Elaine Zinn

Elaine Zinn

NC28803-006

Elaine Zinn

Alice Helms

5/27/08

Sandra Anne Frazier

Asheville, NC

Alice Helms

Alice Helms (AH): My name is Alice Helms. Today is May 27, 2008. I'm conducting an interview with Elaine Zinn for the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project. We're at my home in Asheville, North Carolina and it is 1:15 p.m. Elaine, tell me about the quilt you chose for today.

Elaine Zinn (EZ): The quilt I brought today is called "Makana Aloha" meaning Gift of Love. In Hawaii we call this quilt a Pohopoho quilt because it's made up of squares, it's not all cut from one piece of fabric like traditional Hawaiian quilts, but it's more like pillow-sized squares and each one of these samplers, or 22 inch by 22 inch squares, were made by the various quilters who were featured in the Hawaiian public television series, "Hawaiian Quilting" which I produced in 1993.

AH: Why did you choose this quilt for today's interview? Why did you bring it?

EZ: I brought this quilt today because although I have made quilts myself and I've been working on a Hawaiian quilt for almost forty years, and I'm still appliquéing it so you can see I don't work on it that often, but I felt this quilt really tells a story of my interest in quilting because I believe it's the people who make the quilts that are so interesting.

AH: How do you use the quilt?

EZ: Unfortunately I don't have a place to really hang the quilt in my home so it's stored away but every so often I do bring it out and put over a quilt rack that I have in my bedroom or I put it over a banister where I rotate quilts frequently. My collection of quilts that I have are mostly made by my mother and a few by my grandmother. The quilt was shown recently at The North Carolina Arboretum when the quilting bee, the Wee Bees, showed their quilts there, on exhibit, so I chose this quilt although it's not made by me, it was made for me by these quilters and it's a very special quilt.

AH: Elaine, maybe you could tell us how you came to produce this television program about Hawaiian quilts.

EZ: Well, I went to Hawaii in 1974. No, that's not right. [laughs.] Let me back up here again. I went to Hawaii on January 1, 1966 and I lived in Hawaii for almost forty years before I moved here to Asheville, and one of my co-workers in Hawaii (I worked as an Extension Home Economist, that was the reason I went to Hawaii) taught Hawaiian quilting on the military bases and as the newcomer into the Hawaii Extension Service, I went with her to her six or seven lessons that she gave at the military base at Kaneohe for the officers' wives and Hawaiian quilting was one of the things that she taught besides ethnic foods. That is where I really got interested in Hawaiian quilting and through that association and her helping me cut a Hawaiian quilt pattern, because she had a collection of over 100 patterns, many of which are today in the library in Waianae which is on the leeward coast of Oahu where I lived, on Oahu, at that time. So, I became very interested and she helped me cut it, baste it and I started appliquéing it, and I'm still appliquéing it. It's a jade pattern. Through that and I always liked sewing, that was my main interest as an Extension Home Economist, the teaching of sewing, and then I met Elizabeth Akana. By then I had started teaching at the University of Hawaii as a lecturer, and Elizabeth took my class so we became acquainted and from there we launched doing a whole lot of other projects, such as a conference in Hawaii, called the Friendship Fiber Arts conference, and brought quilters from the mainland United States to Hawaii for this conference which was at the Ilikai Hotel in Honolulu, and then we talked about doing a television series which was in the '90s, yeah '91, we started producing this at Hawaii Public Television. Elizabeth was the hostess of the thirteen-part series. I was the Producer/Writer and Richard Tibbetts was the Director and Editor of the series. We sort of feel like it really helped launch a major interest in Hawaiian quilting because it was shown on over half of the public television stations across the United States and I know it was over half [of the.] 350 [stations.] and then many repeated it. Before that time, in 1986, I produced a film for Hawaii Craftsmen, a non-profit organization, on Hawaiian quilting that was premiered at the Great American Quilt Festival in New York. We had a booth there, took quilters, had a quilt exhibit [of 17 Hawaiian quilts.], had a special Hawaiian night there and that was another big event that we did.

AH: And what year was that?

