Diane Wendorf
Photos
Title
Diane Wendorf
Identifier
ME04073-001
Interviewee
Diane Wendorf
Interviewer
Jeanne Wright
Interview Date
25/10/10
Location
Windham, Maine
Transcriber
Jeanne Wright
Transcription
Jeanne Wright (JW): This is Jeanne Wright. Today is October 25, 2010. It is 11:00 in the morning and I am conducting an interview with Diane Wendorf at my home in Windham, Maine for the Alliance For American Quilts, Quilters' S.O.S. --Save Our Stories project. Diane is the Pastor at the North Parish Congregational Church [United Church of Christ.] in Sanford, Maine. I believe that Diane might have a unique view of the subject of quilts and quilting as it relates not only to her life, but to her vocation. I've been looking forward to this interview since she contacted me. Thank you for seeking me out and for making this interview possible.
Diane Wendorf (DW): Yes.
JW: Tell me about the quilt you brought today.
DW: This quilt is really [a smaller size reproduction of.] a banner that was originally very, very large. Each square was 2 1/2 feet square. It hung from almost the rafters of the very first church I served, which was Trinity United Church of Christ in Wooster, Ohio. I was a very young woman then in the 1980's and I was their first woman minister and wanted to have a way to draw in the women of the church of different ages. I knew that they had been, many of them had been, quilters. The church was in Amish country in the middle of Ohio. If they weren't quilters, they were hand crafters and amazing seamstresses. There were mothers with little girls with smocked dresses and there were grandmothers who remembered back in the day when the church had a quilting group. So I asked questions of many people, many women, and said, 'Well why don't we have a quilting group now?' There wasn't really a special occasion. Not an anniversary or anything like that. It was just a reason to get together. There was another woman in the church who was an artist, a young woman [named Sarah Smith.] She and I became good friends and we cooked up the idea of making banners for the sanctuary. We thought it would make the sanctuary warmer, more inviting and would add a new flavor to what was a fairly traditional stained glass window church. Maybe a 1950's to 1960's style church. We started thinking up different designs that we could use and walked around the church and talked around the church to find out what would be an appropriate symbol, things that were important to the life of the congregation. We picked symbols that we liked out of stained glass windows. There is one square not in the banner I brought today, but the other side that I left in my office, that has a beehive on it. There was a beehive in one of the stained glass windows. That was really important to the women in the church because it seemed unusual to have a beehive in a stained glass window, but it represented community and we liked that. We added symbols that we had talked about. There is a fish in this banner and I had taught the children what the fish symbol means in the Christian community and we had talked about that as being a secret sign among early Christians of where they could recognize each other. The square that is the most important I think to me and really had deep meaning for everyone in the community is the rainbow, which wasn't pictured in any of the stained glass windows, but there had been a little girl who just about a year or so before I arrived had died of cancer at [the age of.] five. Everyone at the church had rallied around that family and that little girl. The experience of holding that family in the heart of the church really brought the church together in ways they had never experienced before or they hadn't remembered experiencing before. So even though I never knew that little girl, I always had had a sense of her because her symbol has hung in my office wherever I've been serving the church. I do have another story that goes with that family. They were a family that really rallied around me. They were not that much older than me, although they had two other children, so they were maybe ten years older than I was. I spent my first Christmas dinner there, which was tough. I had never been away from home and my family at Christmas [very emotional moment.] It meant a lot to me, [to be.] brought into that family. It had to be Christmas Eve and I had dinner there. Then I took their other daughter in my car to the Christmas Eve service because she was singing in the [children's.] choir. I hadn't thought about this--it was snowing like crazy. It was unbelievable. I was driving her to the church and I hit some ice. The car did a "360." I remember that moment really vividly and just praying to God that nothing [bad.] could happen to this little girl. So that square reminds me of that too. [another emotional moment.] I don't know, the large banners hung in the church for a long time and this was the church that I was married in and when my husband and I married, he was pretty insistent that if we were going to be married in the church that I served we had to have some signs of his church which was the Presbyterian church in town [Westminster Presbyterian Church on the campus of the College of Wooster.]. So he and I made more [laughs.] banners, gigantic banners. One that had--they were more banners than quilts, but had the symbol of the church I served, the United Church of Christ church. Then his had the symbol from his church which was the Westminster Presbyterian Church. So we alternated those on and off for a while in the church, but these particular banners that are quilted I think have been used more than any. I know that the women in the church really cherish them because they talk about them and even years later I would get a clipping from a magazine or something from someone in the church showing me where the banners we'd made had been shown off again. I served that church for four years. When I left, my secretary--who was Chris Ertl--she and I had taken a quilting class because even though we knew how to piece and appliqué and make clothing and we could read a patchwork pattern, we didn't know how to hand quilt. I was determined to learn how to hand quilt before I left Amish country. So when I left that church, Chris rallied all the women who had made the different squares [in the large sanctuary banners.] and had them make miniature versions so that they could assemble miniature, not really doll size [laughs.] but room size rather than sanctuary size banners so that I would have them always. So I have. I've always had them in my office and had some place where they could hang and remind me of that first place that never really questioned my presence as a woman in the ministry among them, where I truly felt embraced and nurtured and sent to keep on doing what I felt God had asked me to do. So I don't know. What else do you want me to tell you about that?
JW: Have pictures been published?
DW: One has been published in a Midwestern farming magazine. I can't remember the name of it but I can probably let you know later. [Note from interviewee: Upon later exploration, I found the article featured new banners made for advent after the same fashion as the originals I helped assemble.]
JW: Today, you looked at this quilt, you had a couple of other ones here, but you looked at this quilt and selected this one. Why this one?
DW: Mm-mm.
JW: Why this one, now, today? What special meaning does it have at the moment?
DW: Well it has the most stories to it because more hands came together to make it.
JW: What do you think someone viewing your quilt might conclude about you?
DW: [pause and emotional moment.] That's why it makes me weepy I guess; that I know how to bring people together. How to nurture gifts that they have and how to lift them up in ways they didn't know they could be lifted up and that I cherish the power of women in the church.
JW: Do you ever use this quilt in any form of your ministry? Do you ever take it with you as someone needs to hear a story while you are visiting?
DW: I never have. I really love that notion. I think that this interview is going to inspire me to do some of that that I've never done before.
JW: It really is like a booklet that you could have folded--
DW: Yeah.
JW: --as a booklet and have somebody tell a story if they needed to--
DW: Mm-mm. You're right. You're right.
