N. Amanda Ford

N. Amanda Ford

MD20818-001

N. Amanda Ford

Le Rowell

11/30/05

National Quilting Association

Cabin John, Maryland

Kim Greene

Le Rowell (LR): This is Le Rowell, and today's date is November 30, 2005. It is 4:25 p.m., and I am conducting an interview with Amanda Ford for the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project, which is a project of The Alliance for American Quilts, and we are in Amanda's studio in her home in Cabin John, Maryland. So, Amanda, thank you for agreeing to our interview today.

Amanda Ford (AF): My pleasure, Le.

LR: Good. Tell me about the quilt that you selected as your touch stone piece.

AF: This quilt is a third in a series that is expressing an idea, a philosophy actually of mine that all of our memories are piled on top of each other. That we have one memory, and our new memory gets put on top of that, and the old memories become part of the new memories and build into our psyche. So, I have started off with some hand dyed fabric that I dyed myself, and put it together, and then I cut out a piece and inserted a new piece of fabric in different colors and took the piece that I cut out and inserted that somewhere else in the quilt. If you look over here on the left-hand side [Amanda points to the turquoise piece.], the turquoise piece was cut out of the mauvy grays and that piece was then reinserted over on the right. You get some interesting angles that way, but each new piece gets reinserted and then cut out. This is the third in a series, so you don't see quite as many cut outs and reinsertions as you do in the first one that I did. This one I liked because I've inserted some hand dyed batiks in it that are commercial fabrics which represent new memories and the modern, as opposed to our old psyche that is deeper within us. I then went into the quilting aspect of it. I wanted the quilting to represent also how our lives are intertwined. So, I have a lot of circles. The circle will intertwine with a lot of different memories and be a thread that runs through it. Some are round, and some a square, and some are big, and some are little. But they all interconnect, and one touches another, and no matter how far away from one end, you can't get to the other end without having touched another circle or square with quilting. That represents the threads in our lives. This also is a piece that I made for my husband. It lives on our bedroom wall, because I had been promising a piece for a long time for him that I wouldn't give away or sell. And so, this is my husband's. [laughs.]

LR: You talked about the patterns in the fabric, the batik patterns. The three panel pieces here on the bottom right [Le points to the pieces.].

AF: Yes. Right.

LR: Are those patterns you created?

AF: No, they are commercial batiks that just happen to be in the colors that went with the fabrics that I had already dyed. They lived in my stash. And when I was working on this piece, how I like to work is very improvisationally. I start to pull out pieces and after I start with a base, and then I sometimes go through every drawer that I have and pull-out different pieces. I audition each piece and decide what goes. And those particular ones happened to work. They were similar as well as different enough so they each made their own statement.

LR: What are the special memories in this particular one? You said you made it for your husband.

AF: There are no special memories that, that I am trying to express other than the general idea of memories as a collective. As to how our mind works. And how sometimes sort in your mind, you sometimes feel like your memories might be a file cabinet, but they are not because they interact with your life. It was more a way of expressing how our memories work than expressing specific memories. If that makes sense.

LR: Yeah. Is that what inspired the series?

AF: Yes, yes. And there is the second one in the series, actually also is in our bedroom, it's much smaller. And the first one is right now in my living room, and it has been shown in a couple of places. It has more rich colors in it, and that was where I first started thinking about it. This one is just a little bit more simplified. I like to call it quietly elegant. So, it is more of the quiet memories. So that is what this one is sort of expressing.

LR: Are you working now with dyeing your own fabrics for your quilts?

AF: I resisted for a long time dyeing my own fabric, it was just one more thing that I had to learn, and one more thing that I had to do. And I wasn't' gonna get into it, I was just going to buy it. And a friend of mine whose name is Lois Smith was one of my first quilt teachers. She taught locally and she had a date that she had to teach, and she needed to take the day off to go to a family event and asked if I would fill in for her. And I said, 'Lois I don't know how to dye fabric'. She said, 'Come to one of my classes and I'll teach you'. And so, I went to one of her classes and she taught me, and I got hooked, because I can just do it in my little bathroom that is right off my studio. I do it in baggies or jars. It doesn't take up a lot of space and it's a wonderful surprise, because while you might choose a color, you never know exactly what you are going to get. And it's the only time I really like to iron, because after I wash my fabric, I iron my pieces and it's how I get to know the fabric. So, it's a real satisfying time to iron. [laughs.]

