Quilt Historian, Researcher, Speaker and Future Art Quilt Maker

Thank you Michele for inviting my personal words and thoughts for the Quilting Gallery website. I didn’t want to write the usual story about how I got started in quilting and what I like about quilting; besides it is on my website. For you I decided to let the words flow out, similar to getting into the zone when machine quilting and your mind flies free while your hands and eyes do the work.

Over the last few hundred years women from all walks of life, east coast to west coast, rich and poor, slave and master, illiterate through neuroscientist, children through elders and even some men, have been inspired to make a quilt or many quilts in their lifetime. Quilts are the great equalizer, are they not? Likewise, how many people’s lives do you know that have been touched by a quilt, including viewing them?

Some might say the quilt is so familiar on such a broad scale over time and space, that it could be the material culture equivalent of Jung’s archetypal images held in our Universal Unconscious. I imagine a traditional patchwork quilt filling the archetypal quilt image that most people think of if they were asked today, but an artsy and abstract quilt archetype might some day exist, and may already in quilt artists.

None of us, including me, are untouched by the pull of quilts, both old and new. I collect, study and make quilts, with an emphasis on the first two. When I began quilting in the late 1970s, I made baby quilts because most of the fabric available looked like baby fabrics to me. I taught classes and worked on commission. I made baby buntings for mothers of infants, using clothing from their older child to include with new fabric. When I came back to quilting in 1990, I took classes with Katie Pasquini Masopust, and loved the new fabrics and modern methods and styles that were available then.

For the last year or so I have been pulled back toward contemporary and art quilting, fabrics, exhibits, books and magazines. I am developing a friendlier relationship with fusibles, couching, stamping and free-from cutting. I have drawn the line at painting, but I see that cliff falling away with time too. In the meantime, I have a drawer full of fabulous hand-dyed, over-dyed, and other unusual decorative fabrics from myriad vendors.

I seldom make the quilt I plan out into a finished quilt, nor am I likely to use a pattern from someone else. Nonetheless, I begin to plan a quilt by writing a description of the quilt that includes a theme or message. Perhaps saying I begin sounds more like a determined approach, when in reality an inspiration comes up, from the news, or a book, or a magazine picture that inspires a quilt idea and so I draw the design by hand, with measurements and colors or shades.

I don’t color my design, just write down the colors, like a diagram in a biology book. I prefer prints to solid or hand dyed for the quilts I have been making, so coloring them in doesn’t really do any good in imagining how it would actually look. Perhaps when I am choosing fabrics that reflect art quilts, that will prove helpful. I continue to add to the written document as days pass and thoughts come up. Sometimes an entire new drawing comes to mind based on the original intent, it’s different and I think to myself, maybe a series?

If this sounds lofty, don’t be impressed because the truth is, I seldom make them. The repetition of cutting, sewing blocks to make strips of rows, and quilting is boring to me. The excitement is in the designing and fabric auditioning, which does not a quilt make. Given this, it’s a surprise I didn’t jump on the fusible quilt fad years ago, but I did not! It’s harder to flip the switch back to contemporary quilt making than it was to go from that to the traditional styles I choose to make accurate (more or less) reproduction quilts. Perhaps studying and adoring antique quilts in my collection and those of others, including museums, has formed such an impression in my mind, I can’t get that archetype out to let another in. (LOL)

I do love antique quilts and the textiles used to make them. I am a researcher and publisher and offer guides to both date quilts and do research in quilt history. I also have two blogs, Quilters Spirit that I see as my newsletter for my websites, and it covers all kinds of quilts and quilting, from antique to art. Subscribe for notice that a new newsletter is on the blog and make a comment if the spirit moves you.

My other blog, Women On Quilts, is currently a teleseminar and webcast blog. I plan to offer other types of posts and someday classes, but for now I interview women in the quilting businesses, and quilters, and women in businesses that quilters use. My goal is to highlight women who have made their passion their business. My tagline is women seaming business and spirit together in the creative arts.

The interviews are free of charge and if you are unable to make the live recording, that includes Q&A time, the recordings are available 24/7 from the blog site. Enjoy them at your convenience. Please join us for my tele-interviews, usually on a Monday, in the afternoon or evening. Opt-in for my emails notices and you’ll be reminded and receive call in information.