ID Number: TQ.2015.044
Name of interviewee: Elizabeth [Betty] Sell
Name of interviewer: Christine Burgess
Name of transcriber: Christine Burgess
Location: Elizabeth’s home
Address: Petts Wood, Orpington, Kent.
Date: 21 August 2015
Length of interview: 0:48:49
Summary
Betty talks about her ‘Fish, fur and feathers’ quilt, made from batik fabric that she made and features fish, mammals and birds. She talks in detail about batik dyeing; particular about the layering of the colours for this fabric. Betty is inspired by nature and learnt to sew as a young girl making her first dresses on a hand Singer sewing machine. Later she talks about her involvement with Young Quilters, a University of the Third Age sewing group, a home sewing group and making charity quilts.
Interview
Christine Burgess [CB]: {interview introductions] Elizabeth would like me to call her Betty, thank you for agreeing to this interview Betty a couple of your friends put your name forward and I am delighted you have agreed.
Elizabeth Sell [ES]: Thank you.
CB: If at any time you wish to stop please say so.
ES: Will do.
CB: Okay! Please describe your quilt named ‘Fish, fur and feathers’ and how it came about.
ES: Well when I retired, I was an infant teacher and infant teachers do all sorts of strange things but I like craft and I’d done several things and I saw a batik course advertised and I thought oh that would be good, so I went along to the course and eventually I had some squares of huge flowers and by the time I had finished the course I had about twelve what I call blocks but I didn’t know it then so I thought oh well I could put those together and make a quilt so I didn’t know anything about batting or anything like that so I put a backing on and it got all screwed up and in a terrible state so I thought ‘oh that’s not quilting’. Then I saw a quilting course advertised so I went to quilting course with Pat Taylor [a local quilt teacher] who was, I think was just starting, I’m not sure about that, anyway I got to learn all about batting and outlining with using the machine, I didn’t do hand quilting, not very much, and then this ‘Fish, fur and feather’ was broached in the class and I thought ‘oh I could do batik with that’ and that’s how this quilt came about. And it grew, and it grew, and it grew [laughter] but it was… it was a challenge, and I like a challenge and I’d got plenty of time, my husband was still working so and I was retired so… and that’s… oh hello it’s a bit of hand quilting on there [laughs] [Betty runs her fingers over her hand quilting] but most of it is just outlined. It was quick and easy and colourful and I like that, Batik is a nuisance in as much as you have to boil the wax out and it can be quite messy, but it was a start so it was, so that’s where my ‘Fur, feather and fish’ came in.
CB: Can you describe the process of batik?
ES: Well you have a pot, a metal pot, with wax in it and the same wax you use for candles and you have a heater under the pot, and you can plug it in to the electricity and the wax heats so you start off by putting… oh you have brushes, paint brushes with flat [repeats] flat bristles rather than pointed bristles so that you can and you start off by waxing out the lightest colour you want so for instance that fish you would wax out that with the wax [Betty is pointing to a part of the fish on the quilt] then you would wax out this pattern [pause] and these little dots there [points at the white dots] and I don’t know whether I would have waxed the outside there [strokes] first anyway I would wax the mouth like, no when [repeats] when, that is has set, dried you can then fill in your next bit so you will have white here and white there and you can put yellow in, [repeats] in the shape that’s made there [pointing at fish scale pattern] you can put the yellow in there because that shape, then the yellow for that and the yellow on the tail, I’d forgotten about the tail, right you’ve done white and yellow and you look for your next colour and next colour I think is probably the orange so you put the orange stripes bits in right somewhere in amongst the whites there and the next one is probably this sort of brownie khaki colour so you put that in and then your last one is this dark Maroney colour and that’s the last bit but you have to make sure the wax is set before you do the next colour.
CB: Ah!
ES: Right?
CB: So you have to go over each colour do you with wax?
ES: Yes if you want to hide and then you can do. [Talking over one another]
CB: [Talking over one another] Right.
ES: And then you can do your, sort of brownie khaki so it and you start with the lightest colour and then build it up.
CB: Fascinating.
