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- Announcer: Proceeds from The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show
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Your financial gift helps make this event possible.
Thank you.
[gentle music]
- Welcome; I am Melissa de Leon Mason.
I'm really thrilled to be here.
This is my first time at The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show,
and I am a little bit overwhelmed
by how massive it is,
how many people there are, and all the great things to see.
So I'm really excited, and I'm really glad that you're here.
Thank you for taking the time to come in.
I know there's a lot to see, like I said.
So it's nice for you to come in and sit down
and take a breath and kind of listen to what I have to say
and start thinking about what it means
to be a quilter and a designer
'cause that's what I'm gonna be asking you to do today.
So again, my name is Melissa de Leon Mason.
I am a modern quilter, a therapist,
and a mom of four, which is really busy, so...
[all laughing]
I love quilting.
I call it my therapy, as many of us do,
because it gives me that self-care, that distraction,
and especially that creative expression in a busy life.
I also teach.
I teach a lot, all over the world,
to guilds and at different shows like this one,
at shows like QuiltCon International,
Quilt Market and Festival.
And my quilts have been in shows and museums,
again, all over the world.
And I'm an active member of the Modern Quilting Community.
I am co-chair of the Board of Inclusion, Diversity,
Accessibility, and Equity for the MQG.
And so I speak a lot to people about quilting
and I teach a lot.
And my favorite thing to talk about
and to teach about is design.
Because as quilters,
we start by making other people's patterns, right?
We start by getting drawn in by those quilts that we see
at shows like this, and we say,
"I wanna try that, I wanna make that."
And then we get to this point
where we see a shape that really calls us, and we're like,
"I'm gonna try that; maybe I'm gonna try just that."
Or we're playing with a pattern and we think, "I like it,
but I want it bigger."
And so we adjust and we start playing with scale.
And that's the gateway drug right there
to becoming your own designer.
So when I call you a designer,
when I say everyone in this room is a designer,
some of you might be intimidated by that,
but baby steps; you will get there.
Because every time we make a design choice
in the work that we do, we are designing, we are creatives,
and that's who we are in this room,
because it's a beautiful weekend
and a lot of us have come from a long ways away.
A lot of us not, you know, so long, so far away,
but we've come here, we've gathered to here
on this beautiful weekend to be inside
with tens of thousands of our best quilty friends
that we've never met, and see all these quilts
and shop all these vending booths
and buy all this fabric, right?
Because there's something about this that calls to us.
It's important to you.
The fact that you're here means that it's important to you,
that there is a part of your soul that is in quilting.
And so today, I wanna nurture that
and celebrate that a little bit
and invite you to do the same thing.
So I'm gonna be talking
about making your quilting process personal
by reaching into your own culture and history.
I strongly believe that we imbue parts of ourselves
into the work that we make.
So I wanna talk about how to design with meaning
and with beauty and with history in our minds
and with our hands.
Some of you have probably designed your own quilts,
some of you have not.
Wherever you are in the journey, I'm hoping
that this will be a comfortable starting point for you.
Writers are always told to write what they know.
And I think as quilters, when we start designing,
designing what we know
is a really good place to start and even stay.
And what do we know, like, better than ourselves, right?
So we're gonna talk about where, how to explore,
what things can serve as launching points,
how to get your brain thinking about translating something
that evokes meaning for you into a tangible, created object.
So although I lecture a lot, I'm most comfortable
when we can all be part of this conversation.
So I invite you to really think about
how this applies to you and any questions you might have.
And at the end, like we said, I'll be taking your questions
and I invite your thoughts.
Okay, so let's start by talking about how personal quilts are.
Quilters have been creating meaningful personal quilts
for really as long as quilting has existed, right?
And in all ways, or in some ways, all quilts tell a story.
So a couple years ago,
I was curating an exhibit for a museum
and found myself in the archives
of a local small town history museum.
And while I was there, I found this crazy quilt,
and it didn't fit the parameters
of what I was curating for this show,
but I started spending more time with it.
And really, I mean, I'm trying to do this show quickly,
so we're pulling out quilts, we're looking at 'em,
we're putting 'em back away, right, pretty quickly.
But this one caught my attention,
this historic crazy quilt
because my eyes kept catching on details.
And this is a terrible picture,
but I'm gonna get closer up on it for you.
Because I started catching my eye on symbols
that were embroidered in the blocks and words
and little details, and I noticed names
and some scraps that were hand-painted or watercolored
or drawn in with ink or pencil.
And so I examined the quilt
and I kind of really got pulled into it.
And it started telling me a story, a really cool story,
just from this quilt top.
It wasn't quilted, it wasn't backed.
It was just the top itself.
And so on the back, I could see all the pencil marks
of the people who had written into these blocks.
So what this was was a gift
for the marriage of two people in 1903.
And the blocks in it, some had been created
as early as the 1870s.
So people had been holding onto these maybe
to put into this quilt.
The quilt didn't have a backing,
so I could see the pencil writing.
