Shirley Kelly
Photos
Title
Shirley Kelly
Description
JoAnn Pospisil interviews Shirley Kelly, a former art educator and quilter, about her life and her quilting career. Kelly discusses the quilt she brought in for the interview, which features various family pets and other animals. She talks about her favorite aspect of quilting, applique, and how quilting and applique fit into her daily life. She discusses the artistic aspects of quilting as well, including what makes a great quilt and quilter. Kelly also speaks on art quilts and their importance in American life and women's history. She talks about the preservation of quilts, quilting guilds, and the impact of quilting on her own life.
Identifier
QSOS-116
Subject
Male quiltmakers
Quilts
Quilting
Families
Arts--Commissioning
Quilts--design
Fabrics
Fabric arts
Textiles
Quilting today
Arts & crafts
Decorative arts
Quilts in art
Quilts in interior decoration
Textile artists
Communities
Artists
Art teachers
Interviewee
Shirley Kelly
Interviewer
JoAnn Pospisil
Interview Date
11/02/2001
Interview sponsor
Pam Neil
Location
Houston, Texas
Transcriber
Rachel Grove
Transcription
JoAnn Pospisil (JP): [tape begins mid-sentence.] Date is November 2, 2001. It is about 11:35 a.m., and I'm conducting an interview with Shirley Kelly for Quilters' S.O.S.-Save Our Stories project in Houston, Texas.
[tape recorder shut off and turned back on again.]
JP: Okay, Shirley, we're ready to get started. If you would tell us about the quilt that you have here today?
Unidentified Person (UP): Did you do time and date?
JP: I did that already.
UP: What time? [3 second pause.] I'm sorry.
Shirley Kelly (SK): [4 second pause.] This quilt is called "…And Friends of the Family." It's a number of pets that we have had over a span of forty-five years, either my son or my daughter or my husband and myself. Right now the only living one is the second one down from the top in the corner, the Jack Russell terrier, my daughter's dog. He's about four years old, but all the others have passed on. The only true "friend" as such is Kelso, famous racehorse. He's this one. He belonged to a very nice lady who lives down in Maryland, but she always sent us Christmas cards with Kelso's name on it, so we count him as one of the friends. The little rabbit toy was my grandson's toy when he was very small, and it probably had as much love and attention as all the other animals put together. This is only a very small representation of all the animals that my family have had over the years, but these are the most important ones to us. You need to know how I did it?
JP: [speaking at the same time as Shirley.] When did you come up with this idea?
SK: Okay, I probably--people have asked me that last few days. I think the fish were the first ones that I did, and they were just a picture. I never got around to quilting them. Then that was kind of fun, and I thought it would be interesting to do the horse at the top, Kimbo. Then the tiger cat was my lap kitty, and he was getting rather old, and I thought it would be kind of nice to do one of him too, so I ended up with three of them, and just suddenly the idea clicked that I could do all of the others. They had been done in one way or another, either photography, drawing, something like that. Practically all of the ones up there have been done with pencil drawing at least once, and now they're immortalized with fabric.
JP: Okay. Did you use photographs--
SK: Yes.
JP: For your original [inaudible.]--
SK: Originally I did photography as kind of a hobby, and I had fortunately many, many photography subjects to pick from for pictures. Sometimes it was hard to pick which one I wanted, and it came down to which position would work best [laughter.] on that particular quilt.
JP: Okay.
SK: Some of the pictures were my daughter's, the dog, up in the old left hand corner, Rosco Bear the Rottweiler was my daughter's photograph, but other than that all the others I've taken myself.
JP: Okay. Can you tell us what kind of materials you used?
SK: I use 100% cotton. The batting in this quilt was Quilter's Dream Request. [6 second pause.] I do hand appliqué, prepared edge, which is different from needle turn and machine quilting. All the thread is cotton. The backing is cotton.
JP: What's the overall size of the quilt?
SK: I had to fill that in. I think it's 69" X 78", but once I make it and send it off--
JP: Yes, okay. [laughs.] And of course the meaning, the significance of course, your--
SK: Well, my family has been involved with animals of one type or another ever since I can remember. My grandfather had horses that pulled his carts in his business. In those days, everyone had a trotting horse, and Sunday, when there was nothing else to do and the shops were closed, they'd take the horses out on the street and race each other.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: My father then became a driver for these horses, and around our area there were a number of racetracks where people would go and just for fun, see whose horse was faster, and my dad was one of the ones that got behind the horse and drove. Eventually he became a jockey for a very short period of time, but when he got married my grandmother said, 'Now that's enough,' [laughs.], 'You don't need to do that anymore,' and my mother was quite pleased with that idea too.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: When I got married my husband had a horse, and I really met him through this horse, and that's Kimbo up there, and jokingly we'll curse the horse every now and then. [laughter.] Kimbo is the reason why we met in the first place.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: Naturally come--we had hunting dogs. We had pet dogs. I fell love with a Samoyed, and we raised and bred "Sams" for a while. My children had pets right from the very beginning. My daughter learned to ride at a very early age and eventually became an exercise rider down in Florida and also over at Belmont Park, and Saratoga, but after a while she decided it would be kind of nice not to do that anymore. She couldn't imagine being an exercise rider at thirty and forty years old, so she came home, and now she and her husband live right next door to us, and my son and his wife live on the other side.
JP: Oh, okay.
SK: So while we don't have so many pets in our household. They're either right next door one way or the other.
JAP: [laughs.] Okay.
SK: And we get the joy of these pets without the mess.
JP: [laughs.] Sounds like a good deal.
SK: We have fish, but at our age it's kind of nice to be able to travel and go out and about without the responsibility--
JP: Right.
SK: Of the pets, so as I say, we adapt the ones next door whenever we feel we have to have a pet.
JP: Okay. So what are your plans for this quilt?
SK: This quilt will probably go to one more show. It won Best Wall Quilt at Paducah, and here it won the Master's Award for Traditional Artistry. I may send it to one more show. I don't really know where. I'd like it to go out to the West Coast, because it hasn't been out there, and I'd like people to see it there. I think I will probably, if it's not busy elsewhere, take it to "Quilting by the Lake" with me, which is in Morrisville, New York. It's a two week conference with classes and quilters, and a lot of the people that teach there helped me with this quilt, gave me ideas for doing--and encouragement, how to do it.