LR: Talk a minute about your color palette in general. I notice what you are wearing for example.

AF: It matches my quilts. [laughs.]

LR: Yes, the purple in the quilt, but is there a special color palette?

AF: I have a tendency to move towards the softer colors in the grays, but also in the jewel tones. I get into, for instance, the quilt upstairs, the first in this series, is all very vibrant jewel tones, which matches the purple in my shirt. But I also like things to be elegant at the same time. That is a quality that I have in my quilts. So, these are some of my colors. Yes. It is very difficult to express, but you are absolutely right. And I found with friends that they often wear their colors, I mean when they make a quilt it matches them.

LR: What techniques did you use to make this quilt?

AF: I used piecing. I used, I don't know whether you call it reverse embroidery or inserting. All of the rectangles that you see in the fabric are inserted. I've actually cut a hole in the fabric and then inserted the piece. You will notice that there's no seam connecting the smaller piece on the long rectangles. They're actually inserted directly into that space. It is probably a crazy technique because it takes forever. [laughs.] It's like, somebody said, why didn't you just cut out a rectangle and put it on there and sew around it. But I like the elegance of the finished seams so that I very rarely ever do raw edged pieces. So, those are all inserted and pieced. If you look real hard, some of the corners are not quite perfect, but that's okay.

LR: And, hand work, machine work?

AF: All machine work. I very rarely-- I try everything that I can to not do hand work. Sometimes you have to do hand work. The one place where there is hand work is when you put the binding on the back when you flip it around to the back. That is hand sewn in, and that's the only place, and the label on the back is hand sewn. [laughs.]

LR: So, when did you start quilt making?

AF: I started quilt making when my daughter, Rebecca who's now twenty-two was three years old. I have sewn since I was thirteen years old, and always made curtains, and things. When Rebecca turned three, I wanted to try making a quilt, and I figured I could finally turn my back on her and she wasn't going to kill herself, and that she was a little bit self-sufficient enough that I didn't have to watch her constantly. And, I wanted to make a quilt, and I wanted to take a class at G Street that was an intermediate quilt class, because I figured I already knew a lot and I didn't need all that other stuff. So, I wasn't going to take the beginning course. I was going to take the intermediate course. Well of course, the beginning course was the pre-requisite for the intermediate course. So, I took the class, it was by Lois Smith, and it completely changed my life around. I made a sampler quilt, and I tried all of these different techniques, and I took a Quilt of the Day class, which was a Log Cabin Quilt of the Day, and that was probably the first one that I completed. And that was tied and not quilted. [laughs.] But Lois taught me how to quilt. I did in those early years hand quilt a quilt. It took me eighteen months to hand quilt. I got tendonitis in my elbow. It took two years to go away. [laughs.] And while I love hand quilting, I think it is so beautiful. That was probably when I decided that machine quilting was better for me. [laughs.]

LR: [laughs.]

AF: But that quilt that I hand quilted won an honorable mention at Paducah, The American Quilting Society Show, and I won an honorable mention for that quilt. So, I'm real proud of it.

LR: What was the quilt? What was the pattern?

AF: It was called, "Black and White"--"What's Black and White and Red All Over." It was an original design where I used black and white fabrics and inserted some red every now and then. And I used, I found this one black and white fabric that had zebras and jungle animals on it, and so periodically I'd have a jungle animal sitting out into the border and creeping out, and that was fun. It had a black and red border, and it was the last time I also ever used a polyester batting, because that polyester batting is bleeding out of those black borders. It was before they had black batting. And it is terrible, because every time I take out the quilt you can see these little polyester fibers just coming out of the black fabric and it hurts me every time that I see it.

LR: And where is that quilt?

AF: It's here. It's one that I hang in my living room. Quilts that I haven't sold or that I can't part with, rotate in my living room. I have a high vaulted ceiling, and I take quilts down and rotate them, and periodically it comes out and gets displayed there. I try not to keep them up for too long, because the sun will damage them if it's left up for too long. It's about time to re-put that one back up.

LR: When was the Paducah show? Do you remember approximately?

AF: Well, let's see. It had to be somewhere around 1987, something like that, '89. I don't remember exactly. It was a while ago.