EZ: That was in 1986 and that was the first year they had the Great American Quilt Festival. It was sponsored by the Folk Art Museum [Museum of American Folk Art.] in New York. And then we brought those quilts back to Hawaii and they traveled then to a museum on each island in Hawaii. And we took quilters for an opening of the quilt show and they did demonstrations and they had talks and it was really a great thing. So I traveled the islands with those quilts to help take them there because we couldn't ship them, I had to go with them. And this was sponsored by the Arts Council of Hawaii and I was the Executive Director at that time. So we had funding from our state arts agency to do that. This goes on and on. [laughs.]

AH: What an experience, Elaine. I wonder if we could talk about your general interest in quiltmaking. What's your first quilt memory?

EZ: I remember my mother and her group of friends. I grew up in Kansas, north central Kansas, and my mother had a group of friends in our neighborhood which was called Macyville, which was never a town that I know of, but there was a church, and I remember they met at each other's homes and sometimes they quilted, sometimes they didn't, but they often quilted on each other's quilts. They had a quilting frame and that would have been in the mid-forties, nineteen forties.

AH: Did your mother teach you to quilt?

EZ: I don't recall that. My mother taught me to sew and I was in 4-H. She was the sewing teacher; my friend's mother was the foods leader and my mother was the sewing leader and so it's just sort of my interest in fabric and sewing and all those kinds of things grew, I've no idea if she taught me that [quilting.]. She tried to teach me to crochet but I never could do that, [laughs.] I never could get my tension right. The yarn would always be in [wrapped tightly around.] my fingers so I never really did crochet.

AH: Do you have other quilters in your family?

EZ: My grandmother did quilting. I don't remember her quilting so much but when I was in college, she was in a terrible car accident and as part of her recovery my mother and my aunt gave her some quilts to cross-stitch and I have two quilts which she cross-stitched and then my mother had them quilted, I think by her senior citizens' group.

AH: So you grew up with quilts in your home.

EZ: Yes.

AH: Slept under a quilt.

EZ: Yes. As a child I did. I still have my baby quilts and I have my older brother's quilt that he had and I have a collection of my mother's quilts. She has several friendship quilts for which the women in her club would make squares and it has their names on them. I remember most of those ladies.

AH: And you mentioned that your mother's quilts had been published and photographed.

EZ: Yes. It was when I was in Hawaii and probably around that time that we were doing the fiber arts conference that there was an editor of a magazine [Carter Houck.] and I can't remember the exact name of the magazine - it's stored away - I don't know whether it was Patchwork Circle [Ladies Circle Patchwork Quilts.] or something like that. Her first name was Hazel, that I recall and she came to Hawaii and wanted to take photos of the stories of quilts in Hawaii. I showed her my mother's quilts and she did photograph around three of those quilts and they were published in her magazine; so I always thought that was a real tribute to my mother.

AH: And, when did you start making quilts?

EZ: I probably didn't start until after I was in Hawaii and starting a Hawaiian quilt was probably my biggest quilt but I did make small quilts for one of my dear friends in Hawaii when she had her first and only child. It's sort of traditional to make a Hawaiian baby quilt in Hawaii so I made a quilt for her daughter and so that's actually the only Hawaiian quilt I've finished. I have several pillows started but that's the only one I finished. I did take another class in Hawaii from a quilt shop called Strawberry Patches that taught the Mary Ellen Hopkins technique, 'It's Okay to Sit on My Quilt.' Which is a lot of strip piecing and I still have all those tops, one of which I had quilted last year by Brian Fackler and showed it at the Asheville Quilt Show last year. The Amish squares, I forget what it's called and I gave that to my son [and his family.]. And they have it hung on the wall of their family room.

AH: So, you taught yourself how to quilt and you took some classes and it was sort of a combination of being taught and teaching yourself.

EZ: And I'm a workshop groupie. [laughs.] And I belong to the Hawaii Stitchery and Fiber Arts Guild. Actually I was one of the founding members of that organization and I also was a founding member of the Hawaii Quilt Guild but it was just too much to be involved in two major organizations so I just had to choose one. And, now what was I going to tell you about that? [laughs.] Oh. They bring in several teachers every year and sometimes they're quilters or other fiber arts but I would always take classes from the quilters like Joan Schultz and Jean Ray Laury, who were [among.] the first [mainland.] quilters to be teaching in Hawaii.

AH: And now you teach quilting or fiber arts-related techniques.

