Isabelle Long

Isabelle Long

CA95051-DAR003

Isabelle Long

Joy Combs Spence

8/7/09

Susan Salser

Sunnyvale, CA

Mary Kay Davis

Joy Combs Spence (JS): My name is Joy Combs Spence and today's date is August 7, 2009 at 2 p.m. I am conducting an interview with Isabelle L. Melick Long in her home in Sunnyvale, California for the Quilters' S.O.S.-Save Our Stories project. We are doing this through the American Heritage Committee of the California State Society Daughters of the American Revolution. Isabelle is a quilter and is a member of the Santa Clara Chapter. Isabelle, tell me about the quilt you brought in today.

Isabelle L. M. Long (IL): The quilt is a crib size quilt. It is one of six that I made for our six grandchildren. This is the quilt for Philip who is grandchild number three and all six quilts were a Sunbonnet theme. Our daughter, who is the mother of Philip, likes this quilt because it's done in pastel colors.

JS: Does this quilt have a special meaning besides being made for the grandchildren?

IL: Not really, I just enjoyed doing it and they seemed happy to get them.

JS: Did you choose the sunflower boy and girl because you liked them or because your daughter liked them?

IL: Oh, I chose the patterns because I liked them because after all I had to do the work. And mainly I got the patterns through Quilters Newsletter publications.

JS: Why did you choose this quilt to bring to the interview?

IL: Because I think it typifies my best work. This was made in 1989 and I had been quilting for--oh gee almost 20 years by that point. And from there on it sort of went downhill.

JS: What do you think someone viewing your quilt might conclude about you?

IL: Oh gosh, that would be up to them. I don't know. [laughs.]

JS: The quilt shows a lot of hand quilting. How did you partial out your time to do this?

IL: I usually worked about an hour at a time. After that I would get tired. Or my fingers would get cramped or sometimes I would get bored, but I usually did it while I was watching television.

JS: How do you use this quilt today?

IL: Today, all six grandchildren's quilts are hanging on the wall in our daughter's home in a hallway where they don't get destroyed by sunlight.

JS: So they really treasure them, too, you would say?

IL: I would think so.

JS: And what are your plans for this quilt?

IL: I have no plans for it. It's up to the person who, for whom I made it.

JS: Now, let's talk about the people in the quilt. They're doing various things. Which was most difficult to do?

IL: It's been so long, Joy, I forget. It didn't seem difficult at the time but I think I would have a hard time doing any of that now, both the quilting and the appliqué.

JS: Well I notice this little girl has a doll and I would imagine that was difficult to embroider and put in because it's small.

IL: Well, but I didn't think so at the time. [laughs.]

JS: What about the young boy with the shovel going out to garden? Was he hard to do?

IL: No, I think my only concern was how to position the plaid on his shirt.

JS: Well, we've only talked about two so would you tell me what the other figures are?

IL: Sure, the other Sunbonnet boy is going fishing because I made three Sunbonnet girls [Sue.] and three Sunbonnet boys because we didn't know whether the baby was going to be a boy or a girl. And the other Sunbonnet boy is either holding or chasing a balloon I no longer can remember. I can't tell from this quilt whether it's a string that he's holding onto or has let go. And the Sunbonnet girl has flowers in her apron and the other Sunbonnet girl, she just looks like she has her hand in her pocket.

JS: What color is the quilt itself, the background?

IL: The background is a light cream.

JS: And the lining, the underside of the quilt?

IL: The backing for the quilt was a pale green, like the stars.

JS: The stars look they are trapunto, but you said they were not. They look puffy, so what do you attribute that to?

IL: Probably the thickness of the batting. I don't think it was very thick, but it was thick enough to make it look that way.

JS: Now have we said how big this is, you said it was a crib quilt?

IL: Yes.

JS: So what dimension would that be?

IL: 45 inches by 60 inches.

JS: Which at the time with all that quilting was a chore I'm sure. Most beautiful.
Let's move along to talk about you and your interest in quilting.

IL: How I started?

JS: How you started.

