Doris DeGregorio

Doris DeGregorio

NM87111-010

Doris Jean Wilson De Gregorio

Evelyn Salinger

2010-04-22

Susan Salser

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Jennifer Mullen

Evelyn Salinger (ES): This is Evelyn Salinger and I am conducting a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Doris Jean Wilson De Gregorio. Today's date is April 22, 2010. It is 10:30 in the morning. We are at my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hi, Doris.

Doris De Gregorio (DDG): Hello.

ES: Tell me about this quilt that you have brought for us to see.

DDG: This quilt is a Log Cabin done in 1930's reproduction fabrics. I saw it in an Australian quilting magazine and fell in love with it and said, 'I'm going to make it,' and went home, started cutting strips and started making it.

ES: Did you sew by hand all these strips or do you sew by machine?

DDG: By machine. And then when I saw it done up, I was so in love with this quilt that I sent it to a machine quilter to finish it for me, because I couldn't wait.

ES: Uh-huh. It's beautiful. Let's see: the colors you used are reds blues and greens, primary colors.

DDG: Yes, and some yellows. It's kind of an average assortment of those wonderful old fabrics that I felt are pleasant to the eye.

ES: It's very interesting because the way it's set, with half of the squares in a white, it stands our as kind of crosses. I don't know what that's called.

DDG: Yes, it does, and I don't know. I know there's more than one way of putting a Log Cabin together.

ES: But it is very effective. It's very nice and bright. What size is it approximately?

DDG: It's approximately a double bed size. It's not terribly large, but I don't care, I just love this quilt.

ES: Do you use it or do you just display it?

DDG: I have not used it yet, but we are moving into a new house and I 'm going to find a place for it. Possibly hanging on the wall.

ES: When did you do it?

DDG: I did it four years ago. And it probably took me two weeks to finish it.

ES: Oh, my heavens.

DDG: The more I worked on it, the more little squares I was cutting and sewing. I did get a little tired of all these little squares, but this quilt is the most favorite quilt that I've ever made.

ES: Very nice. You're going to keep this for yourself, correct?

DDG: This one is mine. Yes, yes. I was drawn to these 1930's reproductions for some reason. They are sweet and gentle and I think they speak of an easier time of life, in many ways.

ES: Did you happen to have all these fabrics in your house at that moment when you went home and started cutting?

DDG: I had many of them. I've been collecting Aunt Grace Fabrics, and then as soon as I started the project I realized that I needed to add some because you know that in your stash you never have enough of anything. So, I did actively go out and get a few more.

ES: It's very effective. And I like the borders here where you have three or four different fabrics that go horizontally along the edge.

DDG: Yes, and they're all in here in the quilt someplace.

ES: What was your first experience with quilts and quilting?

DDG: Well, my grandmother was a quilter. And in her day of course, they made quilts, what I call service quilts. You used them to keep warm. They weren't really meant to be art items. But I would see the quilts that she made and I would be fascinated. My mother was not a quilter and I did not live near my grandmother. We visited. So I didn't really see the process of quilting. But, I have three quilts that my grandmother made. The wintertime was her time to quilt. She would cut out her little pieces and then hand stitch them. She would send a letter and say, 'I need scraps.' I made my daughter's dresses when she was little and I would send her the scraps from my daughter's dresses. Later, I would find them in my quilts. I look at her quilts and I say, 'Oh, wow, I remember that one.' Or, 'That was a dress I made in the 60's. That was a long dress I made for myself, you know when everybody was wearing long dresses.' I love looking at those three quilts that I have: one is Drunkard's Path and one is the Double Wedding Ring. [And one is Grandmother's Flower Garden.]

ES: Oh, how very special.

DDG: They are.

ES: Do you hang them or do you display them at all? Or do they come out now and then?

DDG: I used to keep them on the end of beds, until we got a dog. Dogs don't get to be on my quilts, so I had to put them away. But now that we're moving into this new house, I will have a greater opportunity to display them.

ES: That'll be so nice.

