Chris Eichner

NC28723-007

Chris Eichner

Amy Milne

June 9, 2012

Empty Spools Seminars

Cullowhee, North Carolina

Hannah Sailar

Amy Milne (AM): This is Amy Milne and I am interviewing Chris Eichner for the Quilters S.O.S. Save Our Stories Project. Which is the project to The Alliance for American Quilts and it’s June 9th and it’s 2:47 p.m. and we’re here at the North Carolina Quilt Symposium at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Thank you for doing this interview Chris.

Chris Eichner (CE): You’re very welcome.

AM: I would like to start by asking you to tell us, you brought two quilts but I’d like for you to tell us about the one you’ve chosen as your touchstone object.

CE: It’s called “Aspen Woodlands” I created it in my mind and I wanted to do birch trees along a waterfall but their birch trees only grow along a riverbank. So I Googled aspen trees and found out that they do grow along the waterfalls so I was able to put together in my mind that concept and I like things in the distance as well as in the foreground so I was able to formulate that in my mind when I found the sky fabric I couldn’t decide whether it was a sunrise or sunset and of course it went all over the fabric so I had to cover it up cause obviously we don’t have four moons or four sunsets. [laughs.] That’s how it happens, I get a picture in my mind, I get the fabrics and put them down. I don’t sketch anything I just pick the fabrics and I start at the top and work my way down. For instance, here’s your sky at the top and then I picked the black and white fabric for the aspens and I put some on the left and some on the right and then a green fabric of various color value and found a rock fabrics and I kind of layered them all together on a piece of cloth like [inaudible.] and then I just find out where I want to put these pieces of fabric to complete the landscape.

AM: Are they appliqued down or pieced together that foundations layer?

CE: No the muslin is stabilized, then the fabrics are fussy cut and that just means they’re like free cut without a pattern and as I put them down it would be like applique but they’re not appliqued down. They are thread painted down, so I don’t necessarily include all the raw edges. I it causes less fraying and they are easier to handle. So I’ll put all my fabrics down building from the top to the foreground and I’ll also use fuse and stitch, no excuse me, steam the seam light and that will enable me to fuse the pieces down but I don’t do that immediately because otherwise it can cause puckering. So I kind of work that process from the top down.

AM: Did you make this piece for a competition or—

CE: Yeah.

AM: What competition was it for?

CE: I made it for symposium.

AM: Oh, okay. So what year? Not for this year?

CE: A couple months ago.

AM: Oh, okay.

CE: After I made this and I liked it so well I’ve wanted to enter AQS again of course and AQS Grand Rapids I think only takes 40 wide by 40 wide and larger so I had to recreate that again in that size which was enormous compared to this size. The artistic feel of trying to recreate something after I’ve done it is very difficult. I like the water flow in this much better than in the piece I entered in the show, which won first place.

AM: Congratulations.

CE: Thank you, and then I have a smaller version of this for my class to teach.

AM: The class you’re teaching here?

CE: Yes, I taught that on Friday and what I have learned over the years after teaching for four years, I have learned to have prepared kits for the students rather than letting them go do all the shopping. They don’t get the right stabilizers, the fabrics haven’t been starched so they are harder to cut. I have made a pattern, I learned how to take my pattern put it on the printer and run [inaudible.] light through the printer on cardstock paper so now everybody gets a printed piece and all they have to do is correspond that patter that I’ve made with the color to the fabric. It makes it much simpler. [laughs.]

AM: Brilliant. It makes it easier. So when you create you said you don’t sketch, you really go at it through improvisation based on an image you have in your head beforehand?

CE: Yeah, or sometimes I get the words and then the thread painting comes. Like when I did “Autumn Along the Trail of Quilts”, I had the title and then came the thread painting. Claudia Hanson shows that at the AQS to put in her calendar for 2012. That was exciting.

AM: Yeah, I bet. What will happen to this quilt now? Will it go on your wall? Will you enter it in a competition that does accept smaller pieces?

CE: I’ll probably use this as a piece that I’ll use for further teaching on this particular project. But the one that’s larger, I have entered it into AQS Grand Rapids and I won’t find that out until June 22nd. But I just heard, I shouldn’t say but, 2000 quilts will be entered for Grand Rapids and only 200 will be accepted.

AM: Wow.

CE: So if I get chosen I will be shouting, ‘I won, I won.’ [laughs.]

AM: And rightfully so.

CE: I’ve been accepted three times now. The first time I chose something I was accepted and the second and the third so I’m really excited and I’m waiting to hear from Des Moines, Iowa as well because the piece that I chose for that show does accept 24 by 24 and smaller and that’s the piece I’m teaching at John C. Campbell Folk School.

