Pauline Fisher

Pauline Fisher

NY14722-005

Pauline Fisher

Le Rowell

2007-10-09

Karen Sternberg

Chautauqua, New York

Tomme Fent

Le Rowell (LR): This is Le Rowell, and today's date is October 9, 2007, and it is 10:30 a.m. in the morning, and I'm conducting an interview with Pauline Fisher for the Quilters' S.O.S.- Save Our Stories, a project of the Alliance for American Quilts. And we are at Brasted House Bed and Breakfast in Chautauqua, New York. And we are in one of the lovely bedrooms in this home. So, welcome, Pauline. Thank you for coming.

Pauline Fisher (PF): Thank you for inviting me.

LR: My pleasure, my pleasure. Tell me about the quilt that you brought as your touchstone piece.

PF: Well, I brought this quilt, but there really is another quilt I wish I could've brought; however, it's hanging in my church. I live about fifteen miles away from here in a small town along Lake Erie. Our church was the first church in Erie County, Pennsylvania, and we celebrated our 200th anniversary in 2001. So, I organized a group to make a commemorative quilt. That was a wonderful experience, and we have the quilt hanging in the assembly room just outside of the sanctuary today. We wanted to incorporate the history of the church and we also wanted to have the fellowship of the women in creating it. There were twelve women who worked on it, none of them quilters. [laughter.] Two of them actually went out and bought their own sewing machines to be able to work on this project.

We started out making Four Patches and Nine Patches and had presents of table runners and such things by Christmas. I had planned the quilt myself, so I gave them the assignment of all of the signature blocks [that.] are around the outside edge of the quilt. The interior of it was a copy of a stained-glass window that my sister-in-law drew, and then we blew it up to size to be the center medallion block [and I appliquéd it.]. Around the outside of that I wrote, in ink, all of the founders' names, some of them being my relatives. And then we filled in that medallion block with four pictures of four different buildings that the church has been in. [Our church.] started in a log cabin in a cemetery, and it progressed to a white clapboard building in this park in the center of town. [Next.] it had a brick building that was destroyed by fire in the 1880s, and [it was rebuilt as.] the building that we have now. So those four buildings filled out the medallion block of the stained-glass window. Around the perimeter [I inked.] all of the pastors' names and their dates when they served the church.

Surrounding that medallion, we have blocks of "the life of the church", and each of the girls that were in the group made blocks. They were basically an Ohio Star with embellishments, but each center block had an ink drawing done by my sister-in-law, Dottie Wagner, [illustrating.] the life of the church: worship, Bible study, [preaching, music.], communion, mission, and church camp. We brainstormed to get the various [topics.]. [The center is.] surrounded with these star blocks, and the outside border is the signature blocks [that.] mimic the hand-painted stencil that's in our sanctuary. So that's the design of the quilt. The colors come from our stained-glass windows in the sanctuary.

I started these novice quilters out making, first, the signature blocks, and we got stacks of those done. Then we started on the blocks that have the life of the church within. We didn't have the quilt done for the grand 200-year celebration, but it was finished shortly after, and it was used as a cover on a book that came out for the congregation. It was quite a project and probably my favorite, favorite quilt, for the entire experience.

LR: In that line, before we go to your touchstone, are you a teacher?

PF: I do teach quilting in my home to small groups and [give.] private lessons at my huge dining room table, which I had as a child. It seats seventeen people if you pull up a highchair. So, it's a very large dining table that is just wonderful for quilting, and of course [there is.] always some fabric on it. [laughter.]

LR: So, you said if you pull up a highchair, it's seventeen people?

PF: Yes. We say seventeen because sixteen comfortably and then you pull up a highchair for seventeen.

LR: Wonderful. Well, let's start now, again, with your touchstone piece, which is yours, I believe.

PF: Yes. The quilt that I brought started as a Saturday Sampler that is very popular with quilt shops now. To get people to come to their shops once a month, they give you the fabric to make a block and you get the next month free if you bring [it.] back the completed. They were calling this a Civil War Sampler, and I joined it. Twelve of the blocks were patterns from this quilt shop. Then I had surgery, and I was home for five months, non-weight-bearing on my feet. So, I just continued making blocks and finally put them together in this setting. I was inspired by a miniature quilt that was in "Miniature Quilts Magazine," by Connie Chung from Missouri. It was her quilt [setting.]. And I actually got to meet her at the American Quilt Study Group last year and told her how I was inspired by her. This quilt also went to Paducah. No prizes, but I was absolutely thrilled just to be included, to have it hung at Paducah [at the American Quilter's Society Quilt Show.]. It's in the book that is published [every year at the AQS, American Quilter's Society, Show.].

