[bright music]
- Announcer: Proceeds from The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show
support PBS Wisconsin programming.
Your financial gift helps make this event possible.
Thank you.
- Maday Delgado: So, good morning everyone.
My name is Maday, and I want to welcome you
to The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show, 2025 edition.
I call the lecture "The M.U.Q.," and it stands for
"The Making of an Unconventional Quilt."
Here is my website, my Instagram handle,
and then this pretty little picture here
should take you to my website, the QR code.
And thank you all for being here.
I want to start off by a quote that I think is so telling.
It says, "When you walk away from a challenge,
you deny yourself the satisfaction of accomplishment."
And this is an issue from What Women Create
that I have kept for many, many years.
So, what that says is finish what you started,
even if it's a very small piece.
"The Making of an Unconventional Quilt: 8 years in the making."
It took me eight years to finish this,
but I also created a wide variety of work
in those eight years
that a lot of you have been able to witness firsthand.
This quilt can also be found in my special exhibit.
It weighs probably 10 pounds.
It's double-sided.
I applied the backing after I had created the top,
many years later,
and it has been hand-stitched twice.
What is the meaning of "unconventional?"
And my favorite way
to think about being unconventional
is "not based on
or conforming to what is generally done or believed."
So, me, myself, my life, I believe,
is quite unconventional, and I try to create work
that is like nothing that anyone has ever done before.
I have said many times before that if I did not teach,
I would not create.
So, I love being a teacher of everything.
I love to teach anyone how to do everything that I do,
perhaps even better than I do it.
So, that is the reason that I create.
When we look at these two pictures,
you can truly understand
what conventional versus unconventional means.
Conventional is something that you can easily understand.
Both things are things that I have created,
actually in the same year.
The one on the left is called "Dance Floor."
I saw a movie, and I saw it reflected on the floor,
so I created a pattern for it.
And some of my friends like to joke
because I do not create patterns to sell.
I only create the pattern for the students that make the time
to show up for my classes.
So, here's the funny thing.
You can buy the diagram for the one on the left
at the Janome booth,
because someone always tells me, "Oh, I know how to do that.
"My grandma could do that.
I can figure this out."
So I said, "Okay, let's do that."
So, I have a diagram if people truly want to do it.
It's a nine-patch, it's quite simple.
But it's my original design.
The one to the right is quite unconventional,
and you'll notice from all my photos
that I take photos of my quilts on the same street.
I'm quite proud of that street
and what we're trying to create and bring back to my community.
So, this one is called "Trash Talk,"
and that is the mission of 2025.
I launched the workshop "Trash Talk,"
which I'm teaching at the Textile Arts Center of Madison
October 4,
and some of you here are already signed up for that class.
So, that's "Trash Talk."
"Trash Talk" is also double-sided,
and it is machine-embroidered.
Here is unconventional and conventional, right?
So, the one on the left is also an original pattern
that one of my friends sitting here today adopted,
changed a couple things, and she won an award for it
last February.
I haven't created a pattern for it.
It was the same idea.
"I will sell you the photo.
"You can figure out--
"I can tell you what tools to use,
and you can make it your own."
And then, the one to the right is my unconventional piece.
I always wanted to create scrapbooking.
So when Adra, my daughter, was born,
that was my idea,
that I would teach myself how to sew so that I would scrapbook
because I couldn't do it with paper.
I didn't have the time to do that.
So, I created this piece back in 2014,
and someone bought it
for more than I thought my things should be paid,
and it lives in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
But let's go back to my very unconventional,
amazing, multifaceted quilt.
And I started this in 2017.
At the very beginning of 2017,
I started taking my first master's level class
in sustainability.
I did very well in that class,
and I stopped with the one while I was ahead.
[audience laughs]
So, in the spirit of collage,
this is wildly inspired by the Japanese Boro aesthetic.
I am teaching this workshop in Middleton, Wisconsin,
at Blue Bar Quilts, I believe,
the 21st of September of 2025, if you're interested.
And when that big piece got started,
this is what I started with.
I had three little studies.
It has wool, it has vintage fabric.
It has some wiggly, wiggly things that I loved.
And I thought, "Well, I'm just gonna hand-stitch
and see what happens."
