Myrah Brown Green
Photos
Date
08/23/2023
Identifier
QSOS-223
Video
Transcription
[Janneken Smucker]
QSOS interviews usually focus on an object, we call it a touchstone quilt, and that sort of serves as a springboard for the rest of the conversation. Before I have Myrah tell us a little bit about the quilt that she has a great image that you'll be able to see in a moment, I'd first like you to tell us just briefly a little bit about yourself, Myrah. Introduce yourself as, I know Amy lists a lot of hats that you wear, but who are you in relationship to quilts and quilt making?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I have been quilting for, oh my goodness, over 30 years. I'm a self-taught quilter. I did go to college.
I have a PhD in interdisciplinary studies with a focus in art history that focuses on world symbols. So all of my quilts, I will say 100% of my quilts has that foundation. I am also an author, which is really important to me because I create from a quilt perspective.
So I piece stories together and I do a lot of archiving. So this platform is really important to me because I think it's important to archive artists of all genres for generations to be able to come and do research, to further their research. So, and I am really excited about a show opening at the Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.
I've mounted other solo shows, but this one is so special. It's called Talking Quilts and it will open on Saturday, August 26th at 6 PM. So if anyone's in Brooklyn, New York, please come by.
It's, it's, I'm telling you, it is just a beautiful site and I usually don't talk about my work myself, but it was just overwhelming. So that's basically what I do related to quilt making.
[Janneken Smucker]
Thanks so much. And I certainly want to, I live in Philadelphia, so I'm going to make an effort to get up there and see it in the next month and a half or so.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah, just give me a call.
[Janneken Smucker]
All right. Wonderful. I'm thrilled to see this quilt.
I hope you all see it through the screen share right now as well. And the image of the quilt, Khemetic Paradise. So this is sort of the traditional first question of a QSOS interview.
Tell me about the quilt you brought with you today and brought, of course, is our virtual term here as we are all on Zoom.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Well, I use this quilt because you talked about technology and this is when I, I took a workshop many, many, many years ago. It must've been about 30 years ago. I didn't have a, a, a, a quilting machine, not a long arm, but a quilting, something that I could do free motion on, a domestic.
The machine I had was a machine that my mother had, had given me before I went to college. And so in order to do the free motion quilting, I had to cover up the feed dog. And so here is like serious technology before my time actually, but it's, it's machine embroidery and there's tool there.
It's, it is called Khemetic Paradise. Khemet is an ancient name for Egypt. It's the early name for Egypt.
And it basically, the quilt talks about, it talks, it talks about those things or people that we just don't see and how people living, Americans in particular, can be very chauvinistic in thinking that they're, we're the only people in our bubble that we should worry about. And so you see these little animals and bugs and things that may be in another dimension. And so that's what this is a reminder of.
It's a really, really small quilt. It was the first quilt that I ever showed in a, in a major exhibition. It was in Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi's quilt show, Spirits of the Cloth back in the nineties. And it was the smallest quilt in the show, as you can see, it's 21 by 18 inches. And now it's in the collection of the Bloomberg Foundation.
[Janneken Smucker]
It's a really amazing piece. Can you tell us about some of the specific imagery?
[Myrah Brown Green]
So the piece in the middle is a scarab and the scarab, a winged scarab. It's an Egyptian image... bug that is about everlasting life. It never dies.
And of course it's holding the sun. And and which is, you know, which goes with the everlasting life. And this tool, I use tool on top of the flowers.
I, yeah, I use tool. And, and for those of you who are not quilters or may not know what tool is, it's like a sheer netting fabric. And, and then hand dyed fabric is in the, in the background.
So with embroidery, with machine embroidery, you know, the feed dog was dropped. And because I did start it in the class with my machine and got frustrated. And then I think I may have gotten like a lower end machine that allowed me to, that allowed me to free motion quilt.
And I do a lot of free motion quilting these days, but but that's basically what it is. And a lot of those little bugs are made up creatures that I just made up from my head or what I think, you know, we can be familiar, we can be familiar with. So I guess that's basically it.
And it's, it's called Khemetic Paradise. So it's like, you know, I wanted to, I want you to get a good feeling when you look at it. And like I said, it was in spirits of the cloth.
For those of you who saw that show at the, I think it's called the Contemporary Museum of American Art now or something like that. But it was in that show. And that was like such a powerful exhibition.
So and if you can get a copy of the book, the catalog, which was fabulous, you should try to get a copy of that. It's in the catalog.
[Janneken Smucker]
Yeah, wonderful to see it. And I know I was not fortunate enough to see that exhibition in person. But the book is definitely a great substitute since that's all we have at the moment.
We have one question that's specifically about some of the imagery in this quilt in the chat or in the q&a. And it seems to have images that are similar to those of some Aboriginal art, including from Arnhem Lane in Australia. Do you have any familiarity?
Or are there any links to Aboriginal art?
[Myrah Brown Green]
It can be. Yes. And I think that African art, because there's some symbolism that definitely is African, of course.
But yes, you do see that. The thing about Aboriginal art, when you look at the lizard, in most Aboriginal imagery of lizards, or that symbolism, the legs are both going in the same direction, the legs and the arms. When you look at African symbolism, and usually when I because I use a lot of lizard like creatures in my work, and which would be taken from the Dogon Kanaga mask, the arms are going upward, and the legs are planted on the earth.
And the body, for me, becomes a vessel where we enter earth from the universe. And when our time has expired, or even with our, you know, even if it's we're not talking about transition, we may be talking about consciousness, our consciousness goes back into the universe. So there's a lot of intermingling with what the visual look of the symbolism might appear.
But those lizards are basically taken from the Kanaga mask, if you can look that up, of the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa. So.
[Janneken Smucker]
That's fascinating. Thank you for giving that further explanation. So you mentioned that you are a self-taught quilt maker.
Can you take us back and tell us how that transpired? Why did you start making quilts?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I started sewing when I was a little girl. I was in the first grade. I'm a lot older than you are.
And back then, we used to get checked in school for pneumonia, polio, all of those things. And this one day, I was tested and I had walking pneumonia. And they rushed me to the hospital.
Nowadays, pneumonia is like getting a cold for some. But I was in the hospital, I remember, for like about a month or more. And they would give you shots, like, and I was a little girl.
When I came out of the hospital, I stuttered really badly. And some people call it stammering. And I had stuttered for years.