ES: Yes actually it is quite intriguing, there this is my favourite the heron I like him, he makes a really good subject for quilting and you know he’s tall and so the same thing you would do the white bits then your next lightest bits then your darker bits and your yellow bits so you can have you can have it drawn out and so your sort of filling in as you go but it’s a challenge. [CB: Umm]. That’s what I quite enjoy. Mr Fox was a bit difficult, where is he? [Pause] Mm… Mr Fox [searching the quilt for the fox] who’s that which way up is that, oh that er, here he is he was lovely to do and he came up well, didn’t he?
CB: He certainly did.
ES: And that’s the same method, I think over the years its probably faded but um so that’s my probably my first big batik quilt and I’ve gone on to do batik tops to wear batik waistcoats… have I done any… wall hangings I’ve had I don’t remember it’s a long time thirty years isn’t it?[laughter]
CB: It is, it is, so was it a steep learning curve to make the panels into a quilt.
ES: Well as you can see or you have seen I have some strange flat panels running through them so it was not [repeats] not ideal but you know at the time it worked, it worked and that’s the same thing you see your light it was probably a piece of white so you just block out the white and then put the yellow on and you orange and the yellow and do your orange on there and that it hasn’t… oh yes it has, so you start with the lightest colour and fill in with, with your darkest.
CB: Lovely.
ES: Right lesson finished. [CB: laughs] Oh there’s the badger look [Betty turns the quilt around and points]
CB: Oh yes!
ES: He was a nice thing to do, yes so I quite enjoyed it [laughs].
CB: You’ve got a lot of wildlife in your quilt they’re not easy to draw are you good at drawing and where do you get your ideas from?
ES: Well my husband and I had a motor home and we did we did the UK and we are both fond of walking and so we use to… Lake District so it was and I don’t know anything about fish but [laughs] wildlife I am a farmer’s daughter anyway so even though I am in urban London I’m a farmer’s daughter so you know, it was I don’t think we ever had badgers but we certainly had all the other animals and we had a river close to home which we used to swim in, so, and near here there’s a reservoir called… [pause] I’ve forgot what it’s called but it has a lot of birds on it and we used to go down there and walk around the lake there and there’s a pub for lunch [laughs].
CB: Nice.
ES: [Laughter] So that’s, that’s why I like animals and birds and things.
CB: Where do you get your inspiration for making quilts?
ES: Um right, where do I get inspiration? Well the environment and if I see a method which I quite like I have a go at it. It doesn’t always succeed but not to worry I like to have a go at quite a lot of things as will notice [Bettys home is full of her quilts on seats and backs of chairs both dining and armchairs] and nature I like and trees and birds, beasts and methods, you know, these cunning methods of making quilts and you know I like to have a go at most things there’s chenille, you know, chenille [Betty strokes the waistcoat she is wearing which is some of her chenille work] And one day I saw a whole quilt made of silk ties and I was coming out of a charity shop which I like [laughs] which shops I like and there was a plastic bag and they were and they were giving up and in this bag there were lots and lots of ties and I thought ‘aah I remember that quilt in a made with…’ I think it was some, what they call it grannies plate?
CB: Dresden Plate?
ES: Dresden Plate pattern using the ties and I thought oh I’ll have a go at that but in the end it became a waistcoat but when you take a tie apart there’s a lot of material and they were all silk from all over the world. Actually I saw a quilt the other day made with the ties and they’d left the name labels it looked so interesting, you know, a lot of them from all over the world and I wish I’d done that, but I didn’t, but I live and learn.
CB: Having chatted earlier I understand you’ve got a pair of these quilts. Can you tell me the colours of this one and the colours of the other one and are the pictures exactly the same?
ES: Mmm can’t remember what’s on the… I don’t think the pictures exactly the same but there are some orange and yellow I think in the other one, but we’ll have a look at it. But the other one was inspected by my grandson who said ‘Umm fried eggs’ [laughter] with the orange yolk and the yellow outside which was supposed to be flowers [laughter] but never mind [pause]. So I can’t remember what, can I have a look at that one to see what, [repeats] what I did. It’s another very large one [both are opening up the quilt] oh more nature [pause] oh yes birds oh and there’s the, the heron, yes…. I don’t think it’s got any animals, it looks like it might just be birds… fish has it got fish on? No its just birds, now this is probably taken from when we used to go down to the local reservoir and walk round there and so used to see lovely birds, there’s a forgotten what you call…
CB: Mandarin duck.
