Jen Hewett
Photos
Date
3/1/2023
Identifier
QSOS-218
Interviewee
Jen Hewett
Interviewer
Lisa Woolfork
Location
Virtual Interview
Interview indexer
Anne Lafferty
Transcription
[Lisa Woolfork]
Hello everyone. My name is Lisa Woolfork. I am the host and producer of Stitch Please, which is a podcast that centers Black women, girls, and fems in sewing.
And I am honored to have been invited by the Quilt Alliance to interview Jen Hewett today, today, March 1st, 2023. Jen Hewett, welcome to our conversation and thanks for being here today.
[Jen Hewett]
Oh my gosh, Lisa. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.
[Lisa Woolfork]
This is our fourth time. And now we're going to be in the Library of Congress. I can't believe this.
[Jen Hewett]
We're just in the Library of Congress now.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Well, I can't wait to see what the fifth conversation is going to put us on the moon. Let's try that. Let's do that.
So Jen, I am delighted to speak with you today. I wanted to talk with you about the quilt that you have behind you. You said this is from a 2015 series.
Can you talk about the quilt behind you and what it is and what we are meant to get from this beautiful piece?
[Jen Hewett]
Well, the quilt behind me, which is probably about 18 by 24 inches wide. It's not a huge quilt. It is a part of my 2014 or 2015 because what is time anymore, especially in a pandemic.
But part of a series that I did for a show at Rare Device, which is a gallery and a shop in San Francisco, where I lived at the time. And it incorporates bits of block printed and screen printed fabric. And it was really meant to reflect the many, many trips that I made on Highway 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles over the number of years that I'd been living in the Bay Area.
So I moved to the Bay Area in 1992. My parents are still in Los Angeles, where I grew up. And every couple of months or so, I would take a drive on this boring, boring highway that's essentially for trucks going through industrial farmland.
And on one side, it's industrial farmland. On the other side, it's just nature allowed to be nature. And I was really fascinated by that juxtaposition, but also by the fact that it was this connecting road for me.
It was connecting my life as an adult to my life as a child and what that meant. I had five hours to really go from being like the adult living in the Bay Area to being the child of my parents home in Los Angeles. And so what I tried to do was really connect with my surroundings through printmaking.
So you can see behind me, and I don't want to grab it because it might fall over. It's in a frame. This is the last one I managed to sell all the pieces, except for I like this one so much, I kept it.
Good job. But interestingly, in 2014 or 2015, whatever year I was doing this in, I had also been working on a project called Print Pattern Sew. And that was the I was block printing yardage and sewing it to clothes every single month for the entire year.
And I had all these offcuts. So a lot of the offcuts were actually incorporated into this piece. So a lot of my work is botanically inspired.
And so were a lot of my clothes, some of the fabric on my clothes. And also a couple of the pieces didn't make it into fabric right away. But eventually became part of my world market collection.
And so when people say that, you know, they are giving themselves a year or two to make it as a surface designer or as an artist or as a printmaker, I'm like, it took 10 years for some of the stuff to find a commercial purpose. But little did I know when I created this all those years ago, that there actually had been this huge lineage of textiles in my family that nobody talked about. Nobody told me about because it was I don't know if it was just something that was, you know, as as both of my grandmothers became professional women, they kind of let go of and they didn't really talk about.
I mean, I think that had a lot to do with it. And so I knew them as schoolteachers and mothers and grandmothers, and I didn't know them as creative people who are interested in textiles. And I only found out like in the last two years, last year, really.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Unbelievable. And what I appreciate about what you're describing about the highway journey, because what it is actually is both a metaphor and a documentation, because one thing about California is that there is driving. There are a lot.
So much driving. I can never understand why none of those folks in California have friends because everyone seems to drive alone in a car. And it takes so far to get places.
And what I appreciate about what you do is what you often do is you have a keen eye. You are able to see and discern that. Yes, I am taking this drive.
And on the left, it's just me and these giant trucks. But on the right, there is the part that I'm able to connect with and renew myself with. And so this idea that that journey, you know, where other folks might see a headache, you know, you are able to see art.
And it just shows it just shows me that your process is so. You're into your your creative intellectual output, the way that you the way that you receive materials is so capacious. I feel like there's so much you're often holding on to, you know, that organic and inorganic and finding ways to blend those so beautifully, I could imagine someone saying, I'm not going to think about the highway.
I'm just going to think about the nature. Right. But that's not what you do.
You manage to do both simultaneously. And I wonder when you start to build out your design, do you ever ask yourself a series of questions? Or do you just do you just observe and pull from the large set of ideas that are circulating around you all the time?
[Jen Hewett]
Well, OK, so first of all, your statement and your question reminded me that you are, in fact, a professor of English literature because the way you made those connections. That were maybe not explicit, but you you made those connections and you brought it together. And I thought I almost feel like I'm in a classroom analyzing a text because I was an English major.
You and you are the text.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And you are the text. You are the text. You are.
This is you. We are here to talk about your work and you know, I'm paying attention. This is amazing.
They all need to know.
[Jen Hewett]
I also think about how much literature, especially Victorian literature and early 20th century literature is really about women sitting around and looking out windows and writing about what they saw. Right. Or sitting like, you know, the whole idea of Jane Austin being a drawing room author, nothing really happens in her book.
I'm like, so much happens in a book, right? Yes. The whole thing, taking everything in.
It's not Rambo. It's not an action film in that way. It is it is silent.
It is about nuance. It's about observing and analyzing and interpreting what is going on around you and maybe getting it wrong. But anyway, so I just had to throw that in there.
But your question about whether or not I have questions, I think I did in the beginning. You know, I have to be honest. I've been doing this now for 15 years professionally.
And I think I did have questions in the beginning. But in so many ways, it's just ingrained in me. It's like, what am I interested in?
What do I feel like I have to say? What is what comes easily and naturally to me? And honestly, what comes easily and naturally has changed over the years as I've gotten better at what I'm doing.
And right now I'm working on my next fabric collection, and I had this inkling of an idea of like, wait, I'm really fascinated by this one thing. And it's actually about books, which I won't go too far into. But I'm interested in the physical, the materiality of a book.
Yeah. And particularly in old books and vintage books. And how do I interpret that?
Right. Like, how do I make that me, which is usually punching up the color a little bit, making things kind of off, which I really we can talk about that, how I love things that are kind of off. I don't want things to be like too perfect and too, I don't know, too harmonious.
I want there to be a jolt of something that feels a little bit wrong, but you can't put your finger on it. And so a lot of times it's like, how do I interpret something that I'm seeing and say it with my own voice? Yes.
Yes. And so the questions are no longer explicit. They're just kind of floating around and they just come out of my hands.
Right. Like the answer comes out of my hand as I'm drawing, as I'm printing, as I'm tweaking things on Photoshop and trying to get the color right. I don't know.
And then when I'm also right now, I'm actually working on an actual quilt that will be quilted and bound and require some symmetry and some real thought about color. And it's really exciting because it's completely out of my comfort zone to get things nice and square and perfect. And yeah, so that's been super fun.
But also I'm like, oh, this this looks a little bit too harmonious. Like these colors, there's too much red. I got to make it a little bit funky.
How am I going to break this up? And so that's what I've been working on, too.
[Lisa Woolfork]
You know what I love about hearing you say that is that it reminds me of someone. It actually reminds me of Thelonious Monk. And Thelonious Monk, the famous jazz pianist, like incredibly well-known genius, and he was known for dissonance.
He was known for deliberately hitting the wrong notes on purpose. And that was part of the genius. And so when I heard you say that, I was like, oh, yeah, she's getting her mug on.
Right. Like this is it is this idea of when you emphasize that, which is not perfect, it absolutely exposes what we're meant to be thinking about art in the first place. Right.
It makes it keep going.
[Jen Hewett]
Well, so it's funny that you bring this up because this scarf is this is one of my designs and it's called LP. Right. After after a record and right, doesn't it feel like a Thelonious Monk album?
Yes, yes, yes. And you know why?
[Lisa Woolfork]
Because of the way that the circles reverberate the sound. It's like a speaker. It's like I see audio rings.
It's like the reverberation of a sound in visual format.
[Jen Hewett]
And if you see it in real life, it's actually super wonky. Like the circles aren't perfect. They're not perfect.
360 degree circles. Again, the colors are a little bit off. Like there's a sudden jolt of gray somewhere in here that doesn't really show up anywhere else.
