ID Number: TQ.2015.048
Name of interviewee: Suzanne Fisher
Name of interviewer: Elizabeth Betts
Name of transcriber: Katherine James
Location: Not specified
Address: Hove, East Sussex
Date: 9 September 2015
Length of interview: 1:06:03
Summary
Suzanne introduces her Blue and White Sampler quilt, a traditional nine-block small sampler quilt that she uses for her quilt classes. She has been quilting for about twenty years, but her link to sewing goes back to school days. Suzanne talks about her class; the pleasure she gets from seeing others learn and how purposeful quilts should be valued. Later in the interview she talks about funding in adult education, why quiltmaking is important to her as a person and to others.
Interview
Elizabeth Betts [EB]: [Interview introductions] Hello Sue.
Suzanne Fisher [SF]: Hello Liz.
EB: So can we start by talking about your touchstone object. So could you start by describing your quilt?
SF: It’s a nine-block traditional American block sampler quilt. The blocks were chosen as I use this quilt as a teaching aid, so they have no curves, it is simple squares, rectangles and triangles. The colours are blue and white, very similar to Delftware – simply because I picked up a pack of fat quarters and liked them. And it’s also put together using quilt-as-you-go. So there are… I chose a yellow sashing strip which is very narrow and I also put a narrow single-fold binding in the same fabric. Again I used the quilt-as-you-go because I find beginners are very nervous about putting a large quilt through their machines whereas a 12½ inch square doesn’t seem to phase them quite so much. And it’s also interesting for them to see how many different patterns they can make with straight lines and not presuming that they have to rush off to a longarm quilter or do complicated free-machine quilting. There are nine blocks. There’s a centre Friendship Star in the middle – that seems rather apt. There’s a windmill block and a very simple block using rectangles and squares that looks woven – I think it’s called Tartan Ribbons. And I can’t honestly remember the name of the other blocks but there are nine of them. [Laugh]
EB: And what plans do you have, how do you use this quilt?
SF: As I said, this is a teaching sample quilt so it travels round with me to groups. I work… I have my own groups that run in the village where I live, I teach in shops and it’s the one I hold up and say ‘This is what you’re making’. And generally it meets with approval. Sometimes we have people that say ‘I don’t particularly like that block, can I make something different?’ so I will find something else for them to put in. And I do of course have people that say ‘But I want it to be twice as big as that’, so then they’ll make two of a particular block. It illustrates machine piecing and rotary-cutting mats and rulers – it’s not a hand-pieced quilt, it’s completely machine-made. And again I find that some people come having done hand patchwork using templates or over papers, so they initially are quite perturbed by the sight of a ruler and a rotary cutter. But they soon get over it. And I think the hardest thing they find is some of the quick-piecing methods where perhaps they are then they have a bias edge where they weren’t expecting it. One of the pitfalls of quick-piecing, sometimes you end up with a bias edge on the seam that you want to sew. But generally it’s well received.
EB: How many people do you think have made this quilt?
SF: Wow. [Pause] At least 60 I would think. At least 60. Probably 10 classes with six in. And then they’ve gone on to make other projects from it, which is what you want. The whole purpose of a sampler quilt is to give them the skills to go forward and make things on their own or attend other classes, secure that they’ve got some of the skills needed. I don’t think you ever stop learning – but, no, they go forward from it, which is great.
EB: And how do you feel about the quilt? Is it quite typical of the quilts you make?
SF: It, I like block patchwork, and that’s how I learned. I, I went to a class in the, in my local area and learned to do hand-pieced block patchwork. As I moved on and time became a bit more precious I moved on to machine making the temp… the blocks. I like the history behind them, I like the fact they’ve got different names, I like to imagine people sitting in their little log cabins with their Singer hand machine working away on making quilts. So it has that historical specialness for me. Is it truly reflective of everything I make? No, it’s… I usually use even brighter colours than this – it’s a bit mitchy-matchy for me. It, it’s, it was bought as a pack of fat quarters that had been pre-selected, which is how many people buy their first fabric, so it reflects that rather than my eclectic stash that I keep at home. So, I did have sampler quilts at home but I have other quilts that aren’t samplers. I’m fond of it because it’s a good teaching aid and people like it.
EB: Do you find a lot of your students want to make it in the colours you’ve used in this quilt?
