Lisa Call

I promised my next post would have pictures but I have nothing new I’m ready to post. So it’s time for something old instead. My first original design contemporary quilt and a long story, as one of my goals with this blog is to document my history as a quilt maker and artist.

I started this quilt in august 1993 for a traditional quilt guild (Colonial Piecemakers in Williamsburg, VA) “challenge” competition. The challenge was to use the given a yard of fabric in a quilt and the membership would vote on winners.

I rather disliked the required fabric so I chopped it into long strips and started making a rather boring baby quilt that I thought I might donate to charity after the challenge was over.

But something must have snapped in my brain and suddenly I went off in a completely new direction from utilitarian quilting. I had always had a hard time following patterns when making quilts but I would consider myself basically a traditional quilter at the time I started this quilt.

I was probably headed in the direction of making original design work and this was just the right time for it:

• I was a new stay at home mom with a 12 month old baby so I’m sure I was bored out of my mind, not that babies aren’t fun, they just aren’t mentally challenging the same way a job or designing artwork can be.
• I was also active in the fledgling (by today’s standards) online quilt community (quiltnet) and I believe it wasn’t long after I started this quilt that an online group called “no-trad” began for those of us interested in more contemporary work.
• I had wanted to major in art in college but the man footing the bill vetoed that idea (hi dad) but I think I was always destine to end up an artist as I was always creating things (more on that another time). Some day art will be my only career, but currently that computer science degree I got instead is still in the way. Or maybe it is the mortgage preventing the change, which I believe was my dad’s argument in the first place.

Back to this quilt, which I named “housework” because I decided I would rather make a quilt with ugly fabric rather than clean my toilets any day. I always used my kids’ nap times as my quilting time. I never cooked or cleaned or did any of those housewifey type chores. And I very much believe that the quilting is what kept me (relatively) sane those very long and very challenging days and years (9 of them) as a stay at home mom.

Enough blah blah blah - here’s the quilt. As you can see I didn’t quite have my professional photography figured out yet. This was taken in my friend Kathy O’Meara Magnuson’s backyard in Chicago in August of 1994. I stopped by to visit as I was moving from Virginia to Colorado. This is the best photo of the piece I can find. You can see the “challenge” fabric in the center rectangle - it is the wider strips.

Housework  ©1994  ~80″ x 75″ (hxw)


 

I still own the quilt and it hangs in the entry way of my house. It’s a permanent installation as I never did really figure out how to hang the thing and with a combination of wire, hooks, nails and in the end packaging tape it’s been 15 feet up in the air for the last 11 years and I’m not moving it, ever. That’s my grandma’s treadle sewing machine below it.

When I cleaned out my basement last month I came across a notebook full of information about quilts I made long ago. It’s really cool, I’m apparently fairly organized. This is the original sketch for the quilt.

These are my construction notes. I have no idea what it all means (you can read it better if you click for the larger view) but somehow I managed to piece this thing together. I don’t have any recollection of how I managed to do this as at the time I had a very small sewing room, maybe 8′x10′ (and half the room was taken up by a floor quilting frame - so I had a tiny area). And no design wall so I must have laid it out on the floor somewhere. So those of you with small rooms, large work is possible, I can’t remember how I did it but I didn’t let space (nor a baby) deter me.

In the end I didn’t finish the quilt in time for the challenge . I didn’t have the binding hand tacked to the back of the quilt. So it was disqualified from judging. And it was also too big, the rule was at most 50″ on a side. Oops. I have a hard time with rules.

I did finish the binding in early 1994 and I even managed to take good slides of the piece (I didn’t have an SLR camera so again I don’t remember how I did this, or even where I found a wall to display it for the photography).

It was shown at the following shows in 1994 and then retired to the wall in my entry way:

• Quilters Heritage Celebration in Lancaster, PA
• NQA (National Quilt Association) Annual Show, Wheeling, West Virginia (I think)
• Quilts of Colorado, Pioneer Museum, Colorado Springs

And to my total surprise and delight it was even published in the premiere issue of Art/Quilt Magazine in 1994. I guess my slide wasn’t that bad as this is reproduced from the slide.

Clicking the link for the larger image will yield better results for the text.

I went back to my birth name post divorce although there are a few people about that still remember my old name. Both the date I made the quilt and the size are wrong in the magazine. It’s really closer to 80″x75″ and I know I didn’t finish the binding until January of 94.

When I think back on this quilt it was really quite a nice start to my pursuit of quilts as an artform. I was fairly successful with it and I think the publication gave me a lot of encouragement to keep going.

I’ve often said I don’t really like this quilt but having looked at it a lot the past 2 days while writing this I can see a lot of things about it that are really quite nice. It’s certainly not a masterpiece but I’m really quite proud to say that this is where I began.

And it does look nice in the entryway. I just hope the tape continues to hold!