only to be sewn back together again technology like the sewing machine also really created as a demo democratization of filmmaking as well so it's really amazing to look at quilts overtime and see how these changes have transpired and how about making reflects the culture with that it came from the late 20th century of to the current day is now seen the biggest explosion yet in quilt-making is a multi-billion dollar industry and yet at the same time most people assume it must be a dying art that it's still this old-fashioned thing I think one of the most unique to get your question unique aspects of world history is that from almost the very beginning in the United States quilt-making was regarded as old-fashioned something that was on its way out because that's what we like about quilts that they make us feel that we're doing this old-timey thing and that's how people felt in cities in the eighteen forties when they had quilting bees and kind of pretended to be old-fashioned colonial women and that's what happens today as well even though people are using cutting-edge technologies to do the work. AP: You mentioned technologies and how its advanced the art of cool making do you think technology is taking away the article baking or taking away this is old-fashioned approach? JS: I think that there's the old-fashioned approach is sort of a myth so i don't i don't see it as taking away anything from that the one thing I've noticed with some of the new technologies is that there's so much emphasis on precision and this degree of workmanship and that you're losing sort of this tactile comforting quality of the quilt Susan with the process of them right the feeling of making it you know and to some extent and I was just at the international festival in houston texas and looking through the award-winning quilts and I kept seeing you know there's this real emphasis on technical precision which is amazing these are fabulous artist they're fabulous crafts people but some of that sort of the creativity comes that comes from sort of experimentation and you know I certainly would would dig into my grandmother scrap bag of fabrics and and that sort of thing some of that might be missing and sort of the idea of just making a quilt just because you love to have a quilt rather than trying to win an award and make sure that you have this technical excellence I think that there is such a wide range of quilt-making going on today in the United States and around the world that we have some of each and there's room for each we don't all have to be winning best of the best in show at the International Quilt Festival I probably won't ever be entering quilt even I think I'd rather give a quilt is a gift to a friend who has a new baby and not worry if my points my triangles matchup that it's more the expression of giving that quilt and knowing sort of the symbolic meaning behind the quilt. AP: Not so much competition JS: Yeah AP: Your book “Amish Quilts: Crafting an American Icon” why would you consider Amish quilts an American icon? JS:  Well they took an iconic status in the nineteen seventies and eighties and they really became sort of cult objects. What happened was New York art enthusiasts in the late sixties early seventies sort of discovered Amish quilts because they they were out tooling around the countryside or seeing them an antique stores or at outdoor markets. They recognized in Amish quilts the similar similar aesthetic to the sorts of abstract and minimalist painting that was going on in New York City at that time so painting by color field painters that Joseph will like Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, Barnett Newman kind of this stripe paintings of artists like Kenneth Noland and I'm supposed to run fairly similar scale you could hang them on a wall an apartment or gallery and they looked a lot like a painting. So this sort of launched this craze for Amish quilts in the nineteen seventies extending into the nineteen eighties at that eventually they became kind of iconic once they were on US postage stamps once they were used in the marketing campaigns of companies like Auntie Anne's pretzels they became this very recognizable figures and an Amish quilts at least certain patterns looked very distinct from the quilts made by non-amish that's not true across the board but there are a few patterns that were fairly distinct the Amish and those are the sorts of quilts that became a classic patterns really recognizable you know Absolut Vodka even used a quilt and in one of their advertising campaigns  because they for this moment in the in the eighties in particular they really reached and sort of elite status as artwork also became worth quite a bit of money at that time show are you have a lot of history with Amish quilts. AP: One of the things I discuss with my partner Liam is the impact of course and the Underground Railroad. Can you tell me a little bit about how well they relate? AP: sure it's a great question it's become known now as among the quilt circles as the underground railroad quilt code this is a bit of folklore that's been perpetuated through several publications initially there is a children's book called “Sweet Clara the Freedom Quilt” and there's also a book called “Hidden in Plain View” and both of these books sort of elevated this idea that enslaved african-americans used quilts as part of their way to get to freedom using the Underground Railroad it's really pretty amazing story how could use sort of an everyday object use your creativity, ingenuity usually done by women sort of empowering story of women helping their community get to freedom . Unfortunately we just don't have evidence that actually suggest that this indeed happened the the book “Hidden in Plain View” which I mentioned was based largely on one woman's family lore and that family may indeed have had this legend that they made quilts to help escape to freedom but investigation of even that story that this particular woman told included patterns that actually weren’t in circulation in the 19th century included a bit symbolism that probably don't don't translate well to Antebellum era and that are using contemporary ideas about quilts applying the retroactively and the thing is we also don't have other kind of collaborating evidence. Could be in the form of the excellent close themselves or more likely in the form of other narratives either recorded in text or recorded orally. There are a lot of slave narratives that were recorded in the early 20th century under the auspices of the federal government, the most well-known or part of the Federal Writers Project during the New Deal that interviewed and hundreds, thousands of people who grew up in slavery and they do talk some talk about the Underground Railroad I think it's important to keep in mind that the Underground Railroad  really only helped a very very small number of people get to freedom in the north it's one of these amazing stories that our culture has blown into something larger than it actually was because it's such an amazing tale of seeking freedom out of slavery , but they were only a few have that it was often border states that were able to to make their way across the make... people living in border states could make the way across the Mason-Dixon line um but this idea of quilts serving a function in an underground railroad has really had a huge appeal to school teachers, filmmakers, to other people who are interested in celebrating this aspect of American culture I think it's an amazing part of folklore, but I think it's important to to view it as folklore rather than view it as a definitive fact and folklore and myth are important parts of our culture just as they were important parts of you know ancient Greek culture. They help tell us who we are they had helped tell us what values we think are important and that's what this myth does and I don't think it's dangerous necessarily to continue talking about this myth but I think it's important to talk about it as folklore rather than as fact and I say the same thing is true about you know talking about Betsy Ross so in the first American flag we don't really have that much evidence that she really did that but her grandson did a really great PR campaign in the late 19th century that celebrated her as the first creator of the American flag as we know it so doesn't do any harm to keep perpetuating that story, hard to say and there aren't that many women who we can name from the Revolutionary era who did a specific concrete thing so there's some there's this appeal to it but we just have to be careful about how we talk about them talk about it as a as a story and that's part of folklore rather than part of evidence-based historical narrative AP: You mentioned women women often are seen as the foundation of quilt-making. Do you think that quilt making is confined to just women? JS: Absolutely not we can see that right now here in the 21st century more than ever there are many professional male quiltmakers, quilt artists and who have achieved a lot of success in the field and professionally but it's not a new phenomenon of the 21st century either. Before the Industrial Revolution when textiles were quite expensive, it was largely men at least in some areas of England other parts of Europe as well who are making quilts they as professionals as tailors and rather than as a domestic home craft and then there's certainly have been other examples throughout the eighteen nineteen twenty century of male called making as well or often males who would partner with the women in their households to help with quiltmaking in addition but there's sort of this interesting kind of occult of the male quiltmakers currently going on there's a number of male artists who have achieved quite a quite large followings either through social media through teaching quitmaking classes there was just this past year a quilt cruise that which is this crazy phenomenon and of itself that people pay money to go and quilt themed cruises and this was a quilt themed cruise where all of the quiltmaking instructors were men so it's it's a significant aspect of quiltmaking today that said I think quiltmaking is very gendered female and especially through the 19th and much of the 20th century, it has largely been a domestic home craft and we sort of have celebrated quiltmaking as one of women's original arts along with other needle arts because it was fell into this role of with the kinds of things that were appropriate for women to do. Women who didn't necessarily have other outlets for creative and artistic expression. AP: In what ways do you think quilt reflect the community or region? Do you see quilts are different in the north, out west, down south? Do they reflect the region that they're made in? JS:  I think historically quilts have indeed often had a very regional connection, its part of the pleasures of sitting star quilt making have been able to you know see in large numbers these historic antique quilts as well as manyof the state quilt documentation projects that were conducted in the nineteen eighties and nineties and early two thousands and these were for grassroots documentation projects where be quick documentation days in a community and people could bring in their quilts and there would  be an expert on hand to tell them a little bit about pattern, help them get the date and in mass all of these quilt documentation projects told us a lot about the regional differences among quilt makers ,but over time those regional differences have diminished which is not a surprise when consumer culture has more of a national reach and quiltmaking trends are more and more influenced by consumer culture it's not a surprise that there is a sort of more unity less distinction regionally among quiltmaking trends. There are some sort of that shifts today I would say perhaps might be like more of a divide between maybe more cities and suburbs and more rural areas. There's a recent movement called the Modern Quilt Guild, modern quilt movement which modern quilts and are inspired by mid 20th century modern design by Amish quilts, by some of the very utilitarian quilts spite made by African-American and other rural women earlier in the 20th century and that's an aesthetic that really caught on somewhat among the younger demographic the quilt makers but often it's this kind of less conservative visual sensibility that has an appeal there I think there's we can we can learn a lot about a quiltmaker maker by the style quilt they make but less and less of that is specific to regionals and them. AP:Any challenges that quiltmakers face today? JS: Today's quilt industry is experiencing rapid consolidation among many of the large publishing houses that publish patterns and magazines, among some of the fabric companies as well. Some of the smaller independent fabric company's been bought out by larger companies. Same thing is happening in publishing and many of the small locally owned and operated quilt shops fabric shops are shuttering because just like other businesses they can't compete with online sales when you have access to every fabric and at much discounted price compared to going to your local fabric and quilt shop and buying directly from the businessperson there. What online fabric stores don't have is that community that still exists in many of these small shops, but it's been hard for these small shops to sustain themselves among that kind of competition. I think quilts particularly today but always or at least since the early 19th century have really so closely been tied to consumer culture because you're not just buying the fabrics, you’re buying all of this other stuff that goes along with it. All of the the gear in the gadgets, the fancy selling machines, the rotary cutters, the templates, the die cutters. All these things make quilt making I think a lot more fun for people, but also really situate it very firmly in this large industry that is about constantly like buying  new things.  so it's hard to keep up if you really want to have the latest and greatest things all the time and you know how does that make it any different than any sort of other hobby or sort of form of consumer culture where it's it's a lot a lot of it is about acquiring even though there's this very creative process that's also taking place. AP: With the problems that that you mentioned that quilt makers face today what do you think we can do to preserve the history the not the history,  to preserve the quilt for the future? JS: Well I think we need to remember that quilt making today is part of a long tradition and rather than see it as a separate thing. Someone makes a double wedding ring quilt today, it is in conversation with all the double wedding ring quilt that have been made over the last century and a half that it's part of this ongoing process of being inspired and making and remaking and adapting that quiltmaking is always sort of represented. One thing i really like to see is the the beneficiaries of this large multibillion-dollar quilt industry would love to see them be real leaders in the effort to preserve quiltmaking history not just preserving the quilt themselves but also the stories of the quilt makers and to understand the significance that they are just the latest iteration of this long tradition and that in order to continue this tradition which helps their bottom line in fact you know if they can keep selling fabric and sewing machines to a future generation of quiltmakers that will only benefit them, but to understand that it's part of this larger story i'd love to see you know corporations, the corporate leaders in the quilt world really help us own this this heritage. I'm involved in this very small nonprofit you know we have a very limited budget and museums that I'm been affiliated similarly are you know just make able to make do you know they're doing all this preservation work. I'd like to see it as part of the mission of the corporate side the industry of the quilt world to see that as their priority as well. AP: And last but not least besides keeping people warm and decorative art, what do you think is the purpose of a quilt? What do you think they symbolically represent? JS: I think we now associate quilts with all these very warm loving qualities of feeling safe, feeling comforted. When tragedy hits hard wide when the tsunami hit in Japan five years ago, to the aftermath of 9/11 , to the AIDS Memorial Quilt,  to the Quilts of Valor Project that creates a quilt for every veteran following their stint of duty. Quilts so symbolically are comforting no matter what they look like, they have this association that's really intimately tied to them and I think that's why we make quilts for all of these occasions to memorialize people, to respond two tragedies because they make us feel safe and they make us feel comforted and I think quiltmakers love the process no doubt and they love you know this creative expression but ultimately then having this thing that that is tangible, physical representation of feeling safe and comforted, its really significant. AP: thank you Dr. Smucker an honor listening to your answers and what perspectives you have called making and quilt history. I look forward to hearing more classes. JS: Thank you thank you very much my pleasure. Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Quilt Alliance. video 0 http://quiltalliance.org/projects/qsos/ 0 Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Elizabeth Joe Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Students in West Chester University's HIS 480: Digital History course interviewed their professor, Janneken Smucker, for their final project. Smucker talks about her background as both a quiltmaker and quilt historian, weighing in on issues including the Underground Railroad Quilt Controversy, the importance of quilts in American society, and the iconic role of Amish quilts in the late twentieth century. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context PA19383-01 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-11-21 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Title A name given to the resource Janneken Smucker http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/be60ad30d7100f82008f20df6d15da36.jpg 295f2cc46edea9183c52b31dfdfbc861 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/02df7de40abdccf43e6f831b7ab83637.jpg 222d0ff77a863cadc2ed4ebc02cd62ac Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Helen Kamphuis Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Marilyn Mowry OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-009Mowry.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 4 2011-11-03 Marilyn Mowry TX77010-009Mowry Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Marilyn Mowry Helen Kamphuis TX77010-009Mowry.mp3 1:|13(8)|23(5)|35(10)|53(3)|70(7)|83(6)|99(5)|113(8)|124(6)|135(14)|159(9)|174(8)|190(9)|201(2)|214(15)|235(11)|258(10)|302(14)|321(9)|344(4)|353(3)|364(1)|380(12)|403(16)|416(2)|431(8) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-009Mowry.mp3 Other audio English 2 Introduction Uh, this Helen Kamphuis Introduction by the interviewer, Helen Kamphuis, of Marilyn Mowry and her quilt at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Houston, Texas ; International Quilt Festival 29.752,-95.357 17 Site of the International Quilt Festival http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-009_mowry_01.jpg Photo of Marilyn Mowry 45 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. I have to go backwards a little bit Mowry introduces the quilt she brought to the festival. She describes it as inspired by a quilt from the 1840s. Mowry goes on to describe the technical characteristics of the quilt, including its setting and borders. antique quilts ; Borders ; design process ; Fabric – Reproduction ; fabric designer ; Houston, Texas ; Husband ; International Quilt Festival ; Karey Bresenhan ; mathematics ; Nancy Puentes O’Bryant ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; reproduction quilts ; Terry Clothier Thompson ; Wild Goose Chase – quilt pattern 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-009_mowry_02.jpg Marilyn Mowry, reproduction quilt. 238 Background and identity as a quiltmaker I've made 350 quilts Mowry estimates she has made 350 quilts. She discusses her history with quilting, and goes on to talk about the group of women she quilts with, a group called the “19th-century Patchwork Divas.&quot ; Also, Mowry describes how she obtains the reproduction 19th-century style fabric she uses in her quilts. She also talks about how she began quilting and became familiar with 19th-century style quilts. Helen then asks Marilyn about her style of quilting. Marilyn talks about how she was introduced to quilting as well. Going into detail about how she became familiar with older style quilts. &quot ; Lone Stars III: A Legacy of Texas Quilts&quot ; ; 19th Century Patchwork Divas ; antique quilts ; “History Repeated: Block Exchange Quilts by the 19th Century Patchwork Divas” ; block exchange ; Dallas, Texas ; Fabric – reproduction ; Fort Worth, Texas ; guild activities ; Husband ; Kansas City Star Quilts (publisher) ; knowledge transfer ; Published work – Quilts ; quilt shows/exhibitions ; quilting bee ; reproduction quilts ; Social quiltmaking activities 32.800,-97.571 17 Dallas-Fort Worth 381 On collaborating with the 19th-Century Patchwork Divas How do you get your fabric then? Mowry explains how she and her fellow 19th-Century Patchwork Divas obtain the reproduction fabric they use in quilts. For the particular quilt she brought to the festival, she talks about how the blocks were created by other quilters in the group and obtained through a block exchange. As inspiration, the group members use state quilt documentation books that reproduce images of historical quilts that they try to document. The group does not work together to make quilts, but collaborate remotely and get together for an annual retreat. She says that her group meets a couple times a year. After that, Marilyn elaborates on why her group of quilters does not like to work together in a group ; it is logistically challenging. antique quilts ; “New Jersey Quilts 1777 to 1950: Contributions to an American Tradition.” ; Block Exchange ; Dallas, Texas ; Fabric – reproduction ; Fort Worth, Texas ; Group ; guild activities ; New Jersey book ; quilt retreat ; reproduction quilts ; Retreat ; state quilt documentation project ; State study book ; unfinished objects (UFO) ; Virginia book 17 http://www.quiltindex.org/since_kentucky.php Shelly Zegart, “Since Kentucky: Surveying State Quilts,” Quilt Index. 545 Quilt retreat That retreat, the idea comes, you think of what you’re going to make? Mowry discusses the activities she and other quilters undertake at quilt retreats. In addition to the 19th-century Patchwork Divas retreat, Mowry participates in other weekend retreats, including one in which an author and fabric designer came to teach participants new techniques. Author ; fabric designer ; Nebraska ; quilt retreat ; Social quiltmaking activities 17 587 Quiltmakers in the family and studio space No, well, I think one of my sisters does make quilts, and purses Mowry describes her sister and mother's interest in quilting. Mowry inspired her mother to learn how to quilt. She also describes the small room in her house she uses as her workspace. She sometimes has to look for a long time to find the fabric she is looking for in her storage. Next, Mowry talks about her studio area in this section and goes on to talk about her other activities she does when she is not quilting. She mentions that her group of &quot ; divas&quot ; has deadlines, however. 19th-century Patchwork Divas ; Family ; Sewing place ; Sister Work or Studio space 17 641 How many hours a week do you quilt? ; Everyday, everyday. I need to decide In a continuation of last section, Mowry describes her life outside of quilting and how they are intertwined. While quiltmaking, she often listens to books on tapes. She takes breaks to garden. Her 19th-century Patchwork Divas group has deadlines for projects, and she feels compelled to work hard to meet them. 19th-century Patchwork Divas ; block exchange ; exercise, Books on tape ; internet 17 691 More on 19th-Century Patchwork Divas and their reputation Why do you keep staying then in the group if they’re so-- Marilyn talks about the difficulty of joining her quilting group. In addition, she describes the book based on the group. 19th-Century Patchwork Divas ; “History Repeated: Block Exchange Quilts by the 19th Century Patchwork Divas” ; block exchange ; Internet ; Published work – Quilts ; quilt guild ; quilting bee 17 772 On working in a quilt shop It says on the form that you’ve also owned or worked in a quilt shop Marilyn talks about her time working at a quilt shop. She reminisces about the days she worked at the store, having early access to fabrics and quilt patterns. Fabric/Quilt shops ; Quilt shop ; registered nurse 17 842 On her love of 19th-century quilts ; How do you think quilts can be preserved for the future? ; If I understand correctly, you were very focused on the history of quilting, have you participated in other preservation projects. Marilyn elaborates on what attracts her to antique quilts from the 19th century. She elaborates on why she likes the particular styles. Marilyn also talks about the challenges to create the style of quilts that she does, and why that is part of the reason she quilts. Mowry goes on to describe why she is attracted to quilting and provides an odd reason. She indicates that she likes it because it has made her like colors she didn't use to like, in this case, brown, a color frequently found on 19th century quilts. Brown ; color ; Fabrics – reproduction ; Kansas City ; Kansas City Star Quilts (publisher) ; period ; Preservation ; Projects ; Quilt guild ; Quilt history ; quilt labels ; reproduction quilts 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-009_mowry_05.jpg Marilyn Mowry, detail, showing 19th-century color palette 1145 On using hand or machine quilting on reproduction quilts A lot of the divas Mowry explains the difference between hand quilting and machine quilting and why each technique is utilized. Mowry prefers machine quilting so that she can more efficiently finish her quilts, while other members of the 19th-Century Patchwork Divas hand quilt with large stitches. 19th-century Patchwork Divas ; Barbara Brackman ; Fabric – Reproduction ; Hand quilting ; Husband ; Machine quilting ; quilt history ; reproduction quilts ; Terry Thomas Clothier ; Utility Stitch 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-009_mowry_06.jpg Marilyn Mowry, detail of reproduction quilt showing machine quilting. 1351 How she uses her quilts You don’t sleep under your own quilts? Mowry says why she doesn't sleep underneath her quilts. She notes that she may run out of room for storing her quilts. Also, she talks about a time when she revisited her collection of quilts when she had visitors from Australia and it rekindled the interest in her quilts. She is uncertain what will happen to her quilts as her children do not have the appreciation for them. Australia ; Quilt Purpose – bedcovering ; reproduction quilts ; Sleep 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-009_mowry_03.jpg Marilyn Mowry, reproduction quilt 1389 Does it worry you a little? Yeah. I have one son who I know is gonna sell them on eBay. Mowry talks about the possibility of one of her sons selling her quilts on eBay if she were to pass away. She goes on to say that this may not actually happen since they realize that her work is of professional quality since it was featured in a book. eBay ; Son 17 1417 The importance of quilting in her life Why is it important for you though? Mowry talks about her style of quilting again in this section. She also speaks to why she does quilting, and how she does it for what she describes as somewhat selfish reasons. She notes that quilters who prefer other styles in more contemporary fabrics do not understand her love of 19th-century style quilts. Blended Quilts ; Brights ; Fabric - Batiks 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-009_mowry_05.jpg Marilyn Mowry, detail showing reproduction fabrics. 1475 On quilting as “selfish” Sometimes I don't dust the house. Mowry talks about how her quilting can be construed as selfish, but she tries to keep her husband happy though. She continues to cook meals, but admits that maybe she spends too much time quilting. Dust ; House ; housework ; Husband ; Meal 17 1503 Which artists have influenced you? One that walked in this shop the other day In this section, Mowry discusses some contemporary quilters who have influenced her, as well as how she finds inspiration in some of the state quilt documentation project books, including those from Virginia, New Jersey, and the Carolinas. antique quilts ; Barbara Brackman ; Carolinas ; Fabric - Plaid ; Fabric - Reproduction ; fabric designer ; New Jersey ; Published work – Quilts ; Roberta Horton ; State quilt documentation projects ; Terry Clothier Thompson ; Virginia 17 1596 Her desired quiltmaking legacy How do you want to be remembered as a quiltmaker? Mowry indicates that quilting isn't something she is overly concerned with being remembered for. She even goes on to say that she certainly doesn't want anything quilting-related on her tombstone. Daughters of the American Revolution ; legacy ; Proficient ; Tombstone 17 1646 What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy? ; I hate New Orleans stars Mowry talks about the aspects of quilting she doesn't like in this section, including several patterns she does not enjoy making. One part that she doesn't like is the repetition, such as having to make 50 blocks of the same thing for a block exchange. block exchange ; Courthouse Steps – quilt pattern ; New Orleans Stars – quilt pattern ; Wild Goose Chase – quilt pattern 17 1708 On her son’s impressions of his father’s contributions to her quilting What do you plan with this quilt? Although she doesn't answer the question really, Mowry offers up an interesting anecdote about dropping her son off at the University of Texas and how her son was worried that the father would become involved in quilting and become effeminate. Father ; House ; Husband ; Junior ; Lottery ; University of Texas 17 1791 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? ; The price of fabric, as cotton supposedly is going way up. In this section, Mowry predicts future issues that may arise in quilting. One example she brought up was a failure in the cotton crop in China, which could result in high prices for cotton. She also worries about the future of small local quilt shops. China ; Design process ; Fabric/Quilt shops ; Fiber - Cotton ; price ; quilt shop 17 1903 Feelings about having her quilt published When you were invited for the interview, what message did you want to bring across? Mowry talks about how she was humbled by being presented in the &quot ; Lone Stars III: A Legacy of Texas Quilts&quot ; book. &quot ; Lone Stars III: A Legacy of Texas Quilts&quot ; ; 19th-Century Patchwork Divas ; quilt history 17 2002 Conclusion Yes Mowry and Kamphuis conclude the interview. 