JW: --and be inspired.
DW: Yeah.
JW: Other than that, what are your plans for this quilt? How to you see it living in the future?
DW: Gosh. It seems like the thing I need to do right now is take them off my wall for a little bit and use them in worship in the church I'm at now. I've really been struggling in the church I'm in right now, trying to determine if it's really what I'm supposed to be doing. This move has not been super easy. It was a move to come home and be back close to family so I wouldn't have to fly home on Christmas day [laughs.] to be with family. The story doesn't always go the way you expect it to.
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: So [laughs.] it's been an interesting dance trying to figure out all the different comings and goings of my family and their expectations and just I've had a lot of grief about being gone for a long time. I've been out of Maine for 30 years. To come back and naively think that my siblings would just keep on going from where we were [laughs.] was pretty naïve. And it certainly hasn't all been bad, but it's been kind of a surprise. So I don't know. I think the church I'm in now is full of Home Ec. teachers [laughs.] which I had not anticipated. There are at least four of them. Some of them are regular attendees and some of them are not. Some of the others are quilters but not necessarily Home Ec. teachers. Maybe I need to be thinking about some ways to get them to offer their gifts to the creating of something similar. I hadn't thought about showing them these, [laughs.] these old banners to inspire them to do something. That's been part of the struggle of this church. It's kind of all over the place. In figuring out ways to bring these people together, [it.] has been kind of tough and kind of lonely.
JW: Well this could be a catalyst, just as there are many stories on that banner, you have many people. Maybe they could be brought together with a catalyst like this, with a quilt.
DW: Mm-mm. Yeah. Yeah.
JW: They wouldn't necessarily all have to quilt on it, but some people may have a voice.
DW: Yeah. Yeah. They may [think of.] images. It might be a good opportunity as we enter an anniversary year.
JW: You said it was 225 years?
DW: Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Yeah.
JW: That's exciting.
DW: Yeah.
JW: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. How did that start?
DW: All right. I was the first child and the oldest child and my mother was a seamstress and a lovely sewer and so I was born into a household with a sewing machine and a mother who wanted to make her little girl clothes, so I had beautiful clothes as a very little girl. I think that just being there with my mother as she was sewing, I must have absorbed that love for making things out of cloth. In some respects carrying on when she was too busy to, sewing things for my dolls. So I had a lot of fabric all over the place. Then when I was a teenager and was wearing my first pair of blue jeans that I had, probably all through my high school years, I started sewing patches on the bottom when they started going threadbare. At that point I really started loving patchwork. I've always been somebody who liked to put together stuff out of stuff that's around and made my younger sister a dress out of it that I pieced, had a pattern and pieced the fabric and then made her a dress when she was--I must have done that when I was in high school because she was still a little girl, maybe ten at the oldest, because it was a little Polly Flinders kind of style of a dress. It was all wild pieces of fabric [laughs.] all stripped together. I wonder if my mother still has that dress? She must.
JW: It appears that you prefer bright, happy colors. You have other quilts with you here, small ones--
DW: Mm-mm.
JW: --and they are bright. They are--
DW: --mm-mm.
JW: --free form I would say.
DW: Yeah.
JW: They are embellished.
DW: Yeah. Yeah. I like really [laughs.] bright colors. [laughs.] There's a woman in the church that I serve now whose name is Amber. She and I share a birthday. She is a wonderful quilter. She likes everything in subdued soft pinks and soft blues and soft yellows. I like everything orange and hot pink and bright red and black. Last year when we were getting ready for the Christmas Fair we did a fabric exchange. Well [laughs.] she brought me [fabric.]. [laughs.] She cleaned out her cupboards so I could make a few patchwork bags to sell at the fair. Because I thought, 'Well not everybody is going to like my really wild crazy patterns,' so she brought me subdued ones. Then she made a point of buying for herself one of the bright colored ones. [laughs.] So, the two of us laugh about our difference in palette.
JW: Your son, you were telling me he likes the bright colors.
DW: Oh absolutely. Yeah. He went to art school for a year and a half when he graduated from high school and didn't finish, as is often the case I think with the true artists that go to college for art. [laughs.] He is very, very interested in graffiti. So I think he gets his love of color partly from that, but also as a little boy, well as my son how could he not like bright colors? [laughs.] When he was very little he would wear, we would go to fabric stores and I'd pick swatches of fabric to make him baggy pants and things and they were in all these bright, bright colors. I have pictures of him in pants with stars and pants with motorcycles. One Easter when he was four, I think, we went to a shoe store and I picked out a pair of shoes that I thought would be good for him--maybe he was younger than that. Well anyways, he would not even pay attention to me and walked over to the brightest pair of shoes in the shoe store and said, 'I want these.' I knew then that I was not going to tell this boy what he would wear. Sometimes he wore some pretty bright and crazy things. Sometimes I made him, like once I made him an Easter outfit with turquoise shorts and the shirt was every brightest color you can imagine in almost like batik animals. That was a little like a camp shirt, but then he had a turquoise bow tie. [laughs.]
JW: You didn't lose him, did you?
DW: No. No. And even now at 22 he wears bright green socks and loves clothes and likes really bright colors.
JW: You brought a few samples of [liturgical.] stoles that you made, but then there's one that he designed, which is, now that you tell me about him [DW laughs.] clearly looks like him. Explain that. Describe that to us.
DW: Uh-huh. When Josh was 11 he was being the dutiful preacher's kid and was sitting at the back of the sanctuary with his not so dutiful father, my husband, who always had paper there at least for him. Josh was doodling during the sermon and started drawing a design for a stole for me and showed it to me after worship. He must have had crayons or something because he had the colors all in it. I told him, 'Well I could make that.' He kind of shrugged his shoulders. I went about making it. It's one of my favorite stoles. It is, it's got very specific design. It has checkerboard in it. It's all his favorite colors, orange and pink and red. When he was a little boy he had a hot pink jacket because somebody gave it to us. He thought that all jackets were supposed to be hot pink. [laughs.]
JW: Is this [the stole.] a quilted piece or just sewn together?
DW: It's quilted too. [voice recedes as she steps away from the table to retrieve the stole.] Yeah. Yeah. In fact I think it's some of my finest quilting because I think it was a small piece. I could really take care with it.
JW: When you said a checkerboard pattern, I can see that only a small piece of this is checkerboard pattern, and then the colors take off.
DW: Yep. Yep. He didn't really have an explanation for it.
JW: Did he help in any way to construct it or quilt it?