ES: Mandarin duck. And there a lot of Grebe down there anyway this is the quilt that my grandson said ‘Umm there’s a lot of fried eggs’ [laughter] so you can’t please everyone all the time can you, but it’s not as intricate as the other one. He’s nice isn’t he, he’s quite fun and the kingfisher.
CB: Can you tell me what your family think of your quilts and quilt making?
ES: Um well… they all use them [laugh] and my eldest son died about two or three years ago and he had quite a few quilts and when he died his daughters, he had five children, all wanted a quilt [laughs] so they enjoyed them. It’s so long ago if I go to see my youngest son who lives in Worcester he has quilts on his bed, he said ‘they were yours mum’ and I can’t remember making them when um I know I know they’re mine but I can’t actually remember them making so the family I thinks its only Robert who didn’t like my fried eggs [laughter] but he has, he actually… when he was in university I made him a [repeats] a quilt ‘A hundred years of happenings’ it’s in a bookcase with the, with the titles of every year, with… so we got… and I’m no good at history, but we did have 1912 some… it wasn’t Titanic was it? It was a disaster of some sort.
CB: [talking together] I think it might have been Titanic, yeah.
ES: Yes, so every year, but I did have a little book which gave me ideas, but it looked quite good I’ve got a picture of it somewhere and that was… that was the [repeats] the fried egg boy [laughs] and actually he’s given it to his mum, so my ex daughter-in-law has [repeats] has my bookcase quilt. And it was quite good because I did about four shelves so there’s twenty five years, twenty five years… so it’s… 1900 to 2000. There we are, so that’s I don’t… I probably saw it somewhere else the type of thing and thought, ‘oh yes’. [CB: Yeah] That was good. So though I was at that time writing with machines [laughs] so that was easy.
CB: Tell me why you make quilts.
ES: I enjoy it, I enjoy the challenge, I’ve made a lot of friends, I like colours, I like colourful things and they’re lovely around the house aren’t they? Even if they are not the supremely quilt hand quilted pieces of work I like to give them away and we, I have a group on Monday morning from the University of the third age and we discuss quilts and we sit and some people just sit and do hexagons and I also belong to Orpington Quilters and there a… they took me out yesterday cause it was my birthday last Sunday and we went out to a nursery, a nursery garden which had beautiful gardens and the quilt group took me out so that was lovely.
CB: Was it a special birthday Betty?
ES: Not quite another year I’ll be… quite old [laughs].
CB: You’re not going to let us in on that one then.
ES: Well next year I’ll be ninety… so [laughs]
CB: Wonderful!
ES: So I’ve had… I retired at fifty nine, so I’ve just had thirty years of [repeats] of quilting.
CB: Brilliant.
ES: I’ve enjoyed it and I also help with the Young Quilters and we have a Thursday night ‘chattery’ group which is quite nice well its good for me my husband died about ten years ago and they meet here they don’t have to go to a husband or you know they’re not they’re no impeding no anyway they are not pushing anyone out so I enjoy it, it’s good for me and they enjoy it so actually although we went out to have a tea party yesterday afternoon four of them came back last night so we and I discovered all these pieces of red bits which somebody, people give me lots of bits and I thought I’d better to something with those. So Margaret James, sat, she’s had a big operation so she sat and showed me how to do that so tomorrow I am going to a workshop and I’m going to take my light machine and all the bits and she’ll be there she’ll keep me straight.
CB: Very nice, Betty has just showed me a red and, red and white check Dresden plate I think it is.
ES: If you call it that yes [laughter], we tried we tried to make the fan and but it didn’t work we didn’t know why, was it, the was… it wasn’t actually a quarter of an inch, it was more, and it just took a little bit too much off but it made a good… we didn’t have to do anything with the plate that was fine so I shall take it to workshop tomorrow and there’s another lady who wants to do it as well, so between us we’ll have lots of Dresden plates.