AM: Great.

CE: I find out pretty soon.

AM: Now do you make any other types of quilts, do you make any utilitarian like for cover quilts?

CE: Yes.

AM: What are they like?

CE: Simple. [laughs.] I started out by taking, I’ve only taken only three classes my whole life [laughs.] and the first class that I took was with Judy Laure and it was like stair stepping kind of. I call it stair steps. I forgot they are kind of long rectangular pieces and I said, ‘okay I’ll make placemats.’ So I got to the classroom, I put these pieces together and thought, ‘I am not eating on these after making this.’ So I increased it to probably 68 by 40 something [laughs.] and when I took the class, I got home and I thought I don’t like the way these look. They aren’t perfect, the points aren’t all meetings so I took nine blocks apart. Little did I know that I was cutting off stretching and unable to make a 12 inch block or a 10 inch block again. 8 inch block, it ended up 7 and 3/8th each one. I put them together and it came out great so that was my first quilting experience. Then I was going to make a probably twin or queen size but it ended up a king size quilt and I had that quilted and the first one I had quilted. Then my daughter came to the show two years ago that Franklin put on, our guild, and she doesn’t even sew a button and she went around two times and I was kind of astounded and I said, ‘do you really like quilts?’ and she said, ‘Oh, I like them.’ I said, ‘would you like me to make you one?’ And so she said yes and she showed me the fabrics that she would like and of course they are all kind of autumn looking winter batiks and so I made her quilt and I had it quilted. It was probably a little bigger than a twin. Then for this show I had hip surgery in October and I didn’t know what to do with myself so I learned how to hand applique the week before I had my surgery. So I took a class with Audrey Hires called Crazy Daisies and the class I did not understand that it was machine applique, and I do not like machine applique so I put those four blocks aside when I got home and I made nine new blocks while I was recovering. You don’t have to put this down, [laughs.] while I was recovering in the hospital hand sewing an applique I sewed my husband’s sleeve. [laughs.]

AM: Sewed it into the applique? Chris. [laughs.]

CE: But anyway that was just a funny thing and so I did put the blocks together with tilted squares which is something I learned from Audrey Hires and I put the quilt together and I thought well perhaps I’ll send it out to be quilted, I don’t know if I can do this. So I learned how to meander little tiny meandering stitches and quilted the whole thing stitched in the ditch and it’s in the show and it’s called “My Happy Quilt” because it makes me happy when I look at it. It’s totally outside my realm of art thinking. It’s feed sack cloth, there is fabric. It does not go in my house at all. It makes me happy. I can put it on my lap and make me warm. [laughs.]

AM: Well, a quilt like this, one of your finer quilts, what do you think someone looking at that in a show who doesn’t know you would come away thinking about? What would their impression be after seeing one of your quilts?

CE: Well, if I saw that for the first time, never having done this, I would think, ‘wow, I never thought you could put a landscape into fabric and thread.’ That would be what I would think, so perhaps that’s what they would think. The first one that I ever did sat in a box for 20 years and of course I knew nothing about quilting so I had it framed at a frame shop and then I learned about quilting. I did a scene that I took a photograph from my porch and I loved it and I again put it in a frame and I brought it over to Stitch in Time and I said, ‘I want to teach this.’ She said okay and that’s when I started teaching.

AM: So were there quilters in your family?

CE: No.

AM: So what inspired you to do that first one that you said you framed? Was it a quilted piece or just a stitched piece or—

CE: It was a thread painting. I had been a nurse and then I ran a dental lab for braces and then I said, ‘I’m tired of all this.’ So I worked for nothing practically in a fabric store and I fell in love with the sewing machines and never quilting. Did not like the look of a quilt and started my own line of clothing for a wearable art store in silks and started and alterations business and was just inundated with work and then I just kind of moved to Franklin and this is what happened when we got here four years ago, five years ago.

AM: Wow.

CE: And the reason that I entered that first quilt, I mean that first thread painting, which was framed, was because again I had hip surgery in 2002 and I had nothing to do and I couldn’t stand that and so I started painting by myself. I taught myself how to paint and when I was ready to start sewing again I asked a decorator to come to the house and see my work and she saw my painting and she bought them all.

AM: Wow.

CE: So I did two cardinals, a male and a female, to enter into a contest for senior citizens and I happen to bring my one piece that was unfinished in the box for 20 years when I worked at the fabric store and she said, ‘oh, you have to finish that, it’s going to win a gold medal.’ So I went home and finished it and won a gold medal. [laughs.] And the cardinal female won a bronze medal. Art is really big in my family.

AM: So tell us about that, were your parents teachers? What kind of work did they do?