17 Oral History Helen Kamphuis: This is Helen Kamphuis, today’s date is the third of November and the time is 10 o’clock, ten past ten. I’m conducting an interview with, please say your name. Marilyn Mowry: Marilyn Mowry HK: Thank you, for Quilters’ S.O.S. and Save Our Stories a Project of the Alliance for American Quilters. Marilyn and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Marilyn, will you tell me about the quilt that you brought today? MM: I have to go backwards a little bit. I am not a math student, every math class I ever took in my entire life I failed and so I taught my husband a little bit about quilting so he could draft the patterns for me. The hardest to explain to him was seam allowance. As he is so supportive of my hobby he agreed to be the mathematician.I saw a particular quilt at the Houston International Quilt Show-I believe this was in 2008 .This was an exhibit that Carrie and Nancy put on, and I bought the book they published with photos of the exhibit in it. There is a little quilt, made about 1850 that I fell in love with.I gave the picture to my husband and said, “Okay, make a pattern for this quilt &amp ; i will reproduce it- and he did. The really interesting thing about this, it’s not made like any other quilt, that we’ve seen. I one that Terry Clothier Thompson, quilter, author, and designer of fabric had and it was from 1840. I made the quilt with the pattern my husband made but when we came to the last part we could not figure out how the outside borders had been put on.We worked on it and worked on it and worked on it, and one night in the middle of the night my husband sat straight up in bed and said, “I got it!” He wasn’t awake and then he laid back down. The outside borders don’t go top, bottom, left, right, they are a great big huge triangle.You can see it with you look closer at the quilt. I love this quilt because my husband helped me, and he not only helped me figure out the math, he would correct the pattern if he didn’t want me to cut off a part as some quilters did on early quilts. He also helped me figure out colors. HK: You explained it’s a lot different to other quilts, what do you mean? MM: Just the setting of it. HK: What do you mean about the setting? MM: Most borders go one on each side of the quilt. This quilt we couldn’t figure out because the geese ran across the corner of the quilt. Instead of a straight border this quilt has huge triangles attached to the main section of the quilt as 4 large triangles made up of many pieces. I think I did a fairly good job at reproducing this quilt from a small photo in a book. HK: It looks very similar. MM: Looks a lot like that. That is, they have 1850 on it, so I think one of the other ones I saw just like this was 1840 to 1850, maybe even into 1860 and I tried to be true to the fabric. It means a lot to me because my husband helped. HK: Does your husband help you with more quilts or just this one? MM: I’ve made 350 quilts. HK: 350, okay [laughs.] MM: That’s why I forgot to put a this label on this one ! They all, (most of them) still live with me! I consider myself a first generation quilter who taught her mother how to quilt. I am in a group called The 19th Century Patchwork Divas. We have had exhibits in Houston [Texas.] two times. Once in 2004 and then in 2008. We just had a book published with our quilts by Kansas City Star. Our quilts are made with new reproduction fabric &amp ; are made to reproduce the look of quilts from the 1800’s.This has been an exciting year, the Kansas City Star book and this book I am in Lone Star III. Next year is going to be very dull and boring. HK: It’s not 2012 yet, you never know. If you could describe yourself, what kind of quilter are you, a traditionalist? MM: I probably started quilting in 1985. I live in the Dallas -Fort Worth [Texas.] area &amp ; at that time there might have been many one or two quilt shops in the area.I would hire a babysitter to watch my children while I drove thirty miles to the quilt shop.The first quilt that I made was a two color quilt which I really liked.I’ve just gotten away from that two color quilt,obviously, with this very very scrappy quilt. My next quilts were for my boys. I made their quilts like comforters &amp ; tied them. Today my boys don’t particularly care for the old quilt look, so I have no idea what I’m going to do with over 350 quilts! When I die that’s someone else’s problem, but we have to make sure the oldest son doesn’t sell them on eBay, that’s final [laughs.] I’ll come back to haunt him. The organization I’m in, The 19th Century Patchwork Divas have some very intricate &amp ; exquisite quilts we have reproduced. I hope someone in my family might be appreciative of them &amp ; treat them with tenderness &amp ; care. HK: How do you get your fabric then? MM: There’s very few shops that have reproduction fabric in the Dallas Fort Worth [Texas.] area so we frequent them as often as we can.I think I forgot to say we’re a block exchange, so my quilt, this particular quilt that is in the Lone Star III book was a block exchange.There were probably 18 to 20 participants in this quilt. It has my name on it but, I didn’t make all these blocks myself, I just put them together. HK: Do you work a lot with other quilters? It’s a collaborate-- MM: We meet a couple times a year, then we decide what we want to reproduce usually out of the state study books.we buy books like the New Jersey book, the Virginia book, etc. The farther north you go in this country, the books seen to have many more wonderful,traditional quilts.We’ll see a quilt that we want to try and reproduce.We’ll select our colors, we’ll set the time period, and then we’ll make the blocks. Then its up to us to set it in what ever way we want it. There’s another quilt in the Lone Star book similar to this but set totally different. You might not even recognize that these are actually the same blocks. When our group meets we have one member who really keeps us grounded. She does all the, “use this fabric, no use of this one, here’s the measurements and oh by the way, you’ll be murdered in your bed if you don’t turn it in on time.” HK: [laughs.] Okay, okay, harsh woman [laughs.] MM: We actually have probably had forty-two exchanges or something like that and we probably made a total of 250 quilts. There are probably that many in bags that just don’t get completed. HK: Do you prefer working in a group together making a quilt or do you-- MM: We actually don’t sew together.We very seldom have sew in days.It’s getting harder to find a place that you can get for the weekend or one or two weeks, but we all try to get together once a year for our Diva retreat.have a Diva retreat once a year. I don’t like quilts in bags, or unfinished projects so I seem to be an overachiever &amp ; finish most of my projects within a reasonable time. HK: That retreat, the idea comes, you think of what you’re going to make? MM: Well no, for this last one that we just had, we just brought whatever we wanted to. I finished five projects. We do have retreats where we do have a famous author &amp ; fabric maker for a major fabric company come &amp ; teach once a year. She lets us know of the project ahead of time. This one is open to the public. The Diva retreat is just for the Divas to participate in. HK: Are there other quilt makers in your family? MM: No. Well, I think one of my sisters does make quilts and purses and clothing. So basically out of six children there’s just the two of us. HK: Okay. MM: Our mother never seemed to get very good at it [laughs.] She tried then she would ask me for advice. HK: You influenced your mother or it was-- MM: I think I was a quilter before she was. HK: Do you have a studio or a sewing place? MM: I have a very small room and I am evidently very neat because people tell me that when they come to the room.I don’t like to look for something for an hour and a half. I have a lot of elfa unit drawers that I keep my fabric in. HK: How much time would you be spending on your quilts? MM: Everyday. HK: Everyday? MM: Everyday I need to decide on the project I need to work on. I also listen to books on tapes so I get two for one—I get to listen to my book and I get to sew. I’ve taken a couple weeks off to do yard work, dig up the yard, plant things, etc. With the Diva Exchanges, you do have deadlines, you have to get this amount done by a certain time. Due dates really come quickly sometimes! HK: [laughs.] Why do you keep staying then in the group if they’re so-- MM: I BEGGED to get in this group. HK: Okay. MM: And with the internet, people know who we are all over the world and it’s really, really fun because we can almost say, in fact we have, we don’t need to go through the whole title, we just say, “Divas,” “You’re a Diva? How do I become one?” What’s really interesting is after we got here in 2008, we had people keep coming up to us saying, “How do you this? How do you get a group organized? How do you do a block exchange?” It’s not even hard, you just have to decide what you’re going to do, sorta have a little bit of a leader, and you have to do it. Hopefully this book that just came out that Kansas Star published, I’m so bad I can’t remember if it’s history revisited or history reviewed and that tells you a little bit about how you can do a block exchange. HK: Okay. MM: Supposedly we are the only group in the whole United States that have stayed grounded and stayed focused in continue on with this [inaudible.] This actually is one, I did this one [inaudible.] HK: It says on the form that you’ve also owned or worked in a quilt shop? MM: Yes. I’m an R.N. [Registered Nurse.] actually, in my first life, and I haven’t done that for a while but I was at the quilt shop all day and I was spending so much money, that was before the price of yard, yard had gone up so much, and so I said, “I need a job,” and I ended up over there for about seven years. But you get to see everything new that comes in and you actually come home with more ideas because you think, “I saw a quilt somewhere and this would look good.” It got me in trouble a lot, but I made a lot of things. I miss it a little bit, I miss the people, there’s some very nice people that I worked with . HK: [laughs.] If I understand correctly, you were very focused on the history of quilting, have you participated in other preservation projects? MM: No, just selfish I guess [laughs.] No I haven’t, I should. I’m not in a guild right now, which would be helpful too. A lot of people really don’t like this period of quilts, they don’t like the look, they say, “Oh,” I’ve actually had people say, “They look dark and dirty.” HK: I don’t agree [laughs.] MM: I don’t either, but I guess I can understand that because if I ever do stop and make a great baby quilt, I call it eye candy because it’s so much different than what I do. There are the bubblegum pinks and the blues and greens and the chrome yellows that are really really bright, so there were bright colors back then, but this is a good amount darker and a lot of people like that. HK:What attracts you to this period? MM: I thought about and I thought about it, and I have no idea. It’s why did I like quilting and everything else I could think of to make.It was like I came home with quilting and that’s where I stayed for all those years. I don’t know, why do I like this? When I get to the 1900s I don’t like that time period much. HK: Is it the color or their kind of patterns or-- MM: . The very first time I ever tried to reproduce a quilt, I can’t even remember what year it was, probably twenty years ago, there were not reproduction fabrics to speak of. I actually turned things over backwards. It was a challenge trying to get the look of the old quilts.There’s another lady in our group who also likes to make very close replicas of the old quilts. She and I both get magnifying glasses out and we actually look at an old quilt that way. Then we try to find a fabric in our stash to represent that old piece. HK: You just explained already a little bit what draws you to quilting and why this quilt, but could you kind of elaborate a little bit more why you are drawn to quilting? MM: The really funny thing is there’s an awful lot of brown in these and I never could wear brown because of my coloring .I always hated brown and now I love brown. Our group has been told that our quilts are so correct to the period that if we don’t put labels on them in a 100 years no one will be able to tell the reproduction one from the original older quilt. HK: The original. MM: The original, that 100 years from now, they will not know if it was 2010 or 1870. I’m sure they’d be able to figure out that it’s machine quilted but still, they look that close to what we see in the original. I have a tendency to want to duplicate the originals, a lot of people will set their’s differently which is why we were able to pull off the book for Kansas City Star because we had different settings for different blocks.Hopefully the book will be a little bit of an education for people out there who might like to do block exchanges. HK: The quilting, like you just explained is machine quilting. Do you also have handquilted? MM: A lot of the Divas that quilt their own quilts do a utility stitch which I don’t care for.I’m not going to live long enough to handquilt 350 quilts.” The quilter that we use loves the reproduction quilts.She tries to be true to the time period of the original quilt with her quilting designs. . HK: But it’s not the history that attracts you? MM: Yes, and it’s the fact the some of these women didn’t have anywhere near the tools we have now.It the wonderful workmanship these women did before me with limited products. HK: I think it’s a great quilt. Do you, you don’t sleep under your own quilts--- MM: No. HK: That’s what you’re saying, no, you always use them to show them? MM: No I just have them folded here. They all live at home, and that’s the next problem. We either need to move or I need to quit making quilts. I had some visitors here last week from Australia and I was asked to show them a lot of my quilts. It was great fun as I get to look at them all again &amp ; enjoy them. I don’t know what will happen to them all if I am not here one day. HK: Does it worry you a little? MM: Yes, I have one son I know is going to sell them on eBay and I’m going to have to come back and haunt him!It did make a difference to them when their mom’s was in a book, like, “Oh, maybe there is something to it.” HK: But they don’t quite appreciate-- MM: No. HK: The quilting. Why is it important for you though? MM: To quilt? HK: Yeah. Because you’re getting some bad feedback from some people and you still continue. MM: . You know, there’s a lot of people that do Batiks and they do brights and they really don’t get this. It’s like somebody snapped their finger one day and I said, “Okay that’s it, that’s where I want to be, and that’s what I want to do.” I do other things too, I do what they call blended quilts which actually have no high contrast at all and I like that a lot too ; that’s really like painting with fabric. This was a challenge just to find pieces that are large scale &amp ; work in the blendes. It’s probably selfish, self-gratification, but it makes me happy-- HK: What do you mean it’s selfish? MM: I don’t, some days I don’t dust the house. HK: [laughs.] Sometimes I don’t do-- MM: I always cook a meal for my husband because that’s why he married me because I’m a good cook, and I don’t want to lose that. I probably spent a little too much time on it, but that’s ok. I don’t want to do anything else. HK: And sometimes you can share with your husband. MM: Yes, yes. HK: Which artists influenced you, the historical quilters? MM: The state study books influence me quit a bit. New Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas are awesome books to look at for ideas. Barbara Brackman has done a wonderful job with writing history of quilts. Terry Thompson Clothier &amp ; Barbara made wonderful fabric lines. HK: Okay. MM: I’ve never done a quilt study, I don’t remember things. The older I get the less I remember. I can’t tell you when some of the colors in the old fabrics such as bubble gum came out.I should do more studying of the time periods different fabrics were introduced. HK: [laughs.] How do you want to be remembered as a quiltmaker? MM: She was very proficient [laughs.] I finish things. I do have some tops, but I don’t have tops like a lot of people have, I actually finish them. I put labels on them, they shouldn’t be unlabeled. It’s interesting because I was thinking, what I wanted on my tombstone and quilter was not one of them. I think I should put that on there. I was fortunate enough getting into the Daughters of the Revolution a couple years ago so I said, “I want D.A.R. on the top of the tombstone.” Maybe I better put quilter on there also.. HK: What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy? MM: I hate making geese, I’m sorry, I’m getting picky now. I don’t make them very well. Some times when you making many blocks for an exchange it gets old &amp ; boring. What’s really fun is to stop on something you have to do, and just do something for yourself, and I don’t do that a lot of times. I did do one recently, I did an 1860 Courthouse Steps just for me, and I love it! I did it for no reason so really enjoyed it. HK: What do you plan with this quilt? MM: It was folded up and put away with all the other ones at my house.When they said bring one that meant something special to me &amp ; there’s an awful lot of them that actually do mean something special to me I decided to bring this one.It’s very nice to have a supportive husband because everybody doesn’t always support their hobby. I have to add one little quick story here. We took our third child off to the University of Texas when he was a junior. He couldn’t take a car because you have to have drawn from a lottery for a parking space.So his Father &amp ; took him there &amp ; dropped him . I let him out of the car and as he said goodbye to us he said, “Dad, please tell me you’re not going to go all foo-foo on us and start quilting?” [laughs.] So I think he thinks his father is rather foo-foo now for helping me in this quilting process. HK: [laughs.] Right. MM: I thought my husband was colorblind for 25 years. I thought he couldn’t tell blues and greens he has fooled me &amp ; makes wonderful color combination choices for me. HK: What do you think is biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? MM: The price of the fabric, as cotton supposedly is going way up.China had a cotton crop failure, and we’ve been told, “Don’t be surprised if it goes to thirteen dollars a yard!” It’s really hard to justify buying fabric when it’s up to over ten dollars a yard. It’s just amazing, I can’t believe it. You figure how many yards there are in a quilt &amp ; multiply that by $10 &amp ; the quilts are costing quite a bit to make these days. HK: But that’s the only thing that will be confronting, I mean next year maybe a better crop? MM: I worry about the locals. I worry that they may close and that’s where I buy my reproduction fabric. I live in a town of 200,000 and I couldn’t find buttons in that town, there’s no where to buy thread, buttons.Stores just keep closing or moving. I always need something &amp ; have to drive long distances to get these things. HK: [laughs.] MM: I really enjoy the whole process of it. I will lay the newest quilt on the floor in the middle of the room when my husband comes home. I like how he notices it and says, “Wow.” A lot of my friends just don’t get that my husband. HK: When you were invited for the interview, what message did you want to bring across, what was important for you, or what would you have liked me to ask you? MM: It was such a pleasure to be asked to be in this book. There are twenty-two of us in our group the 19th Century Patchwork Divas and there are only two of us in this book I have a traditional quilt, There are not that many traditional quilts being show say at quilt shows anymore, so that meant a lot to me to be asked to be in the book. I know this art form has taken a big turn. I know that’s a good thing but to me, this is what got us here, the traditional quilts.This quilt in the book Lone Stars III is not my favorite quilt.It was one of the easiest ones I’ve ever made. It was fun to make &amp ; exchange the blocks with my Diva sister in crime.I am glad this one was picked though as it shows others what they can accomplish without being a master quilter. HK: But your most important message is that people should focus a little bit more-- MM: Quilt what they want to do. If you like the art quilt, do it. Be creative &amp ; enjoy the process. But look at the antique quilts occasionally &amp ; appreciate what the women who went before us produced. They didn’t have it nearly as easy in their life circumstances as we do. They were the leaders &amp ; we have followed in this wonderful art form. HK: So that’s the most important message to focus us on quilt’s history? MM: Yes. HK: I would like to wind down and finish the interview, unless you say no, okay. I would like to thank you for allowing me to interview for today at the Quilters’ S.O.S. and Save Our Stories oral history project, I really appreciate it. Our interview concludes at 10:45. Okay. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 0 Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Susan Quinn Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-009Mowry Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-11-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Marilyn Mowry Description An account of the resource Marilyn Mowry talks about her love of antique quilts, including her membership in the “19th-century Patchwork Divas" group. http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/477b56a3d338d1a9a4b6567bfe979bc4.jpg 31e4f7b9eaff452e1af5f23d13278733 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/1e5cb7e94966923bb0ccbe8d6a350f7d.jpg dc21eb3a54ec77c62946e9b3094601d7 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/a6c3a01654540a22abc7b2a74a951f5d.jpg 96988af643261860339150c755af757c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Suzanna Hardabeck Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Barbara Oliver Hartman OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-021Hartman.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.1 Barbara Oliver Hartman TX77010-021Hartman Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Barbara Oliver Hartman Suzanna Hardabeck 1:|13(2)|26(11)|36(5)|48(13)|61(2)|74(14)|82(12)|92(12)|103(16)|113(9)|123(4)|135(1)|144(9)|155(2)|170(7)|178(12)|187(4)|205(2)|215(7)|229(4)|242(3)|251(12)|273(14)|291(1)|300(2)|311(6)|320(12)|328(5)|340(3)|352(4)|360(6)|372(10)|383(5)|400(18) 0 http://quiltalliance.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-021Hartman.mp3 Other audio 0 Interview Introduction Okay this is Suzanne Hardebeck and today's date is November the third, and it is 4:08 and I'm conducting an interview with Barbara Oliver Hartman for Quilters' S.O.S. Save Our Stories a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. Barbara and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. The introduction to the QSOS interview between interviewer Suzanne Hardebeck and interviewee Barbara Oliver Hartman at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas International Quilt Festival 29.752, -95.357 17 George R. Brown Convention Center 1001 Avenida de las Americas Houston, Texas, USA 77010 32 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. ; Barbara, will you tell me about the quilt you brought today? Hartman discusses the quilt that she started in 1992, but finished in 2008. The series uses small scraps of fabric left from other projects. She notes that her first quilt in this series was juried into the prestigious exhibition Quilt National in 1993. This one is owned by the corporation behind the International Quilt Festival, Quilts, Inc. quilt national ; Quilt shows/exhibitions 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-021_hartman_01.jpg Barbara Oliver Hartman with her quilt, “Autumn Leaves.” 99 How many hours a week do you quilt? ; That's really a good question. I am in my studio probably ten to twelve hours a day. Hartman works in her studio for three to five hours a day, but she gets distracted frequently. She also describes her color preferences for her quilts. She uses earth tones, including what she calls autumn colors. color ; Time management ; Work or Studio space 17 181 Do you use a design wall? If so, in what way/how does that enhance your creative process? If not, how do you go about designing your quilts? ; Hartman discusses how she uses her design Design process ; Design Wall 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-021_hartman_05.jpg photograph of one of Barbara Oliver Hartman's quilts that uses autumn and earthly colors 248 Have advances in technology influenced your work? If so, how? ; : It really hasn't affected how I do this quilt. I have many, I have many styles that I work in and one of them does use technology. I do some designing on the computer, especially with very intricate pieced quilts, when I do those, but with this particular style of quilts, it's pretty much I have to sort of be designing and sewing and taking care of all the technical aspects all at the same time while I'm working on the piece. 17 344 Tell me about an amusing experience that has occurred from your quiltmaking? ; Oh okay, well I do have a funny story about this particular style, because what I'm doing is I'm using a free motion zigzag stitch and because these are teeny weenie little pieces, I have to get my fingers very close to the darning foot. Hartman discusses a funny story about an experience with a zigzag stitch Benima sewing machine ; darning foot ; Home sewing machine ; quilting injury ; zigzag stick 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-021_hartman_01.jpg Hartman standing next to her autumn quilt 531 What makes a quilt artistically powerful? ; What do you think makes a quilt artistically powerful as you work on your quilts? Hartman says that she does not know exactly what makes a quilt powerful, and she is always happy with her results. 17 http://www.barbaraoliverhartman.com/ Barbara Oliver Hartman's official website 593 Which artists have influenced you? ; Oh, I am very taken with, you know I love Picasso, I love Impressionism, I love Post-Impressionism, a very abstract, this is the most realistic type of thing that I do by far. Hartman talks about the influences of Post-Impressionism artists like Picasso and Monet Claude Monet ; Impressionism ; influences ; Pablo Picasso ; Paul Klee ; Post-Impressionism ; Wassily Kandinsky 17 784 How does quiltmaking impact your family? ; No they aren't. My kids are all artistic, and they're, they love what I do, my husband loves what I do, but they don't do it. One of my daughters is an artist, I mean, she has a real job but she really has a, an artistic bent. Hartman talks about her family in relation to her quilt making. She says that her daughter and brother-in-law are both artistic. artistic bent ; craft fairs ; Quilt National ; Yuma, Arizona 17 952 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? ; We have far more opportunities now. Hartman discuses the fact that quilt makers have far more opportunities today compared to 25 years ago. opportunities 17 1129 What special meaning does this quilt have for you? ; Is there anything you want to share about that quilt that I didn't specifically ask you of, of Autumn leaves? Hartman designed this specific quilt for the Husqvama exhibit and she had not seen it in a long time. collection ; Husqvarna ; size 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_TX77010-021_hartman_03.jpg Picture of the Hartman's Autumn Leaves quilt 1206 What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy? ; Tell me if you have ever used quilts to get through a difficult time? ; Is there any specific part of quiltmaking that you don't like? Hartman talks about her love and hate relationship with quilting. It helped get her through her sister's cancer, but she overdid it and now is physically unable to quilt at the same level that she could before because of carpel tunnel syndrome applique ; carpel tunnel syndrome ; handquilting ; pieced quilts ; thread embellishment 17 1513 Handwork on Quilts How close do you make your stitches when you hand stitch? Hartman talks about her love for hand quilting and how it makes her feel. Embroidery ; guilting 17 1996 Interview Conclusion Okay well I'd like to thank Barbara for allowing me to interview her today for Quilters' S.O.S. Save Our Stories oral history project. Our interview is now concluded at 4:42. 17 Oral History Suzanne Hardebeck (SH): Are we ready? Barbara Oliver Hartman (BOH): Here&#039 ; s the quilt if you want to ask any. SH: Okay. Okay this is Suzanne Hardebeck and today&#039 ; s date is November the third, and it is 4:08 and I&#039 ; m conducting an interview with Barbara Oliver Hartman for Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S. Save Our Stories a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. Barbara and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Barbara, will you tell me about the quilt you brought today? BOH: This quilt is one in a series of quilts that I&#039 ; ve done, been doing for, since 1992. This particular quilt was quilted, was finished in 2008. It is a series that uses every single tiny little piece left from all of my other projects. It&#039 ; s truly a green quilt. I started doing them, sort of by accident, like I say in 1992, and the first one that I made in this series was accepted into Quilt National in 1993. SH: Do you have any specific plans for this, additional plans for this quilt? BOH: This quilt is owned by Quilts, Inc. SH: Okay. About how many hours a week do you end up quilting? BOH: That&#039 ; s really a good question. I am in my studio probably ten to twelve hours a day. I used to actually be productive most of that time but now I&#039 ; m slowing down, I get distracted by many things, and I still think that I probably work three to five hours a day as an average on actually making quilts. SH: Do you have a favorite color or theme? BOH: My main theme is I am a very earthy girl, and I like autumn colors, I wear autumn colors, I like to sew with them, I just really gravitate toward earth tone and muddy colors. Although, I have some projects that I do in others but for the most part, you&#039 ; re going to see a lot of greens, golds, browns, khaki, those yucky green colors that most people don&#039 ; t like to use [laughs.] all of the earth tones, yeah, that&#039 ; s me. SH: I noticed you have a design wall, on this particular kind of quilt, are you using it or are you just improvising? BOH: That is a great point because it&#039 ; s the only type of quilt that I make where I can&#039 ; t use a design wall. What I do is I&#039 ; ll make a very, very crude drawing sketch of where I want to put the ground, the sky, the trees, and sometimes that changes midstream, but because I&#039 ; m working with these teeny weenie little pieces, I call them slivers and bits, and because I&#039 ; m using these little teeny weenie pieces, I can only work on an area about six inches in diameter on my sewing machine at a time. What I have to do is sew until I get them sort of fastened down, and then when I get a few areas finished, I, then I put it up on the design wall to see where I am with it, but it&#039 ; s a really difficult to pre-design using this style that I&#039 ; m using. SH: Has technology affected the way you do this quilt? BOH: It really hasn&#039 ; t affected how I do this quilt. I have many, I have many styles that I work in and one of them does use technology. I do some designing on the computer, especially with very intricate pieced quilts, when I do those, but with this particular style of quilts, it&#039 ; s pretty much I have to sort of be designing and sewing and taking care of all the technical aspects all at the same time while I&#039 ; m working on the piece. SH: Do you teach this method? BOH: Yes. I just started, I actually had not, I&#039 ; d been teaching a lot of other different kinds of things for many years, and a couple of years ago I did develop a class and a PowerPoint lecture where I showed the different steps of the process, and I just came back about a month ago from Fargo, North Dakota and I was teaching the class and some of the students came up with some really neat things, it was very, very fun. I have been teaching at some lately, but that&#039 ; s kind of new to my teaching, teaching list. SH: Do you have any amusing experiences that you&#039 ; d like to share with us, either from your sewing and creating or from your classes? BOH: Oh okay, well I do have a funny story about this particular style, because what I&#039 ; m doing is I&#039 ; m using a free motion zigzag stitch and because these are teeny weenie little pieces, I have to get my fingers very close to the darning foot and I&#039 ; m using a little metal, I&#039 ; m using my Bernina and I&#039 ; m using a little metal open toe darning foot that is not designed to do with a zigzag and I routinely sew my finger. Now, the first worst time that I did it, and I mean I&#039 ; ve been sewing since I was five years old, I&#039 ; ve never sewed my finger, I&#039 ; ve been quilting for thirty years, and I&#039 ; ve never sewed my finger, so and it actually might have been on this quilt, that I have my studio at home is set up, I have a room, and I have my sewing machine, it faces a television set, and right to my left is my computer, so I&#039 ; m like in a cockpit when I&#039 ; m sewing. I&#039 ; m terrible, I&#039 ; m a notorious multitasker and I shouldn&#039 ; t be doing it, so sometimes I&#039 ; ll be watching TV sewing and on the computer, all at the same time, sometimes talking on the phone too, and so one day I was just, I don&#039 ; t know what happened, and I sewed my finger. The first time I ever did and it went through the nail, and so my husband heard me, my studio&#039 ; s upstairs and so my husband heard me yell and he runs to the bottoms of the stairs, he says, &quot ; You okay?&quot ; and I walk out, broke the, sewed right through my nail, it broke the needle of course, I walked to the top of the stairs and I&#039 ; m really getting faint, and he looks at me and he seen me sort of bobbing, he says, &quot ; You better sit down and not fall down these stairs,&quot ; [laughs.] but it was really bad, but since that time, in the last few years, it is just fairly common that I&#039 ; ll catch just the, on my left hand index finger, I&#039 ; ll catch a little bit of the skin or the fat on that finger right beside my nail. I&#039 ; ve never sewn through the nail again and I don&#039 ; t even flinch anymore, it just happens, it you know, it&#039 ; s like no big deal now, but yes that&#039 ; s, and my husband likes the tell that story, &quot ; Yeah you should have seen, if she wouldn&#039 ; t watch TV and sew at the same time, she wouldn&#039 ; t have that problem,&quot ; because of course he&#039 ; s a guy and he only does one thing at a time [laughs.] SH: What do you think makes a quilt artistically powerful as you work on your quilts? BOH: You know, I never think about that, that way. I just do what I do and I&#039 ; m just always delighted and surprised if something turns out nicely and I don&#039 ; t, I know when I see somebody else&#039 ; s quilt and artistically it&#039 ; s you know, it just has a powerful, it, either the color or the design or whatever combination you know, that you, that makes that happen but I don&#039 ; t, you know that just never, I just go into my studio and make stuff and whatever I feel like doing that day, I do, and if, and I&#039 ; m just always kind of happy if it turns out. SH: What artists have affected you and your work do you think? BOH: Oh, I am very taken with, you know I love Picasso, I love impressionism, I love post impressionism, a very abstract, this is the most realistic type of thing that I do by far, just about everything else is very, far more abstract than this, so this is a, kind of my impressionistic series that I&#039 ; m doing. The more, the more of those I do, I&#039 ; m constantly refining the technique and it&#039 ; s just given more of the abstract impressionism look to them, and you know, I love Picasso, Monet, Klee, and Kandinsky those are absolutely my favorite artists. SH: Were you trained as an artist? BOH: No I wasn&#039 ; t, but I came, my mother was a dressmaker and literally from the time I was five years old I sat at the sewing machine. My mother made squaw dresses back in the 50s and she had a business and she had ladies that sewed for her and she made them for stores and custom work for people, I lived in Arizona, was raised there. We had, I had the fabric guy came, the zipper guy came, the thread you know, the trim, all of the different things she used so I was around it all my life, hated anything to do with sewing because I had to do it, and anything my mother wanted me to do I didn&#039 ; t want to do, but I&#039 ; ve always sewed. My grandmother in Texas made quilts, so we would go in the summers and visit her and she always had the quilt on the, she had to quilt that came down from the ceiling you know, at night then you&#039 ; d roll it back up when they would go to bed, and she quilted out of necessity. My mother was very proud of the fact that she did not quilt, because she was prosperous enough to buy the blankets, coming as a child of the depression, so she didn&#039 ; t see much value in what my grandmother did, and my grandmother made all the clothes too, but she also made the quilts from the used clothing because it was a necessity, you know she had to do that. My mother, so it kind of skipped a generation there, and I was in the thirties before I just, I always had a sewing machine, I would sew for my daughters a little bit when they were young, but so I just sort of took it up as a little hobby [laughs.] about thirty years ago and it&#039 ; s just totally taken over our whole family&#039 ; s lives ever since. SH: Is the rest of your family involved in your art business? BOH: No they aren&#039 ; t. My kids are all artistic, and they&#039 ; re, they love what I do, my husband loves what I do, but they don&#039 ; t do it. One of my daughters is an artist, I mean, she has a real job but she really has a, an artistic bent. She is very, a creative thinker, and you know, but none of them are, but my brother-in-law is an artist, he has a PhD in art ; my husband&#039 ; s brother was a potter for thirty-five years, he raised his family doing arts and crafts fairs making pots. So we&#039 ; ve had a lot of artists in the family. It&#039 ; s like we have artists, and then everyone else that appreciates them. This quilt here got rejected from I.Q.A. this year, just for your information. SH: [laughs.] BOH: That was okay, this is the first one I did that got accepted into Quilt National in 1992, so this is, that&#039 ; s how much that technique has progressed. Of course people on this recording aren&#039 ; t going to know what we&#039 ; re looking at. We&#039 ; re going through some of my pictures on my computer. SH: You mentioned being from Arizona, and I know it was Yuma [Arizona.], how does that affect your color use and your quilt style? BOH: I think it&#039 ; s had a pretty profound influence. I tend to really like the desert, I like stark and simple things, simple shapes, I keep it kind of simple, I think the color palettes that I use a lot of the browns and golds and greens and that type of thing, I don&#039 ; t think of