JP: Okay.
SK: And so forth and so on.
JP: Tell me about your interest in quilting. When did you--what are your earliest memories of quilting.
SK: Well, the earliest memories I've had that have anything at all to do with fabric is when I was a little girl, and my grandmother had a treadle machine, and I used to sit up there and treadle back and forth and back and forth, and that was a lot of fun. Out of necessity, being a child growing up during the Depression, I learned to sew clothing, because I had to. If I wanted something new to wear to the dance, I'd better make it myself, or it wouldn't happen, so I did clothing for quite a while. When my children were little I made them clothes. I've always loved quilts. I'm looking at them, ones I saw in books or--I never went to a show or anything. I had always wanted to take classes and just never got around to it. I was an art teacher for thirty-three years, and that's a pretty fulltime job. One day I made a toy for my grandchild, he's seventeen years old now, and it had quilting on the side of it, and I thought, 'That's not very hard. I got to be able to make that, make it a little bit bigger,' so I started out making what I call utility quilts, and it was so much fun. I made a quilt for my daughter. I made a quilt for my son. I made a quilt for my mother, and everybody in the family just about had a quilt that I made, traditional Log Cabin and that type of thing. Well, then my mother and I went up to Nova Scotia to visit friends and family. She was born in Nova Scotia, and when we got back she said, 'Shirley, I think it would be nice to make a memory quilt.' I said, 'Okay,' so I went looking through what patterns I had, and I picked out some traditional patterns like Tree of Life and Ducks on the Pond. She was from Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, and they're known for their apples, and so I had little traditional square red and green for the apple trees, and she didn't like that idea at all. She said, 'Well, Shirley, apples aren't square,' [laughter.] so then the only way that I could figure to make round apples was by appliqué, [laughter.] and that's really how I started. I don't do the traditional type of needle turn appliqué, because I didn't know any better. I found a little craft book that told me to use a lot of glue and a lot of paper, and that's what I did, and then realizing I'd have to get the paper out of there, I had to soak it and soak and get the glue and paper out. I knew there had to be a better way to do this, so I took a class from Elly Sienkiewicz and learned a lot of the things I did were okay, but some were very wrong, so I took some of the things that she said, and I stayed with some of things that I did but in a different way without the glue. [laughter.]
JP: And the paper to pick.
SK: Right and the paper to pick. I still use freezer paper. I pin the paper to the back of the fabric and then iron over the edges onto the shiny side of the freezer paper. A lot of quilters use starch, but I don't do that. When I take the paper off, I baste around all the edges. After I get that done I have a whole bunch of little pieces that look like a jigsaw puzzle. I put them together according to the way my drawing is worked out, and that's the way I do it.
JP: Okay.
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Very [inaudible.]
JAP: How did long did you actually work on this quilt?
SK: This particular quilt, after all the drawing and the photography, once I started working with the actual fabric, I'd say about two years worth of time. A couple of pictures were done ahead.
JP: Now you had your face done already, but--
SK: [inaudible because JoAnn is speaking at the same time.] Yes, right. And the fish were probably done. That piece, the appliqué part was probably done three or four years before I did the rest of the quilt.
JP: Okay.
SK: But none of the portraits were quilted until I was all ready to go. The pictures were quilted first, then framed and set into the quilted "brick wall" using a method taught by Katie Pasquini Masopust.
JP: Are there other members of your family now that quilt?
SK: No, I'm it.
JP: You're it?
SK: I'm the only one of the immediate family. I have a cousin that quilts, and up in Nova Scotia, everybody quilts, because there's nothing else to do in the wintertime.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: And so I have a lot of second, third, and fourth cousins that quilt.
JP: Okay.
SK: In Nova Scotia.
JP: Is your family supportive of your quilting?
SK: Very much so. My husband does practically all the housework. He understands that this isn't a hobby, that now this is my profession, and he gives me time to do it.
JP: Great.
SK: Of course I buy him a nice toy every now and then in the form of a new gun or a tractor or something, but he's very--if I want to go to a quilt conference--like this one for instance, I was called two weeks ago. Was I going to Houston? Well, no, I wasn't. Well, Karey Bresenhan talked me into it, and I said, 'Yes, sure, okay then I'll come,' and when my husband came home, I said, 'Honey, you don't mind if I go to Houston for a week do you?' and he said, 'No, if you want to.'
JP: Great.
SK: He's very supportive that way.
JP: What aspect of quilting do you like the best when you start?
SK: I love appliqué.
JP: Okay.
SK: And I never leave home without it. I appliqué all day long. I force myself to quilt. I have never really done much hand quilting. The vast majority of my quilts have been done with machine quilting, and I don't think I'll ever hand quilt anything very substantial. I'm told that I do very well with machine quilting, but again it's just something to make a quilt, and it's not my--it's not a joy to me. It's appliqué that really is--
JP: So that's your favorite part.
SK: Right.
JP: Okay. And your opinion what makes a great quilt?
SK: People come by and look at this, the last two or three days, and the overwhelming response I get--they like it because it's a happy quilt, and you know it is a happy quilt. I enjoyed working with it. I can't bring myself to make a quilt--although I can appreciate them, that has a statement that's a sad statement. I have to enjoy working on something, something happy, some point. I love animals, and so all the quilts that I've done for competition have been animals, so--
JP: Okay. What aspects do you think make a quilt artistically powerful?
SK: Like any work of art, be it contemporary or nonobjective or any of the words you want to throw in that direction, if it can be viewed and then a 'Oh, wow' type of sentiment evolves, that's what I call a good quilt. Doesn't have to be bright. One right next door to me there, Diane Gaudynski's work, very subtle, very quiet, but it's still a knock them dead 'Oh, wow' quilt, and that's what I like all the quilts that won here are all 'Wow' quilts. [laughs.]
JP: They evoke an emotion really when you see them.
SK: [speaking at the same time as Jo Ann.] Right.
JP: Okay. What do you think makes a good museum quilt, museum quality for a special collection?