EZ: Right. [laughs.]Yes. Actually I got started teaching, well of course as an Extension Home Economist I didn't really teach quilting, more sewing but when I left Extension, I bought a sewing school in Hawaii from a woman who had been the Extension Clothing Specialist but she had retired, started a sewing school. She then moved to Florida so when she moved to Florida, I bought her sewing school and left Extension work and had that about three and a half years. And after I sold that, I went back to the University. I went to the University to teach and I taught just the beginning sewing classes but then there was an opportunity that a woman came to Hawaii at the Honolulu Academy of Arts and taught a stitchery class and that's when we started the Hawaii Stitchery and Fiber Arts Guild. I was teaching at the University and they sent me to take that class along with my friend Phyllis McOmber and then she and I developed a course called Stitchery Design and Technique that we taught as a summer class and it was design technique and mostly just making a project book which I guess you'd call a journal today. And they just learned different processes such as machine work, hand work, they did machine embroidery, hand embroidery and then every year as we would take classes and learn new things then we would share that and then eventually Phyllis became the Extension Clothing Specialist. We had worked together as Extension Home Economists, she was 4H and I was with women's groups and then I taught the class on and off for fifteen years maybe. And it was fashion design majors primarily who took the class.

AH: Interesting.

EZ: It was really a fun class.

AH: So I see that you make wearable art and I wonder how that fits in with quilting.

EZ: Well a lot of the wearable art I did was making vests and you could always quilt it. Started out hand quilting, I learned new techniques and machine quilting and found that because I like clothing and made a lot of my own clothes actually until I started having a family and working full time and then that kind of went by the wayside. Until now that I've retired and I'm back into making small quilts and clothing, wearable art.

AH: So, the wearable art encompasses quilting, beading,

EZ: Painting. Painting on fabrics, the different appliqué techniques, different techniques, embroidery, hand, machine, all kinds of quilting techniques. There was a time back in Threads magazine, there was an artist Byrd Ross who actually was an architect. And she designed this raw-edge appliqué technique where you cut squares of fabric and fold it over the edge of your vest and you just stitched it back and forth, back and forth and covered it up. And so I thought that was really cool and she came as a teacher for the Stitchery Guild and so I have a vest of that and [laughs.] as I learn different techniques, I just usually make a vest, or I should say a jacket.

AH: I wonder, Elaine, of all the different techniques we talked about, what do you enjoy the most?

EZ; I probably enjoy machine work the most because it's fast, I guess is one reason, and the same results, and I think you have a lot of different ways you can use your sewing machine to be creative and I dabble more than I perfect anything, I guess you might say, because I like to try all these things and once I think I know how to do it, I'm ready to try something else. Or put it together with some other techniques that I've learned. So, I think machine work, and I enjoy teaching others how to use their sewing machine because I think so many of us have the machine and just never get around to using the different feet on the sewing machine or doing the free-motion work and stitching without any fabric using the water-soluble wash-away stuff [laughs.] that we have like Sulky Solvy and things like that. And I just think that's really fun to do and I got into silk ribbon embroidery, hand embroidery and there's not much I haven't tried [laughs.] in the way of threads and fiber except knitting and crocheting, I don't do very much of that. [laughs.]

AH: How do you feel about the artistic value of quilts? What do you think makes a quilt artistically powerful?

EZ: To me it's the visual impact. So it's color, design, and the love that goes into making that quilt because I think it shows through in the end result. And that's what attracts me I guess, first, about a quilt.

AH: What do you think makes a great quilter?

EZ: I think it's the passion they have for the art form. And then it's their skills and talent and use of color and their use of design, their finishing techniques. But I think most of all, it's just the love and the passion shows through.

AH: Okay. Now, quilting groups you belong to, why don't you tell me about the different ones.

EZ: Well here in Asheville, I belong to the Asheville Quilt Guild and I belong to a quilting bee called the Wee Bees and there are about thirteen in that group. When I first came to the first meeting [of the Asheville Quilt Guild.], I remember the president who was, I was trying now to think back. I know Ann Holmes was president when I came and went to the first meeting in January and I believe they were looking for, and I think it was Laura Walters then who was president so maybe it was March then. They were looking for a new position to be assistant Program Chair and I thought, 'Oh, I can do that.' Because I did that for many years in Hawaii with the Fiber Arts Conference, it was something I did, so I felt that I knew how to go about doing that, I just needed the parameters that they wanted here so I volunteered and met Rita Williams and she probably wondered who was this person who wants to do this job. [laughs.] But it was a really good thing because then I got to know people quicker in the guild because I think that's very hard for a new person to come into a guild and get to know people without serving on a committee or doing something where you are involved with the leadership.