It kind of works. And part of the reason that I was so fascinated by record covers is that actually my dad back in the day used to run record factories and so places that press vinyl. And so we always had records in our house because he would bring home Billboard and we could choose like if it was if it was released by certain companies, he we could get that record for a dollar.
So it was like the old school BMG Music or Columbia House, except it wasn't a pyramid scheme. So we so we just always had records. And sometimes he would just bring home.
A record because he was really interested in the jacket. In fact, that's how we got our first NWA album.
[Lisa Woolfork]
It was like a very ferocious young man. They seem committed. I think we should listen to this.
[Jen Hewett]
Right. And we did. My dad was like, OK, I think we're not going to listen to this.
During the daytime.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Yes. You know, and I wonder about the music. What did it mean that you were able to get music into your house just at random in this way?
Right. Like it's like all of these things are influences that feed what art means and how you are able to develop as an artist. And I keep thinking about the story you told in your first book about like just walking along as a child and looking at the ground and like that became a way for you to pull together so many of these organic elements for your process overall.
Can you do you see any kind of synergies between bringing in like your dad bringing home all this fun stuff and the experiment of it? Like, you know, this is what the cover looks like. This is what the jacket looks like.
Well, let's see what's inside that discovery. Did that help you? You think as an artist along the way about the other questions you might ask or things that might be surprising for your process?
[Jen Hewett]
I think in my family, there was not a sense of snobbery around music. And I think this is important because I was allowed to like what I liked. Right.
That my dad loved that NWA album as much as he loved this acapella Christian Christmas album that my brother and I still laugh because we know it's Christmas when dad plays it. The record's totally warped. So I bought him a CD of it.
But I think that was really important because there was no sense of highbrow and lowbrow. And I think that's where my little bit of offness comes from. Right.
Is that often in what's considered like lowbrow or art for the masses? There is a little something weird about that. There's like a little bit something tacky in there.
And you can't really put your finger on what the tacky is. I think that's somehow been incorporated into what I do. I don't know.
But in many ways, too, it just wasn't that exciting to have access to all these records because I take it for granted because I grew up with it. Like I grew up and I grew up with all these kids who were very wealthy. And my family was like solidly middle class.
And I like to say my dad was upper blue collar because he he was he worked his way up to management. And so their parents were like builders and doctors. Well, their fathers were their mothers were stay at home ladies who play tennis.
And so I think there is the sense that like what I have is kind of cool, but also like what they have is a tennis court in their backyard. So and it wasn't until I got into college and friends were filling out those Columbia House ads in the back of the college magazine to get their ten albums for a dollar that I realized that I actually had had something really special.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Very special. Very special. Absolutely.
Now, you were saying earlier that like so the Highway Five kind of set you off on some type of path in 2014 and 2015. And as you started to move toward gathering what you needed to create your first book, did you have a sense of what you did? You have a clear sense of like, OK, this is what I want this book to represent about me.
This is what I want to bring forward to help other folks, other folks learn to do what I do or just to kind of equip themselves with a new way, you know, with a new way to approach these questions about art and about printmaking, because as you were talking about text and textiles, that's something I think about a lot as well, right? That the text of a book and then the textile is a fabric, like all of these things, fibers and all these things mixing together. Can you talk a little bit about like your own origin story for your first book?
[Jen Hewett]
OK, so. I think you're making me feel like sound like this deeply intellectual person and when in reality, I was just tired of people asking me to tell them exactly how I did what I did. And Lisa, you know, you know, I am the queen of boundaries and like, you know, this is not a transactional relationship.
Do not ask me to give to handhold you through your project, stranger on the Internet. I know. No, right.
So that was one of the reasons I had already been. I had been teaching block printing classes in person for a while. I had my own online block printing class.
I had all these projects that I'd been sharing on social media. And I kept giving and giving like I would do an online class and someone would say, well, that's too expensive. And I or I would do an in-person class and people would say, well, you know, I wish you would come to.
The biggest one that cracks me up is Brazil. Brazilians are great, but they always were like, come to Brazil. Like, I can't go to Brazil to teach.
I just can't. There's no way I would be able to make any money. Y'all are y'all.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Is Brazil paid? Is like the consulate putting something together for me to come? Because, you know, Brazil is not down the street.
I cannot get there on Highway five.
[Jen Hewett]
But I you know, but again, like now Brazilians wanted to pay me to go to Brazil and hang out for three weeks. I would absolutely do it. Yes, but, you know, Brazil, thanks.
That's right. Just put it out there. But, you know, we like come to Washington state, come to New York to do this.
And it was just so unfeasible for me to do it because I have like I have. Home and a dog and travel is exhausting, as you know, Lisa. And so it finally dawned on me that I should just put together a book right, that book is accessible to people in a way that all the other things are not necessarily accessible.
And so I put together a proposal because I had done this project. I was like, this would make a great book. Halfway through that project, I thought through print Patterson, I thought this would make a great book.
So I started to put together the proposal for it. And as an English major, former English major, I used to do a lot of fundraising and grant writing like this is easy. I know how to ask people for money, essentially.
I know how to make a case for people paying me for whatever this project is going to be. And I put that together and I had this idea like I had always. One of the reasons I started sewing was because I have a very specific taste and a sense of style, and I couldn't always find the clothes that I liked.
And also like kind of a snob. So I like things to be well made with nice fabric. And there was a period of time where Lisa, you and I are about the same age.
Clothes used to be really, really well made. Right. And about 10 to 15 years ago, even the higher end clothes just have not been as well made as they used to be.
I used to be able to get a sweater. I saw sweaters I bought from Banana Republic on sale like 20 years ago that I can still wear. Right.
[Lisa Woolfork]
A wool suit, a wool suit that I got to interview for this job. Like and that was 23 years ago. I still have that suit, right?
[Jen Hewett]
I mean, you can probably sell it for a lot of money on Depop. I thought, well, maybe I could make my own clothes. You know, I have a sewing machine that my parents gave me when I was 13 that I hardly ever touched.
And why not? And then I got to the point where I realized, well, I can't even find the fabric that I like. So maybe I'll just make my own fabric because I had that skill.
Or if I didn't have the skill, I at least had the idea that I could teach myself how to do it. And so that's how Print Patterns Sew, the project was begun. And it was also this time where.
Like, you didn't have to buy a big five sewing pattern, you could work with these independent sewing patterns that not only were the instructions super clear, they also had like sew alongs on their blogs.
[Lisa Woolfork]
You know, all this. They tend to be more size inclusive, too, like much more size inclusive. There's a lot of things that independent pattern companies were and are doing.
That the big five is just kind of catching up to at this point.
[Jen Hewett]
So, yeah, absolutely. I think now it's the big four. We might be down to the big three soon enough, but.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Well, I think it's five now because it's a whole new pattern company that just started. Oh, Mimi G's. Yes, yes, Mimi G's section.
So there's a lot. So they're they're definitely trying. And those are way more inclusive than in lots of ways than the other ones.
So I'm pretty excited for that. I wanted to turn back to making your own fabric, because if we imagine the fabric as the as the foundation of what it means to make anything that you're going to sew, either are you going to quilt a piece or are you going to like make a jacket? Are you going to do a hand towel?
The fabric itself becomes like the basis for that. That is the spring from which everything else is launched. And do you get the sense that there is something empowering about being able to dye your own fabric, to print your own fabric that's even different than being able to make your own garments from the the fabric that you printed?
It seems like that's something I find so engaging about what you do is that you kind of take it all the way down to the studs, right? Like these are the things you need to really make something that is yours. Can you talk about that process of like why printing your own fabric or why printing in that way is so important?
[Jen Hewett]
I think it's because it makes you even less of a consumer and more of a producer. I think this is a really important thing as I've become more and more involved in the quilting industry. And let me say, like, it's a nice it provides me with a livelihood.
But I also see the many ways in which an industry that is about like self-sufficiency and creating your own things also is just exist to sell, sell, sell, sell yourself. Right. And I have thoughts about this.
I have a lot of conflicted thoughts about this as someone who actively participates in the industry, who makes a living from it.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Yes.
[Jen Hewett]
But there is something about being able to take a plain piece of fabric and to execute an idea that you have in your head that is really like at the core of being a maker. Right. I don't know how to explain it much more than that, like because, you know, obviously I'm not weaving the fabric.
I'm not saying everybody should just throw in the towel and spin their spin their own thread and weave their own fabric. But sometimes it's nice to pull yourself out of that system to make the thing, the thing that you absolutely want, because nobody's going to give you the thing you absolutely want. Often you're going to have to make it yourself.