IL: Ok, I started in early 1970s when were living outside Denver, Colorado and through the Embroiderer's Guild of America I learned about quilting classes starting at Quilts and Other Comforts. And I thought, 'Boy, that sounds like fun.' And so I went there. I took one class in piecing, another class the next week in appliqué that I did not like and I threw in the trash can when I got home, and then the third one was for quilting. After those three classes they said, 'Oh, wouldn't you like to make a sampler quilt?' I thought, 'Oh sure, why not?' [laughs.] So, we met once a week again and made one block a week, a 16" block, with varying lessons to be learned, you know, with each one and at the end of twelve weeks we had enough blocks to make a good sized double bed quilt.

JS: At what age was this that you started quilting actually?

IL: The classes were about '72, 1972 or 1973. They were gearing up for the bicentennial of our country.

JS: Now, how many hours a week do you think you quilt?

IL: Not very much anymore, but I would say when I did it a lot, I was probably doing at least two hours either quilting, piecing, appliquéing, you know anything to, oh, and shopping for fabric, of course.

JS: Of course. Are there other quiltmakers among your family and friends?

IL: Among my friends yes, not my family. My mother pieced a Flying Dutchman type quilt with scraps that she had and then she tied it rather than quilted it. But she never--I wasn't impressed with it, unfortunately, and she never did anything else. But my paternal grandmother did make me a quilt when I was about four or five years old and it was embroidered with the verses "Sundays Child is Fair of Face" [nursery rhyme "Monday's Child."] and then she died before it could be quilted but the people from her church quilted it and finished it for me.

JS: Oh, what church did she belong to?

IL: She lived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and the church was Emmanuel United I forget the rest but it was right there in town.

JS: Would you say that the church group was a quilting group? Did they do it for money? Or just for love?

IL: I don't have any idea, but they met regularly.

JS: Isabelle, I would like you [to.] tell me about the other quiltmakers that are among your family and friends.

IL: Okay, among my friends they were made mainly when I lived here in Sunnyvale [California.]. We moved here about 1976. At that time I had seen a friend's, or to be a friend's, name by Pat Gardiner and her name was in Quilters Newsletter and so when I moved to this area I looked her up in the phone book and talked to her on the telephone and I said 'What's doing about quilting here in Santa Clara valley?' And she said, 'Oh, we're having a quilt show. It's over at West Valley College and why don't you come there and introduce yourself to whoever is greeting people?' So that's what I did and I met some very nice ladies and they had a beautiful quilt show, really well done, and not long after that they called me and said, 'Would you like to belong to our smaller group? We meet once a week and we meet in each other's homes and we just bring our own quilting and do our own thing.' I did and that was the beginning of my association with Studio 12, named because we each had our own studios, probably just a corner in the kitchen or a corner in some bedroom and there were twelve of us. And through the years we met for about fifteen to twenty years for just each doing our own thing. One thing we did do, if somebody finished a quilt top and wanted it basted together we would set it up in whosever home had the quilt or the quilt to be basted and everybody would get together and baste it. The price was you had to feed them lunch. And it was sort of fun. We were only too glad to do it for each other. And while we sat and stitched of course we talked a lot. We talked about our families and what was going on in our country, what was going on in the various neighborhoods and it was just a really wonderful group of people.

JS: How long did this continue? You said twelve; did I hear twelve years or twenty-five?

IL: Well, It's I think somewhere between fifteen and twenty. We just thought it was going to go on forever, but it didn't and the other thing that was neat about it was there was a wide age range. I was young enough to be the daughter of our oldest member and then there were people who were ten to fifteen years younger than I was.

JS: So you had experience plus here?

IL: Oh yes, we did.

JS: Did this, did you continue with this group after the quilting era was over?

IL: We did up until about 1995 when too many of the gals moved away or had died and it was difficult to find younger women to come in and quilt during the day because they were working, had full time jobs. And now, today, just two of us live here in the area, Barbara Yeaman and myself, but we have five others who live throughout the United States, two in Oregon, one in Southern California, one in Minnesota.

JS: And do you keep in contact with them?

IL: Yes, we just started a round robin letter and it was so much fun. We can just pick up the threads of conversation like we hadn't stopped quilting together ten years ago. And, in the fall when PIQF [Pacific International Quilt Festival.] is held in Santa Clara [California.], the gal who lives in Mariposa, Betty Robinson, comes over and we pick up the chatting just like we had always done.

JS: How does quiltmaking impact your family?