DDG: So, because my grandmother quilted, somewhere along the way when I was in my thirties I thought, 'That wouldn't be bad.' I was living in Dayton, Ohio. I took a class and it was Grandmother's Flower Garden. We made a little pincushion, all by hand. And then I did a little cheater quilt, a baby quilt. After that, I didn't do anything. You know, life moves on and I went to work and those things just get set aside. Then my friend, Carole [Bonda.] whom we quilt with every week, she said one day a few years ago, 'I've found something new that I like to do and that is quilting.' And I said, 'Oh, okay, that sounds like a good thing.' And that was really the beginning. We took classes and then we did some traveling which was so much fun. We went to the Houston [Texas.] Quilt Show at least four times. We went to the Chicago [Illinois.] Quilt Show, which really is the same as the Houston. We went to the quilt show in Durango, Colorado, the first one that they did. And that was where we met Lynette Jensen who is a well-known quilter. She puts out a line of fabrics and books, and she's from Hutchinson, Minnesota. So, Carol and I stood on the stage and held her quilts up while she talked about them. It was so much fun. Afterwards, we had an opportunity to chat with her and she told us that she had a retreat that they did every fall, in Hutchinson, and so we went. We went with our friend Jan [Oglesby.] and the three of us had a wonderful time. I don't think we did a lot of sewing, but we had a lot of fun. There were a lot of other people there from all over the United States. So, yes, if you are a follower of Lynette Jensen and her style of quilting, then I think you would know about her retreat. So, we thought, 'Gee, that was really fun. We should do another one.' And so, as it happened, we went to the Paducah [Kentucky.] Quilt Show and we'd been trying to get in touch with her. [Eleanor Burns from whom we took two classes.] She's at the Paducah show every year. And she does classes in a big tent at the Fair Grounds, in a big fairground building, and there are just tons of people that go. They have sewing machines for everyone and so you make whatever project that they're going to make that day. We did two projects that day. One, which I recently completed and the other one which is still a UFO, but I'm just itching to get started on it. We got acquainted with her and she did a quilt retreat. She did actually at one time, two. She did one where there were a lot of people. And then one where she just took up to six. So, four of us went to Jerome, California, in the foothills of southern California. We stayed at her house. It's called Bear Paw Ranch and she and her husband took care of us for three days.

ES: Oh, my.

DDG: She has a wonderful studio, equipped with everything we needed. We all four made a Log Cabin. Each one of us put it together differently and we all used different fabrics. I used little children's fabrics, little girl fabrics. I recently gave that quilt to the only little girl left in the family, a niece who is four years old. She was very excited to receive it. She lives in Redondo Beach, California. She's just the cutest little thing. She had a quilt that I had made, a baby quilt. She always calls it, 'Aunt Doris' Quilt.' So now she's got two. [laughs.]

ES: Oh, that's very nice. How long have you actually been quilting?

DDG: About fifteen years I would guess. I was still working when I started.

ES: Would you tell us what you did?

DDG: I was the Activities Coordinator at the Bear Canyon Senior Center. [where we now quilt.]
I loved the quilters. And I would watch them, and I would think, 'Oh. They look like they're having so much fun.' So, when I decided my job wasn't that much fun anymore, I decided to stop working. The first year after I stopped working, I read dozens and dozens of books that I'd been saving. That's all I did for a year. And when I was satisfied with that, then I started going to the quilting group.

ES: Those books were just general books, not quilting?

DDG: No, general books of all kinds. So I got that out of my system and then I started going to the quilting groups. I had met by that time one of our other quilters, Jan [Oglesby.]. And so, we all ended up going to the Bear Canyon quilt group. And that's been a long time now. They're wonderful ladies. That's the wonderful thing about being in a group like ours. I think of us as a quilting bee kind of group. You meet ladies from all over the United States, and sometimes foreign countries. We have one lady from Japan and another from Germany and yet we can all sit there and chit-chat together and that's the marvelous thing about quilting with a group of people.

ES: Now that particular group has a format of working on several quilts and everybody is working on the quilts at the same time.

DDG: Right. We share our time together. When your turn comes up, then you bring your quilt in and we sandwich it, put it on poles, and then two or three people each week will work on it. And it's a great way to have a hand quilted quilt and to have friendships.

ES: Yes. How do you feel [telephone rings.] about hand quilted versus machine quilted quilts? Of course, you had your good quilt machine quilted.

DDG: I love to hand quilt. And by choice all of my quilts would be hand quilted. There's something wonderfully relaxing and it's just a feel good feeling to sit and put those stitches in. And after you've finished a quilt, you know, there are miles of stitches in there. And the wonderful thing is that your hands touch every single square inch of that quilt as you're working. You put pieces of yourself into it and hopefully, the person who then receives that quilt, it will bring them joy.

ES: Oh, yes, you get joy making it and joy giving it and the receiver enjoys it. How does your family feel about your hobby?

