Debra Gabel

Debra Gabel

BOQ-007

Debra Gabel

Karen Musgrave

1/9/09

TheQuiltShow.com

Clarksville, Maryland

Kim Greene

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I'm doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Debra Gabel. It is January 9, 2009. It is 9:07 in the morning and Debra is in Clarksville, Maryland and I'm in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Debra thank you so much for taking time out of your day to do this.

Debra Gabel (DG): Thank you very much for having me.

KM: You're more than welcome. Please tell me about the quilt you selected which is "Obama: it's a NEW Day."

DG: It started the day after the elections. My friend and neighbor, who is also a doctor, is originally from Togo, Africa and she called me immediately. She knows of my art quilts, and she asked me, 'Can you please make me an Obama quilt?' Unbeknown to her, I had already planned to be making an Obama quilt when he announced his nomination to be president. Funny thing is that I was quite torn because I really am a Hillary supporter. I had thoughts of doing a Hillary/Obama quilt, but it never happened. I have a business as well as my art quilts, in quilt pattern making. (Zebrapatterns.com) As the time passed and I heard more about Obama I was so inspired by what Obama had said in his speeches on TV and his debates that it really turned into an Obama quilt, and I became an Obama supporter. Once she [my neighbor/doctor friend.] made the call, it was just that extra kind of kick in the butt to really get started on this quilt. I knew that I had wanted to feature him and the most important thing to me was his, his vision of the future and his hope for the United States. It was pure inspiration coupled with this commission that came the day after that really started the whole quilt.

KM: The quilt is 50 inches by 54 inches.

DG: Correct.

KM: Is that a typical size for you?

DG: It has been since I've been, I've been competing nationally/internationally and that seems to be a nice size. As an art quilt on a wall, it is large enough to have a big impact, yet it is small enough to manage because I do everything on a regular sewing machine, not on a long arm, mid arm, on regular sewing machine.

KM: Is the quilt typical of your style?

DG: It is. The only difference in this quilt is that I typically use raw edge techniques, appliqué techniques. What I mean by that is that you cut the shapes out of fabric, typically I use cottons or batiks and then I adhere it with Steam-A-Seam Light 2, which is a fusible interfacing and then I go around the edges with some kind of satin or buttonhole stitch to make sure all of the edges are sewn down. In the past year I've submitted many quilts to national competitions. I've had a couple in Houston. My first two in Houston had comments that came back from the judges that stated the raw edge technique needed some improvement. I'm a real competitive person so I thought, 'I will show them.' I'll turn all the edges! I turned all the edges so they wouldn't be able to make that comment, however, I think that is probably the last time I'm going to turn all of the edges! [laughs.] It actually came out very nice, but it was just not me. It is a very slow process to do all of that turning. It was worth doing because at the end I came out of it saying, 'Okay, I did it.' I'm happy the way it came out however I didn't do this from inside of me, I did it as a response to somebody outside and that is really not how art should be created.

KM: How do you plan to use this quilt?

DG: It has been commissioned so I think it is going to be sold and it is going to be a wall quilt.

KM: Tell me about the exhibition.

DG: The exhibition [the exhibition, "President Obama: A Celebration in Art Quilts," will be from February 9 to March 5, 2009, in the main gallery (King Street Gallery) of the Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Arts Center, Silver Spring, Maryland.] is being held in Montgomery College, which is a college in Silver Spring which is just on the outskirts of the [Washington.] D.C. Beltway and it is an international quilt show that was put together by a friend of mine named Sue Walen. We have a critique group together. We meet once a month and she is a member of SAQA, which I am also a member. It is S-A-Q-A, Studio Art Quilt Association.

KM: No, it is Associates.

DG: Associates, right, right. [both laugh.] It is a professional--well I'm in as a professional member and it is a wonderful site [www.saqa.com.] and group of people that can from all over the world can get together, see each other's art, have discussions. They have regular call for entries. It is a fabulous thing. She [Walen.] put a note of some sort out to the SAQA people saying how inspired she was by the Obama campaign, the election, the upcoming inauguration, and she was just curious if anybody else out there was also inspired to make a quilt. She got an overwhelming response from all over the world and decided to do a call for entries and try to do a show. She went to a couple of local venues, small venues like libraries and local halls and everybody she approached was interested. She said, 'Well before I sign anything let me go to the next level.' There is a very arts and crafts museum on this college campus, and they were thrilled to have it. She loved that. It was way beyond her expectations being able to be in this exhibit hall in this place and well come to find out now, we have been offered all of these other places in the Carolinas and all of this, so this show may end up traveling and they may end up doing a book and it has kind of taken on a life of its own, which is very exciting for everybody involved. Sue has done a tremendous amount of work on this, and it's just really been very, very successful so far.

KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking.

DG: When I was thirteen years old, I started babysitting to make some money. I lived in upstate New York, and I happened to be a real Type A kind of person and even at thirteen I was very Type A so I started babysitting and then when the kids were sleeping or when they went to bed, I had nothing to do so I would clean the house where I was sitting. Unsolicited, I would just do something because I couldn't stand sitting and watching the TV. I was always doing something. The long and the short of it is she was so happy that I cleaned her house she would pay me a little extra. The next time I got a few odd jobs mowing her lawn and then finally she found out, because we became friends, that I was very artistic. She was a quilter and an artist. She had a small business making raw edge appliqué pillows. This was in the '70's which was pretty unusual. The genre that she featured in her work was unicorns, Pegasus, castles, all that medieval type of imagery. She was making pillows and tote bags. At night I would, when I was babysitting for her children, they would go to bed, and I would hand cut all the little appliquéd horns, huffs and small pieces for her pillows and totes. [technical problem causes phone to disconnect.] Now these weren't patterns, these were finished pillows that were appliquéd and quilted. It turned into quite a big business, and she ended up needing less and less babysitting as her children got older and I did more and more creative work. It lasted for about ten years I eventually had such a fondness for fabric and textiles, and I thought it was so cool that you could cut out any shape and make pictures that love for fiber really never left me. I went on to college and majored in biology, painting and graphic design which is kind of an odd combination. I ended up with a Master in Fine Arts and Graphic Design. Once I had my own family, I came back to quilting to make baby quilts for my kids and my friends that were having babies. It morphed into a small business. My local shop said to me, 'Hey, I like what you are doing. Why don't you make a pattern? I was like, 'Oh are you kidding! I have three babies I can't do that,' but eventually I did.

KM: What is the name of your business?

DG: My business is called Zebra Pattern and that comes from Zebra because I didn't want to call it Debra's Patterns because there are so many Susie's Patterns and Mary's Patterns and names like that out in the field. I have a tendency to use stripes, I love stripes because I'm a graphic designer who I loves bold graphics, typography and graphic imagery. I use stripes. Zebras have stripes, and instead of naming my business Debra's Patterns, I took the D off and put on a Z and it is Zebra Patterns.

KM: How long have you had your business?

DG: I've been doing teaching in patterning for about eight, ten years but I was sick in 2003, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and had a bone marrow transplant at the end of 2003/2004 and came very close to dying so it really helps you get yourself in gear and know what you want to do. After I recovered from that, which was not so easy, I really reevaluated my life and set some priorities and this is my passion. Fabric, sewing, teaching, sharing patterns, anything with fabric and art is my absolute positive passion. I set a one-year goal of making some patterns and trying to teach locally, and a five-year goal of making a pattern line and a ten-year goal of being an international speaker, teacher, lecturer. I'm at the five-year mark this January and I am going to Pittsburgh in the spring to the International Quilt Market show my line.

KM: Very cool.

DG: Yeah, exciting.

KM: Very exciting.

DG: And it is scary.

KM: I think scary is okay.

DG: Of course, scary is great.

KM: How do you balance your time? Tell me how you balance your time.

DG: My children are sixteen, fourteen, and twelve so with each passing year I get a little bit more independent time. My sixteen-year-old, soon to be seventeen just started driving so I get a bigger chunk of time each day that I'm not schlepping him and his brother back and forth to swimming twice a day. I still do schlepping; I still do all the mom home things. I've progressed enough that my husband has come to respect my plan and he does everything in his power now to enable me to be successful which is a real blessing. In the morning I have to get the kids out and I do all the different mom duties that I need to do to get the day prepared, to get dinner planned and then during the day I really focus on the quilting and my business and going to guilds and teaching and somehow it just seems to work out. Also, I work very quickly. I do a lot of processing when I'm driving kids to basketball and baseball, I do a lot planning in my head. Many things bake in my head for weeks and then when I sit down at the computer or the sketchbook to do things, they come out rather quickly because I've been processing them. I'm a pretty good time manager.

