- Quilts are like our lives--
each quilt holds an important story.
Between the first cut of fabric to the last stitch,
quilters explore a personal journey,
combining tradition, innovation, and inspiration.
Join us in celebrating Treasured Quilts of Wisconsin .
- Treasured Quilts of Wisconsin is funded in part by
Quintessential Quilts
and Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.
- Hi, I'm Nancy Zieman.
The tradition of quilting is deeply rooted in our history
while evolving with each generation.
Quilts connect us to the past,
as they hold our stories,
sewn piece-by-piece, and stitch-by-stitch.
While each quilter's reason for quilting varies,
they share the common bond of this traditional art,
the common desire to express themselves
through this labor of love.
- Sewing, for me, started when I was a child.
I had Barbie dolls and my mom had scraps of fabric
and I would sew clothing for them.
I started quilting about 25 years ago.
Initially, my husband thought my quilting was sort of ridiculous,
because you buy fabric, you cut it apart,
and you put it back together,
but now that he's seen me do it for a number of years,
I think he's gained an appreciation for it.
He talked about, in retirement, learning how to sew
because he's convinced he could do it.
And I guess I must make it look easy
because he thinks he's going to give it a try.
"Crazy Nine Patch" was a nightmare.
[chuckles]
My son and his wife choose the pattern
and they don't sew,
so they don't know how difficult the technique was.
The pattern was for a wall-sized piece
and oftentimes when you get a pattern for a wall-sized piece,
there's a reason for that.
Because if you make it bigger, it will make you crazy.
It was a method of stacking fabric and cutting it
and then, putting it back together in a different order
to create an unusual block.
They're fun to give as gifts
because no one's going to get the same thing.
But they also can't return it.
So if they don't like it, they're stuck.
[laughs]
I think everyone needs a hobby, an outlet.
Quilting is my outlet.
Well, I tell my husband, "I'm going to my happy place,"
when I come downstairs to my quilting room.
And he understands it.
It's just about being creative
and having things around me that give me joy.
- I have been making landscape quilts for about 20 years
and I frequently make paths through forests.
It just occurred to me that our lives are just a journey,
like a path in the forest,
and "Come Walk with Me" just kind of flowed
right out of that whole idea of walking with my husband.
I was thinking about fall,
because fall is my favorite season
and it was also my 32nd wedding anniversary,
and my daughter-- the last of children moved out,
so finally, we were experiencing being empty nesters.
And I was really looking forward to a time,
it was just the two of us again,
just like it was when we first got married.
Originally, I had a poem in my mind when I was making it,
and this is for my husband, and so the last stanza is:
"And as you gently hold my hand,
I'll hold on tightly too
and together we can walk along
until our time is through."
Kind of a mushy thing,
but I was feeling mushy when I made the quilt.
[laughs]
That was the inspiration.
And then, about three months later,
two of my kids moved back home,
but we don't need to talk about that.
[laughs]
- I teach quilting skills and sewing skills
to Hmong women, elders.
I started teaching here at Kajsiab House in 2009.
I brought one of my quilts with me to show the women.
And a woman turned to me and said,
"You teach us to make this?"
"Yes, of course, I'll teach you how to make this."
This is just beautiful.
So I've been here ever since.
It's been seven years, on a weekly basis.
- I do many different kind of cross stitches, different...
Also think about animals.
I think about the nature.
I think about trees and leaves
and so I do all different ones
so I have varieties.
- We focus on integrating their hand skills--
which are primarily in
cross stitch and reverse applique--
and we take those skills
and integrate them into more Western style quilting.
So we've kind of merged the two: East - West.
- [translator] The cross stitch are the skills
that both my parents taught me
when I was a young kid.
That's something that I would do for the rest of my life
for my kids to know and to remember that.
Sewing with the women makes me happy.
It makes me feel good,
and unlike when I was there in the jungle in the refugee camps.
- All of the women that are here came here
from Thai refugee camps
and were part of a resettlement process.
During the Vietnam era, the Vietnam War,
they needed to escape Laos if they wanted to survive,
so they are harrowing tales that I hear:
how they moved entire family groups
through the jungles in Laos
into safety in Thailand.
- It tells my stories ever since I came from Laos and Thailand
and how my life has been struggling
and how I survive and came to this country, so.
I will save these for my family.
I will save these for my kids and my grandkids to remember.
- They take great pride in what they can make with their hands.
And they're really pleased
to be able to make something and then give it
to family members, children, grandchildren.
[translator] - I did this quilt.
It's for my son, because I only have one son,
and for him to remember that it's from me, from his mom.
- I don't really have any particular ideas
or story behind the clothing or the quilt here.
Most of the quilt that I do
back in Thailand in the refugee camps
is most of the time because of stress.
I use quilting, and I used quilting as a way
to escape stress and to release my stress and my worries.
- This is giving them another place to put their needle work.
Another way for them to express themselves,
and to also provide something of lasting value
for their families.
- Even though we don't share a common language--
we use translators-- there's a real bond.
I feel a real bond with this group of women.
- It makes me feel happy.
