by Quilt Alliance | Feb 23, 2014 | QSOS Spotlight
For the first time, I’ve started keeping a daily journal–nothing detailed, just a sentence or two for each day. Most of what I write down is the small, mundane things that make up my week, like going to the grocery store or talking a long walk. Individually, the entries aren’t much, but together they’re a fun snapshot of my year so far.Today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight is shining on Barbara Schneider’s “Ring of Days”, a quilt that’s also a daily journal, sewn together in a unique format that offers a view of a year in a glance. Barbara shared the story of this incredible quilt, and the ways it helped her in difficult days, with interviewer Karen Musgrave in 2008: “A Ring of Days” is a piece that I did when I first started to get into quilting. I had taken the traditional quilting classes and had done some sample pieces. At the time I was working as an executive for a publisher and I had a really busy life and my husband was ill. He was diagnosed with cancer and I felt like I didn’t have time to do quilting in the real sense of sitting down and doing projects. I had seen an article by Nancy Halpren in Threads in which she wrote about doing a visual journal. That really struck a cord with me – that I could come home at the end of the day and just do one simple thing. So I set a goal for myself to do that with a template for the shapes and the things that I wanted to accomplish by doing it. I wanted to really be more observant each day of what was happening in my environment and to do something creative each day even if it was just go down and make my sketch. It would be an opportunity to learn new techniques on a very small basis instead of thinking I had to do a much bigger project to accomplish that. I had a notebook that I just carried with me that I could record things about what I might do if I couldn’t get to it that day. It started March 1, 1997 and ended February 28, 1998. I pretty much finished in that time. I had no actual idea about what it was going to become, a “Ring of Days”. I just kept making those pieces day after day after day. After a while I developed a few templates. I did a lot of travel for my work so I made a travel template… Whenever I had travel I used this template that was pointing north, south, east, west. I ended up doing it so I could gain a little bit of time. There were some other format kinds of things – I always did the full moon each month. I would do it a piece based on myths like the strawberry moon or the harvest moon. Some pieces are about events. Actually it was like the only year I can remember in my life in any detail because I can say [pointing to one block.] ‘Oh, that is when my daughter Ellen [Schneider.] graduated from college. So it tends to be events, observations, trying new techniques. I had the book “Jacket Jazz”
and I tried a lot of the fabric manipulation in it. Many pieces were about nature which is one of the things I learned toward the end of the year. Probably half of them had flowers or leaves or water or things like that. Working on the pieces really helped me to feel like I was making some amount of progress in my quilting life, in my artist’s life. One of the great findings at the end of this was that there was next to nothing about the career [audience laughs.] that I had been pursuing for twenty-five years. That fact came together with a number of other things going on in my life and I decided that it was time to move on. At the end of ’97, I retired from publishing and moved into a different role as a consultant. So that was really an observation that came out of this as well. The final format of “A Ring of Days” developed over time. Once I had all the blocks I had to figure out a way to put them all together. I tried out a number of things and ended up finally creating strips – one per month. Then the next step was how to join all the strips. I tried a number of things – continuous loops that you could hang on a rod or could be sewn together. And one of the ideas I had was to create a giant windsock or a Japanese Boys Day banner and it all just started to come together at that point. I had to figure out the structure and how long was it really going to be [sixteen feet.] and whether that would be manageable. Actually a little side note is that when you are using a little plastic template to cut your pieces – after three hundred and sixty-five times it tends to get a little smaller [laughs.] and then you see that the earlier 31 day strips are longer than the later 31 day strips. A story that goes along with “A Ring of Days”, and the reason I decided to bring this piece for the interview, is not only about the fact that it had such an influence on my life at that point but also that it was the first piece that I ever entered into an exhibit. I was attending IQI [Illinois Quilters, Inc.] at that time and the first time I ever heard about Fine Art of Fiber [a joint show with IQI, North Shore Weavers and the North Suburban NeedleArts Guild that is held at the Chicago Botanical Gardens.] I submitted this piece to display at Fine Art of Fiber in 1998. I had never sent anything to an exhibit before that. I packed up the piece and I sent it to Robbi Eklow [then President of IQI.] who gets the box and says, ‘Why did you send me this?’ ‘It is for the show.’ And she said, ‘Oh, you just submit the forms.’ I didn’t even know at the time that you only submit the forms [audience laughs.] I just sent her the whole thing. I do remember it hanging in the middle of the gallery space at the Fine Art of Fiber. I see some heads going up and down out there in the audience. It was quite an experience to actually have something out in public and since then I have done a lot of other exhibits. Doing this piece got me to start creating my own work and it became much less traditional, much more contemporary. I realized that that whole nature base is really important to me.” You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Feb 16, 2014 | QSOS Spotlight