AH: Because it's a large guild.

EZ: Because it's a very large guild, over three hundred members at that time, and more.

AH: And you belonged to a guild in Hawaii.

EZ: Yes. I'm a lifetime member of the Hawaii Stitchery and Fiber Arts Guild there and I still get their newsletters and know a lot of people who are still involved with the guild there.

AH: What do you think is the value of belonging to a guild?

EZ: To me, it's the friendships and the people who share the same interests that you have and getting to know them and I guess that I just love working with nonprofit organizations. I've done that my whole career and now in my retirement also still working in nonprofit organizations. I just think that we need volunteers to help promote and conserve and preserve our heritage of quilting.

AH: How about your bee? What do you get out of that?

EZ: Again, I think you're getting to know people on a more intimate basis as far as, it's not just what their quilting is, their style of quilting or what they like about quilting, but it's that we work together on making quilts for the community and we do that at the first meeting. We meet twice a month. So the first meeting is working on community quilts and then the second meeting they work on their own thing and we meet from 10 to 2 twice a month at a library and we have fun together and we take road trips and we have special get-togethers and so it's just a fun thing to do.

AH: So, all together, how many hours a week do you think you spend on quilting or quilting-related activities?

EZ: Well, this year, Julie Simpson and I started teaching at Haywood Community College. We finished a ten-week class there on Getting to Know your Sewing Machine, sort of mastering your sewing machine but we also had them work on a 12 inch by 12 inch art quilt or contemporary quilt using a calendar photo as their inspiration and then we also then taught a contemporary quilting class at the College for Seniors at the North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement so I spent a lot more time I guess you might say so far this year, in the first five months getting ready for these classes and so forth and learning to use the top-of-the-line Bernina sewing machine because I have a thirty-five year old Bernina sewing machine so I was getting used to the new computerized machines. So I probably have spent maybe ten to twenty hours a week sewing or quilting or preparing for teaching that relates to quilting. I take workshops from guild, like this year I took Norene Goard's machine quilting workshop which was fabulous and I just took Mary Ellen Kranz's poster quilt workshop which was another fabulous class and Eve Agee's threadplay class and you know, I always pick up new things and use them in my own work and in my teaching.

AH: Elaine, tell me about your sewing room.

EZ: My sewing room? [laughs.] It's in a state of chaos right now. I'm in the process of sort of reorganizing. I'm a great collector of stuff, fabrics and notions and everything else that goes with it. So, I use a spare bedroom on the second floor and do overlook [the area.] and can see the mountains, although they have now built a new development, I'm in a townhouse, so they just built new townhouses across from me so they blocked most of my view but I can still see the trees over the top. I have good lighting. I came here two and a half years ago with one sewing machine and I now have three sewing machines plus an embellisher so my "hardware" has gone up quite a bit. It's a small room but I have created some new storage, or bought some new storage cubes that I put things in. I try to keep it neat but sometimes it has to get really messy before I can get it--I'm back in the reorganization stage right now, reorganizing my stuff, trying to find every nook and cranny I can, to put it in. [laughs.]

AH: You sound like someone who is very comfortable with technology, but was it a struggle as sewing equipment became more sophisticated and computerized? Was it hard to keep up with?

EZ: Well, I find it sometimes frustrating because sometimes I notice with the computerized sewing machines it will tell you that there's something wrong with the bobbin and it could be the teeniest, tiniest thing but the sensor will catch that little bit of thread or lint that's in there and you have to learn how to override it and things like that. So to me, that's frustrating. I really like my 35-year-old sewing machine but it doesn't have any computerization to it.

AH: But at the same time, you're constantly upgrading your equipment.

EZ: That's true. And it's frustrating. I'm going through a frustration right now because I want to use Photoshop or one of the softwares to enhance photographs so I can print them on the fabric and I just discovered that my start-up disk is not large enough to handle the size of the software. So I'm in a sort of frustrated [laughs.] moment right now. I don't know how that's going to get solved, I'll have to call somebody and have them come and fix it for me.