LR: So, describe some of the techniques that you used to make this.

PF: The blocks are pretty basic. In the Civil War period, they were mostly geometric blocks [using.] squares and rectangles and triangles. I chose blocks that would have been in quilts at that time. So, it's just straight piecing where you have to be careful with your points and your measurements. There is not a difficult technique in this quilt at all. The stars are formed by the sashing and they kind of make the quilt sparkle. If the fabrics didn't actually come out of the reproduction line, they were ones that I thought looked like they could be reproductions. So, the colors are muted, a lot of browns and dark greens, with the reds and the indigoes that were available at that time, and the golds. The golds and the browns at that time would have come from vegetable dyes, and there was always indigo for the shades of blue, and there was always the madder for different shades of red.

LR: So, hand work, machine work?

PF: I pieced this on a 1935 [Singer.] Featherweight. That's what I do ninety-five percent of my sewing on. I love the Featherweight. I do hand quilt, but it takes me a whole year to finish a quilt, and I did send this one to an Amish woman who lives not far away. And she and her four daughters did the quilting. I asked for a pattern that would be similar to what was [used.] during Civil War time: so, she has fans around the outside and she has shells in the center block, and then the blocks are quilted to the pattern.

LR: It's a lovely piece.

PF: Thank you. It has not been on my bed yet because I keep showing it, and as long as I have to show it, I guess I better not sleep under it. I've slept under it once, just so that I can say that I've slept under it. However, when I made it, I expected it to be on my bed, but it hasn't made it there yet. [laughter.]

LR: I was going to ask you about how you use this quilt. So, your plans are eventually to get it onto your bed?

PF: Yes. But I do a fair amount of lecturing and people ask me for contributions to their shows, so I have a couple of quilts that I have reserved for that purpose, and they don't get put on the bed. And this is one of them.

LR: What do you lecture on?

PF: I lecture on quilt history. I'm also a certified AQS [American Quilter's Society.] appraiser and I have a girlfriend who, together we do a Civil War program. She does the part about the women and the fundraisers, and I do the part on the quilt styles and the colors that were available at that time. So, we have a lot of fun doing that. I also lecture on why people need appraisals.

LR: And why?

PF: Because a quilt is not [just.] a blanket and it's not worth thirty dollars. It's worth a great deal more [than just the cost of a blanket.]. And I want people to document their quilts. I want them to put labels on them. I want them to know the value and when they give quilts away, to share that with the people that get it, so they don't treat it like a dog bed, so that they honor it and respect it [the workmanship and the maker.] too.

LR: That's very important.

PF: Yes.

LR: When did you start quilt making?

PF: I actually made my first quilt right around the Bicentennial. However, I wanted to do it for a long time before and I kept saying, 'I don't have time.' I had small children. I went back to college. I started teaching elementary school. And I kept saying, 'Okay, I don't have time to get involved in something else right now.' And then one day, I said, 'What are you waiting for? Just do it!' And I haven't slowed down since.

LR: What's your first memory of a quilt?

PF: My grandmother was a quilter, and [she.] lived in a large house [with.] a quilting room on her second floor. I was never allowed to go into it. I remember standing in the doorway, watching her stuff in there, not that she was sewing because when I would be visiting her would be not when she would be sewing. I'm one of six children and we were never allowed to go in that room. When she died, in the cupboard, we found quilts made for each of us, and my quilt was one of the lovely ladies with umbrellas in all the pastel colors, and hand quilted by her church group. So, I had that on my bed for a while until I decided to save it, and I had it on my daughter's bed for a while until I decided to save it. I don't have the entire quilt because somehow, it's in pieces, and I'm not sure exactly how that happened because I wasn't a quilter at that time. But I saved thinking that I would frame pieces. Now I just take those pieces and show people that, 'This is what I slept under when I was a child.' I have pictures of the quilt on my daughter's bed, and I know I slept under it. It was a beautiful quilt and the blocks [I treasure.] are beautiful that I [still.] have.

LR: So, do you have quiltmakers other than your grandmother?