And my mother had a sewing machine. And instead of me talking, because children were cruel, of course, I just started sewing. And I would take my babysitting money and I would buy fabric with it as I got older.
And I would just sew. And then when I started out at Boston University and then transferred to Pratt Institute, one of my professors gave us an assignment, a final assignment to create a quilt. And no, not to create a quilt, to create a project using specific colors.
And because I had the sewing machine, I decided to, I had this old book. And it was like a craft book and it had a quilt in it. I said, wow, that looks interesting.
So I looked at it and I said, okay, so I needed to go get fabric. And I got the best fabric that I could find, which was velvet, which I didn't know that was so difficult to work with. And I created this quilt top based on what I saw in this book.
And when I went to, when I took the assignment, I was so proud because I was an A student and I got the assignment back and my professor had given me a D and I was devastated. And not until years, I don't even know why, I didn't ask her why she gave me the D. But years and years later, when I started to quilt, I realized I only had a top and a backing.
There was no batting inside. And that's why she gave me that grade. And so, and it wasn't quilted together.
I had, I guess I had just sewn it like an envelope. And now if I had made it now, you know, I've seen quilts with two layers with just a top where folks call quilts in major exhibitions. And so the time has changed in how we see things.
So that's basically how I got into quilting. And then one of my oldest daughters, godmother at the time, took us, she wanted to take her to the quilt guild, Brooklyn Quilt Guild. And I said, well, since I have the other girls, I have three daughters and a son, let's all go.
My children were not interested. They thought it was a cult. And I loved it.
And that's where I started really getting serious about it. I bought too many books, too much fabric, too many tools. And, you know, that's where I started quilting.
And so I kind of began blending the things that I knew and that I learned historically, and, you know, put them into my quilts.
[Janneken Smucker]
So part of the focus of this season of Running Stitch, as you know, is technology. And along with that is like the learning of the skills and the tools and the processes. So back then, when you were, you know, after this guild meeting, and you started to get quite interested in quilt making, what was your process?
And what were some of the tools and technologies that you used at that time?
[Myrah Brown Green]
So the first Monday, I mean, Saturday, Saturday, I went back to the meeting by myself. They usually had a little workshop that, you know, where people could follow along, someone would teach something. And someone was teaching strip piecing using magazine piece paper.
And you would just, it was almost like a foundation type thing. And that was my go-to. And all I made was strip pieced quilts after that.
But I would love to make huge ones. So I started making queen size quilts. And I would only tie them.
Because, you know, the quilting, I wasn't a quilting in the ditch kind of girl. So I hadn't really found my niche yet, and how I was going to join these pieces together. But I would tie them together.
I mean, I was comfortable with that at that point. And then I would do like little things, I would maybe quilt part of it and tie part of it. And then I was getting and then I don't know if I took a workshop.
I don't think so. Maybe I started buying books. I saw this free motion thing that people were doing.
And maybe it was at a quilt show or something. And I said, Wow, that looks really fascinating to me. And I wanted to do that.
At that time, I didn't have a sewing machine that could do it, you know, without putting the cardboard on top, because people said, Oh, you can put a cardboard on top to block off the feed dog. But I said, I want one of those, whatever kind of machine it is. And I ended up, I think I bought it like an Elna or something, the first one that I got, because it did embroidery, different embroidery stitches, but I never used them.
And then finally, I got a Bernina 150, which is so old. But every time I go get it cleaned, the person wants to buy it. Because it was it was it I don't think they make them anymore.
I know they don't. But it was the quilters edition that came out for like a year. And I don't know, maybe they were too expensive to make because it's all stainless steel on the inside or whatever.
But that is my go to. I have burnt the motor out maybe three or four times from machine quilting. And I mean, when I tried it, I try to sneak and not drop the feed dog.
And that's what would burn my motor out, which you're not, don't do that. But it just felt so good to be able to, to do it without the feed dog being dropped. Yeah.
Did I answer your question?
[Janneken Smucker]
Absolutely.
[Janneken Smucker]
Thank you. I'd like to hear a little bit about then how additional technologies and tools may have changed your quilt making over time. And I know we have a recent big change coming up just in the last few years.
But were there other things that changed your quilt making process that techniques you tried out over the years before the most recent adoption of the longarm?
[Myrah Brown Green]
Oh, yeah. I mean, I've, I always felt like I could do whatever I saw. And I may not do it in the way that that the teacher would teach it in a book or like I would find my way.
I would try to be comfortable with it. So using Lamar or, or tool or any of those things, you've got to have specific needles. You've got to have specific thread.
You've got to have a certain type of fusible web. And I'm saying, I'm talking about those tools because all of those tools help either help you if you're doing the right thing with your machine, because you got to change the tension, you got to change the, you got to change the, the, the bobbin thread, or you got to change. I mean, I've worked with bobbin thread that or top thread that was too heavy to go through any needle.
So I would hand wind it on my bobbin. And then so from the back of my quilt, like so I put the front down as like the back and I would sew from the backside, just so that I could use that thread. I'm one of those women that buy shoes first and a dress to match my shoes.
It's always been like that for me. And it's the same thing with quilt with quilting. I buy the thread first and then I buy fabric to match the thread because I'm just a lover of thread.
So I'm one of the perfect, I'm a perfect example, perfect someone to be an ambassador of thread.
[Janneken Smucker]
Thank you thread companies, I hope you're listening, you can get a great.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm a thread fanatic.
[Janneken Smucker]
Wonderful.
[Janneken Smucker]
So how does, what role does the quilting that the stitches itself, whether you're using, you know, one of those older machines, what is the role that the quilting stitches play within the piece as a whole? I'm sure it's different on every work of art you make, but how do you view the quilting, especially since thread is so important to you?
[Myrah Brown Green]
You know, so I quilt a lot of baobab trees, which is what you see here. And this was the, this is the quilt that they used for the flyer. I create these guardians and I've been doing them forever, like little, little ones.
This is, these are big. These are 40 by 70, 40 by 70 inches. And, and they're actually characters.
They're, they're me per se, probably, but I don't turn the edges of fabric. I really don't care at this point whether my stitching is straight. I think that is so beautiful.
I, I, when I teach any quilting classes, you've gotta learn applique by hand. I, we do everything by hand. You've gotta have a quarter inch seam allowance.
You've gotta use the right needle, whether it's a between or this or that, whatever it is, you've gotta use the right thread. But then once you learn the correct, and some people may argue that that correctness was back in the day, but I still believe that once you learn those things, you can break the rules. So now I'm about breaking the rules because I know what it should be like.