Happy that to sew with Mahta and the rest of my sisters
here at Kajsiab makes me feel really happy.
*
- I think quilting, to me, means a hobby that I have
enjoyed over decades,
which has been just marvelous,
because not only does it relieve you
from the stresses of everyday life,
but it is something that has brought me
treasured friendships,
through good times and bad for all of us.
When I was a young mom, and working full-time,
my husband had a job where he was on the road a lot.
I really didn't feel like
I had a whole lot of time for quilting.
And one of my friends was a hand quilter.
So, I asked her, "How do you get so much stuff done?"
And she said, "I just start my day
"and if I can get three needles full of thread put into a quilt,
I feel like I have accomplished all I need to."
I asked her, "Well, how about, how much time is that?"
And she said, "About fifteen minutes."
And I decided, "I can do fifteen minutes a day."
And I have done that,
including holidays and most vacations.
And I do accomplish a lot.
It's the consistency that's important, I think.
I originally had a closet, and it wasn't really even big.
My sewing machine was on an old typewriter stand on wheels
and I would have to wheel that out and sew,
but I had the desire, so I could continue quilting.
We have probably 15 to 20 antique stores,
junk stores, consignment stores,
and I'll just go there and I'll find something
that will give me inspiration.
And it certainly isn't a quilt--
but it might be a piece of pottery, or...
vintage clothing, it could be.
I do have one quilt
that I just finished called "Chicago."
And it was made because I went on a boat tour
of the Chicago River.
And although it had been a dreary, rainy day,
which was all gray,
I put it down on paper, put it on graph paper,
and I made a purple, orange and yellow quilt out of that.
Right now,
I think I'm working on about five or six.
Completely different styles.
And I may be doing binding on one.
I'm finishing up a label on one.
I've just kind of started one
that I originally started 25 years ago
and I've started doing the final border on it.
And they're different styles and I find that's good,
because some are hand-pieced, appliquéd,
some are done on the machine.
And it's just a great variety.
I think that almost any personality could be a quilter,
if they had the desire,
because there's so many different types of quilting,
that if you're, you know, a very patient person,
who doesn't really like to be around other people
and you have good skills,
there's a lot of quilts for that.
- Creativity is so important for everybody
that's just like exercising is a need,
and eating right is a need,
being creative is a need too,
so that fills that need within me.
Chris and I met in 1994
when we were in the same quilt guild.
I'd asked Chris, "If I was interested in
going to Paducah to their show, how would we get there?"
and so she said, "Well, you could come with me."
So, we started traveling together then.
One of the churches that we like to go to for lunch
was Grace Episcopal Church.
- They have a garden there.
In that garden was
a beautiful dogwood tree and some crosses,
and just a lovely setting.
And we always wanted to do a slice quilt together.
And a slice quilt is one where
you take a picture and you cut it into to chunks
and different people make different parts of it.
- I was doing a lecture on a group of quilts
and it was the first time
that quilt was included in the lecture,
and so I told the story of the quilt to the group.
This one particular woman was in a walker
and she came walking toward me
with this very odd expression on her face.
And she said, "I'm an Episcopalian and a quilter,
"and I go to Paducah to see the show every year,
"and stayed with a friend of mine
"who also belonged to that church.
"And a few years ago, my friend passed away
and so I haven't gone back since."
And she said,
"And she's buried under the cross that's on that quilt."
Then she said, "Thank you for making the quilt."
And what a joy that was to know that
all that time that we put together in making this quilt,
we had no idea that it would touch--
You know, you always hope your pieces touch someone,
but that actually did and we got to hear about it
so that was really a blessing.
- I am a retired Lieutenant Commander
in the United States Navy.
And after I retired, I started teaching school.
I taught math and science.
Now, I just quilt.
I actually began making doll clothes
when I was six years old.
I would sit on the floor of the garage,
trying to make my mother's sewing machine work
and then, she finally gave up
and showed me how it worked and taught me.
And then, I became pregnant with my daughter
and I wanted to buy a quilt for her.
And I went into a shop and realized I could do that.
And so I bought a book.
It was a disaster.
But in a local fabric store,
one of the university professors had done her dissertation
on Amish quilting and was teaching quilting
and I took two classes from her.
I just kind of got stuck.
I stopped making clothing and started making quilts.
I kind of don't quilt like other people.
I get inspired by other people's patterns sometimes,
or quilts that I see,
but I think, "Okay, now how am I doing that differently?"
"Quezal" came out of a calendar
in a Secret Santa in a school I was teaching.
And I was teaching math at the time.
And it was mathematically put together, this medallion,
where everything was put together in a straight line.
There were no what we call Y-seams,
where they are set in and very difficult to do.
It was all established mathematically,
and I was fascinated by it.
There is so much math in a quilt.
We even use calipers that architects use
to determine what's a good border size.
You know, when you get all done,
you don't want to be an inch off
because as small as that sounds,
it can glare at you.
So, we're very mathematical in the process.
Even people who quilt who don't realize they're mathematical,
they really are, more than they think.