LR: Yeah. What is your first memory of a quilt?

AF: [pause for 5 seconds.] I can't remember. Didn't grow up with quilts. My mother sewed, but it was always just dresses and things like that. Maybe at my grandmother's house in Arkansas when my brother and I used to go out in the summer, she had quilts on her bed. But there's not one that stands out as a great memory. I can remember when I decided that I wanted to go into this, looking through magazines. It was just before the quilt came back into vogue, and seeing different magazines, and saying, 'Oh gee, that looks like a lot of fun, I could do that.' And, thinking first I could never do that, that's way too complicated, and gradually getting up my confidence to do it, which is sort of how a lot of things get built, where I think I can't do it and then I think that maybe I can. I am the little engine that could, I think I can, I think I can. [laughs.]

LR: Have you ever used quilts and quilt making to get through a difficult time?

AF: I haven't. I know lots of people have, like the Divorce quilt that is so famous, and is so wonderful to see. At least I haven't set out to make a quilt to express a difficult time. I know that every quilt has a story and during its making events happen. And those happenings get expressed in the quilt at the time. One quilt that I made early on was when my son happened to have--he was eight years old--his appendix out. It was a stressful time, and the quilt was being made during that time. So, I wrote on the back of the quilt as part of its permanent record that this was Aaron's quilt and that he helped when he was sick at home, and expressed some views, because he had a good eye, and it became part of that quilt. So, but I've never set out to make a quilt to get through a difficult time, but I guess my difficult times get expressed in the process of every quilt.

LR: What do you find most pleasing in quilt making?

AF: I like-- the most pleasing is finishing it and looking at it, and just going 'Wow, I really did that.' And sometimes just being amazed that all of the angst that I went through somehow managed to come out in a piece that looks like, God how could I have done that, you know. [laughs.] [LR laughs.] When I've worked on commissions, I have never missed a deadline, and I always try to finish a piece early enough so that I can enjoy looking at it and just experiencing it before it leaves me.

LR: Talk a minute about some of the commissions that you have done.

AF: Commissions are very interesting and very difficult and very challenging. They force you into parameters that you might not ever--that you might not ever consider doing. You are limited by colors because the colors have to match their surroundings as opposed to me wanting to put purple in here, and the client said you can't have any purple. So, it challenges you to do things that you never thought were possible. For me probably the hardest part of a commission is the designing because I struggle with my designs, and it takes me a while. And I have friends that I have worked with who the easiest thing for them is the design, and they hate the execution, and I sort of struggle with the design and love the execution. I get wrapped up into things and will drive by a store that I set out to go to because I was thinking how I had to get this one technique in. So that's fun.

LR: And what are the commissions that you have done in quilt making?

AF: Most of the commissions that I've done have been for synagogues and doing Torah covers and wall hangings and art curtains that have a spiritual quality to them. For me expressing that spiritual quality is probably essential in a quilt, just like this quilt has to do with memories. I mean, your spirituality comes out in your memories. I think that always comes out in things that I've done, that there's that spiritual quality to it. I also love doing the spiritual things because when I see other people being able to experience their own spirituality by something that I've made, helping them get in touch with their own soul, is something that is very difficult to express. And it's probably why I do that. Why I continue to do it when sometimes the commission is really difficult. [laughs.]

LR: You talked about the design being difficult. Are there other aspects of quilt making that you don't enjoy?

AF: I don't enjoy the business aspect of quilt making. And the--I'd rather just be able to sit and quilt and sometimes I wonder why I try to get paid for this as opposed to you know just doing it as a hobby, as opposed to a profession, because the business aspect is awful. Entering the shows is time consuming and not rewarding and you have to have three slides of this, and you have to take the photographs of that, and you have to write up a description, and you have to write the check, and then you have to keep records of how much money you've spent. And all of that aspect is what I hate the most about quilt making. I love dyeing the fabric, I love the sewing. I love just making a regular quilt, ones that I call 'a cookbook quilt'. Because you just cut out the pieces and you follow the pattern and it's mindless, and you just do it. And I love the quilting where I do the push and shove method in a sewing machine and just doodle with that. So, I love all of that but the business aspect sucks.

LR: What's the push and shove technique? [laughs.]

