Linda Fiedler

Linda Fiedler

Linda Fiedler talks about her chosen quilt, the fabrics used, the design, and how it got its name by helping her through a tough time. She describes her first remembrances of quilting, including the work her grandmother and her mother did, as well as talking about how she learned to quilt. Fiedler talks about her experiences teaching quiltmaking all over the country, as well as when she opened up a quilt shop. She talks about the importance of quilts in American life, their importance to women throughout history, and how we can ensure quilts have a place in America in the future. Fiedler talks about the guilds she is a member of, from a local level to the national level, as well as what she looks for in great quilts and quiltmakers for her shows and museums. She talks about her wearable art. Fiedler talks about the trends in quiltmaking and the divide, if any, between traditional quiltmaking and art quilts. She talks about how communities are built through quilting and quilters coming together. She talks about articles and other writing she has done on the subject of quilting. Fiedler talks about the awards she has won with her quilts, as well as her time judging quilt shows. She finishes the interview by talking about preserving quilts, her antique quilt collection, and if she has designed any quilt patterns herself.

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Quilts

Quilting

Quiltmakers

Quilting--United States

Quiltmakers--United States

Quilting--Patterns

Quilting--United States--Patterns

Quilts--United States

Linda Fiedler

Le Rowell

28/09/02

Mistyfuse

Harrisonburg, Virginia

JT Eissenberg

Le Rowell

Le Rowell (LR): This is Le Rowell and today's date is September 28, 2002 and it is 12:10 p.m. and I'm conducting an interview with Linda Fiedler for the Quilters' S.O.S.-Save Our Stories project and we are at the Virginia Quilt Museum in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Linda, thank you for coming and bringing this gorgeous piece. Tell me about the quilt.

Linda Fiedler (LF): This is a quilt I made in 1992. For many, many years I had been making quilts and I had been doing machine embroidery and I really had not got the two techniques together. And for a long time I'd had thoughts of being able to combine my two loves into one thing that was very integrated so that they looked like they'd needed each other. And this turned out to be the first quilt I made that I did incorporate my machine embroidery into the patchwork of the quilt. So it certainly has a lot of meaning for me from that aspect because it--certainly was a big step in my creative development, my personal development in quiltmaking--when I made the step and got the two together and it has been a style that I've worked with then from--to the present.

LR: Did you ever do any hand embroidering?

LF: When I was very young I did hand embroidering and certainly when I first started quilting I did hand quilting. I do machine embroidery now and this is what I call thread painting. It is a free motion machine-embroidery technique and I do all machine quilting at this point.

LR: How do you do that?

LF: [laugh.] On such a large piece? [laughs.] Through the years I have discovered that I like to work in a large palette and so I have practiced enough that I am able to handle a large quilt in my home sewing machine.

LR: And it's just a regular machine, you don't have a--

LF: It's just a regular home sewing machine.

LR: Talk a little about this piece and the fabrics that you use.

LF: The fabrics I use--I use a lot of different fabrics. There's probably a hundred and fifty different fabrics in this quilt. I like for the fabric to carry through the theme of the quilt, both in color as well as in the style of the fabric. And the name of this quilt is "The Calm After the Storm" and it is based on the Storm at Sea pattern, though I have taken artistic license with that and adapted it to my own purposes. So thinking of the colors of the sea I certainly chose the blues and greens and the purples and so forth for the fabrics to give the feeling of the sea as I was working on it and then, of course, the fish which are done in the thread painting-- I've added some of the brighter colors that you might see in tropical fish and so forth. I like to use fabrics that will blend well together rather than having the print within each fabric stand out, I choose fabrics that have what I call a painterly quality but they blend well.

LR: Are they purchased fabrics or--

LF: They are all purchased fabrics.

LR: You don't do any dyeing or--

LF: No, I learned how to do dyeing and decided that I much prefer to make quilts and if I wanted hand-dyed fabrics I would purchase it. But all these, these are not hand dyed fabrics. These are purchased commercial fabrics.