IL: I don't know. Nobody has ever in my family has ever commented about, 'Oh gee you're making too many quilts' or 'You're spending too many hours' or you're spending too much money on buying fabric and other things.'

JS: I'm sure they admire them, otherwise they wouldn't give them wall space. Which member of your family appreciates your quilting the most do you think?

IL: Maybe, our daughter. I think it might just be a girl thing, but hers are always on view, you know, so she sees them everyday. Whereas our son I think he appreciates them too, but the quilt that I made for him was an Amish style and it's not very easy to decorate a bedroom around those colors.

JS: Have you ever used quilts to get through a difficult time?

IL: I don't think so. I think it was just always therapy because I could sit and quilt and either watch TV or be lost in my own thoughts.

JS: Now, I've noticed you mentioned that you did teaching of quilting as well. So do you have an amusing thing to tell us about teaching quilting?

IL: No I don't think it's amusing, but I did spend a lot of time making samples for the shop, which took away from the time I had to make quilts for myself. But, I enjoyed it and since I was trained as a teacher, a schoolteacher, teaching others and sharing what I knew about quilting was just an easy and fun thing to do.

JS: Where did you work? You mentioned teaching in the shop? And what shop did you work at?

IL: I first worked at a little shop called Saga's where she sold just mainly fabric, not necessarily for quilting but after talking to her about it she got in some cotton and we had a little class and my friend, Tunie Moreno, helped me with that class. And then I can't think of her name [Gail Abeloe], she moved The Granary from San Juan Bautista up to Cupertino and our Studio 12 friend, Adeline Nordman and I worked for her in the shop during the hours selling fabric and different notions and then I also taught classes there then in the evening. And then that shopped moved and I taught with Carolea's Knitche who was primarily interested in knitting. And then she got into cross-stitch and then she got into fabric and just one thing evolved. I also worked on the floor there too selling as well as teaching classes in the evening.

JS: Did you enjoy the teaching part of quilting?

IL: Sure, it was a lot of fun, but I found it difficult. People would come to a one-time class, but it was difficult for them to, or maybe it was difficult for me to inspire them to commit to a twelve-week class where they would make a block each week. They just weren't able to take the time, some of them, because they were working full time to make a block a week.

JS: Uh huh. [agrees.] What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking?

IL: Like I said I like to sit and think and dream. [laughs.] And planning is a good bit of it besides doing the actual piecing, appliqué, and quilting. Planning and saying 'What color shall I use, what pattern shall I use?' Talking it over with our group in Studio 12, 'Oh, this will work or no, that won't work. Or this would look better. You could improve it.' And that was another really good thing about Studio 12 was that they were very frank but not rude [laughs.] in assessing what would make it better.

JS: What aspects of quiltmaking do you not enjoy?

IL: Despite appliquéing all those sunbonnets, appliqué is just not my favorite thing to do. I like it, but I don't do it really well. I just, the intrigue is putting geometric things together and piecing. I just like that much better.

JS: Besides our Studio 12 group, what other art or quilt groups did you belong to? Or do you belong to?

IL: Past tense is good. When we lived in the Baltimore area I belonged to the Embroiderer's Guild of America, and so when we moved outside of Denver, Colorado I continued that association. When we moved here to Sunnyvale [California.], the Embroiderer's Guild did not have a local chapter so a friend and I used to travel up to San Mateo once a month and then one of those ladies who lived in Saratoga organized one here in the Santa Clara valley. And I did that for a year, but or maybe more, but by then I was more enjoying quilting and sort of let the Embroiderer's Guild lapse. I belonged to the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association for a number of years and enjoyed meeting the ladies there. Of course, all the Studio 12 members belonged to the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association and I was still active when they put on their first symposium and they put on quilt shows and you know it was fun being involved. You got to know the ladies well and you got to hear the compliments and comments about the quilt that were hanging.

JS: Have advances in technology influenced your work? Do you think?

IL: By the time advances came along I was probably too ensconced with the old time 'do everything by hand' and in the beginning my exposure to new methods mainly, you know, with the machine. What I saw I didn't think was of very good quality. Now, however, that's entirely different and they're doing fantastic things. But I just didn't go along with the flow. I just stuck with doing everything by hand.