CB: I think you will there’s a big pile there of pieces [laughter]. What age did you begin to learn sewing and what type of stitching did you learn and who taught you?
ES: Aah now my mum was left with six children and a farm and… had to be very economical and apart from poultry rearing and things like that she didn’t do the heavy work and she had six children to look after as well and so she sewed, there were three girls and three boys, in her family, so she used to sew dresses for the girls, I don’t think she was actually a very good needlewoman, but anyway we used to wear the dresses because we would have gone without [laughter]. And so from there when I was about twelve my grandma, my mums mum gave me her old Singer hand machine, you know the one you turn the handle on, and she used to wear, my grandma used to wear very long navy blue, I don’t know if it was Barathia some quite nice smooth material, thickish, and she used to give them to me if she’d finished with them and I could use them to make whatever I wanted. She gave me her hand machine anyway and so I used to make Pinafore dresses for myself and my middle sister, so that’s alright, that helped so I’ve stitched and sewn from quite an early age from about twelve or so.
CB: Okay
ES: So it’s a long time if you…
CB: If you work out from your age… [Laughter].Explain how you’ve used those skills to further others learning to sew.
ES: Well as I say the U3A lady who was doing the stitch craft… class, I don’t know if you know what U3A is, do you? Well its University of the Third Age, so I don’t know if there’s any lower age but if there is most of the people who join are over retirement age and there’s a whole list of things which you can do but you do it in people houses, so for instance I have a stitchery group because the lady who was doing the stitchery group, doing the stitch craft group she gave up she’d got trouble with her hands and she couldn’t do it anymore, so we were at a meeting, a friend and I, and she said ‘Betty, can you do this?’ [Laughs] so I said ‘Alright we’ll do it’ we, so we said we’d do it. So we have a group on Monday morning every fortnight and we just learn from each other and if someone’s got a brilliant idea from somewhere else or other they’ll bring it along and we’ll have a go at it. But I must admit a lot of them will sit and do hexagons [laughs] so there all those and what’s that how did, how do I benefit others? Oh we make quilts for the stroke rehabilitation unit and its called ‘I care’ but it’s to do with people coming out of hospital having had a stroke and we make lap quilts which we sell at the U3A meetings and give all the money to the rehabilitation unit. And they’re actually having a sale on the fifteenth of September at their unit in Green Street Green and so I’ve got several new packets of cross stitch and one or two quilts which they have to sell on their stalls there and then if they don’t, what they don’t sell it and if they let me have it back, we’ve got a stall at U3A in the middle of October, so [coughs] we made £325 last year.
CB: Well done.
ES: So we’ve got a lot already a lot of quilts and are a lot of the quilts are patchwork, real patchwork quilts because the bits have been given to us by other people… Orpington Quilters when they have a show and tell we might take a quilt that we’ve done and then people say ‘Oh Betty, I’ve got… can you do with this?’ Right so it costs us very little and actually I think it was Orpington Quilters who actually bought us a roll of ‘batting’ wadding [‘batting’ is the American name and wadding the English name for the soft quilt filling] so we didn’t have to buy wadding, but we’ve finished [repeats] finished that now, but that’s useful.
CB: Yeah, Do you have a particular memory of a patchwork quilt from when you were a child at all.
ES: Actually I do, on my bed and I don’t know who made it, and I wouldn’t think it was my mum, but it had it, I think it was probably log cabin because it had strips of grey flannel, like boys trouser flannel on my bed I just remember this grey flannel it wasn’t, wasn’t bright or anything like that but it was warm, so I can remember that.
CB: Lovely.
ES: But where it came from I don’t know.
CB: Do you prefer piecing by machine or hand and then quilting, I think you’ve already said you prefer to quilt by machine although you’ve got a little bit of hand sewing there.