it. I think a lot of my shapes are also sometimes I recognize kind of the Native American influences and the Mexican influences because Yuma [Arizona.] is on the border and it also has three Indian reservations. That was always something that we saw a lot of. I have a picture here of Yuma [Arizona.], I don&#039 ; t know if I have it on here. SH: What do you think the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today is? BOH: We have far more opportunities now. Twenty-five years ago when a group of us in Dallas [Texas.] tried to get our quilts shown outside of a quilt show, we would go to maybe our local art center, or you know small museum area or even galleries, and almost get laughed out of the place with out quilts. Now, I think we have a lot of opportunity. I think that the challenges are the same as in every endeavor in society today that everybody&#039 ; s looking for instant gratification. I think the challenges are probably our own making because we, you know, there&#039 ; s sometimes you don&#039 ; t want to pay your dues and do the work, and want instant gratification, but for the most part, oh this is what I was going to show you. This is the latest my little grandson, he turned nine, I told him he could sew for the first time, so about a month and a half ago I just cut a bunch of strips for him and he sewed that. SH: Fantastic. BOH: You were asking about the family, so that&#039 ; s what, so my family, so here I&#039 ; ve got a little grandson that&#039 ; s very proud of his little project. SH: Well it&#039 ; s very nice. BOH: My little, my little ginger boy, so, anyway. SH: We have a budding male artist in the family here? BOH: Yes, and he is so proud of it, you know, and he just, because he and one other grandson who&#039 ; s grown now, he was about nine when he was very taken with it, and the thing with the boys that are very mechanical, because see it&#039 ; s equipment to them, you know they&#039 ; re wanting to work the machinery, and this can, and they were both like really into Legos and building the little things that had mechanical parts and all that. The other grandkids weren&#039 ; t into that so, but these two boys, the older grandson and this one, they just have been into it, but both of them have brothers who could care less about it, so, you know, it&#039 ; s just getting them at the right point, but oh he loved that. He loved making that quilt. SH: Is there anything you want to share about that quilt that I didn&#039 ; t specifically ask you of, of autumn leaves? BOH: No, not really. I made that, that was the only one in the series that I actually made for a specific reason and it was for the Husqvarna exhibit that year, when they used to have the Husqvarna, and they had to be made to a certain size, and that was the fifty-one by fifty-one and they traveled for a couple of years, and they could be for sale or not and I was just very fortunate that Carrie and Nancy wanted it for their collection and quilt seeing. It will be I guess in a permanent collection in the museum and so it was, so this is the first time I&#039 ; ve seen it in a long, long time. SH: Does it bring back special memories? BOH: Yes, and it was fun to do, and I was, I mean I was very pleased with it and then when it was sold, I was just ecstatic by who bought it, you know, it was very gratifying. SH: Is there any specific part of quiltmaking that you don&#039 ; t like? BOH: You know, I love all of it sometimes, and I hate all of it sometimes [laughs.] there&#039 ; s really not much I don&#039 ; t like. For many years, probably the first twenty years that I was seriously quilting, my very favorite part of the handquilting. I would sit and handquilt, I could handquilt through anything. Twelve years ago my sister died, she had been sick for many years, you know two or three years really in bad shape, she had cancer, she had melanoma, and I would spend a lot of time with her in the day and I would come home and I would just, my therapy was sitting and handquilting. Well unfortunately, I overdid it, and so now I have carpel tunnel really bad, and so I try to have a quilt on my frame all the time, where if I were seriously quilting a quilt right now, I could maybe handquilt two hours a day, without it making my hands go to sleep at night, and you know be miserable. That was probably the most single, most gratifying part of the quilting process for a long, long time and then I finally had to accept that I couldn&#039 ; t do that anymore. I do different kinds of quilts on not this particular type of quilt with the little pieces, but most of the other quilts that I do, my pieced quilts, my other appliqué quilts, even though I am doing most of the work by machine, I will come back in and do some big stitches or some thread embellishment by hand and it just kind of makes me feel good to have a little bit of that hand work in the quilts. SH: Do you do paper piecing or do just-- BOH: I do a lot of paper piecing, I do a lot of, I know its foundation piecing, I don&#039 ; t do it on paper anymore, I learned that lesson [laughs.] I got tired of pulling paper off, but many of my large quilts, my major pieces, have been paper pieced. SH: Well then do you draw the-- BOH: Like okay, here, well this is-- SH: On foundation or yourself or-- BOH: Yes, okay. Here&#039 ; s an example. This was a quilt that I designed on the computer, this is foundation pieced. SH: Okay. BOH: Curved foundation pieced, so I do it on fabric rather than paper, so then I don&#039 ; t have to tare, so I&#039 ; ve got that extra layer of stability in the quilt, makes them flatter, nicer, and you can do a lot of things with it. SH: What do you use for your foundation? BOH: Muslin, I just use muslin. SH: Do you use a particular type of quilt program or do you just-- BOH: No, it&#039 ; s a drawing program. I use either Illustrator or CorelDRAW ; see I have lots of different kinds. SH: Yeah. Then do you after you draw it on the computer then do you pin it out? BOH: Yeah, what I have to do is if I draw it on the computer, then I have to bring it up to full-size, so if it&#039 ; s, generally what I&#039 ; ll do is I&#039 ; ll take it, I have two ways of enlarging that patterns, one is I&#039 ; ll take it to Kinkos and blow it up as big as I can, that&#039 ; s what I did on most of my star quilts that are foundation pieced, and the other method that I&#039 ; ve started doing some is, another method that I&#039 ; ve started doing some is using my projector, my digital projector, because if I have the image on my computer, then I can just plug my digital, I can throw it onto my design wall and I can trace it. I have to one way or another, I have to come up with a full-size pattern and than that have to be traced off onto the pieces, so then I have to figure out how to put it together. Sometimes I design things where I could not figure out how to make them, so I would have to abandon those. This was a quilt, of course we can&#039 ; t see it, but it&#039 ; s a picture of a face, this is called Stages and it&#039 ; s the stages of grief, and this is the quilt that I would come home and sew on when my sister was dying. Let&#039 ; s see, it&#039 ; s got a heart, tears, a lightening bolt with some shock and so anyway, that&#039 ; s that. SH: How close do you make your stitches when you hand stitch? BOH: This particular, a lot of the quilts, and most of the ones that I do where I&#039 ; m using big stitches, I will do like every other row will be very hot, fine, hand stitching and I&#039 ; m a really good handquilter, and then I&#039 ; ll come back in with the embroidery floss and do the big stitches and I kind of intermingle them because I love the, I love texture on the surface of quilts, that&#039 ; s just, you know just an added thing that I like to do [inaudible.] but see here&#039 ; s like a little pieced quilt here but I&#039 ; ll come back in because it&#039 ; s all machine done, but it made me feel better to put some little hand stitches in there, so I will do that routinely. SH: Very nice. [inaudible.] Okay. I&#039 ; m running out here. Anything that I didn&#039 ; t ask you that you want to answer? BOH: Well the main thing is, I just, oh I love to tell everybody that I love what I do. I&#039 ; ve been so lucky that I have been afforded the chance to not have to make a living at it, or I would&#039 ; ve starved to death [laughs.] and my husband totally supports what I do, he thinks he&#039 ; s supporting a non-profit organization [laughs.] Although I do sell some work [laughs.] [microphone fell off.] I do sell some. I need to plus that back in. I know this little, this needs to come out a little further, just not very, yeah, there we go. Anyway, and my husband loves what I do and he&#039 ; s afforded me the opportunity to do it and he loves my quilt friends. The best friends I have had as an adult and I joined the Dallas [Texas.] guild in 1983 and most of the friends I&#039 ; ve made as an adult are quilt friends, quilt and art friends, and they all have come from quilting, being part of a guild, being part of a group, helping organize shows, and it&#039 ; s just added to the, I mean quilting has added so much to the quality of my life, my kids&#039 ; lives, my family&#039 ; s life, I just feel lucky everyday. It&#039 ; s like a gift ; I mean I really truly was given a gift. SH: Do you mainly use cotton or do you use silk and linen or? BOH: Okay, this is all cotton except I do have some silk thread here in this particular one. For the most part I&#039 ; m using cotton, I&#039 ; m pretty picky about my threads, my materials, and that&#039 ; s another thing that I learned the hard way over the years when you&#039 ; re self taught. I have learned the hard way, do not skimp on your materials, use high quality thread, fabric, equipment, because the only thing that you&#039 ; re doing is the only thing that is non renewable source is your time [laughs.] and when you waste, not using the best product and you know materials that you can afford, I&#039 ; ve been lucky to be able to afford a lot, you know the nice things. I have friends that, you know, might not be able to have all of that, but I try to make everything in as high of quality in the products that I use when I&#039 ; m putting in to something, batting, backing, everything, I try to. SH: Do you use cotton batting or wool batting? BOH: I use, I don&#039 ; t use wool, I use all cotton and I just always say, &quot ; There&#039 ; s no wool in my house,&quot ; [laughs.] my husband might have a couple of wool suits. I just, I love cotton, I don&#039 ; t use any poly-cotton blends at all, I&#039 ; ve have very bad luck with those, so I use, I just use all cotton products for the most part. If I, I&#039 ; m not opposed to, many of my friends really love the wool bats, and I know they are very high quality, it&#039 ; s just, I have gotten into that, and I&#039 ; m very happy with the cotton battings that I&#039 ; m using. I will use a little bit of silk. I have, I love that hundred weight silk thread and I have used it on the surface to do some design work on some quilts. So I will use some silk thread, but mostly, and sometimes in the bobbins I&#039 ; ll use some bottom line that has polyester in it, you know, especially if I&#039 ; m doing those landscapes where I&#039 ; m filling five bobbins at a time, and I need a really fine thread so I don&#039 ; t have to change the bobbins so much [laughs.] but for the most part I&#039 ; m using cotton. SH: Do you use any certain kind of needles or just the eighty weight or the-- BOH: No, I on the needles I use a seventy, the 70s instead of the 80s and I always use sharp, I never use universal, I always use the sharp needle, whether I&#039 ; m doing the seventy or the eighty size needle and I never, I rarely ever use the ninety. I use very fine threads, I like sixty weight, fifty weight thread and I like the hundred weight silk thread and I just, my machines and myself, I just like the way the finer threads kind of sink in to the kind of projects that I work on, and so I use a smaller needle. If I&#039 ; m using a monofilament, a real fine monofilament, invisible thread on some projects, and the hundred weight silk, I will actually use a sixty needle in my machine, a sixty sharp, but those microfiber, sharp, 70s, that&#039 ; s pretty much my preferred needle. I buy them in bulk because I do sew my finger and break them from time to time. SH: I was looking here for silk and I didn&#039 ; t find any, what brand do you use? BOH: It&#039 ; s a Diane Gaudynski has that line of hundred weight, I think both, Yli and Superior have the hundred weight silk thread, I do believe. Diane Gaudynski has a line and she uses that a lot in her very fine machine quilting, which is the best on the planet, the best quilting on the planet, and she&#039 ; s the one that kind of clued me in on using the smaller needles too on the finer threads so they&#039 ; re, it&#039 ; s available, but you just have to look. SH: Okay. BOH: And it&#039 ; s expensive, but. SH: We&#039 ; re running toward the end of the interview. Anything else that you want to cover that we haven&#039 ; t covered? BOH: Not that I can think of, I&#039 ; ve told you everything I know in thirty minutes. SH: [laughs.] Okay well I&#039 ; d like to thank Barbara for allowing me to interview her today for Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S. Save Our Stories oral history project. Our interview is now concluded at 4:42. BOH: Oh here this was a neat quilt. This was a computer design and it was on the cover of that tumbling block book that A.Q.S. did, and so what I did is I drew up a whole block, a whole page of tumbling blocks, and then I swirled them, and made a sphere out of it and then I figured out how to real easily, I did Lisa&#039 ; s quilt in like three weeks, and it&#039 ; s big. See each one of these is a row, so I just did sew flip, sew flip, sew flip, light, medium, dark all the way down and sewed them together, it was very cool ; but that was a technology thing, so we&#039 ; re through with that now. SH: How do we turn them off? BOH: There&#039 ; s probably an off button. That it right there? Stop, maybe where it says-- 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Susan Quinn Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-021Hartman Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Barbara Oliver Hartman Description An account of the resource Barbara Oliver Hartman shares her quilt, 'Autumn Leaves', which took more than 15 years to complete. http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/ef854e184f022110e410b583cc5e8e2b.jpg 71d24816a4d8a6d98483cacc9c660b4e http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/7e3d17b2fdb39646f4657cace672b960.jpg b919a70b6d7b899f1e898b2448ca59da Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Meg Cox Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Alex Anderson Interview Keyword television professional quiltmaker quilt industry OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010-044Anderson.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 4 2011-11-05 Alex Anderson TX77010-044Anderson Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance television professional quiltmaker quilt industry Alex Anderson Meg Cox 1:|10(13)|22(6)|32(10)|48(10)|61(4)|73(6)|87(6)|106(10)|117(5)|128(4)|139(6)|159(9)|175(11)|191(10)|205(10)|216(11)|231(5)|245(10)|255(8)|269(10)|284(12)|305(5)|318(7)|335(3)|345(3)|362(5)|373(12)|383(16)|396(6)|409(8)|428(13)|441(11)|453(14)|465(13)|479(9)|490(15)|503(16)|517(9) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-044Anderson.mp3 Other audio 7 Introduction This is Meg Cox, and I'm conducting an interview with Alex Anderson, for Quilter's SOS, Save our Stories, a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. Meg Cox, interviewer, introduces herself, Alex Anderson, the interviewee, and the project Quilter's Save our Stories. Quilt Alliance 17 46 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today. As usual, you brought a touchstone quilt, a special quilt, so why don't you tell us why you chose this one. Alex introduces her touchstone quilt, and the techniques used to make it. Hand applique ; Hand quilting ; Machine piecing ; Star quilts Quiltmakers ; Star quilts 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Alex_Anderson_QSOS.jpg Alex Anderson with her quilt 139 How do you use this quilt? What do you do with this quilt? What is your plan for this quilt? Alex describes the importance of the quilting process. She says this is important to her touchstone quilt and to her education in quilt-making. Published work - Quilts 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/QSOS_Alex_Anderson_detail.jpg Alex Anderson, quilt detail 215 What is your first quilt memory? Alex, can you tell me about your first quilt memory? Alex recounts her first quilt memory, when she spent time with her neighbor, who was a quilter, as a child. Quilt memory 17 270 At what age did you start quiltmaking? What age did you actually start quilt-making? Alex talks about her first quilt, which was actually the completion of a quilt that her grandmother started. Alex says that she learned many of her technical skills from Lucy Hilty, a Mennonite quilter under whose guidance she completed her second quilt. Amish quilts ; first quilt ; Generational quiltmaking ; Hand piecing ; Knowledge transfer Amish quilts ; Education, Higher ; Mennonite quilts 17 http://www.quiltmuseum.org.uk/blog/interviews/01331.html Interview with American Quilter Lucy Hilty, The Quilters, Guild Collection 387 Are there other quiltmakers among your family or friends? Please tell me about them. Are there other quilt-makers in your family, other than your grandmother? Alex talks about the heritage of quilt-making in her family. She says that both of her grandmothers were quilt-makers, though not professionally. Generational quiltmaking Grandparents 17 429 Teaching When did you start teaching? Alex describes the development of her quilting career, including her teaching, publishing, and work in television. Knowledge transfer ; Learning quiltmaking ; Published work - Quilts ; Teaching quiltmaking Art quilts ; San Francisco Bay Area (Calif.) ; Teaching ; Television 17 697 Tell me about an amusing experience that has occurred from your quiltmaking? Can you tell me about an amusing experience that occurred during your quilting or teaching of quilting? Alex says that she finds it amusing that despite her performance in school, she became an internationally known quilter. high school ; professional quiltmaker ; quilt industry 17 729 What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking? What do you find pleasing about making quilts? Alex discusses the development of what she finds pleasing about quilting. She says that in the beginning of her career it was about building stability in her work, when she could focus on quilting without fear of financial repercussions, and that has since changed into a love for the people of the quilting community. Bernina ; Fabric/Quilt shops ; Home sewing machine ; Published work - Quilts ; Social quiltmaking activities ; Work or Studio space Communities in art ; Economic security 17 809 What are your favorite techniques and materials? Would you talk a little bit about techniques? Alex talks about her journey in technique, which in part has resulted in her return to the student role in quilting. She mentions how her quiltmaking has evolved from being quite traditional to being more experimental. &quot ; Queen of Hand Quilting&quot ; ; &quot ; Quilts, Quilts, Quilts&quot ; ; Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative ; Ami Simms ; Fiber - Silk ; Hand quilting ; Learning quiltmaking ; Modern quiltmaking ; Silk quilts 17 TX77010-044Anderson_full_quilt.JPG Alex Anderson's quilt 886 Have advances in technology influenced your work? If so, how? How has technology influenced your quilting? Alex talks about the expansion of the quilting community through the internet, as well as the documentation of quilting via digital photography. Africa ; Costa Rica ; internet ; Online quilt communities ; Photography/photo transfer ; Quilt guild ; Technology in quiltmaking Globalization ; Internet ; Photography--Digital techniques 17 http://alexandersonquilts.com/ Alex Anderson Quilts website 973 Changes in Quiltmaking Would you say that the materials and the techniques that you're using are different now? Alex talks about the changes in quilting techniques today, and compares the changes to the strictness of quilting historically. She points out new embellishment techniques, and a new emphasis on not following the &quot ; rules&quot ; of quiltmaking. crystal ; Embellishment techniques ; Fiber - Silk ; quilt police 17 1025 Describe your studio/the place that you create. Would you describe your studio now, the place where you do your quilting? Anderson lists the various spaces in which she has done her quilting. Her most recent studio space is an addition that was made to her home. architect ; California ; Livermore, California ; Nancy Crow ; property tax ; quiltmaking classes ; Work or Studio space ; Yvonne Porcella Artists' studios 37.681113, -121.779737 17 Livermore, California, Anderson's hometown. 1148 Tell me how you balance your time. With everything that you do, do you find it hard to balance my schedule? Alex discusses the difficulty of balancing her time in quilting, and methods that she uses to ensure that her time remains balanced. Published work - Quilts ; Quilt Life (magazine) ; quilt magazines ; Time management ; Work or Studio space Artist's studios ; Time management 17 1214 How do you feel about machine quilting vs. hand quilting? What about long-arm quilting? What about machine quilting -- do you do much of that? Alex talks about her excitement at learning how to machine quilt. She says it is important to build a &quot ; tool belt&quot ; of skills. She also describes how she is willing to hire others to do aspects of quiltmaking. She does not like to bind quilts, so she hires that step out. binding ; Machine quilting ; professional quiltmaker Art commissions 17 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-images/TX77010-044Anderson_quilting_detail.JPG Alex Anderson, detail of hand quilting 1279 Tell me if you have ever used quilts to get through a difficult time? Tell me this -- did you ever use quilting to get through a difficult time in your life? Alex discusses changes in her quilting practice during difficult times in her life. She says that in the months following September 11th, as well as following the births of her children, she was unable to sew or be creative. 9-11 ; children ; Door County, Wisconsin ; Embroidery ; family ; International Quilt Festival ; Livermore, California ; Quilt Market ; Quilt Purpose - Memorial ; Quilt Purpose - Therapy ; Redwork Artist's block ; Childbirth ; September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001 17 1429 What do you think makes a great quilt? What do you think makes a great quilt? Alex describes what makes a great quilt. She says that &quot ; great quilt&quot ; is a diverse category that can include quilts with sentimental or intrinsic value. She recounts her daughter and friend making T-Shirt quilts with old T-shirts from college, launching the young woman's interest in quiltmaking. Awards ; Knowledge transfer ; Rail Fence (quilt pattern) ; T-Shirt Quilt ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 1522 What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or special collection? What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum? Alex says that museums should house the quilts of the &quot ; masters&quot ; in the quilting industry. museum ; San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum ; Yvonne Porcella Textile museums 17 http://www.sjquiltmuseum.org/ San Jose Quilt and Textile Museum 1557 Whose works are you drawn to and why? Whose work are you drawn to in particular? Alex states that rather than being drawn to the work of individual quilt-makers, she is particularly attracted to the diversity of quilt-making. Antique quilts 17 1587 Which artists have influenced you? Whose work has influenced you whether it is a quilter or another type of artist? Alex talks about being influenced by quilt-making culture throughout her travels as a teacher. She talks about one experience in particular co-teaching with Jean Wells, and picking up skills from her. Jean Wells ; professional quiltmaker ; Sisters, Oregon ; Teaching quiltmaking Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) ; Teaching teams 44.291878, -121.551459 17 Sisters, Oregon, home of the annual Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show run by Anderson's friend, Jean Wells. https://sistersoutdoorquiltshow.org/ Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show 1681 Why is quiltmaking important to your life? Why is quilt-making important to your life? Alex discusses the importance of control and forgiveness in quilting for her, as well as the learning experience within the making of a quilt and quilting in general. crochet ; family ; grandmother ; Hand quilting ; Home sewing machine ; knitting ; Knowledge transfer ; Learning quiltmaking ; quilt frame ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; woodworking Bobbin lace ; Crocheting ; Knitting ; Stitches (Sewing) 17 1836 In what ways do your quilts reflect your community or region? Now you are nationally and internationally known, but do you feel that your quilts at all are representative of your region or come out of your community in some way? Alex talks about the diversity of the quilt-making community in the San Francisco Bay area, which she says makes it difficult to regionally identify her quilts. Many prominent quiltmakers from the Bay Area have been leading figures in the quiltmaking community. Freddy Moran ; Mary Mashuta ; Roberta Horton ; San Francisco, California Art, Regional ; San Francisco Bay Area (Calif.) 17 1892 What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life? What do you think is the importance of quilts in American life? Alex talks about the importance of quilts in American life. She says that quilting is an identifiable and traceable American art tradition, which enriches its history in the US. She suggests we can trace American history through quilts. African American quilts ; Costa Rica ; Generational quiltmaking ; heirloom ; Quilt history ; September 11 Terrorist Attacks ; Underground Railroad Quilt Code ; United States Civil War Quilts--United States 17 1955 What has happened to the quilts that you have made or those of friends and family? What happens to your quilts? Alex separates her quilts into three categories ; the quilts that will be family heirlooms, quilts that she sells, fundraises with, or gives to family, and quilts that she plans to donate. Donating quilts ; professional quiltmaker ; Quilt Purpose - Charity ; Quilt Purpose - Fundraising ; Quilt Purpose - Wedding ; Quiltmaking for family ; Quilts as gifts Fund raising ; Gifts ; Heirlooms 17 2092 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quilt-makers today? Alex discusses the socio-economic challenges for the quilting industry today. However, she also says that she is optimistic about the current direction being taken by the quilting community. Modern Quilt Guild ; Modern quiltmaking Recessions 17 2153 Legacy Alex, how will you be remembered? Alex says that her legacy is partially dependent on the development of her early television career, which she says does not match her true self. She says she is also further building on her documentation of her work by being published on the internet. Teaching quiltmaking ; Technology in quiltmaking Internet ; Television 17 https://thequiltshow.com/ The Quilt Show, the internet television show co-hosted by Alex Anderson In this interview recorded live in front of an audience at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, journalist Meg Cox interviewed quilt teacher, author, fabric designer, and television star Alex Anderson about her history as a quiltmaker and quilt industry leader. Anderson shares the story about how she began making quilts and how her quiltmaking has evolved over time. Meg Cox (MC): This is Meg Cox and I’m conducting an interview with Alex Anderson for Quilters’ S.O.S. Save Our Stories a project of The Alliance for American Quilts. It is now 10:42 A.M on Saturday November 5th and we’re conducting this interview on the convention floor at Quilt Festival. Now as usual, you’ve brought a touchstone quilt, you brought a special quilt, so why don’t you tell us why you picked this one? Alex Anderson (AA): Why did I choose this quilt to bring today? I consider myself a traditional quiltmaker, although I’m going into new venues, which is very, very exciting but typically I’ve been known as the Star Lady, and handquilter. So this particular quilt was made entirely by me, I didn’t even have a celebrity stunt sewer do the binding [laughs.] and it has machine pieced stars, hand appliquéd and handquilted. MC: What do you think someone seeing this quilt would think about you as a quilter? AA: What would I think if somebody were viewing this quilt, of me as a quiltmaker? I’m pretty simpleminded [laughs.] I mean it’s a classic pattern, but it has a contemporary twist to it. You would know that this pattern A Rose of Sharon was not made one hundred years ago. You would know that it has been made probably around the turn of the century and I also love that it has hand dyes in it. [announcement on loudspeaker.] MC: What do you do with this quilt? What is your plan for this quilt? AA: What do I do with this quilt? Most of my quilts are working quilts. This particular quilt was created for my book Beautifully Quilted by Alex Anderson and it was a book that was written to talk about how much I love designing quilting motifs. I studied under a women named Lucy Hilty who is no longer with us, but she was a driving heart beat for us in the San Francisco Bay area [California.] She was a Mennonite woman who didn’t care much about creating the quilt top, she cared about creating the quilting designs and I’m not sure if that was my tenth book, but it was kind of in there, I knew that I had to document the lessons that Lucy taught me. For me, when the quilt is quilted, that’s when the true soul is, I’m going to say a wrong word, breathed into, the quilt. Is that correct English, Meg? MC: I’m not sure, but it sounds great to me. AA: Okay [laughs.] The quilting to me is where it is happening, especially when you’re sitting at the quilt frame ; this magic. MC: Alex, can you tell me your first quilt memory? AA: My first quilt memory, I can tell you what it is, but I don’t remember it. My first quilt memory was brought to my attention about ten years ago. There was a women who lived next door to my mom and dad and her name is Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Kelly was a multi-talented woman and when I met up with her, you know years later, when I was a little girl, I would come over and sit under her quilt frame. For eighth grade graduation in high school, she gave me a silver thimble. Who would have ever guessed? I met up with her later and she called me on the phone and she said, she’s a lawyer in the Monterey Bay area [California.] and she said, “You’re famous!” and I said, “And you’re smart!” [laughs.] MC: [laughs.] What age did you actually start quiltmaking? AA: Quiltmaking was started in seventy-eight. I was a student at San Francisco State University [California.] My degree was in generic art with kind of heavy design influence. One month prior to graduation, I found out I was a unit short. I had just done a paper on quilting at American Folk Tradition for a children’s class I was in. So I went to my counselor and I said, “If I do a quilt, in this one month, will you give me the unit that I need to graduate?” and she said, “Yes.” So I called my grandmother, who had started a hand pieced grandma’s flower garden in the 1930s and she was thrilled to send it off to me. I went and got cotton batting with seeds in it, I got Laura Ashley upholstery fabric for the backing, and this giganto quilt that I was going to do in one month, ended up being the size of a bathmat. Grandma was profoundly disappointed, but despite all odds, a quiltmaker was born. MC: That’s wonderful. What about the second one? Did that take a while to get through? AA: The second quilt? No, because I was, she asked what about my second quilt. I was supposed to be a weaver for life, but I found my home at the quilt frame that my dad made for me from stolen lumber from the neighbor’s yard [laughs.] and every night I would just come and quilt, quilt, quilt. The second quilt was actually a quilt, an Amish quilt that I made in Lucy Hilty’s class, where I learned how to draw feathers and cables and all those beautiful motifs that we still love today. MC: Are there other quiltmakers in your family other than your grandmother? AA: Are there other quiltmakers in my family? Interestingly enough, I kind of think it skips generations, but I know on both sides, the grandmothers dabbled in quilting, not seriously, but after both grandparents had passed away, both sides, we found my grandmother’s frame from one side in the attic of the other grandmother. We gave it to a museum in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. I’m kind of sad I didn’t hang on to those four sticks but I suppose it’s better that it’s where it really belongs, it’s in Dorr County [Wisconsin.] MC: That’s wonderful. When did you start teaching? AA: So when did I start teaching quiltmaking, about thirty seconds after I started making quilts, because you see I just discovered it [laughs.] I went to a church group and I taught, I don’t even know what, and then I was keeping one step ahead of what the students wanted, and if somebody wants to teach quiltmaking, I say, “It’s great,” find a group of people who want to learn, and just share your knowledge. MC: So what was the class? AA: So what was the class that I taught? I haven’t a clue [laughs.] MC: But then you went from that onto television? Can you talk about that? AA: So there’s a giant leap between when I started quiltmaking to when I went and got on television. There was a lot of teaching that went on. I was, I taught at Cotton Patch, Lafayette, California and Empty Spools store in Alamo, California, and I had the opportunity to put other, my quilts, in other people’s books. The first quilt that I had published was in Quilts, Quilts, Quilts by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes and it was a star quilt on black background, solid fabrics. That was a light bulb moment for me, because at the time in the San Francisco Bay area [California.] there was a war between art quilters and traditional quilters and it was really ugly. I wanted to be with the cool guys, that were the art quilters, but I kept finding myself drawn to the traditional medium and Diana saw that quilt of mine, this simple saw-toothed star quilt, and said, “Can we have it for our first book?” and that was a light bulb moment for me because I realized it doesn’t matter whether you’re traditional, whether you’re art, or you don’t even know where you fit in, all that’s important is that you are a quilter. I was kind of a generic quilter, teaching stars and how to draw the motifs and all that, and I was down at a show, Road to California put on by Caroline Reese in Southern California, and I was approached by Stephanie Kleinman who