LR: How do you get these gorgeous embroidered fish? Do you embroider onto your fabric?

LF: I do my embroidery separately. I do it in a hoop on a stabilizer and then cut it out and apply it to the quilt so that I don't distort the quilt with doing all that amount of stitching on it because the fish, they are solid thread, so there is a lot of stitching on there which if you do it directly onto the fabric, it does really distort the shape of the fabric and the quilt.

LR: So it's not only the fish but it's also like--

LF: Seaweed.

LR: The seaweeds.

LF: Yes, are done in a different type of free motion machine embroidery, a zig zag type of embroidery. But they are again worked on a stabilizer, cut out, and then applied to the quilt.

LR: And then--

LF: I do apply them to the quilt top only before I layer the quilt and quilt it so that you see the quilting around the fish on the back but you don't see any of the actual work from making the fish.

LR: And your backing fabric?

LF: Well, I like for my backing fabric to match the front in some manner and certainly this fabric looked like water [looking at the backing fabric.] and so it certainly had the colors as well that go with the front.

LR: So this is your favorite quilt, or did you have trouble choosing a piece to bring?

LF: No, actually I did not have trouble. This quilt--I felt like it was a big step in my personal development number one, and number two when I named it, I named it "The Calm After the Storm". I always knew that was to be the name, but as I thought back later, the period before I made this quilt was a very turbulent time in my life, and all of those big events that happen to you happened to me in about the five years before this quilt was made; and finally, you know, I had gotten through that death of parents and moving and my husband retiring and the kids going off to college, all of those types of things; and we moved out in the country and it was--has become a very productive time in my creative life. And so this quilt sort of symbolizes the start of that calm time in my life as well as being certainly a big step in my creative development.

LR: So quilting really took you through?

LF: Quilting took me through that time although I will have to say all those things have a detrimental effect on your creativity. I might put it that way. It's very hard to be creative, truly creative and create a big original work during that time. But quilting certainly saved me by just the process of making patchwork blocks and putting them together.

LR: What is your first knowledge of a quilt?

LF: I grew up in Carroll County, Virginia, and actually they still made quilts as I was growing up and I can remember in the church where we grew up one of the fund raising activities of the women of the church was making a quilt and you paid a dollar and they would embroider your name on it, and that was the way they made money. So I was certainly familiar with quilting from then, as well as my grandmother made quilts, and she made quilts that we all slept under growing up. So I've not ever not been aware of quilts.

LR: And your grandmother was from Carroll County also?

LF: Yes, she was.

LR: And anyone else in your family that carried the tradition of quiltmaking?

LF: My mother made one quilt. She had decided that she would make a quilt for each child and there were four children in our family, and she did make a quilt. I happened to be the one getting married when it came time for--when she got ready to start this project; and she made me a double wedding ring quilt which does have fabrics from a lot of my clothes growing up and so forth in it, but unfortunately she died so that's the only quilt she ever made. I was lucky enough to be the one that got that quilt. But other than that there's really been no--I mean in the past everybody made quilts but from then on nobody else.

LR: And you started quilting?

LF: I started quilting in 1971 when we moved to--from Houston to northern Michigan out in the country in January which is not the time [laugh.] to move to northern Michigan from Houston. I had a new baby and my husband worked for an oil company and was out on the wells all the time; and I knew no one and so I decided I would make a quilt, and every afternoon when I put my baby down to nap I would go and sew a block for my quilt and I've been sewing blocks for my quilts ever since that time.

LR: How did you--how did you do that? Did you have lessons or--

LF: No.

LR: Or a book?