AH: Have you used photos in quilts? Or is that something you're just starting on?

EZ: Well I have printed photos out on the various kinds of fabric and I have done a lot of printing of patterns on fabric using a computer and I had a personal copier that we then used for embroidered quilts and that kind of thing and I have printed pictures onto fabric but I haven't made a quilt out of it yet. I have pictures of my grandchildren, or my first grandchild anyway and I haven't put it together as a quilt yet. [laughs.]

AH: What is your collection of sewing memorabilia?

EZ: I really haven't added to my collection but I did go through a period of time when I was going to estate sales and collecting; my mother's button collection, I've added to that, I have the black jet beads, I have collars and capes and stuff like that. My sewing equipment that was my grandmother's on my mother's side. And if I see some of these things, I just pick them up--

AH: Do you display them?

EZ: And add them to my stash. I used to, I don't at the present time. I don't have the space to do that.

AH: What are your plans for that?

EZ: I don't know. Probably give it to--my son is not into it. [laughs.] I don't have any granddaughters, only grandsons so who knows? [laughs.]

AH: How old are your grandsons?

EZ: The oldest one will be four on June 1st, Izzac. Ryan just turned one February 5th and the latest one, Braden was born January 29th of this year.

AH: So they're too young to teach quilting to.

EZ: Right. [laughs.] That's true, but maybe when they get to be nine or ten I can start teaching them.

AH: [20 second pause.] Well, I think there was something else I was going to ask and I can't remember. [laughs.] But we're almost at the end of our time Elaine, so I was just wondering if there was anything that you wanted to talk about.

EZ: Well I would like to say that, talking about Hawaiian quilts, because that greatly influenced a lot of my work and my thinking and my non-profit work for the last forty years is with Hawaiian quilting and the quilters that I worked with in Hawaii and I was part of the group that started the documentation project of Hawaiian quilts in Hawaii back in, I can't remember now when we started, I believe it was around 1991 and that was first through another non-profit organization called the Kalihi-Palama Culture and Arts Society in Honolulu and they liked our idea of doing this and the project is still ongoing and hopefully a book is now being written. But it was kind of interesting to do the Hawaiian quilts as a documentation because many families do not share their quilts or even show their quilts to outside people other than their own circle of family and friends. But we did document over a thousand Hawaiian quilts and we had Quilt Days where people brought their quilts in, we gave them the documentation photos and all the information about measuring and we did oral histories of the quilters and the owners of the quilts that brought them in. And it was really a wonderful experience. And so now the work is being analyzed and they are in the throes of preparing to write a book. And that documentation work of the Hawaiian quilts is now being [prepared to be.] a part of The Center for the Quilt Index, Quilt Index. It's one of the documentation projects that they're doing with The Alliance for American Quilts.

AH: What is the basic difference between a Hawaiian quilt and the quilts that we would have here in the continental U.S.?

EZ: A Hawaiian quilt basically is made from two fabrics. It's an appliqué that is cut from one piece of fabric, the design part, and it is appliquéd by hand on to a background fabric which is usually a contrasting color. And some of the first ones were turkey red designs onto an off-white background, like a muslin. And then, after appliqué is done, then they made a quilt sandwich and it's quilted using echo quilting. They quilt first around the design of the quilt and then they quilt into the center and then from the design out to the edge. And if there's a border, they have to be able to blend the design and the border design together where it meets together. So it's really an interesting process and there's thousands of stitches that go into the Hawaiian quilt and they're all done by hand.

AH: And still done today, right?

EZ: And still done today, yes.

AH: But I'm sure modern quilts and other traditional techniques that have worked their way into the Hawaiian culture.

EZ: Oh yes. There are some people that make the Hawaiian quilt design in the center and then there's pieced work around the edge. And we often thought that they were made only of the two colors but we found many quilts in family collections and museum collections that they did use multiple fabrics and appliquéing the color of flowers or something where there would be different colors. Or if they made a pineapple they might use green in the leaves, that kind of thing. So, they did use more than two colors.

AH: And how old are the oldest of these quilts that you were documenting?