SK: Well, I think the workmanship has to be impeccable. It should hold together visually as a whole. Your eye should be lead around the entire quilt like any work of art without gravitating to one position and staying there. I like to have the backs of my quilts have a statement to go along with the front. This particular one doesn't, but my other three competition quilts that I've won with have had backs that were--
JP: What kind of backing is on this one?
SK: The back of this is--
JP: [speaking at the same time as Shirley.] I don't have gloves, so I don't want to touch it.
SK: Yes. On the back of this is a cross-stitched label and names on all the various panels--
JP: Oh, okay.
SK: [inaudible.] animals were.
JP: Identify them. Okay, great, great. Okay, let's turn from the quilting to the quilter now. What makes a great quilter?
SK: A great quilter? [7 second pause.] Looking at some of my friends that I consider to be great quilters, they're dedicated to a perfect type of work. They don't particularly care if it can be done in three weeks or ten weeks as long as it's perfect to their mind. They think other people have to appreciate it. [4 second pause.] And again the 'Oh, wow' factor comes in to play. [laughter.] Whenever I go to an actual quilt museum, and I've been in a couple of them, all of the quilts speak to me in one way or another, and I think that's important for a quilt that is going to be kept around for ages.
JP: Right. What usually inspires you to choose a certain design when you're quilting?
SK: The design of the quilt itself you mean?
JP: Yes.
SK: Well, I love to do animals.
JP: Okay, so that's what most of them revolve around?
SK: All of my pictorial quilts have revolved around animals. This is the first one that I've done that had cats and dogs and that type of thing. The first quilt that I entered in competition was 102 pandas – "Pandas 'Round the World."
JP: Okay.
SK: And that kind of said something about the world situation as far the ecology of the world. The next two quilts had to do with racehorses, because I was raised appreciating the thoroughbred horse. I have gone to a number of races over the years, made a few wagers.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: I've been very interested in the breeding of racehorses and the way they run and how beautiful they are, just the aesthetic of their whole being, and so I did two quilts with racehorses on them. I'm working on a third right now, which will probably be my last racehorse quilt. In the future I'm looking toward puffins. I've started collecting the fabric to make a puffin quilt, and then way down the line, if I'm still around on this earth, I'd like to do something with Clydesdales. I've made a couple of small Clydesdale quilts that I've given away as gifts or traded, but that's probably about it. I don't think too far down the line, because it takes me a couple of years to think about, and draw it out and another couple of years to get it together. [laughs.]
JP: So you always have one in a stage?
SK: I always have--yes. I usually have three going at once, either in the appliqué stage, the quilting stage, or the design stage.
JP: Okay.
SK: So if I get where I can't face that sewing machine one more minute I come down and start some drawings for the next quilt.
JP: Okay. How do you think that quilting is important to American life today?
SK: It tells a story. It tells what is going on in women's world, how and what they think about things. I have to include some men in there too, because I have met a few really fantastic men quilters. I think that's about it.
JP: Do you find that there--
SK: It's a world of beauty, and the world needs beauty, especially now in this day and age.
JP: Do you find that there are more men quilters now than are--
SK: More that are admitting it. I think probably there's always been men quilters but unfortunately quilting has been women's work. Same way I can remember when I was teaching school my boys didn't really want to have too much to do with--oh, say needle point or anything like that, and then thank God a great big magnificent football player, Rosie Grier, decided he was going to do needle point, and I could then say, 'Well, you all know Rosie Grier. He does needle point.' [laughter.] So, I think probably more men [4 second pause.] that ever admitted it did it for fun relaxation. I know from history--macramé for instance was essentially a sailor's work, and they did it on the boats. They learned how to tie knots in shipping and it gave them something to do, when they realized if they used smaller cord they could make some really fancy stuff.
JP: Okay.
SK: So I think now, people are just--I think men quilters have always been there. Just now they're beginning to admit it.
JP: Okay. How do you think quilts can be used?
SK: Well, I cringe when somebody sits on my quilt regardless of what the book says. [laughter.] Most of my quilts go up on the wall. I use quilts on the bed. The quilt that I use on the bed is what I call a utility quilt. I throw it in the washing machine when it needs it. I use it like a blanket. I've got quilts that I bought. I have a beautiful Amish quilt that unfortunately stays kind of hidden underneath a sheet so that it doesn't get dirty or sun struck or whatever. It would be nice to say, 'Well, I think quilts are around to be used,' but unfortunately they aren't. The fabric that they make for quilts just isn't made to withstand dirt and light. I like them on the wall. I don't like to see them folded up somewhere. I don't like creases in quilts, and I've seen some really fantastic quilts that have been ruined by having a very prominent crease right down the center. Even some that aren't really very big and there's no reason in the world why they can't be rolled. Anything that I've got at home I either lay it out flat or roll it up.
JP: Okay. That was going to be my next question.
SK: Yes.
JP: How do you think they should be preserved? What's the best way to preserve them?
SK: I roll them up. I have them covered in an old sheet I make into a sleeve. I don't put them in a tube or anything. I just have them rolled around a tube that has been covered with anything that I can find as far as batting or an old blanket, a real clean blanket. Keep it away from the cardboard or from the plastic or whichever tube it is that I use for shipping and then I just lie them out flat or roll them. I think it's important to every now and then just open it up, flip it out, and let the air in it. The air doesn't hurt quilts. Never put it in plastic.
JP: So you actually roll them and then you roll them in fabric?
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Yes.
JP: I mean you put fabric around [inaudible.] at the sleeve? Okay. What's happened to most of your quilts? I don't know. You talked about the one on your bed and with the ones you've done for the shows. Have you sold them or--
SK: The ones that I made for my friends and family are being used. Most of them were bed quilts. [5 second pause.] The competition quilts that I've made--and I know a lot of people kind of cringe when I say that, but I make a competition quilt, or I make a utility quilt.
JP: Yes.