LF: No, there were no lessons. When I knew that we were going to northern Michigan, I knew that it was a much smaller town than Houston obviously, so I did go to the Singer place and they happened to have a little pamphlet on some different patchwork patterns. So I picked that up. I was trying to stock up on needles and thread and stuff like that, and I picked up that and I just looked through it, it had maybe fifteen different traditional quilt patterns in it. And I just looked through, there was only a picture--wasn't a whole quilt picture--just a picture of the block itself. I looked until I saw one I liked which happened to be Old Maid's Puzzle and so I made blocks and put them together and bordered it and so forth. In 1971, there were no books on quilting available. Certainly not in Traverse City, Michigan, if there were anywhere else.

LR: Were there any patterns then that you could purchase for quiltmaking?

LF: Not that I was aware of. Now I have sewed since I was a young girl so I was not intimidated by the process, and I just figured out I had to draw my block by--make a template, draw my pieces out and sew them together. And it was all done the old timey way.

LR: By hand?

LF: No

LR: No

LF: No, I've sewed it on the sewing machine. I did not myself quilt that first one. I did take it to a lady where I grew up who quilted for people and she quilted it for me. So I did just the piecing part on the first couple of quilts that I made.

LR: Do you still have some of those pieces?

LF: I have my first quilt, yes. And it's still in good shape and I still like it.

LR: And you have your wedding gift from your mother?

LF: I certainly have my wedding gift from my mother and I do have some quilts from my grandmother that were left from her. So I have three generations of quilts.

LR: How do you use them in your home?

LF: I use them on my guest room beds. I hang quilts in my home and generally I hang antique quilts rather than my contemporary quilts in my home, and I have them stacked and hang some in the stairway and different places in my home.

LR: How do you use this quilt that you brought today in your home?

LF: This quilt generally has not hung in my home. I teach quiltmaking and my quilts hang in museums at different places and times. I also use it in my teaching.

LR: Talk about your teaching. When did you start teaching and what do you teach?

LF: Okay, I started teaching probably in about 1976 or so and then in 1979 I did open a quilt shop and did all the teaching in the quilt shop. So I owned that from 1979 to 1986.

LR: Where was that?

LF: In Tulsa, Oklahoma and just taught whatever you needed to teach in a quilt shop. Certainly then as now, I think the classes are a very large part of any quilt shop, and I have certainly learned a lot myself through my teaching because I feel like I have to be able to do it and do it well, before I can teach it to anybody else. So I certainly have kept up with all the newest and latest techniques and so forth, doing that. After I sold my shop then I did start free lance teaching in quiltmaking, and so since 1986 I have pretty much traveled and taught quilt making. I travel all over the country now teaching my quiltmaking.

LR: Do teach just one class or one specialty or do you teach beginning quiltmaking?

LF: I no longer teach beginning quiltmaking. I teach machine quilting classes from a basic one

to-- I have two advanced machine quilting classes. I teach my machine embroidery classes, thread painting, and I have a couple of piecing classes--I've developed some piecing techniques of my own and I do teach classes on those. So most of my classes have developed out of what I was doing in my quiltmaking personally on my own quilts.

LR: Talk for just a minute, you mentioned in 1971 when you started there were no patterns that you were aware of. What changes did you see from '71 to when you opened your quilt shop?

LF: I began to see things in sewing centers about quilting, the magazines, craft magazines started to have a few articles in them. As a matter of fact I can remember doing Seminole patchwork from an article I saw in Good Housekeeping [magazine.]or something, and there were no rotary cutters [laughs.], none of that stuff, so I drew lines all the way across the width of my fabric and cut it out with my scissors, [laugh.] and did some Seminole patchwork actually. So things did start to become available in all that time and more and more and more people began to get interested in quilting.

LR: Why did you open the quilt shop?

LF: My quilting obviously had become a passion for me and we were living in Tulsa at the time and we formed a quilt guild in Tulsa. I was one of the founding members and served as the first president of that guild. The first day when we had our meeting to--we just invited people; we had a hundred and fifty people show up. So I decided that possibly there would be a market for a quilt shop, and so that was certainly one reason that I went ahead and opened the shop. But also I was, as I said, it was my passion and I really wanted to do more and more, and if I could do something to make a living working in the field that I loved anyway, then it was going to be all for the good.