ES: Yes I, I haven’t got time to hand quilt [she says this while laughing] [repeats] I haven’t got time enough, so recently, I think a lot of people get tired of my quilts. I free-motion quilting all over them doesn’t take long and its adequate and nobody’s going to look very carefully at them, it’s the over… and I keep telling them it’s the overall effect, it is isn’t it?
CB: It is.
ES: I have done smaller free motion quilting and I went to a free motion workshop at the weekend I think it was… who took it? Regan? D’you know Regan? She’s a Bromley teacher quite a young teacher and she took it and it was Zentangle, d’you know Zentangle?
CB: No.
ES: Right, I was given this yesterday [Betty produces a book out of her bag] I was given this yesterday.
CB: Ah lovely, Art, therapy and stress colouring book, wonderful.
ES: But, but if you do this on, on… material… so if you fill in shapes it’s called Zentangle I don’t know why… so but you can someone was telling me yesterday, because they gave me this when we went out to tea so I was looking through it, but apparently Zentangle can be just the art of drawing that, but because we’d had a Zentangle workshop doing it on fabric somebody saw this book and thought ‘aah! Betty would like that’. So, so that, that’s so Regan was taking a workshop last Saturday, so…
CB: Have you already identified something in that book you are going to replicate?
ES: Well I like the animals big swans I think that’s lovely, there’s um, peacock but I have a tremor in my hands so sometimes even free-motion quilting I like the big stuff because you don’t have to worry so much but… you know it was… so well I won’t colour in my, in my book but its ver… Oh look, the owl like, I like owls and they’re very popular at the moment, aren’t they? We went into the local sewing shop after we’d came away from our tea party and they had wall hangings all children’s cot quilts and lots of owls. There’s another bird, [Betty is continuing to turn the pages of her book] so, there’s foxy, yes.
CB: Very good, I think it is right up your street that book [both laugh].
ES: Well the person who was sat next to me Carole with an ‘e’, she never done and free motion quilting so we were given time to do our own thing we were given a piece of material which had wadding in and backing do your own thing, have a practice and this Carole with an ‘e’ had never done any free motion before so she was very timid about it but suddenly I heard her machine and I knew she’d got it but I just knew from the sound of the machine, you know it’s very steady, but she did some really, really excellent work, it was amazing, but that was quite an interesting [repeats] interesting day.
CB: Good! What machine do you use?
ES: Well I’ve had, I had my, my grandmothers hand machine and so up to… up to the time, I should think when I retired I think I probably didn’t have a good machine, and then my husband bought me a Bernina. A big heavy, metal Bernina, but at the time it was, it was, you know not state-of-the-art but a good machine and it’s a very tolerant machine, it tolerates me [laughter] a very good machine and then Because its heavy and its made of metal I bought a Janome and that’s a plastic very basic machine, but quite adequate for me, in I don’t embroider, I use what do you call it, up and down? Zig zag, I use the zig zag actually you can do quite good free hand motion quilting with zig zag and it fills up quickly [laughs] but I take the small machine Janome machine to workshops.
CB: You filled in a questionnaire before this and in it you said that you like to add humorous touches to your quilts can you give me some examples?
ES: Erm…well… [Laughs] no, not really, what humorous touches? If I do a person, you know, I do one with a smiley mouth and one without, what else did I say about this? I can’t… yes other people say this about me but I can’t remember what I do [pause] sorry [talking together]
CB: It’s alright, well [talking together] we can come back to it if you remember you can fill it in then. One of your quilts you said to me ended up in a book. Can you tell me about the book and what [talking together] the quilt was like?
ES: [Talking together] The book, the book was all…. all… Log cabin different log cabin styles and it was called something connections, it was… [Betty is now searching her book shelves for the book] Can I see… can you hang on a minute?
CB: I’ll pause it.
ES: Yes. [Interview introductions].
ES: Making Connections is a book called ‘Around the world with log cabin’
CB: by…?
ES: by…
CB: Diana Travis
ES: Diana Travis, Diana Travis, Janet Rae and Diana Travis, and prior to her asking me if she could use my quilt and its very bright and I like bright things some reason somebody said Olympia ask ask them if they would like your quilt at Olympia and they actually put it on their programme and so that was quite good and Diana Travis saw it and she said ‘Can we use your log cabin quilt?’