PF: My grandmother, and my mother was a Home-Ec teacher, although she never was a quiltmaker. There were all these fabrics, several sewing machines around the house, and I have three other sisters who all sewed. We all had fabrics to play with. I made doll clothes. I made whatnots around the house, pots--things for pots to sit on, potholders. We made our clothes from an early time. We were always sewing but not quilt making. I never thought that sounded like a good idea in high school until I made a curtain that was pieces. So, I had pieced a patchwork curtain, but it was just a curtain that covered a closet, and I have no idea what happened to that, either. But I just kept saying, 'I don't have time to get into quilt making.' There are so many skills involved, it kind of intimidated me. But as I tell people, 'Just take one step at a time.' There are a lot of steps in quilt making but you're doing one thing at a time, that makes it so interesting. But there's always something new to learn. There's always a better way.

LR: So, are you continuing to take classes?

PF: Yes, yes. And I always learn something new from a class, the person. I love just being with the people. So I do continue to take classes.

LR: How many hours a week do you spend quilting?

PF: Well, we have a challenge going on in our guild and it's called "Sally's Challenge." "Sally's Challenge" is to sew every day, and you can make your own rules. It could be five minutes; it could be fifteen minutes. You could count cutting; I count cutting as part of sewing. Some people don't. You make your own rules. My rules are at least five minutes, and it includes cutting but it does not include reading, because I could sit with quilt magazines or quilt books and read and not get the stitching done. But I do sew every day and I probably sew twenty, twenty-five hours a week, because when people come into my house, it's very common to have a three or four-hour class a couple of times a week. My favorite time to sew is after nine o'clock because that's when the phone stops ringing.

LR: Nine o'clock at night?

PF: Yes, nine o'clock at night, because the interruptions are less then.

LR: So how does your quilt making, then, impact your family?

PF: One of my sisters has said, 'Well, Pauline, I have to join the quilt guild because it's the only way I'm going to get to see you.' So, one of my sisters has become a quilter also. I do spend a lot of time on it, but I have a large family, but we get together often. And my husband travels with me. We took a coast-to-coast trip, stopped at every quilt shop that was on the itinerary and there were 54 quilt shops in all. We were gone nine weeks cross-country. So, Paul has become knowledgeable, not a quilter but he's become knowledgeable. [laughter.] His rule is only one quilt shop a day when we're on the road.

LR: And are you a collector of fabrics?

PF: Yes, I do have quite a few fabrics. Doesn't every quiltmaker?

LR: Have you given quilts as gifts?

PF: Absolutely, at every turn. I have very few of my quilts left. I give quilts constantly. There are baby quilts; it's a given. And I try to get ahead. It's very hard to keep a supply ahead because my children and my children's friends, it seems like they're all having babies now, and plus teachers that I've worked with. So, a lot of baby quilts. I give them for weddings and high school graduations, and most of my quilts I have given away. I have never sold a quilt, never expect to sell one. I have a large family and they keep me going.

LR: Have you ever used your quilt making to get you through a difficult time?

PF: Absolutely. And there is always peace when I'm sitting sewing by myself, and that means at the machine and it's also the hand quilting. Usually, anytime that I'm traveling, either my Featherweight is with me or else I have a large hand quilting piece that I'm working on. When I made this quilt, it was after a surgery, so I was pretty much home bound for five months. And I actually enjoyed it. I thought it would be terrible, but I truly did enjoy the commitments that fell away. I had the perfect excuse just to stay home and read and sew and sleep and be with my husband. That was very wonderful. But then it was over, and when I could go again, I was happy to be back in circulation again. I also lost a son once, a week after his college graduation, and so that--of course, the quilt making is something that pulls you very much within yourself and lets you finally blossom again.

LR: What do you find most pleasing with your quilt making?

PF: The people, I guess. I've never [met.] a quiltmaker that I don't like. They're wonderful, wonderful, sharing people. There seems to be no end to the ideas. When you think you've seen it all, there's something new. I love the stories from people, this project with the stories, and the magazines and the books, quilt-related, how it affects every woman's life and how quilt making is such a part of history, the history of women and the history of our country. I was not a historian until I came to history through quilt making. If you would have asked me my favorite subjects in school, history would not have been one of them, but now it is.

LR: Talk a little bit more about that, about the meaning of quilts in women's history in America.