LR: How did all these activities combine with your family life?

LF: --my children were both in school when I opened my shop. Certainly there were some trade offs, some problems there--particularly in the summer. I did arrange it so that I had help coming in when school was out and who stayed and closed the shop, and I went in, in the morning and worked up until that time. There were certainly night classes that I had to teach and my husband babysat for me and so forth, so with help from the family it all worked out.

LR: You had a very supportive family?

LF: I did have a very supportive family.

LR: What do you find most pleasing about quiltmaking?

LF: I think the creative process. It's something I have discovered that I have to have. I like to teach but I have to make quilts and so I have learned that's one reason I sold my shop. It was getting so I did not have time enough to make my own quilts and I really need that creative expression, I think. And certainly I enjoy the process itself, the creation of the quilt. And all of my quilts now are original designs.

LR: And what is the least pleasing aspect of quiltmaking?

LF: Well, you obviously have to have perseverance in order [laughs.] to finish a quilt. However, I guess the tedious part of putting it together and finishing it nicely and binding it nicely and those sorts of things that are--once you've decided on the fabric--not really creating, but you just have to do them. So I think things like that probably are the tedium of making forty blocks if it takes forty blocks.

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

LF: I think quilts have relevance to everybody and I see people who come to museum shows or to quilt shows--all of them have some sort of a story back about quilts. Their grandmother made quilts or whatever. I think it really symbolizes maybe home and the comforts of home to people. Certainly it's important financially now, there's a big industry in the U.S. and in the world so from that aspect it's important too, but I think from a personal aspect--quilts have an appeal to people that maybe many other types of art work do not.

LR: In what ways do you think it has special meaning for women's history in America?

LF: I think women were able to express themselves through their quilts in a way that they didn't have available, the only really creative outlet they had available. They had certainly had a hard lot in life. It was--they worked and worked and worked but they were able to create wonderful quilts, and I think we see that in a lot of the old quilts that they'd really taken time to put something really special into these very functional items that they were making. They had to have them, but they put beauty into them as well.

LR: How do we sustain that interest in quiltmaking for future generations?

LF: I believe we have to get more young people involved in quilting. So many people that are involved in it wait 'til they retire and then they start making their quilts. So I certainly like to do everything I can to introduce younger people to the art of quiltmaking, the art and the craft of quiltmaking because I feel like, you know, we're all gonna to die off and if we don't have younger people coming along it's not going to be sustained.

LR: How do you do that?

LF: Ah

LR: keep the younger people?

LF: Well when I curate a show for example with the museum, and I've worked with the museum, so that they always have projects for the school children. The school children throughout the county come through the museum at this particular museum I'm thinking of, they have a little paper that the children have to look and find different things in a quilt, for instance, a star or a moon or something so that they have to really look at the quilts carefully so that they're looking at them in that aspect. When our quilt guild hangs a show we strongly encourage the children that come through to vote for a viewers' choice quilt so that they will really look at the quilts and not just come in with Mommy--and they really take it quite seriously so if you encourage them, I think they really are interested in quiltmaking.

LR: Talk a minute about your involvement with your guild, your community, and your curating.

LF: Well I've always--I guess since I helped to form the Tulsa guild I've been a member of my local guild wherever I've lived. I also am a member of and always have been a member of the state guilds that I've lived in, as well as the national quilt organizations. So I certainly have participated in that aspect. I like to know everybody and what's going on in the world of quiltmaking. I did have a one woman show at a museum and they had a very good attendance at my quilt show, and so that museum has since started having an invitational quilt show [knocking noise in background was a museum person walking on the wooden floor outside the interview room.] every two years as a very permanent part of their shows. I've been curating that show for them and that has sort of led from one thing to another, and people will ask me, you know at different times [background noise was a museum guest entering the interview room not realizing an interview was in progress in spite of a ribbon across the entrance to the outer room.] to help with getting quilts for a show. And so it just sort of has led to that.