And I think particularly with quilting, like the amazing things that I see coming out of QuiltCon, the amazing quilts that I see. You know, like the ingenuity of that. And a lot of times it's with unprinted fabric, which I also find incredibly fascinating.
But the ingenuity that goes into that, the creativity of that, like, I don't know, I'm not that skilled of a quilter, but I feel like I can still apply that onto fabric. I can still use, harness all of that creativity that I have. And make a thing that's just a piece of fabric, you know.
That probably sounds a little bit too Pollyanna-ish, but.
[Lisa Woolfork]
No, no, no, I don't think so, because I mean, I'm not a fabric dyer. I'm not someone who, you know, I've done a little bit, but that's not something I'm like that, you know, committed to. But something I am very interested in is like, I feel like when I buy your fabric and when I wear your fabric, I feel like I am also participating in that part because I feel like the energy that you have put into printing when you were doing your own screen printing and when you were giving people step by step instructions on how to do this, all of that creative energy is in this, this piece that I am currently wearing. Right.
And so the Unruly Nature collection itself feels so much you. It just it's just it really does feel and I just feel like, oh, good. I have Jen's fabric and this is what I'm going to do with this. And it just feels like I am participating in a conversation with you when I when I make when I take your fabric and I'm like, OK, I'll take this. And all right. So this part of the dress, I'm wearing the CLO dress and it has.
Yeah, I love that one. And so what I did was I I rotated your flowers. First, they were going up and down this way.
And then for the pocket, I rotated it 90 degrees. So it's going long ways. So now your fabric is going almost like an upset, like it's going down and then it meets perpendicular at the pockets.
And that kind of movement feels like me continuing the unruliness of the unruly of the unruly nature. So it does seem to me like that what all the things that you're describing, that you have invested into your pieces are things that are still there, whether you buy it at world markets, whether you are, you know, looking at all of the other places where your art appears, that voice, your commitments, your commitments to the organic, your commitment to synthesizing. All of that is there in and on the pieces themselves.
And that's one of the things that makes me smile whenever I see your stuff. I'm like, ah, this is great. This is going to be great.
I love it. Let's talk a little bit about 'This Long Thread', because, you know, I absolutely love this book. And and and it's a lot about women of color and our long traditions in in stitching and sewing and quilting.
And you've talked to so many people. You've had hundreds of interviews as well as people completing surveys and things like that. The book has been out for over a year now.
Just had his first birthday last year. Can you talk a little bit about how what the comments and feedback have been like and if that's done anything to maybe shape your own art practice moving forward?
[Jen Hewett]
The so the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and because I involved so many people in the creation of the book, there are people who just felt like this big hug and everybody was cheering me on. They were like hugging me and then letting me go and then hugging me when I came back when this book was done. And I think it was Raquel who actually said that Raquel was like, yes, this book felt like a hug.
I'm like, I know I feel like I'm getting a hug from you. I'm getting a hug from you right now because you've you've commented on it. You've said this about it.
But it is one of those projects when people ask me what I've created that I'm proudest of and I know they expect me to talk about a design I've made or a collection I've made. And I always have to come back and say it was this book because I was the conduit. I was the editor, but and I did some writing.
But in reality, this book is about something that's much larger than me. And so I have felt that reflected back to me in so many different ways over and over and over again. And then I'll meet somebody who's never heard of the book, never heard of me, which is totally understandable.
I'm just a small person. And they freak out. Like, well, it happened at Wool and Folk.
So it's the it's like the the artisan fair before Rhinebeck sheep and wool is the day before. And I was sitting in a booth for Tatter, Tatter library, signing books. And a couple of Black ladies who were probably in their 60s were out like they'd taken the train up from the city for the day, wearing their handknit sweaters. And they were like, wait, maybe what's this book about? And I told them and they had never heard of it. And they're like, well, we're just going to have to get these.
Are you going to sign it? OK, sign it, write it out to so and so. And so I sign like, you know, three books.
These ladies who were super excited and, you know, had to do like the auntie thing of just keep on keeping on. Like, I guess we're so proud of you, baby. We're so proud of you.
You keep on going. But they're but they're Louis Vuitton purses and their jewelry and they're perfectly knit slouchy boots. And I was like, this is I mean, I'm not that much younger than them, but this is who I want to be.
And, you know, 15 years.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Thank you for being here to show me what's possible for me in the next 15 years. Exactly.
[Jen Hewett]
So that's also whenever people discover the book. For the first time, an email me something nice or tell me something nice in person, it's just, you know, it's it's so gratifying. How's it change my practice?
I think the biggest thing that it has allowed me to see is that my work is always bigger than me, that I put things out there now and I just kind of let them go. Right. They're going to take on a life of their own.
They are going to become a beautiful dress. They are going to decorate somebody's home now that I have wallpaper. You know, it's just it's it's so much I put things out in the world and I put them out there because I have something that I want to express and then it's out of my hands.
And it's actually really liberating to be able to do that as an artist, to acknowledge that. You can't control the narrative. It's actually it's very liberating.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And and I would just like to add that as someone who is sewing with your work, I think that you pass that message of liberation on forward and I and I say that as someone who like was paying very close attention to the Ruby Star Society salvages on their fabric, you know, Rashida has great salvages and your salvage with Floridora and learning that this was your father's mother and you didn't even know that she had this.
So here she is honored on this fabric and you didn't know that she had this rich background in creativity because you were saying that you knew her as a professional woman. And and now I feel like I know about your grandmother and that I was able to put her under the needle of my sewing machine. And I sit at my sewing machine and think about my own grandmother.
And so, like, it just feels so just affirming. It just and I just don't know if you realize that what you have created and what you continue to create by putting it out in a way that empowers us to create, too, is just extending the reach of 'This Long Thread'. It is stretching it out even more.
What's that? You're going to make me cry. She said the same thing.
[Jen Hewett]
And I just said she was a crybaby. Well, she is. You know, Rashida is just a lovely, squishy human being.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And I cry, too. We can't. We were quiet.
I'll put con every time I saw her every single time. Melody Miller, too. I was like, I can't come back here over here anymore because y'all are terrible.
[Jen Hewett]
Oh, Melody, let me tell you, I have learned so much from Melody because she has been essentially she's my creative director when it comes to fabric. And she picked me way back in 2017 before my first collection. And she asked me if I would be interested in doing this.
And I was like, I had very little Photoshop skill and it would take me forever to do stuff. And so she sent me back my files. And I was like, how did you do that?
She showed me how to do it. And then that really changed what I've been able to do. And so whenever people tell me they think, you know, I need to take these classes, I need to figure this out before I can jump into this professional world.
Like, actually, you just need to have the creative power and the intent and people will help you if you are genuine and reciprocal. And it was. Yes.
Right. And I think a lot of times that gets lost. I think social media has flattened a lot of relationships to people, for people where I get questions from people who are like, I need you to tell me how to work with manufacturers or at least point me to a class.
And then one person, I just didn't respond because that's not OK. And then she started leaving comments on all of my posts like, oh, I guess you've been busy. And I finally said, I don't I don't respond to those kinds of questions, which is a digression.
But I think.
[Lisa Woolfork]
But not a digression. But let me because let me just step in really quickly. Remember, you mentioned Raquel Busa, right?
You were met. You mentioned her. Raquel taught me how to do.
Well, I can't say she taught me how to do Photoshop. She tried to teach me how to do it. She tried to teach me how to do procreate on my iPad.
I took a class with her and we've been talking back and forth. And when you were putting out calls for interviews, I said, Raquel, you need to get in this. And and I made sure I was like, I sent her the link, I made sure she was in and she has been so grateful to be linked up with you.
And it makes me feel like I'm so happy I can make that connection for me. That's what I like to do. I like to connect people.
I like to say, oh, you like to do this and this person does this. Maybe you can learn from this person. And it's the genuine relationship.
I knew she could have something that would benefit what you were doing. And and I know she's so happy to be connected. You know what I mean?
And I feel as though no one has the rights to our time. No one has the rights to that. But if we choose to give it, then that has to be respected, you know, and cared for in good and meaningful ways.
And I think that that's the way we're able to keep this ethic of care going, even in an ugly, extractive social media environment. There is no I've been on those posts with you when people are like, tell me how to do licensing. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding.
You cannot be sitting here telling me that you were on those Instagram posts, the same one I'm on. And you expect her to like break down how you do licensing as an artist. Do you think this is there no one else you can ask?