KM: Do you sketch everything out ahead of time?

DG: Typically, I will work with a pencil sketch. It will just be a really rough thumbnail idea. For example, with the Obama I knew I wanted his head, I wanted his facial features and emotion in his face, and I knew I wanted it on the background of an American flag. Pretty much that is all I knew. I sketched that out and I also write down all my ideas. I will write down all the words, hope, faith, inspiration, future, anything that comes to my mind. Like free association, just write it all down. Get it all down, just purge and get everything out, anything I need to draw, anything I need to write and then I put that down and then at another time, I will go back to my computer, and I will do the same thing on a Google search. I will search those words- hope, faith, prosperity, flag, U.S. flag. It is the coolest thing when you go to Google and search flag, all the different sites that come up and that starts the chain reaction. The chain reaction may start with flag and then it becomes nationalism, then it becomes something else and then I will go to the images and search images. If you search images button on Goggle, for example hope, you will be amazed at all the cool things that come up. All things that you haven't thought of and as I said it starts this chain reaction of thing, to thing, to thing, to thing and you get so inspired and energized by the findings that you just can't wait to start. Then after that I have a second session of brainstorming, but I do it on my computer. Being a graphic designer, I'm pretty well versed in PhotoShop and Adobe Illustrator and I can pretty much draw as well if not better with a mouse than I can with a pencil. What I do is I start drawing again with the computer. I have a huge clipart library and then I will go, and I will snatch all kinds of images from my clipart of flags and monuments and anything that I may think of, and I will have all of those images and with my original sketches, put those altogether and then just the quilt starts to make itself. I will use pieces of clipart and then I alter them. I really want this stuff to be my own. Many times, I will scan in my original pencil sketches then I will go over them with vector lines, which are lines within Adobe Illustrator to render the exact imagery that I want. That is how the quilt is born. The quilt starts like that and then what I do, I will do the composition. I'm really concerned about content first then I go into the elements. The next thing is that once I know, oh I love that dove and I love that image and I love the flag the way I have it, then I compose the whole thing and I'm focus on composition, focus on balance. I'm focused on color. I'm worried about all of those things. I will get a general composition together and I will be doing it pretty much to scale. Then I will print it out on my computer. Fifty-four inches by fifty-four inches is what the Obama quilt ended up. I printed it out. There is a command on the printer called tiling. This allows you to actually print a full-size output that you just tape together. I have lots of tape in my house! I tape this great big paper puzzle together and then I look at it. From there, if it is good, then that is my blueprint to start my quilt. After that, after I have my blueprint, I will start making individual pattern pieces and hopefully the quilt will stay true to the composition but inevitably it always changes. I go from pencil to computer to paper output to fabric and things just keep changing. I let them change. Sometimes the size changes, sometimes the elements, anything can change. Anything is possible at that stage, and I don't limit myself in any way. In this case my original idea was to have Obama looking visionary out into the future and to have the flag behind him and then to have a dove symbolizing peace and having something green in his mouth, hopefully representing that we [the U.S.A.] are going green into the future. I originally positioned the dove on Obama's shoulder. It looked great on paper and compositionally it was sound, but once I got it translated into fabric, it wasn't great. I ended up moving the dove to the upper corner where the stars are typically on a flag and that seemed to really work well in fabric for me. The stars then fell off the blue area where the stars are normally positioned. Instead of having 50 stars, it ended up with three stars. The stars finally ended up floating and circling his head. That all happened way after the fact after, when I was actually working in the fiber. That is my method of working. To review, step one is the pencil. Just get things out on paper. If you saw the sketches, you would think a third grader, did it. It is not perfected in any way. It is just raw pencil marks and stick images. It is just getting everything out then there is a gap and a focus to getting onto the computer and lastly, from the computer into an overall composition or plan and then into patterns and physical shapes without limiting myself at any stage.

KM: Do you work on more than one piece at a time, or do you work on one piece, complete it and then go to the next one?