LR: When you're curating you're looking at many quilts to select them for your show, what do you think makes a great quilt not just for say your show but say for a museum?

LF: I think a quilt that shows the things the museum is looking for. Certainly I feel like the quilt needs to be--the craftsmanship needs to be perfect on it, as well as the color and the design on it. But then it should--generally there's a theme to the show or the museum is looking for a certain style of quilt and then it has to fit that as well. Great quilts also seem to have some sort of an indefinable quality that draws you to them, and it just is a wonderful quilt. I don't know really how to describe what that is but you can walk into two different places and you'll be drawn to certain quilts.

LR: What do you think makes a great quiltmaker?

LF: Commitment, dedication, certainly perseverence and I think she has to allow herself to be creative and to really get into making the quilt rather than trying to just follow traditional rules or whatever. But she has to allow herself to put herself into the quilt and maybe that's what a great quilt has a goodly part of the quiltmaker in it as well.

LR: You also create wearable art.

LF: Yes.

LR: Could you talk about that?

LF: Making a piece of wearable art is certainly different from making a quilt because the piece of wearable art does have to fit on your body and you have to worry about colors, buttons, cuffs, sleeves, darts, all these things; so certainly as far as when you're designing your patchwork or your artwork, your embellishment, whatever it is your going to put on it, you have to be well aware of where all of those things are going to be as well. Also, I think a piece of wearable art needs to show off the wearer as well as the art because our clothes are really, --they're chosen to show us off as a person, so I think we can't forget about that when you're making a piece of wearable art. You need to be aware that there's a back and a front and sides and they all need to be on the same page so to speak. They all need to go together so there is a little bit more going into that because it is made to fit onto a three dimensional body rather than being two dimensional to hang on the wall.

LR: Have you shown some of your wearable art?

LF: Yes.

LR: Where?

LF: I have designed garments for the Fairfield Fashion Show--for three of those--and I've had garments in the other big one in the Paducah [American Quilters Society, Kentucky.] show the Hobbs Fashion Show--at Paducah, as well as many other smaller shows. One of my lectures is my trunk show of wearable art and which I use models and we do a fashion show of my garments. So that has been a very popular lecture that I do as well.

LR: Has that been part of the Houston Festival.

LF: No, I have not done that at the Houston Festival. Houston has actually only added wearable art to their quilt show--oh gosh, it hasn't been more than five years I think that they've had that.

LR: When did you start with your wearable art and your lectures?

LF: Oh, I've always done wearable art. I grew up making my own clothes and so when I came into quiltmaking I was coming from sewing and from making my own clothes. So very shortly after I started making quilts I started making clothes that had patchwork on them.

LR: Talk a minute about the trends that you see in quiltmaking from when you started to now. We talk about traditional quiltmakers, art quilters, what trends have you seen in the past and what do you see for the future?

LF: Certainly I think they're still a lot of people and most people who are just beginning in quiltmaking tend to start traditional which is the way I did as well. Certainly many, many more people are interested in learning how or beginning to develop their own abilities so that they start designing their own quilts now. I think there's a lot more--a lot more quilts being made going toward more innovative, contemporary types of quilts. To me I guess the biggest innovation was the rotary cutter. When that was introduced it opened up a whole new world for quilting, and it allowed us to do a whole lot of things that we would not have been able to do otherwise. I certainly see that trend continuing, and that quilts are becoming much more geared toward art rather than function. I think that will continue, and certainly the wearables, I think, will continue as well; so I think it's just the trend that's currently going on, will continue on. I hope we don't lose all of our traditional quilts in this way. I certainly am starting to see more and more and more machine quilted quilts, beautifully machine quilted quilts, in shows and not as many beautifully hand quilted quilts. And I hope we don't lose that but the trend is certainly going toward machine quilting now.