AF: Push and shove, it's where you just sit down at your machine, and you push your quilt under. You treat your quilt as the piece of paper and then the needle as you pencil, as opposed to those--the long arm machines are what's coming out now, where the quilt just becomes your piece of paper, and you are moving the pencil. Those long arm machines are very expensive and very lovely and a lot of fun, but I like to the nitty gritty of the push and shove method.

LR: How do you feel about the machine quilting versus hand quilting verses long arm?

AF: I think they're all wonderful. I mean, I love to see quilts with hand quilting. I think it's just a beautiful, beautiful stitch. I like to see machine quilting and hand quilting mixed together. I think long arm quilters are developing the skill that is so finite that sometimes you can't tell from a distance whether it is hand quilted, or machine quilted. They are doing free motion, which means it's just as lovely as my push and shove method. I think there's a place for all of this in the quilt world. It's just a different technique.

LR: What do you think makes a great quilt?

AF: I think a great quilt is one that elicits emotion from the person that is either using it or looking at it. And I say looking at it because most of my quilts hang on walls, or on Torahs, things like that. But they're still really quilts or it's a technique. But I guess that is probably the same thing that I think art is. Art is what elicits a response from the viewer and that's what it makes it a quilt or an art. That's what makes a great quilt, that it elicits that response.

LR: What makes it artistically powerful?

AF: Art is in the eye of the beholder. [laughs.] That's a question that's been pondered by so many, and I think in the quilt world today it's where quilting has become an art, but there are still those in the fine arts world who view quilting as a craft, which I think is their—they're being shortsighted. And I could argue until I am blue in the face, but they would never agree with me, and I won't agree with them. But for me, quilting is an art and it's a way of me expressing emotion and beauty and spirituality, and I think that's what somebody who paints with oil paints is doing the same thing. So, I don't know why, because my medium is fabric, why it should be any different--whether it is any different.

LR: What makes a great quiltmaker?

AF: Determination. [laughs.] Somebody who's willing to take risks, and to do it, and to love it. I mean it becomes a passion. So, I think probably anybody can quilt, but a great quilter is somebody who just really loves doing it. Some peoples' technique is better than others, but I think that even ones with not good, or where their techniques not great, can still be great quilters even if it is only for them and their families.

LR: What makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or a special collection?

AF: I think it needs to represent a style, a technique, or to have it a standout beauty, something that's original. I think probably originality is the main thing that makes it museum quality. Although the Amish quilts that you see in museums are not original, except that their color is so vibrant and special that it's an inspiration to others, as well as the fact that they have longevity and the fact that they've withstood the test of time and that is sort of what makes them museum quality, but I think probably that originality and uniqueness is what makes something museum quality.

LR: How did great quiltmakers learn the art of quilting especially how to design a pattern, choose the colors?

AF: Well, they can struggle like I did and teach yourself everything. [laughs.] Or you can take a class, I teach that too.

LR: Where do you teach?

AF: I teach at G Street Fabrics [in Rockville, Maryland.], I also teach for guilds, and I do private tutoring. Also, I teach at my synagogue, I teach what is a called, A Tallit Making Workshop, where a Tallit is a prayer shawl that Jewish men and women wear during prayer services and Saturday services. I do that every year at my synagogue, it starts actually tomorrow night. It's an eight-week class, and every year I have about a dozen students, and they make their own Tallit or one for somebody that they love, and it is a very spiritual thing so that's a really fun class for me. As long as I have been doing that, I have never seen two that are exactly alike which is the other thing I love about teaching. It is because you can teach the same technique to somebody, and you will never see the same thing twice. When I teach, I teach machine quilting and fabric dyeing at G Street and that's always fun because my favorite class is the Introduction to Quiltmaking and Free Motion Quilting. So, I get beginners, and I always start off by telling them that I'm going to learn something from you and you're going to learn something from me, because every time I teach, I learn something new. I hear of a new product that I never heard before, or somebody tells me 'Oh, well I do it this way.' My philosophy is that if it works for you then you do it. If a teacher tells you that it has to be done this way, then you should listen to the teacher and then go home and do whatever you want to. Because I think quilt making is for you, and so go out and enjoy it and if it works for you, do it. But I like teaching, it's fun. It's energizing.

LR: [pause of 10 seconds.] Why is quilt making important in your life?