worked for Weller-Grossman Productions and she came into my class, and she wanted to know if I’d be interested in hosting a television show. And I said, “I can’t talk right now, I’m teaching a class, let’s meet at lunch,” so we couldn’t find a private place until we scored a bus bench, kind of like Forrest Gump [laughs.] and we had ourselves a conversation. I really was not interested in being on television ; I just wanted to be able to be a professional quilter. So I said, “Let me think about this,” and I flew home that night, and John was in the kitchen fixing something that might look like a dinner, and my kids were watching television, at the time my son was probably early high school, my daughter junior high, pre-junior high, and I walked in the house, and I said, “You’re not going to believe this, somebody wants me to do a television show.” It’s the first time my kids ever cared what I did for a living, all of the sudden quilting was becoming important, and I remember walking through the family room to the kitchen, and I looked at my husband John, and I said, “I don’t want to do this,” and he looked at me and he said, “I’ve never seen you back away from anything. I’ve seen you make twenty quilts for a book, for books, in three months. I’ve seen you meet every single challenge,” and he said, “When you’re an old lady, in the old people’s home, sitting on the front porch trying to teach the lady next to you how to quilt, you’re going to be very sorry that you missed this opportunity.” So it was through my husband’s encouragement that I went forwards. MC: That’s wonderful. AA: And Meg that makes me want to weep right now [laughs.] Kidding. MC: We’ve got the Kleenex, don’t worry. AA: Yeah [laughs.] MC: Can you, we’ll switch channels then, can you tell me about an amusing experience that occurred during your quilting or teaching of quilting? AA: An amusing experience that’s happened during my quilting. What isn’t great about this industry, I can’t, I will just say what’s so amusing is that this is the universe’s joke, that I’ve been able to write all these books and have a TV show because I graduated with C- from Livermore High School [California.] MC: Oh. AA: That’s the joke [laughs.] MC: What do you find pleasing about making quilts? AA: What do I find pleasing about making quilts? I knew you’d ask a question kind of like that, so I’m going to preface it differently, then you can re-ask it if I don’t answer it. I have found that in quiltmaking, there are certain things that really have made a difference to me along the way. In the beginning it was when I had my first sewing room, and we took the bed out, and it was all mine that was really a wonderful moment. I remember when I got my first Bernina, I mean we didn’t have money, we didn’t have money at all, I borrowed the money from my dad. I remember when I was first published in Diana’s book, and Laura’s book, and the journey has continued to amaze me. I remember when I could go into a quilt shop and not have to worry if I could feed my family and be able to spend twenty-five dollars on fabric, but now the thing that is so pleasing to me about quilting are the people. And that’s why I love what you’re doing here with S.O.S. [Save Our Stories.] because we are an incredible community and I don’t think there’s anything else quite like it on the planet, so to me it’s the people now. MC: Would you talk a little bit about techniques. Now you are, the queen of handquilting, but can you talk a little bit about your journey in terms of technique and material? AA: Okay as far as my journey of technique, I did start out as a traditional quiltmaker. Love the handquilting, fell into the star lady, and that was actually because in Diana and Laura’s book, Quilts, Quilts, Quilts that wasn’t really included in the sampler. My journey has been taken, has taken a really abrupt turn lately, and it’s very interesting to watch because I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I’m doing something a little bit different. And at this point, my journey is taking me away from teaching and putting me back into the student role. Right now on my frame at home I have a silk Dupioni silk, that’s very arty, kind of like my quilt for the Alzheimer’s movement for Ami Simms, it’s full-size and yet it’s handquilted so it’s kind of like taking the old, and integrating the new to it. I think that’s one of the things we love about quilting, is that it’s not a journey that has an end. The more I know, the less I know, and I think that’s what continues to make this so exciting. MC: How has technology influenced your quilting? AA: How has technology influenced my quilting? A lot, a lot. I’ve learned things in the last five years that I didn’t know my brain could even process and I think technology, the thing is the internet. We are now connecting quilters worldwide. I’ve had the delicious pleasure of being in Africa this past year and meeting with a guild of which it was the first generation of quilters. I had the opportunity to go to Costa Rica and meet with the first generation of quilters and the internet I think is taking our community and just reaching it so far out there, and yet it’s making out community smaller, and smaller, and smaller. I also think digital photography is something else that’s really important. I was trying to put together something, and I went back to try and find college pictures of me, and they just simply didn’t exist because we didn’t, I didn’t have the money to process the film. Now with digital photography, you have people here from all over the world, snapping away their heart’s content, and then they can go to wherever they live and share these pictures either in person, or on the internet, so I think digital photography is a big deal. MC: So you mentioned that silk Dupioni, so would you say that the materials and the techniques that you’re using are different now? AA: I mentioned that I’m working with soup [laughs.] strike that from the record please, silk Dupioni and do I think that globally techniques and all that are changing? Oh definitely. I look here, this is on video, or on audio, but across the way I’m looking at a quilt that is just covered with crystals you know, and it’s changing at a very rapid speed. I think the rules have all been broken or open and there’s not the way that those of you who perhaps started quilting thirty years ago, if you didn’t do it the way that teacher said, you might end up in jail [laughs.] I’ll join you there. MC: Yeah. Would you describe your studio now, your place where you do your quilting? AA: I love my studio where I’m working now. My first studio, I even have a hard time saying that because it sounds so important, and it’s just my playground, my first studio was an extra bedroom with a bed in it, a guest room, and it was after taking a class from Nancy Crow, I came home to my husband and I said, “You know, you’re right, this needs to be, stay the guest bedroom, I’m going to move into the living room and claim that as my own,” and the bed was out the next day, so that was my first studio. The second studio, it was in Pinole, California, we purchased a second house, moved, and it was downstairs and it was quite large. It was long and skinny, but it was large. But then we had to move to Livermore, California, where I was raised, and the real-estate was a little bit more expensive, and so my studio became the largest extra bedroom, the kitchen, and the laundry room. My first book was written in the laundry room. I thought we needed to move, but my dad said, “Look, you’ve got some space right behind the house here, you could add on.” So I went and visited other quiltmakers’ studios, Yvonne Porcella, Freddy Moran, to name some of the people you might be familiar with, and I made a list of the things that I wanted. Then I went to an architect and I said, “It had to be under 500 square feet, because at 500 square feet, we had to pay more taxes. So my studio is 498 square feet, and it’s pushed to the back of the house, through my daughter’s bedroom, which is now my office. I’m so glad I had other people look at the plans, it is the place where you will find me even if I’m painting my fingernails. I love that spot. MC: That’s great. With everything that you do, are you, do you find it hard to balance your schedule? Do you find, we all have trouble finding enough time for quilting, but is that especially difficult for you? AA: With everything I do, do I have time to balance my quilting time? Yes it’s very, very difficult but I do quilt. My mom calls the back, my studio, my studio, not my sewing room, the factory, because she’ll come back there and see me sewing but in the end, when the day is over, and I’m done writing articles for the magazine or working on the website, or traveling, being here with you, and my friends, my friends and family, I find that at four o’clock in the afternoon, that’s where you might just find me, sitting at the quilt frame. I’ve just now put another quilt on the frame, it’s been a long time, and I have vowed that I will always have a quilt on the frame, because that’s where I get centered. I’ve got to have that to go to and it’s been a long time since I’ve made that promise to myself. MC: That’s great. What about machine quilting? Do you do much of that? AA: Machine quilting, yes I’ve learned to machine quilt and I think it’s really exciting that there’s something that you don’t know how to do, I think it’s important to learn to do it because I feel as quiltmakers we have a tool belt, and every technique and tip that you learn, can go into that tool belt and you can pull it out when you need it. So yes, I really like machine quilting, but I will tell you this, I also know I have x-amount of time, back to the time thing, and if I can pay somebody to do something better than I, I will do that, and I will give them credit too. For instance, I, we have the things we love and the things we don’t like, I really don’t like binding quilts, so I bind my checkbook, it’s a matter— MC: Except for this quilt— AA: Well this one I did it all. As a matter of surrounding yourself with the people that love to do that things you hate, then you love to do the things they hate, and that’s how we all get along, right? MC: Tell me this ; did you ever use quilting to get through a difficult time in your life? AA: Did I ever use quilting to get through a difficult time in my life? I’ll bet that’s when Carol started crying, yeah. MC: Most people. AA: That’s a very good question. For me, it was very difficult on 9/11. I was separated from my children and my husband. I was in Dorr County, Wisconsin with my mom and dad. I was to fly home and host a quilt show at Quilting in the Garden at Alden Lane, in Livermore, California, an outdoor quilt show and we packed up a pickup truck and drove cross country. The pickup truck had jump seats in the back, so this was kind of amazing to do this with your eighty-year-old parents and I was horrified being separated from my children and John. When I got home, all the quilters started making quilts, and if you can remember, Houston [Texas.] International Quilt Festival was, you know what, a month and a half later and there was an aisle that went all the way down the length of the convention center with quilts on both sides with people responding to this horrific situation that had happened in the United States. I went to my sewing machine and I was paralyzed. MC: Really? AA: I couldn’t sew. All I could do was pick up and do red work. I couldn’t, so I think for me, the opposite happens, and that was an extremely interesting situation, when I could come to quilt festival and market and see what people had done, and I retreated. MC: How long did it take before you sort of thawed out? AA: Probably, how long did it take before I could get back in the groove, probably about six months? I will also say too, that after I had each child, well let’s start with Joey who’s my oldest, I lost my creativity for a year and I have warned other pregnant women that you could do, this might happen to you, and don’t freak out because you’ll get your groove back on. So when my daughter than was born, I gave myself permission to not be creative for a year. I’m opposite of the pack [laughs.] MC: What do you think makes a great quilt? AA: What do I think makes a great quilt? Wow. I don’t think I can define that because a great quilt might be the best of show, it might be something that documents something, or it might be Katie’s quilt, a young women who is my daughter’s best friend, or one of her very good friends, and two years ago Katie came to me, age twenty-six, and said, “I want to make a t-shirt quilt.” Or no, first it was, “Will you make me a t-shirt quilt?” No. So, we had a quilt day at my house, where my daughter and Katie made t-shirt quilts from their college, St. Mary’s, and at the very end, I looked at Katie and I said, “So what’s your next quilt going to be?” and she goes, “Well, I’ve decided it’s going to be a Rail Fence,” [laughs.] and that t-shirt quilt is the most important quilt. What was really great, I have a little bit of goose bumps going on here, Fourth of July, this last Fourth of July, she’s been quilting a year and a half, and she comes up to me and she goes, “Guess what?” and I said, “What?” she said, “I taught the lady who lives above me how to quilt.” That t-shirt quilt is a great quilt. MC: I totally agree, but what makes a quilt appropriate for museum would you say? AA: Oh what makes a quilt appropriate for museum? You know, I don’t know. I do know that I’m really impressed that Yvonne Porcella got the San Jose [Texas.] Quilt and Textile Museum to accept her work, because you know a hundred years from now, who knows where these quilts are going to be. I do know that probably my quilts are not appropriate for museums [laughs.] but you know it’s probably the masters, the masters and their quilts. MC: So among quilters out there in any kind of genre or style, whose work are you drawn to in particular? AA: Okay so whose work am I drawn to in particular? I don’t think I have a clear answer on that, I really don’t think I have a clear answer on that because I like the diversity is just incredible and I love everything from the antique quilts, I love the new things, I love, I just kind of love them all. MC: Whose work has influenced you, whether it is a quilter or another type of artist? AA: Whose, what quilter has influenced me? One of the great things about being a professional quilt teacher and traveling is that everywhere you go, you are influenced by what’s going on in that area, and then you’re the lucky one that gets to sprinkle that fairy dust in another area, but I do have a story. About four or five years ago, Jean Wells, who owns the Stitching Post in Sisters, Oregon, and who I consider a very good friend, called and asked me to teach, she has retreats that are not during the outdoor quilt show. And I said, “You know Jean, why don’t we co-teach a class together?” I can’t believe I’m telling this story. She had just started a whole thing with opening your creativity, design, color and all that, and I had just discovered a couple of cool techniques. So she said, “Let’s co-teach a class together,” and so I flew up there, she put me up in a wonderful facility and we co-taught for two or three days. What was happening during that magical three day class was that she was profoundly influencing a new direction I was going to take. So that was kind of a light bulb moment and the best part was that I got paid after for teaching [laughs.] MC: Why is quiltmaking important to your life? AA: Why is quiltmaking important to my life? When I discovered quiltmaking, I’m an artistic person, I’m not an A+ artistic person, but my parents are artistic in their own way, my father is a woodworker, my mother lives a very artistic lifestyle meaning she could come in and arrange my furniture or hang the pictures, she can, she lives beautifully. I dabbled in all the textiles, in fact we even found a picture of me sewing at my grandmother’s knee at about age five, stitching. At the other grandmother’s knee at probably the same summer, knitting, knitting didn’t stick, but stitching did. I started sewing in about fifth grade, my eight grade graduation present with Mrs. Kelly’s silver thimble was a sewing machine, but when, then I learned bobbin lace in college, I learned crochet, all the wonderful different avenues of art. But when I sat down at that quilt frame and completed that first quilt, graduated, and then sat down again, it’s like yesterday, I found my home and it was just as clear as could be ; that’s where I belonged. MC: Can you try to analyze that or tease that out at all about what is it about that, that lasted when the others didn’t? AA: What is it about quiltmaking that made it stick? I really don’t know what’s made it stick. I do know that you can control it, and unlike woodworking which I’ve done, I’ve actually made my children’s cradle and it ended up in a Fine Woodworking annual catalog, you can make a mistake and you can’t pull it and squish it and get it back together, there’s forgiveness in quilting. Also, when you create a quilt, in your mind you have an idea of what it’s going to look like or the direction you’re going to go, but like children, they take on their own life. So it’s kind of an interesting evolving journey that just continues, continues, continues and I want to reiterate that I am taking classes now. I am a student and so even in thirty-three years I think that’s how long I’ve been quilting, I realize there’s a whole genre out there of things I want to learn. MC: Now you are nationally and internationally known, but do you feel that your quilts at all are representative of your region or come out of your community in some way? AA: I’m internationally and nationally known, and do I feel that my quilts are, could be regionally identified? MC: Yeah, or reflect your community in some way? AA: Or reflect my community? That’s a tough question because in the San Francisco Bay Area [California.] there’s a lot of stuff going on and so I guess I kind of, my quilts do have a look to them, but in our area we have been very, very lucky because we’ve had Roberta Horton, Mary Mashuta, Diana McClun, Freddy Moran, Judy Matheson, Gay Perry, and I don’t want to skip anybody but we are in a really wonderful area of the United States to be in, so I’m not even sure you could tact anything. MC: What do you think is the importance of quilts in American life? AA: What do I think the importance of quilts is in the American life? Well I do think that it’s one of the crafts that is uniquely identified with us. I own quilts that were brought, that were family pieces, I don’t know who exactly brought them over, but gratefully they’re in our hands, but what, I go to places like Costa Rica, like I mentioned and it’s first generation, I mean here we have the delicious, delicious history of generation after generation after generation after generation. I think that’s why it’s so important. I also think that quilting has documented events in our history, like the Civil War quilts, like the Underground Railroad, like 9/11, as no other media has, medium. MC: I’m curious, what happens to your quilts? Obviously you make them for magazines, but I’m sure you make them for family and friends. What happens to your quilts? AA: What happens to my quilts, do I make them for family and friends? Not really [laughs.] I have what I call my important quilts, the ones that I know kids will fight over and then I have the quilts that are earning myself a living, yes I made my son and his wife a wedding quilt because I knew everybody would talk badly about me if I didn’t [laughs.] and I’m making one for my daughter who is getting married on New Year’s Eve. I have these quilts and some of them are like the ones the kids are going to fight over, some are pretty good, some are okay, and some are horrible. So right now I’m trying to decide what to do. The ones that are horrible I will probably give to a shelter, I’m in a cleaning mode, I don’t even want my name attached to them. Then I have the working quilts, and what I’m doing with those are after their done earning a living, and they’re good quilts, I am not parceling them out. For instance, after Katrina, I put up a thing on my website if you gave any amount of money to the American Red Cross, your name would go in a hat and somebody would win this quilt and I think we raised like about $14,000. For the Japan tsunami earthquake, Ricky Tims gave a free pass to one of his retreats and I threw in a quilt, a good quilt, and we made $35,000 for the American Red Cross. I’m still not getting rid of these quilts fast enough [laughs.] This is the latest plan, and I’m telling you this because Marianne Fons told me this, for my daughter’s wedding, I’m going to have a bridesmaid shower, and I’m going to give each bridesmaid a quilt and then let them fight over them, kind of like what are those things called? A white elephant thing. I’m going to hang onto the important quilts to share, to help earn my living, and then the good quilts that really aren’t helping, I’m going to start getting rid of, it’s time to let them go. MC: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? AA: What is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? Couple years ago we would’ve said bringing in new quilt, younger quiltmakers, but I’m thrilled about the modern quilt guild, they’re doing their own thing. At Quilt Market you saw all these young women and I see them facing the struggles that I faced as a young mom, being a quiltmaker. I would say right now in history, right now it would be the socioeconomic issues and quilt shops having to close down. I think our industry, despite what’s all going on in the world, is relatively alive and healthy and if all of us commit to bring in one quiltmaker, just one quiltmaker, then that quiltmaker is going to pass her fairy dust onto somebody else just like my Katie Coons. MC: To kind of wrap things up, Alex, how will you be remembered as quilter? AA: How will I be remembered as a quilter? The good news is, is I’m on the internet now with Ricky Tims at thequiltshow.com because it’s really who I am. I was, I had a persona that was dictated by Home and Garden Television, that I needed to be, and that’s really not who I am. I’m a little bit, have a little bit of a wild side, if anybody knows me. I think how I hope, I hope how I am remembered is somebody that opened the door of quiltmaking to another person and by the magic of me having to fall into that television opportunity, I was blessed that particular incident. It will not be for my quiltmaking skills [laughs.] MC: Is there any question that I didn’t ask that you wanted to answer? AA: Is there any question that you didn’t ask me, that I want to answer, no, but thank you for not asking my weight or age [laughs.] MC: Okay this is Meg Cox, and I want to give a great big thank you to Alex Anderson for doing this interview today and doing it on the Festival floor, we don’t usually do these things in a big public setting and we are concluding the interview at 11:18 A.M. and thank you very much. AA: Now I want to say to you people before you leave, this is a really important thing that is happening here. We had a thing called quilt days back in the eighties, where states would document quilts that were coming in and we were collecting history like that, it was farily unorganized. I know how much I appreciate the quilts of the 1800s and even the turn of the century and we simply do not have the information on it. What is going on now in our community is seriously profound and important and so if you would be willing to donate money to this so they could continue their cause, if you would be willing to be an interviewer, I want to throw this in off the record, that my daughter who’s getting married to Jerry, I found out Jerry’s grandmother is a quilter and is interviewing people, Save Our Stories, happened to interview Mary Kay Davis who works with us at thequiltshow.com. This is a very, very important thing that this organization is going and we must support them and help spread the word. I want to hear, “Amen, sister.” MC: Amen, sister. I’m going to give you a chance to ask Alex a couple of questions, but just a little bit of business here. AA: You know what, leave the microphone. MC: Okay yeah, so you aren’t yelling. Unknown: We are going to open it up for just a little bit for a couple of questions but I just want to get a little bit of business done. As Alex said we’re— 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from the Quilt Alliance. 0 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/ http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/collections/show/31 0 Interview Date 11/05/2011 Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Meg Cox Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource In this interview recorded live in front of an audience at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, journalist Meg Cox interviewed quilt teacher, author, fabric designer, and television star Alex Anderson about her history as a quiltmaker and quilt industry leader. Anderson shares the story about how she began making quilts and how her quiltmaking has evolved over time. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010-044Anderson Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-11-05 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Alex Anderson http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/750a1eb3742bae492869e7976fea569a.jpg 4a817c00f1efae2e138bcb7553e3ab3d http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/506a382cd03142f386b2ce6b8dcfa44b.jpg a3e72d5649b4b384b5a548d445c93bd0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource International Quilt Festival QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Sandi Goldman Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Andrea Brokenshire OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=TX77010_042Brokenshire.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 4 2011-11-05 Andrea Brokenshire TX77010_042Brokenshire Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories The International Quilt Festival QSOS Quilt Alliance Andrea Brokenshire Sandi Goldman 1:|16(2)|33(8)|40(3)|50(11)|65(16)|77(3)|90(1)|106(9)|120(3)|131(2)|146(2)|161(7)|174(7)|182(8)|192(2)|209(6)|235(10)|254(2)|269(2)|282(16)|297(2)|313(8)|329(6)|341(16)|359(2)|375(5)|393(13)|405(6)|415(10)|437(2)|455(14)|473(12)|486(8)|498(6)|509(8)|519(12)|536(10)|547(5)|562(9)|586(10)|602(15) 0 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/TX77010-042Brokenshire.mp3 Other audio 6 Introduction and touchstone quilt This is Sandy Goldman and today's date is November 5th, 2011 and I'm conducting an interview with Andrea Brokenshire for Quilters' Save Our Stories and it's a project for The Alliance for American Quilts. The interviewer Sandy Goldman introduces Andrea Brokenshire and the quilt &quot ; Summer Solitude,&quot ; she has brought with her to the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Andrea explains how she made this quilt for her daughter Samantha, and that it was inspired by a photographer Samantha took during a family trip to Oregon. daughter ; Houston, Texas ; International Quilt Festival ; Oregon ; photography ; Summer Solitude 29.444, 95.221 17 The International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX. http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_brokenshire_01.jpg Andrea Brokenshire &amp ; her quilt, “Summer Solitude.” 75 Brokenshire’s quiltmaking process for “Summer Solitude.” Can you tell me about your process in creating this particular piece that you brought today? Brokenshire explains how she formed the image of the quilt from a photograph, enlarging the photo to create the design ; she used the contrast of lights and darks of the photo, resulting in a vibrant quilt. The quilt is an image of a sunflower with a bee, made of many small fabrics. She formed this in segments, petal by petal, before progressing to the central piece. She outlines in detail her complex process. Angelina fiber ; Design process ; fabric ; fusible applique ; fusible web ; iron sheet ; needle felted ; organza ; Photography/photo transfer ; quiltmaking process ; Sharpie marker 29.444, -95.221 17 The International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX. 213 Technique used to create quilt's background I noticed the background is many small pieces of fabrics. Andrea explains how she formed the background of the quilt by using batik and hand-dyed fabrics which she fused using a fusible web. Fabric - Batiks ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Free motion quilting ; fusible applique ; machine quilting ; texture 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_brokenshire_02.jpg Andrea Brokenshire, Detail, “Summer Solitude.” 293 Typical quiltmaking process Is this the way you normally work, or is this how you're working now? Brokenshire explains how she pieces the quilt together and visualizes the final product of the quilt from the picture. She explains her quiltmaking process, including how she manages her projects. confetti-style ; dimension ; Fusible applique ; large-image ; needle felting ; painted quilts ; quiltmaking process ; shadow ; texture ; Whole cloth quilts 17 http://ambfiberartanddesign.com AMB Fiber Art &amp ; Design, Brokenshire’s artist website. 417 On using needle-felting to make the bee When you made the bee, because the bee is made separately, did you, had you needle felted before? She describes how her knitting has aided her with quilt making, inspiring her to try needle felting. The bee is her first attempt at needle felting. She describes how she created the bee and placed in on the quilt separately. bee ; knitting ; needle felting 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_brokenshire_05.jpg Andrea Brokenshire, detail of bee, “Summer Solitude.” 449 Why did you choose this quilt to bring to the interview? ; Why did you choose this quilt, to bring this quilt to the interview today? Brokenshire explains that she made the quilt form a photograph her daughter took, after her daughter gave her permission and told her not to make it “ugly.” That anecdote stuck with her as she considered which quilt to bring to the interview. daughter ; photograph ; teenager 17 http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_brokenshire_04.jpg Andrea Brokenshire, detail, “Summer Solitude. 497 Brokenshire's quiltmaking style Do you think this quilt reflects you style? What would someone think about you if they saw that... She describes her love of color and how this passion is reflected in the golds and yellows against the blue sky. She sees the natural world as therapeutic and inspiring. From her background as a zoology major in college, she describes how her love of nature inspires her to make these works of art. beauty ; color ; inspiring ; nature ; style beauty inspiration 29.444, 95.221 17 The International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX. http://quiltalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/qsos_brokenshire_03.jpg Andrea Brokenshire, detail showing blues and yellows, “Summer Solitude. 579 Fabric Were these fabrics all in your stash, or did you have to go buy fabric? Andrea explains how most of the fabric she used for the quilt was in her stash. She further elaborates that she loves hand-dyed fabrics because she loves the trueness of color and tonal varieties of the fabric. In this quilt she uses primarily cotton, but she often uses a blend of cotton and silk. applique ; color ; Fabric - Batiks ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric stash ; Fiber - Cotton ; Fiber - Silk ; natural fibers 17 646 Plans for this Quilt What are the plans for this quilt? Andrea explains that she plans for this quilt to stay in the family, with her daughter, when she moves out of the home as an adult. She further explains that the quilt is stored flat with cotton fabric over it and on a bed. daughter ; family ; light damage ; quilt storage 17 707 Batting Do you use a particular batting in your work? Does it make a difference to you? Andrea explains that she uses a 100% cotton batting for her quilts to give it a stiffness. She uses four layers to create her quilts, rather than the typical three. batting ; Fiber - Cotton ; layers 17 755 On learning to sew and quilt How did you get started with quilt making? You said you were a zoology major. She explains how she has been sewing since the age of five years. Her mother taught her and her sisters how to sew. They went to &quot ; Singer sewing lessons.&quot ; She began quilting in 1997 when her daughter no longer wanted handmade clothes. She further explains how she joined a quilting group and from there grew as a quilter. In 2005 she became very sick from Toxic Shock Syndrome. After this, she had a long process of recovery, when she put quilting down for a while. knitting ; Learning quilt making ; Quiltmaking for family ; Round Robin quilting ; sew ; sewing ; sewing classes ; Singer Corporation ; social quiltmaking activities ; Toxic Shock Syndrome 17 921 On working as a studio quiltmaker Right now are you a full time quilter? Brokenshire describes how she works on quilts and the time she devotes to the craft, estimating she spends 70% of her work week at her art. She further explains that her sister has also made a few quilts, but they have not collaborated. hand piecing ; professional quiltmaker ; stay-at-home mom ; studio quilt artist ; Work or Studio space 17 995 Experiences with illness and recovery You mentioned that you were sick but while you were sick for a few years you didn't quilt. Andrea goes into her time sick, when she couldn't make quilts. She had to relearn how to do things because she had lost the skin on her hands, and when she regained the ability, she began to knit. It became therapeutic for her to be at a knitting store, being around people, and learning about knitting. She describes the colors and fiber of the yarn as being therapeutic to her. color ; healing ; hospital ; knitting ; learn ; quilt ; sick ; textures ; therapy ; yarn hospital knitting sick 17 1078 On the creative process I love the full creative process from looking and dreaming about how I want something to be to placing it on paper. Brokenshire explains the joys of her creative process, which includes bringing a visual concept into the world. She loves the journey of quiltmaking as much as the finished product. The only parts of the process she doesn't like are putting on sleeves and bindings. She expressed difficulty in naming her quilts. bindings ; conception ; creative process ; Design process ; dreaming ; journey ; sleeves 17 1147 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? ; I do. I belong to a number of groups. I am member of International QuiltAssociation (IQA), Studio Art Quilting Association (SAQA), IQF), Austin [Texas.]Fiber Artists (AFA), and it’s like an art quilt group. She mentions the various quilt groups and organizations she is a part of. Austin Area Quilt Guild (Austin, TS) ; Austin [Texas] Fiber Artists (AFA) ; bees ; groups ; guilds ; International Quilt Association (IQA) ; Quilt guild ; Studio Art Quilting Association (SAQA) ; Surface Design Association (SDA) 17 http://austinfiberartists.com/ Austin Fiber Artists 1213 On using technology in quiltmaking Do you, are you a technology person? You mentioned unsung a oversized copier and having to go somewhere to do that, but what other technology things do you use? She elaborates on the technology she uses in her craft. She doesn't use much technology, and admits to being intimidated by it. She generally works form her photographs by enlarging them through FedEx, or Kinkos. She works a lot with a sewing machine. Adobe Photoshop ; boredom ; computer ; design process ; FedEx ; handwork ; Home sewing machine ; Kinkos ; photography ; Technology in quilt making 17 1318 Describe your studio/the place that you create. ; Where do you create? What does your studio look like? Brokenshire explains her studio, how she stores her fabric, and how she organizes her materials and the space. She organizes her fabric by color, with a few exceptions. She describes how she likes to look down from her home balcony at a quilt, to gain a better view of the scope of the quilt. She further comments on her creative process. Bernina 820 machine/ cabinet ; design process ; Design wall ; dyes ; fabrics ; flower ; pedal ; shelving ; Work or Studio space ; yarns 17 1542 On listening to music while quilting Do you work with music on or do you like quiet? Andrea explains that while she works, she likes to listen to soothing, ambient, music, in order to be in a state of zen while she works on her quilts. ambient music ; Machine quilting ; music ; relaxation ; work ; zen 17 1586 Thoughts on quiltmaking in general I'm going to ask you some questions about just your general feelings about quilting in general, like what do you think makes a great quilt? She explains how she finds great significance in the fact that all quilts are someone’s creation, and this gives them their value, that personal connection. She further mentions some people who have influenced her and classes she has taken. Becky Goldsmith ; Diane Sehorne ; influence ; International Quilt Festival ; Jacobean floral work ; Judy Coates Perez ; kit quilts ; learning ; meaning ; needle turn applique ; painting ; Pat Campbell ; Philippa Naylor ; picnic quilt ; quiltmaking classes ; story ; value 17 1792 On publishing her quilts in books You're a part of the Lone Star's Three book...? Have you been published in any other books? Andrea notes the books in which her works have been published in. She describes having her work published as feeling like “winning the lottery. 