LR: But you see both the traditional and the contemporary working together or is there a separation between traditional quilters and art quilters?

LF: I think and I hope that they ,quilters, look at each one of them no matter what kind of quilt you like to make--that you look at the other area and draw what you can from that. I very seldom see any more people who don't like a quilt just because it's machine quilted for instance, though that used to be very common back in the early nineties. I think people are accepting of all of this now of both the machine quilters and hand quilters, and realize that quilting is plenty big enough for all of us. If you want to hand quilt you can; if you want to hand piece you can, if you want to machine piece you can, if you want to machine quilt you can.

LR: Our time is just about up and I haven't had a chance to ask you about your writing and publications. Would you mind if I come to the end of this tape and put another tape in?

LF: That would be fine.

LR: Would that we alright? [Le stops the tape and puts in a new tape; slight pause.] We are now on new tapes because Linda and I would like to continue our conversation. Linda, one thing I forgot to ask you was you've moved a lot and how has quiltmaking helped you to adapt to new communities?

LF: The first thing I have always done since we had the quilt guild in Tulsa--every time I moved, the first thing I do is find out where the quilt guild is and when it meets and go to the meeting. I always take a show and tell because I realize [laugh.] that that's important but it certainly has given me a support group from the very first [inaudible.] move. Many times it takes a long time to meet your neighbors and to become a part of that (community) and so I have been able to get a support group early. The other thing I do--I always volunteer fairly early on to take a job within the guild if I've just moved to a place so that I really can feel like I can become a part of that guild. So certainly it has helped me in that respect.

LR: Talk a little bit about your writing.

LF: I have done several magazine articles about different techniques that I'm teaching. I have done one years ago on a big shirt that was a garment class that I taught. My thread painting class has been one of my most popular and I've done--I have two separate articles on that and am working on a book about that, hopefully. I am also, hopefully, working on a book on my machine quilting techniques. So I've just done just articles at the moment but hopefully will go ahead and get my books done.

LR: Are the articles recent articles and in which magazines?

LF: Let's see, the most recent one was in June of last year on thread painting in Quilting Today. I have published in the American Quilter which is the one from Paducah. I can't remember the name of the other magazine that I had an article in about my big shirt.

LR: And you've won many awards?

LF: I have.

LR: What was your most important award?

LF: I guess my most important award was that I won best of show at the Columbus, Indiana quilt show and it was a $10,000 purchase award. So that was certainly the largest monetary award I have ever won.

LR: When was that?

LF: That was in probably 1994.

LR: And do you remember your first award?

LF: Yes, as a matter of fact, it was at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in 1988 and it was the first quilt I had ever entered into a show of any sort, and it did get second place there. I thought at that point that it was--must be easy to get awards [laugh.]. I have since found out that's not true [laughs.]

LR: When did you start participating in the Houston Festival?

LF: When we moved to Houston in 1986 the Houston Quilt Guild certainly has a big part there, and so I became involved in the show and was helping with it and joined the International Quilt Association then.

LR: And just one question about the book that you are in the process of writing?

[Linda and Le were talking at the same time.]

LF: Vaguely in the process of writing--

LR: Process, okay--

LF: It's not far enough along really to talk about.

LR: Okay. And I know you have judged shows. Talk about the judging process and how you feel about it.

LF: I enjoy judging. It's very hard work. I do go into it with the idea that I want to be as encouraging to the quiltmaker as I possibly can be and I certainly--any criticisms I might have of her quilt I want it to be in a positive way that will hopefully help her and the quilt; so I'm certainly very aware of the person who has made the quilt because I know how I feel about my quilts and, you know, I would like people to encourage me rather than to really discourage me. Certainly now in the judging you are looking at both hand and machine quilted quilts in the same categories. They are competing against each other I guess, and they're judged together. They're judged on the quality of the quilting, not how it was done and not how long it took to do it; and I think that has been a pretty easy transition for quiltmakers--maybe not so easy as I think--but that certainly is the way it is judged in all the major shows now. Some people are surprised at that. Certainly today--quilts are judged basically in two areas, the area of color and design, and then the area of workmanship. And if you get no guidance from the promoters then generally it's about a fifty-fifty split that you're looking at. I know back in older days it was mostly on workmanship, and color and design were not considered nearly as much.