AF: Oh, that's a hard question, [laughs.] it just is. I guess it fulfills a need that I have to be creative. I guess that's the main thing. It's like when I am being creative down in my studio my cooking is lousy. When I'm not making anything down in my studio, my cooking is very creative. [laughs.] So, it sort of has to come out in a different way. I started out I guess being most creative (before I discovered quilting) doing needlepoint, and I would do needlepoint designs that were original and difficult, and using different yarns and then I discovered quilt making and I haven't done any needlepoint since. So, I still have some of the pieces I did on a wall in what used to be the kids' playroom or the rec room, but I guess I've always been creative, and this is just a way of me to really express it.

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

AF: I think quilts tell a story like I said before. Quilts have been in every culture throughout the ages, but I think America has really brought out quilt making. It's truly an art back from the women who rode across the prairie and sewed their dresses into quilts. The African Americans who were showing these wonderful quilts in museums now, the Gees Bend quilts that are so creative and colorful that it's just part of our culture. To the quilt that I made for my daughter for her to take to college where everybody came in and said, 'I want one of these, where did it come from.' It kept her safe and warm the four years that she was in college and was a part of home. I think that the quilts that I make that live on Torahs that express the spirituality and tell stories are part of the Jewish American quilter. I think that when you walk into hospitals and you see quilts on the wall, it's so warm and the quilts that are being made for the GIs that are coming back from Iraq, that they have so many quilts that they had to close out because they had, thank God, more quilts than they had servicemen who needed them. So, I think that quilt making touches American life in many, many ways. And, also, you know, considering the number of students that come through my quilting classes throughout the year, new people are taking up quilting all the time, so it's a very creative way people like to express their creativity.

LR: What are the ages of the people that are taking classes from you?

AF: I've had mother/daughter, where the daughter's been thirteen and the mother's been in her thirties. I've had mother/daughters that have been--the daughters in her forties and the mothers in her seventies. I've had men. I've had people of all ages in my classes. I've had women who've come in who are just retiring and have never sewn before that are discovering what a sewing machine is. And people who've had feather weights since the time that they were thirteen. They're coming in and rediscovering it. So, there are no age bonds to this.

LR: That's interesting.

AF: I also taught quilt making in my daughter's fourth grade class when she was in elementary school. I went in and offered my services to her fourth-grade teacher. I said, 'You know I am a quiltmaker and I'd love to do something with the class.' She said, 'I have been waiting my whole teaching career for somebody to offer this.' [laughs.] In the fourth grade they were exploring colonial times and I went in on a weekly basis and taught patterns to the girls. They hand sewed the pieces together. Near the end where all the girls had made quilt squares, another mother and I sewed them all together and quilted the quilt. [phone rings again.] Machine quilted of course, unlike colonial times, and gave it to the teacher.

LR: What a great project.

AF: [laughs.] It was.

LR: [phone continues to ring, and we ignore it.] Which brings me to one of my questions, which is what is the future of quilting in America?

AF: I think that there are no bounds. I think that the future of quilting is pretty much that the momentum has started and it's just going to keep on, and I think we're going to find new ways to use quilts. I can just see it growing and growing.

LR: How do we perpetuate that?

AF: That's a good question.

LR: You mentioned already one, the school project that you did.

AF: The school project. I think taking it into churches and synagogues. They are starting to let scissors back on airplanes so that we can do work on airplanes again. [laughs.]

LR: I saw that in the paper. [laughs.]

AF: It will be nice when you can take your little embroidery scissors that were never going to hurt anybody. [laughs.] But I think that offering it in schools is a start. I take classes sometimes in Ohio at the Quilt Service Design Symposium, and one class I took a couple of years ago, one of the participants taught at a high school with troubled kids. And she always did a quilt project with them every year. She was asking for the leftover squares that people didn't want. Give them to her and she was going to have her students work with them. And so, I said I have to show my family first, but I will mail them to you. So, I mailed them to her, and she sent me back at the end of the year a picture of a quilt that her students had put together and quilted. It's a way of therapy, it's another way of using an art technique to help troubled teenagers to get their act together. It is just one more way of moving it into all realms of society.

LR: How do you think we can preserve quilts for the future?