SF: It’s inevitably the problem. They want exactly the same fabric and the nature of fabric is that they’re not going to get exactly the same fabric and one of the issues I think beginners have is having the confidence to pick six fabrics. What they don’t realise is that actually, unless you have completely no colour sense at all, you can pick any six fabrics and for a sampler quilt they’ll work. But they do want this fabric and for a while there was very little blue and white fabric available but it’s, I have noticed one or two ranges coming back in so they will be able to do something more similar.
EB: If we talk about you and quiltmaking, when did you first start making quilts?
SF: I’ve always sewn, you know usual dolly quilts, well dolly clothes and moved on to dressmaking and did a lot of embroidery, sort of tent-stitch cushions, half-cross-stitch cushions, those kind of things, and then I changed from being a full-time teacher to a part-time teacher, having done a machine embroidery course with Wendy Dolan and met people who liked textiles, talked about textiles and thought, ‘I want to do a bit more’. So I changed to become a part-time teacher and did my City & Guilds Embroidery. And then in the early 1990s again my job changed and I wasn’t able to attend my City & Guild class on the particular day that it was being held, so I joined, I went to a shop called The Quilt Loft in Worthing, met Mary Hockley and Val Mehock and did their course and from that point onwards have always done patchwork and quilting. And I learned from somebody else, which I think is how you should learn.
EB: Are there quiltmakers in your family?
SF: No. My grandfather was a glover, and I, they think that’s where my love of stitching came from. My mum struggled to sew a button on, my, both my maternal and my paternal grandma did mending but didn’t make quilts. So I am at the moment the quiltmaker in the family.
EB: And have you always been attracted to textiles? Or was it…
SF: No, I’ve always been attracted to textiles. I would have loved to have taken it further at school but I had the… I don’t know whether it was a handicap or a blessing to be a nine O-level girl, and nine O-level girls don’t do needlework or domestic science – two things I loved. So at school I didn’t have the opportunity, so consequently my A-levels were more academic and I went on to become a teacher rather than perhaps going down the textile route. I think nowadays it’s probably easier to get into textiles at school.
EB: What age did you teach? What age range?
SF: Primary. So, but I did always try and involve some kind of sewing with the children in school, and I ran after-school sewing clubs. And since not being a full-time teacher I have gone into school and run textile projects with children to make wall-hangings or all sorts of different things. And quilts, we have made quilts!
EB: You mentioned The Quilt Loft, the shop in Worthing where you did classes. What sort of classes and what years were you there?
SF: It would have been the early nineties and in fact a group of us still meet. We, we have a small private stitch group and it is ten of us that learned at some point with Mary and Val and we still meet on a Thursday evening to make quilts together and to put the world to rights. Val and Mary taught a nine-block hand-made sampler quilt as your first project which was run on, I think, one afternoon a week and one evening a week and then they ran Saturday workshops. Mainly hand, they did a lot of hand work so I learned to do a lot of hand stitching, a lot of hand quilting and in the… it’s more… I think I found machine work through City & Guilds Patchwork because I went on to do my City & Guilds Patchwork and that’s where I did more machine work. So, yeah, Mary and Val did a lot of hand work and I’ve still got lots of quilts that I made with them and little Japanese doll and all sorts of things I made with them. I owe them a lot.
EB: Whereabouts did you do your City & Guilds in Patchwork?
SF: I started at Chichester and the course then moved to Bognor and my tutor was Jenny Bullen. It, I did it one day a week, obviously with work at home between the weeks and it took me two years to do each part because it was the old syllabus, Part 1 and Part 2 rather than the Diploma and the Certificate. And we did the art work, the design work alongside that as well, it was all in one qualification rather than separate as it is now. So it was a lot of hard work but again I’m still friends and still meet up with some of the people that I did the course with, so it’s… And you learn so much more than the stitch, it’s the history of it, it was the design work, everythink that I think it’s, if you can, if you can find the time and have the energy and sadly now find the fees it’s a worthwhile thing. I was very lucky, I did it at a time where it was being heavily subsidised and I think one year we paid something like £25, where it’s over £300/£400 now. So I was fortunate.
EB: Any memorable pieces of work from the course?
SF: I actually hated the pieces of work. I found them contrived so I think most of my City & Guilds Patchwork has been confined to the bottom of the blanket box. I did do a piece of work based on what was then the new atrium at the British Museum. I went up took photographs and did a piece of work in blues, strangely enough, with stained-glass, with stained-glass quilting and it was taken from a sort of perspective point of how the light radiated through all the triangles and things, so I, that was one that sticks in my mind for positive reasons. I did have to make a tea-cosy with hand quilting and it’s gross and it’s hidden – it’s got a tassel on it as well. It’s horrible [laugh].