It's something you just try and you do it, and you learn it,
and it becomes sort of like walking.
It's not a difficult thing.
It's relaxing.
*
- Well, I did not come from a family of quilters.
I was, I think, about the first one.
After my grandma died, mother was going through her attic
and she found this old quilt top that had been rain-stained.
And it wasn't very pretty, but she said,
"I know if I give it to you,
you'll make something beautiful out of it."
It took me a long time to finish it,
and I did the whole thing,
quilting with a punch and poke method,
which is not the way you're supposed to do it.
[laughs] But it worked and...
But after that one project, I was hooked on quilting.
I get a lot of my inspiration from rugs.
This quilt, "Creation Springs Forth,"
I saw a rug from the 16th century.
And it was a little picture in black and white,
and it showed half the quilt,
but I drew the pattern out from that picture
and I made a lot of changes in it.
I'm not using the computer to draw my quilt.
I'm doing it with pencil and paper,
and that's just the way I like to work.
And I just make time each day
to do some quilting.
Some days a few hours, some days quite a few.
And it took 3,600 hours to finish that quilt.
It's probably been in 15 shows
and I have a lot of ribbons to prove it.
I've won "Best of Show" at the American Quilters Society
in Paducah, Kentucky twice.
I didn't accept the check
because I didn't want to give up the quilt.
And my husband almost died.
The first time, I turned down $15,000,
and the second time, I turned down $18,000.
He had told me, "If you die before I do,
I'm going to sell your quilts."
Well, in the last three years,
I've given away 11 quilts.
I fixed it so
he doesn't have to worry about who to sell them to.
I get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing
the design from my head to the cloth
and see that it's turning out
and I just, I feel good.
My husband could have a nervous breakdown watching me relax.
[laughs]
I want handwork to live on.
And that's why I'm teaching, and I'm only teaching work by hand,
because I kind of see it as a dying art.
I still do everything by hand
because, to me, that's a quilt.
When I'm finished,
it feels like a quilt,
and I just get a warm feeling when I see a handmade quilt.
So, I try to do it to the best of my ability
and after making a lot of quilts I've gotten pretty good.
[laughs]
- My mother made a lot of the clothes for my sister and I.
She would save a lot of the scraps
from those outfits that she made.
So we...
recently went through all of these scraps
and tried to sort them and figure out what to do with them.
And my sister is also a quilter
so we decided that it would be fun
to make a couple of quilts with these scraps
that were left over from our outfits growing up.
So, as we were going through all of these scraps of fabric,
we would come across one that, you know,
my mother had made an outfit for me out of.
And then, we would find
the matching, you know, fabric that my sister had.
We really remembered wearing those outfits
on different occasions:
first day of school or for a special holiday gathering.
We ended up making 60 blocks
with all of these scraps of fabric
and divided them into three quilts.
So I ended up with one, my sister has one,
and my mother also has one.
So, it was really a lot of fun both for us,
and as well as for my mother,
you know, watching us going through those,
and her, you know, self-reliving some of those occasions
with us.
- Quilting is more than simply stitching fabric together.
It's also about innovation--
using traditional methods in modern ways,
including different materials,
and incorporating bold techniques.
Ralph Emerson said,
"Do not go where the path may lead,
go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
Enjoy our next featured Wisconsin quilters.
They have indeed created new paths
with their intriguing and innovative quilts.
- I started this in 2008,
right with the downturn of the economy.
I had time on my hands because
my website design business was falling off.
So, I found this book that my mom had located
called One-Block Wonders .
I looked at the instructions and they were understandable,
so I thought, "Well, I'll try one.
"I have a sewing machine. I can make straight stitches.
I can cut straight lines."
Being a former architect, I know all about straight lines.
So I tried it, and as I was making it,
I was sharing my progress on social media
and my friends were responding enthusiastically.
And a friend of mine in LA
named Wayne Chiu, who's Chinese,
looked at it and he said, "Oh, that's a dragon."
And I looked at it
and it was immediately apparent.
He's right. That's a dragon.
I hadn't seen it...
so I found two black, two of the darkest pieces,
dark black pieces,
and I moved them into place to sort of form eyes.
And I called it "Dragon."
For me, it's more about
the exploration and the discovery
as I go.
Unlike in architecture, where you plan the thing ahead,
and then, you make the thing happen,
here I can't plan the thing ahead.
I don't know what it's going to look like.
I just take this fabric that looks good,
chop it up, and start putting it back together
and see what happens.
I need to be as precise as I can:
my blades sharp, my needles sharp, my lines straight.
And I often get the comment that, you know,
from other people who make quilts
that they wouldn't want to work this way.
It takes too much precision.
The finished quilt rewards the viewer
at different levels of magnification.
You can see one of my large quilts from
a hundred feet away
and you'll see the color, the overall shape,
and that's part of the design, that's intentional.
But then, as you approach it and walk up,
you can walk all the way up to within an inch of it,
and inspect the details
and then you can start to pick out the elements,
find the surprises.
You can find the eyes of the animals here.
And so, it provides joy at many levels.
