Maryanne Olson

Maryanne Olson

FL34106-004

Maryanne Olson

Suzanne Sanger

05/21/2003

eQuilter.com

Naples, Florida

Suzanne Sanger

Suzanne Sanger (SS): This is Suzanne Sanger. Today's date is May 21 2003. It's 4:10 p.m. and I'm conducting an interview with Maryanne Olson for the Quilters' [S.O.S.-] Save Our Stories project and the Naples Quilters Guild at my home in Naples, Florida. Maryanne, tell me how long have you lived in Naples?

Maryanne Olson (MO): Well, I really live in Bonita Springs, which is just a suburb of Naples, and it is-well, I moved here in November.

SS: So you're a new resident.

MO: Yes we are.

SS: Clearly you did not learn to quilt in Naples.

MO: No, it goes back many, many years. I've been quilting now for 26 years.

SS: Wow.

MO: Well, I say 26 years, that's from the time I took my first quilting lesson. Needless to say, it was all hand quilting and it was back in the days when browns and beiges and creams and rusts were in. A few years ago I found one of the pieces I never finished-the honeybee and the other little happy things were just not me. It has been in a pile, and I suppose to this day, if I really looked I could find it, but I never did finish it. Then we moved from a Chicago suburb, Crystal Lake, Illinois, which is where I had my first class, and moved to Columbus, Ohio. It was very interesting because when we went to look for a place to live there--we were building a house, my husband had been transferred and I looked for a place near a quilt store. So I automatically moved in to Columbus with my baggage, opened up the yellow pages in the first hotel that we stayed in, found a quilt store, went to the quilt store, met the person who owned the quilt store, and promptly found an apartment within a mile of the quilt store. But that's where I started taking my classes, and then I was working full time, so it was very difficult to keep it up. I am unfortunately a total nut about everything being absolutely perfect, which I'm trying hard to stop doing and just letting it go and create, and not making sure that every single stitch was in the same line and every single thing was just minutely perfect. So I put things away when I took classes there that if they didn't come out absolutely perfect, I put them away. I have one quilt that it turned out to be king size, I left it for 5 years because one corner--it was a lone star and I did it all in batiks--and one corner did not work. For 5 years I left it there until I finally fixed that corner and finished that quilt.

SS: Clearly you didn't believe in the 'evil eye' theory.

MO: I guess I'm not familiar with the evil eye theory.

SS: Oh that's where, you know, in the olden days the quilters always put a mistake in their quilts and that was called the evil eye.

MO: Well, see we referred to that as the Amish. We're close to Amish country there and the theory that we tell, or that I tell when I'm teaching, is that I tell all of my students that this is what the Amish do. They purposely put in a mistake, because only God is perfect, so we put in a mistake.

SS: You didn't buy into that too well for yourself.

MO: No. [laughs.] Oh, I can buy into it for my students. For myself, no. I put totally different parameters on myself.

SS: Maryanne, let's talk about the quilt you brought today. It's clearly not beiges and orange and avocado green and those colors.

MO: No, no.

SS: Tell me more about it.

MO: Well, I have a true love of color and the brighter the color, the better. I've gone through different stages of colors, and I have been very lucky because I have what I would call a knack for color. I can look at a piece of material, look at a color and four months later I can go and buy thread that matches that color.

SS: That's amazing.

MO: It's just something that I was born with. I mean there's no training, no nothing. It's just something that I can do. It helps when you get into really wild and crazy colors, the wilder the color the wilder the print, the more I enjoy it. I love, just absolutely love, teaching a class and having everybody come in, and wanting it to be in this box. And the box consists of not necessarily primary colors, but colors in the order, well, semi-primary, where they cannot see putting wild colors together, or anything. And taking them out of that box and putting them into the world of color. I totally, totally enjoy teaching and I love to see what my students can do. They have to come out of that box and go into a total different mind frame, and I see it happening more and more with every one of my students. I am just so very, very lucky that they'll let me say, 'Oh no, that's horrid. Let's go with-'Well I guess I don't use the word horrid, I'm a little more tactful than that, but I'll say, 'Let's try this. Let's try this. If it works, fine, if it doesn't -you know, let's just play with that.' And it has worked out. I'm just really, really thrilled with what they have done, and the neat part about teaching is the fact that you get to learn everything they've learned. There isn't a class that I haven't learned something from one of my students.