JS: What, have you ever won an award for your quilts?

IL: I wouldn't call it an award. I won recognition for a competition that Quilters Newsletter put on. This was to make a quilt block that depicted your state. It didn't have to be the state where you were living at the time. It could've been where you grew up or where you had at one time lived. And my heart is still in Pennsylvania, which is my hometown. And so I designed a quilt block sort of like a Dresden Plate. It had keystones around in a circle, seven of them, and then on top of the keystone was a two-pieced pointed star. And so I had seven pointed stars and seven keystones and these were done with a series of fabric that Quilters Newsletter had done from maybe seven shades of one color going from rose to cranberry, or from pale yellow to sunshine, butterscotch yellow. And so I choose seven of those colors and used those shades and appliquéd the whole thing on a black background. And we had to also state why we did this and what it meant to us. And, lo and behold, they chose me to represent the state of Pennsylvania for which I was really thrilled and then they published all of these in a book.

JS: What is the name of the book, do you recall?

IL: Something to do with the 50 states.

JS: What has happened to the quilt?

IL: The quilt was, they did not choose my block to put in the quilt. They chose another block from Pennsylvania. And there were 50 blocks and they sewed it together. They, meaning the people at Quilters Newsletter and then it toured the country. I assume that it's still in their possession someplace.

JS: Excuse me. [clears throat.] What are your favorite techniques and materials?

IL: I just still like piecing. There's something intriguing about the different geometric shapes and still all cotton because it's the easiest to handle.

JS: We're talking materials here. Do you do anything with fusibles?

IL: No, I don't do fusibles. I think I'm just an old stick in the mud [laughs.]

JS: Do you have a studio where you can muse and create?

IL: I do now. It shares space with my computer, but my sewing machine is in there because I do put one step of the binding on the quilt on the machine. The rest I do by hand.

JS: What else do you have in your studio besides your sewing machine?

IL: I have books. [laughs.]

JS: Do you have a design wall; I think was what I was trying to ask you?

IL: Oh, no, the design wall is in the dining room and it doesn't stay up there all the time. It's just a piece of flannel that has grid marks on it. But it's in the dining room because I can get away from it and you know see what it looks like from a distance as well as what it looks like close up.

JS: Tell me how you balance your time.

IL: Oh gosh, I'm not very good at balancing time.

JS: Now you told me that you did your work early in the morning on the quilt that we're displaying and you did it in the late afternoon. So how did you balance your time? Were you working at the time?

IL: No, I was working and you know that was the time that was available. But one thing that we soon discovered with Studio 12, once our kids left the house; you know, they went to college or went off to jobs or they got married. We had days to ourself and it was okay to quilt at 9 or 10 o'clock in the morning. We didn't have to do our dusting and vacuuming and scrubbing the floors before we could sit down and quilt. So, I guess maybe I'm not a good manager of time because I just do it when I feel like it.

JS: How do you go about designing your quilts?

IL: I would not call myself an original designer. I have to see something that appeals to me either design wise or maybe I'm in a fabric store and I see color that I like and I think 'Oh, I gotta have that quilt fabric.' And I got in the bad habit because I believed somebody when they said, 'If you see a piece of fabric that you really like you ought to buy three yards of it so you have enough either for a backing or for the outside borders,' and I bought into that and so I have an excess collection of fabric. But I mostly get inspired and stimulated by seeing something. I may not copy it directly. I might change it a little bit here and there, but--

JS: Do you gravitate to the bright colors or the rather muted ones?

IL: I don't know. As long as it has blue in it, it's okay.

JS: Whose works are you drawn to as an artist in quilting?

IL: I, I don't know that they are artists per se, but they are published works. And I guess they have to be artists. I'm gonna retract that. The first person I really thought 'Gee this gal's an artist' is Chris Wolfe Edmunds, did "George Washington Kneeling," did the "Cherokee Trail of Tears," Just interpreted pictures perhaps that had been painted into quilting and just did a fantastic job. She is what I would say is an artist and Judy Martin and Margaret Miller might be artists also, but in a different way. They were more into publishing the patterns that they had developed. Margaret Miller is really good, I think, at setting quilt blocks in different ways. Not all lined up rows and that just appeals to me. She does a good job.