500 Art Quilts ; Anniversary for the Paducah [Kentucky] Show ; books ; category ; Full Bloom a Celebration of 40 ; Karey Bresenhan ; Lark Publications ; Published work - Quilts ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Texas History 17 http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/398505706 Ray Hemachandra and Julie Hale, 500 Art Quilts: An Inspiring Collection of Contemporary Work (New York, NY: Lark Books, 2010). 1900 Artichokes in Bloom The quilt that you have in the show this year, how, can you tell me about that quilt? She describes one of her quilts in the art painted surface category, called &quot ; Artichokes in Bloom.&quot ; This quilt won the Judge’s Choice Award at the 2011 International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. art painted surface ; artichokes ; Awards ; beautiful ; bloom ; blowing ; category ; confetti-style ; International Quilt Festival judge’s choice award ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; wind 17 2003 Why is quiltmaking important to your life? ; It’s part of my identity I think. I have always sewn. She discusses how quiltmaking is a part of her identity. She returns to her childhood when she and her sister learned how to sew clothes. In this, she explains her journey through life as she grew as a quilter and an artist. For her, quilting is a way to express herself. It gives her hope. She could not imagine not creating something. She then muses about the direction where her quilting will take in the future. Each family member will eventually get a quilt from her. abstract ; botanicals ; emotions ; family ; flowers ; identity ; nature ; patience ; photography ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Quilt Purpose – personal expression ; quiltmaking for family ; sewing 17 2244 Keeping track of quilts she has made How do you keep track of what quilts are where? Andrea explains how she keeps track of her quilts using a directory of computer folders with their images and locations. catalog ; computer ; Copper Shade Tree Gallery ; Lone Star Three Exhibit ; photography ; Quilt Purpose – Exhibition ; quiltmaking for family ; Round Top, Texas ; Texas Quilt Museum (La Grange, TX) 29.906606, -96.878010 17 Location of Texas Quilt Museum Texas Quilt Museum http://texasquiltmuseum.org/ 2349 Teaching quiltmaking Do you Teach? She explains what and where she teaches. She likes teaching, and will travel to teach, preferring to teach in small groups. She mentions the techniques she typically teaches, but shares that she is trying to get over “stage fright,” preferring to teach in small groups of 6-20. appliqué ; Austin, Texas ; class ; Free motion quilting ; Honeybee Quilt Store (Austin, TX) ; Marble Falls, Texas ; raw edge appliqué ; teaching quiltmaking 30.451367, -97.784215 17 Location of Honey Bee Quilt Store, Austin, Texas http://www.honeybeequiltstore.com/ Honey Bee Quilt Store website 2445 Conclusion Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you want to mention today? Brokenshire concludes by stating that she thinks it is important to continue creating art and to keep the tradition and art form alive. art ; beauty ; create ; future generations ; Knowledge transfer ; tradition art ; beauty ; conclusion 17 The International Quilt Festival, Houston, TX. Oral History Sandy Goldman (SG): This is Sandy Goldman and today’s date is November 5th, 2011 and I’m conducting an interview with Andrea Brokenshire for Quilters’ Save Our Stories and it’s a project for The Alliance for American Quilts. Andrea and I are at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas. Andrea, will you please tell me about the quilt you brought today, which is titled &quot ; Summer Solitude&quot ; ? Andrea Brokenshire (AB): It is a quilt that I made in 2008 for my daughter, Samantha. She took the photograph this quilt was inspired from when we were visiting my family in Oregon. SG: How old is Samantha? AB: She is nineteen now. SG: Is she a photographer? AB: Amateur photographer. SG: Does this quilt stay with her? AB: No, she’ll get it someday [laughs.] SG: It’s beautiful. AB: Thank you. SG: Can you tell me about your process in creating this particular piece that you brought today? AB: Yes I can. I work from photographs. I took the photograph and enlarged the image using a large format photocopier. On the photocopy, I traced out the major design elements with a black sharpie marker. The Sharpie marker bleeds thru the paper so when completed, the mirror image of the image is created on the back side of the photocopy. This becomes the master template pattern used to create the design. Each template piece was numbered then transferred to paper backed fusible web and then individually cut out. Fabrics were auditioned for each template unit, fused then cut out. Using a applique pressing sheet, the template pieces were reassembled into larger units (petals of the flower). I would work one unit (petal) at a time around the circumference of the flower I worked on entire, then I completed the center. The bee is a needle felted, and the wings are made with Angelina fiber and organza that I stitched , then attached. SG: I noticed the background is many small pieces of fabrics, could you explain how you create that and is that also fused? AB: The background is created using numerous batiks and hand-dyed fabrics to make a pallet of color. This is important because when I cut the fabrics into small irregular pieces the color goes all the way through the fabric.. These bits of fabric were placed individually down onto a foundation background covered with fusible web, fused down to temporarily hold them in place prior to free motion stitching. After they were stitched down, I used my fingernails to roughen them up a little bit to have the edges that were not sewn down lift up to give texture and dimension to the quilt. SG: Is the background under the whole flower or is it just where we can see it? AB: It is just where we can see it. The flower was put down first. Then I would lift up the edges of the flower petals and just place the background bits just within a quarter of an inch or less within the perimeter. Then everything was heated with the iron to fuse the edges and bits down and free motion quilted. SG: Is this the way you normally work, or is this how you’re working now. AB: Yes this is the way I am working now. Most of my recent quilts are either whole cloth painted quilts or are images that are painted then appliqued. This one is not a painted quilt but concept is basically the same ; large image on appliqué down, raw edge fused appliqué, with a piecey confetti-style background back to give texture and dimension. SG: It’s beautiful kind of the contrast between the smaller pieces and the larger pieces. So you mentioned that you use free motion quilting, and that this whole piece is done by machine, how do you visualize the free motion quilting? AB: I look at the photograph quite a bit to look and see how the veining and how each petal is moving and how the light is touching each petal contrasting with the shadow. Then I take what I see, and try to thread-paint that into the design following the shape of the petal. SG: Did you sit down and work on this all in one day, one week, do you have a feeling? Or do you work between projects? Will you work on one or two projects at a time or were you only working on this quilt? AB: I only worked on this quilt. I have a hard time thinking about many quilts at a time. I knew I had other projects that I wanted to do but I pretty much work one piece at a time because I want to put my full attention there. I’m not one to have many hands in the fire so to speak. SG: When you made the bee, because the bee is made separately, did you, had you needle felted before? AB: No, no, but I had bought a needle felter and I wanted to try it out. It was interesting to me. I am also a knitter and so I have a real love for different fibers and I wanted to try some include different textiles to give interesting tactile qualities for the quilt. SG: I think it’s a very successful piece. AB: Thank you. SG: Why did you choose this quilt, to bring this quilt to the interview today? AB: This is a quilt that I made for my daughter and I love the image and I kept on asking her if I could make a quilt with this image and she kept on saying, &quot ; No.&quot ; I had to wait a while, and wait, and finally she said &quot ; Mom, okay you can make a quilt just don’t make it ugly.&quot ; I decided to bring that because that thought kind of always sticks in my mind.[laughs.] and so that’s why I chose this quilt. SG: Do you think this quilt reflects your style? What would someone think about you if they saw that, like a viewer, what would a viewer think about you? AB: [ten second pause.] SG: I can repeat my question ; I said what would a viewer think about the person who made this quilt? Do you have any ideas? AB: Well I think first and foremost, I love color. I think that comes out in my quilts. I find color to be very therapeutic and to be very inspiring. I absolutely love the play of the golds and the yellows against a cerulean blue sky. and that is what this particular quilt really speaks. I love nature and I like how beautiful the natural world is. I would hope to think that if somebody saw this quilt that they would see the beauty that is all around us. SG: Were these fabrics all in your stash or did you have to go buy fabric? 943 AB: No they were all in my stash [laughs.] I gravitate towards batiks and hand-dyed fabrics and because of the depth and the trueness of color and the variety. I also like how the color goes all the way through the fabric as opposed to printed fabrics where the design is only on one side. I like the many tonal qualities in batiks. I like how these fabrics work together. SG: Would you say you’re mostly using cottons in your fabric then, cottons in your quilts, all cottons? AB: In this quilt, yes. Currently I work with natural fibers of cotton and silk, most of my appliqué is done in silk but the backgrounds are done in cotton. SG: What are the plans for this quilt? AB: This quilt is going to stay in the family and when my daughter moves into her home as an adult I will be giving this to her. SG: How do you store this quilt then? AB: This quilt is stored flat with cotton fabric over it and stored on a spare bed. SG: Stored on the bed. Are there other quilts stored on the bed? AB: Yes. My quilts are stiffer and small and so if you start rolling them up or putting them they get all bent, so I like to keep them flat, I would like to have a better storage system later on but at this point I don’t have that. I just put it on the bed and cover it with a dark cotton fabric so everything breaths but the sun can’t get to the quilts. SG: Do you use a particular batting in your work? Does it make a difference to you? AB: I use 100% cotton. I like the cotton because it gives stiffness and a suppleness the needle will go through all the pieces. SG: Are you using just three layers? Meaning the back, the batting, and then your piece top. AB: Actually there’s four layers. There is the back, the batting, a what I call a foundation layer (what all the little pieces are put on to) and then all the pieces. SG: How did you get started with quiltmaking? You said you were a zoology major. AB: I am one of five girls in my family and I have been sewing since I was five years old. My mother was determined to make sure her daughters knew how to sew. She was raised on a farm. Being the eldest, she spent most of her time outside. When I was a young girl, my older sisters and I went to &quot ; Singer &quot ; sewing lessons and that’s how we learned to sew. I pretty much made my garments through my high school years. Quilting, I didn’t start quilting until 1997, that’s when my daughter decided she did not want me to make her any more clothes. About that time, I was in a neighborhood stitching group. My neighbor suggested that we make a &quot ; round robin&quot ; Picnic quilt. (A round robin quilt where each person would make something then it would go to the next person and they would add onto it and eventually we would have a quilt). I thought, &quot ; There was no way that I would ever do that. I’m not a piece-y piece-y type of a person&quot ; [laughs.] I couldn’t even imagine but, I tried it anyway. We made a number of round robin style quilts and that was how I learned how to quilt. Started out very traditionally, like most new quilters, and in 2004 I was trying to take traditional quilting and making it more with bright colors and more relevant for today’s time. In 2005, I got very sick with a disease called Toxic Shock Syndrome. I was working on a couple of quilts for my niece and nephew when I got sick. I was traumatized every time I would come in front of the machine (PTSD). That’s when I started knitting and working in other fibers. In 2007 I started quilting again, mainly making something for a friend that I knew that would really appreciate a handmade item and that broke ate mental barrier. All the sudden, I had a million ideas came into my mind and I went in a completely different direction. That’s how these quilts started. SG: Right now are you a full time studio quilter? AB: I would say 70% yes. I’m an empty nester. I was a at-home mom for years and I am still balancing a little bit of house and the kids but for the most part, yes, I try to work in the studio every day. SG: Is the studio in your home? AB: Yes it is. SG: And so everyday you get to do something. AB: Yes. but to say full time eight to ten hours a day, I do not have that luxury at this point, but hopefully I will eventually. SG: You’re the only quiltmaker in your family? AB: Yes, in my immediate family. I have a sister that also is interested in quilts and she has made a few traditional style hand pieced quilts in the past, but at the moment she is not quilting. SG: Do you quilt together, you and your sister? AB: No, no, she lives in another state. SG: You mentioned that you were sick but while you were sick for a few years you didn’t quilt. AB: I did not quilt at all. SG: But you used knitting to get through that time? AB: Yes. SG: You used fiber? AB: Yes. When I got out of the hospital, (I was in ICU for about two weeks) I had to relearn how to do everything.I had lost all the skin in on my hands and so it took a number of months for the skin to come back and be strong enough that I could touch things. I had to relearn how to walk and I had to relearn how to do everything. There was a knitting store that had just opened up near my house and my friends would take me there. I would sit there my eyes transfixed by the colors and textures of the yarn. I remember thinking &quot ; I need to learn how to do this.&quot ; So when my hands heeled enough, I learned to knit and crochet. After six months, I started working there. SG: Right, so it was yarn therapy. AB: It was yarn therapy, that’s right. But is was also color therapy. I made some lifetime friends there. SG: Yarn and color and I think they relate. AB: Yes, I think they do too. SG: What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking? AB: I love the full creative process from looking and dreaming about how I want something to be to placing it on paper. From conception to the execution. Once it’s done, it’s kind of lost its interest in me. I mean, I love looking at my quilts, it makes me really happy to see them, but they are done. It’s the process the journey from the beginning to the end that keeps my interest. Once finished, I’m ready to go onto the next project. SG: Is there any part of it the process that you don’t like? AB: I don’t like putting on sleeves and bindings [laughs.] I do not like sleeves and bindings. SG: We found that, I’ve heard that from other people. AB: [laughs.] And I have a hard time thinking about names for my quilts. Sometimes that’s difficult for me. SG: Do you currently belong to any quilt guilds or groups or both? AB: I do. I belong to a number of groups. I am member of International Quilt Association (IQA), Studio Art Quilting Association (SAQA), IQF),Austin [Texas.] Fiber Artists (AFA) and it’s like an art quilt group. I’m also a member of Surface Design Association (S.D.A.), and the Austin Area Quilt Guild. SG: Are you attending, how many bees a week or a month? Are you going to the bees? AB: I do not go to bees. I was involved in one a number of years ago but lost touch after I got sick. I do go to the meetings for the Austin Fiber Artists Group.. Problem is, a lot of the meetings are at night and I have to drive though Austin [Texas.] but I try to make as many as I can. SG: Do you, are you a technology person? You mentioned using a oversized copier and having to go somewhere to do that, but what other technology things do you use? AB: I’m not a very technological ; I’m actually very intimidated by all of that. I can get around a computer fairly well. Photoshop and that type of thing I can do but I generally take my photographs and go to FedEx or Kinkos and have them do all the work because it’s a lot easier and it takes a lot of the headache out of it. It’s totally worth it for me to have them do it versus me do it. SG: Do you have more than one sewing machine? AB: Yes I do. I have three sewing machines [laughs.] SG: So it would be bad if the power went out, right? [laughs.] AB: Yes it would. I always keep my hands busy. Before I made my quilts by machine, I did hand appliqué and hand quilting so no matter what I will be always creating as long as my hands work, I will be making something. SG: So you’ve also known what it’s like not to have your hands working? AB: Yes I always have a project in my hands. I’m not sure if it’s a product of the way I grew up. We always had something to do. I don’t know the meaning of being bored, I always have something I could be doing. SG: Where do you create? What does your studio look like? AB: My studio space is on the main level of my house. I have a Bernina 820 machine/ cabinet. i have shelving filled to bursting with supplies. I’m starting to grow out of that room so I’m spreading out to the rest of the house now [laughs.] but that’s where I have everything there. I have all my fabrics in there and my dyes and my yarns and I’m just surrounded by all sorts of things that and products to help me in my creative process. SG: How do you store your fabric? AB: I store my fabric in a closet located in my Studio. I have like open bins so my fabrics are easily accessible and its all there and then I close the closet so the sun doesn’t get into them. SG: Are they organized by color or fabric style? AB: They are organized by color, then fabric types. The fabric are separated into two groups.I have one area that I call fashion fabric(non-hand dyed, batiks, dyed cottons or printed fabric) and then a area for hand-dyed and batik fabrics. SG: Do you use, do you have a design wall and do you use it? AB: I do have a design wall located in my studio but I use it more as a bulletin board. I have a two-story house with an open foyer. I place my work on the floor and walk upstairs to get a better perspective. I look down on my work and I get a better view. SG: It’s almost like squinting at it in a way, but you’re above it. AB: Mhm because you need to be far enough away to get the whole overall design and if you get too close you don’t see things sometimes. SG: How do you bring it out then? Do you bring it out on a piece of batting or just it’s already put together? AB: Yeah at that point it’s already pretty much put together. When I’m putting the composition together I’ll audition fabrics and petals before it is fused to make the overall design. For example, in this piece when I was adding and making a specific petal, and before the piece was actually put together I would lay it down and stand back and look at it. If I didn’t like the petal and it needed to be reworked, I would see that I would make a new one. I mean it would be auditioned and if I said to myself, &quot ; No I don’t like that, it’s too dark,&quot ; or, &quot ; That color’s not quite right,&quot ; or &quot ; It stands out,' or for whatever reason, I just make a new one and start over for that particular area. SG: Do you save the pieces that don’t work? AB: I am more and more. Before I didn’t because I’d get kind of locked on that, I needed to have a fresh pallette, I just had to put it away. I am saving things more and more because I’m not sure if I might use it in some other application in somewhere else. SG: Would you redo the same quilt in a different way, or do you always move on to the next? AB: I don’t, I go on to something else. I try to do something different with every quilt that I do, I don’t, I think everything needs to be a one of a kind type of a piece and even subject matter to that extent. SG: Do you work with music on or do you like quiet? AB: Yes, yes I love music, especially when I’m machine quilting. The music puts me in a Zen moment and relaxation. I like to listen to ambient music like piano and just very soothing. SG: So probably music that has no words, just background noise would you say? AB: Right instrumental, instrumental music, just very peaceful music kind of helps especially when you’re machine quilting for a while you get a little tense in your shoulders. SG: Right, so you can get up and move around. AB: Mhm. SG: I’m going to ask you some questions about just your general feelings about quilting in general, like what do you think makes a great quilt? AB: [seven second pause.] I’d have to think about that for a second. What I think that makes a good quilt really is the fact that it’s been made. We live in such a society where people don’t know how to do anything. They go somewhere else to have things done. I think it’s important to be able to make something and to go through that process so all quilts to me have value and meaning because somebody made them and they weren’t mass produced. I guess I’m not one for kits and that type of thing or preprocessed type stuff. Every quilt has a story, there’s a meaning that every single quilt artist has and they’re trying to convey. So, just the fact that they’re made from a beginning quilt that, the first attempt that somebody trying to do something to most intricate and elaborate style quilts, just the fact that they were even thought of and made in the first place I think means something to me. SG: Do you feel influenced by other quilters? Or is there anyone particular? AB: Absolutely. Probably my first influence of quilters were the ladies that said, &quot ; Oh we can just make a picnic quilt. We’ll just make one and we’ll sit on it during a picnic.&quot ; I refused to take mine out on a picnic, because I worked too hard on it. But, there’s a number of quilt artists that mean a lot. My best friend, Diane Sehorne, is a piecer. She is meticulous. Becky Goldsmith was one. I sat and watched her do needle turn appliqué and learned how to do it perfectly. Pat Campbell with her gorgeous Jacobean floral work. Judy Coates Perez who taught me how to paint, I didn’t know I could paint, but I took the ideas of color and what I do with fabric and transferred it into painting and making art quilts, didn’t even know I could do that. Philippa Naylor with her precision work. There’s a lot of people that I just find absolutely fantastic and I am always trying to learn new things. I like the challenge myself and try to come up with new ways and problem solving type techniques. SG: Are you the type of quilter that takes classes? AB: Yes I take, I’ve been taking classes all week long. I am a lifetime learner. I think that there’s always something new to learn and everyone has value in what they can give. I like to take other people’s information and process it and come up with my version that is uniquely my ownand it kind of spits out on something new in my brain. SG: So you were taking classes all week-- AB: Mhm. SG: Here in Houston [Texas.] You’re a part of the Lone Star’s Three book-- AB: Yes. SG: Have you been published in any other books? AB: Yes I have. I have a quilt in 500 Art Quilts that was published about a year, two years ago through Lark Publications.Karey Bresenhan was the juror for that book. The first time a quilt of mine was published was in 2003.My quilt &quot ; Full Bloom a Celebration of 40&quot ; was published in a commemorative book AQS put out for their 20th (or was is their 25th) Anniversary for the Paducah [Kentucky.] Show. I’m kinda of new to this whole publishing thing. SG: How does it make you feel when you hear that you got your quilt accepted in this book, or any book really? AB: Like I won the lottery [laughs.] It’s great, it’s great. It’s like sometimes I think, &quot ; Oh man, they must have made a mistake that, they don’t really think that my quilt.&quot ; It’s just honor, it’s just honor and a privilege to be involved in this and as my girlfriend says, &quot ; You’re now part of Texas history,&quot ; and I thought, &quot ; Wow, that’s pretty cool.&quot ; SG: Did you submit artwork or did they ask you? AB: They asked me. I had a couple quilts in the show last year, and those two quilts Karey asked if I would put them in the book. SG: The show here in Houston [Texas,]? AB: The show here in Houston [Texas.], yes. SG: Do you always submit to the same category when you submit? AB: No, no it just depends on what quilt I make. I generally do art pictorial or nature-style quilts depending upon what it is, I have had quilts in art painted surface, art pictorial, and art naturescapes. Generally in those categories, but it just depends on the quilt. SG: The quilt that you have in the show this year, how, can you tell me about that quilt? AB: Yes I can. It is called &quot ; Artichokes in Bloom.&quot ; It is in the art painted surface category. It is a picture of artichokes that are actually blooming. The heads of the artichokes are filamentous and they look like they’re blowing in the wind. It’s quite beautiful. It has a pieced background, the confetti-style pieced background, similar to the quilt we’re looking at today. It won judges’ choice this year and that was very exciting for me. I feel like I’m Cinderella, I just don’t want to lose my shoes [laughs.] SG: Did you know beforehand that you were going to win Judges’ choice? AB: No I did not. I just, I had gotten a call from Houston [Texas.] in September, I had just returned from a trip visiting my family and actually completely forgot about the notifications and got the call and I just was jumping up and down and was like, &quot ; Oh my gosh, oh my gosh I can’t believe this,&quot ; and was just, couldn’t believe it. It was very thrilling, but I didn’t know what award I won, I just knew that I had won a cash award ; I did not know what it would be until Tuesday night, November 1st. SG: Oh, that’s how they work it. That’s really really exciting. How would you say quiltmaking is an important part of your life? AB: It’s part of my identity I think. I have always sewn. When I was growing up and I was sewing clothes, and my sisters were sewing clothes, I used to get such a charge out of making something no one else had-- to be unique, I loved to sew. I would get so excited. One of the things I’ve learned as I got older was patience. I’m getting better at it being patient, not so great all the time, but striving to slow down.. When I was a kid, I didn’t have any patience and I just rushed through things and thus my garments were not made very well.I have always been drawn to bright colors. I would go and I would pick out the most bright colorful crazy garish patterns that I could possibly find and I made my clothes. I was so proud. As I got older, my older sisters didn’t sew as much, they looked at it as a chore and they looked at it as drudgery or something that they had to do, and I’ve never felt that way. I’ve always looked at it as a possibility, and as a joy, and a way to express my emotions. If sometimes life gets really hard, I find that’s when I make my best quilts because there’s always a sense of hope and possibility. That’s what I like about quilting and garment sewing. For me it is a part of how I define myself., I can’t imagine not creating something, to me it’s like breathing. SG: What direction do you see your quilting going in? AB: Well, I love art quilting. I really don’t know. I’d like to continue doing original work and but as far as where it goes, I’m not sure. It just depends on what happens in the future in my life. I would like to try some abstract-type work but I don’t really think abstractly. It makes me uncomfortable but I think doing thing that are uncomfortable will stretch me as an artist. I’m a nature lover, I would like to do more work in with animals and more different subject matter rather than botanicals but I love botanicals and I love big flowers and the curves and I think they’re kind of sexy and they have, they just have presence. I just love that. I’m guessing I will always stay in that general area, but I don’t know. SG: Do you have a lot of quilts on the horizon? AB: Yes. SG: Are they in your head, are they on paper, how do you keep track or how do you know what you want to do next? AB: I’m constantly looking for interesting subject matter so I always have my camera with me. I have probably about fifteen quilts that are in my head, waiting to come. I have the photographs are already there, it’s just the process of making them and spending the time to make them. Like I said before, I have a number of family members and each one of them will get a quilt and the next quilt that I will be making will be for my sister, Heidi, and so I will try to balance a show quilt then a quilt for a family member and other quilts for galleries.Each quilt I make have different reasons for being. So yes, I have many things going on. SG: How do you keep track of what quilts are where? AB: I use my computer. I have all of the quilts cataloged. I have folders for each quilt that contains full and close-up photographs. I have lists of where all my quilts are and what they’re made of and how much it took me to make them and all that type of information. Currently I have one of the is at the Texas Museum, for the Lone Star Three Exhibit. I have a number of quilts at Copper Shade Tree Gallery in Round Top, Texas.. I’m entering different competitions and things nationally so I keep track of all of that. SG: That’s a big job keeping track of everything. AB: Keeping track of everything. I think it’s important, I have a document that is a list of credits and I am constantly updating. Any time that I get a quilt accepted into a venue, I update. It helps me not to forget. SG: That’s true. Do you feel like, do you most of your family members have a piece of your work? AB: Not yet, but they will be. I am from a blended family. Biologically a have 4 sisters and 1 brother. I also have 2 sisters, and brother from my Dads’ second marriage, so there are nine of us. Three of them have quilts, my mother has a couple, my dad has a couple, so they’re all, the rest of them are waiting [laughs.] SG: Do you teach? AB: I do. SG: Where do you teach? AB: I teach at Honeybee Quilt Store in Austin, Texas and I teach beginning free motion quilting and intermediate free motion quilting and raw edge appliqué and this background and pretty much I’ll teach anything that somebody wants to learn. I’ve also started traveling and teaching in the local areas around Austin [Texas.] such as Marble Falls in central Texas. SG: So where you could drive is that pretty much-- AB: Yeah, right. SG: You must really enjoy it. AB: I do, I do, but I have to get over something called stage fright. I do very well in small groups, microphones get me very nervous, and talking in front of large groups of people, so I’m working on that, but I do good in small groups. SG: Do you limit your class sizes? AB: I do, depending on the venue and how big the space is, anywhere from six to twenty, depends on the space. I want to make sure everybody gets individual attention because I think that if somebody spends money and wants to come and listen and learn something they deserve hundred percent of my attention and knowledge. My students get every little tip and tidbit that I could possibly think of and I want them to be able to have that. I think you get too big you lose that intimacy. SG: So you sound like a very busy quilter, teacher, mother ; is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you want to mention today? I think we covered a lot of aspects of your life and quilting. AB: I don’t think so I just think it’s important that we continue to create and to make beautiful pieces of art and keep this tradition and this art form alive for future generations. I think that’s very important. SG: Well I’d like to thank you Andrea for letting me interview you today, and I believe I forgot to mention that we started at ten o’clock this morning, and it’s now 10:41 and we are concluding our interview now. Thank you so much. AB: Thank you, thank you. 2015 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 0 Interview Date 11/05/2011 Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Martha Sielman Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context TX77010_042 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-11-05 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Title A name given to the resource Andrea Brokenshire Description An account of the resource In this interview, conducted at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, Andrea Brokenshire explains her quiltmaking process, as well as fiber art as a therapeutic practice. http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/2277a49756878595e35d3dedc96902e4.jpg 44eabdba5fd66f127a6d384e9c121fc8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Georgia Bonesteel Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Karen Musgrave Interview Date 3/7/08 Transcriber Kim Greene Interview Format audio Location The location of the interview Flat Rock, North Carolina OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-33.xml Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Meg Cox Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound **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.