It’s hard to believe that we’re already five full months into 2014! Since today happens to be June 1st, our Q.S.O.S. Spotlight this Sunday is on an interviewee named June! June Ross, who has won first place in American Heritage and DAR quilt contests. Too much of a stretch for you? Read on for some excerpts from June’s Q.S.O.S. interview:
On her unusual reason for starting to quilt: “I started quite late in life. I am a retired art teacher, and I remarried 24 years ago to a gentleman who had a hardware background and was not used to the mess that a creative person creates, so I gave up making baskets, and I sold my loom, and I started making quilts which I could fold up and neatly put in a little spot that wouldn’t bother him.”
An amusing anecdote from her quilting life: “I have a pretty extensive basket collection, and included in the basket collection are two workbaskets that were made by the slaves in South Carolina, and I took them to be appraised at one point, and the lady who was appraising the baskets remembered them. She was mounting an exhibit, and so she came to the house to take pictures of them and measure them etcetera and she brought a friend of hers from South Africa who was looking at my quilts while the lady was taking care of the baskets. And when she got through looking at that quilt, ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘if I saw you coming out of Walmart, I never would never have guessed that you could make such lovely things.‘ So, that started me thinking about how–how I should look in order to make people aware of the fact that I make beautiful things. I thought that was amusing.”
On what makes a great quilt: “Well, the visual impact of a quilt. I think is important. Interesting value changes in material that is selected. That is another advance. You used to have red material, green material. Now you have tone on tone. All types of patterns that you have. I particularly enjoy the color, and it’s always fascinating to see what beautiful quilting can do to a relatively ordinary looking product.”
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
qsos@quiltalliance.org