by Quilt Alliance | Oct 28, 2013 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
Today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight features Denyse Schmidt, an iconic quiltmaker, teacher and entrepreneur whose quilts reinterpret traditional patterns with a modern sensibility. Quilt Alliance president Meg Cox interviewed Denyse at the Quilters Take Manhattan event in September of 2012. Denyse shared with the audience at the Fashion Institute of Technology a bit about how she became interested in quilting: “[W]hen I was at Rhode Island School of Design, I started looking at historical quilts more and then after I graduated and had moved to Connecticut and I was… I didn’t have a network of friends there yet and I was working as a graphic designer and it was kind of a very mass-market mind-numbing job [laughter.] I became an expert in Barbie Pink and I was making a quilt for a friend and it was simple nine-patch. I got really interested in the whole, all the stories of quiltmakers and how–whether and how accurate it is or not–those stories of women coming together in a community and the whole barn-raising idea. I was longing for my own community and all my friends were kind of far away and I think I kind of latched onto that idea of quiltmaking, plus, at the time I got really interested in old-timey music, like, Appalachian string-band music and to me it kind of had the same resonance of people coming together, rolling it up, and you didn’t have to be great at it. And I think the quilts I kind of fell in love with, they weren’t about matching corners and being precise. There was a beautiful kind of happenstance and accidental quality in some cases to them. And so making–so I kind of fell in love with all of that and then I was making a quilt as a gift for a friend. I think having a tangible record of the amount of time I spent hand-quilting––you know, “here’s 3 hours” as opposed to my graphic design work, which is in many cases, very ephemeral: it’s printed matter, I’m spending hours kerning space between letters, no one ever notices. It’s on a piece of paper that gets crumpled up and thrown away, versus this very tangible record of time that I had spent and then that it was also a lasting object that was useful and beautiful. So it had this graphic quality and a tactile and textural quality plus, you know, the bits of fabric my mother––I’m youngest of four kids and both my parents had careers but they were very handy makers of things and my mother sewed all her clothes and I grew up in central Massachusetts and we used to go to all the mill stores and stuff, so to me the whole collecting fabric thing was very connected to my mom and being with her. And so to make a quilt that sort of combined all of these things, to me it seemed really magical.” Denyse has been called “the godmother of modern quilting”. She described how she saw her role in the origins of the modern quilting movement: “It’s funny, these days it happens so fast that we’re kind of finding the origins of things,which is kind of odd. I think, while it’s flattering, I try not to take it too seriously because I think, I think I was in a place and a time and I was always presenting my work. It’s great–on one hand I think, I kind of got my message out there. It look a long time but people noticed and that’s really gratifying. And on the other hand, nothing is ever one person. It’s a kind of confluence of events and things that happen. When I started out, I used the word ‘modern’ because I was talking to an audience that didn’t have any other reference point and in some ways, was that the right word? I’m not really sure. I’ve never been very good at absolutes. I kind of recoil from them because to me, nothing is all one thing or another. However it gets defined, I’ll leave that to someone else, to do the defining.” Denyse also shared a story about re-discovering the simple pleasure of hand-quilting a small doll quilt for her book Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration: “I don’t have that much free time and it’s like anybody who does a particular thing–like how the carpenter has all the unfinished construction jobs at home. I think the last thing I want to do is get behind a sewing machine when I have free time. One of the last projects that I made start-to-finish was one of the quilts in my book [Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration.] and of course making a book is very labor-intensive… In this book–and all the quilts that are on display here are from the book–and it was my chance to pay homage to all those historical quilts that inspired me in the first place. But one of the quilts in a book is a little doll quilt and I hand-pieced it and hand-quilted it. I got to watch movies while I did it and I enjoyed every second of it. It was really nice. And I knit, occasionally. But lately I’m just trying to do less. I’m trying to do less. It’s really easy, in today’s world, everybody’s on devices and communicating all the time. I’m finding it exhausting these days. So I’m just trying to learn how to get back to something that feels simpler.” You can read the rest of Denyse’s interview with Meg Cox here. Some of Denyse’s quilts are on display at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky through January of 2013. You can also read more stories about quilts about quilts and their makers at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance’s site. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Oct 22, 2013 | Uncategorized