AF: I think it's important that places like The American Quilting Society Museum buy quilts and keep them. I teach my students how to store their quilts that they make, and I tell them, 'Please don't put them in direct sunlight.' People find quilts in their grandmother's attic that have been there for fifty years, and they take the quilt out and they discover that this quilt is just great. I think if they want to preserve the quilts that they need to think about archival stuff, about not using unnecessary chemicals to mark a quilt. And that they're buying good quality cottons, being sure that the materials they are using are of good quality. You would be surprised that fifty years from now the quilt you are making now is going to end up on somebody else's bed, and they're just going to think of you the whole time they're using it, and you don't want it to fall apart.

LR: You spoke a moment ago about long arm quilting. What are other trends that you see for the future of quilt making?

AF: [pause for 5 seconds.] I see techniques, such as things that get used with these fusible products, Wonderunder. It makes collage making very easy because you're ironing fusibles onto the back and you don't have to necessarily sew everything down. I see using the computer with fabric is probably the next way to go. If you see any of Michael James' new quilts, they are using large printers where they're putting yards of fabric on and then running them through a computer printer process. I think that's probably a new way to go. Interestingly enough I was just in Italy and went to a place where they had the Jacquard looms that were invented in the 1880's. I saw women weaving these brocade silks just like they did on the same machines that they did in 1880. And then thinking of Michael James and using a new printing press and it's just a continuation of figuring out how to get a pattern on a piece of fabric. And who knows what they're going to invent ten years from now that we're going to be able to do with fabric.

LR: In the preservation of quilts though you mention the fusible materials. Are these materials that will last?

AF: They recently came out with a study where they addressed those issues. I saved the article because I talk to my students about it. Some of them wear better than others, some of them yellow with age; some of them harden with age too, so we don't know. The answer is that you don't know how it's going to age. There are also things like monofilament threads that we don't know; it's only been around for twenty years. So, is this going to crackle and break in another twenty years? They try to do testing that artificially age things, but we won't know until fifty years past whether it was a good idea or a bad idea. I try real hard not to ever use monofilament thread for that very reason, especially in quilting, because I don't know what's going to happen. But there are tons, like in arty pieces where I am couching yarns, where monofilament thread is really the only thing that works, and so I do worry about those things, what's going to happen twenty years from now.

LR: [pause of ten seconds.] You mentioned on your quick questions that you have given quilts as gifts, obviously to your children, and have you given others?

AF: I have. My famous story that I like to use as part of my teaching machine quilting is because you're limited to how big you can make a quilt underneath a sewing machine. My brother-in-law is a carpenter and I wanted him to do some work for me and I wanted to pay him, and my sister wanted a quilt. Um, and I wanted to pay him. [laughs.] And, she won, so I had to make the quilt. She had a king size waterbed, so I had to do it in pieces. [phone rings again.] So, I did it, and now another of my sisters has complained that I've never made anything for her, so I'm in the process of making a quilt for her. It's a much more of a traditional quilt than anything that I usually do. But, yeah, people that you make a quilt for are very special. You don't make them lightly because it just takes time.

LR: Do you sleep under a quilt? You said you have them on the walls in your bedroom.

AF: I have slept under a quilt, and for the longest time we slept under one of the first quilts that I made. But I love my husband dearly, and he likes to put the quilt underneath his chin, and then he sweats. [laugh.] It started to get really grungy, and I couldn't stand it anymore, so I retired that quilt and bought a duvet cover and [laughs.]. If my husband wouldn't stick it under his chin, I probably would put it back. [laughs.] But my daughter sleeps under a quilt that I made for her, and my son sleeps under a quilt that I made for him.

LR: Is your daughter following in your footsteps?

AF: No. Her creativity is with photography and writing. But my son can sew and has done some quilting of his own, so--but he likes to paint, so they are both artistic that way.

LR: Good, good. Our time is just about up actually, and is there anything else that you would like to add?

AF: No, it's just that I would encourage people to try quilting. It's just such a satisfying endeavor, and it just becomes a passion, and you never know exactly where you are going, but you won't be bored.

LR: Good. I have a couple of questions I am going to ask you about some of your pieces after we finish the interview [both speak at the same time.]. Because I am fascinated with so many of the pieces you have done, but our time is just about up, so I want to thank you Amanda.

AF: Oh, thank you.

LR: For allowing me to interview you today as part of the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project, and our interview was concluded at 5:09 p.m. Thank you very much.

AF: Thank you.