JS: What about your friend Philomena [Durcan.]?

IL: Philomena took it to another; she's another artist. She developed her own style based on mainly Celtic designs without necessarily always doing a Celtic pattern. She started out that way and then she evolved where she would make more floral things incorporated with a Celtic design. And just pulled herself up by the bootstraps, developed her own company, had people publish her books. I think she's up to at least four and just a really wonderful gal, just, just did it all by herself. But she, I would also consider an artist without having any formal study, that I know, of other than a class or two on color at De Anza College.

JS: Why is quiltmaking important to you?

IL: I think I needed an outlet. I'd always played sports and that was great when you're younger but then you need to diversify to be an interesting person and so it was just a great way to express another side of my personality.

JS: How do you feel about machine quilting versus hand quilting?

IL: Well, I didn't like it to begin with because I just didn't think the quality was there in the beginning, but it certainly is now and they can do some fantastic things that I couldn't begin to do by hand and whether you're piecing a top or appliquéing a top or quilting on the machine, you get it done quicker than you could by hand and I think this is what's going to keep our individual, privately owned, quilt shops going because if everybody quilted like I did, by hand, they just couldn't afford to stay in business.

JS: What about longarm quilting?

IL: I have not had very much experience with longarm quilting, but I think it's the way to go. I think if I remember correctly what I read in quilt magazines that not only are professional people using longarm quilting but they're developing longarm quilting for people to use in their own home.

JS: In what ways do your quilts reflect your community or your region?

IL: I don't think that they do. Or I'm just not aware of that type of reflection. I just think I do what appeals to me.

JS: You don't think that the sunflower children are a reflection of the Midwest, Pennsylvania and New York?

IL: Oh, they might be. I wish I knew. I think I need to go to a psychiatrist to find out why I was so enthralled with Sunbonnet Sue to begin with and my guess is that I did one and got complimented on it and of course, when you're complimented, then you're encouraged to continue. I just didn't know how to cut it off I guess. [laughs.]

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

IL: Oh I think they have a story to tell, very definitely and I think we're just beginning to appreciate quilts from the 1800s that have survived and the story they have to tell about what times were like then; what the quiltmaker was going through. I was particularly interested in the Gees Bend [Alabama.] display from the black women creating from almost nothing to make quilts that were just outstanding and reflected what you could do with very little.

JS: In what ways do you think quilts have special for women's history in America? Is that sort of about the same thing?

IL: Probably, but, it wasn't until people began to pay attention to the importance of quilts and that they meant and how they fit in America's history. I think now more people are aware of it then they were let's say right after World War II and 1950s.

JS: How do you think quilts can be used?

IL: Oh heavens, I don't know what to say. I think there are so many possibilities besides bed coverings. They can be wall hangings. They can be quilt designs. People like to put them on clothing, just any number of things.

JS: Are we talking about art in clothing?

IL: Sure.

JS: Coats, dresses, blouses, this type of thing? Adornment as it were?

IL: Yah. I think they have become more sophisticated. I can remember that going to one of the early quilt shows people would just have a quilt block on the back of their vest or on the hem of their skirt. Now it's come to fashion where it's not necessarily quilt blocks on the clothing, but it's incorporated maybe partial block and certainly the fabric is there.

JS: What has happened to the quilts that you have made for family and friends? Most of them.

IL: [laughs.] I like to think they kept them. When I first made, after I made the first quilt, learning quilt, at Quilts and Other Comforts, I made one or two smaller quilts and I gave them to friends and then we moved away from that area. So I have no idea what happened to them. Since then, I've just made them for our family. I don't remember making any for friends, but I might have because when our daughter was getting married, I made some of her clothes and she showed them to me ten, twenty years later and I don't remember even making those clothes. So, I'm not sure.

JS: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today?

IL: I think it is sorting through all the possibilities. There's just so many choices to make, design, fabric, color, what are you going to do with it? Is it gonna be a quilt that's for a bed? Is it going to be a in a wall hanging? Is it going to be in a public place? Is it going to be in a home and there's just so many people out there sharing their designs and so many different kinds of fabric. It's mind-boggling. I think it's harder to eliminate everything that you see and settle on one design, one kind of fabric.

JS: A person who is just beginning to quilt; what would be the major things they should, they would need to buy to begin quilting? Or piecing?