Check it out! We’ve posted 7 new Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! videos on our YouTube channel. The formula for these Go Tell It! videos is simple: one person talking about one quilt in front of one video camera for three minutes.We’ve created Go Tell It! interviews with quilt makers, quilt owners and even museum curators. Some interviewees tell the story of their first quilt, the history of a special family quilt, or one with a funny story. Whatever the “teller’s” motivation, every quilt has a story and the Quilt Alliance is eager to document, preserve and share that story, for the education and inspiration of today’s quilt lovers and tomorrow’s historians and genealogists.Here are a few of our newest Go Tell It! uploads. You can check out our Go Tell It at the Quilt Show! video playlist here for more great videos![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhx7UMTo9AI&w=560&h=315][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4U-Y8Y-QQA&w=560&h=315][youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmNE1v4bhPY&w=560&h=315]Go Tell It is currently being piloted with the help of quilt show organizers like QuiltCon and Original Sewing & Quilt Expo. In the future we will offer simple training on how anyone can create and share their own Go Tell It! videos, as well as the opportunity to Go and Tell It at future quilt shows and events. Questions? Email us at…
by Quilt Alliance | Oct 20, 2013 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
We’re continuing our trip around the world with this week’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight! Last week, we visited a quilter in Peru. This week, we’re in Germany–we’ll hear from Petra Voegtle from Munich, Germany. In her interview, Petra shared a bit behind her inspiration for a quilt she entitled ‘Vanity’: “Originally I made this piece for a competition. The competition’s theme was requesting a self-portrait. I have used a lot of different motifs and themes for my work but I never did a self-portrait. So this was a challenge that intrigued me very much. I did not want to do something usual. I mean most people think of their real face when they are asked for a self-portrait, be it photographers or painters. I thought about what the face of a human is made of, my face consists of. I thought about the physical part of a face, how it is built up on bones, muscles and nerves, blood vessels and finally skin. I thought about all the layers which are put on top of each other (isn’t this wonderfully quilt related?). And then I thought about how faces carry different layers of meaning, one mask on top of another, mostly never revealing what’s beneath the very last one, the one that shows your real self. I think most people do not show their real face, they try to show only their superficial best. And this is how images are often done. Photographers use filters and a lots of technically sophisticated lenses, painters do not paint the wrinkles and scars that decorate a face – rather they try to show the very best of a person, the beauty or that what could be there and that what reflects a society’s standards. I thought about a person that requires the self-portrait. What do you need a self-portrait for? Don’t you know how you look like? Or is it something you would like to represent but never can? What is it what you see in the mirror? Your true self or something you would like to be? These were the questions I asked myself. I personally hate to be photographed – many people do. The reason might be that someone could catch one of your masks you don’t want to show. On the other hand what is so important that you want to hide? Are self-portraits only another metaphor for self-importance? And when someone feels his/her own self-importance isn’t this exactly what we call vanity? There it was, that word “vanity.” I immediately thought of the old biblical theme about the deadly sins and I decided to work on a whole series about these. What could be better for this theme than represent each character through a face, distorting it into a grotesque not only to make it overly clear which character is reflected but also to show a certain satiric moment. So “Vanity” in fact was the first piece of this series, big drawings first, which have been executed on fine Chinese paper and backed with silk, then repeated as coloured stitched pieces, quilts… The series about the deadly sins will be continued. I am not through yet with this subject but I also cannot work on this heavy theme continuously. Where would be the fun? By the way, the piece was rejected at the competition. Apparently it was too controversial and did not meet the expectations for a self-portrait!” You can read more stories about quilts from around the world at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance’s site. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Oct 13, 2013 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