The past few weeks, our Q.S.O.S. Spotlight has been about the ways quilting has helped quilters through hard times, sad moments, and difficult passages. Quiltmaking can provide solace in a time of need, but it can also provide joy, camaraderie, and a heck of a lot of giggles. This week’s spotlight features a few answers to the question “tell me about an amusing experience that has come from your quiltmaking”. These are just a handful of many–from quilt disasters to humorous mis-understandings, clueless relatives and wild exploits at quilt camp–it’s clear that quilting and fun can go hand-in-hand. Carolyn Gorham Guest tells a story about the hazards of multi-tasking while sewing: “There’s an amusing sewing story at my mother’s. Because I was one of four girls, and my mother sewed, sometimes every table and space would be spread out with patterns and fabric and whatever. One summer day when my younger sister and I were sewing, we had a sewing machine set up on the dining room table and one set up out on the front porch. We were working at it. Mom was making bread. They were moving things from place to place. We got the bread done and everything put away for dinner, which was midday. My father bit into a roll that had a common pin in it… It was one of the few times I’ve ever seen him make specific requests about, because he usually was an easy-going man. He wanted the sewing separate from the food.” Shirley Fowlkes Stevenson overhears an opinion at a quilt show: “One of the first shows, I guess that I vended in Paducah [Kentucky.] years ago. Two little old ladies came up in front of the booth and pointed at a quilt and one said to the other, “Mabel, that’s not a quilt, that’s just something you hang on the wall.” [laughs.] I still remember that.” Gwen Otte shares some mis-understandings about a common sewing tool–the marking pen: “[O]ne of our friends is an advanced math, algebra, trig teacher here in Gordon. And she could be my daughter. She’s much younger. But we invited her to come and she hadn’t known us very well but she came. We had a blue, almost navy blue and white, star quilt spread out and it was under construction. The blue, water-soluble pen was new at that time, that felt tip, and I had marked the quilting lines on the white with that. And she walked in. She sat down, brought her own thimble, brought her own needle. She sat down, didn’t say anything, started chatting, was rather reserved but we didn’t know her real well and after we had worked for an hour and a half or so, somebody said, ‘Well, let’s remove those blue lines from this white and see how it looks.’ She said, ‘You can take that out?’ And we said, ‘Well, yes, you use water.’ And she said, ‘Oh, I just thought you women had the worst sense of color in the world. That that would be in there forever.’ And so she was so relieved when we removed the turquoise. Then another friend who was here that day went to a quilt shop and a few days later I got a cell phone call and the reception was terrible. I could barely make out what she was saying and she finally said, ‘I am in a quilt shop in Rapid City and my husband has been looking for that green bottle that you used to remove that blue line.’ And I said, ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’ And she said, ‘Oh you know, that green bottle you always spray that with to take the blue line out.’ You can imagine her laughter when I said, ‘That’s water in an old hairspray bottle.’ ” What’s your most amusing quilt experience? You can read more (funny, inspiring and entertaining) quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Feb 9, 2014 | QSOS Spotlight
This week is second in a series of posts (you can read the first here) spotlighting quilts from the ‘Alzheimer’s : Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS’. Each of the quilts was made by a quiltmaker whose mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Our first quilt comes from Sonia Callahan: “‘Women Who Were’ was something that was in my mind for a very long time. My mother had “dementia/Alzheimer” and was in a care situation for seven years. I would go and visit her and as I sat there I got to observe the various people who were there and recognized the fact that some people were more advanced in this disease than others and some people really still cared about themselves. Basically I tried to capture that in the quilt. I also saw my mother fading and I saw her go through the stage where she wasn’t quite sure who she was and I had hoped to capture that… I have two older brothers and we oversaw her care after my father died and that is where the quilt originated. What I really wanted to do was to capture the various people that I observed for the many hours that I sat with her and also recognize that there is a world outside that window, that there is a whole world that these women don’t access. So it is kind of hazy and I meant to do that intentionally so that you would get the feeling that you were enclosed in this room and that the outside is no longer available, which is true to a degree. We did bring my mother out and have her for half a day or a day, but she always went back to her home. One of the characters in there is a woman called Olga and when my mother first came in she and Olga made a wonderful twosome. They developed a great relationship and they would often sit in the lounge and hold hands. So one of these people has a name, but the rest of them are just sort of people that I have observed… This was her life and this is the life of many of the women who were very distinguish women and were in the same situation that she was. I have to commend the care that she got and it is in a way a tribute to the caregivers who take care of