DG: I have to say I do both. If I have a deadline, which I did have on this one, I had a commission to have it done by January, I tend to focus on that but I've been doing this long enough, (I'm 47 years old) to know that once you get at a point where you are a little stuck, rather than just being stuck and sit with your wheels going around in the mud I move to something else. I put up my stuck project at whatever stage I'm in on my design wall and just keep walking by it and I don't force it. I let it happen on its own. Because I have a pattern business, I always have patterns that I am developing and designing. That work is much more structured with more rules. I always have something to do if that if the creativity is not quite flowing. I can go back to my structured business [Zebra Patterns.] and create more patterns. I always have patterns that need creating or translating or I can do writing or pattern color development. Those are down times from the creative time. When I do enough of those types of tasks and have made several trips to the basketball court or the baseball field, I usually have got the creative problem solved on the art quilt that I'm doing, so I will go back to that project. So, the answer is yes, I do work on several things at a time, but I try to focus on only one art quilt at a time.

KM: Describe your studio.

DG: My studio is in my basement, and it was carefully planned. We have been in this house about ten years and it's a real nice space. It has about standard eight-foot ceilings, with four full length windows. One looks out onto a bed of irises and other flowers that I've planted; one looks out onto a birdfeeder and the other two looks out onto our backyard swimming pool so that I can be in the craft room working--I call it my craft room, rather than my studio--looking out onto my pool watching my kids during the summer. I originally started with rug, bad idea, step on pins, so just last year after nine years I changed it to a wood floor and that's been great. I can slide around from my computer to my sewing machine to my serger to my printer, flying around all over the room and I have a large kitchen table that I put a really large mat on. The mat is probably 36 [inches.] by 60 [inches.]. It's a cutting mat so I've got the whole surface for cutting and working. I have a higher counter for a large paper cutter, and I have the IKEA system with the wire mesh baskets. I have trying different storage systems for a very long time, and I have come to the conclusion that the removable wire baskets are the absolute best system for me. I have all of my fabrics sorted by color in wire baskets. You pull out the whole basket. If I want reds, I can pull out my whole basket of reds and they are all neatly folded. They are in color order and because I teach a lot of classes I have a basket for each of the classes that I teach. So, for example, when I go to teach my class on landscape painting art quilts, I just pull out that basket and bring my whole system. My whole class is right in that basket. All the handouts, all the materials, there may be rotary cutters, anything for that class are right in the basket. I find that is the best way to keep organized. It is very important for me to keep organized. When I'm working things are flying like Eleanor Burns. Everything is flying all over the place it is kind of crazy but afterwards I do clean up. I put everything back so that the next morning I don't walk into a studio and feel overwhelmed.

KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you even make the distinction?

DG: I think of myself as a passionate fiber artist who has a nose for business and is open for anything.

KM: Very nice. What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today?

DG: Biggest challenge let's see. Overcoming fear. I see as a teacher a lot of quilters out there today that are afraid, which is one of my passions is to help people not be afraid. They are afraid to machine appliqué, they are afraid to free motion quilt, they are afraid to pick the wrong color. Its, it's one of my main focuses is to help these people free up and when they do it's the best feeling for me as a teacher to see them say, oh my gosh I can do this. I think when I was introduced to quilting there were so many rules. There were rules about when you meander you can't cross over the lines. Rules, smules! I just don't go for that. I think this is an expression and it all boils down to your intention. If your intention is to enter a quilt show and win a $1,000 prize then yes then the rules apply, but if your intention is to create a blanket to keep your kid warm then the rules are a whole lot different. I really am an artist that likes to know the so-called rules, but I don't necessarily adhere to the rules. If that makes any sense.

KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why?

DG: Do you mean artists or quilters?

KM: Both.

DG: I love Toulouse-Lautrec, he is a graphic French impressionist, and his stuff was very free, the subject matter was a little risqué, not that I'm risqué but it was cutting edge and it had something, it really spoke to people. It was free and easy, and it was incomplete. A lot of his images are images of women dancing in Paris and burlesque dancers and you will see her face and her dress and then it will kind of fade out, you won't see arms or legs or and that is really interesting to me that you can get the message across, and you don't have to tell the whole story. I just love his graphic interpretation of things. I also love all the impressions, Manet and Monet. Picasso, I have a great respect for in that he started as a fine master painter realism and ended up somewhere so different. It is really cool. As far as quilters, I really respect Jane Sassaman. She also happens to be a graphic designer and her stuff is bold, graphic and most of all excellent craftsmanship and that is a real issue for me. I really respect people who strive for excellent craftsmanship. That is always an underlying goal in all of my quilts. I really strive towards excellent craftsmanship, good construction. I admire Ricky Tims. I've had a class with him. He also is a graphic designer. There must be something parallel in the way we [graphic designers who also quilt.] think because I love the way he organizes his class. I love the way he's really taken off his art quilting as well as his business, The Quilt Show, and all his books and everything else he is doing, and he is positive, and he is happy. I've had classes with Sassaman, she is positive and happy so to be around people who are giving to their students and to be around people who are achieving goals that they set is very inspiring to me.