SS: That's wonderful. It's wonderful for you, and I know it must be wonderful for your students. Let's get back to this quilt a little bit. Is there a pattern that repeats? The colors are so wonderful and intense that they blend so beautifully, and the flow of color in this quilt is just fabulous. It causes you to lose the ability to see the pattern in a way, which is a good thing.

MO: well, this is from a book called Strips and Curves, and they suggest that you pick out a fabric that you really like, and then you make your strips. You start with, in this case, I took, I started with my yellows, went through to oranges, picked up an orange-red, went into red, picked up a red-purple, and went into purples. And then, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be fun if I took, (being very frugal, which is ridiculous because I have more fabric I think than mos tof the people in the entire world), but I started taking the ends that were left and adding them on, where in some spots, not necessarily this one, but I've done another one since, where I've taken my yellow and butted it against a purple. Here's a little bit of purple that shows right there, so that I just kept using the colors. I have a student who when I was teaching this class made a mistake. Her mistake was instead of using the solid, she used another strata and cut the strata and attached it to the strata. I cannot tell you how fantastic that is. So we've now incorporated her mistake and some of the other ones. The pattern or the book does come with, or you order the templates in addition, and this is made with the template. And I've now ordered--

SS: This is basically a Drunkard's Path, right?

MO: Not really, it is just--

SS: Similar to?

MO: Similar, okay. But all you're doing is just taking-you have your, well it's not a quarter moon the way you would think of a quarter moon. Think of a quarter of a circle. And then it's just a border around it to make it a square. But it all depends on how you put it together. Now you can make it a Drunkard's Path, you can make it a whole circle, the middle here was supposed to be, a whole circle. This one is the whole circle. But by splitting it up and putting stratas and whole pieces, it's totally different. And then I started putting in some decorative stitching on it and I did the decorative stitching just to bring out some of the colors. I learned--to me this was a learning process; it still is. I ended up using yellow threads on yellow and I used purple thread on purple and then I began to realize, gee, these don't show up the way I want them to, so then I started changing colors. I started putting purples on yellows, and then I started putting yellows on purples, and reds on oranges, and oranges on reds just to bring out the color. I also learned on this quilt that the reason it's called--I should go back a bit-the reason it's called Anniversary is because this was made as a 20th wedding anniversary gift for my husband. I really hadn't picked up anything for him for our anniversary because he was out of town. I think at that time he was in Reno, Nevada, at a convention and I was alone in Columbus, Ohio. So I didn't plan on him giving me anything for our anniversary or celebrating it until we got back, or until we were together. Well, he got together with my granddaughter, and he put together twenty gifts. And they were all in little tiny boxes, and one of them was for our, one of them contained the names of all of our grandchildren. One of them contained a key that he labeled The Key to My Heart. I mean it was just spectacular. One of them was the first ring he ever gave me. That was like the 20th gift, and then there was the little--as I'm opening these all up, my granddaughter is there going on and on about the different things. The businesses we've owned were all in a box. Things like that. And the last one was this ring that he had given me, our first--my first ring. And then she said, 'Oh, wait a minute. Grandpa forgot. He wanted to give you one more for your next anniversary.' and it was the most gorgeous diamond anniversary ring I've ever seen. Immediately, I felt guilty. So I had two days to put this together. [laughs.] So it is not perfect, it was a learning experience, and it was like, let's put it together, let's get it done so that when he walks in the door there's a present for him. But he hangs it in his office and really, in order to bring it down here to use it for the class I was teaching, we had to do everything in the world to convince him that it could leave his office. All he talks about is wanting his quilt back for his office.

SS: Wow. It sounds like you hit the jackpot as much as he did. [laughs obscures words here.]

MO: Oh yes, it was wonderful. But I learned in doing this, the things that you're not supposed to do. I learned that you don't take a quilt like this and put all the batting in and then come back and do the decorative stitching. You do the decorative stitching first and then you put your batting on. So I like to, I would really like to keep this. Unfortunately it is going back to his office, but I like to take in quilts that I have made so that I can tell them, 'Look, these are the mistakes. This is what your shouldn't do. This is what I learned from this. This is what you can learn from it, and the best way to go.'

SS: Very good. Well I can tell you have a long-time interest in quilting, and I know you have already said you started by taking a class. Tell me how long, how many hours a week do you think you quilt?