DDG: Well, my husband sees me walking in the house with bags of fabric, occasionally. Now that we're moving, he's really seeing how much [laughs.] stuff there is. I'm running out of room already. But you know the funny thing is that you start a project and you think, 'Okay, I'm going to use everything from my stash.' And you need something. There's something not there. A particular color or shape or design and you have to go out and buy another piece of fabric. But I think my family has all benefitted from my quilting. All of my grandchildren have received quilts of varying sizes, depending on their age. And I've made--I have two granddaughters whose other grandmother is Japanese. So I made them Japanese quilts. They love having a Japanese grandmother, so they love their quilts.

ES: Oh, yes. Talking about that, you brought another one to show us today. Tell me about the other one although we may not have a picture of it, you can still tell us about it.

DDG: Okay. A number of years ago I asked my son what kind of quilt he'd like to have and he said, 'Japanese.' We had talked about Japanese food and so forth on a visit that he made when he came to Albuquerque. So, that was just his automatic response. I had found several of the fabrics that are in his quilt on a visit that I had made to Phoenix. [Arizona.] So I laid them all out on the floor and kind of asked them what they wanted to be, how they wanted me to use them. The large square that has the Japanese ladies' faces had to be fussy cut because I didn't--the faces are so beautiful that I didn't want to make it too small and I didn't want to cut pieces out, so I fussy cut those. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, so I have the large square. I believe it's about 14 inches. Then I made just a Nine Patch with off-white and the Japanese fabric in each of the large Nine Patch squares. This was made to measure to my son's bed. He no longer has that bed. [laughs.]

ES: Oh, dear.

DDG: And this is a larger than king size quilt. But when I finished it, we sandwiched it, and it was one of the quilts that was made with our Bear Canyon Quilters. I think this was probably the longest one that we ever dealt with because of its size and the quilting on it. I think it took at least two years in there, but it turned out so beautiful.

ES: It is very beautiful and now would you describe the sashing and things like that?

DDG: Well, there is black on black sashing, separating the large fourteen inch squares of the ladies and the fourteen inch nine patches. And then there is sashing that goes all around the outside of the quilt, the black on black. There is a one inch strip going all around that's in a red and black, kind of a polka-dot. And then there's a large black strip that goes all around the outside and then the binding is black as well. Black on black. The back is just muslin because I didn't want to take away from the beauty on the front.

ES: The muslin is probably the same as the squares in the nine patches.

DDG: Yes. Black and white squares, yeah, and it just seemed to be the right thing to do.

ES: It's very nice. Very effective.

DDG: So my son wanted this quilt, but he was living in a one bedroom apartment. There were three people living in a one bedroom apartment. So I decided, no, I'm not going to give it to him under those circumstances. He now has a lovely new home in Tampa, Florida, and I'm now prepared to give him his quilt when he either comes here to Albuquerque or I go to Tampa. Once I make a quilt for someone, I'm eager to give it to them. I've had my fun with it and I'm finished. I'm ready to move on. This quilt actually was displayed at the Prime Time Expo at the Fair Grounds about six years ago and it won a third place ribbon.

ES: Very striking. Have you entered other shows along the line?

DDG: No, I just enjoy quilting. I would want it to be too perfect. And it's hard to make a quilt perfect.

ES: Have you done any teaching of quilting along the years?

DDG: I taught one class to the Bear Canyon Quilters and it was Pioneer Braid. That was several years ago and I think several people made that. One of them, Janet [Moffatt.], has made dozens. And she created a new style because she started doing it in kind of a watercolor way where she would start with darks and work her way up to the lights at the top. So she embellished that initial pattern.

ES: That's wonderful.

DDG: Yes, it was fun. Everyone had a good time. But that's it.

ES: Do you keep track of your quilts? Do you have an album or something?

DDG: I have photographs. Yes, I keep photographs. And I also have photographs of every person that I've given a quilt to, holding the quilt.

ES: That's a good idea.

DDG: So someday, especially with my grandchildren, I will give them the pictures that I took of them with their quilt, when they are, you know, middle aged and I'm a senior [laughs.] or more senior. [laughs.]

ES: When did you first start sewing?

DDG: Home Ec in high school. And I remember the first thing I ever made was a yellow blouse. We all made the same ugly blouse. [laughs.] And we had to put in button holes. That was the only time I did button holes. I do not do button holes, nor do I do zippers.

ES: I understand that.

DDG: Uh-huh. [laughs.] So that was when I started. And then when my two boys were small, I would sew pajamas for them, but I never could get the placket correct in the pajama bottoms. [laughs.] So, eventually I gave up and didn't put a placket in. And when my daughter was young, I made her dozens of little summer dresses.

ES: Nice. And as you said, many now have appeared in those quilts. [of your grandmother.]

DDG: They have.

ES: That's a wonderful way to remember.