But there's certain things that you're gonna have to have. I've gotta use the right, um, I've gotta use the right fabric with the right thread. I've gotta figure out the tension in the bobbin.
Someone had said to me when they saw one of my quilts, and I showed a close-up, and the thread was coming through the backing, the coming through to the top, and she typed and told me that I needed to change the tension. And I said, I purposely did that. You know, like, I, that was what I wanted.
I wanted that bobbin thread to come through the top. Um, that's where technology comes in. So, and we have the, and this is what I, I, I tell folks, we have the power to manipulate anything that is, doesn't talk.
I mean, I know AI is starting to, but they all have the same, most of them have the same voices. But, you know, but we have that power to manipulate in a way where we can work with, um, the technology for our benefit. And so this one I did on a, on a, on the long arm quilting machine.
And, um, another thing is, when you look at my fabric, I, I rarely use African fabrics in my work. I've, that I, I have probably one of the best collections of antique African fabrics or hand-dyed African fabrics. I basically only use, mostly only use hand-dyed fabrics.
Um, although people will say, are you sure? And I'm like, well, I made the quilt. So, um, but I try to manipulate whatever it is that I'm doing, even if it's a, like this monkey wrench.
I wanted to manipulate it and I'm working on some other things to, um, you know, where I'll manipulate other quilt block patterns, but I can break the rules now because I know what the block looks like. So, you know, and then I just love working with color. This piece just got acquired by the Smithsonian American Museum in DC.
And, um, it's, it was in the, um, collection of Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi. And, um, and there's no African fabric in this work and it looks really like there might be. And the, but the symbol is an Akwaba symbol.
She is a protector symbol. It talks about a woman, Akua, and her husband who couldn't get pregnant. And they hear about a doctor that lives far, far away.
And they go to him and he prescribes them this Akwabaa symbol, this Akwabaa doll. Um, but first she has to go to a woodmaker. So for him to make it and, um, and it's like laid on his altar.
So it gets charged, they charge, it gets charged and then for her to, and then she gets it and wears it on her back. The heads are flat. And I'm, I don't know if you've seen an Akwabaa symbol, but the heads are flat so it can lay against the back.
There are round heads, rectangular heads, square heads, which mean either girl, boy, right. Um, and then the flying geese in the, you know, there, I wanted it to go in different directions. And I foundation pieced this, this one.
I'm really fascinated with foundation piecing. I did a, I, I published a book um, called Peace Symbols Quilt Blocks from the Global Village, where I, um, I put a call out to people around the world many years ago in 2009. Yeah, before then.
And I asked them if they would make a quilt based on like using one of my, um, um, one of my quilt block patterns. And these are all quilt block patterns from around the world. As a matter of fact, you could probably get this book for like very little now because it's so old and it's out of print.
But if you look at the, if you have it, or if you go to the Australian section, you will see a, a lizard. And the one that you see on the cover is more, is, is African. So you see the feet facing the ground and the arms facing upward.
But the, um, the Australian one, both legs and arms are facing upward. So that makes it different. Yeah.
So.
[Janneken Smucker]
Um, just pay attention. We put the link to where you can find used copies of this book in the chat. So check it out.
I do want to make sure we, we hear about how, um, how you began to use a longarm machine and in recent years, tell us about, um, why you were inspired and kind of how that process went.
[Myrah Brown Green]
So I always thought they were fascinating. And for me, because I create queen size and full size quilts, I always created huge quilts. It's really hard, or it just takes a lot of physical power to push that size quilt through a, through a domestic machine.
And I remember getting called to the store because whenever I bought fabric, I used to buy a lot of quilt fabric and at stores, um, at quilt shops, and I would go in and I, so I was like one of the great customers. So when they got a, this particular quilt shop got a long arm and they brought people in to use it because the object was them for them to sell it. And they invited me and I went and tried it and I said, Oh, that's interesting.
But it was not anything that I could pay for, or it was not something that I would invest in at that moment, but I never let it go out of my mind. And then my friend, um, and I have a friend in Brooklyn who has a quilt, a long arm, and she let me come and, and quilt a small quilt quilt on the machine. And I got hooked.
It was like I was riding a motorcycle. I mean, I could feel the vibration through my body. And I never, I never remember, I never forgot that.
And then during the lockdown, I really wanted it. I had, what I did was I did this, like for years I had done this, um, vision board and I put the long arm machine up and I had my friends and family donate a certain amount of money and I would make them a quilt once I got the long arm. I mean, years and years and years and years and years went by though.
And then during the lockdown, the, the shutdown, or, you know, the 19, the COVID-19 shutdown, I decided to see if I could get a long arm machine. And for some reason I was able to do so. And I live in Brooklyn, so there's really no one in this area, no quilt shops in this area that, um, that can come and put the quilt, the long arm together, but the long arm came.
And at the time we were quarantined, my husband and I, and I, and it was just so heavy, but the guy was nice. You know, we had on, I had on my mask, he brought it in the house and sat at the, the mail person held me said, lady, this is heavy. So I'm like, how am I going to get it upstairs?
So I opened the boxes and I just started bringing one piece up at a time. And then I decided I'm going to try to put this together myself. And I put my machine together myself.
And the only thing I didn't do right was I didn't align the screws, but I worked, I quilted on it because I had a show coming up the following year, a solo exhibition, and I wanted to get some things done on the machine. And just recently I called a handy quilter and said that when I get to one side of the machine, it feels like I'm fighting with it in order to stitch. But I, you know, I had gone through that for like months.
And he says, well, it sounds like your, your screws are not aligned. And so I ended up taking the machine apart again and aligning the screws and now it's fine. So, but yeah, so that's how I got into the long arm.
[Janneken Smucker]
So impressive that you built it yourself. That's just kind of blowing me away. I mean.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah. And it says something for handy quilter as well. I will give them, I have to give them credit because you're able to do that.
Thank you. You know, you're able, like they made it so that you're able to really do it. And they have such good folks.
I mean, I've talked to back and forth to one of the women now on, on Instagram where we follow each other. So this is a quilt that I did for my son. It, it went all over the place.
It, it went, it was in embassies from the U.S. embassy program. And so it hung in Guinea, which was really fascinating that the ambassador, because so the American ambassadors to whatever country or in the world, when they leave the U.S. they get to take an art show with them. And so they go through art and, and they decide who they want in the embassy to have in the, like what art they want to have in the embassy.