IL: You mean, aside from the fabric, the fabric and the batting. Needles. If you're doing sewing machine, then you'd have to have a sewing machine that would be able to let you do what you wanted to do with the fabric. If you're quilting by hand, you'd, you have a choice. You can do it in your lap or you can put it in a hoop that you can hold in one hand and quilt in the other. You need a thimble of some kind and right now my favorite thimble is something that is sort've like rubber, but they come in really neat colors, and so it's soft on your finger and the edges don't dig into your middle finger if that's the one that you put a thimble on. [JS agrees.] And they're brightly colored and they work just as well as the metal or leather ones. I've never been able to wear a thimble on my left hand, the one that is underneath the quilt when I quilt. And so as a consequence when I'm quilting, I have very sore fingertips on my left hand. And then gradually as I get into the quilt it becomes a callous and that makes it a little bit easier. Good lighting. Good heavens as we get older maybe we also need magnification. But if you're doing it when you are young and your eyes are in good shape you don't need that, but it certainly helps.

JS: You haven't mentioned shears.

IL: Oh, scissors? [JS hums agreement.] Oh I fell in love with Gingher brand. A lady came to Hawaii--came from Hawaii rather, to our first quilt symposium put on by the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association and she had this pair of Gingher scissors and she was showing us how many layers it could cut through and how great it was and I still have the original ones and recently within the last two or three years I found a whetstone so that you can sharpen your own Gingher scissors because they say don't take them to a sharpener. You know somebody who likes to sharpen knives.

JS: Have pictures of you, your quilts and or patterns been published, Isabelle?

IL: Just very briefly, the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association published original patterns and quilt designs and they did two books. I still have in possession one of them and I put it a pattern for "Geometric Nonsense" and then I did another one for "Long's Flowers" that was an appliqué and I don't know that they are in anybody's collection other than the members of the Quilt Association.

JS: What did the book sell for?

IL: Oh, heavens.

JS: Do you remember the cost?

IL: No, I have no idea, but I'm sure it was reasonable, because it was just a plastic, spiral-binding.

JS: [JS hums agreement.] We hear about the University of Nebraska collecting quilts very vigorously trying to enlarge their collection and so what makes a quilt appropriate for a museum or a special collection, do you think?

IL: I would think it would either interpret an era or a particular style that would tell a story that would be significant in that maybe there were so few of them made or so few of them preserved. And I think the museums are doing a much better job of collecting and having examples like the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution.] Museum in Washington, D.C.

JS: And what about in being commercial, for instance Doug Tompkins of Esprit?

IL: I had the pleasure to be there at least once to see his collection when it was in, when he had his Esprit company in San Francisco. And it was really impressive. He had them hanging in the walls all over the work place and it must've been a very pleasant place for the people that he employed. And then, not too long ago, he sold the collection and it was bought by Lancaster, Pennsylvania museum and so most of the quilts; I don't know that they bought all of his quilts, but they have them there which is where they belong because they were Pennsylvania Amish quilts.

JS: What about the Shelburne Museum in New Hampshire? [note: the Shelburne Museum is in Vermont.]

IL: Okay, I've only seen a few pictures of the quilts from there, mostly in Quilters Newsletter, but I don't know anything about that, do you know?

JS: Well, it's a very great collection. But, I was just thinking you know we have people who only made quilt blocks, such as Carrie Hall, now let's talk about her for a minute or two.

IL: Okay, in maybe 1978, a group of us from the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association attended this symposium in Kansas and they had on display a lot of her blocks, as well as, some other things typical of Kansas and so a nucleus of ladies from the Santa Clara Valley Quilt Association who went there, went there with the idea that we were going to have our own symposium the next year; and we wanted to see how it was done and what collections they had; and so it was really neat to see here was somebody who was making lots of blocks but I don't think she ever made a whole quilt.

JS: [laughs.] I don't think so either. Well, Isabelle is there anything that you would like to add to this interview?

IL: I don't think so. I think we've covered all the bases we need to cover.

JS: I'd like to thank Isabelle for allowing me to interview her today as part of the Quilters' S.O.S.-Save Our Stories. Our interview concluded at 3:17 p.m. on 7th of August 2009.