EZ: I think there were some that would go back, some of the flag quilts go back to 1883 which is another type of Hawaiian quilt because they did make flag quilts, the Hawaiian flag or the seal of Hawaii in quilts as the center of the flag quilt and then there'd be four flags, Hawaiian flags, that went around it and sometimes they did American flags. So it kind of by the design of the seal that you could tell perhaps when the quilt might have been made because the seal did make some changes along the way. But I think around 1848, may have been the earliest quilt that we could definitely say came from that period of time. But they're still working on analyzing some of those. But it's very fascinating.

AH: And what was the origin of quilting in Hawaii? Where was it learned?

EZ: Well, it's really hard to say, but probably, and there is a story that goes around, there's two stories actually [laughs.] One is that a Hawaiian lady spread out some cloth, maybe tapa cloth, under the shade of a tree and saw the shadows of the leaves falling on it and perhaps then that started the idea of the design and may have started the Hawaiian design. The other is the missionaries, because it's documented when they came to Hawaii on the ship Thaddeus.. The first missionaries that came, they stopped on the Big Island and Hawaiian ladies came on board the ship and they brought fabric because they had traded with the sailors, the sailors always had fabric to repair sails on the ship and so forth. And so the missionary ladies sat these Hawaiian ladies down and gave them scraps of fabric and taught them patchwork which we know today was actually appliqué, what we call appliqué, hand sewing a piece of fabric atop another fabric. So that's the story of Hawaiian quilting. And then there are all the traditions of making quilts for a baby, and not stealing designs from another person. Sometimes they'd put their quilts out on the line to dry or just to air them out and somebody would copy their design and that was a big no-no; they'd be made fun of at a luau or something. And you don't sit on the Hawaiian quilts, for two reasons, one is practical, you don't want to break the stitches and the other is you dishonor the quiltmaker by sitting on her bed [quilts.]. And when they made the Hawaiian quilts originally they'd spread the fabric out on the floor and only the quilter whose quilt it was could actually sit on the fabric and cut out the design and roll it and fold it and do all that, but only she could sit on the floor and on the quilt and I have a friend who, to this day, she sits on the quilt as she bastes it on the floor. She would sit on the floor, then [she.] makes her design and then [she.] takes it off [inaudible.] The floor's very clean and she's very clean and she's barefoot and sitting down. And she just moves or 'walks' with her hips across the quilt. It's really an art form to see it happen.

AH: That's very, very interesting. What a wonderful tradition. Anything else you wanted to add before we conclude?

EZ: No, I think that's probably everything that I can think to talk about. A couple of other things I was going to say that in promoting Hawaiian quilting, is that besides the two films, the series on public television and the film, "The Hawaiian Quilts, A Cherished Tradition," which was the first film that we did and that was done in part to honor Mealii Kalama. She was honored by the National Endowment for the Arts [Folk Arts Program.] as one of the winners [of the National Heritage Fellowship.]. It's a fellowship they give to folk artists and she was one of those from Hawaii who was honored to receive that [in 1985.]. And that's why we did the film, the one called "A Cherished Tradition," and showed other quilters too, but it's the story of Hawaiian quilting and the meaning behind the quilt. And then Elizabeth Akana and I also started up another wonderful thing in Hawaiian quilts is that they did do other quilts and one was the red work quilts and there would be peddlers, I guess you might call them, gentlemen that would go around the various communities and bring things to sell out of the back of a truck or something. And one of them was the red work quilts that were stamped onto muslin or white cotton and had the threads and so forth and the quilters made red work quilts and they were Hawaiian designs, not of the Hawaiian quilts we know but were of the flowers and the flags and things like that. And we found many of those types of quilts when we were documenting Hawaiian quilts. And Verna Kuyper and I started a company called Hawaiian Quilt Plantation of which we published modern day Red Work quilt patterns that were designed by Junedale Quinories and Hinano Campton. That was really a lot of fun. Junedale is another one of the premier quilters in Hawaii, Junedale Quinories, on the Big Island, and she does miniature Hawaiian quilts also. When you think about taking a huge quilt [design.], 120 inches by 120 inches and bring it down to and an18 inches by 18 inches or smaller, in miniature, they're really outstanding.

AH: Okay, I think we've said it all. [laughs.]

EZ: Really? [laughs.]

AH: This concludes our interview. It is now 1:55 p.m. Thank you Elaine.

EZ: You're welcome.