PF: Well, I think since time began, dishes and food disappear very fast, and children grow up and lead their own lives, but the needlework that women have done has been something that has continued, and it's been an outlet for them to show beauty when there might not have been a lot of beauty in their life in other places. I'm not just talking about the frontier of America, but worldwide, in tents and hovels and cottages wherever, the women's needlework is precious to them, and they've shared that with their children and those are the things that their children have taken with them. That's what the immigrants carried from their country to their new homes, just a table scarf or a pillowcase that was fancy. So, I think needlework has always been extremely important to women. I don't think it's been important to men, darn it. And we've seen them used for dust rags and covers, just to protect them while they were being bumped around or something, and that hurts because I don't think women's needlework has received the appreciation. And I think we are changing that a little. I think we are really realizing the art of it, and also the emotional side, how it pulls you through hard times and how it is a gift that says, 'I love you,' like no other gift can.

LR: Let's step back. You mentioned what was pleasing about the quilt making and you said, 'People.' But of the actual work of -- you talked about your designing, you talked about piecing, you talked -- what is most pleasing in that process?

PF: In the process, oh. There are so many things. The color, of course, the color of the fabric. I love the design process and I do make a fair amount of things that I catch from books and magazines, that I basically follow the directions most of the time. Change the size or change something a little bit, and I call that mindless sewing because there are sometimes, I just want to feed things through the sewing machine. But I also do design quilts and put my own sashings and my own blocks together. I love medallion quilts. I'm working on one now that a friend gave me a palampore, a printed piece from Holland that is reminiscent of the John Huston prints with the Tree of Life and the birds and the flowers, and I am working on that now, building it out from the center. I love medallion quilts. That's probably my favorite style. I'm very much a traditional quilter. But in teaching, I start with the basics. Probably the most fun for me is the color. I love color and seeing it come to life. It's like that five-year-old making the doll clothes from teeny scraps of fabric and she'd love to see it come to life as a dress that a doll could wear.

LR: Are there aspects that you do not enjoy?

PF: I seem to have a hard time finishing things. I get the quilt top done and then to get it layered to get to the quilting or to actually send it to a machine quilter--and I send a lot of things to machine quilters now. Any gifts I give, they're machine quilted. The hand-quilted ones are the ones that have been close family members, or I would have them myself. I just finished doing borders on three tops. I always seem to get to that point and then I hang them over a ladder in the dining room and then they just sit there, and I enjoy them as I go on to the next project. Probably the most fun is starting a new project because the ideas are endless.

LR: Have you been involved at all in longarm quilting?

PF: I have tried to stay away from that. I looked at that because I don't want to learn [a new set of skills.] it's a whole other area. I think I want to concentrate on making quilts and teaching people. I found it fascinating. I always like to try the [longarm.] machines at the [quilt.] shows, the machines that they have available at the show. And I have wonderful friends that have longarms that I've played with their machine, but I don't think I want to do that. I don't think I want to go through the classes and become really good at it. I'll let them do that.

LR: You have enough on your hands.

PF: Right, right.

LR: What do you think makes a great quilt?

PF: I think the first impact comes from color, and then it comes from the design of the quilt. And a really great quilt has a message. You notice something, it's hard to put your finger on it but you know it when you see it. When you see it, you say, 'This is very, very special.' And it's a lot of fun to figure out some of the meaning of the quilt as you learn more about the quilt. For example, we have an art teacher [Michael.], retired, in Edinburgh, Pennsylvania, who did have the Best of Show in Paducah two years ago for a handmade quilt and it was a kaleidoscope. And each of his blocks, you had to really work hard to figure out what they were but because he was a teacher, some of them were related to teaching. Some were related to places that he had traveled in his life. But it was that motif repeated through the kaleidoscope. So, it took a little bit of studying for that quilt to have its meaning speak out. But I love quilts that have a message, as I love the church quilt that we made. That is a piece with the history of the church.

LR: So, what makes a great quiltmaker?

PF: Well, their family had better be patient! [laughter.] Because you certainly need time to be different and you need time to devote to the reading and the traveling and the meeting and the sewing. It is a very time-consuming thing, but it is not a cheap hobby. You know, so many quiltmakers start saying, 'Oh, I've got lots of scraps,' and that doesn't last long. They want the new fabric just like everybody wants the new fabric.

LR: What trends do you see in quilt making during the time that you've been quilt making?

PF: The fabrics continually changing, the batiks that we have now and the prints that are so themed. We have these conversation prints. Years ago, they were little bitty things, half an inch or so, and our conversation prints now are huge panels of the holidays and different lifestyles. So, the variety of fabrics that we have now. The trends, I see more and more machine quilting, of course, and much finer machine quilting. The detail, the tiny stitch, the heaviness, the amount of the machine quilting, we're putting so much more of it on the quilts now. As an appraiser, it helps us date them more because we see these trends. It's the trends changing throughout the last 200 years that allows us to date the quilts, and it's continuing now, and it will. They keep coming up with new ideas.