And I guess that's what makes them feel more comfortable because they're away from home. And this was the second time an ambassador reached out to me. And this went to Guinea.
And when I did my ancestry, my DNA, that's one of the places that my ancestors are from. So that was really interesting. And so this does have an African fabric that I, that I cut because I fussy cut a lot as well.
If you look in some at some of my quilts, so I cut out the, the, they called a gungun symbols, which means ancestors. And it was, they were like, it was, it's a brown and white fabric. And I think some people would know this African fabric because it's like an old fabric.
And, but I didn't want that color. So I over dyed it in purple, but everything in the quilt is hand dyed. Except I think the red and the drum is a piece of fabric that I, and maybe his shirt.
But now my son has it hanging in his apartment. So, and it's, and this was the first one that I actually had the guts to paint on after I finished it. Cause I said, okay, Myrah, you quilted it.
The fabric was definitely expensive and you're going to paint on it. So I said, you know, I'm going to go with it. And that's the song Afro blue.
And so anyway, so that was.
[Janneken Smucker]
Well, this is a great piece to have up. We have a couple of questions in the Q and A about your fabric. One about, about this choice to not use African made fabrics.
So can you explain a little bit more about why that is a preference of yours?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I do use a lot of like, but very little now, but in most of my quilts in 99.9% of my quilts, I don't. And the reason why is I... I think of my ancestors and how they came here with only what they had on their backs.
And they came as master seamstresses and master tailors, and they made, they did so for other people, but they created for themselves things that reminded them of what they wore back home. And I wanted to know what that felt like. And so when you look at this piece in particular, I mean, it just takes me to Africa.
And even though my son is juxtaposed against these figures from this African fabric that I fussy cut and those figures that people know me to create, the figures in the background dancing. But I just, you know, I just say, okay, how can I create this fabric? And because my background is in world symbols, and I do a lot of color study.
And even when I, you know, when I've taught, I can teach how to create a quilt that you might want to look Australian, or you want to look Asian, or you want to look Indian, based on color, based on shape, based on the size of the pattern, you know. So that's basically why I do what I, you know, what I do, but it's just, it's to make a connection.
[Janneken Smucker]
Can you tell us, we have another question about your hand-dyed fabric. Is that all work you do yourself? And tell us a little bit about your dyeing process.
[Myrah Brown Green]
I have dyed fabric. I've taught classes, I've taught hand-dyed fabric classes, but no, these are not, these are really old hand-dyed fabrics that I got like many years ago, that I just bought them up. And a lot of times I would have like the go of the fabric, the choice.
I had so many choices that I could get because a lot of folks didn't want to buy hand-dyed fabric because it was so expensive. And I'm so happy that I invested in a lot. And then people have gifted me hand-dyed fabrics because they know I use them.
But yeah, so, and then I have, and then years ago, my husband and I took in an elder who was one of the first, who was the first entrepreneur to have an African shop in Brooklyn many, many, many, many years ago, many decades ago. And he lived with us. And when he transitioned, he left me like a lot of hand-dyed, traditional African fabrics.
And so it took me a while to cut for them. Yeah, but now I do. Yeah, but these are all, these are hand-dyed from, these are not African fabrics.
These are hand-dyed fabrics that I found along the way. So.
[Janneken Smucker]
I have another question about using the longarm machine. Do you, in your current work now that you're using the longarm, do you free motion with it or do you thread paint? What are some of the techniques for those of, for those of you in the audience who are familiar with longarm machines that you can gather that it's this massive thing.
It's the machine behind Myrah here in the screen. How, what are the techniques that you like to use?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I like to, well, I see, okay, some people call thread painting, they see thread painting as something different from machine quilting or machine free motion quilting. To me, it's the same thing. I mean, thread painting may be a bit more intense where you fill in specific areas, which I can do.
But I do, I do mostly free motion. I am getting better at the machine now. So creating patterns that are really tiny, like little circles, like I'll practice doing things like that.
I am able to write my name now. Yeah. Before I was having an issue and I would take the quilt off the machine and write my name on the domestic, but now I'm able to write my name.
So that means something. And for those of you who know my name, I have my name and then I have an unk at the end of my name. So, you know, so now I can do that.
I, like I said, I do raw edge quilting. Some people will applique their tops before they put the three layers together. For me, I always thought that that was a waste of time for me.
So I, so now I, so I have the courage to applique the three layers on my long arm, which is a big deal for me. And I can get pretty comfortable. I mean, I get pretty comfortable to when I, when I'm quilting, when I'm applique quilting, you know, quilting people, pieces that are applique.
[Janneken Smucker]
Stitching it right down as part of quilting process, right?
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yes. That's, that's, I mean, I've always done that, but doing it on the long arm, I had to kind of adjust.
[Janneken Smucker]
That would take some courage, I would think.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah. And, you know, I have a good friend, Sylvia Hernandez. She, I would, you know, she, she would get the calls from me when I first got my machine because she has done it for so long.
And, you know, she would just tell me to relax. She told me to buy a, a stress, to buy stress mats for the, in front of the machine for me to stand on because my back would be killing me. And, and then she would just tell me, she says, just relax, even holding the bars.
I was like squeezing them and, you know, so anyway, but yeah.
[Janneken Smucker]
That's, that's exactly, we actually had another question about tips for someone who's terrified of her, her own long arm machine. Anything else you have to offer as a, I know you are, in addition to many of the other hats, Myrah wears, she is a coach to other artists as well.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah, I would say just relax, relax. I have, when I'm using a cone versus a small spool, I, I put this netting sleeve on top of my cones for me. Don't care about the beeping sound as Sylvia would tell me.
Don't care about that sound. So I don't, I don't, I just block it out. You know, and eventually everything will even out, but, and my favorite thread, and I'm going to give a pitch, is bottom line.
I am a bottom line girl. I use it for everything. And so that's, you know.
[Amy Milne]
Well, they will appreciate that, Myrah. That was very generous of you. You have been such a, this has been such a great interview.
Thank you so much for being generous with your time and, and, you know, really getting real about long arm. I love that. If it's beeping, just don't listen to it.
Try to ignore the beeping. Your work is unbelievable. It's just so exciting that you have this solo exhibit, and I wish I could be there to see it.
And I hope that everyone who's able to get there will try to see it.