Many of you might know that that the Quilt Alliance was named The Alliance for American Quilts until 2012, when the board of directors voted to become the Quilt Alliance to reflect the popularity of making and studying quilts around the world, as well as the Quilt Alliance’s broadened global focus on projects both at home and abroad. Since the Quilt Alliance isn’t just interested in American quilts, today’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight features an international interview with Peruvian quiltmaker Mary Flor Garcia. Mary Flor supports her family by making arpilleras, small three-dimensional appliquéd pieces. Though she’s thousands of miles away from the United States, her interview has many of the same themes as an interview with a quilter from Lima, Ohio might: satisfaction in a finished project, a hope for the future of needlecraft, and a love of chatting while sewing! Mary Flor shared a bit about the joy of seeing her completed work: I get excited about the appliqué of my landscapes. The appliqué is when once I have the background ready, I fill it with all the details. You imagine how it is going to turn out, and that is what I like the most… I feel good because I like making it. It is something that now comes to me naturally. I never imagined working on this, but now I like it. I tell my older sister, how it is that before she dared to do anything and now it is me, the younger one who dares to do even more. And she tells me, it’s because I am young, her ideas and mind are not in this anymore. She also shared a bit about the place where she sews: “My place is a small room where I have my bed and my small kitchen. I sit in my little table, in my bench and with my bag of fabrics. I feel good when my sister who stitches for me, and my brothers chat with me. Then, I stitch and stitch while chatting but when I am alone, I can’t stitch! I need someone talking to me.” Often, Q.S.O.S. interviewees talk about teaching and encouraging a younger generation. Mary Flor is hopeful that arpilleras will continue to be made in Peru: [T]he girls in the future, yes they are going to like it, they are going to continue doing it. And if they have a feel for the creativity that we all have, they are going to improve it even more from what we are doing now. I see the future as more beautiful, more vibrant. AB: Do you think that we are, or you are encouraging the new generation to continue? Are there young artists making arpilleras? LFG: Yes, there are girls that are just starting, and most of the learning comes from the stitching. And when you already know how to stitch, then if you have the desire to try more and if you have talent and good skills then they start asking to make a full landscape on their own. And that is how we give them the opportunity by encouraging and helping them trust they can do it. I have a small niece that likes to stitch. AB: How old is she? LFG: She is 12 years old and likes to stitch and my brother, who is a man, from little when we needed it, he also helped out stitching. Whoever dares to do it, can do it. AB: That’s good, it is good to know as one may think, look perhaps this kind of artwork, in 20 years from now, may not exist anymore as it is quite rare for it to be all handmade and with so much detail. LFG: There are people who get bored. They may do a little and say, ‘I can’t.’ This work is not for everyone, because you do need to have lots of patience. You can read more stories about quilts from around the world at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Quilt Alliance’s site. Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Sep 22, 2013 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
Did you know that next year–2014–will be the 15th anniversary of the Q.S.O.S. Project? Over the past 14 years we’ve collected almost 1,100 interviews with quilters around the world! This week’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight shines on one of the very first Q.S.O.S. interviews from 1999, Paula Nadelstern (who’s also one of many special guests at our upcoming Quilters Take Manhattan event!). Paula shared with interviewer Lorraine Jackson a bit about her kaleidoscope quilts, her family, and the unusual places she finds inspiration (like photographs of snowflakes from the 1920’s)! Paula started by explaining a bit about the touchstone quilt she brought with her: Kaleidoscopic XX: Elegant After Maths Each quilt that I’ve done has lead to the next idea, and the next idea. So, working in a series, creating a body of work in one series, has really stretched me as an artist. I mean, there are ideas in here that are rather simple that I didn’t think about in my first quilt, or my fourth quilt, or my tenth quilt. I love the idea that what might look very simple to somebody looking at this quilt, were very new ideas to me that I came to because I really stretched the one idea. So, there’s that sense of it. I started working with a lot of silks in my quilts, starting at about my fourteenth or fifteenth quilt, so there’s a lot of silk in this quilt. The “elegant aftermath,” the aftermath really relates to the fact that, this is really the result of understanding the sense of the kaleidoscope and the geometry that is involved in the kaleidoscope, that I know now how to make an image seem as if it’s fleeting and is spontaneous, and really give the sense of a kaleidoscope, using the methods and materials of quiltmaking. The fabric part of quiltmaking is very, very important. And shared a bit about her