LR: What about the advances in technology?

PF: I have a hard time speaking to that because I sew with this 1935 machine. I do have a fifteen-year-old Viking that my husband bought as a Christmas present and it's a computerized machine, but I don't use it very much. And he said I wouldn't be having it if he'd known how little I would use it because he was feeling sorry for me using the Featherweight, and I still love the Featherweight because I can do everything to take care of it. And mostly for what I do with traditional quilt making just takes a straight stitch. But, of course, the technology with the photo transfers, with all the embroidery incorporated, these machines are incredible, and I really don't know about it other than what I read because, again, at least at this point, I don't think I want to get into it. It's a whole other world.

LR: Yes.

PF: Maybe in a former life I might have been an 1800 woman who never wanted to go any farther, which has nothing to do with Chautauqua Institution today.

LR: Talk more about the importance of quilts in American life.

PF: As an elementary teacher, when we ask children to bring in what's special to them, a lot of quilts come in, and they're quilts made by grandmas and aunts and sometimes mothers, but often mother's the one who's too busy to do it right now, so it's an older member of their family that has done that special quilt. And as an elementary teacher, I was tickled to get these quilts from home, and I would constantly bring in quilts, also, to show them. We always had math days in Geometry with the quilts on the floor and the rulers, and I would say, 'Now, these blocks are supposed to be three square inches. I might have made a mistake.' And give them the measurements and they'd measure like crazy to find mistakes that Mrs. Fisher might have made. And I have wonderful photographs of children crawling all over quilts on the floor because they're using it in math class. A lot of teachers are quilters, so quilts are incorporated into the curriculum as much as they can. But in the children's lives, their quilts that have been given to them are precious to them. They become the snuggly blankets that have to travel with them whenever they need comfort.

For the commemorative quilts that have been made over the ages for gifts for people and wedding gifts and quilters always are making wedding gifts for people. I'm actually getting them done before the weddings now. A few years ago, sometimes they didn't get them until after the wedding. And, of course, the church commemorative quilt that many of them are being made. And in my appraisal, I get many quilts that were made for a special time in someone's life, and now a generation or two has gone by and they're seeking to have more information about that quilt and coming to ask information.

So, the quilts--the original question before I got off the track was how quilts are important in life?

LR: Yes.

PF: They are, and they're looked at as an important item in the family. They tuck them away to keep them safe. They don't wear them -- or they don't use them up and wear them out.

LR: How do we preserve quilts for history?

PF: For history, well, I keep telling people to keep them out of the sunshine and to keep them away from extremes of temperature, to not wash them often. This is not like a blanket that has to go through the washer and dryer every couple of months or something. When a quilt is on the bed, if your body is not touching it, you don't need to wash it that frequently.

Myself, I used to have all the blinds open in my bedroom and now, when I leave the bedroom in the morning, I close the blinds, and that's because I want to sleep under a quilt, but I also want to take care of it. So, we are teaching more about care of quilts. That is one of the questions I get asked here very often, 'How do we care for them?' And they can be washed but it needs to be a very gentle operation and it needs to be--I kind of think of it as a little ceremony. It's not doing the laundry; it's doing it gently. I do use the washing machine sometimes but never agitate it, just to fill and to soak with a quilt soak product and to spin it out and to dry it flat. And I think it's important for us to continue to teach quilt care.

LR: What do you plan to do with the quilts? You said you give most of them away, but do you have ones that you will pass to family members or--

PF: The ones that we are using I think will be used up. And I make sure that every family member, if they don't have one now, eventually they're going to have one. So, I don't expect to have a big stack of quilts. When my end comes, I hope that I've shared them because I think that's more important. None of the quilts that I make are museum pieces. They were not intended for that; they were intended as comforting caresses and hugs. And I tell people to use them.

LR: Well, you've certainly encouraged quilt making in young people and are there other ways, besides school that you mentioned, to encourage quilt making in young people?