the elderly, because that is a special talent and a very, very special way of giving.” Timi Bronson and her 3 sisters each made a small quilt representing how they felt about their mother, who was diagnosed with “‘Shattered Lives’ is actually four small quilts that were then put together into a framing system that I came up with. I have three sisters and we each made a twelve by twelve quilt that is in fact a complete quilt in and of it’s self. They sent them to me and I put the four quilts into a frame using cotton fabrics. The individual quilts represent what each of us feels about our mother who was diagnosed with a progressive form of dementia in 2004… [T]he only thing that I said I was going to do, that I knew for sure it would be those little bars in black. They took it from there. Dona and I both decided to use a photograph to do our pieces, and the other two used piecing techniques and we all kind of incorporated the same color scheme, which was very odd because we did not discuss it at all. My quilt is actually done from a photograph of my mother that was taken on their 50th wedding anniversary. I took the photograph and put it through several different techniques in different photo programs to actually shatter it so that it looked like a piece of broken glass. I then printed it on to fabric and appliquéd it onto the background fabric. The dementia has actually shattered my mother’s life and it has shattered our lives. She is not the same person that she once was and as caregiver for her, my life certainly has been changed completely.” You can read more quilt stories, including more stories from the ‘Alzheimer’s: Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS’ sub-project on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Feb 2, 2014 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
One of the most compelling Q.S.O.S. sub-projects is the ‘Alzheimer’s : Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS’. It’s comprised of interviews with quiltmakers featured in the touring quilt exhibit of the same name, curated by Ami Simms. This week and next weeks’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight will feature two quiltmakers whose mothers were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and the quilts they created to help celebrate, memorialize, mourn and support those affected by the disease. Gay Ousley’s quilt, ‘She’s Come Undone’ began with verbs: “My mother had Alzheimer’s disease and at that time we were struggling and sort of at the end of her life, and I began to look back on the things that she had enjoyed. My parents had a wonderful life. They traveled all over the world. They were very active in their community, in their church, they liked to socialize, they had a big network of friends. My mother enjoyed golf and she was in two bridge clubs; all that was taken away when she got Alzheimer’s. I began to think about this, and since she was an English major in college, words were important to her. I decided that I would use words, verbs that would tell the story of what she could no longer do… I cut letters out for these words and fused them down to the background fabric and then I stitched them inside the letters so the edges would fray as the trip went on its journey, because this Alzheimer’s just frays everybody and everything that it comes into contact with.” Linda Cooper’s quilt combines a tribute to her mother and grandmother’s love of gardening with the biological science of Alzheimer’s: “My quilt is rather understated, it is a little subtle, it doesn’t hit you in the face like some of the other quilts do with the horror of the disease. Both my grandmother and my mother were wonderful gardeners and they took great pleasure in getting outside the house and doing something and making something grow. They lived in Ohio and they enjoyed it when the weather finally got good and they could go out and make things grow so I used the daylily. I used a technique that I learned from Phil Beaver. He is from Indiana and he does fabric painting. I used that for the background and I put daylilies on it. I appliquéd first around the daylilies with variegated thread so they didn’t look too abrupt and the edges are raw and some of the stems were a little wacky and they sort of look like the flowers would have grown outside. The background of the painting has some bright spots and some dim spots. The flower inside, it is more of the memory of my mother and grandmother, and in the border I used–I’m a biologist. I trained at Purdue as a neurophysiologist and so I used the brain plaques, the amyloid plaques that they see in Alzheimer’s and I beaded the nerve cells and once in a while there would be a normal nerve cell and then I would stitch in a sort of convoluted one and put some beads in there, so that is the biological tie of the disease.” You can read more quilt stories, including more stories from the ‘Alzheimer’s: Forgetting Piece by Piece QSOS’ sub-project on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Jan 26, 2014 | QSOS Spotlight