DW: No, no. He has ventured into sewing a tiny bit, but not that much. I keep thinking that he might because he and I are avid fans of "Project Runway." [laughs.]
JW: Has he expressed an interest in quilting?
DW: Not, he's interested in the quilts I make for him, but I would say I haven't really exposed him to some of the really avant garde kind of art quilts that are out there. He's more interested in painting giant walls and things [laughs.] like that. You know being the only child, there's that sense of needing to differentiate from his mother who has a pretty strong personality, so that he can have a pretty strong personality too. Yeah. Yeah. But I did make him a quilt. I started making it for him when he was about to graduate from high school. I was making it for him to take to college but did not finish it. I finished the top with the colors he picked and then last year in the summertime I started working on the back and put it all together and finished it in time to wrap it up and give it to him for Christmas. Because he is an avid biker and fan of Lance Armstrong, the pattern is bordered in that Tour de France yellow. I wrote on the back, 'Dreaming of the Tour de France' on it. Being the tender-hearted fellow that he is, he burst into tears when he saw that. It really touched his heart. It was pretty sweet. He always sleeps with that. He also always sleeps with [a quilt that.] the women who made the banner in the first church, when he was born, we were living in our next place. We were living in Cincinnati, but of course the folks in the Wooster church got word that their young woman minister was pregnant. They had all attended my wedding. We invited both of our churches, so we had 800 people at our wedding. [laughs.] The reception was at my secretary's farm, the one who put these banners together. So, everybody came to the reception to have potluck, a giant potluck. When they heard that I was pregnant they put together just a really simple quilt. It was just two pieces of fabric, a piece of flannel and a piece of regular, it was a print with little bears on it and totally not the colors that are normal in our house [laughs.]. They were brown, you know, soft brown and soft blue, very delicate kind of pale colors. They hand quilted it all and put a binding on it and that was their gift to us, partly the way to show us they were still quilting together and also a very practical, purposeful blanket and Josh still rolls that up and sleeps with that too. So even at 22 there are things that he cherishes that he understands the importance of stuff like that.
JW: It's nice that quilts can be part of his life.
DW: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: It appears to me that you've hand quilted this? [the stole her son inspired.]
DW: Mm-mm.
JW: Do you do any machine quilting or is it all hand quilting?
DW: I'm trying [to.] teach myself machine [laughs.] quilting. I don't find it as satisfactory because I can't control it as well. I have a Bernina Patchwork but I'm not very patient [laughs.] when it comes to machine quilting. I want to go really fast and then I'm really disappointed at how the back looks. I really prefer to do the hand quilting. But sometimes I just choose to do the machine quilting.
JW: When you are hand quilting, how do you feel? How does it make you feel?
DW: Oh, it's like a prayer. It's definitely like a prayer. It's very restful, very calming. It's a real creative time for me because I can, I always feel like I'm thinking about people, and I get more ideas of things to make when I'm hand quilting. I think it's a pretty deep thing to do.
JW: Mm-mm. From whom did you learn to quilt, not just sew, but quilt?
DW: Oh. Well, the actual how to do the hand quilt stitching was the class I took with my secretary in the Wooster church. Having lived for a couple of years in Amish country I was bound and determined to learn how to hand quilt. I had seen hand quilting of course and preferred that look. I had been patching and piecing things for a long time, but really had the dream that I would make some quilts and felt like I needed to know how to do that. So, I took the class. It was like a, I don't know, a three-week class.
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: And then just started doing it.
JW: How many hours do you quilt?
DW: Now? That's a hard question. [laughs.] I've become quite a knitter too now. [continues to laugh.] I'm a pretty passionate knitter as well. I can't say that I quilt every week anymore.
JW: Do you have any quilts in progress?
DW: Yes. I do. [laughs.]
JW: Are they UFO's or are you really working on them?
DW: No, I'm really working on them. I like to have projects that I finish. That's one of the things about making things that's important to me. Ministry is always unfinished business. People in the churches that I have served have always said, 'How do you find the time to do all this work?' meaning the hand crafts that I do. I say, 'You know, I have to have something that I finish, that's done.' Yeah. The quilt I'm working on right now is machine pieced. It's kind of a, it's not really a log cabin. It's pretty modern. It's for my sister's oldest son who was married this summer and his bride. The top's done. I did machine quilt it and I'm really happy about that. I'm determining now whether to put a border on it of stripped pieces or just leave it of the squares and put some binding around it.
JW: Mm-mm. Isn't it fun to have all the flexibility in the world?
DW: Yes.
JW: To do anything you want.
DW: Exactly, exactly.
JW: One area of the world that you can create.
DW: Exactly. And I don't have to please anybody but myself and that's a nice thing because--
JW: You have control over that, that one area.
DW: Yes. Yes.
JW: What is your first quilt memory?
DW: My first quilt memory. Ah. My grandmother had quilts. I don't even remember where this one was, but I really remember a Sunbonnet Sue quilt. It might have been--we had a camp [on Pequawket Lake near Cornish, Maine.]. It's actually in Limington. I don't know if there were quilts on those beds or if they were on the beds in my grandmother's house. But they are definitely connected to my grandmother, even though she was not a quilter. She came from [Bar Mills, Maine.] and a farm family. She was certainly a fine seamstress also. This was my mother's mother. But yeah, there was a Sunbonnet Sue quilt somewhere that I remember just kind of looking at and feeling and being amazed at the stitches and kind of a quirky pattern.
JW: Is it something you thought you might like to try someday? Did it inspire you or put a little spark in you?
DW: I [pause.] don't know. It must have. I don't really remember consciously thinking that. I just remember that I thought that was really, there was something about it that I liked. I liked that it was tactile and that it was fabric and that it had stories to tell. It seems like I must have read a story too as a little girl about someone who had a quilt. It told stories about where this piece came from and what dress that came from. I don't remember what the book would have been, but I must have read a book like that. I don't know if "The Five Little Peppers" would have had that in it. I didn't read "Little Women" until I was much older.
JW: How does quilting impact your family now?
DW: I'm the only one who does it. [laughs.]
JW: But your family, your household.
DW: Oh, in my family?