** <strong>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.</strong><br />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. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AFPBP-33 Type The nature or genre of the resource Oral History Title A name given to the resource Georgia Bonesteel Description An account of the resource 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. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/2a916bc37231653d3d9bfb3bd742020f.jpg caa94f1c0991b4ba851e10952f9e9228 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/61093d2da03bfd9f14668888a3f7d1fd.jpg 1470691e8d28627a56135a96555aa0a7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource New York QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Carolyn Mazloomi Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Michael Cummings Location The location of the interview New York City, New York OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=NY10001-008.xml Interview Date 9/16/17 Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Joe Cunningham Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael Cummings Description An account of the resource In this live QSOS interview recorded at the 2017 Quilters Take Manhattan, Michael Cummings talks about his process, inspiration, and the tools he uses to make his art quilts inspired by music, African-American history, and American culture. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context NY10001-008 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 9/16/17 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/dc44c24a7a3bde405c904a0c3baa3777.jpg 9cc7c07cd34c5605ef3b348c77bbd5ff Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Alzheimers Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Karen Musgrave Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Becky Goldsmith OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=AFPBP-03Goldsmith.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 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 &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; quilt Becky has a quilt called &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; Goldsmith talks about the design behind her &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; quilt which was created for Ami Simm's Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece exhibit. Her design began with a &quot ; perfect&quot ; 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 &quot ; great quilt&quot ; / advice for new quilters What do you think makes a great quilt? Goldsmith addresses what, in her opinion, makes a &quot ; great quilt&quot ; 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 &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; Goldsmith begins by talking about the appraisal for her &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; 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. &quot ; Quilter's Newsletter Magazine&quot ; ; 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&#039 ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview Becky Goldsmith. Becky is in Sherman, Texas and I&#039 ; m in Naperville, Illinois, so we are conducting this interview by telephone. Today&#039 ; s date is February 29, 2008. It is 2:08 in the afternoon. We are doing a special Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories based on the Alzheimer&#039 ; s: Forgetting Piece by Piece Exhibit and Becky has a quilt called &quot ; Trying to Hold On.&quot ; Thank you for doing this with me, and tell me about &quot ; Trying to Hold On.&quot ; Becky Goldsmith (BG): When Ami asked me to take part in this exhibit and I said yes, it was not really because Alzheimer&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t necessarily mean you won&#039 ; t get it. But anyway, the way I approached the quilt was if I had Alzheimer&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; s and for what I would hope if I had Alzheimer&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m very used to doing invisible stitches and turning the edges under as smoothly as I possibly can. Working on the Alzheimer&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m happy to hear that. I don&#039 ; t know if it might be because it is not overtly depressing to look at, and let&#039 ; s face it, Alzheimer&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m happy with that, because I look at the body of the work that I have done, and I don&#039 ; t make depressing quilts. I can&#039 ; t seem to make myself make depressing quilts. I&#039 ; m not really a very depressive sort of person. [laughs.] I am happy to hear that, I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; s see, I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; Cake Designs, so that people can have context to all of this. Tell me about Piece O&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t know, we self published a bunch of the books and now we are with C&amp ; T Publishing, I guess we have a total of twenty-three or twenty-four books, and god knows how many patterns. I really don&#039 ; t, in the hundreds of patterns. As I said, we self published for a number of years, and then moved to C&amp ; 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&#039 ; t mean that I&#039 ; m the creative one and she is not, it means that I can draw and so when I&#039 ; m drawing for myself it is pretty easy, but when I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t really tell them apart. KM: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups now? BG: I&#039 ; m a member of the Dallas Guild, but I&#039 ; m far enough away that I rarely get to go to the meetings. I&#039 ; m a member of the local guild, but I&#039 ; m on the road so much that, there again, I rarely get to go to the meetings. I feel like I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; ve just joined and I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m not going to mention names, but the person who invited me, I thought ‘damn I think I will do this.&#039 ; [laughs.] This person who said it had helped her a lot and she is an individual that I didn&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m a little bit hopeful, because people use our patterns. It is really, really nice. I don&#039 ; t know about other people who write patterns and publish their work, but I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t have that big of a house, we don&#039 ; t even have an eighteen hundred square foot house and because my studio is in such a visible area of the house, I can&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t deal with stuff piled up on the floor and everywhere, I just can&#039 ; t go there. I can&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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 &quot ; Lorna&#039 ; s Vine&quot ; , 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; s very vivid imagination, I enjoy those a lot, a whole lot. Nancy Crow, I&#039 ; ve always enjoyed looking at Nancy Crow&#039 ; s work, and Ruth McDowell. I really like Ruth&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m taking the first class I&#039 ; ve taken in fifteen years. Since we started Piece O&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m going to take a class with Ruth next month, and I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; m looking forward to. And I hope I have my pattern done so I can actually play with the fabric when I&#039 ; m in class. KM: Let&#039 ; s touch on Alzheimer&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t love it, but I don&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t so I don&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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 &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; . 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&#039 ; 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: &quot ; Simply Delicious&quot ; 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&#039 ; t when that quilt was made. &quot ; Stars in the Garden&quot ; would be another one. &quot ; Everyday Best&quot ; 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&#039 ; Newsletter. It&#039 ; s still one of my personal favorites. Funny enough--sometimes I think about putting it in the top five and sometimes I don&#039 ; t but &quot ; Welcome to the North Pole&quot ; , 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&#039 ; m done with them I&#039 ; m done with them. I&#039 ; ve got &quot ; Empress Feathers&quot ; , a great big princess feather, that hangs in the dining room. I&#039 ; ve got one hanging in the pink bedroom where my fabric lives. I want to hang the &quot ; Stars in the Garden&quot ; , 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&#039 ; ve got &quot ; Flowering Vines&quot ; up there and then &quot ; Everyday Best&quot ; 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&#039 ; ve got cats. I&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; t think so. Don&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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 &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; 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 &quot ; Trying to Hold On&quot ; quilt. If you draw, let&#039 ; 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&#039 ; 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 &quot ; Breaking the Rules&quot ; , so we will see, but I&#039 ; m working on the manuscript for that right now. KM: How very interesting. It sounds like it was influenced by &quot ; Trying to Hold On.&quot ; 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&#039 ; m happy to have done this. I appreciate being asked. 2017 Quilt Alliance. All Rights Reserved. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net Interview Format audio Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Del Thomas Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Becky Goldsmith Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AFPBP-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Description An account of the resource Becky Goldsmith talks about getting started making quilts and how it's grown into a quilting business, and offers advice for new quilters. http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/3f709d5a5180357daa95b76ad78b82d8.jpg 1ada4a0511157ccbbee16cdfb80cffb0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Barack Obama Quilt QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joy-Lily OHMS Object https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=Joy-Lily.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.2 QSOS Interview with Joy-Lily Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories Quilt Alliance Joy-Lily 0 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/BOQ-032 Joy-Lily.mp3 Other audio 0 Introduction This is Karen Musgrave and I am conducting a Quilters SOS Save Our Stories interview with Joy-Lily 17 28 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today Please tell me about your quilt &quot ; Help, Hope &amp ; Hallelujah!&quot ; Lily gives an explanation behind the design of her quilt &quot ; Help, Hope &amp ; Hallelujah!&quot ; . She began the project with a commission for screen-printing fabric for a client of hers This quilt was not originally designed to reflect and was left with extra fabric. the election, but she understood later that is what she was designing was a metaphor for what she was seeing in the election cycle. Barack Obama ; borders ; Fabric - Painted ; Fabric - Print ; Female quiltmakers ; Home sewing machine ; Long arm quilters ; Long arm quilting ; Long arm quilting machine ; Machine quilting ; Political quilts ; professional artist ; professional quiltmaker ; quilt back/lining ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Celebration ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; surface designer 17 http://www.joy-lily.com/quilt/ObamaBig.JPG &quot ; Help, Hope &amp ; Hallelujah!&quot ; 549 What are your plans for this quilt?/ participating in the exhibit So what are your plans for this quilt? Lily shares her hopes for her quilt to continue touring in shows and exhibits as well as some of the other artists' work she wants to see in the exhibit. art class ; Art quilts ; Barack Obama ; Bonnie Smith ; fabric selection ; Journey of Hope Exhibit ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; screen printing ; surface design ; Susan Shie 17 728 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. So tell me about your interest in quiltmaking Lily shares how her family history have brought her to her love of fabric, art and quiltmaking. Her job as a graphic designer also helped her get into quiltmaking. children ; commercial art ; fabric selection ; family ; graphic designer ; immigration ; Learning quiltmaking ; parents ; professional quiltmaker ; quiltmaking classes ; screen printing ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 882 What are your favorite techniques and materials? So tell me about your favorite techniques and materials Lily briefly speaks about the variety of fabrics that she uses, including cotton, silk and now felt as well. Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric - Multiple scrap ; Fabric - Print ; Fabric dyeing ; fabric selection ; Fabric stash ; Fiber - Cotton ; Fiber - Cotton or polyester blend ; Fiber - Silk ; Quilt Purpose - Teaching or learning sample ; Sample quilts ; Silk quilts 17 961 Joy-Lily's artistic style Is &quot ; Help, Hope &amp ; Hallelujah!&quot ; typical of your work? Lily speaks to some of her more general artistic habits and style choices. Her favorite parts about quiltmaking is the variety of fabric that she can work with in several different ways. She is also a fan of long arm machine quilting. borders ; Design process ; drawing ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric - Multiple scrap ; Fabric - Printed patchwork ; fabric design ; Fiber - Silk ; Improvisational piecing ; Journey of Hope Exhibit ; Learning quiltmaking ; Long arm quilters ; Long arm quilting ; Long arm quilting machine ; Machine quilting ; Patchwork quilts ; piecing ; quiltmaking classes ; Scrap quilts ; Teaching quiltmaking ; Whole cloth quilts 17 1243 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? Um, do you belong to any art or quilt groups Lily mentions some of the quilt groups and guilds that she belongs to or has in the past. She explains the significance of the friendships and networking she can accomplish while belonging to the groups. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Arts Council ; Friendships through quilting ; Northern California Council of Quilters ; Quilt guild ; quilting communities ; San Francisco Quilters Guild ; Southern California Council of Quilt Guilds ; Surface Design Association (SDA) 17 1326 Advice for new quilters What advice would you offer someone starting out? Lily offers advice for new quiltmakers: she suggests to forget about creating a perfect piece, start out small and finish. Learning quiltmaking ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 1359 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? Lily speaks to the challenges that she sees art quilters facing which is recognition as an artist. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Challenges within the quilting community 17 1403 Tell me how you balance your time. So how do you balance your time? Lily talks about her work schedule with teaching quilt and art classes on Thursdays and Fridays and working on her art for the rest of the week. Learning quiltmaking ; professional artist ; professional quiltmaker ; quiltmaking classes ; surface design ; Teaching quiltmaking ; Time management 17 1475 Describe your studio/the place that you create. Describe your studio. Lily explains her working studio space which is in her home, in a far corner of her bedroom. She has a sewing machine and quilting tables there along with her collection of fabrics and unfinished projects. Fabric stash ; Home sewing machine ; home studio ; unfinished objects (UFO) ; Work or Studio space 17 1582 What do you think makes a great quilt? What do you think makes a great quilt? Lily explains what she refers to as the &quot ; three levels of interest&quot ; that capture the attention of someone viewing a piece. It starts from capturing the interest from looking at it far away and moves closer to seeing and appreciating the smallest details. Art quilts ; fabric selection ; Learning quiltmaking ; stiches ; Teaching quiltmaking ; visual artist 17 1668 Joy-Lily's identity as an artist Do you think of yourself more as an artist Lily speaks to how she identifies as an artist before she identifies as a quiltmaker. She approaches all of her quilts from her artistic background. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; professional artist ; professional quiltmaker ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; surface designer 17 Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I&#039 ; m conducting a Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Joy-Lily. Joy-Lily is in San Francisco, California and I am in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Today&#039 ; s date is February 6, 2009. It is now 12:22 in the afternoon. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this interview with me. Please tell me about your quilt &quot ; Help, Hope and Hallelujah.&quot ; Joy-Lily (JL): I started this quilt a long time ago. I started making the fabric because I&#039 ; m basically a surface designer and quilting is one of the things I do with all those wonderful art fabrics that I make just for fun. I actually had a commission to make a series of Thermofax silk screens. Those are quick little screens that I made on a machine for another quilter who was using a variety of polka-dots. She had me make twenty-two different screens with larger and smaller and denser and thinner groups of polka-dots [even a screen of O&#039 ; s.] and then because she couldn&#039 ; t print them herself easily, she asked me to do the printing. She needed them printed in black and opaque red yellow and blue and she only needed three or four of each piece, so I wound up with a screen full of ink [each color, each print.]. Instead of just wiping it off or scraping it back into the jar, I decided to play and I printed onto fabric in random scattered patterns with the leftover ink, partial prints, all kinds of overlapping prints with these four colors. This one piece of fabric was kind of a pale mint green and has been fascinating me for a long time. I thought that some day I would cut it up and just like Jackson Pollack, make it into random squares, maybe make a grid out of it and then make a simple quilt. I had it out during the election period. The election by the way, I thought I would get so tired of it, but I didn&#039 ; t. I&#039 ; ve been interested in Obama ever since the hoopla about his becoming a senator. He obviously had a lot of good qualities so I&#039 ; ve had my eye or ear to the radio, so as the primary season wore on I was rooting for him every single primary whether it was an up or a down, the poles were up and down and I became obsessed with all the minutiae of the election. I was thinking about using it [this piece of fabric.] and then one night I&#039 ; m lying in the bathtub and I saw those squares that I was going to cut out of the mint green polka-dot fabric with red slashes running through them. There is a quilting technique where you slice the fabric, you put in an inch wide strip and then when you sew it back together with half inch seams, you have an exact replacement for the amount of fabric that you took away. So the pattern underneath appears to float behind the stripe. I&#039 ; m not a night worker usually, but I got out of my bath, threw some clothes on and started putting stripes in this big piece of fabric, intending all the while to cut it up. Then I put in blue stripes and then I put in yellow stripes because they seemed to want to be in there. The piece was so busy that I decided that it needed to look like a triptych. It still wasn&#039 ; t about the election and it got framed, in three pieces with black around the three pieces. The more I looked at it the more it seemed to be about the west, middle and the east of the country. These stripes that went across from one section to the next seemed to be about the way people were communicating across the country. The red stripes and the blue stripes and even the yellow stripes were communicating across the country and I still didn&#039 ; t know what it meant but over time it began to take on my fascination with the election. Those clusters of dense polka-dots in blue or in red started looking like campaign headquarters and maybe the yellow ones that were kind of scattered looked like undecided voters. Then I started realizing I was working in primary colors and all these jokes started getting into it, so I went with it and I decided, &#039 ; Okay this is about the election.&#039 ; This is just about the time, early November, when all of us were holding our breath and many people were thinking, &#039 ; Can it really happen? Can he really win?&#039 ; There was this huge amount of hope and excitement and then he did win. So I wanted to put another layer on the quilt to express that excitement. That became three big swishes, again blue, red, and yellow. Then I spent many hours rearranging these swishes. The yellow one was also a message from my muse because I got this vision that the yellow one needed to be a big multiple zigzag, kind of like you see in cartoons when something really exciting or something blows up. I went with it. It seemed like I&#039 ; m getting good advice. the swishes finally got arranged in such a way that the blue one was higher, the red one went up and it dipped and it went up a little more and the yellow was one is a big zigzag. They started to look like graph lines running across these three panels. There are all different levels in which you can say, &#039 ; Yeah, I understand why this is about the election.&#039 ; The hallelujah part, the excitement got put on the top layer. A lot of thought went into what quilting technique am I going to use [to create the hallejulah layer.]. At first, it was going to be stripes and I thought, &#039 ; Should I slice and replace the stripes? No, I better not because those black borders will offset too much in the long run.&#039 ; I wound up backing the quilting cotton swishes, especially the yellow. Other darker colors always show through yellow so I backed it with a fairly heavy layer of fusible interfacing. Then I topped stitched it on with a sewing machine zigzag and that seemed to work. Before I was finished, the [swish.] pieces were hanging off the [lower left.] end and then I thought, &#039 ; Okay, let&#039 ; s make them hang off the end.&#039 ; It looks like they are coming before the election and moving on out. The hardest thing about the whole quilt was binding those bottom left hand corners where the swishes actually pass beyond the boundary of the quilt edge. So I learned some new technical things [laughs.] about how to do that. Anyway, so the quilt became &#039 ; help&#039 ; because of all this activity, this chaotic activity in the back group, &#039 ; hope&#039 ; and &#039 ; hallelujah&#039 ; for Obama winning the election. Then I had to think about how I&#039 ; m going to top stitch it because I&#039 ; ve got these different colors and the stitching is going to cross the swishes in red, yellow, and blue. What color of topstitching thread am I going to use? All kinds of problems. The morning I was scheduled to go to an appointment at the long arm quilting machine, which I adore using, I was in the bathtub again. [laughs.] I got an inspiration. My bathtub should be a write-off on my taxes. Meanwhile, the inspiration was to use words that each of the candidates had said and use words from the public. Somewhere along the way my old roommate came to town and when he saw the quilt in progress he said, &#039 ; You know, what that yellow means don&#039 ; t you?&#039 ; He is from the Philippines and he said, &#039 ; The color of the People&#039 ; s Revolution in the Philippines was yellow, so the yellow stands for the people.&#039 ; I went, &#039 ; Oh, of course.&#039 ; The blue quotes are comments that Obama has made in various speeches about how we have to help each other and there is always hope. For the ones from [John.] McCain I had to find something really quick. So I went to look at his concession speech on line. One of his statements during his speech that moved me very much was, &#039 ; I pledge tonight, to do everything in my power to help him,&#039 ; so there is the &#039 ; help&#039 ; context again and of course one of the red lines says &#039 ; the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick&#039 ; and in yellow it says things like, &#039 ; I never believed I would live to see the day that an African American would be elected president.&#039 ; &#039 ; We did it!&#039 ; &#039 ; Hallelujah,&#039 ; and things like that. That is the story of my quilt. KM: What are your plans for this quilt? JL: I am hoping that it will continue to go on tour for a while, other than that I haven&#039 ; t thought about it. [on second thought, I&#039 ; d be happy if someone bought it.] KM: Are you planning to go to the opening? JL: Yes, I am. KM: Whose works are you looking forward to seeing up close and personal? JL: I haven&#039 ; t been looking on the website enough to really have a feeling for it. Susan Shie is a famous quilter, so it will be interesting to see what techniques she used to get to that kind of imagery she used on hers. I&#039 ; m as much interested in how you make marks on fabric as I am in how you put it together to quilt it. I guess in general, I will be looking for my particular interest in surface design as much as I will be looking at people, how they sewed it and what their content was. I&#039 ; m fascinated by the fact that there are so many different directions people have gone in. In fact, I&#039 ; m in the show because my quilt does not have a picture of President Obama on it. At first when I emailed Sue Walen she said that it [the exhibit.] was pretty much filled up and she would put me on the waiting list. Then a couple days later, she emailed me back and said &#039 ; Is your quilt something other than a picture of the candidate (at that point) Obama, because we need a little diversity in our show?&#039 ; I said, &#039 ; Yes as a matter of fact it is,&#039 ; so voila, I&#039 ; m in the show. It turns out that they opened up another floor, I understand, in the gallery, so that all of the quilts will be able to be shown, even though some people did two or three quilts. I was a little anxious for a while, worried about whether my quilt was so far off topic kind of, that it might not get exhibited. KM: How did you hear about the exhibit? JL: Good question. It was because of my Thermofax again - the silk screen making machine. I teach a surface design class and some of my students know that I have it so they order screens from me. There is one woman who is in the show, Bonnie Smith, who ordered a screen and when I saw what she was wanting me to make it was a stylized portrait of Obama. She previously had a quilt in Japanese show and won some kind of award. It was a stylized portrait, I think, of herself repeated in various squares and I thought &#039 ; I bet she is going to make a quilt like that about Obama&#039 ; . When I brought her the screen I said, &#039 ; Is there some kind of show about Obama or the election?&#039 ; and she said, &#039 ; Yes.&#039 ; So she gave me the link and I got in touch with Sue. That is how it all started - my trusty little Thermofax machine. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. JL: My mother was a dressmaker. Actually her father was a tailor, and when she came to this country from Russia, she worked in the dress factories of New York. When I was a child, there were always scraps of fabric under her sewing table to play with. I thought I would be a fashion designer, but I quickly discovered that making clothes was quite a chore and I was never quite up to the level of the &#039 ; fashion of this week.&#039 ; I just kept the sewing skills in the background and I became a graphic designer. I did that for many years when I lived in New York City. In those days it was called commercial art, but I learned that it was more commercial than it was art. So I started doing actual batik one summer when I was visiting my brother and his wife in Santa Barbara, California. People started buying my little batik dyed pieces and so that&#039 ; s how I came back to the fabric. I guess my interest in quilting came from the fact that I had batiks and I had marblized fabrics and I needed to do something with them. Also for a short while I had a little job of sewing up quilt squares into potholders for another quilter. I wasn&#039 ; t a quilter yet, but this lady was selling them at craft shows and she just needed production work. The patterns so fascinated me that I went and took a quilting class. Before I had learned very much about that, I found myself volunteering at the local senior center teaching those seniors quilting. Boy, did I learn a lot doing that! I&#039 ; ve been teaching quilting ever since. I eventually got a grant from the California Arts Council to teach at that senior center. I taught three days a week. One day was quilting, one day was silk painting, and one day was printmaking on fabric. I was in hog heaven doing that and that led me to what I do now, which is I teach quilting and surface design for the local Adult Education Districts as well as making scarves and marketing them. I also sell occasional quilts and do the occasional lecture and workshop for a quilt guild or a fiber art guild. KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why? JL: Can I think about that and get back to you? [The Gee&#039 ; s Bend quilters, Nancy Crow, and Mary Mashuta because they are improvisational and innovative quilters who use also use color dramatically.] KM: Tell me about your favorite techniques and materials. You talked about Thermofax. JL: I like to manipulate fabric. I like to paint it, print it, dye it, bleach it. I even sometimes pleat it and chop it up. I like to use silk as well as cotton as I have a background that led to silk painting. Lately I&#039 ; ve gotten into felting. The very first piece of sample felting I made went into a quilt. I see felt work as another potential quiltmaking material, although whole quilts might not be made out of it. It could include surfaces that are partly felt as well, on the surface and with fabric. I&#039 ; m not so interested in weaving and crocheting and knitting - the yarn media, but the felt is more like Play-Dough. You can make pictures in it. You can make shapes out of it. You can do all kinds of things with it that are very exciting but still work at the surface. KM: Is &quot ; Help, Hope and Hallelujah&quot ; typical of your work? JL: No, it is not. It is extremely unusual in that it doesn&#039 ; t have a lot of piece work in it. The only thing that is typical about it is that I used some hand printed fabric. KM: What would your work typically look like? JL: I have several different styles. Another style that doesn&#039 ; t have a lot of piece work in it would be a whole cloth piece of silk bordered by another patterned silk. I&#039 ; m a closet fabric designer. I never wanted to go to school and learn fabric design and go into that industry but I have always designed fabric. Some of my fabrics look great around the other pictorial pieces of silk painting. Lately, I&#039 ; ve been matching them up and making quilts that are pretty much a whole cloth quilt, so that is one style. Another style is to take a patchwork design and do it in kind of an off beat way, kind of liberated or Gee&#039 ; s Bend style. In fact, in my class right now my students are having an awful lot of fun doing things where the corners don&#039 ; t match. We trim the square afterwards so that it will be easy to assemble them, but for the time you are doing it, as long as you can sew a straight line, it is fine. [laughs.] So I like the Gee&#039 ; s Bend quilting, improvisational quilting style. I like to work with found scraps ; the most exciting things I do seem to be the things that come from what was on my quilting room floor or what was left after I did another project. I quickly throw these pieces together and that is the most fun. I like to work with gradient fabric. A little side story here ; I did actually get to design and have printed some fabric for the quilt market. It turns out a friend of mine is an art director for one of the companies that create quilt fabrics. So [when I showed her my work.] she picked a couple of my marbled designs and they put them into production. They are called &quot ; Swirls.