Winter is in full force here in North Carolina, where we’re enjoying frozen temperatures and occasional threats of snow. With the spirit of winter in mind, today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight is shining on Jacque Hensell, and her quilt “Let It Snow”. The quilt was the first was the first she made after months of not quilting. The story of the small coincidences that lead to her quilting again in a time of need is a wonderful reminder that sometimes, spring can be just around the corner. “The “Let It Snow” quilt is very special to me because there came a time when I had many demands on me. My youngest grandchild was diagnosed with a terminal illness. My family was committed to taking care of him at home. I totally lost interest in quilting. I was very sad because I had lost my interest in quilting. I tried to get the interest back by going out and buying fabrics or buying new patterns. I’d go home and there would just be no spark at all. I would then just give the things I had bought away. I teach quilting and many times students come to class and they don’t have their block completed. They usually say, ‘I was just too busy to do my block,’ or ‘I didn’t getto it because I have a lot going on.’ I couldn’t image why someone couldn’t get a block done. Since I began quilting, I would get up in the morning thinking about quilting and go to bed thinking about quilting. Then that period of time came for me when I couldn’t work on a block. Actually, I didn’t pick up a needle for 9 months. This quilt was the turning point in my quilting life. It was the reason I got back into quilting. I know there was definitely divine intervention in the series of events that restored my quilting interest… Because of the things in my personal life, I had cut back in the number of classes I was teaching. I had one class that I’d been with for 5 years. They met in a church and the group was called Quilts and Other Comforts. They had a devotional and refreshments before class. They were a wonderful group and really my favorite class. They knew I had other demands in my life and that I was cutting back on my quilting classes, but they just insisted that our group continue. I tried to tell them I didn’t have time to work up a new project for them, but I had one quilt project we could do. The quilt class I offered them was named “Snowbound.” I had taught this class many times and the preparation work was done. The group all said they wanted to do this project even though two of the girls had taken this class from me before. The girls that had taken it before said it would give them an opportunity to finish their project. In the “Snowbound” quilt, there is one block that is a nativity scene. The class had recently done a nativity scene, so one of the girls in the class asked if I could come up with a substitute for the nativity scene. I said, ‘Well that really won’t be a problem,’ and I didn’t really think it would be. I just thought, ‘Well, I’d just get to that when I have to. I was just kind of managing my life on a crisis basis. I’ll come up with something for that, you know, I just said, ‘Okay.’ Also at that time, my daughter was having major surgery. I was going to be with her during this time in the hospital and I knew that I needed something to bring to work on… So the very next morning, I came in to my daughter’s hospital room and on her breakfast tray is a skating scene placemat. I instantly saw my replacement for the nativity scene. At that point, I was kind of like my old self, I was going, ‘Oh Heather, just a minute, don’t spill any food on this, just a minute, let me–,’ I got really excited. So then I began sketching a skating scene from her placemat that had been on her tray…And so, as I sketched, I started thinking, ‘Well, you know, I’ve always wanted to redo that “Snow Bound” quilt, I might just make that quilt again as well, and I might just do that, I think I’ll make all their clothes in flannel.’ And I just start thinking and my mind just starts thinking about what I’m going to do. I was very enthusiastic about the project. I could hardly wait for us to get home and start working on it. The following Monday, I needed to go and be with my son’s family to help them and care for my grandson. One thing I always did when I was at his house was read a story to the two middle grandchildren before they took their naps. I always read them one small book or one chapter of a chapter book. That particular day, one of them said they wanted two books. I just said, ‘No, it’s going to be one book.’ Well, to make a long story short, he insisted it was going to be two books and I was just too tired to argue with him. I said, ‘Okay, today it is going to be two books but from now on you understand that it is going to be one book.’…So, the second book that was chosen for me to read was a new book that they had just gotten and it was called “Let It Be Snow.” It was a story about children playing in the snow. I was so excited. As I was reading, I keep seeing the children in the book as figures on my new quilt. I actually used almost all the figures that were in that book on this quilt. I just converted them to appliqué patterns. They were so easy to convert to appliqué patterns. Up to this point, I had thought that all the event were just a coincidence, taking the lesson plans to the hospital, […] her placemat being a skating scene. But then when, the following Monday, when my grandson insisted on me reading two books and the second book being the snow book I knew that somebody was helping me get back into quilting.” You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Jan 19, 2014 | QSOS Spotlight
Today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight is shining on Selena Sullivan of Durham, North Carolina. Selena shared stories of her stunning Baltimore Album quilt, 15 years in the making, teaching her mother to quilt, and the importance of guilds in her quilting life. Selenta talked with interviewer Le Rowell about some of the details of her touchstone quilt: [T]his is a copy of a Baltimore Album style quilt that I worked on over a period of fifteen years, so it’s one of my more ambitious projects, although I would work on it for a year or two and then put it aside and work on another project, and then I’d always pick it back up. And I always felt I wanted to finish this quilt and was happy that I was able to do so finally… I’ve gotten a lot of comments about this one with the Milk Maid [pointing to the block.] And while I think I may have gotten the idea of the Milk Maid from some of the original Baltimore Album blocks, I added some other things into this block that were different. First of all, the cow was a brown [and.] white-spotted