EB: But you still own it?
SF: I still own it, yeah. I haven’t quite got to putting it in the bin. Its close [laugh].
EB: Why do you think you haven’t thrown it in the bin?
SF: I think cos it took so much work to do [laugh]. I hated every minute of it. It sort of you know, I’ve come on from here [laugh]. I’ve never made another and I don’t think I will [laugh].
EB: So following on from City & Guilds, did you take more classes?
SF: Yeah, I’ve, I enjoy workshops, I’m even now teaching myself, I, I still like to go to workshops, not because I want to pinch their ideas, but it’s more the conversation and the tips you pick up along the way. And, and, and being given an idea, but knowing where you can spark, you know, where you can go with it. I did a lot of work with June Barnes, did several summer schools with her and then did two or three long courses with her focusing on free-machine quilting and also using white and cream fabrics and dyeing, and using shrinking, trapping buttons, trapping cords, trapping… which was great fun and I think freed me up from just doing block quilting. I think that was what sort of led me away from just doing block quilting and being a bit more adventurous. And she was, and again I was very, very fortunate to have an exceptionally good teacher. And through her I met Leslie Morgan as well so on one of the courses Jean did the, June did the patchwork or sewing side of it and then we had Leslie Morgan teaching us to do the dyeing side of it: dyeing in big trays, overdyeing, discharging, all sorts of different things. Which I’d done a bit of in City & Guilds, but again the time pressures and constraints on what you could do, this was the opportunity to, to actually make something you wanted to make rather than having to make something to show the technique, which I know you have to do [laughs], but it’s a bit soul-destroying sometimes. Don’t always like the fabric, don’t like the thread.
EB: And what sort of quilts do you make now?
SF: A lot of the quiltmaking I do now is samples for people to teach, for me to teach other people. But they’re not all sampler quilts so I make quilts with pre-cuts because again I find beginners who are nervous of the rotary cutter can make something very satisfying with the pre-cuts and then that leads them on. I just make things that take my fancy. Sometimes it will be straight, you know, I see something on Pinterest and think ‘Ooh, I’ll find the pattern for that’ and I’ll have a go and I make it. And other times it’s because I’ve got some fabric and I think I really want to do something with it. I don’t know what. At the moment I’m making a quilt for a couple that have just got married and it, it started with a layer cake and I had an idea of what I wanted to do with it but I’m not doing that now, I’ve decided to do something completely different. It’s my own pattern and hopefully it’ll work cos it’s a gift [laugh]. Yeah, I just, I don’t know I just – I make bags, I’m not a big tablemat maker or I don’t make toys and things like that, it tends to be quilts, and they’re all over the house. I’ve got quilts on the back of every sofa, every chair, folded up in blanket boxes, I give them away, some of them are wall-hangings, so yeah I did have, they are on the wall, I’ve got one over the bannister, cos I don’t know where else to put it. So I think that, you know, at some point I’m going to have to either stop or clear out. And I think clearing out is probably the most likely scenario [laugh].
EB: Are there any particular styles or techniques that attract you?
SF: I’ve probably got styles that don’t attract me. I’m not a big fan of foundation piecing. I’ve watched many people do it and it looks really easy when they do it but I cannot work from the back and the front and it just ends up in a pile of fabric in the corner, never to be looked at again. I’m not a big fan of curves so I tend to work straight lines. That’s not to say I can’t do curves, I just… they don’t come naturally [laughs] I just stick to straight lines. I like quite linear quilts and I like, I have… when I first started I was very traditional like civil war, that sort of style of quilt [inaudible] and that kind of thing, but I have moved to more modern quilters. I’ve moved to the more abstract but linear designs. There’s a lot of white in quilts at the moment. Sometimes I think there’s too much white so I’m a bit, bit careful with white, but yeah, anything. And, and I’ll give it, I get inspiration from all sorts of things, sometimes you know it can be the tiles on a floor or a fair pattern in a magazine or Pinterest or the free leaflets that fabric manufacturers give away or you go to a show and take a photograph and it might not be the whole quilt, it might just be a corner of a quilt that you suddenly think, ‘Oh that’ll make a nice small quilt’ and I have to say I am making smaller quilts because they are easier to store. Not so many king sizes.
EB: And quilting. Do you prefer hand or machine?