So, I made it into a happy little pillow,
and that was the beginning of this piece.
I have loved this piece for so long.
While I was putting the sleeve
so that we could hang it at the show,
I still found spots that I could hand-stitch,
so I'm not quite done with this journal.
So, that's how this was for me.
It was a journal of eight years,
lived through some really difficult family things
and some triumphs, as well.
It also has the most expensive pair of jeans
I ever bought for myself when I was--
[all laugh]
When I was, like, 25 years old and I knew nothing, nothing!
I paid $125 for those jeans.
I haven't done that ever since.
But the jeans are represented in here.
So, some of the floral motifs that you see on the screen
were actually on the inside of the pocket of those jeans.
And when I took everything apart,
that got revealed.
So, here was the idea.
That, as the denim got worn out, the flower would imprint,
so the actual embroider was on a side
that no one could see from the pair of jeans.
My waistband, which was smaller, is also featured in here.
And then there's everything
from fabric friends have given me
to things that I have found to things that I have purchased,
and I really tried to keep the palette
as dim as possible.
And once you see my work,
you will see what that "dim as possible" was.
Here is another view of it when we got started.
I saved everything from these jeans,
including the yellow thread,
which I used to piece it back into the piece.
So, this is all done by hand.
And then in 2018, you know, as life is bound to happen,
through a difficult period of my life,
I started collecting little girl dresses in silk,
and I started mending it because it really was falling apart.
So, I love to collect secondhand fabric,
and that's why the name of my brand
is Sustainable Textile Design.
Here is a close-up of another little silk dress
that I purchased within my community.
Here are some of the tools that I like to use.
And things have evolved a lot in the eight years
that I have been creating work.
But I also wanted to show you the back of this piece.
So, this is as it stood in 2021,
and you can see all the different kinds
of batting that I use, especially for hand-stitching.
You can give yourself license to use, at any given time,
any type of wool.
My least favorite, which is, I think, the best,
is wool, because it attaches to my skin,
so I don't like it, but if I have it, I will use it,
and I will never throw away something
that is nice and can be used for different purposes.
So, you can see a map of where we started,
where we went from 2017.
And that's how I create.
So, I call it "The Chaos of Perfection."
We create on batting first, and then we add the backing.
So, you can see each panel that I created.
2021 also coincided with the exhibition
at DuPage College in Illinois.
It was an exhibition of Frida Kahlo's work.
It was supposed to be in 2020,
but it got moved to 2021 for obvious historical reasons.
And it says, "Nothing is absolute.
"Everything changes, everything moves,
everything revolves, everything flies and goes away."
So, it really spoke to my heart,
and it was probably the most transformative exhibition
that I have ever been a visitor at,
and it took many years to bring to Illinois.
So, in here, I'm showing you how I am applying
the backing fabric.
Each segment for the backing
was individually hand-appliquéd through all the layers,
stitching twice through the top.
This quilt is so heavy and so thick,
I actually broke a hand-stitching needle.
Quite painful, so I don't recommend it.
[all laugh]
But I want you to see how, to the left-hand side,
I have the batting exposed
so that you can see the past of the project.
And then to the right,
I'm appliquéing the backing one piece at a time
instead of having a solid piece--
piece by machine.
And you can see how I use denim.
I have muslin.
I have knit.
Anything that I could find got hand-appliquéd to the back,
including my favorite thing to collect,
which is flour sacks.
If you have a chance to see this quilt in person,
which I highly recommend, they can show you the back.
I hope there's someone with a glove
and they can show you what the quilt backing looks like.
So, this is part of the backing.
I used a lot of white T-shirts that I found in the trash can
at a quilt shop,
and I said, "Someday, I'm gonna use this for something,"
because they were working on T-shirt quilts,
which is a wonderful way to preserve memories.
So, this quilt doesn't have only eight years of my memories.
It has countless years
of someone else's life history as well.
And here is the different types of things that I use.
I just folded the quilt, and you can see the denim.
You can see some Japanese prints on the lower left-hand side.
You can see, on the top, linen.
You can see block-printed fabric to the right of the image.
So, all different kinds of techniques,
lots and lots of hand stitches,
and the more crazy they look, the better they feel for me.