Maybe you can build better relationships with people, you know, for real, like confused.
[Jen Hewett]
Well, I think of the great Chawne Kimber saying we all have access to the same Google. But I think so much of my growth and so much of my growth has been due to community. And in order to be a part of a community, you have to be a part of a community, which means that there is, again, communal care.
There is sharing. It is not about coming in and saying, what can I get out of this? It is as much of like, what can I give?
What can I receive? And I think, you know, again, the book is so much about community. I think originally it was titled The Craft Community.
It was like the placeholder title. And I kept saying to my editor, my agent, I don't know what the title is yet, but it will become really clear when I read all the survey responses. I'll be able to come up with a title then.
And finally, I got pushed really hard to come up with the title because they had to start marketing the book. And I had gotten through like the A's, the B's and the C's, arranged everything alphabetically. And I got to Miss Cecile Lewis and her quote, which incorporated 'This Long Thread', was the one that stood out to me.
And I thought, that's it. That's the title. And so I sent it off to my editor and my agent.
And then my publisher was having, I think, a 50th or 25th anniversary, no, 50th anniversary party. And I, you know, I said, this is where the title comes from. And I read the quote and everybody was sniffling in the room.
And I thought, so this is actually it. This was like, was a community title, right? I somehow knew that if I pulled together everybody's stories, that I would receive the gift of the title.
But I had to do all that work. And I also had to be a good steward and I had to be perceived as a good steward of people's stories, right, in order to receive that gift.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And you also had to trust yourself. And I think that that is something that it takes a while, I believe, for both individual people as well as artists to develop, to trust themselves, to say, hey, I'm going to say, I don't know what the title is now, but I believe that the work that I have done will present me with a title at some point. And that's what happened.
Do you have any advice about how does one develop such a muscular sense of trust in oneself? Or would you describe that, would you describe yourself that way?
[Jen Hewett]
Yes. So honestly, it's a lot of therapy. I say this with like no sense of shame, but people ask me, like, how did you say thank you, therapy?
Yeah, no, I had a fan.
[Lisa Woolfork]
They say sewing is therapy. And I'm like, no, no, sewing is therapeutic, but therapy is my actual therapy.
[Jen Hewett]
And I was a perfectionist. I was terrified of making a mistake. I was convinced that everything I said or thought was wrong.
And I was working with these people at this job who were like as smart as I was, but they were not having the same many crises every day that I was having, or at least they appeared not to. And I thought, you know what, there is another way to do this. And so I went online and the first therapist that had an email address that I could just email because I have phone phobia, I emailed her and she said, come on in.
You know, I'm happy to see you next day. And it was just it happened to be good luck because this person also treats people with eating disorders and eating disorders and perfectionism are very, very closely linked. I don't have an eating disorder, but because she had that background, she was actually able to help me break the perfectionism pretty quickly.
And our first session, she said, you have an assignment. You know, I was a really good student. I love an assignment.
She said, I want you to intentionally make a mistake this week and see what happens and report back next week. And I don't remember what the mistake was. But I came back that next week and I was like, nothing happened.
Nothing happened. I'm still here. I'm still here.
There was no public shame. And that broke it. I was like, I can say what I think.
I can be in these meetings where everybody's just throwing out ideas and some of them are crappy and I can be comfortable with my ideas being crappy. And then when I became an artist, I guess I was always an artist. But when I became a professional artist, there was a sense like I could go in and I could try this and I didn't have to be the best at it.
I didn't even have to be good at it. I could go into a screen printing class and say, I'm an absolute beginner. I need someone to help me.
And I could accept the help. And I think, again, we talk about community like there are people who think they can only give help. They don't need to receive help.
But I think the people who need to receive help actually benefit the entire community as well. Right. Because it allows other people to use their gifts.
Yes. And to share their gifts. And so I yeah, then I just became a person who was willing to take risks all the time.
You know. Mitigated, level risks, decent risks, not being crazy and just trying anything. But I suddenly had the sense of confidence that it took me like, you know, four years of therapy really to build.
But once I got to this point, there was no looking back and I still have anxiety. I will occasionally have a bit of anxiety. And now I just know it's like, oh, this is just my brain like doing some work for me.
And I'm just going to let it go. You know, what's the worst? And my therapist would always say, what's the worst that could happen?
Take it to its logical end or illogical. And I get to like and then I get evicted from my apartment and I don't have anywhere to live. And she would say, but is that true?
I'm like, no, that isn't true. I would always have a place to live because I have. Yes.
Right. Yes. But even if like I had nowhere to go, would I be OK?
I would probably be OK. And it was. Yeah.
So it's very hard to find a good therapist. I don't recommend just going with the first one you find online and sticking with that person for four years. I was very, very lucky.
But I think particularly as Black women, we don't like to talk about this.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And I think that's changing. I absolutely believe it's changing. The podcast Therapy for Black Girls just got an NAACP Image Award.
And I think that's because, you know, and that's something that if you have access to the Internet, you can listen to more than like 300 episodes that she has of Black women talking to other Black women therapists about how to help people with these issues or challenges. And I definitely think that we are seeing some important shifts in us, you know, as Maxine Waters would say, claiming our time, you know, claiming our time and being willing to live our full whole lives. And I am just grateful that and I say this all the time, that we are the ones that we've been waiting for.
When I look at your fabrics, when I look at your pieces, when I see what Yvonne has done, when I see what Rashida has done, when I see what you've done, when I see what Chawne and Latifah have done, all of these folks have been pulling this wagon for so long. And now we are all here to kind of celebrate and participate in this table they've helped to set out, including you, you know. And I just think that is so wonderful, you know, because as we move forward, the folks who are coming behind us, the people who are younger than us, the next set of creatives are going to have, they won't have the same limitations, you know, and hopefully they'll be able to start because you have been there, you know, that we get to, you know, that we benefit from the work that you have done to get to this point and to have all these beautiful fabrics that are things that we can have and incorporate into our own work.
And I think that that is a true and utter gift that has come from you and that we are, and speaking for myself, immensely grateful for, immensely.
[Jen Hewett]
Well, I am so grateful for you, Lisa. You are such a voice, talking about amplifying, I love how you amplify us, how you celebrate us and amplify us and encourage us and find us, let's be honest. And see us.
It is, I mean, because of you, I have felt even more in tune and touch with a community.
[Lisa Woolfork]
You know, I'm glad I am grateful to be in community with you, Jen Hewett, I absolutely am. Any time I see you doing something like that's my friend. I wear my friend's fabric, you see it.
Tell me what, let's end that, and I know they wanted us to have a certain time for this, but what are some of the things you imagine or things that you would hope for, for the future of American quilting? Chawne Kimber's piece has been purchased by the Renwick, so it's now America's Quilt. How do you imagine, or what are some of your hopes and dreams for what the future of American quilting looks like for you, for us, et cetera?
Oh, geez, I don't know that I can answer that. Have I ever really thought about it? Any answer you have is the correct answer.
This is one of those, trust me, keep going, whatever you say is the right answer.
[Jen Hewett]
I would love to actually continue to see a move away from, so I love the craft of quilting. I absolutely love it. I think that people who quilt are incredibly skilled craftspeople, right?
But I would love to see a movement away from everything having to be perfect and harmonious. I would love to see a little bit more wonkiness in there. I would like to see a little bit more disparity.
That's not the right word. I just want to be, I want to be jarred. I think there's something really fun and necessary about being jarred.
And maybe that's also something big about something bigger that I'd like to see in the future of this country, is that more people need to be in the position where they are jarred. They are pushed out of not even a comfort zone, but they are confronted with something that is different, that is uncomfortable, that requires you to stop and think. And instead of being scared of it or push back on it, to really stop and think about it and think about the reactions.
Because, you know, I like that little bit of dissonance in everything I create. And hey, a little bit of dissonance in our way of thinking isn't the worst thing, really.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Not at all, especially if it's going to get us to more love and more freedom.
[Jen Hewett]
Right. And even just some respect, you know, like a bit of respect. I always tell people, I don't I don't necessarily want your love, but I do want your respect.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Yes, that's that is so true. Absolutely true. Well, Jen, this has been so much fun.
Thank you all. Thank you so much for talking with me, for Quilter Share Our Stories. This is an interview that's going to be aired sometime in March, March 15th.
And so I think I'll see you again. We'll be back for that part. But thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. This has been truly a delight.
I'm just so glad to be able to talk to you again. But especially for this. Thank you.
Thank you, Lisa.