SF: I tend to do machine quilting. I like quilt-as-you-go cos my back likes quilt-as-you-go and I like the fact that with your walking foot on you can create interesting patterns with straight lines and curves. I have got quilts that I have free-machine quilted and I have had quilts longarm quilted but it’s a different style of quilting and I, it, I tend to get them done for speed and I’m not always overjoyed with the result. I find they flatten the quilt out a bit, they’re… just be a bit careful with it. And I do hand quilt, I do English paper piecing which is obviously hand sewing, but I do quite like hand quilting but I use a perlé thread so it’s quite a big-stitch quilt. My fingers are getting a bit arthritic and I can no longer do a nice little fine stitch and I’ve never been one to count how many stitches I can get on my needle or worry about the fact of getting 16 stitches to an inch or whatever the quilt police would like you to do. As long as it looks neat and tidy, and that’s what I say to my students: as long as the stitch and the space between it are fairly equal, it will look okay.
EB: And whereabouts do you quilt?
SF: On the fabric, or…? Oh, in my location, where do I cook, in front of the television often, I listen to a lot of television. I take it on holiday, so… we tend to holiday in the UK in cottages so I’ll take, always take something with me. In fact my sewing often takes up more space in the boot than anything else. So yeah, and I quilt in groups that I attend, so I socially quilt as well as just quilting on my own. And in the garden sometimes, I have been known to take it out into the garden. I do have two cats, which can make quilting a little tricky at times if they like to sit on the quilts or join in. So usually in a cat-free environment!
EB: And how about piecing? Do you have a specific room where you piece?
SF: I’m very fortunate. In this house I have a sewing room, [microphone noise] so I’ve got a machine that’s set up, and I can just go in and sit down and piece. I have enough, I have a cutting table and everythink, ironing board, the lot there and I can just lock myself away, put the iPad in the, in the dock and listen to endless audio or the radio and wake up about six hours later and think ‘gosh, I’m hungry’. So I’m very fortunate I have the sewing room. And that has safe piecing, that tends to be where I do it because my husband is a bit picky about finding pins in the lounge carpet [laugh] or in the armchair – or anywhere else [laugh]!
EB: How much time do you think you spend making quilts a week?
SF: It’s unusual if I don’t do some stitching every day. So probably, if you added all the hours up I probably spend between one and two days, whole days, quilting. And you know, that’s in and above teaching, that’s just me sitting at my sewing machine stitching.
EB: And do you tend to work on one quilt at a time or do you have lots on the go?
SF: I have quite a lot on the go [laugh]. I actually have two baskets by the side of my sewing machine that I have been promising myself I will get to the bottom of – but all that happens is another one goes on top. So I probably work on three or four projects at a time. They’re all at different stages so I might be cutting something out or I might be quilting one or putting the binding on one or, or whatever. I tend, I have to say I tend to try and piece the blocks or the parts of a top all at the same time. The fatal thing is I then collect them together and think I’ve finished that quilt and it joins the basket. And then I get it out and think, ‘Ooh, I haven’t actually put the borders on that quilt,’ or you know it needs a binding or actually it needs quilting. So I have a lot of tops… yeah, I’m a bit of a butterfly.
EB: And how much money do you think you’ve spent on your quiltmaking hobby?
SF: Is this going to be published so my husband can read it? A lot, a lot. I don’t come out in profit at the end of it. [Laugh] If I go to a show, gosh, if I go to a show, and I probably go to, say I go to four big ones a year, I probably spend £100 at each show. That’s including my entrance fee and my sandwich. And then it’s not unusual if I go into a quilt shop for me to spend £20–£25. So probably at least £1000 a year. [Laugh]
EB: And do you go to lots of exhibitions?