And it said things like, "a piece of Tom's tie,"
or "lace from my wedding gown," or "Mother's handkerchief."
So with only the names of the couple and the year,
I hit ancestry.com
and I went down a rabbit hole, like you do, right?
I spent hours tracking down this family, finding the names,
locating them in history, and tracing their story
from a tiny town in New York through Missouri,
and then into this tiny town
in the mountains of northern Utah.
I tracked it down so far
that I was able to send a Facebook message
to the direct descendant of this couple,
who actually only lived a couple miles away from my house,
and let them know that this quilt was in the archive
and kind of told them the story of it.
It was a lot of fun because this quilt told a story
about the hands that made it.
It created this picture,
this image of this significant event in the owner's life,
and all of the people who loved them
and all of the materials used to create it.
Now, we rarely see this kind of organization
and detail in quiltmaking for life events today
with the pencil and the documentation.
Document your quilts, label your quilts
because it's gonna be so helpful for future historians
when they take a look at them.
Today, memory quilts take the form of T-shirt quilts,
a quick and cozy way to celebrate experiences
and to remember loved ones.
And contemporary quilters have also embraced
using meaningful materials in designs.
So these kinds of quilts connect us
to the past and to others.
So keeping this in mind, I wanna take a look
at how to design a different type of keepsake quilt,
one that connects to you, yourself, your story,
and your cultural heritage.
Now, although I live in Logan, Utah currently
with my husband and four kids,
I grew up on the Texas-Mexico border,
part of a large, close-knit Mexican-American family,
where everyone lived within a few blocks of each other
and things were loud and colorful and wonderful.
And my childhood straddled two cultures,
two sides of the borders, all at once.
So the colors and the sights
and the experiences of that childhood
is kind of a rich landscape that I look to when I design,
as you can see from the colors that I use and the motifs.
And I'll get into that a little bit more,
because what I wanna do right now is talk about you,
because the point of this whole lecture is to get you
to start exploring your background
and see if you can't find points of inspiration to draw from.
So let's start by talking about where you come from.
I wanna break this into two parts.
First, your story, and second, your cultural heritage.
So these two things are woven together
along with a million other things
to form part of your identity.
There's a lot that goes into the formation of you,
but for the purposes of what we're doing here,
those are the two areas that I wanna focus on.
Okay, so let's think about the concept of story.
Concretely, who are you?
Where do you come from?
Again, great rabbit hole to go down
if you have time on your hands,
and even if you don't and you want a distraction.
Start by exploring your family tree.
Even if you have before,
even if you already know a little bit
about where you come from,
you never quite know what you're gonna find, right?
So I've been working on my family history for a long time,
and I'm constantly surprised by the things I find.
And diving into your family tree
uncovers people who are vibrant and complex and intentional,
just as much as we are today,
just as three-dimensional as we are today.
And it's kind of amazing to be able to look into that
and to be able to discover that.
So here's some places to start.
Ancestry websites.
DNA testing; that's so popular.
I have a lot of friends
who have discovered a lot of surprises through those.
Ask your family members for stories.
Take an oral history of your family if you haven't before.
So I'm gonna be using
my own family background as an example.
I got into learning about my family's history
because my grandpa spent a lot of time on it.
It was kind of his passion, especially in his later years.
And he drew me in with stories about these
great-great-something grandparents
who settled a large part of Texas
with the Spanish land grant.
And the stories of their lives, wars and predators
and even pirates were just fascinating to me
to delve into these histories, to look at these documents.
Here's a monument that my grandpa helped to get erected
on the Texas State Capitol grounds,
honoring those Tejano pioneers that my family was part of.
The settlement that they founded, the de Leons,
is a city today, with still in the city, the church
that my great-great-something,
I never remember how many generations back,
grandmother built with her Spanish dowry
and holds artifacts from her own home still
from the mid-1800s.
Further back in my family history,
I discovered a name of a woman,
only a name that I am dying to know more about.
It was Ana Lucia, the White Lightning.
That was all she was known as.
So I'm just, like, dying to know who that woman is
and what her story is.
There's so many cool things that you can discover,
so talk to your relatives,
find out the story of your family.
Years ago, I directed a women's oral history project
for a local university.
And through this, I interviewed hundreds of women,
sitting down with them and a recorder
and just listening to their life stories.
And I discovered that at the beginning
of each interview process,
everyone would say the exact same thing,
"My life is not that interesting."
And at the end, they and I would realize
that there is this complex, dynamic life
in this person and in their stories.
I also started recording the oral histories
of some of my own family members.
And it's been a treasure.
Especially since my grandpa has passed on,
it's really been an amazing thing to have sat down and done.
Story also encompasses all of the things
you've inherited from the people and places that you come from.
So the world is a large, diverse place.
We all come from somewhere, even if we have to go way back
or do some digging to kind of figure it out.
So your story is made up of all of these things
that came before you and your family, in your community,
the people who raised you.
It's informed by tribe, ethnic group, country of origin,
ancestry, the landscape around you, geography,
religious identity, et cetera.
So I want you to really think about these things.