Building a tolerance for the unconventional can be scary.
Becoming more unconventionally artistically
could simply be becoming more adventurous.
So, I'm gonna give you a few tips
on how you can get more unconventional in your work.
Some people would call it "more modern," "more freeing."
I simply call it
"more adventurous and unconventional."
Don't be afraid to work with miniature.
And I fell in love with this.
I don't collect fabric
because it comes from a specific designer.
I collect the fabric because it looks
like I can tell a story with it.
And good news:
we are all officially storytellers in this room,
and you have been for years,
because of the work that you choose to create
and the time that you're investing
in the things that you want to do with your time.
So, it's valuable, it's artistic,
and we are all storytellers.
And here is a piece that didn't quite fit into the exhibition.
So, I like to work in panels, okay?
Because you can really hone in on your skill
of building a palette study, right?
So, this was all gifted to me by an amazing artist
that is also presenting here
at The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show 2025.
I wanted to unite the colors monochromatically
as much as possible,
and then I broke my little discipline rule in there
and threw in some opposing color for this type of work.
I am extremely proud of this.
I got the top done before December 31,
and I started after Christmas of last year.
And here she is.
So, do some color play with solids.
Put 'em all together and see what happens.
I also wanna show you how unconventional I am.
I have three sides that I rounded,
and then one side is a 90-degree angle, okay?
Because there's no rules.
And I also love this study so much
that I did not square off my quilt.
So, whatever size, whatever shape
the quilt came out of,
which I call it more of a tapestry,
I left it, so it is wobbly, it's not even,
and it is absolutely 100% me.
And, of course, here is my tie study.
So, this year, I started teaching a class
on making concentric circles,
and I received, from a wonderful human and her mom,
probably 2,000 ties.
[audience murmurs]
And someone had actually gone through
and spent the time on opening each tie,
so, really, it was begging for me to use it.
And, of course, I'm not gonna throw away
so much yardage of something so good
that is now being made.
So I decided to create my panels with the ties.
Tie is an unconventional fabric to use
for your tapestries as well.
And then I said, "Okay, how else can I elevate this?"
So I started working with concentric circles,
and then the circles that I would cut out,
I machine-appliquéd back into this piece.
I will bring it tomorrow for those that are still around.
But this is something that I really wanted to show you.
So, I am gonna continue teaching concentric circles
because it is its own kind of magic.
This is machine-piece and machine-appliqué.
Here is another unconventional fabric.
I found these remnants, very small remnants,
in Savannah, Georgia, a couple of years ago
when we were vacationing, and I created two totes,
and people fell in love with it.
I sold them, and I didn't even know it would happen.
They are not perfect by any means,
but work with unconventional fabrics
and this is what it means, right?
Otherwise, this would be thrown away.
Here is my favorite thing to work with:
denim and deconstructing denim,
another unconventional fabric for quilting.
There's so much denim out there,
and it takes hundreds of gallons to create one pair of jeans,
so I highly recommend to people
to please use as much denim as possible.
So, I deconstruct absolutely every single piece of the denim.
And here's the result.
I am hand-stitching this gorgeousness.
It is gonna take me probably a year to do it.
But I have used everything,
and these were denim jeans that were given to me
by local farmers of where I live.
So, when people don't know what to do with fabric,
they send me an e-mail and they say, "Hey, Maday,
"can you use this?
Do you know someone that can use it?"
And 95% of the time, I will find a new home for it,
because I do know resources
for reusing and upcycling as much as possible.
It is an incredible piece.
It is extremely heavy,
but it is 100% worth the effort to deconstruct denim.
And remember those tiny little things that I showed you
a couple of slides back,
the tiny little miniature piecing?
That's where it lives right now, and then more concentric circles
and then more repaired pockets,
because I had to remove the little metal,
you know, those little buttons.
And then to the right of the image,
I actually left the metal fastener in there.
I want to draw the attention to the dirty part of the denim.
That is the thing that I love the most
because it speaks about someone else's lives, their triumphs,
and you know that being a farmer is not an easy feat.
So, I take it as a great badge of honor
to be able to use things that other people have actually worn
against their skin.
And here it is in a more beautiful light.