CB: And there it is…
ES: There it is.
CB: Page one hundred and seven.
ES: And that’s her, your quilt is on there, hope to see you soon… Chartham, wherever that is…
CB: Lovely.
ES: From the 1999 National exhibition I don’t know what that means [describing a postcard Diana Travis had sent her with the book which Betty keeps inside the book signed by both Janet Rae and Diana Travis]
CB: That’s name of the quilt on the front. [Betty is reading the title of the quilt pictured on the postcard]
ES: Oh right, [repeats] right so that was, that was a one up-man-ship wasn’t it? [Laughter]
CB: It certainly was.
ES: It was… so when… it was obviously I was at a workshop or something or somebody was teaching about log cabin and I’d done all these beautiful blocks and I thought well I’ve got to put them together now, how do I put them together? So… and I think they went together really well, I had to add [repeats] add a strip here and there and the triangles I did on the outside but um, yes, that was quite a feat I think [laughs].
CB: Beautiful!
ES: To they [repeats] they’ve cut the [repeats] the border off it doesn’t help, did you see it, it’s up on the bed upstairs.
CB: I did yeah…
ES: It’s much brighter than it shows there but that’s my [repeats] my fame [both laugh].
[Long pause].
CB: Where do you source your fabrics, you’ve said you like charity quilts, charity shops do you get all of your fabrics there or some of it or… [Talking together] hardly any…?
ES: No I get backings there usually, occasionally I pass a charity shop and as I was coming back from shopping this morning there was hanging outside on a rail a huge piece of cotton bright cotton fabric and I thought ‘oh! What’s this?’ And it was a Star Wars duvet cover so why not so I thought ‘why not’. Ah I’ve got a piece of a new quilt that somebody wanted chopped up that will do for the filling, so I bought it back so my five ‘shi… fifty ‘p’ [repeats] fifty ‘p’ I keep… fifty ‘p’ and my gift of the filling of the wadding there we are, a fifty ‘p’ quilt. So we can sell that with the other quilts for… unless I think of a great grandson who… or even grandson who needs a quilt [laughs] but it’s absolutely new you know people and it’s like this this quilt this lady came, she said ‘I shan’t use it, can you make me a strip to go across the bottom of her bed?’ It was a huge double quilt so there… so… and lots of people, because we have been doing quilts for charity, making lap quilts and [pause] and people have said ‘Oh Betty do you want this or do you want that’ so we’ve been given a lot of pieces.
CB: Does your quilting fill a creative need in you?
ES: [Hesitates] Yes, obviously. Yes we’ve done… we’ve done batik we’ve done sun dying, there’s some sun dyed fabric on there, we put milk bottle tops, you [repeats] you dip your [repeats] your material in in the dye, take it outside and put it on a picnic table in the sun then put inhibitors on the top so if you’ve got a bag full of say bottle tops… they have to be heavy enough to withstand the wind or the breeze and you put those all over, underneath that you get a pale mark so if you can, if it’s a windless day put a leaf there if you could pin the leaf on you would get dark all around the outside and underneath the leaf it wouldn’t… what was the question… about? My urge (laughter).
CB: Your urge.
ES: Right we’ve printed [repeats] we’ve printed so that was quite good, so we’ve got a couple of quilts for the sale that we printed. We printed birds [laughs] and we printed sunflowers and I even printed some rats the other day to go in the middle of a cushion tiny ones, [laughs] [uses her hands to show a circle about the size of the centre of the cushion] that was quite fun. Done a lot of that, I hadn’t done that in ages, what other things have we done? We’ve… I’ve made a lot of waistcoats and so various methods, and paints, what else have we done? All the stitching and shapes I suppose but I’ll have a go… at you know… at most things [laughter]
CB: Well may you long be quilting Betty, thank you ever so much our interview is ending at half past two.
ES: Shame, shame, [Talking together] shame.
CB: [Talking together] Thank you! [Both laughing]
ES: Right if you find it’s too bitty….
CB: No! No…