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: It's something that certainly my son and my husband value. I think that it was attractive to my husband when he met me that I did things like this because he grew up in a house with his grandmother, who was his most beloved adult, who helped raise him. He was half raised in his grandmother's house. I think there was a peacefulness and a home, sense of home, in a home that was filled with hand crafts going on. He values that quite a bit. We have an old quilt that his grandmother made him. She had made all the grandchildren quilts, but he was the oldest one and I'm not quite sure why she had not made him one, but he asked her to make him one. She made him one out of his grandfather's old pants. It has no pattern to it, very random, kind of looks like the quilts of Gee's Bend a bit. So very, almost modern looking, but very homespun, even thrown around the sewing machine, kind of randomly all over. It's a big heavy, heavy thing. We use that. He was insistent that we use that on our bed for ever and ever. I have tried. I actually grew really tired of that quilt because it was so contrary to the--I had just wanted to make a quilt for that bed and here we were, stuck it felt like, with this quilt his grandmother had made. Partly related to that, my husband suffers from depression and when his crisis came, which was right when our son was born, he would wrap himself in that quilt, so I do understand the value of that quilt. It has a huge comfort for him. It has many, many holes in it that, because he's such a, he's not careful. [laughs.] He's done many a crossword puzzle on that quilt. I've patched it. He's patched it. I've put a new red flannel backing on it. But it's still, when he's feeling the worst, that's what he wants to wrap up in. It has to be dry cleaned [laughs.] cause it's made out of wool and polyester and just all the random swatches of what his grandfather wore for pants.
JW: Yeah. It sounds like both you and your husband, a quilt has helped you get through a difficult time then?
DW: Oh yeah. Many times. I would say that's true.
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: Yeah.
JW: Have you got an amusing experience that has occurred while you are quilting, something that just cracks you up?
DW: [laughs.] Gosh. I don't know if this is funny, but one of my very favorite people who died a year and a half ago, Cleta Kitchen, who was the first person I really got to know in a real special way in the church I'm in now, she knew she was dying, but she didn't tell me. She kept calling me up, just randomly. She'd say, 'You gotta come over.' [laughs.] I'd go over and she'd say, 'I have something for you.' She just slowly started giving me like her quilting hoop and her appliqué scissors, little bit by little bit. She certainly didn't give me everything. She had seven children, three girls, and they got a lot too as they should have. But there were a couple of things that she wanted me to take. She was very insistent, [laughs.] almost bossy. [laughs.]
JW: So, you look back on it and find that amusing then?
DW: Yeah. Yeah. And endearing. Yeah.
JW: What do you think makes a great quiltmaker?
DW: Oh gosh. [pause.] A great quiltmaker. That really depends. I'm fascinated with quilts that kind of push the edges of tradition, so that can be a really great quiltmaker, untraditional kind of stuff. I also think the ones that have deep meaning because they are for someone or to celebrate something. I don't know, I guess anybody who quilts I find to be a pretty great person.
JW: Machine quilting, hand quilting, tying--different techniques. Now you've talked a little bit about that but if you had your preference, what would you be doing?
DW: I'd rather do the hand piecing, certainly, and the hand quilting.
JW: Hand quilting?
DW: I really like doing it all by hand because I think it has a more finished, a more precise look to it. You have more control over it. But in terms of productivity, I'm trying to push the edges. I do like some of the machine quilts. My friend Cleta Kitchen said to me, 'Why wouldn't you use the machine?' [laughs.] When she said that to me, I said, 'Oh, yeah.' [laughs.] So. So, yeah.
JW: What do you think makes a great quilt?
DW: Oh, that it stirs up something in you, I think. I love to see really good technique. I do like wonderful patterns. But I like patterns that are sharp. I know there is a huge trend to manipulate fabric. There is, I think that some of the new trends are almost over the top and that they have gone so far away from traditional quilting that they don't appeal to me so much. They have too much made on them or too much random stitches all over the place. I like a quilt that feels good in your hand, that has a lovely pattern to it, you can see the work of the hands that made it. But I like the really graphic ones too. I have an Amish quilt that I bought. It's a wall hanging that I bought after I had moved from being in Amish country. I bought it when I could finally afford one. [laughs.] But I really love the traditional black and deep red and deep blue in Amish quilts, but I love the Gee's Bend quilts. I think there is so much heart in all of those because they have stories that go with them.
JW: What's something about quiltmaking that you don't like?
DW: [paused for a moment and turned off the tape.] [laughs.] What don't I like about quilt making? That there's never enough time for it.
JW: In what ways do you think your quilts reflect your vocation?
DW: What ways do they reflect my vocation? Oh, I think they have a tradition. They evolve. They represent so many different people. They bring joy. There is something really celebratory about a quilt, I think. Maybe because they also are like banners. But then I love the comfort about them. I read a book about African American quilting and the traditions of the quilt that you sleep under on your wedding night or the quilt that you wrap someone who's dying in, or even the sense that some quilts have the spirits of all those who have gone before you. I think there is a magic--a power to them. I love the stories of how quilts were signposts on the Underground Railroad and all of those different kinds of stories and how quilts have been woven into children's stories. I think that that's what shows the importance and the preciousness of it too. As a storyteller and someone who is passionate about children's ministry, quilts have been incredibly useful to me in that way.
JW: What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life, not just in your ministry, but in general?
DW: Ah-huh. I think that long before women used the terms women's power or women united or any of those sort of feminist things, that even if they didn't articulate it, I think that women knew that there was a power in the quilting. I think that the boys and men who were raised in the midst of that quilting, because I do think quilting is more specifically women's art, I think it was threatening. But also, because there's such a focus taken on quilting together. When women circle around, there is power there. I think that's been a strength for our country. It's probably one of the reasons that women have the kind of broad possibilities that we have in this country.
JW: Do you have any tips or advice for beginners?
DW: Gee, just get started. Don't be afraid. Don't worry about being perfect. Those are a lot of "don'ts." Try it. [laughs.] Find somebody who will make a quilt with you. Make something little that makes you happy. Do with it what you want to. That's why I like doing the wall hangings that I do. I add bits and pieces from my grandmother's sewing box and beads that I have bought at crafts fairs or on trips.
JW: What do you think is the biggest challenge for quiltmakers today?
DW: A challenge for quiltmakers? Gosh, I think, mmm. I didn't think about there being any challenges. [laughs.] Well no. That's--I think the thing that I've always experienced is how many people see--it can be separating. If you're a quilter, you're domestic and you are doing something that seems old-fashioned. I think that our world is so busy and so hands-on in terms of computer stuff that there are a lot of folks who don't pick up a needle. I mean, I'm excited about the generation that is starting to do some hand crafts in new ways. Like the women who are twenty years younger than I am and teenagers who are knitting and who are piecing things together in some funky ways.