KM: Anyone else?

DG: Let me think. The impressionists, I love Art Nouveau. I love textile artists like William Morris. William Morris is an early textile designer. Architecture: I love Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright. I love art deco. I pretty much love everything. [laughs.] I love folk art. I love all kinds abstract quilting. I tend to be very realistic as you can see with my Obama quilt and if you look at my website and my blog and see all my artwork. It is very realistic representational and sometimes I feel like maybe that is not so arty, maybe the abstract people are more arty than I am. I try to do that stuff sometimes but all my art friends who do the abstract stuff say to me, do the realist stuff, if we could do the realist stuff we would do the realist stuff, but we can't do the realist stuff, so we do the abstract stuff. I don't know, but I just enjoy what I'm doing, and I'm influenced by all kinds of things.

KM: How do you want to be remembered?

DG: I would love to be remembered as somebody who is positive and who's a giver and somebody who if you asked them for help pretty much would always say yes.

KM: You talked about belonging to SAQA and the critic group.

DG: Right.

KM: Do you belong to any other art or quilt groups?

DG: I do, I belong to two local quilt guilds. Regular traditional quilt guilds, one in Columbia called Faithful Circle Quilters and Milltown Quilters and they meet in a little church, and it is a traditional quilt group and I love it. I love it because you've got younger people and you've got much older people and anything you want to know about quilting there is somebody there who knows about it. It is a tremendous wealth of information. It is a great place to show quilts. We have quilt shows every year. I also belong to Nimble Fingers, which is in Bethesda, which is kind of a ride for me, but it is more art quilt oriented. It meets once a month rather than weekly. The other two are weekly. I do go to those once a month because it is a group of art quilters and I get more feedback. I also belong to Fiberlectric which is a monthly group. It's a juried of artists that are professionals in the [Washington.] D.C./Baltimore area. I also belong to a small critic group of artists that quilt artists that want to exhibit and have a business selling their stuff. They are more geared toward national showing and most of those people are SAQA members. One of my favorite groups is a quarterly group that I started with a friend; it is called Metrothreads. It is an online Yahoo group, but it is also a regional quarterly show and tell. We've got about 70 members now. What it is, is a forum online as well as in person for local fiber artists to meet and just have a show and tell. What I've found is that the guilds are geared for mostly traditional quilters. They are talking about blocks and appliqué and all the traditional things. Guilds tend to be very community oriented, and they like to gather. However, the art quilter is a different can of worms. Art quilters that I've known usually work solitary. They like to get together occasionally with art friends, like a critic group once a month maybe but they are not really into meeting every week and quilting. Guilds usually include social graces that go of sharing food and chit chatting and sharing old magazines, etc. Art quilters are pretty solitary I would say. I looked for three years for an Art Group of Quilters. There really wasn't any such group and I came to the conclusion there isn't because artists don't come out and they don't want to be committed to a steady group with structure and formal guild jobs. I formulated, as I said with a friend, this concept of a group where we could exchange ideas online locally and/or regionally and talk about art quilts, art processes and our personal journeys as fiber artists. I belong to a local church. We have a large parish hall. We meet in that church, and we put all the quilts up on a large wall. Sometimes we have had as few as ten. Sometimes we have had as many as forty. Art quilters will come up and will display all their quilts and it is this live incredible art show. It is really exciting because you have creative people that want no part of an art guild, want no part of displaying or showing their work [answering machine 'three seconds remaining.'] that want no part of showing their work and they come out and show their work and it is magnificent. There are all these art quilters out there that have no interest in the public, they just do it for art's sake, but they do want to keep touch with a few artists. It is a really rewarding group.

KM: Very good. Was it difficult to organize?