SF: Yes, not just quilt exhibitions. I try and go to other textile exhibitions, I love the Museum of Fashion in Bermondsey Street and will go, go regularly to those exhibitions, just to see how cloth’s used to design a thing. I go to the V&A very regularly and obviously they have quite a few textile exhibitions, I’ve been to the Quilt Museum in York, I’ve been to the American Museum several times, I go to local exhibitions, [microphone noise] just small quilt exhibitions, I’ve been to the NEC several times, Ardingly is a favourite, Sandown, I still like Sandown, and I go to the Malvern Autumn Show regularly. And I go with friends, it’s a social outing, but I have been known to go on my own. And my husband is taking me to the Knitting & Stitching Show for my birthday. I don’t think he knows how much I spend! [Laugh]
EB: Does he have his own hobbies that you do/does so that you can …
SF: Not quilting. Yes, he does, and actually I’m very fortunate cos when we go on holiday we quite regularly go to Wales so I can go to the Jen Jones Quilt Museum at Lampeter and there’s also a quilt shop next door to it, and he has discovered places he can go, so he will just disappear off. As long as there’s a bookshop I stand a chance. He’s a cricketer and he doesn’t play anymore but he’s chair of a club, so he goes and watches them and again it’s something I can take a quilt to and sit and stitch. I went, this weekend we went to a match and I took my, some English paper piecing with me and I ended up having a conversation with three elderly gentlemen about the quilting that their mums used to do and it was all hexagons. They were fascinated because I was using diamonds. So that was interesting and yeah, he, he’ll watch football and we go horse racing, so again it’s quite portable to horse racing, I can take a bit in the car and when it gets too cold for standing by the track I’ll go and do some quilting! So yeah, he’s got his own hobbies. They’re not quite as expensive as mine. [Laugh]
EB: And you mentioned you like quilt history and you go to Lampeter. So what sort of historical quilts really interest you?
SF: I’m really interesting, interested, in the quilts that were made because they were needed rather than the quilts that were made because that’s what ladies did in the afternoon. I’m more interested in… at Lampeter you see a lot of the old Welsh quilts that were made because they needed something to put on the bed. Some of them were designed and made by professional quiltmakers and they would have been a special quilt bought for a wedding or something, so it’s the social history behind the quilt and I like the old scruffy quilts, the ones that have been in the dog-basket and have got a bit of love, and that, I have to say the Jen Jones Quilt Museum is particularly good at showing those sorts of quilts. And I’m not particularly fussed by silk quilts, and you know the quilts that were obviously made by someone that had, myself, boundless amounts of money, obviously, to go out and buy all the new fabrics and do it, you know, so, I do collect some vintage fabrics but they cost a lot. [Laugh]
EB: Do you have any vintage quilts?
SF: I have, I’m very fortunate, my mother-in-law… [phone rings; interview suspended then resumes]
EB: [Interview introductions again] So, Suzanne, we were talking about the old quilts…
SF: Yes, my mother-in-law tackled me one day and said, ‘I’ve got something for you. It’s a quilt.’ Now her idea of what a quilt is and my idea of what a quilt is, is a little different and I had the most horrendous feeling it was going to be the crocheted-square blanket that she had been trying to palm off on me for some time. And I was wondering how I was going to politely refuse it when in fact she handed me a bag and in it was a white quilt that I’d not seen before. When I got it out, it is actually a wholecloth hand-stitched quilt, it’s a North of England wholecloth; it isn’t a strippy quilt, it has a centre pattern that grows out and it belonged to my husband’s grandparents and was given to them as a wedding present. It obviously wasn’t white when it started. It’s cotton sateen and I think it probably was an eau-de-nil green but it actually went to the laundry to be washed – it’s got laundry marks on it – and it has managed to survive remarkably well except that it’s white now and one edge which I’m guessing is probably the edge that was at the top of the bed is quite worn and you can see the cotton wadding inside. It’s a bit like kapok wadding. So yes, so I’m very grateful to my mother-in-law that it wasn’t a crocheted blanket but actually is this rather beautiful hand-stitched wholecloth Yorkshire quilt – they lived in Pateley Bridge, Yorkshire so I, it came, somebody in the village made it for them. Unfortunately I don’t know the name of the maker and I don’t know the precise date they got married but it was in the early 1900s. So it is loved and it’s kept off the bed so the cats can’t sleep on it. And yeah I like it, and I like it because of the social history that’s attached to it but it is also a beautiful quilt, it’s still got weight, it’s still warm, it could still be used today. It, I have repaired the top of it with just some stitching so that it’s held together but there’s no reason at all why it couldn’t be used. It’s still purposeful and fit for purpose.
EB: And you mentioned vintage fabric. So do you, as well as new fabrics do you use older fabrics?
SF: Yes, I have a little hoard of Liberty which isn’t necessarily vintage but because of the name the patterns are vintage although I was, I don’t know whether lucky is the word, but I met at the Regional Day, one of the Guild Regional Days, a lady who had been a buyer at Liberty, was selling off her sample books and I did buy one of the little sample books, so they’re 1970s fabrics so that’s a bit vintage, although I was born before then. And I do have some Laura Ashley fabric which again pre-dates current fabric, it’s the older fabric. And I have some unmade-up Clothkits, which were a company that printed fabric, mainly used for clothing, in the seventies, and I have one or two Clothkits dress patterns unmade-up, children’s dress patterns, that are secreted away in a cupboard.