JW: Great, great. Is there anything else that you'd like to add in another brief moment?
DW: [shakes her head no.]
JW: I'm just going to say thank you for coming here and doing this. I knew it would be exciting and it was. It was fun. This is part of the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project. Our interview concluded at 11:48 [a.m.] on October 25th, 2010. Thank you very much.
DW: Thank you.
Diane Wendorf (DW): Yes.
JW: Tell me about the quilt you brought today.
DW: This quilt is really [a smaller size reproduction of.] a banner that was originally very, very large. Each square was 2 1/2 feet square. It hung from almost the rafters of the very first church I served, which was Trinity United Church of Christ in Wooster, Ohio. I was a very young woman then in the 1980's and I was their first woman minister and wanted to have a way to draw in the women of the church of different ages. I knew that they had been, many of them had been, quilters. The church was in Amish country in the middle of Ohio. If they weren't quilters, they were hand crafters and amazing seamstresses. There were mothers with little girls with smocked dresses and there were grandmothers who remembered back in the day when the church had a quilting group. So I asked questions of many people, many women, and said, 'Well why don't we have a quilting group now?' There wasn't really a special occasion. Not an anniversary or anything like that. It was just a reason to get together. There was another woman in the church who was an artist, a young woman [named Sarah Smith.] She and I became good friends and we cooked up the idea of making banners for the sanctuary. We thought it would make the sanctuary warmer, more inviting and would add a new flavor to what was a fairly traditional stained glass window church. Maybe a 1950's to 1960's style church. We started thinking up different designs that we could use and walked around the church and talked around the church to find out what would be an appropriate symbol, things that were important to the life of the congregation. We picked symbols that we liked out of stained glass windows. There is one square not in the banner I brought today, but the other side that I left in my office, that has a beehive on it. There was a beehive in one of the stained glass windows. That was really important to the women in the church because it seemed unusual to have a beehive in a stained glass window, but it represented community and we liked that. We added symbols that we had talked about. There is a fish in this banner and I had taught the children what the fish symbol means in the Christian community and we had talked about that as being a secret sign among early Christians of where they could recognize each other. The square that is the most important I think to me and really had deep meaning for everyone in the community is the rainbow, which wasn't pictured in any of the stained glass windows, but there had been a little girl who just about a year or so before I arrived had died of cancer at [the age of.] five. Everyone at the church had rallied around that family and that little girl. The experience of holding that family in the heart of the church really brought the church together in ways they had never experienced before or they hadn't remembered experiencing before. So even though I never knew that little girl, I always had had a sense of her because her symbol has hung in my office wherever I've been serving the church. I do have another story that goes with that family. They were a family that really rallied around me. They were not that much older than me, although they had two other children, so they were maybe ten years older than I was. I spent my first Christmas dinner there, which was tough. I had never been away from home and my family at Christmas [very emotional moment.] It meant a lot to me, [to be.] brought into that family. It had to be Christmas Eve and I had dinner there. Then I took their other daughter in my car to the Christmas Eve service because she was singing in the [children's.] choir. I hadn't thought about this--it was snowing like crazy. It was unbelievable. I was driving her to the church and I hit some ice. The car did a "360." I remember that moment really vividly and just praying to God that nothing [bad.] could happen to this little girl. So that square reminds me of that too. [another emotional moment.] I don't know, the large banners hung in the church for a long time and this was the church that I was married in and when my husband and I married, he was pretty insistent that if we were going to be married in the church that I served we had to have some signs of his church which was the Presbyterian church in town [Westminster Presbyterian Church on the campus of the College of Wooster.]. So he and I made more [laughs.] banners, gigantic banners. One that had--they were more banners than quilts, but had the symbol of the church I served, the United Church of Christ church. Then his had the symbol from his church which was the Westminster Presbyterian Church. So we alternated those on and off for a while in the church, but these particular banners that are quilted I think have been used more than any. I know that the women in the church really cherish them because they talk about them and even years later I would get a clipping from a magazine or something from someone in the church showing me where the banners we'd made had been shown off again. I served that church for four years. When I left, my secretary--who was Chris Ertl--she and I had taken a quilting class because even though we knew how to piece and appliqué and make clothing and we could read a patchwork pattern, we didn't know how to hand quilt. I was determined to learn how to hand quilt before I left Amish country. So when I left that church, Chris rallied all the women who had made the different squares [in the large sanctuary banners.] and had them make miniature versions so that they could assemble miniature, not really doll size [laughs.] but room size rather than sanctuary size banners so that I would have them always. So I have. I've always had them in my office and had some place where they could hang and remind me of that first place that never really questioned my presence as a woman in the ministry among them, where I truly felt embraced and nurtured and sent to keep on doing what I felt God had asked me to do. So I don't know. What else do you want me to tell you about that?
JW: Have pictures been published?
DW: One has been published in a Midwestern farming magazine. I can't remember the name of it but I can probably let you know later. [Note from interviewee: Upon later exploration, I found the article featured new banners made for advent after the same fashion as the originals I helped assemble.]
JW: Today, you looked at this quilt, you had a couple of other ones here, but you looked at this quilt and selected this one. Why this one?
DW: Mm-mm.
JW: Why this one, now, today? What special meaning does it have at the moment?
DW: Well it has the most stories to it because more hands came together to make it.
JW: What do you think someone viewing your quilt might conclude about you?
DW: [pause and emotional moment.] That's why it makes me weepy I guess; that I know how to bring people together. How to nurture gifts that they have and how to lift them up in ways they didn't know they could be lifted up and that I cherish the power of women in the church.
JW: Do you ever use this quilt in any form of your ministry? Do you ever take it with you as someone needs to hear a story while you are visiting?
DW: I never have. I really love that notion. I think that this interview is going to inspire me to do some of that that I've never done before.
JW: It really is like a booklet that you could have folded--
DW: Yeah.
JW: --as a booklet and have somebody tell a story if they needed to--
DW: Mm-mm. You're right. You're right.
JW: --and be inspired.
DW: Yeah.
JW: Other than that, what are your plans for this quilt? How to you see it living in the future?
DW: Gosh. It seems like the thing I need to do right now is take them off my wall for a little bit and use them in worship in the church I'm at now. I've really been struggling in the church I'm in right now, trying to determine if it's really what I'm supposed to be doing. This move has not been super easy. It was a move to come home and be back close to family so I wouldn't have to fly home on Christmas day [laughs.] to be with family. The story doesn't always go the way you expect it to.