studio and very patient family! I live in my two bedroom apartment in New York City with my husband and my daughter. She’s a college student and she’s twenty-one and beginning to move out and I’m still working on my kitchen table. I’ve never had a studio, though I’ll probably be able to start working in her room a little bit… They don’t mind stepping on pins in the living room. At this point, they are used to the kitchen table being my studio instead of the place where they, you know, have dinner, that sort of thing. They’re very supportive. Inspiration for a kaleidoscopic quilt can start anywhere… I’ve written two books one on group quilts and one on the kaleidoscope method. And a few other little things for Dover. And I’m now starting a book on snowflakes… Yes, actually a snowflake is really a six-sided image, in some ways it’s very much like the quilt we have in front of us. Except that basically I’ll use a blue and white palette. Not a very rigid blue and white palette, really stretching that but then also using it in the shape of a snowflake. I will be working in one sixth, designing the snowflake from that one sixth and then duplicating that six times. Photomicrographs of snowflakes were taken in Vermont in the 1920’s so we have these small, little images that I’ve used to identify the specifics of a snowflake. I’ve made one quilt like that and now I’m doing a book about it. Interested in reading more about Paula? You can find her interview and more quilt stories at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Alliance’s site! Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
by Quilt Alliance | Sep 15, 2013 | QSOS Spotlight, Uncategorized
In just under 2 weeks, the Quilt Alliance will headed to New York City for our Quilters Take Manhattan event. We’re busy preparing for the event, so we’re definitely in a New York state of mind! It seemed only fitting that we shine this week’s Q.S.O.S. Spotlight on New York Beauty quilts. There were a number of Q.S.O.S. interviews that featured a quilt made with New York Beauty blocks and even more that had a story about tacking this beauty of a block! Jeri McKay shares a red and white New York Beauty made by her great-great-grandmother. It’s both a stunning quilt and a symbol of Jeri’s life as a New Yorker! “Okay, that was made by my great great grandmother Edna Frances Sanders Carrell. And it was passed on to me by my aunt who had a few of her quilts. I’m the only one now that has one of her quilts in the family. We never knew what happened to the others. She gave them to friends, but not to family at the time. It’s a New York Beauty and I found that I was given that in California, where I was born and raised. But the New York Beauty was not in a state that any of my family ever lived in. And it turned out that I lived the last half of my life in New York. And so it was really quite amazing how certain quilt patterns I have picked through my life, which I’ll probably mention later have turned out to be very portentous in what has happened in my future.” New York City might be bustling, but it was the natural world that inspired Jean Wells Keenan’s New York Beauty! “Well I am kind of obsessed with gardening at the moment. I love to garden and Ihave always been a real outdoor person and like hiking and all of that and have been tuned into nature so I think most of my quilts have a feeling coming from nature because that is where I get inspired from. And I think what has happened with me personally is that you see things in nature that you might not be able to think up yourself like color combinations because it works there then it is going to work in a quilt so I really let that be my guide. And I don’t think I could have done this quilt had I not been a gardener and really tuned into the subject matter that inspired me.” Lucinda Mayan combined a 19th century pattern with a celebration of the upcoming 21st century: “It’s called the “Millennium Beauty.” It’s a New York Beauty design. I think that’s where all those little points get their name. It has eight millennium prints throughout the quilt. In the center the fabric has “Millennium” in fourteen different languages. It was just a way of expressing the year 2000 and it’s coming. I can’t believe it’s the year 2000, but it is. I quilted for a long time, and it was challenging. I wanted something that would challenge me. I like the traditional quilts, especially when you look at some of the older quilts. They have so much work and detail. I’m amazed at what they did years ago. You can still look back at them and appreciate what they did. I don’t know that we’ve gotten any better at what we’re doing. We’ve gotten faster. We’ve gotten more accurate ways of making our pieces, but what they did was just wonderful. As soon as I saw this one I thought, ‘Oh, I’d like to make that.’ When the challenge came I thought, ‘Well, this is what I want to do.’ I love fabric. I appreciate it. So I wanted a design where you could appreciate the fabric and what the artist did to design it. I just took the 2000 theme and went with it.” Interested in reading more? You can find more quilt stories at the Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories page on the Alliance’s site! Posted by Emma Parker Project Manager, Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories…