It has since grown from the left-hand side
to be much larger than that,
and if you look to the right image
to the lower section of the right-hand side,
you can see that there are H and S.
I don't know if that was the person's name
or they just needed to write a little note.
But there is a badge of history right on this piece.
Improv doodles, right?
It could be curves, it could be straight lines,
it could be triangles, it could be jelly roll,
whatever you wanna call it.
But try to experiment with form, texture,
shapes, and colors, right?
So, in every lecture that I give every year, anywhere,
I always say to people,
"Create a challenge for yourself,
and you have a year to complete this challenge," right?
Create a long-term project.
Maybe not eight years like I did,
but, for me, the specific piece that I created
that lasted, you know, eight years,
there was a lot of life that happened in those eight years,
and that was my long-term project
that I used as a journal, and it's not quite done yet.
So, this is a class that I'm teaching September 20
right here in Middleton at Blue Bar Quilts,
if you would like to join me.
And then we go back to the unconventional.
And I have to tell you, the more rare I make pieces,
the more my kind of people love it,
and I usually sell them.
So, this was sold to a pastor at a show.
So, collage is a form of self-expression.
There's no conventional seam allowances.
It's abstract.
You can mix media, you can use your vintage,
you can use a little bit of metal,
anything that you can hand-stitch,
and you can create your own piece.
This was created after a terrible thing happened
in France, and I had to creatively do something.
So...
And then, this is an experiment in grayscale.
So, please don't fear knits.
This is completely made with knits.
I bought a dress, and they sent me the pieces
that were cut off from the dress,
so I decided to honor those little pieces of fabric,
and I created a shirt from that that I brought here today
so that you could actually feel it and see it,
and it is hand-stitch.
So, don't fear the knits.
And I love--
Having moved here from New York City,
I do love alley life
in the most positive way for me, anyway.
So, when I visit-- This is in St. Cloud, Minnesota,
where I teach fairly regularly for the Minnesota Quilters Show.
And my family and I were walking down the alley,
and I'm trying to find the perfect place
to photograph this work,
and it couldn't be more perfect than that.
There is trash on the floor.
There is an orange and white cone.
So, they climb up the stairs,
and they help me take a picture of this quilt
that also happens to be in the special exhibit.
So, art imitating life: change with the times.
Observe the world around you.
There's a lot of beauty,
and there's a lot of garbage, as you can see.
[audience laughs]
The most important thing that I can tell you
is adjust your creative expectations.
Just because something did not come out the way you planned
doesn't mean that it's not worth finishing.
So, if we go back to the first slide,
talking about those accomplishments,
finishing what we started.
Try new techniques.
Be patient with yourself.
Explore, use your stash.
This piece is called Piece by Piece.
It's also part of the exhibit.
I created this piece for an exhibition that we did,
I think, maybe two years ago, even last year,
at the Wausau Center for the Visual Arts here in Wisconsin.
And I happened to buy scraps,
because that's probably the thing that I buy the most.
I buy scraps from fellow artists.
And all those little pieces in the center
came in a bag, okay?
And I was thinking,
"Well, I can't really use all these triangles
"because I can't create something that I wanted,
"so I'm forced to create something
with the triangles that were in this bag."
And I said, "Okay, I can either be salty and upset,
"or I can see this
as the opportunity that presented itself."
So I decided to piece everything back together.
It has a lot of amazing details,
so if you can go and see it in person, please do so.
And then, the thing on the top and on the side
was actually a class that I taught.
The pattern is called "Chain of Fools."
It's by Jen Kingwell.
And so, I'm still honoring the project.
I didn't want to make a huge tapestry,
so I included it in Piece by Piece
that you can see right here at the exhibit.
It is a double-sided tapestry.
It can be hung either way.
So, oftentimes, to save myself space
and the headache of trying to invent
a quilt backing for my pieces,
I just use another quilt top that I made.
So, you will see that a lot in the pieces that I create.
And here, I'm gonna leave you
with one of my most favorite quotes.
"We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors.
We pass it on to our children."
And that is a Native American proverb
from What Women Create, issue 14.
And I really wanna thank you for being here this morning.
I have a couple more things that I wanna talk about,
and the quilts are right behind me,
so we are not quite done yet.
This here is called Silver Lining.