Do any of these factors play largely into the story of you?
It's a really good exercise
to think about some of the influences
you might not have given weight to in the past.
How have these things made you who you are?
I grew up in the very, very flat Rio Grande Valley,
and now I live in the mountains of northern Utah.
The landscape is very different,
and I notice it influencing me in some of the colors
or shapes or motifs that I've started to go towards.
So I want you to think
about how these things have made you who you are.
Is there something about them that calls to you,
that stands out to you?
Is there anything about them that you've noticed
makes you pay attention when you look at art,
when you look at quilting,
when you're pulling or are pulled towards things,
the patterns you're drawn to?
So think about that, and I'd love to hear from you
at the end if you have any thoughts.
For me, again, it's the experience
of being Mexican-American that jumps out to me
when I think about my childhood
as a little Latina on the border,
that makes me wanna explore that deeper.
That's the story I like to explore
when I'm looking for inspiration.
So let's talk about your cultural heritage.
This includes objects that represent our history
and our identity, our bond to the past, to our community.
Cultural heritage often brings to mind artifacts,
like paintings and drawings and prints
and mosaics and sculptures,
historical monuments and buildings,
as well as archaeological sites.
But the concept of cultural heritage
is even wider than that.
And it's gradually grown to include kind of all aspects
and evidence of human creativity and expression:
photographs, documents, books, and manuscripts,
instruments, individual objects.
And it's not only limited to material things
that we can see and touch.
It also consists of the immaterial,
traditions, oral history,
the stories that get passed down, performing arts,
social practices, traditional craftsmanship,
representations, rituals, things that get transmitted
from generation to generation within a community.
So look for other clues about where you come from,
what's important to your family.
What are the prized recipes?
What are the stories that get told
over and over at family reunions?
What is the dish, the literal dish,
the platter that the food is always served on,
that you remember in your mom's cupboard?
What cool old photographs come up
and everybody laughs about?
These things are your research
and your background for designing where you come from.
So spend some time exploring this area.
Especially if you're looking to discover your voice,
your heritage is a really good place to start.
Explore these things deeper.
What are the stories and objects and works of art
and expressions that speak to you?
So I want you to really think about that.
Now, going back to my own example.
Again, it's the colors and movements
associated with the Mexican-American world
that I think of.
The bright colors of my aunt's walls,
the ceramic painted churches,
and the bright pottery that everyone had,
and then especially the bold, flowing folklorico skirts
from the dance lessons I took as little girl
that I didn't really appreciate as much back then.
Now I wish I had.
For me, it's yards and yards of fabric
and being able to twirl that around.
That was enough, right?
Not so much the dance steps, but the skirts.
So enchanting, isn't it?
So much movement; seems to have a life of its own.
So that's something I go back to.
So what I'm hoping by spending all the time
talking about your background is that if you haven't before,
you'll take time to connect with it,
'cause it can be a really major resource for inspiration
and inspiration that's personal,
that really means something to you, right?
Because it's amazing to be able to create patterns
that other people make.
But it feels a little different
when you put a little bit of yourself into that,
in whatever way that looks like,
in the colors and the fabrics you choose
and how you manipulate that pattern,
and how you start to design your own work
and what you use your work for.
Those are all of the design choices,
the little points of influence where you put yourself into it.
So let's talk about,
as we think about design and inspiration,
where we as quilters usually look for inspiration.
So a few years ago, my friend Steph did an informal poll
of fellow quilt designers in the Modern Quilt Community
and put this graphic together.
These are kind of the results of her poll
as the many things that people would said they looked to
when they're getting inspired to design quilts.
So take a moment and take a look at this.
Carpet, tiles, fashion, math, personal challenges,
updating traditional blocks, building facades.
Has anyone ever visited somewhere and said,
"Ooh, I really like that drain.
That little grate is kind of amazing."
Especially the grates around trees,
usually really cool and geometric.
Or you see the facade of a building and you're like,
"There is something to that arch that I really like,"
and you take a picture of it.
Science, I thought that was a really interesting place.
My brain doesn't go to science for inspiration,
but it was really cool to see this
and then start to get to know some quilters who use science
to generate their designs, either in a very organic way
or using technology, generative design
to start to create their quilt patterns and motifs
or to manipulate something that speaks to them.
The lines of quilting motifs themselves,
fashion, doodling, all kinds of things.
So does this speak to you?
Do you kind of look to some of these things and say,
"Hmm, that would be a really cool quilt?"
I can't count the number of times I've been walking along,
and I say, "That would be a really cool quilt."
It's gotten to the point where my husband notices
when I pause somewhere and he's like,
"You taking a picture for a quilt design?"
I'm like, "Yeah, exactly.
You're gonna see that in a month."
Yeah, so think about that
and think about if there's other avenues, other areas
that speak to you where you find your inspiration.
So I wanna take a step further now
and make these sources of inspiration here personal.
I want to look at these things through the lens of your own,
each of your individual cultures and your stories.
Because I think we often find things that inspire us.