SK: Along with the other--the pandas. The first quilt that I made that I entered in competition was supposed to be a quilt that went on a bed in my grandchildren's play room. I have a collection of stuffed pandas, and what I wanted was a place to put the pandas. I thought, 'Well, I'll make a panda quilt, and so they can sit on it, and it will look like they're in a forest with all these other pandas around the quilt,' and I thought I'd go out and buy some panda fabric. Back in those days there wasn't any. Lions, tigers, and bears but no pandas, so I started a panda quilt. Well, then when I had it finished I realized I wasn't going to let any grandkid near it with [laughter.] chocolate cookies and suckers and whatnot. I was encouraged by my friends to enter it in a major show, specifically Paducah, and it won a prize. I think it was third place in amateur appliqué or something like that. I frankly don't remember now, and it was bought. The quilt museum there in Paducah asked if they could buy it, and so I sold it to them. The next quilt that I did was "Two Minutes in May," which was named one of the best one hundred American quilts of the twentieth century. Before it was named that it was bought by a horse breeder out in California. [5 second pause.] The next quilt that I made to enter in competition was called "Battle of Old Hilltop." The first one, "Two Minutes in May," was of the Kentucky Derby. "Battle of Old Hilltop" was of the Preakness Stakes.
JP: Okay.
SK: And the man who bought "Two Minutes in May" also bought that one. This was the next one. This will be staying home, this "Friends of the Family." My children would have a [laughter.] have a cow if I sold it. I have to keep that at home.
JP: Do you have plans to go for the Triple Crown and do Belmont?
SK: Yes.
JP: [laughs.] Oh, okay.
SK: The one that I'm working on now is a Belmont quilt. It's called "Flowers of the Crown," and it has about two dozen each of black-eyed susans, roses, and carnations, the three types of flowers awarded to each of the races that constitute thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown.
JP: Okay.
SK: And I will never make another carnation as long as I live.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: Roses--
JP: Explain why?
SK: Oh, my. Roses and Susans are easy, but everything I tried for a carnation ended up looking like a white camellia--
JP: [laughs.]
SK: Or a white peony.
JP: Okay.
SK: And I finally had to bite the bullet and make each individual petal and do some painting on them, and put all the petals together--never again, [laughter.] never again. I loved them when they were done, but it--
JP: Very intense? [laughs.]
SK: But that's--there's going to be a picture of two horses, the last two that won the Triple Crown in fact, Alydar and Affirmed. They're in a picture on a wall, and then in front of the wall will be a table, and the table will have a portrait of the winning horse and a scrapbook with some of the articles on it about the winning horse and then the vase of flowers.
JP: Okay.
SK: Another year at least before it's done.
JP: Okay, okay. Do you belong to a guild?
SK: No, I don't. There's four gals. All of our names begin with 'S,' and we all live in the Colden hill country, and we needed something to call ourselves, us four, so we called ourselves the Hilltop Quilters, and there's Sherry and Sandy and Shirley and Sally --What'd I say? Sally, Sandy, Sherry, and Shirley. Us four.
JP: Sherry. Okay. [laughs.]
SK: We're the Hilltop Quilters. [laughs.] And one of the gals' son calls us the "Thread Heads." [laughter.]
JP: Do you get together regularly?
SK: Pardon me?
JP: Do you get together regularly?
SK: Yes, for lunch.
JAP: Okay.
SK: Every now and then. We all do something different in the quilt world, and sometimes we'll get together, and each person will do what they do while we visit.
JP: Okay.
SK: And that's really about it. We don't have meetings or anything like that.
JP: Okay.
SK: There are some very nice quilt guilds in our area, but I feel if I can't devote the time to a guild, I'm not going to join one, and I don't like sitting and talking about mundane things like money.
JP: Yes, you want to quilt. You don't want to talk about quilting.
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] I just--I want to quilt. That's it. I want to do it.
JP: So you're basically self-taught?
SK: Yes.
JP: Okay.
SK: Although I have taken--since I've started quilting I have taken some fantastic classes.
JP: Okay.
SK: They're fun. The teachers are marvelous people, and now I call half a dozen of them my friends.
JP: Okay.
SK: I wouldn't miss the classes. I'll take classes as long as I'm alive.
JP: [inaudible.]
SK: So much fun.
JP: Exactly. Is there anything else you'd like to say about quilting and the quilt festival?
SK: No, I think that's about covered it. I can't really think of anything else. Of course tonight, about 3 o'clock in the morning I'll think of something. [laughter.] I think that that's about it.
JP: Okay. I think I've covered all the questions that I have on here that you just didn't pick up on and cover without me asking. How many hours a week do you quilt generally average?
SK: I can tell you that one, because everybody asks me that.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: It's not at all unusual for me to get up at five in the morning, and while I'm waiting for the coffee to perk I'll start appliqué.
JP: Okay.
SK: I'll appliqué all day long. Usually watch the sitcoms on the television at night, and they end about 11 o'clock, and that's when I go to bed, and I've been either appliquéing or quilting or drawing [4 second pause.] all but about maybe two to three hours out of that time, and that's spent eating. [laughs.]
JP: Okay. [laughs.]
SK: So day in day out. That's my thing.
JP: Okay and this is seven days a week, not five day weeks?
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Seven days a week.
JP: Everyday. Okay.
SK: If someone says, 'Let's do lunch,' they have to come and drag me out, but I will go out and do lunch. [laughter.] But if I didn't, I'd be quilting.
JAP: Okay, okay.
SK: It's not--it's no longer a hobby.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: It's now something you have to do in order to survive.
JP: Okay. Does that take the edge off at all? I mean did you--when you were relaxing, just kind of learning, and getting--
SK: I don't know. I think I'm fairly relaxed person as it is, but I always have to be doing something.
JP: Okay.
SK: I've done needle point. I've done photography. I've had all kinds of hobbies. My profession was teaching. I taught high school art for thirty-three years.
JP: Okay.
SK: And my degree was in art education, and my advanced work was in photography.
JP: Okay. [6 second pause.] So it just kind of manifested itself in quilting--?
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] And that's about it.
JP: Now with the art.
SK: Yes, yes. Now I don't do any of the other any kind of crafts I used to be involved with, but I'm always doing something, and what's nice about appliqué is you can take it wherever you go. When you're sitting in the doctor's office, instead of twiddling your thumbs--
JP: Sure.
SK: You're appliquéing.