cow that we had. We had a cow, a milk cow, when I was a child. And we called her Mother Cow. So I had to have that brown-and-white spotted cow because I had to milk her early mornings before I went to school, and had to milk her when I came home in the evenings. So it was very personal to me. And then the Milk Maid, I determined early on that any figures in my quilt were going to be black figures or African American. So in the Angel block and this Milk Maid, they’re African American figures. I also had to put sunflowers here because my grandmother grew lots of sunflowers. I can still see them out by her fence and around her house. So I’ve loved sunflowers for just this reason, and as a nice flower, and I had to put them in here as well. But this block [indicating.] sort of was a design that I took from other blocks, the idea was adapted from the Goose Girl block, which is a Hannah Foote block and I made the tree similar but less complicated. But that was one that I pretty much kind of designed pulling many aspects together with some personal details. Selena was able to share her quilting skills with her mother: I think my first memory, as a child my mother made what I would consider utility quilts, you know, old discarded clothing, old pants or whatever. Usually, if she could get woolen fabrics or heavier fabrics, she would make utility quilts because we lived on a farm, a drafty house, so you really had to have lots of quilts here in North Carolina, Rowland, North Carolina. You had to have quilts to keep warm. And some of her quilts would be so heavy, you know, you couldn’t move once you got under them in the bed. But I remember her making these quilts and she would get friends or cousins or neighbors to help quilt them and they would have the old frames that were suspended from the ceiling. And my earliest memories would be to play underneath that frame as my mother would quilt. And she always made these utility quilts, so she really never made like Eight-Pointed Star or those type of quilts… I didn’t find out till much later on that my mother had always wanted to make what she considered those pretty type of quilts. I mean, none of the utility quilts she made survived. They were all used up. And so later on, I think it was in the late mid-eighties, I taught my mother to make those pretty quilts, like Eight-Pointed Stars, Broken Dishes, just simple things like even a Nine Patch. And then also I think she ended up making three quilts, almost finishing the third one before her death, and that third one was a Bear’s Paw. She really liked that pattern. And she was amazed that she could do these types of quilts and that I was able to teach her to do that and she would finish one quilt and then ask me to start her on another one. And she always criticized me for starting a quilt and not finishing it before starting another quilt and not finishing it. But I think I’m more of a process quilter. Selena also talked about what she gains from being involved in a variety of guilds, including the African American Quilt Circle of Durham: When I moved to Texas, the Austin Area Quilt Guild was a pretty big guild, maybe 200, 300 people, but there may have been three African American quilters in it. So it was not until I moved to Pittsburgh that I was able to join two guilds there, one of those being an African American work group. So it was in the early nineties that I started working with this work group and became interested in African American quilts, and was able to see that, in fact, the techniques used were quite different. The fabric choices were different. The designs were different. And that’s when I started to seek out African American professional quilters, and I think Michael Cummings was one of the quilters that I had gone to a talk and a presentation by Michael Cummings. I think it was in the early nineties. Carolyn Mazloomi, Faith Ringold, and their books and their works, and [I.] have such an appreciation, so I think you may see those influences, perhaps, in some of my quilts. Then, of course, when I moved to North Carolina here in the African American Quilt Circle, and I find that being in several guilds gives me an appreciation for different types of work, and I can work in different venues and learn different techniques. And also, too, I was convinced to join an art quilt group, Professional Art Quilt Alliance South, which they have usually two exhibitions a year, and they are juried exhibitions. And I have submitted quilts to that and got in. I have really expanded my African quilts, fabrics, and working with that, and I will admit that initially, I found it difficult to work with some of the fabrics because initially, I felt they were busy, and I wasn’t quite sure how to pull them together in an effective manner. But working with this group and seeing their quilts and learning to appreciate their use of design and color, I find that I’m drawn to a big variety of fabrics, strong, bold colors and bold designs. And I find that I can, in this African American quilt group, and it’s not rigid, necessarily, patterns. All of the quilts are different. They’ll take a traditional quilt and put their own spin to it, kind of a free-flowing design. And when I work with this group, I find that I have that freedom to do that without restrictions and not even restrictions in fabrics and colors. And I find that I like silks, wools, African fabrics, traditional fabrics, plaids, and just whatever that quilt calls for. I like to start a project and with an idea and then let that quilt tell me what it needs, tell me to take the fabrics and where to take that design, and that’s pretty much when I work with this African American quilt group, that’s how it’s done. You can read more quilt stories on the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance website. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