DG: Not really. I searched around the area as I said for about three years. I came across a dying group in Baltimore City. From there I got a name of a lady who was near to my house with the same idea. We teamed up, we made a Yahoo group and then we had my first meeting three years ago around my pool.

[answering machine interrupts.]

KM: Let's go back to where we were. Is there anything that you would like to add that I haven't asked you?

DG: We have not mentioned my website and blog.

KM: What is your website?

DG: My website is www.zebrapatterns.com and within the website is my blog so you can see how and what I'm working on. I usually take pictures of techniques that I am doing and all different inspirations I may have. That is informative and fun for people to follow.

KM: Talk a little bit about your blog. Why is blogging important to you?

DG: Everything I do is multifaceted, so blogging helps to give a mental review of what I have done and what I need to do by writing it all down. It is like journaling, and I don't journal, but it is a way of journaling and I've found I've only had a blog for a short time, maybe--about three or four months. It is a great "check in" device to say, oh this is what I've done, oh hey I did that and then it is a way to say this is what I need to do. It is really a great way to do that and to get connected with new people and to get connected to other groups and to promote my pattern business and to promote my lecture business. It is multifaceted; it works in personal levels, all different levels so I think it is a fabulous thing. I have started reading a few other people's blogs as well.

KM: Let's go back to Obama before we close. I can't remember in my lifetime quiltmakers making art about a president.

DG: Right.

KM: Why do you think there is this phenomenon of making Obama art?

DG: I think for myself I was inspired to make a quilt because of the person that he is and the times that are upon us. It is like the perfect storm. He is a really smart, dynamic man. He's also, many people refer to him as the first black president, but the cool thing about him is that he is really multi-cultural. He represents the uniting of race, of ideas, of everything. He really truly is somebody different and I think too that the quilting world is really maturing, especially in art quilting. Art quilting is a relatively young art form and I think many art quilters were moved. I had to make this quilt. It wasn't a choice I had to make this quilt because if it is something that you are passionate about and something inspirational like this comes along you need to express it. That is why people are making art quilts all over the world, is because this man has some kind of dynamic energy, and we are at a crossroads. In the world or the universe, there is some kind of dynamic energy that happens to all be lining up. It is an excellent opportunity for artists to really express their feelings about the state of the world, the state of the universe and the possibility of hope. I think the possibility of hope is what is driving all of the quilters and artists that are creating Obama art.

KM: Have you seen many of the quilts from the exhibition?

DG: I have. I've seen them online. There is an Obama quilters' website and the people that have been invited to this special exhibition have been talking amongst each other and there is an online photo gallery, so I've seen them there. February 13 there is the official opening for the quilts, so we will all get to see them in person at that point.

KM: What do you think of them?

DG: I think that they are all [pause.] emotional. They are all heartfelt. They are coming from inside, inside of the artist. That is what I see, I see raw feelings on all of them, unlike things that are not necessarily planned or abstract, I see raw emotion coming out and it is very exciting. It is very exciting, and I've had many people say to me, who follow my art that this is the best piece of art I've produced ever, and I actually had a person cry and hug me when she saw it. That inspires me. I have so many more Obama quilts in me I can't wait to get started.

KM: That was my next question. How many Obama quilts do you think you will make?

DG: As many as I need to feel like I've done justice to my soul and to his spirit.

KM: Are you going to have an Obama pattern?

DG: You know, people have asked me about that. I don't know about that. I'm going to have to check. I'm a rule follower in the sense that I take my business very seriously. I'm going to have to see if that is allowed. If it is allowed, I think it would be a good service. I may have to look into that. About three years ago licensed the Maryland Terrapins [Division One College in Maryland.] logo and did a very successful run of Maryland Terrapins patterns, but I've since discontinued that because licensing is so outrageously expensive and you know we are just little quilters and we are just selling little nine dollar patterns and we are not selling hundreds of socks and tee shirts and caps so there is all of these lawyers and rules and regulations. But I may look into it because you are probably the 15th person that has asked me, oh are you please going to make a quilt, or quilt pattern. I will look into it and maybe I will get back to you on that. [both laugh.]

KM: I want to thank you for taking time out of your day and doing this interview with me. We are going to conclude at 9:55.

DG: That is great. Thank you so much for having me. Good luck with your website.

KM: Excellent, thank you.