CE: My mom went to Pratt Institute but she quit after a while but she’s quite an artist. My grandfather was from Germany and was an artist in calligraphy and cakes. So I grew up in New York City and the bakery was underneath our apartment and it was magnificent. Uncles and cousins and everybody just seemed to have the art gene.

AM: Wow. So what about in your family life? Do you have children?

CE: Yes, I do.

AM: Do they make art and—

CE: No.

AM: But your daughter liked the quilt, you said she doesn’t stitch but—

CE: I know you asked me a question but I thought about something. My daughter likes to paint and draw, she’s very good at it. Go ahead.

AM: I just think it’s really interesting that you’ve got that fine art background and it sort of came into quilts. Quilts themselves weren’t that appealing to you originally.

CE: I wouldn’t have ever made a quilt. Of course I learned after those two friend pieces had a quilt because when I went to Max’s shop Stitch in Time, I saw what quilting was and so I made a piece called “Jerusalem” and it was copy for Natalie Sull and it was a beautiful old Jerusalem tree that was ancient and in front of it was all these poppies and so I put the backing and the top together and quilted it and so she hung it up in the shop and she said, ‘don’t worry about it Kris.’ And I went back in there and I said, ‘it is starting to womp.’ So I said give me that and I took home and I took it all apart. I put the batting in it. I learned how to quilt it. I entered it into the first Franklin show, joined the guild and I won first place. I said, ‘wow, this is amazing.’ I gave her the credit that it was a copy and that I interpreted her piece but it was exact and I even couldn’t find the background fabric that was exactly like she had depicted. So I went and bought red dye, put it in a great big pot, and stuck the cloth in there until I got the background fabric the way she had it. [laughs.]

AM: Well, what does your studio look like? Describe your studio or your work space.

CE: Well I have two closets in there and I have very little fabric because I don’t need a lot of fabric for what I do. So I really only basically have two selves with batic fabrics on them and they are only about four foot wide maybe 16 inches deep so that’s not really a lot of fabric. But I do have a large collection of stabilizers and a great collection of threads. I love Sulky products and they asked me if I would be in their book. So I was published last year and the year before by Sulky with two projects. I had to make each project 13 times for the national educators in the U.S. to use at the quilt expeditions that they do and also for the merchants market I think it was and “Dogwood” is in there, “Beautiful Dogwood”. That was the first book that Sulky published me in and that won third place in the show here.

AM: So they use them for like for trunk shows in a sense?

CE: Yes. Last year I entered the Hoffman Challenge and they chose my piece and so it’s been going around for a year.

AM: How exciting.

CE: Yeah.

AM: So I know that you teach and that you’re picking up a lot of teaching jobs and—

CE: Yes, I am. I love it.

AM: How does your showing relate to getting your teaching jobs and how do the two affect each other?

CE: Well, I had to recently, last year, develop a website because I was teaching at a guild and this particular person raved to her sister who lived in New York on Long Island and she called me and asked me to teach on a cruise and so I’m teaching on a cruise this year and there was no way I could have people, nobody knows me, and so she said, ‘you need to get a website.’ So I had someone get a website for me and that has helped a lot. So that exposed me in a different media in a different way. So to answer your question, I know a lot of people just like what I do and so like with my teaching yesterday, I can’t tell you how many people have asked me if I would come to their guild and teach. For three years I’ve been trying to get into [inaudible.] Guild and have me teach up there. Finally someone asked me yesterday and I was like, ‘I’ve been trying, I’ve been trying.’ So she’s interested. I’ve had the most wonderful comments and feedback with this class that I’ve ever had.

AM: That has to be really gratifying.

CE: Yeah, it is, it is. I love sharing my experience with other people and my philosophy with that is, I have [inaudible.] the normal quilter the traditional quilter and their comment is, ‘I wish I could do that, I’ve always wanted try. I know I can’t.’ My comment is, ‘yes you can if you know how to quilt free motion broider, you can do this I promise.’ One lady, I saw her in the parking lot outside Ashville Cotton, she said, ‘I really want to do that.’ And she was in her 70s, and I said, ‘well take the class and if you don’t like it, I’ll give you your money back.’ So after the class was finished we had a little session of people voting, and she won. Since then, she has taken every class almost I’ve ever taught and she has won many times.

AM: Wow.

CE: So I like sharing this experience with other people. It just makes me feel so happy, it makes me cry. I need a Kleenex. [laughs.] I like people to be able, and I often say there is an artist within you and when they don’t know which fabrics to pick, which is a recent thing I’ve done because of simplicity and being able to accomplish more in a class, but what I like to be able to help them to do is to discover their own artistic abilities and interpretation. When I wasn’t doing the kits and having patterns, I felt that there was more expression for them to find the way they wanted to cut it out. But my focus for them to learn how to thread paint was deleted and this is allowing them to learn how to thread paint, which is really my goal for them, more than expressing their own cutting.