And if you're a two-year-old boy,
as happened at the Milwaukee Art Museum,
a number of years ago,
he walked up and tried to smell the flowers in my quilt,
which was pretty darn cute.
[laughs]
- I love going the backroads with my bike,
and so I was riding along one day
and there was a farm that I was passing
and stopped suddenly
because there was a baby Swiss calf--
actually two of them, twins--
and their mother and I just thought they were so adorable.
I said, "Oh, I've lived in Wisconsin like 13 years.
I've never done a cow quilt."
I actually start with an original photograph.
And I spent some time creating
what I call kind of an original line drawing of that,
and played around a little bit with it.
I thought, "Well, I could play and change up this design
a little bit to create more whimsy."
I then thought about adding in a little friend.
And so, Texture Tweedy is on the back of Trish.
And I actually have to say
that Texture Tweedy has been traveling
and appears in a variety of the quilts that I create.
But I have had great response with Trish and Tweedy
and it was so much fun to be able to create it
and just enjoy the chuckles and the laughs
that come about
as individuals enjoy viewing the quilt.
*
- I've just have always made things from day one.
I've always created something from nothing
and had fun doing it
- I actually made my very first quilt
when I was five years old.
I sewed together the scraps from my mom's scrap bin
and included the furry toilet seat cover,
and then, gave it to my brother. [laughs]
My Grandma still tells that story.
The "Amazing Technicolor Dream Quilt" started
because of a challenge.
It was the scrap quilt challenge.
I love challenges, they are--
They inspire me to do stuff
that I may have had in the back of my head,
or maybe didn't know I was going to do.
So you just take fabrics and you sew them all together
and it makes it like really scrappy,
and I just had this rainbow in my head.
And then, I just started sewing and cutting,
and sewing and cutting.
And then this "Dream" quilt came about.
And that was sort of like a turning point, too,
in my quilting career.
That's where, I think, people started
to notice that I was a quilter.
You never know where inspiration is gonna come next.
You'll see a lot of trees in my quilts.
I live around-- I'm surrounded by 3,000 apple trees.
I love color...
My kids often ask me what my favorite color is
and it's rainbow.
'Cause I love them all.
I don't discriminate at all.
I think anybody can be a quilter.
Like a lot of people, when they find out I'm a quilter,
like "Oh, I wouldn't have patience for that!"
Well, I'm not a very patient person,
but I do like five projects at the same time.
I used to be a civil engineer,
so I have this mathematical side of me,
but I also have this crazy,
like, "Let's not worry about it..." side of me.
I make a lot of stuff is because I don't worry about it.
Like, I trust my gut and I do it, and if it's not right,
I just cut it up and do something else with it.
And I'm cool with it.
Quilting is my sanity.
When I'm being really crabby and my husband is like,
"Just go downstairs and sew something!"
Quilting keeps my mind busy,
and just keeps me more focused
and it makes me happier.
Right now, I'm, like, enjoying my passion,
but I'm seeing my kids grow up,
and they are getting to see me enjoy my passion, too.
- A big part of my work for the last several years
has been my fascination with "found objects"
in what would some people would call "trash" or "junk."
- I have four kids.
And one year, after Halloween,
behind our couch was a trough of candy wrappers.
Not just a few scattered back there,
but literally a pile of candy wrappers.
So I started incorporating those,
just tearing them, little bits of them,
pieces of them into my work.
That piece is then layered with other objects,
buttons, paperclips, rick rack, just junk jewelry,
all kinds of things.
I often look at the texture and color of things
and then start putting it into the work.
And then, I stitch the whole surface,
which sometimes can be a little challenging
'cause I have all these objects in there, and stiff wrappers.
I have to roll that
and get it through my sewing machine.
At one point, I was sewing
and the needle hit one of the objects on the surface
and the needle actually broke and bounced off my cheek.
And I went, "Whoa! This is not good."
So my sister, who is a scientist,
gave me a pair of clear, very clear safety glasses
that I can wear when I'm sewing.
So it sounds like, "Oh, sewing should not be dangerous,
but, you know, in this case it was a little weird."
- I've always sort of had an affinity for quilts.
I don't know why, I can't explain it.
All quilters will understand.
I didn't like working from patterns.
I didn't like making quilts that were already out there.
I don't know why.
I don't like to follow recipes.
I don't like to listen to my elders.
It was just something about:
I wanted to throw my own personality
into those designs.
I like modern movement.
I like geometrical abstraction in art, in painting.
I kind of surprised myself with this quilt.
I had been trying to break out of the severe geometry.
And trying to get some curves into my work,
and hadn't found out how to do it,
and I finally had this idea, like, wait a minute,
I don't have to make curved seams to get curves.
I can make the pieces themselves curve
as they travel down the quilt.
And it came out pretty well so I call it "Oh, Gee" because,
"Oh, gee, I can't believe that worked out as well as it did."
- O-g-e-e is also a design motif in architecture.
It's a kind of window, or molding,
and it has a curve to it,
so there is a bit of a double meaning going on.