JP: Sure. Okay. Well, if you don't have anything else, I'm just going to sign off with our little closing here and say thank you to Shirley Kelly--
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Thank you very much for including me here.
JP: For taking the time to allow me to interview you for this 2001 Quilters' Save Our Stories project. Our interview is concluding at 12:25 today.
SK: [inaudible.]
JP: Thank you.
[tape recorder shut off.]
[tape recorder shut off and turned back on again.]
JP: Okay, Shirley, we're ready to get started. If you would tell us about the quilt that you have here today?
Unidentified Person (UP): Did you do time and date?
JP: I did that already.
UP: What time? [3 second pause.] I'm sorry.
Shirley Kelly (SK): [4 second pause.] This quilt is called "…And Friends of the Family." It's a number of pets that we have had over a span of forty-five years, either my son or my daughter or my husband and myself. Right now the only living one is the second one down from the top in the corner, the Jack Russell terrier, my daughter's dog. He's about four years old, but all the others have passed on. The only true "friend" as such is Kelso, famous racehorse. He's this one. He belonged to a very nice lady who lives down in Maryland, but she always sent us Christmas cards with Kelso's name on it, so we count him as one of the friends. The little rabbit toy was my grandson's toy when he was very small, and it probably had as much love and attention as all the other animals put together. This is only a very small representation of all the animals that my family have had over the years, but these are the most important ones to us. You need to know how I did it?
JP: [speaking at the same time as Shirley.] When did you come up with this idea?
SK: Okay, I probably--people have asked me that last few days. I think the fish were the first ones that I did, and they were just a picture. I never got around to quilting them. Then that was kind of fun, and I thought it would be interesting to do the horse at the top, Kimbo. Then the tiger cat was my lap kitty, and he was getting rather old, and I thought it would be kind of nice to do one of him too, so I ended up with three of them, and just suddenly the idea clicked that I could do all of the others. They had been done in one way or another, either photography, drawing, something like that. Practically all of the ones up there have been done with pencil drawing at least once, and now they're immortalized with fabric.
JP: Okay. Did you use photographs--
SK: Yes.
JP: For your original [inaudible.]--
SK: Originally I did photography as kind of a hobby, and I had fortunately many, many photography subjects to pick from for pictures. Sometimes it was hard to pick which one I wanted, and it came down to which position would work best [laughter.] on that particular quilt.
JP: Okay.
SK: Some of the pictures were my daughter's, the dog, up in the old left hand corner, Rosco Bear the Rottweiler was my daughter's photograph, but other than that all the others I've taken myself.
JP: Okay. Can you tell us what kind of materials you used?
SK: I use 100% cotton. The batting in this quilt was Quilter's Dream Request. [6 second pause.] I do hand appliqué, prepared edge, which is different from needle turn and machine quilting. All the thread is cotton. The backing is cotton.
JP: What's the overall size of the quilt?
SK: I had to fill that in. I think it's 69" X 78", but once I make it and send it off--
JP: Yes, okay. [laughs.] And of course the meaning, the significance of course, your--
SK: Well, my family has been involved with animals of one type or another ever since I can remember. My grandfather had horses that pulled his carts in his business. In those days, everyone had a trotting horse, and Sunday, when there was nothing else to do and the shops were closed, they'd take the horses out on the street and race each other.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: My father then became a driver for these horses, and around our area there were a number of racetracks where people would go and just for fun, see whose horse was faster, and my dad was one of the ones that got behind the horse and drove. Eventually he became a jockey for a very short period of time, but when he got married my grandmother said, 'Now that's enough,' [laughs.], 'You don't need to do that anymore,' and my mother was quite pleased with that idea too.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: When I got married my husband had a horse, and I really met him through this horse, and that's Kimbo up there, and jokingly we'll curse the horse every now and then. [laughter.] Kimbo is the reason why we met in the first place.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: Naturally come--we had hunting dogs. We had pet dogs. I fell love with a Samoyed, and we raised and bred "Sams" for a while. My children had pets right from the very beginning. My daughter learned to ride at a very early age and eventually became an exercise rider down in Florida and also over at Belmont Park, and Saratoga, but after a while she decided it would be kind of nice not to do that anymore. She couldn't imagine being an exercise rider at thirty and forty years old, so she came home, and now she and her husband live right next door to us, and my son and his wife live on the other side.
JP: Oh, okay.
SK: So while we don't have so many pets in our household. They're either right next door one way or the other.
JAP: [laughs.] Okay.
SK: And we get the joy of these pets without the mess.
JP: [laughs.] Sounds like a good deal.
SK: We have fish, but at our age it's kind of nice to be able to travel and go out and about without the responsibility--
JP: Right.
SK: Of the pets, so as I say, we adapt the ones next door whenever we feel we have to have a pet.
JP: Okay. So what are your plans for this quilt?
SK: This quilt will probably go to one more show. It won Best Wall Quilt at Paducah, and here it won the Master's Award for Traditional Artistry. I may send it to one more show. I don't really know where. I'd like it to go out to the West Coast, because it hasn't been out there, and I'd like people to see it there. I think I will probably, if it's not busy elsewhere, take it to "Quilting by the Lake" with me, which is in Morrisville, New York. It's a two week conference with classes and quilters, and a lot of the people that teach there helped me with this quilt, gave me ideas for doing--and encouragement, how to do it.
JP: Okay.
SK: And so forth and so on.
JP: Tell me about your interest in quilting. When did you--what are your earliest memories of quilting.