And they're these disembodied pieces of art on Pinterest
or Instagram or walking down the street, right,
and we have no connection to them,
except that we're drawn to them.
And maybe there's something to that.
So that's something to explore.
What is it about this?
Sometimes I see an arch, and early in our marriage,
my husband and I lived in Egypt for a few years.
Sometimes I'll see an arch
just in a building in an American city.
And I think, "Wow, I love that arch."
And if I ask myself what is it about that arch,
it's usually shaped like one of the minarets
in the city skyline that I loved so much.
Things like that.
So things you might not think about,
there might be a deeper connection there.
So kind of explore that.
My challenge for you is to start farther back
from kind of the initial disembodied piece of art
that we see and that we're drawn to.
Take it a few steps back, ask yourself questions about it.
I'm a therapist, so I'm always about
trying to get to the bottom of things.
What is the story of this?
What is the reason for this?
Where is this coming from?
Why am I reacting like this?
I love asking questions like that.
Start with your story and then follow where it takes you.
So now that we're digging into our heritage
and our culture, what kinds of things
can we in this room look to for inspiration?
So things mentioned in this graphic, of course, and more,
tile, carpet, architecture, textiles, art.
Each culture, each region, each community
produces these things that are unique to them.
Certain colors and motifs and symbols
can be found repeatedly in the art of a culture
and in the microcultures within that culture.
So I want you to look into that
and then pull out some of those things that speak to you.
So I'm gonna look at some examples,
and then I'm gonna talk about how to do this respectfully.
So let's imagine, if we're talking about cultural heritage,
that you have Greek heritage, and you wanna explore that
for sources of design inspiration.
What are some popular motifs in Greek art?
Now, that's a little daunting
'cause we're talking about such an ancient culture.
What part of Greek art, right?
Colorwise, the things that just immediately come to mind
are these deep blues of the Mediterranean,
the terracotta roofs that you see in pictures,
the whitewash, high-contrast pottery,
breezy neutrals, grays of marble statues.
What about surface design?
What about artwork and tiles and carpets and ceramics?
You have a lot of mosaic work, which is cool.
You have famous motifs to work with, like the Greek key,
like interwoven ropes.
You have some high contrast,
but you have a lot of neutral use.
There's a lot of area to play there.
What if you come from an Islamic religious tradition
and you wanna look to that for your design inspiration?
So first of all, lucky duck.
Some of the most beautiful art
and architecture in the world is Islamic.
Because of the emphasis on math
and lack of human figures in the art tradition,
you end up with these incredible geometric shapes
and these gorgeous lines and contrasts.
You're looking at star shapes,
where the number of points dictates the design around it
and how those lines come together.
Maybe think about a medallion construction
to represent the Islamic art concept of infinity
and the calligraphy.
Oh, I'm a sucker for the calligraphy.
We collected so much art
when we lived in the Middle East and northern Africa.
Maybe you take the idea of integrating words
into your quilt.
Maybe you start playing with bias tape appliqué.
There's a lot of fun to be had
when you start thinking about, "How can I do this," right?
Architecture elements like the ones I mentioned,
the arches, the domes,
the minarets would be fun to play with.
What if your heritage is deeply rooted
in where you happen to live right now?
What if you don't even have to go that far back?
Because again, remember that we're inspired
by everything around us, everything that we touch,
everything that we see every day.
So again, lucky ducks if you're from around here
or wherever, but especially here
because you have kind of the natural, you have the lush,
you have the rolling prairies, you have the lakes,
you have the idea of earth stewardship, the modern lines,
so many things that inform the place that you live in.
So look into that; what does that mean?
For me, I've been living in northern Utah
in a mountain valley for about five years now.
I've never lived near mountains like that before.
And like I said, they're starting to creep into my work
as I exist in this landscape, in this geography,
where everywhere I turn, I'm surrounded by these huge peaks
and this alpenglow in the evenings,
and kind of the jagged peaks and the contrast of snow,
and the turning leaves that are just starting to turn
in little places, pops of color.
Look into your landscape, your geography.
So dive in.
Take what you know about where you come from
and explore that for inspiration.
And you're probably gonna find
some pretty rich traditions to draw from.
Now, with all that said,
there's something we really need to talk about.
And that is how to work with culture,
how to play with culture and draw from it,
even your own, respectfully and responsibly.
This is something I'm passionate about.
I talk a lot about it, especially as a designer,
as someone who loves to teach design,
and again, in my work with IDEA in modern quilting,
because I wanna make sure
and emphasize what I'm not telling you to do here.
I'm not telling you to copy, I'm not telling you to pillage
'cause there's no creativity in that.
You don't need to take one of those images
that I showed and recreate it exactly.
That's not putting you into it.
That's not telling your story.
So take it and think about what it means to you
and how you can make a design choice,
a little point of inflection to add your own self
and your own story to that.
So I wanna quickly talk about the difference
between inspiration and appropriation.
I think it's important to know as designers,
it's one of those buzz phrases we hear in popular culture,
usually around Halloween or sports teams,
not as much in quilting.