DDG: And it's funny because yesterday I was going through some boxes of things as we're moving, and I found some scraps of fabric that my mother had kept from dresses that I made when I was in high school. Just small pieces. So, I looked at those and I thought, 'Okay, that will go in a wall hanging or something somewhere along the way.' But I think the time I remember most when sewing for my daughter was when we lived in northern Quebec, Canada. My ex-husband was military, and we were stationed up in a small town of, they said, 20,000. I never saw that many people in that little town. We were getting ready to come back to the states and I was making little summer dresses. It was in May, and I was in what they called the sunroom of this house that we lived in. I had to have lights on because the snow was so high up on the windows that the room was dark. The sunroom was dark. I had probably fourteen feet of snow that was piled up on the sides of my driveway. [laughs.] When I couldn't throw that snow up on top any longer, then I gave up, but we had a neighbor with a snow blower who would come and take care of that for us.

ES: You said that your grandma lived far off from you. Where were you growing up and where did your grandma live?

DDG: I grew up in California and my grandmother lived in Illinois. As time went along in my life, I lived in Dayton, Ohio, which was a day's drive. So, when I could, I would take my children and go and visit. And that's when I would see her quilt and I thought, 'Boy, that's gotta be fun.'

ES: Yeah, somehow that little seed gets planted in the brain. I had a similar thing. Someday I'm going to do that.

DDG: Yeah, it goes back there, and it lies dormant for years and then someone says, 'Quilt,' and you think, 'Oh. All right. Quilting sounds like a great idea.'

ES: Do you have a quilt frame in your home?

DDG: I do. I have a square one, but I don't usually hand quilt at home because I like to make big quilts. I'm not too much for wall hangings because you run out of walls. And after a while, you get tired of looking at them. Two or three years of the same wall hanging, and you say, 'Okay,' you know.

ES: Right. One of the things we ask is how has quilting had meaning for American women, in your view?

DDG: Well, I think that in the old days, women, mothers and wives made quilts to keep their families secure and warm and as time has gone along, we make them for different reasons. You make a choice what design you're going to do, what fabric you're going to use and it's an artistic choice that you put together. You do put a great deal of your spirit into this process of making the quilt. And then I know a lot of people make them as art projects and put them in shows. Now people design them on computers, which probably take them away from the fun, from my point of view. But I think that it gives us an outlet for our artistic abilities, whatever they might be, and then, you know, you get better at it when you stick to it and you design sometimes your own things. When I first started quilting, I didn't have any quilt books and I didn't think I could quilt on someone else's direction, so I made up my own. I remember nothing complicated about it. But I would just lay the fabrics out and let them decide what they wanted to be. Sometimes when I'm quilting by myself at home--You're making the project and it's your time to be with yourself. You have your thoughts. I often listen to recorded books because it's a great way to read a book and quilt. You know you can't always do two things at once.

ES: Hm-mm. Well, when you get to the point after decisions are made, you can do that.

DDG: Yes.

ES: I can't do that when I'm in the process of deciding.

DDG: No, and I can't do it if I'm cleaning house. The only time I can listen is when I'm sitting at the sewing machine, and you know, after a while it gets a little relentless and I think, 'Oh, how many more do I have to make? Oh, I only have ten and I need fifty squares.' So, you lose yourself in books because you are doing the same thing over and over and over and before you know it, you're finished. But you do put your heart into it. If you're making a quilt for someone who is ill, you put as much love and as much healing as you can into that quilt. And my granddaughter said to me, well, she wrote me. I had made her a little Pioneer Braid quilt in her favorite colors of pink. She said, 'When I put this quilt around me, it's like a hug from my grandma.' She wanted to take the quilt to school, and they wouldn't let her.

ES: Who?

DDG: Well, the school. They wouldn't let her bring this quilt. She couldn't bring her blankie with her. So, my daughter-in-law called me and said, 'Can you make a little tiny one with those fabrics in it?' So, I made her one. It probably was ten by ten inches square with just little squares in there. I sent it to her so she could put it in her backpack, and she would always have it with her. [laughs.]

ES: How old was she at about that time?

DDG: She was about six. You know, they have these sweet little emotions, these little girls, about things like that.

ES: How many hours a day or week do you figure that you put into quilting?

DDG: When I'm working on a quilt, I forget the rest of the world and just want to be left alone to quilt and quilt and quilt. As long as my husband isn't home that works beautifully. But when he comes home, he expects a little attention, and you know, he expects me to fix dinner and--[laughs.] But when I'm just working on a project, I'm totally focused, and I don't want anybody to bother me.