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: So [laughs.] it's been an interesting dance trying to figure out all the different comings and goings of my family and their expectations and just I've had a lot of grief about being gone for a long time. I've been out of Maine for 30 years. To come back and naively think that my siblings would just keep on going from where we were [laughs.] was pretty naïve. And it certainly hasn't all been bad, but it's been kind of a surprise. So I don't know. I think the church I'm in now is full of Home Ec. teachers [laughs.] which I had not anticipated. There are at least four of them. Some of them are regular attendees and some of them are not. Some of the others are quilters but not necessarily Home Ec. teachers. Maybe I need to be thinking about some ways to get them to offer their gifts to the creating of something similar. I hadn't thought about showing them these, [laughs.] these old banners to inspire them to do something. That's been part of the struggle of this church. It's kind of all over the place. In figuring out ways to bring these people together, [it.] has been kind of tough and kind of lonely.
JW: Well this could be a catalyst, just as there are many stories on that banner, you have many people. Maybe they could be brought together with a catalyst like this, with a quilt.
DW: Mm-mm. Yeah. Yeah.
JW: They wouldn't necessarily all have to quilt on it, but some people may have a voice.
DW: Yeah. Yeah. They may [think of.] images. It might be a good opportunity as we enter an anniversary year.
JW: You said it was 225 years?
DW: Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Yeah.
JW: That's exciting.
DW: Yeah.
JW: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking. How did that start?
DW: All right. I was the first child and the oldest child and my mother was a seamstress and a lovely sewer and so I was born into a household with a sewing machine and a mother who wanted to make her little girl clothes, so I had beautiful clothes as a very little girl. I think that just being there with my mother as she was sewing, I must have absorbed that love for making things out of cloth. In some respects carrying on when she was too busy to, sewing things for my dolls. So I had a lot of fabric all over the place. Then when I was a teenager and was wearing my first pair of blue jeans that I had, probably all through my high school years, I started sewing patches on the bottom when they started going threadbare. At that point I really started loving patchwork. I've always been somebody who liked to put together stuff out of stuff that's around and made my younger sister a dress out of it that I pieced, had a pattern and pieced the fabric and then made her a dress when she was--I must have done that when I was in high school because she was still a little girl, maybe ten at the oldest, because it was a little Polly Flinders kind of style of a dress. It was all wild pieces of fabric [laughs.] all stripped together. I wonder if my mother still has that dress? She must.
JW: It appears that you prefer bright, happy colors. You have other quilts with you here, small ones--
DW: Mm-mm.
JW: --and they are bright. They are--
DW: --mm-mm.
JW: --free form I would say.
DW: Yeah.
JW: They are embellished.
DW: Yeah. Yeah. I like really [laughs.] bright colors. [laughs.] There's a woman in the church that I serve now whose name is Amber. She and I share a birthday. She is a wonderful quilter. She likes everything in subdued soft pinks and soft blues and soft yellows. I like everything orange and hot pink and bright red and black. Last year when we were getting ready for the Christmas Fair we did a fabric exchange. Well [laughs.] she brought me [fabric.]. [laughs.] She cleaned out her cupboards so I could make a few patchwork bags to sell at the fair. Because I thought, 'Well not everybody is going to like my really wild crazy patterns,' so she brought me subdued ones. Then she made a point of buying for herself one of the bright colored ones. [laughs.] So, the two of us laugh about our difference in palette.
JW: Your son, you were telling me he likes the bright colors.
DW: Oh absolutely. Yeah. He went to art school for a year and a half when he graduated from high school and didn't finish, as is often the case I think with the true artists that go to college for art. [laughs.] He is very, very interested in graffiti. So I think he gets his love of color partly from that, but also as a little boy, well as my son how could he not like bright colors? [laughs.] When he was very little he would wear, we would go to fabric stores and I'd pick swatches of fabric to make him baggy pants and things and they were in all these bright, bright colors. I have pictures of him in pants with stars and pants with motorcycles. One Easter when he was four, I think, we went to a shoe store and I picked out a pair of shoes that I thought would be good for him--maybe he was younger than that. Well anyways, he would not even pay attention to me and walked over to the brightest pair of shoes in the shoe store and said, 'I want these.' I knew then that I was not going to tell this boy what he would wear. Sometimes he wore some pretty bright and crazy things. Sometimes I made him, like once I made him an Easter outfit with turquoise shorts and the shirt was every brightest color you can imagine in almost like batik animals. That was a little like a camp shirt, but then he had a turquoise bow tie. [laughs.]
JW: You didn't lose him, did you?
DW: No. No. And even now at 22 he wears bright green socks and loves clothes and likes really bright colors.
JW: You brought a few samples of [liturgical.] stoles that you made, but then there's one that he designed, which is, now that you tell me about him [DW laughs.] clearly looks like him. Explain that. Describe that to us.
DW: Uh-huh. When Josh was 11 he was being the dutiful preacher's kid and was sitting at the back of the sanctuary with his not so dutiful father, my husband, who always had paper there at least for him. Josh was doodling during the sermon and started drawing a design for a stole for me and showed it to me after worship. He must have had crayons or something because he had the colors all in it. I told him, 'Well I could make that.' He kind of shrugged his shoulders. I went about making it. It's one of my favorite stoles. It is, it's got very specific design. It has checkerboard in it. It's all his favorite colors, orange and pink and red. When he was a little boy he had a hot pink jacket because somebody gave it to us. He thought that all jackets were supposed to be hot pink. [laughs.]
JW: Is this [the stole.] a quilted piece or just sewn together?
DW: It's quilted too. [voice recedes as she steps away from the table to retrieve the stole.] Yeah. Yeah. In fact I think it's some of my finest quilting because I think it was a small piece. I could really take care with it.
JW: When you said a checkerboard pattern, I can see that only a small piece of this is checkerboard pattern, and then the colors take off.
DW: Yep. Yep. He didn't really have an explanation for it.
JW: Did he help in any way to construct it or quilt it?
DW: No, no. He has ventured into sewing a tiny bit, but not that much. I keep thinking that he might because he and I are avid fans of "Project Runway." [laughs.]
JW: Has he expressed an interest in quilting?