QSOS interviews usually focus on an object, we call it a touchstone quilt, and that sort of serves as a springboard for the rest of the conversation. Before I have Myrah tell us a little bit about the quilt that she has a great image that you'll be able to see in a moment, I'd first like you to tell us just briefly a little bit about yourself, Myrah. Introduce yourself as, I know Amy lists a lot of hats that you wear, but who are you in relationship to quilts and quilt making?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I have been quilting for, oh my goodness, over 30 years. I'm a self-taught quilter. I did go to college.
I have a PhD in interdisciplinary studies with a focus in art history that focuses on world symbols. So all of my quilts, I will say 100% of my quilts has that foundation. I am also an author, which is really important to me because I create from a quilt perspective.
So I piece stories together and I do a lot of archiving. So this platform is really important to me because I think it's important to archive artists of all genres for generations to be able to come and do research, to further their research. So, and I am really excited about a show opening at the Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn, New York.
I've mounted other solo shows, but this one is so special. It's called Talking Quilts and it will open on Saturday, August 26th at 6 PM. So if anyone's in Brooklyn, New York, please come by.
It's, it's, I'm telling you, it is just a beautiful site and I usually don't talk about my work myself, but it was just overwhelming. So that's basically what I do related to quilt making.
[Janneken Smucker]
Thanks so much. And I certainly want to, I live in Philadelphia, so I'm going to make an effort to get up there and see it in the next month and a half or so.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah, just give me a call.
[Janneken Smucker]
All right. Wonderful. I'm thrilled to see this quilt.
I hope you all see it through the screen share right now as well. And the image of the quilt, Khemetic Paradise. So this is sort of the traditional first question of a QSOS interview.
Tell me about the quilt you brought with you today and brought, of course, is our virtual term here as we are all on Zoom.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Well, I use this quilt because you talked about technology and this is when I, I took a workshop many, many, many years ago. It must've been about 30 years ago. I didn't have a, a, a, a quilting machine, not a long arm, but a quilting, something that I could do free motion on, a domestic.
The machine I had was a machine that my mother had, had given me before I went to college. And so in order to do the free motion quilting, I had to cover up the feed dog. And so here is like serious technology before my time actually, but it's, it's machine embroidery and there's tool there.
It's, it is called Khemetic Paradise. Khemet is an ancient name for Egypt. It's the early name for Egypt.
And it basically, the quilt talks about, it talks, it talks about those things or people that we just don't see and how people living, Americans in particular, can be very chauvinistic in thinking that they're, we're the only people in our bubble that we should worry about. And so you see these little animals and bugs and things that may be in another dimension. And so that's what this is a reminder of.
It's a really, really small quilt. It was the first quilt that I ever showed in a, in a major exhibition. It was in Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi's quilt show, Spirits of the Cloth back in the nineties. And it was the smallest quilt in the show, as you can see, it's 21 by 18 inches. And now it's in the collection of the Bloomberg Foundation.
[Janneken Smucker]
It's a really amazing piece. Can you tell us about some of the specific imagery?
[Myrah Brown Green]
So the piece in the middle is a scarab and the scarab, a winged scarab. It's an Egyptian image... bug that is about everlasting life. It never dies.
And of course it's holding the sun. And and which is, you know, which goes with the everlasting life. And this tool, I use tool on top of the flowers.
I, yeah, I use tool. And, and for those of you who are not quilters or may not know what tool is, it's like a sheer netting fabric. And, and then hand dyed fabric is in the, in the background.
So with embroidery, with machine embroidery, you know, the feed dog was dropped. And because I did start it in the class with my machine and got frustrated. And then I think I may have gotten like a lower end machine that allowed me to, that allowed me to free motion quilt.
And I do a lot of free motion quilting these days, but but that's basically what it is. And a lot of those little bugs are made up creatures that I just made up from my head or what I think, you know, we can be familiar, we can be familiar with. So I guess that's basically it.
And it's, it's called Khemetic Paradise. So it's like, you know, I wanted to, I want you to get a good feeling when you look at it. And like I said, it was in spirits of the cloth.
For those of you who saw that show at the, I think it's called the Contemporary Museum of American Art now or something like that. But it was in that show. And that was like such a powerful exhibition.
So and if you can get a copy of the book, the catalog, which was fabulous, you should try to get a copy of that. It's in the catalog.
[Janneken Smucker]
Yeah, wonderful to see it. And I know I was not fortunate enough to see that exhibition in person. But the book is definitely a great substitute since that's all we have at the moment.
We have one question that's specifically about some of the imagery in this quilt in the chat or in the q&a. And it seems to have images that are similar to those of some Aboriginal art, including from Arnhem Lane in Australia. Do you have any familiarity?
Or are there any links to Aboriginal art?
[Myrah Brown Green]
It can be. Yes. And I think that African art, because there's some symbolism that definitely is African, of course.
But yes, you do see that. The thing about Aboriginal art, when you look at the lizard, in most Aboriginal imagery of lizards, or that symbolism, the legs are both going in the same direction, the legs and the arms. When you look at African symbolism, and usually when I because I use a lot of lizard like creatures in my work, and which would be taken from the Dogon Kanaga mask, the arms are going upward, and the legs are planted on the earth.
And the body, for me, becomes a vessel where we enter earth from the universe. And when our time has expired, or even with our, you know, even if it's we're not talking about transition, we may be talking about consciousness, our consciousness goes back into the universe. So there's a lot of intermingling with what the visual look of the symbolism might appear.
But those lizards are basically taken from the Kanaga mask, if you can look that up, of the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa. So.
[Janneken Smucker]
That's fascinating. Thank you for giving that further explanation. So you mentioned that you are a self-taught quilt maker.
Can you take us back and tell us how that transpired? Why did you start making quilts?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I started sewing when I was a little girl. I was in the first grade. I'm a lot older than you are.
And back then, we used to get checked in school for pneumonia, polio, all of those things. And this one day, I was tested and I had walking pneumonia. And they rushed me to the hospital.
Nowadays, pneumonia is like getting a cold for some. But I was in the hospital, I remember, for like about a month or more. And they would give you shots, like, and I was a little girl.
When I came out of the hospital, I stuttered really badly. And some people call it stammering. And I had stuttered for years.
And my mother had a sewing machine. And instead of me talking, because children were cruel, of course, I just started sewing. And I would take my babysitting money and I would buy fabric with it as I got older.