AM: Well, who inspires you? Whether in the quilt world or outside the quilt world? What artists or types of artwork can inspire you?

CE: Well, when I was in Florida working at this quilt shop, I saw the booth by Sulky and I saw this beautiful water in the winter, fall, and that’s the one I started with. So when I was now 20 years later in Franklin, I was at Maxine’s, I had that paste with me, and low and behold in the store are Joyce Draxler and Patty Lee. Joyce Draxler says to me, and I’m asking them, ‘what should I do with this piece?’ Maxine, the owner of the store. Joyce says, ‘I know that work’ and I said, ‘you know this work?’ [laughs.] And she said, ‘well that was in my book.’ And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re Joyce Draxler?’ And she says, ‘yeah, we live here.’ So Joyce Draxler, Patty Lee, and Nancy Saben, and Carol Engram all live in the cul-de-sac, in Franklin, 20 minutes from my house. [laughs.] So we often get together.

AM: How cool.

CE: And they have been very inspirational to me. Patty Lee is the liaison between the consumer and Sulky and she has given me the most wonderful, helpful, get over yourself information and encouragement and how to deal with disgruntle students and disappointed people and pushy people and how to learn about copyright and copy wrong and those people have just really helped me a whole lot.

AM: What aspect of quiltmaking, as you do it, do you like most?

CE: Of thread painting itself, the technique, I like making applique, which is a free form tree or whatever. But my favorite thing to do with trees of the aspect of building a landscape, I think it’s picking out the fabrics and putting onto the Muslim foundation what I see in my mind.

AM: What part of it do you like the least?

CE: [8 second pause.] When the machines break down. [laughs.] There isn’t any part I like the least, a day without thread painting is a day without sunshine.

AM: That’s a great quote. So obviously technology has really influenced your work, the availability of technology.

CE: Yeah, I think I’m a perfectionist. So I like perfecting the stitch, trying to make it become three dimensional. I have learned so much about the value of color, shadows, foreground, background, middle ground, what does all that mean. There isn’t anything I don’t like about it, expect when I have to make it thirteen times.

AM: What is your schedule like? What’s your daily schedule like when you’re in the studio?

CE: Well, in the studio?

AM: Yeah, what’s a typical day like when—

CE: Well first I take care of my health. I go to the fitness center. And then I start either preparing for workshops and guild presentations, which takes a great deal of my time, or I am creating a new project for a quilt shop like Ashville Cotton, Stitch n Time, a lot of different shops. I make a project for each of the shops.

AM: Wow, how often?
CE: More than several times a year. I don’t know.

AM: And that’s a project that becomes a kit and they sell the fabrics with it you mean?

CE: Well, if I’m working at a quilt shop I obviously can’t make a kit together because I want my time very astute about helping the quilt shop person sell their own product. So that’s up to them. When I work with a guild or doing something like this, then I can build a kit and make it available that way. But I really try to take an inventory at their quilt shop and use their products. I always ask, ‘do you want me to use your stabilizers instead of Sulky because I don’t work for Sulky. If you want me to promote your line I’ll be glad to do that.’ Because they are in business and they are doing me a favor, so I want to be able to help them sell their product.

AM: What do you think makes a great quilt? Not just within your own work but when you go to a quilt show or an exhibit. What do you think the ingredients are of a good quilt?

CE: Color is what pops out at me first, and then when I get close I look at the workmanship. I study about points matching and it really is important to me even though I’m not a pieced quiltmaker that’s really very experienced, I look at that right away. I’ve been educating my husband when he comes to the quilt shows about it. Now he’ll come over to me and say, ‘look, I looked at blah blah blah quilt and you know what, those points don’t match.’ [laughs.] So I like the color aspect pops out at me and what they’ve done with the shapes to create movement. I love quilts that have movement. So I like bargello and I’d like to learn how to do it one day.

AM: So what do you think makes a great quiltmaker?

CE: Well, I don’t have a lot of experience in that field but what comes to mind is someone that takes a class and then they don’t make the exact same quilt but they interpret with their own color values and style of quilting and I think that makes the person so individual. I could never copy anyone’s work anymore, ever. I just could never do that.

AM: Why?

CE: It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for me to copy someone else’s thread painting or wall hanging. I can barely do my own a second time, because I don’t feel the information of artistic expression. It doesn’t happen for me.