It explores
a lot of different things that I have gone through artistically.
It's going to have a little bit of appliqué,
which is where the Silver Lining came from.
There was no other special meaning to Silver Lining,
but there was silver and these are lines,
so there you have it. [audience laughs]
It couldn't be more straightforward.
But I am teaching this class in Baraboo October 18
if anyone wants to join me.
There are templates that are available on my website
that you're going to need for this class.
And then I will be providing the template
for creating the concentric circles.
Okay, so, I haven't even finished it.
I have a few more sections to apply to it,
but I wanted to bring it to you
so that you could see something fresh
and see how my mind works.
So, it's not that I only create things
that are hand-stitched and a little bit chaotic,
which is absolutely amazing
for the style of work that I want to create.
But I wanted to show you something more consistent
so that when you tell your friends you came to this lecture
and you're like, "Well, she didn't show me
how to make anything,"
well, we still talked about different techniques
so that you can take back home with you.
This is not gonna be hand-stitched
because I have my hand-stitching schedule
quite tied up,
but it's going to be another amazing piece.
I wanted to create sort of a more, for me,
grown-up palette,
so a little more serious with a pop of color.
Still has a lot of piecing to create some of these segments.
And then this is called Playing with Jacks.
So, if you take photos of this,
please do not share them with your friends on the web.
It is a fresh class
that I taught the middle of August,
and it's called Playing with Jacks
because that was my favorite game when I was a child,
and it's something that I dreamt up.
I use Indian fabrics from-- Amy Butler sells quite a few
of block-printed Indian fabrics in here,
so it's very soft.
It is machine-embroidered,
and I can create consistent things
that other people may deem
as, you know, conventional, normal.
I can do those things, too.
But what I create for myself, more private work,
will be the hand-stitched pieces that you can see in here.
And I finally found a technique
that I can have for the rest of my life.
This is what I wanna do for the rest of my life.
But there's more consistency.
Then to my left,
I have another piece that I just finally got after one year.
It was living in Indianapolis with Crimson Tate.
She's also here.
And this was her most recent fabric collection,
so I'm happy to have it back.
And this one here is done by my friend and student Mary.
This was something
that I adapted from needle-turn appliqué,
'cause that's not gonna happen, to raw-edge appliqué by machine,
and then we hand-stitched everything.
So, if you want to see my own piece,
it is on my website,
and everybody has access to that.
But I wanted to showcase some of the work of my students
so that you see that people actually come to my classes
and it's just not me talking about this.
So, I want to show you...
It actually fits.
I'm very proud of it.
And it is a pattern by 100 Acts of Sewing.
So, if you're interested, you can modify it.
You can do some really cute things to it.
You can also leave it open, so I want to show you.
Right?
So, instead of closing it, we can just leave it open here.
So, sometimes I make garments for myself,
not just upcycle things.
But what I love the most is giving new life to things
that other people would discard.
And this is a piece from a sew-along
that we did last year.
The easiest way to show it is to wear it.
And this pattern is by Natalie Chanin.
So, we did a sew-along.
Everything is sustainably sourced in Alabama,
and if you're curious about it, it's called,
Alabama Chanin is the brand,
if you want to give this a try for yourself.
And then, this is a class that I started in 2020.
My friend Mary also finished it.
I thought it was gonna be, you know, warm in September,
so I didn't bring mine, but I was wrong.
[audience laughs]
But this is her work,
and she's happy being part of the audience
and being part of my classes, I hope,
and she's also a great friend
for being put in the spot for my lectures.
So, if you ever have any ideas
of something that you wanna share
and you don't know how to tackle,
please feel free to reach out to me.
I don't give you my phone number,
but I give you the phone number to the place where I work,
and so you have access to me
more than probably anybody else out there.
I wanna say thank you so much for being here
and being such a good sport being recorded.
It is a great honor to be in your company,
and I hope the next year, you go
and try to be more unconventional and wild,
because there's only one life to live,
and you are in it,
so you might as well be spectacular with your time.
So, thank you.
If you have any questions... [audience applauds]
- Attendee 1: Yeah, I have a question, Maday.
How do you manage what you see?
Like, if you're working with silk
and the thing is truly right down to the threads,
do you use a stabilizer, or do you just save it, or...