But I think that it has to do with quilting
because when we're using design practices, motifs, images,
we have to be sure that we're doing them
in a really creative and respectful way.
So what is cultural appropriation?
It's the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption
of the customs, practices, ideas, iconography, et cetera,
of one people or society by members of another
and typically more dominant people or society.
So to appropriate is to, as a privileged individual,
play in the world of a minority culture
without an appreciation
or an awareness of the daily struggles
and discriminations of that culture.
It's a taking.
It has to do with a power dynamic.
And it often happens accidentally
when we don't acknowledge where we're borrowing from
or we use something in an inappropriate way,
especially a sacred symbol.
I notice that right after me in this room,
there's gonna be a lecture on Lakota quilting.
I want you, if you have the time, to sit in on that lecture
because the Lakota star is such an incredible motif
that we see in quilting,
with such a rich tradition and history and story.
So take a look at that.
Next to my special exhibit of quilts in the hallway out here
is that artist's Lakota star quilts.
So take a look at those and then really think about that.
It's a huge topic that merits its own discussion.
In fact, I have a whole lecture that I give about it,
but right now, I just wanna point it out
and just kinda let you sit with that idea
as you look to inspiration.
Because as we delve into our background and our cultures,
I wanna make sure that we're doing it responsibly,
respectfully, again, in a way
that puts ourselves into it, right?
That's not copying or taking,
but instead saying, "What does this mean to me?
What do I have to say about this?
How can I do this in a way that tells my story?"
Now, let's talk about design.
We've talked about exploring your own culture
and history for inspiration with some guides
about where to look, what to look at.
We've talked about how to do it respectfully, responsibly.
Now, let's get to the creative part,
which is what I love, the process.
So for this final part,
I'm gonna use some examples in my own work
to talk about how to go from inspiration to a quilt.
And I'm gonna tell you
how you're going to do the same thing.
So as we create, I'm gonna point out different stages,
different inflection points
where we make those design choices
that are informed by what you're originally inspired by.
So let's go back to those inspirations from our story
and our cultural heritage.
I talked about these skirts that I love so much.
That's gonna be my jumping-off point.
So that's design choice number one; that's my inspiration.
I have looked into my background.
I have pulled out this motif that I'm constantly drawn to.
And now I'm gonna ask myself, "What is it?
What is it about this that draws me in?"
For me, it's the motion.
I love the motion, that any way you swirl these skirts,
some new lines are created.
I love the curves.
Something about what curves imply,
again, motion, movement, progression,
that all, it just kind of speaks to me.
I love the line, the fact that this line,
you're taking these very geometric elements, line,
and you're curving them and you're manipulating them.
And I love the color.
If you haven't noticed, I love bold color, very bold color.
That's what I love to use.
And so I'm drawn to these high saturation, high contrast,
almost overwhelming combinations of color.
I teach a color class.
I'm teaching it here tomorrow.
And I talk about how to put together
the perfect fabric pool,
how to put together a palette that works.
Now, the problem is, I kind of break my own rules.
I'm a bit of a maximalist.
I like all the colors.
I like all the saturation.
And in my own design, I like to kind of almost overwhelm
and exhaust people's eyes, as mean as that sounds.
But that's kind of always what I look for is,
is it gonna make you tired looking at it?
I want that.
So that's kind of what I'm drawn to.
If you watch folklorico long enough,
if you watch these skirts long enough, it's overwhelming,
the colors, the movements, the nonstop rhythm.
And so that's my design choice number one.
That's my inspiration.
That's me asking, "What is it about it?
What is it about that's personal to me?"
Well, the fact that as a little girl,
I had to do these classes.
We all did in school.
Every year, we would put on a program
and we would all learn a traditional dance by grade.
And then for Mother's Day,
we would put on a big school program
and we would do our dances.
We knew all the dances.
We knew what the ones that the second-graders did
and the third-graders.
And we were all excited to get to sixth grade,
when we could break out of this and do our own thing.
And so we do, like, '50s with poodle skirts.
But again, poodle skirts, big flowing skirts, right?
So there was something, you know, to that,
that speaks to what we were learning.
So for me, it's an homage back to that.
So I decided a while back
that I was gonna create a series of quilts
exploring these different aspects
of this childhood memory of these skirts.
So for my initial design,
I wanted to create a skirt in motion,
but in a modern, geometric way.
Now, this was early in my quilting
and I was still a little bit afraid of curves.
I'm not afraid of curves anymore.
In fact, I love curves, I teach curves.
Rarely do I make anything that's not curved.
But initially, I was constrained by what I knew
and what I felt comfortable with.
So I started with my design concept.
And now my next thing is to dip into my quilter's toolbox.
So what is a quilter's toolbox?
A lot of us have heard of that idea before, right,
your quilter's toolbox.
It's where you keep all of the skills
and knowledge that you've acquired
in the classes you've taken, in the patterns you've made,
in coming to shows and listening to lectures
and going to workshops.
In your quilter's toolbox,
you have your cutting strips tool,
and you have your English paper piecing tool.