MO: Now that my life is becoming normal [laughs.], and I'm down here living in paradise, I probably quilt about 20-30 hours a week.

SS: That's pretty good.

MO: Well, right now it's really making samples, class samples. And it's not doing the type of quilting I would like to do. I would like to do more art quilting, more getting into experimenting. But when you start teaching at a place that has never had a teacher, you have to basically, oh back in the old days we called it 'filling the pipeline.' You have to make up enough samples for them so that they can hang them up to show a class. Once you have that established, then you can go in and you can pick up a specific pattern, or a specific technique that you want to teach and do a sample of it, but unless you have something up, people don't realize what they can do. And they're very limited in their belief in themselves. You have to convince your students that they can go far.

SS: I have a feeling you're very good at doing that, Maryanne.

MO: [laughs.] Oh, thank you.

SS: What's your first quilt memory?

MO: Oh, let's see. I think it goes right back to the first, what was it called, it was just called a sampler quilt, and that's my first quilt memory.

SS: The first one you made.

MO: Really, we, I have absolutely nobody in my family who has ever quilted. So this was something new to me.

SS: How'd you happen to get interested in it?

MO: You know, I really don't know. I really don't know. Back many, many years ago when my children were small, I ended up taking sewing classes, which is kind of ridiculous because my mother was an excellent, excellent seamstress. But I could not learn from my mother. I had more problems trying to learn from my mother, so when my fourth son, or my fourth child was born, I decided to go take sewing lessons. So I took sewing lessons for three years and ended up teaching sewing and tailoring, and then that went on the back burner as I went to work full time. And then, I don't know, one day I walked past a quilt store-a little tiny quilt store-and I looked in and I thought, 'Ah, that's what I would like to do.' And that I really have. I've done some sewing as far as clothing, since then. I've wanted to try out, I've done a couple of vests [phone rings; tape stops; resumes.] But they're art vests. And that's where I'd like to stay. I want to experiment more with wearable art.

SS: So your wearables, you've just done a couple of things?

MO: Very few, very limited. Purses, odd things. Even though I dress flashy with a lot of color because I love color, I'm not ready to wear some of the things I see in the art magazines. I really don't particularly want to look like a peacock walking down the street. [laughs.]

SS: You mentioned a son and three other children, how has quilting impacted your family, or has it?

MO: Oh it has, it has. I have 6 children. My husband has two, and for the fortieth birthday of each child they get a quilt of their choice. Well, I had all six of my children in seven years, so I've been really quilting a lot 'cause they're all, they're all right there. And it's interesting because they each had their own idea of what they would like in a quilt. My daughter, who has her house done in Southwestern, wanted a southwestern quilt, so that was done. I have another one who is into hearts, so we had to do something with hearts. My youngest daughter, who's going to be 40 in October, wants snowmen, and I'm having a very hard time with snowmen. I just can't conceive doing a quilt for a bed with snowmen, but somehow we will do that. We also have 16 grandchildren, so we've gotten almost an assembly line of baby quilts. And we just three weeks ago had our first great-grandchild.

SS: Oh, my! How exciting.

MO: And I just finished Kylie Anne's quilt so we just keep going.

SS: [laughs.] Have you ever used quilting to get through a difficult time?

MO: I've used quilting to get through very difficult times. Particularly--that's when I started quilting. I was in the middle of a divorce, and it became, it became an excellent way for me to express myself, my feelings, and start back. Also, when I came down here to Florida, my husband's still working, and I've used it as a way of meeting people. It's absolutely wonderful. There is a special thing about quilters. Oh, I know they say women are catty and all sorts of stuff, but when you meet a quilter, that sort of goes away. They, they're willing to share fabric with you, they're willing to give you tips, they're willing to just do anything to help you. There's a bond there that is totally incredible. I was in Hawaii at the airport and I was doing some hand quilting, and at least four other women came up to me and said that they were quilters too, and you know, you end up taking out pictures of what you did. All of a sudden, grandchildren disappear and out come the quilt pictures. So it is an excellent way of meeting new people.

SS: I think that's true. I've used that myself. What's your favorite thing about quilting?

MO: Color. Color. [laughs.] It seems to be my theme.

SS: What about the process? What about the process is your favorite?