I'm just curious.
- So, the question is if something is very,
is very thin, right, if a fabric is worn out,
how do you work with it?
So, there is a stabilizer
that I have been using since 2012,
and it's called fusible PolyMesh.
And we talk about it in every lecture that I give,
and we actually use it in some of the workshops, as well.
Fusible PolyMesh by OESD, yeah.
- Attendee 1: And the other question that I had is
when I've gotten donations from people,
I've found all kinds of not just fabrics,
but also smells and other-- [laughs] other elements
that, you know, I just want to make sure
it doesn't get contagious to other things
like mold and stuff.
So, how do you handle that?
- So, I get a-- So, the question is,
when you get donations and the fabric smells a little bit,
don't fret.
So, we get snow in Wisconsin still.
We don't know how long that's gonna last.
So, one of the things that I do is I actually take the fabric
and put it in the snow, okay?
It doesn't matter if it's cloudy.
It doesn't matter if it's sunny.
If it is sunny, it's going to be better.
So, all that snow--
And it has to be fresh snow, my friends--
I would put it in there and let it rest,
and some of that odor and smell will be absorbed.
The sun is a wonderful cleaner as well.
It's a cleanser, so I would say use that.
If you don't have that, you can try your dryer.
Sometimes the fabric cannot be washed
because it will disintegrate, or maybe you are afraid
that the fabric will bleed into a major project.
So, those are some of the things that I do.
If you have to, I would use Soak, S-O-A-K.
It is a very concentrated soap.
Just a little bit of that in a tub of water,
it could be just a plastic tub,
and you can just submerge it in there
and play with that a little bit and see.
But the sun and the snow.
Rainwater, I collect rainwater
for a variety of things,
just because I am concerned about water waste,
which is a sustainable thing to do.
So, I use some of those things, yeah.
Any other questions?
You better make me work.
- Attendee 2: Hi, when you start a new project,
how far do you plan ahead?
- Okay, so, the eight-year project
or any project, right?
So, it depends.
If an idea is gonna turn into a class,
which, 99% of the time,
that is the reason that I create,
I just plan for the project.
The eight-year project became
more of a therapeutic thing for me to do,
and it was a journal.
I believe that if you don't want something to be known,
you better not put it on paper, text message,
or your website, right?
So, there are some very private things
that I'm not ready to share, and it's helped me deal
with personal trauma and just things that happen
when you migrate from another country.
So, that became my journal, so I continued, right?
So I created a little piece in 2017, and I didn't think
that this thing would grow as much as possible,
but the more I hand-stitch, the more I heal myself.
So, there's always something to be healed from
in this modern society,
so I continue the project until this year.
Yeah, so, I don't plan very far in advance,
and if I decide, "Okay, so"--
When I was creating Playing with Jacks,
I created one block,
and then I was like, "Okay, let's try a second block."
And I said, "Okay, let me do four
and see what this could look like."
And then I thought, "What a crazy idea.
Let me create this for my retreat."
So, every year, I teach a retreat
to eight to ten people,
so it's very small, very private.
We have dinner, we have a great time.
We have peaches from my trees.
So, it's a nice, cozy environment.
And that's the reason I decided to go larger,
to bring it to other people as well,
and see if they would find some joy in that.
But I don't cut a whole quilt.
And I have to tell you-- you're gonna laugh--
I don't consider myself a quilter
because I want to paint.
I want to hand-stitch.
I want to play with the garden, you know?
I look at life like one full sustainable unit,
where I grow gardens for my community
for the last 11 years, where I help my neighbors,
where I donate fabric,
where I donate new sewing machines to nonprofits.
That's the kind of world that I want to live in.
So, for me, sustainability is
the whole way of living and being.
And, yes, I'm quite imperfect.
Just ask my husband and my daughter.
[audience laughs]
But I do want to share this beautiful life
and this art of making with people
and people that I haven't met yet.
So, I'm probably one of the most real people
that you will ever meet, because I put the work in
and I put my body through that work
to give back to my community.
So, yes, don't plan a lot ahead.
I don't, not artistically, right?
I'm pretty uptight about a lot of things,
but my art is probably the most freeing thing,
thanks to hand-stitching.