Not literal tools, not like the tangible tools
that we're all gonna go out there and buy,
but the knowledge and the skills to say,
"Okay, I have an idea.
Well, my next step is, how do I make that?"
Or what I like to ask is, "I wonder if I could make that."
I like that challenge.
So then you go into your toolbox and you say,
"What tools do I have to make this?"
So at the time, I was like,
"Hmm, I'm not gonna use my curve tools
"'cause I don't feel really comfortable with them.
"I wanna use my modern geometric tools.
"I wanna play with minimalism, even though I'm a maximalist.
"I want to have some really stark lines.
"Even though this overwhelms, that's not what I wanna do.
"I want to think about motion and depth and movement,
"but I'm gonna do it in a way
that's a little bit constrained."
So I went into my quilter's toolbox.
So think about your quilter's toolbox
once you have your design inspiration.
What can you use to create your idea?
So since I wanted to do something geometric,
I decided to stick with
kind of the most common, basic block that we learn,
that is so versatile and can be so complex
in the ways we use it.
And so I started with a log cabin.
How am I gonna turn this concept
into something that invokes a skirt?
Because on its own, it doesn't, right?
Okay, so let's talk about this.
Let's talk about the design process.
Now, this is the how, okay?
So I've got my tools, I know what I'm gonna do.
Now, how am I gonna use that to evoke what I want?
The depth, the movement, the motion, constraint.
Okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna play with this.
So how do I play with this
and things like this to create what I want?
So I'm gonna do a little bit of a half courthouse steps here,
and I'm gonna add it to each side
because I wanna start building out from this log cabin.
I wanna start giving it some depth
and something to play with.
And then I'm gonna keep on going
because that alone is, like, not very interesting, right?
Like, eh, right?
It's fine.
So I'm gonna add some corners to it, put those in.
Now it's starting to look kind of really cool and geometric,
but a skirt, like, really?
All this looks like is a block.
It's very static, it's not moving.
So I'm gonna add some little wings to it.
Again, using this manipulated
log cabin courthouse steps technique, right?
And so this is kind of the layout that I come up with.
Now, I like it, but it also looks like
kind of the Mexican folk art crosses that were on our walls.
And I like that.
It also kind of reminds me of the Ojo de Dios ornaments.
I'll show you a picture of those in a little while
that we used to make as children
until our fingers, you know, withered up and gnarled.
But that's not a skirt.
It doesn't look like a skirt.
So how am I gonna make this feel a little bit more dynamic?
Oh, that was easy.
I'm just gonna put it on point.
I'm just gonna move it, rotate it just a little bit,
because something about this, something about the diagonal,
think about how it makes your eye move.
So if we have this, your eye is going like this, right?
It's going across, it's going down, across, down.
It's taking those courthouse house steps
all the way down, right, or up.
Now if it's this, we're going up and down and up and down,
not in the way we would as a curve,
but we're still having that motion, right?
It's still taking our eye on that journey.
And I wanted to convey that motion.
Now, my next design choice, this is a fun one,
fabric and color.
Love fabric and color.
How am I going to turn this flat design
into something with depth
and that evokes kind of that heritage?
So I'm gonna take the colors that I love,
the colors, like colorful aspects of my childhood,
and I am going to play with those.
So the reds, the pinks of Bougainvillea plants,
the turquoise of Talavera tiles, papaya oranges,
the dark blues that you find also in tile and pottery.
So I'm gonna pull out those colors from my fabric stash,
and I am going to use those
to decide on the colors for my blocks.
So I started with my center.
This is what it was originally like, with that open middle.
But then I realized that this doesn't really give me the depth
that I want, and I want some depth.
I want a little bit of weight in the center
if I want the skirt to spin around it, right?
Otherwise it all just kind of exists floating.
So I changed that later on to blue in the center,
as you can see over here.
Okay, and then I just added the other colors,
just in an easy gradient.
So it wasn't too overwhelming.
Again, I was a little constrained in here.
I was playing with minimalism
in kind of a maximalist color palette, right?
And I liked this.
I like the depth that that ombre effect creates.
I like that it gives me the idea of layers
and the idea of movements,
the idea that maybe there's some things peeking out, right,
and some things overlapping.
So that's my third design choice.
Then I wanted to give it a little contrast
to add some more depth to it, and I did that
with kind of a contrasting thin line all around that,
and it made me really happy.
So Sharon is gonna be our assistant.
So she's gonna kinda hold this up
if you wanna see it a little bit closer.
Thanks, Sharon.
- Audience Member: Beautiful. - You want me to walk around?
- Sure, go ahead, whatever you feel like.
If you wanna stand, go ahead and stand.
So take a look at that.
Now, let's think about the last design choice here
that I'm gonna talk about for this quilt,
and that is the quilting.
Now, I'm gonna admit a cardinal sin
and say that the quilting is not my favorite part.
It's often, to me, a chore,
and I'm too cheap to send it out to a longarmer.