DW: Not, he's interested in the quilts I make for him, but I would say I haven't really exposed him to some of the really avant garde kind of art quilts that are out there. He's more interested in painting giant walls and things [laughs.] like that. You know being the only child, there's that sense of needing to differentiate from his mother who has a pretty strong personality, so that he can have a pretty strong personality too. Yeah. Yeah. But I did make him a quilt. I started making it for him when he was about to graduate from high school. I was making it for him to take to college but did not finish it. I finished the top with the colors he picked and then last year in the summertime I started working on the back and put it all together and finished it in time to wrap it up and give it to him for Christmas. Because he is an avid biker and fan of Lance Armstrong, the pattern is bordered in that Tour de France yellow. I wrote on the back, 'Dreaming of the Tour de France' on it. Being the tender-hearted fellow that he is, he burst into tears when he saw that. It really touched his heart. It was pretty sweet. He always sleeps with that. He also always sleeps with [a quilt that.] the women who made the banner in the first church, when he was born, we were living in our next place. We were living in Cincinnati, but of course the folks in the Wooster church got word that their young woman minister was pregnant. They had all attended my wedding. We invited both of our churches, so we had 800 people at our wedding. [laughs.] The reception was at my secretary's farm, the one who put these banners together. So, everybody came to the reception to have potluck, a giant potluck. When they heard that I was pregnant they put together just a really simple quilt. It was just two pieces of fabric, a piece of flannel and a piece of regular, it was a print with little bears on it and totally not the colors that are normal in our house [laughs.]. They were brown, you know, soft brown and soft blue, very delicate kind of pale colors. They hand quilted it all and put a binding on it and that was their gift to us, partly the way to show us they were still quilting together and also a very practical, purposeful blanket and Josh still rolls that up and sleeps with that too. So even at 22 there are things that he cherishes that he understands the importance of stuff like that.
JW: It's nice that quilts can be part of his life.
DW: Yeah. Yeah.
JW: It appears to me that you've hand quilted this? [the stole her son inspired.]
DW: Mm-mm.
JW: Do you do any machine quilting or is it all hand quilting?
DW: I'm trying [to.] teach myself machine [laughs.] quilting. I don't find it as satisfactory because I can't control it as well. I have a Bernina Patchwork but I'm not very patient [laughs.] when it comes to machine quilting. I want to go really fast and then I'm really disappointed at how the back looks. I really prefer to do the hand quilting. But sometimes I just choose to do the machine quilting.
JW: When you are hand quilting, how do you feel? How does it make you feel?
DW: Oh, it's like a prayer. It's definitely like a prayer. It's very restful, very calming. It's a real creative time for me because I can, I always feel like I'm thinking about people, and I get more ideas of things to make when I'm hand quilting. I think it's a pretty deep thing to do.
JW: Mm-mm. From whom did you learn to quilt, not just sew, but quilt?
DW: Oh. Well, the actual how to do the hand quilt stitching was the class I took with my secretary in the Wooster church. Having lived for a couple of years in Amish country I was bound and determined to learn how to hand quilt. I had seen hand quilting of course and preferred that look. I had been patching and piecing things for a long time, but really had the dream that I would make some quilts and felt like I needed to know how to do that. So, I took the class. It was like a, I don't know, a three-week class.
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: And then just started doing it.
JW: How many hours do you quilt?
DW: Now? That's a hard question. [laughs.] I've become quite a knitter too now. [continues to laugh.] I'm a pretty passionate knitter as well. I can't say that I quilt every week anymore.
JW: Do you have any quilts in progress?
DW: Yes. I do. [laughs.]
JW: Are they UFO's or are you really working on them?
DW: No, I'm really working on them. I like to have projects that I finish. That's one of the things about making things that's important to me. Ministry is always unfinished business. People in the churches that I have served have always said, 'How do you find the time to do all this work?' meaning the hand crafts that I do. I say, 'You know, I have to have something that I finish, that's done.' Yeah. The quilt I'm working on right now is machine pieced. It's kind of a, it's not really a log cabin. It's pretty modern. It's for my sister's oldest son who was married this summer and his bride. The top's done. I did machine quilt it and I'm really happy about that. I'm determining now whether to put a border on it of stripped pieces or just leave it of the squares and put some binding around it.
JW: Mm-mm. Isn't it fun to have all the flexibility in the world?
DW: Yes.
JW: To do anything you want.
DW: Exactly, exactly.
JW: One area of the world that you can create.
DW: Exactly. And I don't have to please anybody but myself and that's a nice thing because--
JW: You have control over that, that one area.
DW: Yes. Yes.
JW: What is your first quilt memory?
DW: My first quilt memory. Ah. My grandmother had quilts. I don't even remember where this one was, but I really remember a Sunbonnet Sue quilt. It might have been--we had a camp [on Pequawket Lake near Cornish, Maine.]. It's actually in Limington. I don't know if there were quilts on those beds or if they were on the beds in my grandmother's house. But they are definitely connected to my grandmother, even though she was not a quilter. She came from [Bar Mills, Maine.] and a farm family. She was certainly a fine seamstress also. This was my mother's mother. But yeah, there was a Sunbonnet Sue quilt somewhere that I remember just kind of looking at and feeling and being amazed at the stitches and kind of a quirky pattern.
JW: Is it something you thought you might like to try someday? Did it inspire you or put a little spark in you?
DW: I [pause.] don't know. It must have. I don't really remember consciously thinking that. I just remember that I thought that was really, there was something about it that I liked. I liked that it was tactile and that it was fabric and that it had stories to tell. It seems like I must have read a story too as a little girl about someone who had a quilt. It told stories about where this piece came from and what dress that came from. I don't remember what the book would have been, but I must have read a book like that. I don't know if "The Five Little Peppers" would have had that in it. I didn't read "Little Women" until I was much older.
JW: How does quilting impact your family now?
DW: I'm the only one who does it. [laughs.]
JW: But your family, your household.
DW: Oh, in my family?
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: It's something that certainly my son and my husband value. I think that it was attractive to my husband when he met me that I did things like this because he grew up in a house with his grandmother, who was his most beloved adult, who helped raise him. He was half raised in his grandmother's house. I think there was a peacefulness and a home, sense of home, in a home that was filled with hand crafts going on. He values that quite a bit. We have an old quilt that his grandmother made him. She had made all the grandchildren quilts, but he was the oldest one and I'm not quite sure why she had not made him one, but he asked her to make him one. She made him one out of his grandfather's old pants. It has no pattern to it, very random, kind of looks like the quilts of Gee's Bend a bit. So very, almost modern looking, but very homespun, even thrown around the sewing machine, kind of randomly all over. It's a big heavy, heavy thing. We use that. He was insistent that we use that on our bed for ever and ever. I have tried. I actually grew really tired of that quilt because it was so contrary to the--I had just wanted to make a quilt for that bed and here we were, stuck it felt like, with this quilt his grandmother had made. Partly related to that, my husband suffers from depression and when his crisis came, which was right when our son was born, he would wrap himself in that quilt, so I do understand the value of that quilt. It has a huge comfort for him. It has many, many holes in it that, because he's such a, he's not careful. [laughs.] He's done many a crossword puzzle on that quilt. I've patched it. He's patched it. I've put a new red flannel backing on it. But it's still, when he's feeling the worst, that's what he wants to wrap up in. It has to be dry cleaned [laughs.] cause it's made out of wool and polyester and just all the random swatches of what his grandfather wore for pants.
