My philosophy of Quiltmaking

Looking back over the years I can reflect on just how much quiltmaking has meant to me in my life and how much it has guided my life to experiences I would never have had otherwise.  Quilting has shaped my life. 

When I made my first quilt at the age of twenty-two, none of my friends had ever considered making a quilt.  Thus, I confess that the accolades I received in finishing the quilt inspired me to make a second quilt (they also went to my head).  Having sewn by hand since I was about twelve years of age, I found the applique technique of hand-sewing as peaceful as I had experienced years before when I first learned how to embroider by hand.  I was used to sewing by hand and I think overall that is why applique work appealed to me and the fact that I’m not good with the sewing machine which pieced work required.  My sewing machine and I don’t really get along.  I found that quilting by hand brought me a certain peace of mind.

There were no books available on how to make quilts back then in the nineteen-sixties and so I was and am largely self-taught.  I continued to quilt after I married but thirteen years later my whole life collapsed and changed forever.  My husband, Bob Small, died suddenly and tragically accidentally on June 6^th 1972.    Left with two young children, four and seven, I was teaching figure skating at the time for the Borough of Etobicoke, in Toronto.  But I found eventually that teaching figure skating took me away from home at a time when my children were coming home from school and on Saturday mornings as well, so I began to look for some other part-time job preferably one I could do from home.  The problem was the only other skill I had really was quiltmaking.  Two years later I read in the newspaper about a quilting class being held in a community college in the east end of the city and I thought, that was something I could do, as I had attended Teacher’s College for a year and I knew how to set up a teaching course.  I called the College and asked if the quilt teacher would mind if I audited one of her classes which the teacher agreed to and after that I went to the Community College in my area of the city.  They carried a course in weaving so I told them they should consider classes in quiltmaking.  I still don’t know how I had the nerve to do it.  But after presenting a course outline, the art department agreed to carry two semesters of quiltmaking and they arranged for their wood workshop students to make the small quilting frames I needed.  Humber College quilt classes were filled immediately and after two semesters the students and I put on the first quilt exhibit at the College, which was a huge success.  I then brought the classes into my home studio and taught there for the following nine years.

Since my Humber College students wanted to keep on meeting to quilt, I thought back to my history classes in school and how historically guilds were used in Europe to teach people new skills.  Thus, I formed the second quilt guild in Canada in 1975, the Etobicoke Quilters Guild with the help and support of my Humber College quilt students.  My quilting took on a new meaning for me and I knew that none of this would have happened to me had I not experienced the death of my beloved husband and that I had a need to help support my children with part-time work.  Life happens to us all and we never know in what direction it will take us.  With this tragedy came opportunities for me as well. 

In 1977 my quilt guild held the first Canadian Quilt Conference at York University in Toronto and because of the newly published Quilters Newsletter magazine, from Colorado, I learned of the creative people who were drawn to textiles as their medium of choice, creative in the sense that they were formally trained by their education in the Fine Arts and in Design and who were producing such wild and different quilt designs that I asked them to teach at our conference and all who were approached, agreed.  It was then that in looking at their textile work at this conference, I realized that if I were ever to grow with my quilt work, I would need more educational training and in the subject of design for that’s what quilts are all about, the surface design on a quilt.  While I realized this, I never expected it would ever happen.  

In 1983 I had made a wall quilt which I designed, titled ‘When I Grow up I want to be an Individual’, featuring penguins on my quilt.  I wanted to enter it into a juried exhibit and needed to have it photographed, which I did.  And when the person photographing my work was finished doing so, he turned to me and said:  “You really ought to consider going to the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in downtown Toronto”.  Of course, I immediately thought he felt I needed all the help I could get with my design work, which showed you the confidence I had in myself as a designer but of course that wasn’t what he meant at all.  As he was also a school principal, I took his words to heart but explained I was too old (43 years old), I still had one teenager at home and after all I was ‘just’ a quiltmaker’.   Quilting was considered a craft, not a form of art.  The next morning when I woke up, I thought, what if I never tried, how would I ever know if I might be accepted as a part-time mature student at the Art College.  And so, I called the school office and it turned out that the following two weeks were the only two weeks of the school year in which they were acceptive prospective students.  “Did I want to make an appointment?” I was asked.  Without a moment’s thought, I said “yes”.  Later, I wondered just what I was getting myself into. 

And so, a week later, I trudged off to the Ontario College of Art, with three of what I considered to be my best quilts in a green garbage bag, only to find when I arrived at the College that there was a line-up of young people half my age in the College hallway, waiting to be interviewed by three instructors, all holding professional black art portfolios.  There I stood with my green garbage bag.  “I don’t belong here” I thought.  Then, “oh well, I’m here, I’ll have to give it my best and try” and so I proceeded into the Colour Studio to face my three instructors and my interviews.

Well, as it turned out I was right, the Art College instructors turned their noses up at my quilt work lying on the floor of the Colour Studio.  “Where did your designs come from?” I was asked.  I replied “from in my head”.  “Where are your designs now?” I was asked.  “In the garbage, I was through with them” I replied.  Both answers were not what the instructors wanted to hear.  The third and last instructor approached me and by then I knew enough to say, “I am here on a whim, someone suggested I try applying to the college”.  The instructor, whom I later found was the head of the Industrial Design Department, (Claude Gidman) asked me after looking over my quilts, “what would you like to learn if you were admitted to the College”.  “Colour and Design” I immediately replied.  With that he said, “pack up your quilts, I’ll take you to the front office and make an appointment for you to be interviewed by the Head of the Design Department” and with that an appointment was set for me the following week.  His parting words to me however were “If she doesn’t let you into the College, don’t bother applying again”.  Hmmm, just as I thought, art colleges didn’t let craft people into their schools.

The following week I met with the head of the design department (Joan Burt).  After she looked at my quilts, she said “why these are just beautiful, they are quilted tapestries, I am going to put you into second year advanced, as you already have your medium (textiles)” and with that, a whole new world opened up to me.  I floated out of her office thinking I’d made it.  However, what I didn’t factor into the equation was that my education until then had been in the academic field, not visual art.  There is a world of difference between the two and how information is relayed and taught.  It was a challenging experience for me but some of the best years of my life when I finally caught onto the teaching methods.   Six years later, I graduated with a diploma in design as I had to take a semester off for medical reasons.  I finished my last two and a half credits in an independent study at my new home in the country, consulting monthly at the College with my chosen panel of instructors.  My topic was NorthWest Coast Indian art and design and I am proud to say, I received honours for this study.

Thank you for taking the time to read what quiltmaking has meant to me.  I know that quilting has meant a great deal to many other quilters as well, the world over.