SK: Well, the earliest memories I've had that have anything at all to do with fabric is when I was a little girl, and my grandmother had a treadle machine, and I used to sit up there and treadle back and forth and back and forth, and that was a lot of fun. Out of necessity, being a child growing up during the Depression, I learned to sew clothing, because I had to. If I wanted something new to wear to the dance, I'd better make it myself, or it wouldn't happen, so I did clothing for quite a while. When my children were little I made them clothes. I've always loved quilts. I'm looking at them, ones I saw in books or--I never went to a show or anything. I had always wanted to take classes and just never got around to it. I was an art teacher for thirty-three years, and that's a pretty fulltime job. One day I made a toy for my grandchild, he's seventeen years old now, and it had quilting on the side of it, and I thought, 'That's not very hard. I got to be able to make that, make it a little bit bigger,' so I started out making what I call utility quilts, and it was so much fun. I made a quilt for my daughter. I made a quilt for my son. I made a quilt for my mother, and everybody in the family just about had a quilt that I made, traditional Log Cabin and that type of thing. Well, then my mother and I went up to Nova Scotia to visit friends and family. She was born in Nova Scotia, and when we got back she said, 'Shirley, I think it would be nice to make a memory quilt.' I said, 'Okay,' so I went looking through what patterns I had, and I picked out some traditional patterns like Tree of Life and Ducks on the Pond. She was from Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, and they're known for their apples, and so I had little traditional square red and green for the apple trees, and she didn't like that idea at all. She said, 'Well, Shirley, apples aren't square,' [laughter.] so then the only way that I could figure to make round apples was by appliqué, [laughter.] and that's really how I started. I don't do the traditional type of needle turn appliqué, because I didn't know any better. I found a little craft book that told me to use a lot of glue and a lot of paper, and that's what I did, and then realizing I'd have to get the paper out of there, I had to soak it and soak and get the glue and paper out. I knew there had to be a better way to do this, so I took a class from Elly Sienkiewicz and learned a lot of the things I did were okay, but some were very wrong, so I took some of the things that she said, and I stayed with some of things that I did but in a different way without the glue. [laughter.]
JP: And the paper to pick.
SK: Right and the paper to pick. I still use freezer paper. I pin the paper to the back of the fabric and then iron over the edges onto the shiny side of the freezer paper. A lot of quilters use starch, but I don't do that. When I take the paper off, I baste around all the edges. After I get that done I have a whole bunch of little pieces that look like a jigsaw puzzle. I put them together according to the way my drawing is worked out, and that's the way I do it.
JP: Okay.
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Very [inaudible.]
JAP: How did long did you actually work on this quilt?
SK: This particular quilt, after all the drawing and the photography, once I started working with the actual fabric, I'd say about two years worth of time. A couple of pictures were done ahead.
JP: Now you had your face done already, but--
SK: [inaudible because JoAnn is speaking at the same time.] Yes, right. And the fish were probably done. That piece, the appliqué part was probably done three or four years before I did the rest of the quilt.
JP: Okay.
SK: But none of the portraits were quilted until I was all ready to go. The pictures were quilted first, then framed and set into the quilted "brick wall" using a method taught by Katie Pasquini Masopust.
JP: Are there other members of your family now that quilt?
SK: No, I'm it.
JP: You're it?
SK: I'm the only one of the immediate family. I have a cousin that quilts, and up in Nova Scotia, everybody quilts, because there's nothing else to do in the wintertime.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: And so I have a lot of second, third, and fourth cousins that quilt.
JP: Okay.
SK: In Nova Scotia.
JP: Is your family supportive of your quilting?
SK: Very much so. My husband does practically all the housework. He understands that this isn't a hobby, that now this is my profession, and he gives me time to do it.
JP: Great.
SK: Of course I buy him a nice toy every now and then in the form of a new gun or a tractor or something, but he's very--if I want to go to a quilt conference--like this one for instance, I was called two weeks ago. Was I going to Houston? Well, no, I wasn't. Well, Karey Bresenhan talked me into it, and I said, 'Yes, sure, okay then I'll come,' and when my husband came home, I said, 'Honey, you don't mind if I go to Houston for a week do you?' and he said, 'No, if you want to.'
JP: Great.
SK: He's very supportive that way.
JP: What aspect of quilting do you like the best when you start?
SK: I love appliqué.
JP: Okay.
SK: And I never leave home without it. I appliqué all day long. I force myself to quilt. I have never really done much hand quilting. The vast majority of my quilts have been done with machine quilting, and I don't think I'll ever hand quilt anything very substantial. I'm told that I do very well with machine quilting, but again it's just something to make a quilt, and it's not my--it's not a joy to me. It's appliqué that really is--
JP: So that's your favorite part.
SK: Right.
JP: Okay. And your opinion what makes a great quilt?
SK: People come by and look at this, the last two or three days, and the overwhelming response I get--they like it because it's a happy quilt, and you know it is a happy quilt. I enjoyed working with it. I can't bring myself to make a quilt--although I can appreciate them, that has a statement that's a sad statement. I have to enjoy working on something, something happy, some point. I love animals, and so all the quilts that I've done for competition have been animals, so--
JP: Okay. What aspects do you think make a quilt artistically powerful?
SK: Like any work of art, be it contemporary or nonobjective or any of the words you want to throw in that direction, if it can be viewed and then a 'Oh, wow' type of sentiment evolves, that's what I call a good quilt. Doesn't have to be bright. One right next door to me there, Diane Gaudynski's work, very subtle, very quiet, but it's still a knock them dead 'Oh, wow' quilt, and that's what I like all the quilts that won here are all 'Wow' quilts. [laughs.]
JP: They evoke an emotion really when you see them.
SK: [speaking at the same time as Jo Ann.] Right.
JP: Okay. What do you think makes a good museum quilt, museum quality for a special collection?
SK: Well, I think the workmanship has to be impeccable. It should hold together visually as a whole. Your eye should be lead around the entire quilt like any work of art without gravitating to one position and staying there. I like to have the backs of my quilts have a statement to go along with the front. This particular one doesn't, but my other three competition quilts that I've won with have had backs that were--
JP: What kind of backing is on this one?
SK: The back of this is--
JP: [speaking at the same time as Shirley.] I don't have gloves, so I don't want to touch it.
SK: Yes. On the back of this is a cross-stitched label and names on all the various panels--
JP: Oh, okay.
SK: [inaudible.] animals were.
JP: Identify them. Okay, great, great. Okay, let's turn from the quilting to the quilter now. What makes a great quilter?
SK: A great quilter? [7 second pause.] Looking at some of my friends that I consider to be great quilters, they're dedicated to a perfect type of work. They don't particularly care if it can be done in three weeks or ten weeks as long as it's perfect to their mind. They think other people have to appreciate it. [4 second pause.] And again the 'Oh, wow' factor comes in to play. [laughter.] Whenever I go to an actual quilt museum, and I've been in a couple of them, all of the quilts speak to me in one way or another, and I think that's important for a quilt that is going to be kept around for ages.