Hello everyone. My name is Lisa Woolfork. I am the host and producer of Stitch Please, which is a podcast that centers Black women, girls, and fems in sewing.
And I am honored to have been invited by the Quilt Alliance to interview Jen Hewett today, today, March 1st, 2023. Jen Hewett, welcome to our conversation and thanks for being here today.
[Jen Hewett]
Oh my gosh, Lisa. It's always a pleasure to chat with you.
[Lisa Woolfork]
This is our fourth time. And now we're going to be in the Library of Congress. I can't believe this.
[Jen Hewett]
We're just in the Library of Congress now.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Well, I can't wait to see what the fifth conversation is going to put us on the moon. Let's try that. Let's do that.
So Jen, I am delighted to speak with you today. I wanted to talk with you about the quilt that you have behind you. You said this is from a 2015 series.
Can you talk about the quilt behind you and what it is and what we are meant to get from this beautiful piece?
[Jen Hewett]
Well, the quilt behind me, which is probably about 18 by 24 inches wide. It's not a huge quilt. It is a part of my 2014 or 2015 because what is time anymore, especially in a pandemic.
But part of a series that I did for a show at Rare Device, which is a gallery and a shop in San Francisco, where I lived at the time. And it incorporates bits of block printed and screen printed fabric. And it was really meant to reflect the many, many trips that I made on Highway 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles over the number of years that I'd been living in the Bay Area.
So I moved to the Bay Area in 1992. My parents are still in Los Angeles, where I grew up. And every couple of months or so, I would take a drive on this boring, boring highway that's essentially for trucks going through industrial farmland.
And on one side, it's industrial farmland. On the other side, it's just nature allowed to be nature. And I was really fascinated by that juxtaposition, but also by the fact that it was this connecting road for me.
It was connecting my life as an adult to my life as a child and what that meant. I had five hours to really go from being like the adult living in the Bay Area to being the child of my parents home in Los Angeles. And so what I tried to do was really connect with my surroundings through printmaking.
So you can see behind me, and I don't want to grab it because it might fall over. It's in a frame. This is the last one I managed to sell all the pieces, except for I like this one so much, I kept it.
Good job. But interestingly, in 2014 or 2015, whatever year I was doing this in, I had also been working on a project called Print Pattern Sew. And that was the I was block printing yardage and sewing it to clothes every single month for the entire year.
And I had all these offcuts. So a lot of the offcuts were actually incorporated into this piece. So a lot of my work is botanically inspired.
And so were a lot of my clothes, some of the fabric on my clothes. And also a couple of the pieces didn't make it into fabric right away. But eventually became part of my world market collection.
And so when people say that, you know, they are giving themselves a year or two to make it as a surface designer or as an artist or as a printmaker, I'm like, it took 10 years for some of the stuff to find a commercial purpose. But little did I know when I created this all those years ago, that there actually had been this huge lineage of textiles in my family that nobody talked about. Nobody told me about because it was I don't know if it was just something that was, you know, as as both of my grandmothers became professional women, they kind of let go of and they didn't really talk about.
I mean, I think that had a lot to do with it. And so I knew them as schoolteachers and mothers and grandmothers, and I didn't know them as creative people who are interested in textiles. And I only found out like in the last two years, last year, really.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Unbelievable. And what I appreciate about what you're describing about the highway journey, because what it is actually is both a metaphor and a documentation, because one thing about California is that there is driving. There are a lot.
So much driving. I can never understand why none of those folks in California have friends because everyone seems to drive alone in a car. And it takes so far to get places.
And what I appreciate about what you do is what you often do is you have a keen eye. You are able to see and discern that. Yes, I am taking this drive.
And on the left, it's just me and these giant trucks. But on the right, there is the part that I'm able to connect with and renew myself with. And so this idea that that journey, you know, where other folks might see a headache, you know, you are able to see art.
And it just shows it just shows me that your process is so. You're into your your creative intellectual output, the way that you the way that you receive materials is so capacious. I feel like there's so much you're often holding on to, you know, that organic and inorganic and finding ways to blend those so beautifully, I could imagine someone saying, I'm not going to think about the highway.
I'm just going to think about the nature. Right. But that's not what you do.
You manage to do both simultaneously. And I wonder when you start to build out your design, do you ever ask yourself a series of questions? Or do you just do you just observe and pull from the large set of ideas that are circulating around you all the time?
[Jen Hewett]
Well, OK, so first of all, your statement and your question reminded me that you are, in fact, a professor of English literature because the way you made those connections. That were maybe not explicit, but you you made those connections and you brought it together. And I thought I almost feel like I'm in a classroom analyzing a text because I was an English major.
You and you are the text.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And you are the text. You are the text. You are.
This is you. We are here to talk about your work and you know, I'm paying attention. This is amazing.
They all need to know.
[Jen Hewett]
I also think about how much literature, especially Victorian literature and early 20th century literature is really about women sitting around and looking out windows and writing about what they saw. Right. Or sitting like, you know, the whole idea of Jane Austin being a drawing room author, nothing really happens in her book.
I'm like, so much happens in a book, right? Yes. The whole thing, taking everything in.
It's not Rambo. It's not an action film in that way. It is it is silent.
It is about nuance. It's about observing and analyzing and interpreting what is going on around you and maybe getting it wrong. But anyway, so I just had to throw that in there.
But your question about whether or not I have questions, I think I did in the beginning. You know, I have to be honest. I've been doing this now for 15 years professionally.
And I think I did have questions in the beginning. But in so many ways, it's just ingrained in me. It's like, what am I interested in?
What do I feel like I have to say? What is what comes easily and naturally to me? And honestly, what comes easily and naturally has changed over the years as I've gotten better at what I'm doing.
And right now I'm working on my next fabric collection, and I had this inkling of an idea of like, wait, I'm really fascinated by this one thing. And it's actually about books, which I won't go too far into. But I'm interested in the physical, the materiality of a book.
Yeah. And particularly in old books and vintage books. And how do I interpret that?
Right. Like, how do I make that me, which is usually punching up the color a little bit, making things kind of off, which I really we can talk about that, how I love things that are kind of off. I don't want things to be like too perfect and too, I don't know, too harmonious.
I want there to be a jolt of something that feels a little bit wrong, but you can't put your finger on it. And so a lot of times it's like, how do I interpret something that I'm seeing and say it with my own voice? Yes.
Yes. And so the questions are no longer explicit. They're just kind of floating around and they just come out of my hands.
Right. Like the answer comes out of my hand as I'm drawing, as I'm printing, as I'm tweaking things on Photoshop and trying to get the color right. I don't know.
And then when I'm also right now, I'm actually working on an actual quilt that will be quilted and bound and require some symmetry and some real thought about color. And it's really exciting because it's completely out of my comfort zone to get things nice and square and perfect. And yeah, so that's been super fun.
But also I'm like, oh, this this looks a little bit too harmonious. Like these colors, there's too much red. I got to make it a little bit funky.
How am I going to break this up? And so that's what I've been working on, too.
[Lisa Woolfork]
You know what I love about hearing you say that is that it reminds me of someone. It actually reminds me of Thelonious Monk. And Thelonious Monk, the famous jazz pianist, like incredibly well-known genius, and he was known for dissonance.
He was known for deliberately hitting the wrong notes on purpose. And that was part of the genius. And so when I heard you say that, I was like, oh, yeah, she's getting her mug on.
Right. Like this is it is this idea of when you emphasize that, which is not perfect, it absolutely exposes what we're meant to be thinking about art in the first place. Right.
It makes it keep going.
[Jen Hewett]
Well, so it's funny that you bring this up because this scarf is this is one of my designs and it's called LP. Right. After after a record and right, doesn't it feel like a Thelonious Monk album?
Yes, yes, yes. And you know why?
[Lisa Woolfork]
Because of the way that the circles reverberate the sound. It's like a speaker. It's like I see audio rings.
It's like the reverberation of a sound in visual format.
[Jen Hewett]
And if you see it in real life, it's actually super wonky. Like the circles aren't perfect. They're not perfect.
360 degree circles. Again, the colors are a little bit off. Like there's a sudden jolt of gray somewhere in here that doesn't really show up anywhere else.
It kind of works. And part of the reason that I was so fascinated by record covers is that actually my dad back in the day used to run record factories and so places that press vinyl. And so we always had records in our house because he would bring home Billboard and we could choose like if it was if it was released by certain companies, he we could get that record for a dollar.