&quot ; At the same time, they were going to do a matching series of gradient fabrics where it [the value.] went from dark on the edges to light in the middle and back to dark on the far selvage. But at that particular time there were several other companies doing something similar, so they never went ahead with the gradient line. But I wound up with all the practice prints of gradient fabric and I also wound up thinking about how wonderful these fabrics could be, used just in replacement for flat colored fabrics. If you use a graded fabric or an ombré fabric, your quilts are going to start shimmering and glowing with these changing colors. I&#039 ; m working on a book [laughs.] for using ombré fabrics in quiltmaking, experimenting with that. That is another whole look that I have ; what happens when you substitute graded fabric for plain fabric. I&#039 ; m sure I have a couple of other styles and maybe we can get back to that. KM: You talk about using a longarm [quilting machine]. Do you use a longarm to quilt all of your quilts? JL: Mostly, it is so much faster. I was trained not only as a graphic artist but also as a fine artist, so I love to draw. The longarm machine is sort of a drawing tool, a little bit like--what do they call that kind of drawing where you&#039 ; re doing a continuous line? Contour drawing. It&#039 ; s an automated contour drawing machine and it also feels a little bit like you are riding a motorcycle standing up, so it is a power position. I&#039 ; ve taught myself to go slowly and deliberately and draw what I want to draw. For example, one of my silk whole cloth quilts is nasturtium flowers and lots of leaves. I&#039 ; ve drawn with stitching around the leaves and also stitched big loopy circles with nasturtium [leaf.] veins in the middle. When you turn the quilt over, on the back its all muslin and so you see a drawing. I have a lot of fun with it. I&#039 ; m very comfortable using the longarm machine freehand. KM: You go some place to do this? JL: Yes I do. I have a friend here in the city who rents her longarm machine and she is about a mile away. When she is not available I can rent one in a quilt shop that is down in San Mateo, which is about fifteen minutes south of San Francisco. They have a couple of them. They trained me to use the longarm there. It is called Always Quilting. KM: Very cool. Do you belong to any art or quilt groups? JL: Yes I do. I belong to the San Francisco Quilters Guild and the Northern California Council of Quilters, which is a [clears throat.] an uber guild. The teachers, the quilt shops and the guilds belong to it, so I belong to it as a teacher. I belong to the Southern California Council of Quilt Guilds, the same kind of organization. At various times I have also belonged to the American Crafts Council, Surface Design Association and to Peninsula Wearable Arts Guild and to Contemporary Quilters and Fabric Artists. I don&#039 ; t belong to those last groups at the moment, but there are an awful lot of groups to join so I kind of rotate around them over the years. KM: Why is it important to you to belong to these groups? JL: The contact with other quilters, whether they are quilt artists or not. I always see something new and exciting and it is networking and stimulating because they have speakers who are really interesting and they get you going in new directions and teach me about new materials. They [other members.] are my friends. They are the people who speak my language. KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? JL: Don&#039 ; t try to be perfect. &#039 ; Perfection is optional&#039 ; is one of the mottos in my classroom. At any given time I have about twenty beginning quilters in class so they usually come into the class with a project for a bedspread or something large or something half finished. I encourage them to make something small so that they can see it, go through all the processes and get it finished. KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? JL: I&#039 ; m particularly interested in the challenges of art quiltmakers because our art is often looked at as a home craft and it isn&#039 ; t that any more. It is as much a fine art as painting and sculpture and digital photography, but because its made out of homey materials sometimes we get degraded, &#039 ; that is not real art, that is just a quilt&#039 ; , so that is our challenge to make the public aware that art quilts are real art. KM: How do you balance your time? You talk about surface design, making quilts, teaching. JL: My time revolves around my teaching schedule and I&#039 ; m fortunate enough to be able to make a living teaching half time, two and a half days a week, Thursdays and Fridays are available to do art. Occasionally on weekends I&#039 ; ll have a workshop one day or take a workshop, but usually I have that four day time span of Thursday through Sunday that I can use to catch up with my life and catch up with my art work. [laughs.] Sometimes I get ideas while I&#039 ; m in class. One of the wonderful things about working with students is that they do things I never would have thought of and that leads me off in new directions. I can even try my hand while I&#039 ; m at class, showing other people and learning from them. Some weeks go by and I don&#039 ; t do any quilting and other weeks that&#039 ; s all I do, almost all I do: I eat and sleep and do a few other things, but spend a lot of hours quilting. It goes in bursts. I&#039 ; m not the sort of person who gets up and quilts for two hours in the morning like a writer. [laughs.] KM: Describe your studio. JL: My studio is three quarters of my bedroom. I&#039 ; m fortunate that I have a house with really big rooms and my bedroom is about 18 foot long. So one corner by the window is the bed and the stereo and the rest of the room is walls of bookshelves - open bookshelves with the fabrics piled up by color and kind. In the middle of the room is a 60 inch standing high quilting table and it has my sewing machine on it. If I turn my chair around to the wall, I have a desk there. The ironing board is back in there somewhere. On the open shelves where I have the quilt fabric, I also have some boards that are about 48 inches high and about 30 inches wide and they kind of act like sliding cupboard doors to protect the fabrics from the light, even though they are not attached. They are covered with flannel and I use those as work boards. If I have a really big quilt piece that I&#039 ; m trying to organize, I put a flannel tablecloth on top of my bed with the flannel side up and I use that as a work table. Then when I&#039 ; m done or I need to go to bed, I roll it up with all those pieces caught in the flannel. The plastic on the back keeps them from sliding around because if it were just a piece of flannel the fabric on the back would cause them to move. So I can have several pieces wrapped up in flannel tablecloths waiting for the next step. KM: So you work on more than one thing at a time? JL: Oh absolutely. I have drawers and file folders full of unfinished projects! KM: What do you think makes a great quilt? JL: One of the teachers that, whose ideas I like, Mary Mashuta said that a great quilt has three levels of interest: that you spot it all the way across the room and it excites your eye and then when you get up closer kind of middle distance you have another level of interest going on that you can see. Then when you get really, really close you see something else that you couldn&#039 ; t have seen at those other two distances. Perhaps a tiny texture pattern in the fabric or perhaps all those yellows that you thought were all the same are actually all different fabrics. It has interest at different levels and I kind of go by that particular wisdom. Also my sense of balance and color as a visual artist come into play. If something strikes my eye, I just like it. What else makes a good quilt? Something interesting going on in the stitching. Something interesting going on in the fabrics that are being used. Perhaps some hand dyed fabric used in an unusual way, something that makes your eye move all around the quilt and appreciate all its different aspects. A message in it. KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you even make the distinction? JL: I&#039 ; m an artist first and for a long time I&#039 ; ve been working with fiber. Sometimes I go back to painting, for example in silk painting or printmaking or printing on fabric, but I come to my quilting from the point of view as an artist. I have only one bed quilt and it&#039 ; s on my bed [laughs.] and it is a piece of art too. KM: Did you make it? JL: I did. KM: Its nice sleeping under a quilt. JL: Let me tell you a minute&#039 ; s worth about this quilt. It&#039 ; s made up of stripes that are from samples and demonstration pieces that I&#039 ; ve done in my classrooms over the years and unfinished squares and extra half squares [batteries run out, interview briefly stops.] KM: Okay, so tell me about the quilt on your bed. JL: The quilt on my bed is made up of leftover pieces and demonstration pieces. I have three different quilting classes so when I demonstrate something I usually do it three times. Little checkerboards, half squares, curved piecing, and things like that and they are organized in long stripes based on how wide they are. It is a bar quilt, and the strips are intermixed with stripes of a sarong fabric that I happened onto which is all very dark colored pattern in kind of browns and golds and a little navy blue. Somehow that pattern works with it all. Most of the pieces in between are solids, because I tend to work in solid color but that pattern fabric just goes perfectly with everything. So the bars are all different sizes and there is no border. I call it &quot ; Joy&#039 ; s Bend.&quot ; I was very much influenced by the Gee&#039 ; s Bend quilters (show at the local museum} at that particular moment. It is kind of funny because it&#039 ; s the biggest quilt I&#039 ; ve ever made. It is 85 inches [each way.] but it was one of the fastest I ever made and that comes back to the theme of the scraps and the leftovers are the things that excite me. KM: How do you want to be remembered? JL: As a woman who inspired, as a teacher who inspired a lot of other people to become not just quilters but artists. KM: Very nice. What do you have in the works right now? Any more plans for more Obama quilts? JL: I had one more idea [for another Obama quilt.] and I was talking with a cartoonist about it. Before we could go any further, I heard that someone had done a political cartoon like that so obviously it is one of those &#039 ; gestalt of the universe&#039 ; things. It occurred to me before he was inaugurated that there were so many things on his plate, fixing the economy, fixing the environment, fixing the Middle East, fixing Afghanistan and Iraq and getting a puppy and all these things. I was picturing a cartoon appliqué quilt of him arriving on his office window ledge in his Superman costume with a big &quot ; O&quot ; on his chest. On the inside wall there is a bunch of Post-It notes, (they could actually be flaps sticking up from the quilt) with all of these to do things on them. I heard that a political cartoonist did just about the same thing, describing him as &#039 ; he&#039 ; d better be Superman to pull this one off.&#039 ; I&#039 ; m kind of glad I didn&#039 ; t get started on that. I had enough on my plate. KM: I don&#039 ; t remember in my lifetime a president-elect or a president inspiring so much quilt art. Why do you think so many art quilters decided to do Obama quilts? JL: Boy is that a good question. I think because he inspires people like no president has in recent history, because he speaks to the people as one of us, not as somebody from the political elite, even though he is on some levels. He touches the hearts and minds of our everyday lives, of our needs of getting the kids fed and earning a living and talks about people losing their jobs and all of these things going on. Also because the black people in our community and of the United States have been so disenfranchised for so long in politics that this is a real wonderful--what am I trying to say? It&#039 ; s a new world. It&#039 ; s a new time in which, there is wonderful validation (that is the word I wanted) for their equality. KM: What do you want people to walk away from viewing your quilt? JL: Because it&#039 ; s not a picture of Obama I want them to walk away remembering the days of the election. It&#039 ; s like having a baby ; the election is over and all that agony [laughs.] is forgotten. There is something about our collective system that makes us forget the agony now that we have the baby. I want people to remember what the election was like and how maybe it was different from previous elections and I want them to remember it with the various puns and jokes [in my quilt] and I want them to have a good laugh about it. There is one more piece in it that I&#039 ; m particularly amused by: the red swish has a little bump up and then it kind of levels off again. I call that &quot ; the Sarah Palen&quot ; effect. KM: How cute. We have been talking almost forty-five minutes. Is there anything you would like to share that you haven&#039 ; t touched upon before we conclude? JL: I can&#039 ; t think of anything right now. KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to talk to me. I hope you have a good time at the opening. JL: Thank you. I wish you could be there. KM: I&#039 ; ll be there in spirit. We are going to conclude our Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories at 12:58. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/ Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audio Interview Format audio Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Karen Musgrave Interview Date 02/06/2009 Location The location of the interview San Francisco, California Transcriber Kim Greene Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Sally Maxwell Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Joy-Lily Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context BOQ-032 Description An account of the resource Joy-Lily talks about her Obama quilt, inspired by Barack Obama's election to the American presidency in 2008. http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/8148368de33b1a8ad449c3121abbc578.jpg f5d3906fd48db0fa6a7573700a41ba35 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/d703335707096b01a684614b9ca2945a.jpg 2dc8143cef91691b9946f23724d98e49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Georgia QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Laura Wasilowski OHMS Object https://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=GA30188-003Wasilowski.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.2 QSOS Interview with Laura Wasilowski Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories Quilt Alliance Laura Wasilowski 0 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/GA30188-003Wasilowski.mp3 Other audio 0 Introduction It is 12:14 and I am conducting an interview with Laura Wasilowski 17 18 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today Tell me about the quilt you brought Wasilowski explains how she created her quilt &quot ; On a Leaf and a Prayer&quot ; . She used fused and hand dyed fabric and thread as well as hand embroidered the top for texture. Art quilts ; Embroidery ; Fabric - Fused ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric - Multiple scrap ; Fabric dyeing ; hand embroidery ; Hand quilting ; quilt back/lining ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Show and Tell (quilt guild) ; stitching ; studio quilt artist 17 300 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking So tell me more about your interest in quilting Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Fabric - Fused ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric dyeing ; Learning quiltmaking ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 Wasilowski explains how she was introduced to sewing and fabric art in her youth. This transformed into art quiltmaking after college. She moved to Illinois and met a quiltmaker who introduced her to the world of quilts. http://artfabrik.com/ Laura Wasilowski's store and website 453 How many hours a week do you quilt? So how many hours a week do you Wasilowski talks about the different ways she spends her time working during the week. She makes quilts and other small pieces of artwork, travels and teaches quilting. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric dyeing ; Fabric/Quilt shops ; Selling quilts ; small business owner ; Teaching quiltmaking ; Time management 17 517 What is your first quilt memory? What is your earliest quilt memory Wasilowski explains that her first memory of a quilt is of one from her grandmother. childhood ; children ; Generational quiltmaking ; grandchildren ; grandparents ; Quiltmaking for family 17 537 Tell me if you have ever used quilts to get through a difficult time / Tell me about an amusing experience that has occurred from your quiltmaking (teaching)? Have you ever used quilts to get through a difficult time Wasilowski talks about the positive and negative ways that quilts have impacted her life. Designing collage quilts were one of the ways that she dealt with her sister's death and the 9/11 terror attacks in New York. She recounts that taking her husband to his first quilt show was one of the most amusing experiences with quilts. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Gender in quiltmaking ; marriage ; Mourning/Grief ; Quilt Purpose - Mourning ; Quilt Purpose - Therapy 17 639 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? What art groups do you belong to? Wasilowski talks about her membership in the Professional Art Quilters Alliance (PAQA) and how the group focuses on the interests of professional over amateur quilters. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Learning quiltmaking ; Professional Art Quilters Alliance ; professional quiltmaker ; Quilt guild ; teaching quiltmaking 17 http://www.artquilters.com/ The Professional Art Quilters Alliance (PAQA) website 708 Have advances in technology influenced your work?If so, how? / Describe your studio/the place that you create. Have advances in technology influenced your work? Wasilowski talks about how her shift to using fused fabric has changed her artwork. She also describes her home studio, which is in her basement. Design Wall ; Fabric - Fused ; Fabric - Hand-dyed ; Fabric dyeing ; fusing fabric ; Hand piecing ; home office ; Home sewing machine ; home studio ; piecing ; Technology in quiltmaking ; Work or Studio space 17 815 Tell me how you balance your time. Tell me how you balance your time. Wasilowski briefly talks about her time management techniques which include multitasking. professional quiltmaker ; Time management 17 867 What do you think makes a great quilt?/ What do you think makes a great quiltmaker?/Whose works are you drawn to and why? What do you think makes a great quilt? Wasilowski talks about the works and artists that she is drawn to and why she finds these works and artists to be impressive to her. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Color theory ; fabric selection ; Female quiltmakers ; Frida Anderson ; Melody Johnson ; professional artist ; professional quiltmaker ; quilt design ; Vincent Van Gohn 17 959 How do you feel about machine quilting vs. hand quilting? What about long-arm quilting? With your smaller pieces you've done hand quilting Wasilowski talks about how she often uses a machine to quilt her larger pieces, and because of time, doesn't make as many large quilts anymore. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Hand quilting ; hand stitching ; Home sewing machine ; Machine quilting ; professional quiltmaker ; Time management 17 994 Why is quiltmaking important to you? Why is quiltmaking important to you? Wasilowski shares some of the benefits that being a professional quiltmaker has brought her ; she includes travel, meeting interesting students and making new friends. female quiltmakers ; friendship through quilting ; Learning quiltmaking ; professional quiltmaker ; Quilt guild ; Quilt Purpose - Personal income ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Teaching quiltmaking ; travel 17 1062 What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life? / In what ways do you think quilts have special meaning for women’s history in America? What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life? Wasilowski talks about some of the traditional uses of quilts in American history and then how these uses specifically affected women. American quilters ; children ; Female quiltmakers ; Generational quiltmaking ; Quilt history ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; Quilt Purpose - Comfort ; Quiltmaking for family ; traditional quiltmaking 17 1131 What has happened to the quilts that you have made or those of friends and family? So what has happened to your quilts? Where are they? Wasilowski mentions some of the different places that her quilts have ended up and what some people do with the versions of her works that they buy. Collecting quilts ; Donating quilts ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; Quilt Purpose - Home decoration ; Quilt shows/exhibitions 17 1160 What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today? Wasilowski concludes the interview by mentioning that the biggest challenge facing quiltmakers if finding the next gadget to use. Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; challenges in quiltmaking ; Female quiltmakers ; professional quiltmaker ; technology ; travel for quiltmaking 17 The Alliance for American Quilts Quilters’ S.O.S. â€&quot ; Save Our Stories ID Number: GA30188-003 Laura Wasilowski, Interviewee Jodie Davis, Interviewer Ann Garvey, Transcriber Georgia Quilt Show Duluth, Georgia October 16, 2010 12:14 pm. Jodie Davis (JD): [Hi, this is Jodie Davis it’s October 16,] 2010 and it is 12:14. I’m conducting an interview with Laura Wasilowski for Quilters’ S.O.S.--Save Our Stories--a project for Alliance for American Quilts. We’re here in Duluth, Georgia at the Georgia Quilt Show. Laura--your first question. [JD laughs lightly.] Laura Wasilowski (LW): Yes. JD: Tell me about the quilt you brought, and you can only have one. LW: I can only--I can only show one? JD: Yep. LW: I’m not showing this one. [laughter.] I’m showing this one. JD: The reason is--is because we want people to [pause.] to have to, you know, otherwise you would want to show a bunch of quilts. But, it has to be something that’s important to you and has meaning. LW: Well, this quilt does have a lot of meaning to me. This is called, “On a Leaf and a Prayer.” And, this is a quilt--can you hear me in the back? [muffled.] Yeah, okay. This is a quilt that I made by improvising. I was--I’m a fuser. And, everything I do is made with fuse fabric. So, I fuse a lot of fabric. I use a lot of yardage. [Break in interview due to malfunction of recording equipment.] [Note added by Laura after interview: And I save all those left over fused fabric scraps after I complete a quilt. Often these fused scraps are the inspiration for my next quilt and trigger designs like this quilt, On a Leaf and a Prayer. The scraps allow me to improvise, to make up the quilt design as I go. They let me play.] And with it, I would play with both--with joining the leaf with the houses and I played. And, that’s how I ended-up with “On a Leaf and a Prayer.” That’s the design--basis for this design. Can I talk about the stitching? JD: Sure, why not-- LW: I will now talk about the stitching. [laughter.] I’m really enamored with hand embroidery now. For some reason it’s come--I’ve always done embroidery work. But, for some reason on smaller quilts now. I discovered that if I add hand stitching to it, basic embroidery stitches, like running stitch, or French knots, or any of those basic stitches, then it really brings a quilt to life. It changes the surface. It gives it--it’s more textural. Then, it’s a way to add pattern and texture and it helps define shapes. For instance, if you put the little thread window panes on here, suddenly it--it becomes a window. So, I’m stitching straight stitches to make the window panes. I can add pattern in the background to kinda lift it off the surface more. So, I’ve become enamored with hand stitching. And, what I do is I usually use--I’m a hand-dyer, so I’ll hand dye all the fabric for the quilt. And, then I also hand-dye thread. And, my thread is variegated, so the colors sequences change across the length of the thread. And, when I add the stitching, I’m using maybe a size eight pearl cotton, or size twelve pearl cotton that I’ve dyed. And I--it just makes me so happy. [JD laughs.] I can sit around and it’s something I can do by hand. It’s-- it’s kind of a strange combination because fusing is very fast. It’s very fast. But, hand stitching is very slow and methodical. But, it’s a real--combination of slow and fast. So, I really enjoy that. JD: Show the back of your quilt too. LW: Oh. On the back of the quilt--on the back of this type of quilt, I would put random acts of fusing. Okay. Random acts of fusing is just taking all those left over fuse strips and--or fabrics, and filling in the back. You may have noticed that this has something inside it Jodie. JD: Something stiff. LW: Yes, thank you. What do you think it is? JD: [muffled laugh.] Well, it’s probably not cardboard. LW: That’s right. [laughter.] Thank you for asking Jodie. [JD laughs.] There’s--there’s [cough.] batting in here. But, there’s also another product called Timtex inside. So, when I’m making this type of quilt, it’s made with a wrapped binding and wrapping the front around not only the batting, but the Timtex. And, that way I can get curvy shapes round the edges. So, I stack the batting and Timtex up together and I cut them out the same size and shape at the same time. And, then you get a curvy wave. You can do circular quilts this way. You can do heart shape quilts--whatever shape you want to do. The Timtex keeps it really flat when you hang it on the wall. And, what I like about it is--I don’t know if you can see this, but all you need is a really--a little loop to hang it on the wall--and that’ll hang like--you don’t need that stupid rod pocket. JD: And, the other thing I noticed Laura is that you have a patch here that says, “Chicago School of Fusing” and it’s on the back of the quilt. LW: Yes. I am in fact a member of the Chicago School of Fusing. I’m the Dean of Corrections at the school. And, we are advocates of using fusible web to create art quilts. I mean they--these are art quilts. They’re not--they’re not functional in any way. Their only purpose is to hang on the wall and be seen. You don’t wash these. You vacuum it off ; shake it out to clean them. So, they’re non-functional, they’re just pieces of art for your wall. JD: [pause.] Perfect. Perfect. [pause.] So tell me Laura about your interest in quiltmaking. LW: Well, I don’t have a traditional background for quiltmaking. I start--I have made traditional quilts, but I actually learned how to sew through the 4-H system. I was--I was born and raised in Colorado. And, I had a wonderful 4-H teacher. She was a mother of one of my friends and she taught us how to make clothing. So, I learned how to sew with her. I went through the whole system until, you know, your teenage years. And then, when we moved to Minnesota, we moved to Minnesota [added Scandinavian accent.] where I learned my second language. [laughter.] And, we moved to Minnesota and I went away--I went to college there, and I was put into the costuming department at the school, because I knew how to sew. So, I could sew the costumes. It was part of a work study program. And, when I was there, I learned how to dye fabric--costume parts. So, I became a dyer. Right out of school, I was dyeing and printing and doing silkscreen work on fabric and making clothing out of it ; and sewing the clothes, you know, for boutiques and stuff like that. And, then when I moved to Elgin, Illinois which is where I still live. I moved next door to a woman whose name is Janet Dye. And, Janet is a quiltmaker and I owe so much to her, because she introduced me [unidentified noise --poor audio quality.] to the world of quiltmaking. And, she would bring me to shows, wonderful shows like this, and we would go to programs where there would be presenters. And, one of the very first presenters I saw was Caryl Bryer Fallert. And Caryl was doing the hand-dye fabric. She was making art quilts which I’d never heard of before. And, so she--she was so inspiring that I started using that fabric that was dying to make this thing called art quilts. So, I gave up traditional quilting. I’ve made them for beds ; I’m not good at it. JD: Seriously? LW: But, I gave that up, and about the same time, I met another woman whose name is Melody Johnson. And Melody was--she was interested in fabric dyeing. And, I was interested in this technique that she was doing which is fusing. And, so we kind of combined efforts. We formed a company called, “Artfabrik.” And, we sold hand-dyed fabrics and threads, but also I started using those fabrics to make fused art quilts. That’s--the rest is nothing new. JD: [JD laughs.] [inaudible.] That’s great. So, how many hours a week do you devote to quilting? LW: Probably, well I have--I have a business. Artfabrik is my business. I make hand-dyed fabrics and threads. I travel and teach all the time. So, I’m always developing classes or I’m out somewhere--seminar, or an exhibit like this. I make quilts to sell. I make a lot of small artwork to sell. So I would say, probably--how many hours are there in a week? Yeah. JD: I can hear that was the answer. LW: Yeah--at least--at least [high pitch from microphone.] ten hours a day or more. It’s kind of a --you know, you have--when you’re in this business. I love this. I love looking around and looking at all the vendors and stuff, because you know they’re all entrepreneurs. They’re all small business people at cottage industries. And, I love the idea that quilting is based upon all this different cottage industries. And, they’ve all evolved and developed their [high pitched sound--from distant microphone.] they’re earning a living by doing this. It’s a wonderful--it’s a wonderful industry. [inaudible.] JD: It is. What’s your earliest quilt memory? LW: My Grandmother had quilts that she passed down to us, and I still have some of those. And, I look at the fabrics that are in them and they remind me of her and my mother and a--a little doll blanket like and one of my Grandma’s aprons. JD: Hmm. [pause and then clears throat.] Have you ever used quilts to get through a [high pitch of microphone again.] difficult time? LW: Yeah. Several--many, many years ago one of my sisters passed away. And, it was really traumatic. It was very hard for everybody in the family. And, it was also the same time that 9/11 happened. So, there was all this emotion going on. And, it was a real emotional time. So, I would take fused fabric and chop it up and rearrange it. And, I did a lot of collage quilts. They were called, “Color Chip Collage” quilts. So, this whole series madeduring that time span where it was very therapeutic to play with color and fabric and to make something that was all, you know, fractured and chopped up and make it into something beautiful. So, it was a good time with--experience. It helped me get through that time. JD: Tell me about an amusing experience that has occurred through your quiltmaking, or your teaching. LW: My favorite story is about my husband. [chuckles.] My husband is--he works, of course but one time, we went to the Houston Quilt Show because I needed somebody to help me with the booth. I didn’t have a helper. So, he decided he would drive down to Houston with me and we would set up the booth, and we did all that, and he was fine. But, he’s never been to a quilt show before in his life. So, we’re all set up and the doors open and you know how the herd of people come in, and he looked at the--looked at the aisle and at one point he turned to me and he said, ‘It’s women! It’s all women.’ [laughter.] He was so scared. [laughter continues.] It was the funniest thing. JD: That’s a good one. LW: Yeah. [laughter.] JD: What art or quilt groups do you belong to? LW: I belong to a group in Illinois [high pitched microphone again.] called, “Professional Art Quilters Alliance.” It’s PAQA. P-A-Q-A. And, it’s a group of people in our area. We have people from Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana. We all meet maybe once a month of the second Wednesday in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. You’re all welcome. [chuckle.] And, we gather together. Our purpose is not so much to--to have cookies and cake, it’s more about advancing ourselves professionally. So we’re--we encourage each other. You know, we’ll show each--we mentor each other, basically. So we’re talking about teaching. We’re talking about how you can make--turn your--what you’re making into a business somehow. If somebody has experience in pattern-making, they’ll help other members. If you published a book, you talk to the other people about publishing, and that type of thing. So, it’s--it’s--it’s for people that are interested in treating this as a professional. JD: Wonderful. Have advances in technology influenced your work? LW: Yes. Well, fusible web is an advance in technology, I guess. Although, it’s been around since the 70’s or so, right? So that’s--that really changed how I worked from being a piecer to somebody who makes the pictorial art work. But, what I liked about fusing when I discovered it was I could take that idea in my head and translate it into fabric really rapidly. And, I didn’t have to piece things together. So, yeah fusing has changed the way I work. JD: Describe the place where you work. LW: I work in a pit. [laughter.] I work in the pit every day. I work in the basement of my house. The basement is--is pretty nice though. It doesn’t have any outside light, but--I’ve a fairly large laundry room. So, one wall of the laundry room is the--the washer and the dryer and a sink. And, just behind that is a very large table--about 4 x 8 table with a plywood top with canvas on top. And, that’s my printing table, or where I dye fabric. There are shelves for the dye over here--for mixing the dyes. There’s storage. And, then there’s a little office space where I’ve all my files and the computer and my bulletin boards and something like that. So that’s one room. On the other side, is a sewing area where I’ve two large sewing cabinets. [high pitch from microphone again.] And, then I have cabinets on the wall for storing quilts--the long quilts are rolled up and put in there. And, then there’s a large table with that Teflon sheet all over it where I--is my fusing table. And, I--I have to stand up when I work so I--it’s a little elevated. So, I stand there, so. And I have a design wall and really good lighting. JD: Lighting is important. LW: Yeah. JD: Tell me how you balance your time. LW: I try to work [muffled --poor audio quality.] on something a little bit--I work in units of time. How’s that, so, I’ll set aside an hour to do computer work ; set aside an hour or two to do stitching. I break up my day that way. I try to focus in on what I’m doing with that time and not be too scattered. But, I am one of those--I’m a task stacker, you know, those people that like to do multi-task. I like to do multiple things in life, so I’m in my studio ; I have to be doing the laundry at the same time. JD: [JD laughs.] Fortunately, it’s right there. LW: Yeah. JD: So you said, you do use a design wall? LW: Yeah. Yes. I use--it’s also for photographing quilts, so I’ll design on there and then it’s it’s--I’ve got lights, so I can also take photos myself. JD: Good idea. What do you think that makes a great quilt? LW: I think a great quilt is something that’s well designed, it’s--it’s balanced, it has all the basic principles of design, variety, and contrast, repetition, and balance. And, it grabs you--when you see it, it grabs you--it sucks you in. That’s the--That’s a mark of a good artist--somebody that sucks you in [laughter.] [inaudible.] JD: What makes a great quiltmaker? LW: Somebody who’s--appreciates fabric a lot. How’s that? [laughter.] JD: I think everybody here is that-- LW: So far, we’ve got a room full. [laughter.] JD: Whose works are you drawn to and why? LW: I’m drawn to a lot. I like Melody Johnson’s work. [muffled singing in background.] On the other hand, I like Frieda Anderson’s work, because it--because of the design. She has really rich colors. But, she has very elegant design. That’s kind of simple, but they’re very nicely cut elegant designing. Are we talking about quiltmakers or-- JD: Could be any artist. LW: I would love Van Gogh’s work. I love Vincent Van Gogh’s work. Any of the Impressionists because of their use of color and light and the way they place color next to color, it’s wonderful. I’m very fortunate living in the Chicago area. They have the Art Institute of Chicago there. They’ve a wonderful exhibit of--wonderful area called the Impressionists’ artists. I go down there and--get [inaudible.] wonderful place. JD: Hmm. With your smaller pieces you’re doing--hand work with your larger quilts, do you do hand or machine? And, how do you feel about hand versus machine quilting? LW: Well, on a larger piece, I would do mostly [high pitch microphone.] machine work, although starting to combine hand on--with a machine, but--and the small work, because you’re--you know you’re holding your hands and your manipulating, it’s easier on a small piece than a big piece. I’m not making as many large pieces anymore, because I don’t have as much time. And, I’m so caught-up in the hand stitching that I want--only want to make small. JD: Why is quiltmaking important to your life? LW: Well, quiltmaking is a way for me to support my family, of course. It’s a way for me to earn money to support my family. It’s also a way for me to travel [a low pitch murmur of happy birthday is being sung in the background.] around the world. I was in Ireland this year, Great Britain. Next year, I will go to Spain and Denmark. So, I get to go to these places that I wouldn’t normally get to go to. I get to go to places like Duluth, Georgia. [chuckle.] I have never been. So, it gives me a way to travel and see things. I get to meet all sorts of really fun people like Jodi and other quiltmakers that I really enjoy meeting the other teachers. We share the nation. We commiserate. We know each other only because we’ve seen each other on the road. And, I have all these students that have really interesting lives. I’ve had zoologists and people that have worked at NASA ; I mean they just have really interesting lives. They train dogs ; I mean there’s just so many interesting people out there. It’s a great way to meet--meet a variety of people. JD: It is just a big guild. LW: It is. JD: What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life? LW: Well, of course, traditionally they--you know, we used them for comfort and to keep us warm and that type of thing. I think that they--they join us to the past generations. They--they cross generations and they--they give us that feeling of nostalgia, or connection to the people in the past. As well as to you know, to your neighbors and friends. So that’s--[high pitched microphone.] It’s a great way to network socially. JD: And, then thinking specifically of women-- LW: Yes. JD: The importance of quilts to women. How do you feel about that? LW: Yeah, Well were--I think as women we’re tactile people. You know, from the moment you’re born, you’re wrapped up in fabric, right? So, fabric is really important to us. [laughter.] Hopefully, you’re wrapped up in fabric. Anyway, so we’re tactile people and we like the touch of it and the feel of it. And, its--and now it’s something that women are probably more familiar with and I don’t know, because we have the tradition of sewing. For a lot of--most women have that tradition in their background. JD: So, what has happened to your quilts? Where are they? LW: My quilts are in collections from Japan to Great Britain, Spain. They’re all around the country. A lot of people buy them--the smaller versions to put in their sewing room, or--or on the walls. I’ve sewed big ones and little ones. I give them away once in a while. But, they connect me to people everywhere. JD: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing quiltmakers today? LW: I think the biggest challenge is, finding that next gadget that you want. [JD chuckles.] It’s very difficult--you have to walk aisle after aisle. [more laughter.] [inaudible.] It is so hard. I know I’ve been looking for hours already. I’ve got my eye on a few things [laughter continues.] That’s my biggest challenge right now. JD: Why do we love to learn? [more laughter.] LW: Yes. JD: Is there anything you wanna add that we haven’t touched on? LW: No, I think this is a really wonderful art form. It’s--it gives you so much in your life. And, it’s a great way to connect with other people and to see the world. And it’s--it’s just something that has really fulfilled my life. And, I don’t know what I would have done. I would have had to be a secretary. [JD chuckles.] Oh, no offence to [inaudible.] [laughter.] JD: Yeah. Great. Well thank you Laura. This interview was with Laura Wasilowski. Thank you for allowing me to interview you today as for the Quilters’ S.O.S.