AM: Let me ask you some questions now about quiltmaking in general about our culture. What do you think, just for you personally, why is quiltmaking important, making the work that you do? Why is it important in your life?

CE: You mean for like people to become aware and know about the women who have experienced this or just more me?

AM: Just for you at this point. For this question, what does it mean in your life?

CE: It is very important. It has really helped to develop my self-esteem. It has taught me to be very patient with people. To not box people in to what I think thread painting should look like. For instance, the first class I had ever taught was tremendously challenged. I thought everybody was going to do it exactly the way I had done it. Their interpretation was cactus, big and bulky and awkward looking funny trees that had nothing to do with my vision. I learned in that class very quickly how to let go of that and let a person express their own selves. I even went to the bathroom and cried. I’ve learned how to do that and I like being kind to people. I like someone who really feels challenged and just feels so frustrated, it happened yesterday and it was just overwhelming to go to this older woman and try to help her. I’m sorry. [crying.]

AM: No that’s okay.

CE: It just really touched me. She’s just so incapacitated and she’s in the room next to me and we ran into her this morning or this afternoon and she stopped me in the hall and she hugged me and said, ‘thank you so much for helping me, even though I couldn’t do it.’ It made me feel so good and it makes me happy to make someone else feel good, must be the nurse in me. [laughs.]

AM: Yeah, I was going to ask you if you ever had the sense that there is some connection between in work and what you do as a teacher.

CE: Yes there is very much. I always feel humbled, I never think I’ve arrived and each time I’ve won over or I get wonderful comments. And I’m like, ‘is that really me that they are talking about?’ My husband is a wonderful supporter and a great promoter, he’s always helping me do whatever I need to do to get to where I’m preparing or becoming a participant or a teacher and he does laundry, he does everything so it’s really brought us closer together as well, he’s very sharing in this talent and he called me Picasso. [laughs.]

AM: So sweet. That kind of brings us to a good point. I’ve just got one or two more questions and then I’ll ask you, is there anything you want to say that we haven’t covered. But, quiltmaking has been predominantly a pursuit of women in history, now is certainly not the case. We’ve heard from other people this weekend that there were quiltmakers in their family a long time ago. What does it mean to you to be a part of something that involves so many women and has this great history? Why do you think that aspect is important to you and to our culture?

CE: Well Joy McGill opened up a new world of camaraderie. The caring that goes on within the guild for each other when people are facing difficulties and the comfort quilts, that’s very touching. Reaching out to the community, all the children that are born at Angel Medical Center get a baby quilt. All the children that are within the program where they are having to be taken out of the house in a hurry because of domestic violence and so forth or drugs all get a quilt and our guild supplies them. I think that’s so important, it’s touching so many lives. Quilts of Valor, recognizing the veterans, being able to honor them.

AM: Now when you do your quilts, I notice you have labels on your quilts, what’s important to you to be known about that quilt via the label when you’re not with the quilt? What information do you put on there?

CE: I’ve just become more aware of being able to possibly tell, not a story but, what did I make this and for who. That just became an awareness to me and I’ve not done it yet. Mostly those labels were just informational pieces to not get stolen. But now I see a different point because when I’m gone, my daughter, Julie, I made this for you Julie, during blah blah blah and I have done that for her now. I make her little wall hangings. She’s got the three seasons. She’s got one more to go.

AM: Oh, she’s so lucky. [laughs.] What do you think the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today?

CE: Economically, I would say the financial aspect is probably hard for people that are retired. Young mothers is probably because of commitment to raise the family and the financial aspect. I am kind of amazed at the kind of people that are [coughing.] able to afford to buy what they do buy. I can’t think of anything except the economics because there seems to be so many guilds and support groups to help people learn how to quilt. We have many bees in our quilt guild, and they’re free and so I belong to a hand applique bee now and that’s really nice to be able to get together, have lunch together, share, and know someone. Like one of the ladies in my class, I got to spend time with her last night and have dinner with her. It was a real treat, I just listened and it was so much fun to just listen to her life. She’s an author, she is like, wow who would have ever known. She just has so much to say. It was really interesting.

AM: That’s really neat. I don’t have any other questions, do you have anything that you want to add to this record that we haven’t talked about?

CE: No just that I hope to be able to keep quilting. [laughs.]

AM: I hope so too—

CE: And share this gift, I do feel it’s a gift, I really do. Because I mean I didn’t get it until I was in my 60s.

AM: Fantastic. Well, thank you Chris Eichner for this interview for the Quilters’ S.O.S. Save Our Stories Project. It is 3:27 p.m. and thanks a lot.

CE: You are very welcome, I enjoyed it.

AM: Me too.