ES: Do you have advice for new quilters?

DDG: Well, my advice would be that it would be a smart thing to take a basic quilting class and learn how to use the rotary cutter. I did not know how to use a rotary cutter and the first time I used it I cut myself seven times. I didn't know which way to put my hands, where to hold and where to cut. So, I would say a basic quilting class and a basic class for rotary cutting. And then make a simple project. The simplest to me is the Nine Patch. You learn how to measure, because a Nine Patch won't go together if you haven't gotten all of your squares measured correctly. And that's kind of what I did, except I didn't take the basic classes until after I started quilting. [laughs.] I kind of did it backwards, but that would be my advice.

ES: Good. Do you have a refuge or a sewing room of your own?

DDG: I do. I have one in my old house, and I just moved my sewing machine and everything to the new house yesterday. And so I've spent time setting it up, and I will be sharing that room with my husband and the computer.

ES: Oh.

DDG: But he indicated to me that he would not be in my way. [laughs.] I will probably be in his, but he won't be in mine.

ES: Do you have a big place to put your stash?

DDG: You know, I thought it was, but I'm realizing it's not big enough. I'm going to have to be a little more creative in how I've got things arranged, because I need more room. So, [sigh.] it's difficult. [laughs.] I think I have the same problem every quilter has.

ES: Hm-mm. What is your favorite aspect of quilting?

DDG: I think that putting it together is the thing that's most fun. I don't like so much cutting. That gets tedious after a while. But once you lay it out and begin to see what's going to happen to it, and then you sew the first square, you feel on top of the world because, oh, it went together perfectly. Then, that's my favorite. A little aside a little story: Four of us were going to make a wall hanging that is the Log Cabin. It had fairly narrow strips, probably an inch at the most. This wall hanging when finished made an angel. You appliquéd the head on and then you drew her face. Then you could do any number of things to add to it. My friend Carole said, 'This is going to be easy. We need such and such.' Everybody, all four of us, got what we needed. And we had cut our strips and everything. So, we got together to create this project. Well, it sounded easy, but it was not easy at all. Jan finished hers first and she did it exactly the way the pattern said, and hers was for Christmas so the angel was holding a Christmas tree. Well, I didn't want it for Christmas; I wanted it for year around. Actually, it hangs in a bedroom right now. So, I made mine different and I had mine holding a candle. It's not a real candle; it's a quilted candle that she's holding. As far as I know, Carole never finished hers and our fourth person, Betty, never started. [laughs.]

ES: Oh, that's funny.

DDG: But that was one of our fun get-togethers when we were working together making various projects.

ES: Yes. Have you any other stories that you wanted to tell us about from your past or some quilting experiences at Bear Canyon? [Senior Center.]

DDG: Well, one summer, Jan, Carole, Betty and I decided we would have a quilt retreat at my house. My husband was out of town and so they brought their fabrics over and Carole and I tried to do some funny things that reminded us of going to a real quilt retreat. We made them folders and we put rules and regulations in it: rules and regulations about eating with clean hands when you're quilting and various things like that. And on different doors in my house, I would put signs that looked like other classes were going on while we were quilting. One sign had 'brain surgery.' Different silly things like that to make everyone laugh. We were working on a Lynnette Jensen project. We were all making the same quilt. Mine is actually finished. Jan finished hers first because she always finishes everything first. And so, we had a lot of fun. We made squares that turned out to be flowers, in strips. It was quite a project. I marvel at the fact that I was able to do it, because looking back on it, I have no idea how I managed to create this project because [laughs.] it was overwhelming. But doing it together, we had so much fun. So that's one of the other wonderful things about quilting is that you share times with friends, and you create new friendships. With quilting, you have this thing that everybody is enjoying together.

ES: Right.

DDG: I love to listen to the ladies at Bear Canyon, the older ladies. I remember Maye [Daniel.] who passed away three or four years ago. She one day was telling me about--she was brought up in Tennessee and when she was a young woman, she told me about the first time she ever saw a car. And I thought, 'Wow.' As long as I have lived on this earth there have been cars. You know she had wonderful stories. 'So, if you didn't have a car, Maye, how did you get any place?' 'Horse and buggy.' And she was very matter of fact about it. She was a lovely lady.

ES: You have had a good experience with your quilting life.

DDG: Yes, I have. I cherish all the family that I have and all the things that I've done. I cherish every piece of fabric that I'm trying to find a place for, and yeah, it has been great.

ES: Well, thank you so much for doing this interview today. It has been very enjoyable.

DDG: Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you.

ES: You're welcome.

End of interview, 11:10 a.m.