--Save our Stories project for the Alliance for American Quilts here in Duluth, Georgia. Our interview is concluding at 12:36. [clapping.] audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/ Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Jodie Davis Interview Date 10/16/2010 Location The location of the interview Duluth, Georgia Transcriber Ann Garvey Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Sally Maxwell Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Laura Wasilowski Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Description An account of the resource Laura Wasilowski talks about her quilt, "On a Leaf and a Prayer", a fused quilt made from hand-dyed fabric. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 10/16/2016 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GA30188-003 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/465d2d97e7e1a621bb7b34d6894da588.jpg 7cc6b440db300281c1330a10d94fb9e6 http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/files/original/ee65f5adb95a712a5579942198435cb6.jpg 7defe5944f8989e3750f44b22f5964c4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Barack Obama Quilt QSOS Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Marjorie Diggs Freeman OHMS Object http://quiltalliance.net/ohms-viewer-master/viewer.php?cachefile=BOQ-044Freeman.xml OHMS Object Text Raw full-text of the OHMS Object. Used for full-text searching. 5.2 QSOS Interview with Marjorie Freeman Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories Quilt Alliance Marjorie Freeman 0 http://quiltalliance.net/qsos-audio/BOQ-044 Freeman1.mp3 Other audio 0 Introduction This is Karen Musgrave and I'm conducting a Quilters SOS Save Our Stories interview 17 23 Tell me about the quilt you brought in today Please tell me about your quilt &quot ; Yes We Can and In My Lifetime&quot ; Freeman explains how she came to create her quilt &quot ; Yes We Can and In My Lifetime&quot ; for the Journey of Hope Exhibit. The quilt displayed in the exhibit was the second version of a quilt she already had made honoring Barack Obama before he had won the presidential nomination. To exemplify her theme of hope, she uses stars and quotations in her design. African American quiltmakers ; African American quilts ; Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; Barack Obama ; Carolyn Mazloomi ; Democratic National Convention ; Design process ; Embroidery ; Fabric - Geometric ; fabric selection ; Female quiltmakers ; Hand quilting ; Journey of Hope Exhibit ; Machine quilting ; Master Quilter ; quilt design ; Quilt Purpose - Artistic expression ; Quilt Purpose - Celebration ; Quilt Purpose - Exhibition ; quilt series ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; studio quilt artist 17 790 What are your plans for this quilt? What are your plans for the quilt Freeman shares her plans for the two quilts, which was originally to gift to Obama when he became president. Her new plan is to gift one to each of her two sons. Barack Obama ; children ; Quilt Purpose - Gift or presentation ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; Quiltmaking for family ; Quilts as gifts 17 849 Yes We Can and In My Lifetime quilt design So tell me about the words that appear in the center of the stars Freeman explains in detail the design behind her Yes We Can and In My Lifetime quilt which includes pictures and come of Barack Obama campaign speech quotes depicted within stars on the quilt. African American quiltmakers ; African American quilts ; Barack Obama ; campaign promise ; childhood ; economy ; Female quiltmakers ; Journey of Hope Exhibit ; patriotism ; presidential campaign ; quilt design ; Quilt shows/exhibitions ; quotation ; race relations ; segregation ; social justice 17 1303 Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking Freeman talks about her relationship with quilts from childhood to present day. She grew up with quilts from her grandmother and mother and used them as bed coverings throughout her life. African American quiltmakers ; baby quilt ; blocks ; childhood ; Children's quilts ; Donating quilts ; Female quiltmakers ; Generational quiltmaking ; grandchildren ; Home sewing machine ; Learning quiltmaking ; Quilt guild ; Quilt Purpose - Bedcovering ; Quilt Purpose - Charity ; Quilt Purpose - Personal enjoyment ; Quiltmaking for family ; Sampler quilts 17 1664 What art or quilt groups do you belong to? You mentioned belonging to the African American quilt circle Freeman mentions two of the quilting groups that she belongs to and some of the activities that the groups participate in. She was recently elected as part of the guild leadership for one of the groups. African American Quilt Circle ; African American quiltmakers ; Durham Orange Quilters ; Female quiltmakers ; Guild activities ; Guild leadership ; Learning quiltmaking ; Quilt guild ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 1766 Advice for new quiltmakers / teaching new quiltmakers What advice would you offer someone starting out? Freeman offers advice for new quiltmakers and explains her method for teaching her students how to quilt. She guides students and answers questions but promotes independence in the learning process. advice ; Art quiltmaking ; Art quilts ; children ; Female quiltmakers ; Hand quilting ; Home sewing machine ; Learning quiltmaking ; Quilt Purpose - Gift or presentation ; Quiltmaking for family ; Quilts as gifts ; Teaching quiltmaking 17 The Alliance for American Quilts Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories Project The Barack Obama Quilt QSOS Tape Number BOQ-044 Marjorie Diggs Freeman, Interviewee Karen Musgrave, Interviewer Kim Greene, Transcriber Durham, North Carolina March 4, 2009 10:15 a.m. Note: The telephone wiring in Marjorie Diggs Freeman has problems which caused the call to be disconnected three separate times after about 40 minutes. Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I&#039 ; m conducting a Quilters&#039 ; S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Marjorie Diggs Freeman. Marjorie is in Durham, North Carolina and I&#039 ; m in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview over the phone. Today&#039 ; s date is March 4, 2009. It is now 10:15 in the morning. Marjorie, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk with me. Please tell me about your quilt &quot ; Yes We Can and In My Lifetime.&quot ; Marjorie Diggs Freeman (MF): I actually have two quilts by that name. The second one is the one that is on exhibit in Washington, D.C. at the Historical Society. [&quot ; Quilts for Obama: An Exhibit Celebration of our 44th President&quot ; at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. from January 11 to July 26, 2009.] For me to tell you about that quilt, I guess I need to tell you about the first one that I made because the second one is based upon the first one. I was so excited when the possibility of Barack Obama running for president occurred that I knew that I was going to make a quilt about him. Period. There was no doubt about it. I was excited back in 2004 when he did his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. I think the keynote address was &quot ; The Audacity of Hope&quot ; [Vintage, 2008.] and he later did a book called &quot ; The Audacity of Hope.&quot ; When he made that address I said to myself, &#039 ; This man is somebody really, really special,&#039 ; and so my book club and I read the book &quot ; The Audacity of Hope.&quot ; It talked about compromise and cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, but at any rate I knew after reading that book, and how he talked about hope, that America really had the potential to offer hope to everybody. If you look at my quilt, the first thing you see when you look at it is the word &quot ; HOPE&quot ; emblazoned across the middle of it. I knew if I ever did a quilt it had to have &quot ; hope&quot ; written in huge letters across it. When I decided to do this quilt I knew I had to use that and for me it had to be in red, white, and blue. I purchased the background fabric for the quilt long before this, well 2008, before that Democratic Convention was even held. As I said before, I was going to make this quilt regardless of the outcome because I believe Barack Obama has all the skills, the ability, the charisma, all the leadership, the knowledge and everything to make a great leader for our country. I had in the back of my mind what I thought I wanted to do but I really wasn&#039 ; t sure so during last year&#039 ; s convention when he was actually nominated, just before he was nominated. I started designing the quilt and I said to myself, &#039 ; How am I going to go about this?&#039 ; Being a relatively traditional quilter, I decided that he is such a star I&#039 ; m going to use stars and that&#039 ; s basically what I did. It has stars all over it and I didn&#039 ; t just want plain stars with his picture in it, but I wanted words that sort of described him as a person or words that stood for what he symbolized or said. I took words from what I felt he represented. I felt he had appeal to everybody in the United States. He cut across all segments of the population so I thought he was a generational reconciler. That was one of the phrases I put in one of the stars. In his book and in the speeches that he made while he was campaigning, while he was going through the primaries, he felt that people were really hungry for unity and so I had &quot ; A Unified America&quot ; in yet another star. In the speech that he gave on race in Philadelphia, I think that was in March of last year, he said that we were looking for, we needed a more perfect union and that all of the people were, all Americans were, looking for a change and that it was possible for everybody in America to have social justice and economic justice, it didn&#039 ; t matter. I thought I wanted to include all of those elements in the quilt. As I sat there designing, I actually drafted the stars myself, those things I included on my quilt. Well, once I looked at my background fabric and I thought about how to do this, you know you have one idea in mind and then you start to get it together and it really doesn&#039 ; t work out. I found that I had to put all of my stars on pentagons because the background fabric was so busy my stars didn&#039 ; t show up so I had to kind of alter my plan a little bit, which I did, but that didn&#039 ; t matter. In order to go along with my theme of hope, I chose a quote that he had given when he gave an acceptance speech in Iowa, when he won that primary and the quote was about hope not being just about blind optimism but it was something we really had to work for and reach for, I put that in a rectangle in my quilt. Now you may say, &#039 ; Well this is about the first quilt, how does that impact on the quilt that is hanging in Washington [D.C.]?&#039 ; Well I say the two quilts are really interrelated and I had to use them on the second quilt as well and let me tell you why. I got really excited when Dr. Mazloomi, Carolyn Mazloomi, called me and said that she was inviting black master quilters from across the United States to participate in an exhibit in Washington, D.C. for quilts honoring Obama. Well, first of all, I could barely speak because I was a &quot ; master quilter,&quot ; that in itself shook me to the very soles of my feet. Aside from that I thought, wow that was an honor and then I thought this will be a piece of cake, I have a quilt already made, but then I said to Carolyn, &quot ; You know I really can&#039 ; t put in this quilt that I have because it&#039 ; s not as good as it should be because there is some imperfections in it and if I&#039 ; m going to have something hanging in an exhibit it has to be &quot ; just so.&quot ; Much to my surprise, a couple of days later I get another call that says, &#039 ; The quilt can not be larger than 36 inches by 36 inches.&#039 ; Well needless to say the first quilt was much larger than that, so therefore I had to redo it anyway. [laughs.] KM: What size was the first quilt? MF: The first quilt was 38 [inches.] by 45 [inches.] and it had a lot of images of Barack Obama on it and one of the things she said was that Roland Freeman does not want to have a lot of photo images of Barack Obama on the quilt. I thought oh well so I would have to redo it anyway. That eliminated the first quilt automatically. When I redid the quilt, the second quilt I only used one image of Barack Obama and I used the stars but I had to rearrange it and it worked out okay. The second quilt is completely, the one that is in Washington, is completely hand done. There are no machine stitches in that quilt at all except the ones that hold the navy blue binding on. Other than that, it is all done by hand. KM: Why did you choice to do it all by hand? MF: Because I enjoyed it. [laughs.] Some people may think I&#039 ; m a mad person but it was such a special honor for me I wanted to make it special and I enjoy hand work tremendously so therefore I opted to do the entire thing by hand. That is why I elected to do it that way. As I made the first quilt I prayed that he would be elected to the presidency. I didn&#039 ; t have to pray as much for the second quilt. I had to pray that I finished it in time because I was doing it all by hand so my prayer was a little bit different [laughs.] than it was when I was doing the first one. The first one was backed with fabric from Africa but the second was not, it was just backed with plain white fabric with little stars on it. That was what happened with my first and second quilts because I had to complete that, the second quilt, the one that is the smaller one in thirty days and I managed to do it in time believe it or not. KM: What are your plans for the quilt? MF: In as much as I have two and I have two sons one will get one quilt and one will get the other quilt. My initial plan for the first one was to actually give it to President Obama when he became president and if that happens he will get the quilt. Nothing would delight me more. My eldest son already has a quilt that I made for him. My second son does not, so my younger son will get the quilt that is hanging at the Historical Society, so that will be what happens with the two quilts. I feel that they should stay in the family, but if Barack wants one, he can have which ever one he chooses actually. [laughs.] KM: Tell me about the words that appear in the centers of the stars. MF: Okay with pleasure. In the upper left hand corner there are the words &quot ; Social and Economic Justice for All.&quot ; I feel that is one of the campaign issues that President Obama was putting forth and that is one of the things that he is really working for now. He is facing some terrible problems right now in our country with the economy being what it is, but he realizes that it is going to take a lot of time. I felt that is one of the problems in America right now and that there is no equality across the board for everybody. I think that was one of the appeals to the general population and that was one of his platforms and I think he is working toward that. That was in one star, and then on the right there is one that says, &quot ; A More Perfect Union.&quot ; His speech in Philadelphia, I think I mentioned that earlier, addresses racism and that speech I think they entitled: &quot ; We the people in order to form a more perfect union,&quot ; which is actually a quote. It is not an original at all but it&#039 ; s a quote from the Constitution. This is what he wants for our country, it is nothing new. We can always do better. America can always improve itself. We have gotten better as the years have gone on. That Constitution was written when slavery was very much in vogue, it was alive, it was well and there are issues now that still we have to embrace. There are problems of racism that still exist. We still have issues of immigration to address and there are other problems in our country, so we are still working toward a more perfect union. It&#039 ; s not a perfect country, we still have flaws and so therefore I felt that the fact that he realizes this and he is interested in doing things a little differently, he wants a different approach, I felt that this is something that I had to include in one of the stars. Another star, the one in the middle, says &quot ; A Unified America.&quot ; I feel that people really want to be unified. I grew up during the time of World War II and there was such unification around America in spite of all the segregation that existed and things during that time, people were still, we were true Americans, we had a common cause, we were fighting for the same thing. I don&#039 ; t know if it was because we were at war as a country but I remember saving stamps in a stamp book. Every Tuesday at school they sold stamps that you saved and after you filled up the book you got a war bond. You saved aluminum foil, you saved tin cans and lids and things like that. Everybody was doing something for the benefit of the country and it seems as though we&#039 ; ve gotten away from that. We came together after 9-11, but that kind of dissipated. We come together when there are problems in the country, but then it just fades away. We come together in the time of crisis, but I think we all really need to work together all of the time toward common goals and that is why that was there &quot ; A Unified America.&quot ; The star on the left &quot ; Generational Reconciliation&quot ; I spoke about earlier. Barack Obama appeals to all segments of the population. He definitely appeals to the young, and he appeals to many older people because they see that he brings something new to the table, a new idea. We find out that the old ways of doing things aren&#039 ; t working so well so we have to look at a new way of doing our business. I worked with the campaign here for Barack Obama, registering people, I worked the polls, I stood out in the rain on election day soaking wet but it didn&#039 ; t matter because I felt if he doesn&#039 ; t get elected at least I can say I did what I could do for him to get elected. He does appeal to everybody. In the middle there is a huge star and that star says, &#039 ; The time is now to bring real CHANGE to the country we love.&#039 ; That encapsulates everything that I think he stands for, because we&#039 ; ve got to change the way business is being done in Washington because the old way just was not working. I think that explains what all those stars mean to me, that is how I interpreted it and of course I have the one image of Barack Obama at the top center that has his picture. KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. MF: I haven&#039 ; t always had an interest in quilting, but I&#039 ; ve always had quilts around me, always. I guess it started early on when I wasn&#039 ; t really cognizant of quilts. I have the baby quilt that my mother and grandmother made for me ; still have it. As a child, we did not have purchased blankets. I had heavy quilts on me at night that my mother made. All I&#039 ; d known for covers when I lived at home were quilts. During my married life I purchased blankets and things like that of course. I watched my mother make quilts, no special pattern at all, just made quilts. I developed serious, not a serious interest, I will just say an interest in quilts in the eighties when I was a principal of an elementary school and I needed a new activity to kind of relax myself. I had gotten a book on a sampler quilt and I was determined to try all these different blocks and to make a quilt and again I did it all by hand. I was going to do these blocks all by hand. Not that I didn&#039 ; t have a sewing machine because I&#039 ; ve always had a sewing machine. I used to make everything I wore including coats, believe it or not. With the coming of children you don&#039 ; t have time for that. At any rate, I picked up this book and I started making these blocks off and on to just relax myself after a stressful day. Over the years, I finally got these blocks finished and put together in a queen size quilt. I won&#039 ; t tell you how many years it took but when it was time to put all of these blocks together for this queen size quilt I knew that I had to use the sewing machine to put the sashing on or I would lose my mind, which is what I did. I used the sewing machine for the drop around the edge of the bed and I also used the sewing machine to help make the shams for the pillows. That was in &#039 ; 88 I guess, when I took an early retirement. After that I did quilted Christmas stockings and small wall hangings and things of that nature and I was into other kinds of crafts. I was in upstate New York on the Vermont border where it was cold so I was doing more knitting, but then I moved to North Carolina and I left my other needlecraft and really started quilting. When I arrived here I rejoined a group called The Links and they were building a Habitat house. The Links decided it would be nice to give the people in this Habitat house a quilt. Well they looked at me and I said, &#039 ; Oh, of course I can do that!&#039 ; So I helped certain ladies in The Links and another group we were working with in putting together, making blocks and putting together a quilt for the people who were going to be the owners of the house. That was the beginning of my quilting. That would have been 1992. I did quilting on my own off and on until I joined a group called the African American Quilt Circle and boy oh boy those ladies were so inspiring and it was so exciting that I haven&#039 ; t stopped. That was where I guess my interest in quilting really and truly began. It was like being ignited, a firecracker being lit! I guess I&#039 ; ve been quilting for, really seriously quilting for about ten years. As I think of that, you made me really think about it, how long I really have been serious about quilting. As I said before, quilting has always been a part of my life. My mother was making a quilt I guess a year before she died but I&#039 ; ve always had them around me, they&#039 ; ve always been a part of my life. KM: You mentioned belonging to the African American Quilt Circle, do you belong to any other art or quilt groups? MF: In deed I do. I belong to the Durham Orange Quilters which is a group of ladies that live in Orange and Durham Counties here in North Carolina. Last year and this year I&#039 ; ve been elected to be their workshop chairperson and that&#039 ; s a very interesting group in that we have speakers every month or an activity going on every month and I have the exciting job of having teachers come in to do workshops for us. That&#039 ; s been very exciting and eye opening because I get a chance to research and look and see what&#039 ; s new, what&#039 ; s out there, and it&#039 ; s been very mind expanding for me. That group has two hundred members at least. The African American Quilt Circle has sixty plus I would say. That group is based in Durham, North Carolina. I&#039 ; m the program chairperson for that group so it keeps me busy. [laughs.] KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out? MF: I look to people who are really interested in quilting. What I have done with people who really show an interest, I give them some basic instruction on how to put things together. I have actually taught people who don&#039 ; t have a sewing machine how to quilt. Once they have the basic instruction I let them go on their own and I answer their questions and I will tell you why I do it that way. I was self-taught through books and I learned the traditional way of quilting and I was very busy matching those corners and all of that. What it did to me, Karen, was it stifled me later on. I learned all the skills of the quarter inch and the matching and all of that, which was good background, don&#039 ; t get me wrong, but what happened when I wanted to break away from that and do art quilts and do things on my own, where as part of that was beneficial it also kind of held me back because I didn&#039 ; t feel as free and I couldn&#039 ; t let go of the traditional ideas as much. I have found that if I just give the basic information, the learner is much freer and is able to do things on their own much more quickly than if I instruct them on all the little ins and outs of traditional quilting. I don&#039 ; t know if you can understand that or not. KM: I can, definitely. MF: That is what I&#039 ; ve found. I&#039 ; ve sought out, not sought out but when I talk to people and I find they have a truly sincere interest in quilting that is what I do. I work with a lot of people one on one. I even taught a ten year old girl how to quilt. She made a pillow for her grandfather who has since died, and the joy that gave her and gave him was remarkable. Another fifteen year old girl made a wall hanging for a high school project that was descriptive of her life and that was very rewarding for me as well as for her. She is a student. She is actually a senior at Spellman now. All of those things are rewarding for me and I did not have to give a whole lot of instruction [phone disconnection.] KM: You were talking about the fifteen year old girl. MF: She finished the quilt and she is now a senior at Spellman College and so you never know the impact that your individual teaching will have on a person later on. KM: Is &quot ; Yes We Can and In My Lifetime&quot ; typical of your style? MF: Yes, you see I&#039 ; m still bound up in this traditional thing. However, I have spread my wings and I have done some very non-traditional things. I do a lot of scrap quilting. I have lots of fabric from Africa and I have some silks and I do a lot of appliqué. I love to do appliqué and things with my hands of course. I have taken some classes with Lyric Kinard and Hollis Chatelain so I can do some painting. I&#039 ; m interested in that now and other forms of embellishment on my quilts. I&#039 ; m kind of spreading my wings and trying some new things. KM: Describe your studio. MF: It never was a bedroom. I live in a three-bedroom townhouse. One of the bedrooms is like a TV room, the second one is my studio. Its full! where should I start? I could almost go in there and walk around it, but my studio has two walls of bookcases, one filled with fabrics. On another wall there are books and more fabric, threads, buttons. On the wall with books there is a table in front of the window which I look out of and get inspirations. I also have a computer in there and a TV and a tape player or I should say a CD player, I listen to music. I have a closet that is full of fabric, on the shelves and on the floor, a chest-a-drawers which I have had all of my life. I say all of my life because it was with me as a child and I still have it. I have a table that has collapsible leaves which I use for cutting. The table with my sewing machine on it. [phone disconnection.] On top of my bookcases I have baskets and boxes in those baskets are all sorts of things. I actually have adinkra stampers that I picked up in Ntonso, Ghana when I was there. They use them to stamp adinkra symbols on fabric. I have scraps. I have glue. You know you have to have ways of storing all these kinds of stuff: lace and ribbons and embroidery thread. I even have baskets that have needlepoint work in them. Another one has stuff you are going to do someday, embellishments, beads from Africa, notecard supplies, brushes, all sorts of stuff like that. On the walls I have art work that my brother did. He was a professional artist for Associated Press. I have some of my work of course and it&#039 ; s a crowded spot but there is plenty of room for me to get around in and do what I have to do. Also on these bookcases I have a box of paints, boxes for beading and that sort of thing. I have baskets of scraps. [phone disconnection.] KM: Are you the type of person that works on one project at a time or multiple projects at a time? MF: Multiple. [laughs.] I can&#039 ; t just concentrate on just one thing because I get too many inspirations at different times so I&#039 ; m all over the place. I have multiple UFOs [unfinished objects.] under my bed and I vowed that in 2009 I was going to finish them, but I don&#039 ; t think I&#039 ; m going to be very successful. So I have a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Then I have to work on projects that people want me to do for them, so I&#039 ; m all over the place. I can&#039 ; t just concentrate on any one thing. If I waited to finish one thing before I went to the next I wouldn&#039 ; t get very much done. KM: How would you like to be remembered? MF: Wow that&#039 ; s a tough question. I guess I want to be remembered as somebody who really cared about the art of quilting. I want to be remembered as somebody who shared what she knew. As somebody who always encouraged people, who kept an open mind, who was creative and kind and gave of her time and her talent. To me when you do what you really enjoy it&#039 ; s obvious in the end product. I want my quilts to tell a story. I want my quilts to tell about my life, my experiences, and my family, and I hope that they reflect what I enjoy, what I believe in, and my favorite things. I hope that looking even deeper that they describe me as a person who always did her best. KM: Is there anything that you would like to share before we conclude? MF: The past couple of years I&#039 ; ve entered a new stage of my life where I have been able to concentrate more on quilting and wanting to learn new things and really concentrating on expanding my skill and my knowledge about the new things and being able to express myself in new ways through quilting. It has been very exciting for me to begin to do that. You know sometimes you can look at a person&#039 ; s work and you can say, &#039 ; Oh I know who did that,&#039 ; or &#039 ; Oh, so and so did that.&#039 ; I don&#039 ; t know that I want to be remembered that way. I just want to continue to thoroughly enjoy what I&#039 ; m doing and continue to share it with other people ; to see and help others see it as the true art that it is. KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day and sharing with me. You were wonderful. MF: I thank you and thank you for your patience during all the interruptions on the telephone line. [laughs.] KM: That is quite alright. We are going to conclude our interview at 11:03. audio 0 http://quiltalliance.net http://qsos.quiltalliance.org/ Interview sponsor Name of interview sponsor Del Thomas Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Karen Musgrave Interview Date 3/4/09 Location The location of the interview Durham, NC by telephone Transcriber Kim Greene Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Marjorie Diggs Freeman Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Description An account of the resource In this interview, Marjorie Freeman shares her quilt "Yes We Can and In My Lifetime"