So it was like the old school BMG Music or Columbia House, except it wasn't a pyramid scheme. So we so we just always had records. And sometimes he would just bring home.
A record because he was really interested in the jacket. In fact, that's how we got our first NWA album.
[Lisa Woolfork]
It was like a very ferocious young man. They seem committed. I think we should listen to this.
[Jen Hewett]
Right. And we did. My dad was like, OK, I think we're not going to listen to this.
During the daytime.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Yes. You know, and I wonder about the music. What did it mean that you were able to get music into your house just at random in this way?
Right. Like it's like all of these things are influences that feed what art means and how you are able to develop as an artist. And I keep thinking about the story you told in your first book about like just walking along as a child and looking at the ground and like that became a way for you to pull together so many of these organic elements for your process overall.
Can you do you see any kind of synergies between bringing in like your dad bringing home all this fun stuff and the experiment of it? Like, you know, this is what the cover looks like. This is what the jacket looks like.
Well, let's see what's inside that discovery. Did that help you? You think as an artist along the way about the other questions you might ask or things that might be surprising for your process?
[Jen Hewett]
I think in my family, there was not a sense of snobbery around music. And I think this is important because I was allowed to like what I liked. Right.
That my dad loved that NWA album as much as he loved this acapella Christian Christmas album that my brother and I still laugh because we know it's Christmas when dad plays it. The record's totally warped. So I bought him a CD of it.
But I think that was really important because there was no sense of highbrow and lowbrow. And I think that's where my little bit of offness comes from. Right.
Is that often in what's considered like lowbrow or art for the masses? There is a little something weird about that. There's like a little bit something tacky in there.
And you can't really put your finger on what the tacky is. I think that's somehow been incorporated into what I do. I don't know.
But in many ways, too, it just wasn't that exciting to have access to all these records because I take it for granted because I grew up with it. Like I grew up and I grew up with all these kids who were very wealthy. And my family was like solidly middle class.
And I like to say my dad was upper blue collar because he he was he worked his way up to management. And so their parents were like builders and doctors. Well, their fathers were their mothers were stay at home ladies who play tennis.
And so I think there is the sense that like what I have is kind of cool, but also like what they have is a tennis court in their backyard. So and it wasn't until I got into college and friends were filling out those Columbia House ads in the back of the college magazine to get their ten albums for a dollar that I realized that I actually had had something really special.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Very special. Very special. Absolutely.
Now, you were saying earlier that like so the Highway Five kind of set you off on some type of path in 2014 and 2015. And as you started to move toward gathering what you needed to create your first book, did you have a sense of what you did? You have a clear sense of like, OK, this is what I want this book to represent about me.
This is what I want to bring forward to help other folks, other folks learn to do what I do or just to kind of equip themselves with a new way, you know, with a new way to approach these questions about art and about printmaking, because as you were talking about text and textiles, that's something I think about a lot as well, right? That the text of a book and then the textile is a fabric, like all of these things, fibers and all these things mixing together. Can you talk a little bit about like your own origin story for your first book?
[Jen Hewett]
OK, so. I think you're making me feel like sound like this deeply intellectual person and when in reality, I was just tired of people asking me to tell them exactly how I did what I did. And Lisa, you know, you know, I am the queen of boundaries and like, you know, this is not a transactional relationship.
Do not ask me to give to handhold you through your project, stranger on the Internet. I know. No, right.
So that was one of the reasons I had already been. I had been teaching block printing classes in person for a while. I had my own online block printing class.
I had all these projects that I'd been sharing on social media. And I kept giving and giving like I would do an online class and someone would say, well, that's too expensive. And I or I would do an in-person class and people would say, well, you know, I wish you would come to.
The biggest one that cracks me up is Brazil. Brazilians are great, but they always were like, come to Brazil. Like, I can't go to Brazil to teach.
I just can't. There's no way I would be able to make any money. Y'all are y'all.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Is Brazil paid? Is like the consulate putting something together for me to come? Because, you know, Brazil is not down the street.
I cannot get there on Highway five.
[Jen Hewett]
But I you know, but again, like now Brazilians wanted to pay me to go to Brazil and hang out for three weeks. I would absolutely do it. Yes, but, you know, Brazil, thanks.
That's right. Just put it out there. But, you know, we like come to Washington state, come to New York to do this.
And it was just so unfeasible for me to do it because I have like I have. Home and a dog and travel is exhausting, as you know, Lisa. And so it finally dawned on me that I should just put together a book right, that book is accessible to people in a way that all the other things are not necessarily accessible.
And so I put together a proposal because I had done this project. I was like, this would make a great book. Halfway through that project, I thought through print Patterson, I thought this would make a great book.
So I started to put together the proposal for it. And as an English major, former English major, I used to do a lot of fundraising and grant writing like this is easy. I know how to ask people for money, essentially.
I know how to make a case for people paying me for whatever this project is going to be. And I put that together and I had this idea like I had always. One of the reasons I started sewing was because I have a very specific taste and a sense of style, and I couldn't always find the clothes that I liked.
And also like kind of a snob. So I like things to be well made with nice fabric. And there was a period of time where Lisa, you and I are about the same age.
Clothes used to be really, really well made. Right. And about 10 to 15 years ago, even the higher end clothes just have not been as well made as they used to be.
I used to be able to get a sweater. I saw sweaters I bought from Banana Republic on sale like 20 years ago that I can still wear. Right.
[Lisa Woolfork]
A wool suit, a wool suit that I got to interview for this job. Like and that was 23 years ago. I still have that suit, right?
[Jen Hewett]
I mean, you can probably sell it for a lot of money on Depop. I thought, well, maybe I could make my own clothes. You know, I have a sewing machine that my parents gave me when I was 13 that I hardly ever touched.
And why not? And then I got to the point where I realized, well, I can't even find the fabric that I like. So maybe I'll just make my own fabric because I had that skill.
Or if I didn't have the skill, I at least had the idea that I could teach myself how to do it. And so that's how Print Patterns Sew, the project was begun. And it was also this time where.
Like, you didn't have to buy a big five sewing pattern, you could work with these independent sewing patterns that not only were the instructions super clear, they also had like sew alongs on their blogs.
[Lisa Woolfork]
You know, all this. They tend to be more size inclusive, too, like much more size inclusive. There's a lot of things that independent pattern companies were and are doing.
That the big five is just kind of catching up to at this point.
[Jen Hewett]
So, yeah, absolutely. I think now it's the big four. We might be down to the big three soon enough, but.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Well, I think it's five now because it's a whole new pattern company that just started. Oh, Mimi G's. Yes, yes, Mimi G's section.
So there's a lot. So they're they're definitely trying. And those are way more inclusive than in lots of ways than the other ones.
So I'm pretty excited for that. I wanted to turn back to making your own fabric, because if we imagine the fabric as the as the foundation of what it means to make anything that you're going to sew, either are you going to quilt a piece or are you going to like make a jacket? Are you going to do a hand towel?
The fabric itself becomes like the basis for that. That is the spring from which everything else is launched. And do you get the sense that there is something empowering about being able to dye your own fabric, to print your own fabric that's even different than being able to make your own garments from the the fabric that you printed?
It seems like that's something I find so engaging about what you do is that you kind of take it all the way down to the studs, right? Like these are the things you need to really make something that is yours. Can you talk about that process of like why printing your own fabric or why printing in that way is so important?
[Jen Hewett]
I think it's because it makes you even less of a consumer and more of a producer. I think this is a really important thing as I've become more and more involved in the quilting industry. And let me say, like, it's a nice it provides me with a livelihood.
But I also see the many ways in which an industry that is about like self-sufficiency and creating your own things also is just exist to sell, sell, sell, sell yourself. Right. And I have thoughts about this.
I have a lot of conflicted thoughts about this as someone who actively participates in the industry, who makes a living from it.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Yes.
[Jen Hewett]
But there is something about being able to take a plain piece of fabric and to execute an idea that you have in your head that is really like at the core of being a maker. Right. I don't know how to explain it much more than that, like because, you know, obviously I'm not weaving the fabric.
I'm not saying everybody should just throw in the towel and spin their spin their own thread and weave their own fabric. But sometimes it's nice to pull yourself out of that system to make the thing, the thing that you absolutely want, because nobody's going to give you the thing you absolutely want. Often you're going to have to make it yourself.
And I think particularly with quilting, like the amazing things that I see coming out of QuiltCon, the amazing quilts that I see. You know, like the ingenuity of that. And a lot of times it's with unprinted fabric, which I also find incredibly fascinating.