The connection between making a digital design on a computer
and designing a quilt is pretty close.
It seems like I'm still cutting things up into pieces.
I will often start with a photograph
and I'll just go in and grab some pieces
out of that photograph
and then I'll stitch them back together
using the software.
The great thing is that it just happens a lot faster.
I can turn out
a piece a day, if I want,
instead of one quilt a month.
I think that quilters do have to have a flare for tedium,
and I don't have one.
I like things to be, to happen immediately.
I want to be instantly gratified,
but quilting will not allow that.
I mean, "A stitch in time saves nine."
And it actually saves, like, 89.
If you make a mistake, you cost yourself all sorts of time,
so you have to slow down.
There's no way not to.
It ends up being kind of a pleasant place to be,
when you're in that state while you're quilting.
I don't actually understand why men don't want to quilt more
because it has some of the things I think they love the most,
which is power tools.
I mean, a sewing machine is the ultimate power tool.
*
- The name of my quilt is "Untied."
The reason I named it that
is because it's all about the ties.
And I grew up in a family that was really all about
recycling and repurposing and using everything possible,
shopping small, staying local.
So one day I went to Dig and Save on Park Street,
and I looked around and I found some ties.
I knew I needed a lot of them, about 60.
And then, I went up to the cashier and she said,
"Okay, put them in the basket, and I'll weigh them
because you pay 50¢ a pound."
And she said, "So what do you going to do,
like, make a quilt or something?"
and I said, "Yes, as a matter fact I am."
"Do you need more ties?"
and, "How much money have you got?"
Well, I have $9 on me.
And she said, "All these ties under the counter here
"are ones that I was supposed to put out today
"so if I can put them all in your basket,
you can buy them all."
So I ended up doing that.
I don't know what I was thinking.
Before I knew it, I gave her $7,
and she was putting them all in bags,
and walked out to my car with all these ties.
And then, what I ended up doing,
was taking them home and washing them all.
And I counted them as I put them in the washer
and I had 80 ties.
I gave the few of them to my son
because I said, "You know,
"someday you're going to need ugly ties to wear to work,
and... a lot of these qualify."
- I retired from my job
and decided that I was going to do something exciting.
I tried jewelry making.
Too messy.
I tried pottery.
Too messy.
I went to a show at a mall.
I had never seen quilts before.
And I just fell in love,
and I said, "Does anybody teach this?"
And, of course, a dozen hands went up.
I did traditional quilting for about two years.
And then, I got a little bored.
So I thought,
"Well, it's illegal what I'm about to do,
but I don't care because this is how I want to quilt."
I decided to break rules
and simply cut fabric that looked like nature.
And I started cutting trees.
I cut them with scissors
so they wouldn't look like telephone poles.
And when I put them on the fabric,
to stick them there,
I used glue sticks,
which I still do today.
To be a quilter,
it's wonderful if you love precision.
To be a landscape quilter,
it takes a little guts,
because you're really painting with fabric.
Finding the right fabric
and the scale that works with your scene
is crucial.
So I tell quilters something they love to hear:
"Buy a lot of fabric."
You need work from the far-back forward
in order to get the scale and color
because color fades in the distance.
My wooded scenes are probably my favorite to do.
I was on my way
to Paducah, Kentucky for the quilt festival
for the first time,
and on the side of the road, we saw a dogwood in bloom.
It was breathtaking
and I decided that I just had to portray that.
And when I got home,
I started working on "Kentucky Dogwood."
That quilt ended up winning 1st in its category in,
at Paducah the following year.
Now it's been 23 years doing landscape quilts
and I love it as much as ever.
Quilting began as an exciting hobby
and ended up being a vital part of my life.
I don't know what I would have done without it.
It probably defines me .
- Quilters find inspiration almost everywhere--
through nature, a walk, memory, or a special occasion.
These quilts hold their stories;
stories of loss and joy,
stories of culture or history,
stories that need to be told.
- Quilts are just so...
They're mysterious and they're wonderful.
They're endowed with story, I think.
And that is the thing that really inspires me.
I love story,
and I just feel like
when you're putting pieces of fabric together,
it's weaving a story.
When I was younger, my grandmother, she bought me a sewing machine.
Her mother died at a very young age.
And the one thing that she remembered
was her mother putting together quilt pieces.
It's one of the only memories that she has of her mom.
She didn't learn how to sew,
but she wanted me to learn how to sew.
And so, I kind of feel like
it's reaching into the generations
and pulling something out.
I met my husband's grandmother.
She was a quilter and she quilted by hand.
And I remember saying,
"I really would like to learn how to do it."
And she says, "I'll show you."
I had been one of those people who would peruse the quilt shops
and you'd see the rotary cutters.
And so, she's cutting the fabric
and I said, "Well, what do you cut it with?"
And she says, "With a scissors."
You know. [laughs]
As an author, I love story, just... period.
And I thought it would be really cool to,
you know, to do a story quilt.
It's the story about my parent's first date.
Everybody has various renditions of the story.
My mom and my dad are going on this date.
They were feuding with the family,
the Johnson family across the way.