PF: Let's see. In my classroom, most years, we have done a classroom quilt and then had it as an auction item, with the money going to our Special Education children. And they've always been quilts that the children make, that the children have done the blocks and then I've put them together with sashing and completed the quilt, but the children have done the blocks. And I always read literature about quilts, and I love -- as a retired teacher, I'd love going back to school with my favorite books. And "The Keeping Quilt" [by Patricia Polacco.] is one of my favorites, a book that has to do with the importance of it long term, of the fabric and the quilt and the memories, but "The Keeping Quilt" is a book that incorporates all of that, family and tradition. So that's one of my favorite books.

Another one is the story--I'm trying to think of the title. It's the men and the women in competition for the county fair. The men seemed to think, 'What's this big deal of quilt making?' They could also do a quilt for the county fair. And the men work in private, and the women are working in their homes. And when the take it to the fair, the wagons collide, the quilts get muddy, and they end up putting their [clean parts.] together to have a quilt that's clean, the men and women come together in the end. And it does have wonderful pictures and wonderful watercolor drawings in it, and it's a very good story. Something about the Johnsons--it escapes my memory. I've been retired a year-and-a-half. Imagine all the things that I've forgotten. [laughter.]

LR: You'll have an opportunity to put the title in your interview. That's not a problem. [Pauline found the book, "Sam Johnson and the Blue-ribbon Quilt" by Lisa Campbell Ernst.]

PF: Good.

LR: Do you have a collection of quilt making memorabilia?

PF: It isn't so much sewing as it is historical. And I look for the timespan, a little bit of whitework, a little bit of the medallion quilts I told you that I am working on, that palampore, that could have been really an 1800 piece that they would have used what fabric they had very sparingly. But I've collected our fabrics over the timespan. I have bought garage sale quilts just for the fabrics that were in them because I'm looking for the authentic compared to the reproduction. And I have replicated one thirties' quilt that was loved to death, with thirties' reproductions. Two of the fabrics in the original quilt, I have a reproduction of that same pattern in the reproduction that I've made. So, what I've collected has to do with history, the history of fabric and the history of quilt making. It isn't so much sewing supplies that I wish I could afford, like quilts, but that hasn't come yet. When my ship comes in, then I can collect quilts. [laughter.]

LR: What is the future of quilt making in America?

PF: Oh, that's a wonderful question. One of my classes--Bobbie Aug said that quilt making has always seen high periods and low periods and high periods and low periods, and we always get asked, 'What's happening in this period? We've been going strong for twenty-five, thirty years already. Will this last?' And Bobbie Aug's answer is that as long as we're searching for that comfort, that stability, that belief in a simpler time, quilt making is very, very appealing to our emotional side. Those are my words, but it's Bobbie's thought and we need that so much in our lives. That's one of the reasons, I think, that quilt making is so strong, is because as we sit working on our quilts at home, we're connected with women from generations ahead who have done the same thing, and we are praying and hoping and expecting that it will continue, that there will be a future. And sometimes our life is--well, since nine eleven [September 11, 2005.], everything's changed. 'Will there be a tomorrow?' is in the back of our minds. So, quilt making's going to be around for a while. We need what it gives to us.

LR: Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to share?

PF: I did bring the book from the Northwestern Pennsylvania quilt documentation. Most places have done quilt documentation, but they're still popping up. I think that documentation is very important. It was important to me personally because it got me started on history. When I volunteered and took the training that they offered so that I could document quilts, that opened up this whole world to me that now has become my life. We continue getting documentation, and this project, the Save Our Stories and the Boxes Under the Bed, all of these are so important.

LR: So, you're familiar with the Boxes?

PF: We're trying to start a quilt study group in this area, Northwestern Pennsylvania. At the show two weeks ago at Chautauqua, we did put up flyers about Boxes Under the Bed. We would be a willing place for people to [leave their quilting ephemera.] instead of dumping them in the garbage. Here were people who would find them interesting and would preserve them if [they.] didn't want them, or if you wanted them to let us look at it, document it, and give it back. So, we put that flyer out two weeks ago and imagine being called for stories [an interview for the Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories project.].

LR: Well, furthermore, the Alliance has a project, Boxes Under the Bed, and I will put you in touch with the person who can help you with that because that is another one of our major projects in this historical preservation.

PF: Okay. Yes.

LR: So that's very exciting. So, our time is up.

PF: Okay.

LR: So, Pauline, thank you so much for coming for this interview. It's been a great pleasure and Q.S.O.S. will be richer for it.

PF: Thank you.

LR: And it is 11:15 [a.m.]. So, thank you.

PF: Okay. Oh, my goodness, I could go on and on, right. [My pleasure! You can see that it is very easy for me to talk about quilting!.]