MO: My process-is just designing it. Once the top is done, I lose total interest. I'm not a hand quilter. I have one quilt that I made that does not have one piece of machine stitching in it. Not only did I piece every single piece, hand quilted every single piece, everything. I hate it. [laughs.] Well, it goes back many, many years. And it's really-- it's really some of those horrible materials. But I had back surgery and was confined to bed for six weeks, and I did finish it and did all the hand quilting on it, and I decided no, that's not my thing.

SS: Well, it's good that you tried it, so you know that.

MO: Oh, I know. But you have to try it. You have to try it. I do do all my binding, once I sew the one part on, when I turn my bindings, I do all the binding by hand, so that's my hand input to any quilt. [chuckles.] And I'm not an appliqué person either. I don't feel that I do it well enough. I've fallen in love with Steam-a-Seam 2.

SS: Mm-hmm!

MO: And that seems to be my thing because I can cover up my raw edges and everything with stitching so it doesn't show, but I am in total awe of anybody who can appliqué. I've made up my mind that next season when I come down here, I am going to take a hand appliqué class just so that I can try to get some feel or some love for it, but I just don't feel that my stitches are perfect enough to do it.

SS: Ah, we're back to perfect.

MO: Yep. [laughs, then both laugh.] I guess that's it.

SS: Maryanne, what do you think makes a great quilt?

MO: I think the thing that makes a great quilt is the love that's put into it. When you make a quilt, you put yourself into it. Even if it's just a sampler quilt, if it's just going to be a lap quilt or something, you put yourself into that quilt. You put yourself into it when you go and you look for the pattern, when you cut the pattern out, when you sew it, when you finish it. That's all you, and it's left either to be loved to death and thrown out eventually when it gets to be a rag, of if somebody will preserve it and pass it down to the next person.

SS: What do you think makes a quilt artistically powerful?

MO: Artistically powerful-I think I'd go with color primarily then I'd go with the design. I think those are two key elements. I just like walking into a room and seeing something where the color pops out at you, and then going up and seeing the fine lines, the techniques, the design in it. That's me. I like to look at the workmanship, like I say, I am totally impressed by anybody who can do hand quilting and hand appliqué, but to me, that is something that's the fine, fine, fine points of quilting.

SS: What do you think makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or a collection?

MO: Yes, that's pretty interesting because I've taken classes from some of the greatest quilt teachers in the world right now. I've worked with Ginny Beyer, you know, who I consider really one of the pioneers of quilting. I've worked with Libby Lehman, whose thread play I just absolutely, absolutely love. And it all depends. Museum quality is, there's two different types of museums. In Columbus, we have a historical museum, which goes back and you've got something that was made by a child that goes into a museum. You've got something made by somebody else who is in a museum. The Dairy Barn in Ohio has all contemporary quilts in it, so you're going a completely different way. I've never been to Paducah, so I don't know what Paducah has in their museum, but I would think that it would be combination of all sorts of quilts. Museum quality I think has to be the whole gamut. It has to be from the very, very original, it has to be from the hand pieced to the very far out pieced.

SS: So do you think the things that you think should end up in a museum today, not the old ones, the old ones maybe are there because they still exist, that workmanship--that differentiates what belongs in the museum versus what doesn't, or is it just a whole combination?

MO: I think it has to be a whole combination. Workmanship is excellent, I mean it's what I strive for, but I also strive for the other opposite, the far out part [laughs.] and then you have to have your middle. I've seen people take just your very, very simple basic pattern like you talked about, the Drunkard's Path, and you can go with your basic, what would you say, home spun look in a Drunkard's Path, or you could go to the far end extreme with the bright colors and that. It's so hard for me to picture a museum that wouldn't have a combination of both. I mean it has to have both. You have to have the appliqué, you have to have the hand piecing, and you have to have some of the far out. And now so many people are using the colorful threads, which weren't around before. I love using the metallic threads and the holoshimmer by Sulky and the new neon thread, it just totally changes the look of everything. And I love to throw in some beads to pop it. I guess it becomes less a quilt that you would see on a bed and more of an art form, but I couldn't see a museum that had all bed quilts or one that had all art quilts.

SS: What do you think makes a great quilter?

MO: Again, I think it's the love of material, the love of color, the love of threads. The funniest thing, oh, I shouldn't say it's the funniest thing, but the thing that tickles me the most about anybody that comes into a quilt store, they're always carrying a bolt of fabric in their hand, and they don't, you don't just carry a bolt of fabric up to be cut. While you're waiting for it to be cut, you caress this piece of fabric with your hand. I have never seen anybody who can hold a piece of material, if they are really into it, without petting that bolt of fabric. [laughs.]