But the ingenuity that goes into that, the creativity of that, like, I don't know, I'm not that skilled of a quilter, but I feel like I can still apply that onto fabric. I can still use, harness all of that creativity that I have. And make a thing that's just a piece of fabric, you know.
That probably sounds a little bit too Pollyanna-ish, but.
[Lisa Woolfork]
No, no, no, I don't think so, because I mean, I'm not a fabric dyer. I'm not someone who, you know, I've done a little bit, but that's not something I'm like that, you know, committed to. But something I am very interested in is like, I feel like when I buy your fabric and when I wear your fabric, I feel like I am also participating in that part because I feel like the energy that you have put into printing when you were doing your own screen printing and when you were giving people step by step instructions on how to do this, all of that creative energy is in this, this piece that I am currently wearing. Right.
And so the Unruly Nature collection itself feels so much you. It just it's just it really does feel and I just feel like, oh, good. I have Jen's fabric and this is what I'm going to do with this. And it just feels like I am participating in a conversation with you when I when I make when I take your fabric and I'm like, OK, I'll take this. And all right. So this part of the dress, I'm wearing the CLO dress and it has.
Yeah, I love that one. And so what I did was I I rotated your flowers. First, they were going up and down this way.
And then for the pocket, I rotated it 90 degrees. So it's going long ways. So now your fabric is going almost like an upset, like it's going down and then it meets perpendicular at the pockets.
And that kind of movement feels like me continuing the unruliness of the unruly of the unruly nature. So it does seem to me like that what all the things that you're describing, that you have invested into your pieces are things that are still there, whether you buy it at world markets, whether you are, you know, looking at all of the other places where your art appears, that voice, your commitments, your commitments to the organic, your commitment to synthesizing. All of that is there in and on the pieces themselves.
And that's one of the things that makes me smile whenever I see your stuff. I'm like, ah, this is great. This is going to be great.
I love it. Let's talk a little bit about 'This Long Thread', because, you know, I absolutely love this book. And and and it's a lot about women of color and our long traditions in in stitching and sewing and quilting.
And you've talked to so many people. You've had hundreds of interviews as well as people completing surveys and things like that. The book has been out for over a year now.
Just had his first birthday last year. Can you talk a little bit about how what the comments and feedback have been like and if that's done anything to maybe shape your own art practice moving forward?
[Jen Hewett]
The so the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and because I involved so many people in the creation of the book, there are people who just felt like this big hug and everybody was cheering me on. They were like hugging me and then letting me go and then hugging me when I came back when this book was done. And I think it was Raquel who actually said that Raquel was like, yes, this book felt like a hug.
I'm like, I know I feel like I'm getting a hug from you. I'm getting a hug from you right now because you've you've commented on it. You've said this about it.
But it is one of those projects when people ask me what I've created that I'm proudest of and I know they expect me to talk about a design I've made or a collection I've made. And I always have to come back and say it was this book because I was the conduit. I was the editor, but and I did some writing.
But in reality, this book is about something that's much larger than me. And so I have felt that reflected back to me in so many different ways over and over and over again. And then I'll meet somebody who's never heard of the book, never heard of me, which is totally understandable.
I'm just a small person. And they freak out. Like, well, it happened at Wool and Folk.
So it's the it's like the the artisan fair before Rhinebeck sheep and wool is the day before. And I was sitting in a booth for Tatter, Tatter library, signing books. And a couple of Black ladies who were probably in their 60s were out like they'd taken the train up from the city for the day, wearing their handknit sweaters. And they were like, wait, maybe what's this book about? And I told them and they had never heard of it. And they're like, well, we're just going to have to get these.
Are you going to sign it? OK, sign it, write it out to so and so. And so I sign like, you know, three books.
These ladies who were super excited and, you know, had to do like the auntie thing of just keep on keeping on. Like, I guess we're so proud of you, baby. We're so proud of you.
You keep on going. But they're but they're Louis Vuitton purses and their jewelry and they're perfectly knit slouchy boots. And I was like, this is I mean, I'm not that much younger than them, but this is who I want to be.
And, you know, 15 years.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Thank you for being here to show me what's possible for me in the next 15 years. Exactly.
[Jen Hewett]
So that's also whenever people discover the book. For the first time, an email me something nice or tell me something nice in person, it's just, you know, it's it's so gratifying. How's it change my practice?
I think the biggest thing that it has allowed me to see is that my work is always bigger than me, that I put things out there now and I just kind of let them go. Right. They're going to take on a life of their own.
They are going to become a beautiful dress. They are going to decorate somebody's home now that I have wallpaper. You know, it's just it's it's so much I put things out in the world and I put them out there because I have something that I want to express and then it's out of my hands.
And it's actually really liberating to be able to do that as an artist, to acknowledge that. You can't control the narrative. It's actually it's very liberating.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And and I would just like to add that as someone who is sewing with your work, I think that you pass that message of liberation on forward and I and I say that as someone who like was paying very close attention to the Ruby Star Society salvages on their fabric, you know, Rashida has great salvages and your salvage with Floridora and learning that this was your father's mother and you didn't even know that she had this.
So here she is honored on this fabric and you didn't know that she had this rich background in creativity because you were saying that you knew her as a professional woman. And and now I feel like I know about your grandmother and that I was able to put her under the needle of my sewing machine. And I sit at my sewing machine and think about my own grandmother.
And so, like, it just feels so just affirming. It just and I just don't know if you realize that what you have created and what you continue to create by putting it out in a way that empowers us to create, too, is just extending the reach of 'This Long Thread'. It is stretching it out even more.
What's that? You're going to make me cry. She said the same thing.
[Jen Hewett]
And I just said she was a crybaby. Well, she is. You know, Rashida is just a lovely, squishy human being.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And I cry, too. We can't. We were quiet.
I'll put con every time I saw her every single time. Melody Miller, too. I was like, I can't come back here over here anymore because y'all are terrible.
[Jen Hewett]
Oh, Melody, let me tell you, I have learned so much from Melody because she has been essentially she's my creative director when it comes to fabric. And she picked me way back in 2017 before my first collection. And she asked me if I would be interested in doing this.
And I was like, I had very little Photoshop skill and it would take me forever to do stuff. And so she sent me back my files. And I was like, how did you do that?
She showed me how to do it. And then that really changed what I've been able to do. And so whenever people tell me they think, you know, I need to take these classes, I need to figure this out before I can jump into this professional world.
Like, actually, you just need to have the creative power and the intent and people will help you if you are genuine and reciprocal. And it was. Yes.
Right. And I think a lot of times that gets lost. I think social media has flattened a lot of relationships to people, for people where I get questions from people who are like, I need you to tell me how to work with manufacturers or at least point me to a class.
And then one person, I just didn't respond because that's not OK. And then she started leaving comments on all of my posts like, oh, I guess you've been busy. And I finally said, I don't I don't respond to those kinds of questions, which is a digression.
But I think.
[Lisa Woolfork]
But not a digression. But let me because let me just step in really quickly. Remember, you mentioned Raquel Busa, right?
You were met. You mentioned her. Raquel taught me how to do.
Well, I can't say she taught me how to do Photoshop. She tried to teach me how to do it. She tried to teach me how to do procreate on my iPad.
I took a class with her and we've been talking back and forth. And when you were putting out calls for interviews, I said, Raquel, you need to get in this. And and I made sure I was like, I sent her the link, I made sure she was in and she has been so grateful to be linked up with you.
And it makes me feel like I'm so happy I can make that connection for me. That's what I like to do. I like to connect people.
I like to say, oh, you like to do this and this person does this. Maybe you can learn from this person. And it's the genuine relationship.
I knew she could have something that would benefit what you were doing. And and I know she's so happy to be connected. You know what I mean?
And I feel as though no one has the rights to our time. No one has the rights to that. But if we choose to give it, then that has to be respected, you know, and cared for in good and meaningful ways.
And I think that that's the way we're able to keep this ethic of care going, even in an ugly, extractive social media environment. There is no I've been on those posts with you when people are like, tell me how to do licensing. And I'm like, you've got to be kidding.
You cannot be sitting here telling me that you were on those Instagram posts, the same one I'm on. And you expect her to like break down how you do licensing as an artist. Do you think this is there no one else you can ask?
Maybe you can build better relationships with people, you know, for real, like confused.
[Jen Hewett]
Well, I think of the great Chawne Kimber saying we all have access to the same Google. But I think so much of my growth and so much of my growth has been due to community. And in order to be a part of a community, you have to be a part of a community, which means that there is, again, communal care.