And I would just sew. And then when I started out at Boston University and then transferred to Pratt Institute, one of my professors gave us an assignment, a final assignment to create a quilt. And no, not to create a quilt, to create a project using specific colors.
And because I had the sewing machine, I decided to, I had this old book. And it was like a craft book and it had a quilt in it. I said, wow, that looks interesting.
So I looked at it and I said, okay, so I needed to go get fabric. And I got the best fabric that I could find, which was velvet, which I didn't know that was so difficult to work with. And I created this quilt top based on what I saw in this book.
And when I went to, when I took the assignment, I was so proud because I was an A student and I got the assignment back and my professor had given me a D and I was devastated. And not until years, I don't even know why, I didn't ask her why she gave me the D. But years and years later, when I started to quilt, I realized I only had a top and a backing.
There was no batting inside. And that's why she gave me that grade. And so, and it wasn't quilted together.
I had, I guess I had just sewn it like an envelope. And now if I had made it now, you know, I've seen quilts with two layers with just a top where folks call quilts in major exhibitions. And so the time has changed in how we see things.
So that's basically how I got into quilting. And then one of my oldest daughters, godmother at the time, took us, she wanted to take her to the quilt guild, Brooklyn Quilt Guild. And I said, well, since I have the other girls, I have three daughters and a son, let's all go.
My children were not interested. They thought it was a cult. And I loved it.
And that's where I started really getting serious about it. I bought too many books, too much fabric, too many tools. And, you know, that's where I started quilting.
And so I kind of began blending the things that I knew and that I learned historically, and, you know, put them into my quilts.
[Janneken Smucker]
So part of the focus of this season of Running Stitch, as you know, is technology. And along with that is like the learning of the skills and the tools and the processes. So back then, when you were, you know, after this guild meeting, and you started to get quite interested in quilt making, what was your process?
And what were some of the tools and technologies that you used at that time?
[Myrah Brown Green]
So the first Monday, I mean, Saturday, Saturday, I went back to the meeting by myself. They usually had a little workshop that, you know, where people could follow along, someone would teach something. And someone was teaching strip piecing using magazine piece paper.
And you would just, it was almost like a foundation type thing. And that was my go-to. And all I made was strip pieced quilts after that.
But I would love to make huge ones. So I started making queen size quilts. And I would only tie them.
Because, you know, the quilting, I wasn't a quilting in the ditch kind of girl. So I hadn't really found my niche yet, and how I was going to join these pieces together. But I would tie them together.
I mean, I was comfortable with that at that point. And then I would do like little things, I would maybe quilt part of it and tie part of it. And then I was getting and then I don't know if I took a workshop.
I don't think so. Maybe I started buying books. I saw this free motion thing that people were doing.
And maybe it was at a quilt show or something. And I said, Wow, that looks really fascinating to me. And I wanted to do that.
At that time, I didn't have a sewing machine that could do it, you know, without putting the cardboard on top, because people said, Oh, you can put a cardboard on top to block off the feed dog. But I said, I want one of those, whatever kind of machine it is. And I ended up, I think I bought it like an Elna or something, the first one that I got, because it did embroidery, different embroidery stitches, but I never used them.
And then finally, I got a Bernina 150, which is so old. But every time I go get it cleaned, the person wants to buy it. Because it was it was it I don't think they make them anymore.
I know they don't. But it was the quilters edition that came out for like a year. And I don't know, maybe they were too expensive to make because it's all stainless steel on the inside or whatever.
But that is my go to. I have burnt the motor out maybe three or four times from machine quilting. And I mean, when I tried it, I try to sneak and not drop the feed dog.
And that's what would burn my motor out, which you're not, don't do that. But it just felt so good to be able to, to do it without the feed dog being dropped. Yeah.
Did I answer your question?
[Janneken Smucker]
Absolutely.
[Janneken Smucker]
Thank you. I'd like to hear a little bit about then how additional technologies and tools may have changed your quilt making over time. And I know we have a recent big change coming up just in the last few years.
But were there other things that changed your quilt making process that techniques you tried out over the years before the most recent adoption of the longarm?
[Myrah Brown Green]
Oh, yeah. I mean, I've, I always felt like I could do whatever I saw. And I may not do it in the way that that the teacher would teach it in a book or like I would find my way.
I would try to be comfortable with it. So using Lamar or, or tool or any of those things, you've got to have specific needles. You've got to have specific thread.
You've got to have a certain type of fusible web. And I'm saying, I'm talking about those tools because all of those tools help either help you if you're doing the right thing with your machine, because you got to change the tension, you got to change the, you got to change the, the, the bobbin thread, or you got to change. I mean, I've worked with bobbin thread that or top thread that was too heavy to go through any needle.
So I would hand wind it on my bobbin. And then so from the back of my quilt, like so I put the front down as like the back and I would sew from the backside, just so that I could use that thread. I'm one of those women that buy shoes first and a dress to match my shoes.
It's always been like that for me. And it's the same thing with quilt with quilting. I buy the thread first and then I buy fabric to match the thread because I'm just a lover of thread.
So I'm one of the perfect, I'm a perfect example, perfect someone to be an ambassador of thread.
[Janneken Smucker]
Thank you thread companies, I hope you're listening, you can get a great.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm a thread fanatic.
[Janneken Smucker]
Wonderful.
[Janneken Smucker]
So how does, what role does the quilting that the stitches itself, whether you're using, you know, one of those older machines, what is the role that the quilting stitches play within the piece as a whole? I'm sure it's different on every work of art you make, but how do you view the quilting, especially since thread is so important to you?
[Myrah Brown Green]
You know, so I quilt a lot of baobab trees, which is what you see here. And this was the, this is the quilt that they used for the flyer. I create these guardians and I've been doing them forever, like little, little ones.
This is, these are big. These are 40 by 70, 40 by 70 inches. And, and they're actually characters.
They're, they're me per se, probably, but I don't turn the edges of fabric. I really don't care at this point whether my stitching is straight. I think that is so beautiful.
I, I, when I teach any quilting classes, you've gotta learn applique by hand. I, we do everything by hand. You've gotta have a quarter inch seam allowance.
You've gotta use the right needle, whether it's a between or this or that, whatever it is, you've gotta use the right thread. But then once you learn the correct, and some people may argue that that correctness was back in the day, but I still believe that once you learn those things, you can break the rules. So now I'm about breaking the rules because I know what it should be like.