They just happened to be in the middle of a family feud
during my parent's first date.
And my father comes...
brings my mom back and it's...
They're a little later than, you know, what's expected.
And they see my-- And he sees my grandmother
standing on the porch with a shotgun,
and he thinks the shotgun is for him.
That's the story that I've heard just growing up from,
you know, my uncles and my aunt.
A lot of the grandchildren in our family have heard.
I thought that it would be nice to memorialize it on a quilt.
I think story quilts are a wonderful way,
when there's something you want to pass down to your family,
there's something you want to remember,
you know, they can look at that quilt.
They can rattle off the details of that quilt,
and, by not even knowing it,
they're really taking in the family history
and the family lore that way.
- We used to camp all the time with my children
on the banks of the Mississippi.
In the month of August,
you have this spectacular display of meteorite shower.
And I remember we would be there, looking up
and your neck gets stiff,
and we had lounge chairs out, we're all laying down,
looking up and over there,
and this is happening over there,
and it was just like watching just a spectacular moment.
And that's what I wanted to show.
And I thought, it's like sharing with my three grandsons
something that was a part of their mother's life
that we had done a lot of times.
*
- The name of my piece is
"Faith, Family & Friends at the Crossroads."
The applique blocks tell the story
of my dad, my husband's mom.
They actually passed away two weeks away from each other.
And it really was that turned into something
that was a dedication to them.
And in the center of the quilt there's the cross.
And we feel like, through all of that turmoil,
it really brought us together,
but we were at the crossroads of life
because all of the sudden, we had no parents.
We were the next generation.
And it wasn't but a couple of months later
that we found out that
we would be grandparents for the first time.
So it just represents the whole circle of life
and all the good things that God has.
Even with sorrow, there comes joy.
- We met ten years ago while we were both artists
at the children's museum in Appleton.
And we were both giving programs there and we met and...
hit off a friendship.
After we started hanging out together,
we realized that we both had this wonderful folk art.
And one day we just got together and we were just saying,
"You know?
I'm a storyteller, of native stories,
and Pat, you're a quilter,
why don't we put this together?"
- And we thought
that quilts tell stories. - Yes.
- And so, by brainstorming it together,
we just thought it would be a great combination
of two different cultures
that were different to both of us.
I make the quilts so
I actually do the physical part of what you see
when Deb and I are doing our program together.
- And I'm the teller of tall tales.
I'm the story teller.
- I've developed some of the quilts
and then Deb looks at them and says,
"Oh, I have a great story that goes with that."
And then, sometimes it's the other way around
where she'll say, "I have this great story, Pat.
Do you think that you could make a quilt to help tell the story?"
So, it's kind of a give and take, both ways.
It just flows really easily between us, I think.
- I'm an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin,
Turtle Clan.
I've been telling stories forever.
And, of course, all of the stories that I do tell
are Native.
I just started to go into the classrooms
and start to tell a story here and there.
And then one day,
my husband said to me, "You love this.
"This is you. This is in your bones.
You really should think about doing this as a profession."
The quilts' stories,
that program "Native Stitches and Stories,"
just is always evolving.
We're always coming up with new ideas,
and new ways to get our story out there,
our message out there.
- This is the quilt that I made to represent the Plains Tribes.
The features of it are
the teepees in the middle with the storytellers.
- In the beginning,
when earth was still young,
and giants still roamed the earth,
a great sickness,
[shaker]
came over the earth,
and everyone died
[shaker]
except for one small boy.
[shaker pulsing]
And with the tears from Boy's eyes,
the rivers, the seas,
the lakes and ponds,
they all began.
And with Boy's body,
the mountains, the prairies,
the plateaus, and plains,
they all began.
And that is how earth began.
[shaker]
* [soft chanting]
*
- Both my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunties...
all quilted.
Whenever we visited my grandmother's house,
we slept under the quilts that she made.
It was their way to be creative,
but also they were doing something functional.
Making sure the family was kept warm.
The story of my quilt is about adoption,
because that's a common theme in my family.
It tells the story of when I was adopted
back in the day.
It depicts that,
and then talks about how faith
has been a part of our lives,
then goes to my family now with my adoptive daughter.
The fact that my mother is a quilter played into it a lot,
and I knew that she would be able to hand-quilt it for me
once I pieced it together.
And I knew that I wanted my daughter to have
something passed down to her.
And so, I decided that would be a wonderful gift to her.
A legacy gift for Solana Marie Woodland.
Designed and handcrafted by Cynthia Marie Woodland,
Solana's mom.
Hand-quilted with love
by Doris Marie Adams, Cynthia's mom.
January 2015.
The history that we have as African Americans with quilting.
And the messages that were sent with quilts, you know.
My mother quilts, my grandmother, my great-grandmother.
It's something that's in the family.
And I do feel like it's another way to tell a story.
It's a colorful, visual way to tell a story.
- My husband is-- was born in Colombia,
is native Colombian.
So his family still lives there.
So we travel there frequently--
several times a year.