SS: What does quilting teach you?

MO: Patience. It teaches you that you have to keep at it. Patience is the most--as far as I'm concerned. It also teaches you that you have to learn to put some time away for yourself to do it. If you really love it, and if you really love yourself, you put some time away for you. For me, quilting is a way of losing myself, taking myself out of difficult situation, taking myself out of any situation and doing something that I really love. And it's a treat. It really is. I just wish I would overcome my habit of buying all the fabric in the world, but [laughs.] it's not that bad a habit to have.

SS: In what ways do you think your quilts reflect your community or your region? Do you do different things in Ohio than you do in Florida? Of course you haven't been in Florida long.

MO: I don't. I don't. I'm a true rebel. I really am. When I started really getting into quilting, I found that I had to do my own thing. Even if we went to a class that was like a mystery class [clock chimes.] and all the colors were provided, what you were going to make, I couldn't do it. I had to pick my own colors. Even though I didn't know what it would look like, I knew that if it had colors that I liked, I would be happy with it.

SS: Do you do that when you take classes from teachers?

MO: Yes, yes. It's interesting because one of my favorite places to take classes is QSDS in Columbus, Ohio. Linda Fowler and Nancy Crow started it. Linda Fowler is still running it, and it is two weeks of quilting classes.

SS: What does QSDS stand for?

MO: Oh, good. I knew you'd ask that.

SS: And I shouldn't have. Never mind, go ahead. [laughing]

MO: No, you shouldn't have. It's think it is called the Quilter's Society of Design Symposium. It's the Design Symposium. And luckily I got to know Linda, and we've become very, very good friends. Linda's work is just incredible. There's a new book out called "Oxymorons" and I was able to look through that book, and I have had classes from at least 12 of the teachers in that book.

SS: Oh, how lucky.

MO: And I've learned from every one of them. I find that sometimes I think I'm probably a very difficult student.

SS: In what way?

MO: I like to learn their techniques. I like to learn what they're doing, but in my mind I still have to do it. I learn their technique but I have to do it my way. I don't mean my way exactly--

SS: You opt to take their technique and use it for your purpose?

MO: And use it for my purpose. Yes.

SS: Now, as a teacher, do you feel, if you have a student like that, are you not energized by that student?

MO: I'm more than energized.

SS: Oh I would think, if you're that kind of student, you would not be difficult for a teacher. I would think you'd be thrilling for a teacher.

MO: Yes, yes, I am. I am. I've taught Flowers and Flies, which is just a wonderful, wonderful creative process, because you take your flowers and it's just a basic, very, very basic flower pattern. Well there's nine flower patterns and three butterfly patterns, and everybody started out with just doing it piece by piece, and no bright colors, no colorful thread, nothing. And I was able to get them out of that into making pieces, into making flowers, and they can't believe how far they've come. It's just so magnificent to see a light bulb pop in one of your students. You can see it. You can see it as it happens. 'I have to do it this way; it has to be this way. I don't use colors, I can't use colors, I hate colors.' And then all of a sudden you see this flower, 'Wait, I went home last week and look what I brought back, and what do you think this and how do you think that is?' And you can take something, like one of the students came in and it was a butterfly and she said, 'This is the most horrible thing. I'm throwing it out. I can't stand it.' And I said, 'You sit right down there at your sewing machine. Here's some thread. Let's go over it. Let's put this here and that there,” and I said, 'Now think about it. Everybody now is lucky enough to have machines that do creative stitches; why not use your stitches? Put them in. See how they work.' I said, 'All right, you hate this butterfly; you're throwing it out. Use it. Use it to experiment with. You're going to throw it out anyway.' Needless to say, it has become her favorite piece of the whole quilt. [laughs.]

SS: What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life?

MO: They've come a long way. You have to go back, how many years ago? Oh, way, way back. You started out with people just taking old clothing whatever they could get their hands on to make a quilt. You used it for warmth. You used it for a gift for a friend. If somebody got married, everybody went together and made a quilt. If somebody had a baby, they did the same thing. It brought love, friendship, warmth, to every relationship, and it's come a long way. I think we've had years where people sort of pushed quilting aside, and now, more and more people, oh there was some quote not too long ago of how many women start quilting each year, and I find that down here, it's really, it's a unique experience. Teaching is two different ways for me. Up north, I can take a class of 20 people and I can show them how to do it, help them a little bit with it, and it's fine. Down here, I need my classes to be six people.