But there's certain things that you're gonna have to have. I've gotta use the right, um, I've gotta use the right fabric with the right thread. I've gotta figure out the tension in the bobbin.
Someone had said to me when they saw one of my quilts, and I showed a close-up, and the thread was coming through the backing, the coming through to the top, and she typed and told me that I needed to change the tension. And I said, I purposely did that. You know, like, I, that was what I wanted.
I wanted that bobbin thread to come through the top. Um, that's where technology comes in. So, and we have the, and this is what I, I, I tell folks, we have the power to manipulate anything that is, doesn't talk.
I mean, I know AI is starting to, but they all have the same, most of them have the same voices. But, you know, but we have that power to manipulate in a way where we can work with, um, the technology for our benefit. And so this one I did on a, on a, on the long arm quilting machine.
And, um, another thing is, when you look at my fabric, I, I rarely use African fabrics in my work. I've, that I, I have probably one of the best collections of antique African fabrics or hand-dyed African fabrics. I basically only use, mostly only use hand-dyed fabrics.
Um, although people will say, are you sure? And I'm like, well, I made the quilt. So, um, but I try to manipulate whatever it is that I'm doing, even if it's a, like this monkey wrench.
I wanted to manipulate it and I'm working on some other things to, um, you know, where I'll manipulate other quilt block patterns, but I can break the rules now because I know what the block looks like. So, you know, and then I just love working with color. This piece just got acquired by the Smithsonian American Museum in DC.
And, um, it's, it was in the, um, collection of Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi. And, um, and there's no African fabric in this work and it looks really like there might be. And the, but the symbol is an Akwaba symbol.
She is a protector symbol. It talks about a woman, Akua, and her husband who couldn't get pregnant. And they hear about a doctor that lives far, far away.
And they go to him and he prescribes them this Akwabaa symbol, this Akwabaa doll. Um, but first she has to go to a woodmaker. So for him to make it and, um, and it's like laid on his altar.
So it gets charged, they charge, it gets charged and then for her to, and then she gets it and wears it on her back. The heads are flat. And I'm, I don't know if you've seen an Akwabaa symbol, but the heads are flat so it can lay against the back.
There are round heads, rectangular heads, square heads, which mean either girl, boy, right. Um, and then the flying geese in the, you know, there, I wanted it to go in different directions. And I foundation pieced this, this one.
I'm really fascinated with foundation piecing. I did a, I, I published a book um, called Peace Symbols Quilt Blocks from the Global Village, where I, um, I put a call out to people around the world many years ago in 2009. Yeah, before then.
And I asked them if they would make a quilt based on like using one of my, um, um, one of my quilt block patterns. And these are all quilt block patterns from around the world. As a matter of fact, you could probably get this book for like very little now because it's so old and it's out of print.
But if you look at the, if you have it, or if you go to the Australian section, you will see a, a lizard. And the one that you see on the cover is more, is, is African. So you see the feet facing the ground and the arms facing upward.
But the, um, the Australian one, both legs and arms are facing upward. So that makes it different. Yeah.
So.
[Janneken Smucker]
Um, just pay attention. We put the link to where you can find used copies of this book in the chat. So check it out.
I do want to make sure we, we hear about how, um, how you began to use a longarm machine and in recent years, tell us about, um, why you were inspired and kind of how that process went.
[Myrah Brown Green]
So I always thought they were fascinating. And for me, because I create queen size and full size quilts, I always created huge quilts. It's really hard, or it just takes a lot of physical power to push that size quilt through a, through a domestic machine.
And I remember getting called to the store because whenever I bought fabric, I used to buy a lot of quilt fabric and at stores, um, at quilt shops, and I would go in and I, so I was like one of the great customers. So when they got a, this particular quilt shop got a long arm and they brought people in to use it because the object was them for them to sell it. And they invited me and I went and tried it and I said, Oh, that's interesting.
But it was not anything that I could pay for, or it was not something that I would invest in at that moment, but I never let it go out of my mind. And then my friend, um, and I have a friend in Brooklyn who has a quilt, a long arm, and she let me come and, and quilt a small quilt quilt on the machine. And I got hooked.
It was like I was riding a motorcycle. I mean, I could feel the vibration through my body. And I never, I never remember, I never forgot that.
And then during the lockdown, I really wanted it. I had, what I did was I did this, like for years I had done this, um, vision board and I put the long arm machine up and I had my friends and family donate a certain amount of money and I would make them a quilt once I got the long arm. I mean, years and years and years and years and years went by though.
And then during the lockdown, the, the shutdown, or, you know, the 19, the COVID-19 shutdown, I decided to see if I could get a long arm machine. And for some reason I was able to do so. And I live in Brooklyn, so there's really no one in this area, no quilt shops in this area that, um, that can come and put the quilt, the long arm together, but the long arm came.
And at the time we were quarantined, my husband and I, and I, and it was just so heavy, but the guy was nice. You know, we had on, I had on my mask, he brought it in the house and sat at the, the mail person held me said, lady, this is heavy. So I'm like, how am I going to get it upstairs?
So I opened the boxes and I just started bringing one piece up at a time. And then I decided I'm going to try to put this together myself. And I put my machine together myself.
And the only thing I didn't do right was I didn't align the screws, but I worked, I quilted on it because I had a show coming up the following year, a solo exhibition, and I wanted to get some things done on the machine. And just recently I called a handy quilter and said that when I get to one side of the machine, it feels like I'm fighting with it in order to stitch. But I, you know, I had gone through that for like months.
And he says, well, it sounds like your, your screws are not aligned. And so I ended up taking the machine apart again and aligning the screws and now it's fine. So, but yeah, so that's how I got into the long arm.
[Janneken Smucker]
So impressive that you built it yourself. That's just kind of blowing me away. I mean.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah. And it says something for handy quilter as well. I will give them, I have to give them credit because you're able to do that.
Thank you. You know, you're able, like they made it so that you're able to really do it. And they have such good folks.
I mean, I've talked to back and forth to one of the women now on, on Instagram where we follow each other. So this is a quilt that I did for my son. It, it went all over the place.
It, it went, it was in embassies from the U.S. embassy program. And so it hung in Guinea, which was really fascinating that the ambassador, because so the American ambassadors to whatever country or in the world, when they leave the U.S. they get to take an art show with them. And so they go through art and, and they decide who they want in the embassy to have in the, like what art they want to have in the embassy.
And I guess that's what makes them feel more comfortable because they're away from home. And this was the second time an ambassador reached out to me. And this went to Guinea.