I, I get very interested in the culture there
and take a lot of images
and in my quilts then
are just sort of an expression of those cultures.
"You Can Always Tell a Gentleman by His Shoes"
was inspired by a photo that I took of...
I had just turned a corner,
and I happen to see a man across the street
with his foot up on a barrel reading some papers
and he was very distinguished looking.
Had this really cool hat on and I quickly snapped a photo.
I don't always know what's going to be a quilt
until I get home and look at things and...
But that one was a very striking image for me.
And I actually started making the image
by creating his shoes first
and that's kind of how the name came about.
I get so much satisfaction quilting.
It, it gives just me a lot of pleasure
to represent these images in fabric
and reinterpret them a little bit.
I actually feel like the quilts are a better,
evoke a better emotion and feeling about that image
than the original photograph did.
- I started in my twenties and thirties, I think in the '70s,
when the great quilt revolution occurred in this country.
And I was drawn to it, but not head-over-heels.
It wasn't until I became a machine quilter--
and could actually put the kind of quilting on my designs
that I made on the quilt top
to make it the way that I wanted it to look--
that I was happy.
And then, I was hooked by quilting.
I'm known for the color, I'm known for piecing, and...
but more importantly, probably, for the machine quilting
that I lavish on my quilts
to take them from ordinary to special.
So I take an everyday design
and I elevate it
to something that is sort of 'Sunday Best' with the quilting.
You take your life and you put it into your quilt.
Your experiences, your preferences, your colors,
everything that so far has been in your life,
you can put in your quilt.
Quilters, in general, tend to use occasions for quilting.
I used it as a way to just keep myself busy
and work, through color and design,
through a very bad time in the country's history
and that was 9/11.
The name of the quilt is
"Through a Glass Darkly: An American Memory."
And it refers to looking at things that happened in life
through a dark perspective
and yet, there is light coming through.
I had made probably five or six blocks,
and there were just going from okay
right downhill into just dull, dull, dull.
You would walk by and say, "Was that a quilt or a shadow?"
You know, there was just nothing there.
And I thought, "Okay, it's flat, it's dull, it's terrible."
And I took a break
and came back up
and there was my cat, Fluffy.
And she was a pastel tortoise shell
with about 50 different shades of neutral.
And I said, "Oh, I need 50 different shades of each color."
And then, it started working.
It's-- The colors that I bought
made the dull colors look better,
and the dull colors that I started with
made the bright ones just sing,
almost like light through a stained glass window.
And that's how I look at this quilt.
I think a quilt
should reflect your heart and soul,
art, beauty,
something that you want to communicate.
Something that when a viewer looks at it,
feels, and gets it, and says, "Oh."
There is nothing better than to have someone look at it
and say exactly what you were thinking when you made it.
It's art under the needle.
You are creating something that's in your head.
The needle is the way to express it
and it comes out and people see it as art.
- Using basic needle, thread, and fabric,
Wisconsin quilters create their treasures.
Combining tradition, inspiration, and innovation,
the art of quilting captures, preserves, and shares memories.
Thank you for being with us
on Treasured Quilts of Wisconsin .
- Treasured Quilts of Wisconsin
is funded in part by
Quintessential Quilts
and Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.
*
- The name of my quilt is "Never Say Never,"
but I'm going to rename it "Ten Fish"
because there are seven fish that are appliquéd on,
but then there are three in the quilting.
I had never beaded before,
so I added some beads to it.
And my-- what should I say?
Kind of my thing is using vintage linens
and so I cut up some linen, dyed it,
and so it's kind of the kelp in the quilt.
I used wool
from old wool skirts
that I wore when I was in high school.
But I didn't really find
my niche of using vintage linens
and doing stitchery
until the past, maybe, 10 years.
And the vintage fabrics,
they have such stories behind them,
you know, when you think about great-grandma or grandma
making these embroidered
or crocheted lace things.
I feel those stories of the women that worked before us
is really important.
- The title of my quilt is
"Salvaging Selvedges: Eight Red Squares."
I salvaged these selvedges
that people have thrown into the garbage
and I make quilts out of it.
That's my claim to fame: is using what people don't want.
I hand out my card at the quilt show usually,
and I will get packages in the mail
of what people have thrown in the garbage
or else they say, "You can deal with it, not me."
So all of my quilts,
for the last 14 of them,
have been made entirely
from what people have thrown in the garbage.
Every one of them is different,
even though they're all made of selvedges,
they're all different patterns.
They're sturdy and they get softer when you wash them,
but they're meant to be used.
How did I get into it? I guess growing up
in a big family, on a farm,
you used the everything,
even the pig's tail.
- "Splash!" was a really fun day.
We were in Cartagena and we were touring this old fort,
and it started raining, just pouring rain.
And everyone else was taking shelter
and these two little boys were out on the patio
just playing with the water bottles,
actually squirting each other with water bottles
despite the fact it was raining cats and dogs.
And they are having so much fun
and they were doing handstands.
And I have several images from that scene
that I will probably make into quilts someday.
But that was the first one.
*
- The name of my quilt is "The Barn Quilt."