JW: Yeah. It sounds like both you and your husband, a quilt has helped you get through a difficult time then?
DW: Oh yeah. Many times. I would say that's true.
JW: Mm-mm.
DW: Yeah.
JW: Have you got an amusing experience that has occurred while you are quilting, something that just cracks you up?
DW: [laughs.] Gosh. I don't know if this is funny, but one of my very favorite people who died a year and a half ago, Cleta Kitchen, who was the first person I really got to know in a real special way in the church I'm in now, she knew she was dying, but she didn't tell me. She kept calling me up, just randomly. She'd say, 'You gotta come over.' [laughs.] I'd go over and she'd say, 'I have something for you.' She just slowly started giving me like her quilting hoop and her appliqué scissors, little bit by little bit. She certainly didn't give me everything. She had seven children, three girls, and they got a lot too as they should have. But there were a couple of things that she wanted me to take. She was very insistent, [laughs.] almost bossy. [laughs.]
JW: So, you look back on it and find that amusing then?
DW: Yeah. Yeah. And endearing. Yeah.
JW: What do you think makes a great quiltmaker?
DW: Oh gosh. [pause.] A great quiltmaker. That really depends. I'm fascinated with quilts that kind of push the edges of tradition, so that can be a really great quiltmaker, untraditional kind of stuff. I also think the ones that have deep meaning because they are for someone or to celebrate something. I don't know, I guess anybody who quilts I find to be a pretty great person.
JW: Machine quilting, hand quilting, tying--different techniques. Now you've talked a little bit about that but if you had your preference, what would you be doing?
DW: I'd rather do the hand piecing, certainly, and the hand quilting.
JW: Hand quilting?
DW: I really like doing it all by hand because I think it has a more finished, a more precise look to it. You have more control over it. But in terms of productivity, I'm trying to push the edges. I do like some of the machine quilts. My friend Cleta Kitchen said to me, 'Why wouldn't you use the machine?' [laughs.] When she said that to me, I said, 'Oh, yeah.' [laughs.] So. So, yeah.
JW: What do you think makes a great quilt?
DW: Oh, that it stirs up something in you, I think. I love to see really good technique. I do like wonderful patterns. But I like patterns that are sharp. I know there is a huge trend to manipulate fabric. There is, I think that some of the new trends are almost over the top and that they have gone so far away from traditional quilting that they don't appeal to me so much. They have too much made on them or too much random stitches all over the place. I like a quilt that feels good in your hand, that has a lovely pattern to it, you can see the work of the hands that made it. But I like the really graphic ones too. I have an Amish quilt that I bought. It's a wall hanging that I bought after I had moved from being in Amish country. I bought it when I could finally afford one. [laughs.] But I really love the traditional black and deep red and deep blue in Amish quilts, but I love the Gee's Bend quilts. I think there is so much heart in all of those because they have stories that go with them.
JW: What's something about quiltmaking that you don't like?
DW: [paused for a moment and turned off the tape.] [laughs.] What don't I like about quilt making? That there's never enough time for it.
JW: In what ways do you think your quilts reflect your vocation?
DW: What ways do they reflect my vocation? Oh, I think they have a tradition. They evolve. They represent so many different people. They bring joy. There is something really celebratory about a quilt, I think. Maybe because they also are like banners. But then I love the comfort about them. I read a book about African American quilting and the traditions of the quilt that you sleep under on your wedding night or the quilt that you wrap someone who's dying in, or even the sense that some quilts have the spirits of all those who have gone before you. I think there is a magic--a power to them. I love the stories of how quilts were signposts on the Underground Railroad and all of those different kinds of stories and how quilts have been woven into children's stories. I think that that's what shows the importance and the preciousness of it too. As a storyteller and someone who is passionate about children's ministry, quilts have been incredibly useful to me in that way.
JW: What do you think about the importance of quilts in American life, not just in your ministry, but in general?
DW: Ah-huh. I think that long before women used the terms women's power or women united or any of those sort of feminist things, that even if they didn't articulate it, I think that women knew that there was a power in the quilting. I think that the boys and men who were raised in the midst of that quilting, because I do think quilting is more specifically women's art, I think it was threatening. But also, because there's such a focus taken on quilting together. When women circle around, there is power there. I think that's been a strength for our country. It's probably one of the reasons that women have the kind of broad possibilities that we have in this country.
JW: Do you have any tips or advice for beginners?
DW: Gee, just get started. Don't be afraid. Don't worry about being perfect. Those are a lot of "don'ts." Try it. [laughs.] Find somebody who will make a quilt with you. Make something little that makes you happy. Do with it what you want to. That's why I like doing the wall hangings that I do. I add bits and pieces from my grandmother's sewing box and beads that I have bought at crafts fairs or on trips.
JW: What do you think is the biggest challenge for quiltmakers today?
DW: A challenge for quiltmakers? Gosh, I think, mmm. I didn't think about there being any challenges. [laughs.] Well no. That's--I think the thing that I've always experienced is how many people see--it can be separating. If you're a quilter, you're domestic and you are doing something that seems old-fashioned. I think that our world is so busy and so hands-on in terms of computer stuff that there are a lot of folks who don't pick up a needle. I mean, I'm excited about the generation that is starting to do some hand crafts in new ways. Like the women who are twenty years younger than I am and teenagers who are knitting and who are piecing things together in some funky ways.
JW: Great, great. Is there anything else that you'd like to add in another brief moment?
DW: [shakes her head no.]
JW: I'm just going to say thank you for coming here and doing this. I knew it would be exciting and it was. It was fun. This is part of the Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories project. Our interview concluded at 11:48 [a.m.] on October 25th, 2010. Thank you very much.
DW: Thank you.
Collection
Citation
“Diane Wendorf,” Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories, accessed May 3, 2024, https://qsos.quiltalliance.org/items/show/2152.