LR: As a judge you don't find it difficult then to judge between hand quilting and machine quilting?

LF: I do not. When I judge quilting I don't just look at the stitch itself. I certainly look at that but I also look at the quilting design, how to carries through the feeling of the quilt. I look to see if the quilting fills the space adequately, so there are a lot of other things that you look at so you can certainly judge the quilting on the quality of the work, but you also are looking at these areas of design and so forth as well; and so with that it really--I do not find it very hard to judge the two together.

LR: You mention the criticism as part of the judging--

LF: Yes--

LR: and that you would like people to give you feedback. Do you as a judge give critical feedback to people who have submitted their quilts?

LF: Yes, most of the shows do have a critique sheet. Many of them you go through and check items, you know, either minuses--minus, satisfactory or excellent, so generally you would have three categories. So you're giving them very specific feedback then that would cover things like color, use of color, or workmanship, the piecing technique, the appliqué technique, embroidery technique, or the quilting technique, things like that. And then I certainly do try to always give a positive statement which is generally my first impression of the quilt. And then if there's something other than what I've checked in the critique sheet a constructive criticism statement. And many times it's a small thing but it would be something that would help her quilts in the future if they were to do that--hopefully.

LR: How do you think quilts can be preserved for the future?

LF: Well, we have museums and things and certainly they're preserving them there. I think in our homes and so forth we need to take care of them and we are doing that a whole lot better now than we used to. But we need to keep making them as well. Certainly quilts and fibers in general are going to wear out and so we can't--a quilt today is probably not going to be around a thousand years from now--so we certainly do want to keep making them. But certainly our museums and things like that are very much more into preserving textiles and fibers better than they used to be.

LR: How do you care for the quilts in your home?

LF: I have them--my antique quilts rolled and wrapped in sheets. My personal quilts that I use in my teaching or whatever I store flat on my guest room bed and they are covered up then with a bed spread, but they are stored flat so that they don't get creases and things like that in them.

LR: Your antique quilts, talk about them.

LF: I do have not a large collection but a small collection of antique quilts that I have purchased over the years, very few from my family but a couple. When I owned my quilt shop, many times I did have the opportunity to purchase antique quilts. So I do have some nice ones.

LR: What kinds of antique quilts? Is there a theme in your collection or--

LF: I have appliqué. I have pieced. I have whole cloth. I just have to love it. I generally do piecing rather than appliqué, piecing and embroidery and so several of my antique quilts are appliquéd quilts which I dearly love but I don't like to do it.

LR: What period are the quilts from?

LF: I have my oldest one is dated in the quilting 1856. Then I have several from around 1900 and in the 30's and so forth.

LR: Have you ever made any quilt patterns in connection with your teaching?

LF: I have--I have designed some quilts that I teach as one of my classes. I have not published these patterns as published patterns. When I had my shop, I designed some patterns and thing--for classes in the shop. But again they were just for that particular thing I've not published them and tried to sell them.

LR: Is there anything else in particular that you would like to talk about before we finish our interview?

LF: I don't think so.

LR: Okay. Well, I want to thank you Linda for your interview today as part of our Quilters' S.O.S. project. It's September 28, 2002 and our interview was concluded 12:58 p.m.

Patchwork quilts.

Sewing machines

Machine quilting.

Double wedding ring quilts

Houston (Tex.)

Teaching quiltmaking

Teaching quilting

Quilt shows

Wearable art

International Quilt Festival Houston

Awards

Appliqué.

Preservation