I was just intrigued with all the barns,
the different styles of them,
and I grew up on a farm, and married a farmer
so I just always been intrigued with barns.
You first had to appliqué all the fabric down.
You started with the sky
and worked forward to the foreground
to either the paths or the ponds on it.
I went back and used DMC floss
for some of the branches and the stems of the flowers.
There's so many barns that are getting--
either deteriorating or getting torn down.
That was one thing I really felt with
when I was working with the barn quilt.
All the history that we're losing...
I just think it's really a legacy
to just keep these pictures of the barns anyway.
- The name of my quilt is "Water."
My elderly aunt
asked me if I wanted the contents
of the family sewing chest.
And when she opened the chest,
there were a number of patterns that I recognized
and one that I didn't.
When I asked my aunt where it came from,
she said she thought it was a piece
that her grandmother had started,
and the pattern dates back to about 1875.
The sample that I found in my aunt's sewing chest
looked about like this,
and I didn't know how to make sense of it.
I did some research on the Internet.
I found the pattern called "Ocean Waves"
that matched the sample that I found.
Then, I set about figuring out how to put it together.
I had to learn a lot about matching points
because I had picture quilts,
but I had never done a pieced quilt before.
And I wasted a lot of fabric
getting the points to match,
eventually got it to match,
put the borders on, and gave it the name.
- Okay, so I start with drawings,
a lot of different little sketches.
I don't keep them in a journal.
I just have them on pieces of paper,
and then
put them onto an 8 1/2" x 11" paper.
I will then move on
and do a graph paper 8 1/2" x 11" sketch.
I will also, at the same time, do a fusible picture
in gray, black, and white
to kind of get an idea of where I'm going.
I'll go back to the graph paper
and try some color variations on the picture.
And then, I'll do a full-sized graph paper drawing
of the piece.
I don't necessarily
follow that stitch-to-stitch,
as you can see here.
I ended up not using that in the final piece.
The other thing I like to do
is always have a label
that is somehow related to the piece.
It's very important to label our quilts.
In this one, I have a little building.
I have the name of the piece, the date,
where I made it, and the year.
In this case, I haven't quite finished the label yet,
but it's almost done.
And we all need to put hangers on our quilts
for when they hang in shows.
*
- My very first free motion machine quilting
was just incredibly hilarious.
I not only couldn't move the quilt under the needle
in any direction but back and forth
like I had sewed all those years,
regular straight seams,
where you have to move it sideways.
My brain said, "You cannot go sideways,"
so I would have to actually just force it and...
The stitches were uneven. They were terrible.
I couldn't take breaks because I wanted to be able to do it.
And I figured if I stopped,
I'd never be able to get back to where I was.
So the very first time, I did a lot of free motion quilting,
I burned out my sewing machine.
It was an elderly machine
from when I first graduated from school and had a first paycheck,
and it never had done machine quilting before
and that was a little bit too intense
for this poor machine.
So, basically, the house filled with smoke,
my rubber sole on my shoe
melted to the accelerator on my sewing machine,
and I had to take my foot off because it got hot.
I thought, "Why is my foot hot?"
And that is how intense this is...
You get in your own world.
You get so driven to do it,
and so controlled by trying to
get your brain and your hands to work together
with the sewing machine
that things can happen.
But that was a learning experience for me.
I went on from that and learned
that I had to take breaks, I had to relax,
I had to just let it flow, and let it go.
And one day, it'll just happen.
- The pattern panels have to line up exactly,
any fabric that's older,
even has been washed,
loses its dimensional accuracy,
and you wouldn't be able to get a clean stack
of six perfectly aligned pieces of fabric, so it's always new.
It has, the pattern has a large repeat in it,
by which I mean the pattern goes for a certain distance
and then repeats, in usually a seamless way.
You usually can't tell where the repeat happens.
I usually buy fabrics that are
very swirly, or flowery,
or complex.
Romantic Orientals work, florals work,
but I've done others.
I was challenged by the women at the quilt shop
to do one out of a Star Wars fabric.
It had a lot of colors in it so it was a challenge.
But by the time I had wrestled all those colors
into these rolling shapes,
it felt like rolling waves of plasma,
not that I know whether plasma rolls,
I don't know,
but that's what came to mind.
I thought, "Well, that's 'The Force.'"
It's a Star Wars quilt.
I'll call this one "The Force."
And it's one of my favorites,
and one of other people's favorites, too.
- I just start sewing
complimentary pieces of fabric together
with absolutely no idea what I'm going to do.
And they're odd shapes,
and I just sew them together, with no plan at all.
I'm also the kind of person who never gets lost when I drive--
I have an adventure-- and I quilt the same way,
where I don't really like to have a plan.
I like to just take off.
After I retired, I was talked into joining a guild.
I sewed a great deal--
My husband was ill, and I was confined to the house.
And he encouraged me to continue to go to the guild.
And all those women turned out at his memorial service.
And I was overwhelmed.
We're all the same,
and everybody encourages everybody else.
I can't go ten miles without finding a quilter.
And that's wonderful.