Yes.
- Attendee 3: When you appliqué onto the back,
are you doing a traditional turned appliqué
and then stitching over it,
or are you, you're just hand-stitching?
And do you stitch all the way through to the front?
- Yes, so, every stitch from the back.
So, the question is, when I stitch, needle-turn appliqué?
Regular appliqué, yes.
So, I overlap my pieces because I don't want anything else
to kind of show from the back,
but everything is, again, through all the hand stitches
through the front of the piece.
So, the front of the piece
has the past and the present for that piece all in one,
and you truly have to go see this hot mess by yourself.
[audience laughs]
I mean, because when you see it, you will want to touch it.
I promise, and I'm talking about a quilt here.
But I want you to know that if they let you,
you can touch my piece, everything that is hanging.
And I also have another piece in there.
It's called The Chaos of Perfection,
and it is hand-stitched twice again.
And I do that because I have nothing else to do.
[audience laughs]
No, truly, I do it because I want it to be
the defining thing of my work.
I want to create the time to be slow and methodical,
and as long as I live, that's the system of creating
that I will have.
So, that's when I decided to make also
machine-quilted pieces double-sided.
So, I do a lot of that, yeah.
- Attendee 4: When do you know a piece is finished?
- So, this one, the eight-year project--
The question was,
"When do you know if a piece is finished?"
First of all, if I have a deadline.
[audience laughs]
I'm silly.
But the eight-year project is still not done.
I'm gonna continue stitching in there,
and I think I devise sort of a plan for that.
I'm gonna give each year a color.
So, if I continue,
because we had to take a break in this piece, and I--
we had to take a break--
I'm gonna choose a different color every year
so that I, even though if I don't remember
what year I added to my journal,
I can still say, "This was a different year," right?
And I'm gonna continue talking about this project
and the healing properties of having a long-term project.
So, when your first, your friends tell you,
"Hey, did you finish the retreat piece from three years ago?,"
you say, "No, Maday told me that I am fully capable
of having a long-term project." [audience laughs]
"And this is gonna take as long as it takes," right?
And you should always surround yourself with people
that are encouraging of your practice and your work,
and should anyone be hypercritical, find new ones.
[audience laughs]
Yes.
- Attendee 5: I came to your lecture last year,
and you had a specific kind of batting
that you were using that had, like, the back on it, too.
- Yes.
- Attendee 5: And I forget what the name of that was.
- Yes, so, we talked about--
Bless you for coming two years in a row.
I mean, I don't know how you do that,
but here we go, okay.
So, the piece that I show you, the denim piece, I'm using,
it's called Birdie Bird Batting.
It's Birdie Bird Batting,
and if you go to the Janome booth,
they will order you any size that you want.
And the denim piece was so, so heavy
that I really couldn't find the time
to bring it here, and we didn't have enough space,
but it will be making an appearance, for sure,
if I come back next year.
So, Birdie Bird
has the batting and the flannel sewn together.
It's basted together.
And so, the premise was that you would put your quilt top
on the batting side and the backing of it
on the flannel side.
Well, that's way too much work.
So I decided to use the batting and the flannel,
which are basted together, against the back of my piece.
And then all I'm doing is moving with two pieces of something,
even though I have three layers.
Highly recommend that you try this product,
and if they allow you to see the back
of any of the quilts in the exhibit--
it's called Trash Talk: Sustainability in Focus --
you will see Birdie Bird Batting on the back of those pieces
so that you can see what I'm talking about.
- Attendee 6: What was the brand of thread?
- So, the hand-stitching thread,
which you can see at the end of the lecture over here,
it comes directly from Japan,
and I love it because I go through four layers
of hand-stitching and it doesn't shred easily,
so I finally found something
that will be with me for a while.
I hope you have a ton of fun out there.
Go see, there's 15 exhibits
of people that I know and people that I don't know,
and it's well worth it,
so when you're tired, sit down, have a snack.
But I hope you enjoy it, and I truly am very grateful
that you're here at 8:30 in the morning
to put up with me, so...
Thank you so much.
[audience applauds]
- Announcer: Proceeds from The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show
support PBS Wisconsin programming.
Your financial gift helps make this event possible.
Thank you.
[bright music]