JP: Right. What usually inspires you to choose a certain design when you're quilting?
SK: The design of the quilt itself you mean?
JP: Yes.
SK: Well, I love to do animals.
JP: Okay, so that's what most of them revolve around?
SK: All of my pictorial quilts have revolved around animals. This is the first one that I've done that had cats and dogs and that type of thing. The first quilt that I entered in competition was 102 pandas – "Pandas 'Round the World."
JP: Okay.
SK: And that kind of said something about the world situation as far the ecology of the world. The next two quilts had to do with racehorses, because I was raised appreciating the thoroughbred horse. I have gone to a number of races over the years, made a few wagers.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: I've been very interested in the breeding of racehorses and the way they run and how beautiful they are, just the aesthetic of their whole being, and so I did two quilts with racehorses on them. I'm working on a third right now, which will probably be my last racehorse quilt. In the future I'm looking toward puffins. I've started collecting the fabric to make a puffin quilt, and then way down the line, if I'm still around on this earth, I'd like to do something with Clydesdales. I've made a couple of small Clydesdale quilts that I've given away as gifts or traded, but that's probably about it. I don't think too far down the line, because it takes me a couple of years to think about, and draw it out and another couple of years to get it together. [laughs.]
JP: So you always have one in a stage?
SK: I always have--yes. I usually have three going at once, either in the appliqué stage, the quilting stage, or the design stage.
JP: Okay.
SK: So if I get where I can't face that sewing machine one more minute I come down and start some drawings for the next quilt.
JP: Okay. How do you think that quilting is important to American life today?
SK: It tells a story. It tells what is going on in women's world, how and what they think about things. I have to include some men in there too, because I have met a few really fantastic men quilters. I think that's about it.
JP: Do you find that there--
SK: It's a world of beauty, and the world needs beauty, especially now in this day and age.
JP: Do you find that there are more men quilters now than are--
SK: More that are admitting it. I think probably there's always been men quilters but unfortunately quilting has been women's work. Same way I can remember when I was teaching school my boys didn't really want to have too much to do with--oh, say needle point or anything like that, and then thank God a great big magnificent football player, Rosie Grier, decided he was going to do needle point, and I could then say, 'Well, you all know Rosie Grier. He does needle point.' [laughter.] So, I think probably more men [4 second pause.] that ever admitted it did it for fun relaxation. I know from history--macramé for instance was essentially a sailor's work, and they did it on the boats. They learned how to tie knots in shipping and it gave them something to do, when they realized if they used smaller cord they could make some really fancy stuff.
JP: Okay.
SK: So I think now, people are just--I think men quilters have always been there. Just now they're beginning to admit it.
JP: Okay. How do you think quilts can be used?
SK: Well, I cringe when somebody sits on my quilt regardless of what the book says. [laughter.] Most of my quilts go up on the wall. I use quilts on the bed. The quilt that I use on the bed is what I call a utility quilt. I throw it in the washing machine when it needs it. I use it like a blanket. I've got quilts that I bought. I have a beautiful Amish quilt that unfortunately stays kind of hidden underneath a sheet so that it doesn't get dirty or sun struck or whatever. It would be nice to say, 'Well, I think quilts are around to be used,' but unfortunately they aren't. The fabric that they make for quilts just isn't made to withstand dirt and light. I like them on the wall. I don't like to see them folded up somewhere. I don't like creases in quilts, and I've seen some really fantastic quilts that have been ruined by having a very prominent crease right down the center. Even some that aren't really very big and there's no reason in the world why they can't be rolled. Anything that I've got at home I either lay it out flat or roll it up.
JP: Okay. That was going to be my next question.
SK: Yes.
JP: How do you think they should be preserved? What's the best way to preserve them?
SK: I roll them up. I have them covered in an old sheet I make into a sleeve. I don't put them in a tube or anything. I just have them rolled around a tube that has been covered with anything that I can find as far as batting or an old blanket, a real clean blanket. Keep it away from the cardboard or from the plastic or whichever tube it is that I use for shipping and then I just lie them out flat or roll them. I think it's important to every now and then just open it up, flip it out, and let the air in it. The air doesn't hurt quilts. Never put it in plastic.
JP: So you actually roll them and then you roll them in fabric?
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Yes.
JP: I mean you put fabric around [inaudible.] at the sleeve? Okay. What's happened to most of your quilts? I don't know. You talked about the one on your bed and with the ones you've done for the shows. Have you sold them or--
SK: The ones that I made for my friends and family are being used. Most of them were bed quilts. [5 second pause.] The competition quilts that I've made--and I know a lot of people kind of cringe when I say that, but I make a competition quilt, or I make a utility quilt.
JP: Yes.
SK: Along with the other--the pandas. The first quilt that I made that I entered in competition was supposed to be a quilt that went on a bed in my grandchildren's play room. I have a collection of stuffed pandas, and what I wanted was a place to put the pandas. I thought, 'Well, I'll make a panda quilt, and so they can sit on it, and it will look like they're in a forest with all these other pandas around the quilt,' and I thought I'd go out and buy some panda fabric. Back in those days there wasn't any. Lions, tigers, and bears but no pandas, so I started a panda quilt. Well, then when I had it finished I realized I wasn't going to let any grandkid near it with [laughter.] chocolate cookies and suckers and whatnot. I was encouraged by my friends to enter it in a major show, specifically Paducah, and it won a prize. I think it was third place in amateur appliqué or something like that. I frankly don't remember now, and it was bought. The quilt museum there in Paducah asked if they could buy it, and so I sold it to them. The next quilt that I did was "Two Minutes in May," which was named one of the best one hundred American quilts of the twentieth century. Before it was named that it was bought by a horse breeder out in California. [5 second pause.] The next quilt that I made to enter in competition was called "Battle of Old Hilltop." The first one, "Two Minutes in May," was of the Kentucky Derby. "Battle of Old Hilltop" was of the Preakness Stakes.
JP: Okay.