There is sharing. It is not about coming in and saying, what can I get out of this? It is as much of like, what can I give?
What can I receive? And I think, you know, again, the book is so much about community. I think originally it was titled The Craft Community.
It was like the placeholder title. And I kept saying to my editor, my agent, I don't know what the title is yet, but it will become really clear when I read all the survey responses. I'll be able to come up with a title then.
And finally, I got pushed really hard to come up with the title because they had to start marketing the book. And I had gotten through like the A's, the B's and the C's, arranged everything alphabetically. And I got to Miss Cecile Lewis and her quote, which incorporated 'This Long Thread', was the one that stood out to me.
And I thought, that's it. That's the title. And so I sent it off to my editor and my agent.
And then my publisher was having, I think, a 50th or 25th anniversary, no, 50th anniversary party. And I, you know, I said, this is where the title comes from. And I read the quote and everybody was sniffling in the room.
And I thought, so this is actually it. This was like, was a community title, right? I somehow knew that if I pulled together everybody's stories, that I would receive the gift of the title.
But I had to do all that work. And I also had to be a good steward and I had to be perceived as a good steward of people's stories, right, in order to receive that gift.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And you also had to trust yourself. And I think that that is something that it takes a while, I believe, for both individual people as well as artists to develop, to trust themselves, to say, hey, I'm going to say, I don't know what the title is now, but I believe that the work that I have done will present me with a title at some point. And that's what happened.
Do you have any advice about how does one develop such a muscular sense of trust in oneself? Or would you describe that, would you describe yourself that way?
[Jen Hewett]
Yes. So honestly, it's a lot of therapy. I say this with like no sense of shame, but people ask me, like, how did you say thank you, therapy?
Yeah, no, I had a fan.
[Lisa Woolfork]
They say sewing is therapy. And I'm like, no, no, sewing is therapeutic, but therapy is my actual therapy.
[Jen Hewett]
And I was a perfectionist. I was terrified of making a mistake. I was convinced that everything I said or thought was wrong.
And I was working with these people at this job who were like as smart as I was, but they were not having the same many crises every day that I was having, or at least they appeared not to. And I thought, you know what, there is another way to do this. And so I went online and the first therapist that had an email address that I could just email because I have phone phobia, I emailed her and she said, come on in.
You know, I'm happy to see you next day. And it was just it happened to be good luck because this person also treats people with eating disorders and eating disorders and perfectionism are very, very closely linked. I don't have an eating disorder, but because she had that background, she was actually able to help me break the perfectionism pretty quickly.
And our first session, she said, you have an assignment. You know, I was a really good student. I love an assignment.
She said, I want you to intentionally make a mistake this week and see what happens and report back next week. And I don't remember what the mistake was. But I came back that next week and I was like, nothing happened.
Nothing happened. I'm still here. I'm still here.
There was no public shame. And that broke it. I was like, I can say what I think.
I can be in these meetings where everybody's just throwing out ideas and some of them are crappy and I can be comfortable with my ideas being crappy. And then when I became an artist, I guess I was always an artist. But when I became a professional artist, there was a sense like I could go in and I could try this and I didn't have to be the best at it.
I didn't even have to be good at it. I could go into a screen printing class and say, I'm an absolute beginner. I need someone to help me.
And I could accept the help. And I think, again, we talk about community like there are people who think they can only give help. They don't need to receive help.
But I think the people who need to receive help actually benefit the entire community as well. Right. Because it allows other people to use their gifts.
Yes. And to share their gifts. And so I yeah, then I just became a person who was willing to take risks all the time.
You know. Mitigated, level risks, decent risks, not being crazy and just trying anything. But I suddenly had the sense of confidence that it took me like, you know, four years of therapy really to build.
But once I got to this point, there was no looking back and I still have anxiety. I will occasionally have a bit of anxiety. And now I just know it's like, oh, this is just my brain like doing some work for me.
And I'm just going to let it go. You know, what's the worst? And my therapist would always say, what's the worst that could happen?
Take it to its logical end or illogical. And I get to like and then I get evicted from my apartment and I don't have anywhere to live. And she would say, but is that true?
I'm like, no, that isn't true. I would always have a place to live because I have. Yes.
Right. Yes. But even if like I had nowhere to go, would I be OK?
I would probably be OK. And it was. Yeah.
So it's very hard to find a good therapist. I don't recommend just going with the first one you find online and sticking with that person for four years. I was very, very lucky.
But I think particularly as Black women, we don't like to talk about this.
[Lisa Woolfork]
And I think that's changing. I absolutely believe it's changing. The podcast Therapy for Black Girls just got an NAACP Image Award.
And I think that's because, you know, and that's something that if you have access to the Internet, you can listen to more than like 300 episodes that she has of Black women talking to other Black women therapists about how to help people with these issues or challenges. And I definitely think that we are seeing some important shifts in us, you know, as Maxine Waters would say, claiming our time, you know, claiming our time and being willing to live our full whole lives. And I am just grateful that and I say this all the time, that we are the ones that we've been waiting for.
When I look at your fabrics, when I look at your pieces, when I see what Yvonne has done, when I see what Rashida has done, when I see what you've done, when I see what Chawne and Latifah have done, all of these folks have been pulling this wagon for so long. And now we are all here to kind of celebrate and participate in this table they've helped to set out, including you, you know. And I just think that is so wonderful, you know, because as we move forward, the folks who are coming behind us, the people who are younger than us, the next set of creatives are going to have, they won't have the same limitations, you know, and hopefully they'll be able to start because you have been there, you know, that we get to, you know, that we benefit from the work that you have done to get to this point and to have all these beautiful fabrics that are things that we can have and incorporate into our own work.
And I think that that is a true and utter gift that has come from you and that we are, and speaking for myself, immensely grateful for, immensely.
[Jen Hewett]
Well, I am so grateful for you, Lisa. You are such a voice, talking about amplifying, I love how you amplify us, how you celebrate us and amplify us and encourage us and find us, let's be honest. And see us.
It is, I mean, because of you, I have felt even more in tune and touch with a community.
[Lisa Woolfork]
You know, I'm glad I am grateful to be in community with you, Jen Hewett, I absolutely am. Any time I see you doing something like that's my friend. I wear my friend's fabric, you see it.
Tell me what, let's end that, and I know they wanted us to have a certain time for this, but what are some of the things you imagine or things that you would hope for, for the future of American quilting? Chawne Kimber's piece has been purchased by the Renwick, so it's now America's Quilt. How do you imagine, or what are some of your hopes and dreams for what the future of American quilting looks like for you, for us, et cetera?
Oh, geez, I don't know that I can answer that. Have I ever really thought about it? Any answer you have is the correct answer.
This is one of those, trust me, keep going, whatever you say is the right answer.
[Jen Hewett]
I would love to actually continue to see a move away from, so I love the craft of quilting. I absolutely love it. I think that people who quilt are incredibly skilled craftspeople, right?
But I would love to see a movement away from everything having to be perfect and harmonious. I would love to see a little bit more wonkiness in there. I would like to see a little bit more disparity.
That's not the right word. I just want to be, I want to be jarred. I think there's something really fun and necessary about being jarred.
And maybe that's also something big about something bigger that I'd like to see in the future of this country, is that more people need to be in the position where they are jarred. They are pushed out of not even a comfort zone, but they are confronted with something that is different, that is uncomfortable, that requires you to stop and think. And instead of being scared of it or push back on it, to really stop and think about it and think about the reactions.
Because, you know, I like that little bit of dissonance in everything I create. And hey, a little bit of dissonance in our way of thinking isn't the worst thing, really.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Not at all, especially if it's going to get us to more love and more freedom.
[Jen Hewett]
Right. And even just some respect, you know, like a bit of respect. I always tell people, I don't I don't necessarily want your love, but I do want your respect.
[Lisa Woolfork]
Yes, that's that is so true. Absolutely true. Well, Jen, this has been so much fun.
Thank you all. Thank you so much for talking with me, for Quilter Share Our Stories. This is an interview that's going to be aired sometime in March, March 15th.
And so I think I'll see you again. We'll be back for that part. But thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. This has been truly a delight.
I'm just so glad to be able to talk to you again. But especially for this. Thank you.
Thank you, Lisa.
Citation
“Jen Hewett,” Quilters' S.O.S. -- Save Our Stories, accessed September 1, 2026, https://qsos.quiltalliance.org/items/show/2719.