I do all my quilting on my domestic machine,
and oftentimes, it kind of sits for a while
before I get to it.
But I had to think about what the quilting meant, right,
what I wanted it, because the quilting
is not just an extra you throw on top, right?
The quilting is a place
where you can put yourself and your story into it.
So what I decided to do is, like I said,
it evoked those Ojo de Dios ornaments.
So you can see those up there.
It's kind of the yarn stars
that we would make around Christmas time.
Again, at school, we were just forced to make these
until we were so tired.
It wasn't that bad, it really wasn't, but it felt like it.
And so I wanted to evoke that.
And so I did that hand stitching,
the big stitch quilting
to kind of evoke the rods that those are on.
Even though this is a skirt to me,
I also wanted to do a callback to that part of my childhood.
And so I decided to incorporate that.
I also still wanted the suggestion of those yarn strings
that make up that diamond.
So I did thin quarter-inch quilting
within each of those geometric shapes.
I chose a dark thread to give kind of contrasting depth
and just kind of quilted concentric lines
radiating from the center.
I had to keep the lines of the individual
or the invisible sticks that the yarn would be wound on.
And then for the negative space,
I just kind of kept those straight lines.
So that's an example of how to take,
start to finish, an idea from your history,
from your culture,
and think about, "What does this mean to me?"
And take it from step one to a finished quilt.
It's not actually that difficult.
You just keep asking, "What does this mean to me
and what can I do with it," right?
Which is really cool.
So this is the first, it became the first
in a series of quilts exploring these skirt motifs.
So in the next, Sharon, will you hold this one up?
- Sharon: Oh, okay. - Thank you.
So this is the next in the series.
This is called Folkloric Number Two.
Okay, so in this next one,
I am getting a little bit more comfortable
with the idea of how to play with curves,
but still with my geometric toolbox.
I wanted to add motion to the geometry,
a little more than I had already.
I wanted to break it up into segments
and evoke the lifting, the kind of fantastic lifting
of a skirt that happens at the beginning
and the end of a dance.
And so that's what I did with that.
And then I started playing with free motion quilting.
Again, I do everything on my domestic machine.
So it really was playing to add folk art motifs to it.
So there are the doves and the flowers
and the vines that you often see on Mexican tiles.
- Sharon: Okay, or so?
So now, Sharon, if you'll pick up the other quilt,
and here you can just toss it up there.
It's really funny, out in the exhibit,
they're handling the quilts with white gloves.
And I'm just like, "My kids, like, walk on these."
- Audience Member: That's what I'm thinking.
- Yeah, so you can just toss it up there.
So for the third in the series, this one came later on
when I was far more comfortable with curves, as you can see,
and wanted to play kind of in conversation with an artist
that I admire who you might recognize
just from the composition, Sonia Delaunay,
who also played with geometric abstraction in paints
and then with textiles.
She's a great influence to a lot of quilters,
especially because of her textile work.
So I wanted to play with her composition in Petite Automne
and in other works that she's done.
So playing with that idea, I decided to add my own spin,
the elements of bold color.
I made templates to create her interrupted curves,
which drops the geometry of the previous quilts
and kind of lets the skirt spin freely.
I wanted this one to feel like motion.
And I also wanted to put myself in conversation
with this great artist that I could only, like,
aspire to that kind of creativity.
And then also, again, acknowledge where that came from
and who she was and what she did.
So the quilting on that follows the spin of the skirts
with the background being a simple geometric grid
to kind of contrast with that motion.
So again, with these two quilts
that Sharon has just held up for you,
think about the design choices, so you know the inspiration.
Now, what were the design choices with layout,
with composition, with fabric, with quilting?
All these places that you can imbue
a part of yourself and your story.
So I hope that that makes sense and it's helpful to you
if you're looking for new avenues of inspiration
or ways to discover your own voice in your art.
I want you to give yourself time and space
to think about where you come from, what shapes you,
what larger community story are you part of?
I want you to give yourself permission to explore that.
Give yourself space to take a minute and say,
"I love making other people's work
"because man, in this community,
"there are some creative geniuses,
"there is some incredible stuff out there,
"and I'm a part of this community.
"What do I have to say?
"What can I do to put my voice in here?
What can I do to express my own self?"
Explore that.
Pull out and appreciate the things that came before you,
that others have created.
And then become a part of that line of creators.
Treat the legacies of your culture
and other cultures with respect and get creative.
Make it personal, make it meaningful,
but make sure it tells your story.
Thank you.
[audience applauding]
So we have some time for questions, for thoughts.
I would just kind of love to hear from you.
Like I said, I love this to be a conversation.
Coloring books, that's, you know...
So what was it?
About 15, 10, 15 years ago,
adult coloring books became really popular, right?
Geometric coloring books.
I remember I was living abroad at the time
and I was in a bookstore in Italy,
and I found a geometric coloring book.
It's the first time I'd ever seen an adult coloring book.
And I got it, and I just, like, spent so much time.
I actually found it in a box recently
and gave it to my daughter
'cause I had only filled in about a quarter of it.