SK: And the man who bought "Two Minutes in May" also bought that one. This was the next one. This will be staying home, this "Friends of the Family." My children would have a [laughter.] have a cow if I sold it. I have to keep that at home.
JP: Do you have plans to go for the Triple Crown and do Belmont?
SK: Yes.
JP: [laughs.] Oh, okay.
SK: The one that I'm working on now is a Belmont quilt. It's called "Flowers of the Crown," and it has about two dozen each of black-eyed susans, roses, and carnations, the three types of flowers awarded to each of the races that constitute thoroughbred racing's Triple Crown.
JP: Okay.
SK: And I will never make another carnation as long as I live.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: Roses--
JP: Explain why?
SK: Oh, my. Roses and Susans are easy, but everything I tried for a carnation ended up looking like a white camellia--
JP: [laughs.]
SK: Or a white peony.
JP: Okay.
SK: And I finally had to bite the bullet and make each individual petal and do some painting on them, and put all the petals together--never again, [laughter.] never again. I loved them when they were done, but it--
JP: Very intense? [laughs.]
SK: But that's--there's going to be a picture of two horses, the last two that won the Triple Crown in fact, Alydar and Affirmed. They're in a picture on a wall, and then in front of the wall will be a table, and the table will have a portrait of the winning horse and a scrapbook with some of the articles on it about the winning horse and then the vase of flowers.
JP: Okay.
SK: Another year at least before it's done.
JP: Okay, okay. Do you belong to a guild?
SK: No, I don't. There's four gals. All of our names begin with 'S,' and we all live in the Colden hill country, and we needed something to call ourselves, us four, so we called ourselves the Hilltop Quilters, and there's Sherry and Sandy and Shirley and Sally --What'd I say? Sally, Sandy, Sherry, and Shirley. Us four.
JP: Sherry. Okay. [laughs.]
SK: We're the Hilltop Quilters. [laughs.] And one of the gals' son calls us the "Thread Heads." [laughter.]
JP: Do you get together regularly?
SK: Pardon me?
JP: Do you get together regularly?
SK: Yes, for lunch.
JAP: Okay.
SK: Every now and then. We all do something different in the quilt world, and sometimes we'll get together, and each person will do what they do while we visit.
JP: Okay.
SK: And that's really about it. We don't have meetings or anything like that.
JP: Okay.
SK: There are some very nice quilt guilds in our area, but I feel if I can't devote the time to a guild, I'm not going to join one, and I don't like sitting and talking about mundane things like money.
JP: Yes, you want to quilt. You don't want to talk about quilting.
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] I just--I want to quilt. That's it. I want to do it.
JP: So you're basically self-taught?
SK: Yes.
JP: Okay.
SK: Although I have taken--since I've started quilting I have taken some fantastic classes.
JP: Okay.
SK: They're fun. The teachers are marvelous people, and now I call half a dozen of them my friends.
JP: Okay.
SK: I wouldn't miss the classes. I'll take classes as long as I'm alive.
JP: [inaudible.]
SK: So much fun.
JP: Exactly. Is there anything else you'd like to say about quilting and the quilt festival?
SK: No, I think that's about covered it. I can't really think of anything else. Of course tonight, about 3 o'clock in the morning I'll think of something. [laughter.] I think that that's about it.
JP: Okay. I think I've covered all the questions that I have on here that you just didn't pick up on and cover without me asking. How many hours a week do you quilt generally average?
SK: I can tell you that one, because everybody asks me that.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: It's not at all unusual for me to get up at five in the morning, and while I'm waiting for the coffee to perk I'll start appliqué.
JP: Okay.
SK: I'll appliqué all day long. Usually watch the sitcoms on the television at night, and they end about 11 o'clock, and that's when I go to bed, and I've been either appliquéing or quilting or drawing [4 second pause.] all but about maybe two to three hours out of that time, and that's spent eating. [laughs.]
JP: Okay. [laughs.]
SK: So day in day out. That's my thing.
JP: Okay and this is seven days a week, not five day weeks?
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Seven days a week.
JP: Everyday. Okay.
SK: If someone says, 'Let's do lunch,' they have to come and drag me out, but I will go out and do lunch. [laughter.] But if I didn't, I'd be quilting.
JAP: Okay, okay.
SK: It's not--it's no longer a hobby.
JP: [laughs.]
SK: It's now something you have to do in order to survive.
JP: Okay. Does that take the edge off at all? I mean did you--when you were relaxing, just kind of learning, and getting--
SK: I don't know. I think I'm fairly relaxed person as it is, but I always have to be doing something.
JP: Okay.
SK: I've done needle point. I've done photography. I've had all kinds of hobbies. My profession was teaching. I taught high school art for thirty-three years.
JP: Okay.
SK: And my degree was in art education, and my advanced work was in photography.
JP: Okay. [6 second pause.] So it just kind of manifested itself in quilting--?
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] And that's about it.
JP: Now with the art.
SK: Yes, yes. Now I don't do any of the other any kind of crafts I used to be involved with, but I'm always doing something, and what's nice about appliqué is you can take it wherever you go. When you're sitting in the doctor's office, instead of twiddling your thumbs--
JP: Sure.
SK: You're appliquéing.
JP: Sure. Okay. Well, if you don't have anything else, I'm just going to sign off with our little closing here and say thank you to Shirley Kelly--
SK: [speaking at the same time as JoAnn.] Thank you very much for including me here.
JP: For taking the time to allow me to interview you for this 2001 Quilters' Save Our Stories project. Our interview is concluding at 12:25 today.
SK: [inaudible.]
JP: Thank you.
[tape recorder shut off.]
Interview Keyword
Quilts as art
Quilt guilds
Preservation of quilts
Museum quilts
Men in quilting
Women in quilting
Creative processes
Commissioned quilts
Quilting as a career
Art quilts
Traditional quilts
Daily routines
Art educators
Machine quilting
Hand quilting
Quilts in American life
Quilting culture
Horses in art
Family pets
Family quilts
Textile arts
Needle arts
Contemporary quilts
Utility quilts
Creativity
Artistic talents
Collection
Citation
“Shirley Kelly,” Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories, accessed April 25, 2024, https://qsos.quiltalliance.org/items/show/2494.