SS: Why is that?

MO: We have a totally different group of people down here. We have people who have now retired. We have people in their 60's, like myself, who need a little extra help, who have been taught all along that this is it. You make sure you do it on this line. You do it this way. You do it that way. They're afraid to experiment. Some people are a little older, have a little trouble understanding, and if you work with them, and you sit down and you can take the time and if you explain it to them-you need to do more than just explain. Like when I teach up north, I've got people in their 20's, 30's, 40's 50's. Down here the range of my students is totally different. It's 50 to 70, and if you sit down with them and you work with them and you have them make samples and make sure that what they do in class, they finish it, they understand it, you need to go a little extra and it's easier if you have a smaller class. And they're so appreciative because they didn't think that they could do this. They haven't sewn in 40 years, and all of a sudden, 'I have this sewing machine, and I've come down here now and I have time for me. And how can I better my life? How can I do something?' You start them with something very, very simple and they get enthused about it, and what I like to do is make sure that it is completely finished in class, so that when they walk out, they not only have the top finished, they know how to add their batting, they have their back, and what I do when I teach Flowers and Flies, I have some material that has ladybugs in it. When I start that class, everybody in my class gets a piece of this ladybug material, and I know, maybe some other people like it too, but if I look at a quilt and it's got that ladybug in it, I know that I had some part of that quilt. So that, and now what I'm doing is, when I teach a class now, I make a label, you know, a quilt label, for everybody, because I'm notorious for not putting quilt labels on, so I am making quilt labels for every one of my students. When they finish the class, they get a quilt label for it so when it goes out the door it's finished.

SS: Do you think your students up north, maybe because they're younger, are more courageous or have more of a willingness to see themselves as artists? Do you think that's part of the difference between-that it's maybe age related?

MO: I think it is age related. Most of the students up north work full time and they come in after a hard day. They're willing to play or experiment a little more; and down here, I don't know how to explain the difference, you know. It's just a totally different way of teaching. I love both ways.

SS: That's really interesting. In what ways do you think quilts have special meaning for women's history in America? Have we already touched on that?

MO: I think so. Women have come so far. Again, it's a bonding experience. When you go back to the original quilting that we've done, we didn't have TV, we didn't have computers. The only time when we got together was at a quilting bee. That's when they got to find out what was going on in the neighborhood. What was happening, and it was a whole different way of living because people back then didn't have what we have now. They didn't have all the modern conveniences, so they had to do everything, and they didn't get to do what we have. Now we can turn on the TV, we can see Alex Anderson. I mean, if you're out and you want to tape it, you can tape it. You can pick up any book on any subject. I have a collection of quilting books that has to be totally incredible. I think particularly when you look at them now and you realize that most of them are between 25 and 30 dollars, and you look at your shelf, and you look carefully at it, and you start counting, 1,2,3,4, that's a hundred, 1,2,3,4, that's another hundred, and you realize that you have a collection well over a thousand dollars worth of books. I have some from the very, very beginning when I quilted, and I wouldn't give them up. They're there. They're part of me. It's just so interesting. We have just grown so much, and I think in the last few years, we've just grown more and more. I'd say the last, oh, personally for me, the last 10-15 years have been a really growing experience.

SS: Maryanne, we're almost to the end of our interview. Is there anything we haven't touched on that you'd like to say at this time?

MO: I would like to say how important it is to donate quilts to worthy causes. I make at least 3 quilts--not all large for various charitable organizations Shriner's, Cancer Fund, Linus Blankets and of course our own Shelter Quilts. Many of my quilts are used in charitable auctions and serve two purposes. 1. They make a monetary contribution to the charitable organization or are enjoyed by a person with personal problems--abused wife or child, AIDS baby, etc. 2. They let the public know that quilting is alive, well and thriving as a modern hobby. It is no longer something that their grandmothers did. It is something that they can do.

I've just really totally enjoyed this and I really appreciate the opportunity to do this. And I thank you.

SS: Well, thank you, Maryanne, for allowing me to interview you today as part of the Q.S.O.S. project. Our interview concluded at 5 p.m. on May 21st, 2003.