And so she was like, "This is so cool.
And it's an Italian; I don't understand."
You don't have to understand.
It's a coloring book, right?
Coloring books, such cool ideas and motifs.
A lot of those designs you see starting to come up
in free motion quilting, right?
If you think about graffiti style
free motion quilting, like Karlee Porter designs,
type graffiti quilting, a lot of that,
you see kind of those free-flowing geometry curves
and ideas.
That's a really great source of inspiration.
Okay, so Rebecca is inspired by science and math.
And so she's pointing out satellite imagery
that NASA publishes.
Was it about two years ago that the James Webb went online
and showed us, like, such vibrant,
new images of some of the pictures
that we'd seen before of these nebulas, right?
But even satellite imagery,
that's a really interesting idea.
So a quilt I designed a while back
that was a quilt of the month
for the Modern Quilt Guild was called Flyover.
And it was designed on an airplane when I was on my way
from California to, I think, Atlanta or maybe Texas,
and flying over kind of the middle part of the country
that everyone calls flyover states, which drives me crazy.
I spent 10 years in Indiana, and it is not a flyover state!
It is a beautiful place.
But looking down, you know how you see those plots of land
and the circles in between,
and you can see where like, one person's farm, like, cuts off
and another one's begins
and different crops based on different colors.
That's a really cool place
to look for some block inspiration.
Yeah, exactly.
So the circles, she's saying, where the irrigation occurs.
I didn't realize that's why there are circles.
I just assumed maybe it was growing taller there.
I'm clearly not a farmer. [audience laughing]
But where you have circles cut off
and curves interrupted and different colors,
that's really cool.
- Yes.
- Audience Member 2: In the quilt exhibit,
there is a flyover quilt.
- Oh, is there? - Of Gettysburg.
- Oh, interesting. - And it is fascinating.
- Okay, a flyover quilt of Gettysburg in the exhibit.
So points if you can go and find that.
That's awesome; I will look for that.
Isn't it cool to think of all these different places
that we're inspired by,
different ideas, different things?
Yeah, so if the question is
how to take a whole lot of different cultures,
a lot of different inspirations,
a lot of different parts of your story 'cause you don't...
Well, maybe you do wanna make, like, 20 different quilts.
We all do, right?
No, you don't?
Okay, well--
- Audience Member 2: Not in this one.
- Not in this one.
If you wanna put into one thing that's really meaningful.
So let's think about
those design points of inflection, right?
So our friend here suggested needlework.
So what if one of your design choices
is some kind of embroidery,
or the quilting comes from one region
and the geometric motifs and patterns come from another?
It could be something like separating,
you know, those cultures out.
And that way, you don't have something
that feels too chaotic maybe,
or maybe you do incorporate them and say,
"What happens if I use this kind of stitching
with this traditional color?"
So something to play with.
I mean, one of these places of inspiration
that we talked about is, like, traditional blocks
and updating them or making them your own.
So when you said windmill, my brain went,
"Ooh, that's cool to take a windmill
"and zero in on that center part of it.
"And how could I do that?
"And what traditional block might I use for that?
"And how may I put my own spin on it?
Could I design my own block for it?"
So that's kind of where my brain goes,
is there's different avenues.
You could say, go into your quilty toolbox and say,
"Okay, so the farmer's daughter could work here."
And you could go into your quilty toolbox and say,
"What if I used foundation paper piecing
"and made my own design?
"Or what if I used kind of the abstract lines or shapes
"in a farmer's daughter and use that in my quilt?
And then it's kind of my own, it has my own style."
Whatever your style is, you know.
Maybe your style isn't abstract,
or maybe you wanna get a little uncomfortable and try it.
So I would play.
I think the key is to play with it, right?
I think a lot of times, we treat our quilts
as so precious.
Like I said, my kids, when they're sick,
they are under my pieces,
and the next week, they get sent out.
Like, literally one of my kids was very, very ill recently.
And the next week, the quilt that she was snuggling under
was sent off to a traveling exhibit.
We can mess up.
We can give ourselves room to play.
We can give ourselves space to explore.
And maybe it'll work and maybe it won't,
but it'll be a story and you'll remember it.
And maybe you'll be the person
who writes in pencil on the back,
"Hmm, cool idea, didn't work."
You know, or something like that.
So I would say play with it and kind of explore all avenues.
And remember, you don't have to be constrained
by what other people have created.
Think about, "What do I have to say about this?"
Thanks for your ideas and your thoughts.
Each person in this room is a unique individual.
And I don't say that to be like, "We're all unique butterflies,"
but we are. [audience laughing]
We are all these complex, intentional beings
walking around with these stories and these histories.
And I would love to see you say, "What do I have to say?
"What does that tell me?
And what do I have to say to put into this art community?"
So, thanks; enjoy the show.
Thanks for being here. [audience applauding]
[gentle music]
- Announcer: Proceeds from The Great Wisconsin Quilt Show
support PBS Wisconsin programming.
Your financial gift helps make this event possible.
Thank you.
[gentle music]