And when I did my ancestry, my DNA, that's one of the places that my ancestors are from. So that was really interesting. And so this does have an African fabric that I, that I cut because I fussy cut a lot as well.
If you look in some at some of my quilts, so I cut out the, the, they called a gungun symbols, which means ancestors. And it was, they were like, it was, it's a brown and white fabric. And I think some people would know this African fabric because it's like an old fabric.
And, but I didn't want that color. So I over dyed it in purple, but everything in the quilt is hand dyed. Except I think the red and the drum is a piece of fabric that I, and maybe his shirt.
But now my son has it hanging in his apartment. So, and it's, and this was the first one that I actually had the guts to paint on after I finished it. Cause I said, okay, Myrah, you quilted it.
The fabric was definitely expensive and you're going to paint on it. So I said, you know, I'm going to go with it. And that's the song Afro blue.
And so anyway, so that was.
[Janneken Smucker]
Well, this is a great piece to have up. We have a couple of questions in the Q and A about your fabric. One about, about this choice to not use African made fabrics.
So can you explain a little bit more about why that is a preference of yours?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I do use a lot of like, but very little now, but in most of my quilts in 99.9% of my quilts, I don't. And the reason why is I... I think of my ancestors and how they came here with only what they had on their backs.
And they came as master seamstresses and master tailors, and they made, they did so for other people, but they created for themselves things that reminded them of what they wore back home. And I wanted to know what that felt like. And so when you look at this piece in particular, I mean, it just takes me to Africa.
And even though my son is juxtaposed against these figures from this African fabric that I fussy cut and those figures that people know me to create, the figures in the background dancing. But I just, you know, I just say, okay, how can I create this fabric? And because my background is in world symbols, and I do a lot of color study.
And even when I, you know, when I've taught, I can teach how to create a quilt that you might want to look Australian, or you want to look Asian, or you want to look Indian, based on color, based on shape, based on the size of the pattern, you know. So that's basically why I do what I, you know, what I do, but it's just, it's to make a connection.
[Janneken Smucker]
Can you tell us, we have another question about your hand-dyed fabric. Is that all work you do yourself? And tell us a little bit about your dyeing process.
[Myrah Brown Green]
I have dyed fabric. I've taught classes, I've taught hand-dyed fabric classes, but no, these are not, these are really old hand-dyed fabrics that I got like many years ago, that I just bought them up. And a lot of times I would have like the go of the fabric, the choice.
I had so many choices that I could get because a lot of folks didn't want to buy hand-dyed fabric because it was so expensive. And I'm so happy that I invested in a lot. And then people have gifted me hand-dyed fabrics because they know I use them.
But yeah, so, and then I have, and then years ago, my husband and I took in an elder who was one of the first, who was the first entrepreneur to have an African shop in Brooklyn many, many, many, many years ago, many decades ago. And he lived with us. And when he transitioned, he left me like a lot of hand-dyed, traditional African fabrics.
And so it took me a while to cut for them. Yeah, but now I do. Yeah, but these are all, these are hand-dyed from, these are not African fabrics.
These are hand-dyed fabrics that I found along the way. So.
[Janneken Smucker]
I have another question about using the longarm machine. Do you, in your current work now that you're using the longarm, do you free motion with it or do you thread paint? What are some of the techniques for those of, for those of you in the audience who are familiar with longarm machines that you can gather that it's this massive thing.
It's the machine behind Myrah here in the screen. How, what are the techniques that you like to use?
[Myrah Brown Green]
I like to, well, I see, okay, some people call thread painting, they see thread painting as something different from machine quilting or machine free motion quilting. To me, it's the same thing. I mean, thread painting may be a bit more intense where you fill in specific areas, which I can do.
But I do, I do mostly free motion. I am getting better at the machine now. So creating patterns that are really tiny, like little circles, like I'll practice doing things like that.
I am able to write my name now. Yeah. Before I was having an issue and I would take the quilt off the machine and write my name on the domestic, but now I'm able to write my name.
So that means something. And for those of you who know my name, I have my name and then I have an unk at the end of my name. So, you know, so now I can do that.
I, like I said, I do raw edge quilting. Some people will applique their tops before they put the three layers together. For me, I always thought that that was a waste of time for me.
So I, so now I, so I have the courage to applique the three layers on my long arm, which is a big deal for me. And I can get pretty comfortable. I mean, I get pretty comfortable to when I, when I'm quilting, when I'm applique quilting, you know, quilting people, pieces that are applique.
[Janneken Smucker]
Stitching it right down as part of quilting process, right?
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yes. That's, that's, I mean, I've always done that, but doing it on the long arm, I had to kind of adjust.
[Janneken Smucker]
That would take some courage, I would think.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah. And, you know, I have a good friend, Sylvia Hernandez. She, I would, you know, she, she would get the calls from me when I first got my machine because she has done it for so long.
And, you know, she would just tell me to relax. She told me to buy a, a stress, to buy stress mats for the, in front of the machine for me to stand on because my back would be killing me. And, and then she would just tell me, she says, just relax, even holding the bars.
I was like squeezing them and, you know, so anyway, but yeah.
[Janneken Smucker]
That's, that's exactly, we actually had another question about tips for someone who's terrified of her, her own long arm machine. Anything else you have to offer as a, I know you are, in addition to many of the other hats, Myrah wears, she is a coach to other artists as well.
[Myrah Brown Green]
Yeah, I would say just relax, relax. I have, when I'm using a cone versus a small spool, I, I put this netting sleeve on top of my cones for me. Don't care about the beeping sound as Sylvia would tell me.
Don't care about that sound. So I don't, I don't, I just block it out. You know, and eventually everything will even out, but, and my favorite thread, and I'm going to give a pitch, is bottom line.
I am a bottom line girl. I use it for everything. And so that's, you know.
[Amy Milne]
Well, they will appreciate that, Myrah. That was very generous of you. You have been such a, this has been such a great interview.
Thank you so much for being generous with your time and, and, you know, really getting real about long arm. I love that. If it's beeping, just don't listen to it.
Try to ignore the beeping. Your work is unbelievable. It's just so exciting that you have this solo exhibit, and I wish I could be there to see it.
And I hope that everyone who's able to get there will try to see it.
Citation
“Myrah Brown Green,” Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories, accessed September 1, 2026, https://qsos.quiltalliance.org/items/show/2718.