EB: Do you do dressmaking as well as quiltmaking?
SF: I do, yeah. I like wearing dresses and I find that in order, I like long-length skirts, in order to get a dress with a longer-length skirt the best way is to make it. And the patchwork fabrics are lovely for it, they’re a nice-weight cotton and you know you get interesting, far, there’s far more patchwork fabric available than dressmaking fabric now. It’s turned completely round. Unfortunately it’s not cheaper to make your own clothes but it is a way of getting what you want. So I do, I do do dressmaking for myself, so yes.
EB: Any particular fabric brands that you love now or you can remember that you loved in the past?
SF: I did like Laura Ashley. I can remember I went on a school trip in the second year I was at secondary school. We went to Norwich for some reason, we went on the Norfolk Broads. We were taken on the Norfolk Broads in the last week that they hired the boats out and I’d have been in about the 4th form at school, maybe the 5th, and essentially we were put on the boats in groups of eight with a member of staff. And we had to cook, clean and look after ourselves [laugh] – a bit of a baptism by fire – but one day we were taken into civilisation and that was Norwich and it was, we went, we were given time to go shopping and I can remember going into a Laura Ashley shop and buying – goodness knows what my friends thought – buying several metres of a pink Laura Ashley fabric with a little white print on it and from that I made a dressing-gown. And goodness knows where it’s gone but that was the sort of, that’s the Laura Ashley fabric I now look to buy, it’s that seventies pretty-pretty fabric rather than their contemporary designs. So I do buy them, the Laura Ashley fabric. It hasn’t been made into a quilt but it will one day. It’s in a drawer, but it’s very special.
EB: Do you have lots of big drawers?
SF: I have an awful lot of drawers, boxes [laugh] with fabric in and of course because I’ve done embroidery and still do some embroidery I have an awful lot of boxes with thread in and hand-thread and buttons and beads. I could keep several shops supplied for several years. And quite what’s going to happen to all this fabric one day, I don’t know. I think The Guild need to prepare themselves for a large artic, articulated lorry arriving with my stash! Somebody will benefit, yeah I have masses, far more than I will ever use but I think every quilter says that.
EB: And how about sewing machines? When did you buy your first sewing machine?
SF: I was given my first sewing machine. I was probably 10 or 11 and my parents bought it me for Christmas, it, and I’ve still got it. It’s a little Singer, black and gold electric Singer with a heavy wooden base and a little domed wooden cover. On it I made many clothes, so that would be my first one, I’d have been about 11. And when I was 16 they bought me a Brother sewing machine that did buttonholes because I’d got to the point where I needed to do buttonholes. So I’ve still got both those sewing machines. I have about 12 sewing machines but again people give them to me. I have the original Singer, I have a hand Singer, I have a little Elna that has its own little case that folds down, somebody’s given me a Cresta sewing machine which is the most fabulous 1950s pale green, it looks like a Cadillac, sewing machine that somebody’s mother had and they were going to take it to the tip, would I like it. And then I have my workhorse machine is a Bernina 1260, but I also have another Bernina that I bought off a student so she could upgrade to a different machine. And I’ve recently bought a Janome to take to classes because I have to say the Bernina’s are a bit heavy. But that’s not really a good excuse! I have more sewing machines, well one a month!
EB: So how many of these do you, would you say you actually use on a regular basis?
SF: Three of them. The two Bernina’s and my new Janome. I have an embellisher as well, does that count as a sewing machine? I don’t use that very often. And I do have a Brother Embroidery machine P design, you know, machine as well. So that’s another one that’s outside the 12 ordinary sewing machines.
EB: So that’s 14.
SF: Yeah. Thereabouts, yeah.
EB: And do you still do embroidery, by machine or by hand?
SF: Yes, I do. Often to add detail perhaps to a quilt or if I’ve made a bag or somethink I might add some herringbone stitch or something so… and I have, like English paper piecing, I have a, I do sometimes take a cushion cover or something that I’m just using embroidery wools or something on with me cos it packs up quick and small and in fact if anything it’s sometimes easier to take embroidery cos you just need a big needle and a pair of scissors and wools. That’s it. You don’t need rotary cutters and rulers, mats. So I still do embroidery, yeah.
EB: The Brother P machine is machine-embroidery software.
SF: Yeah.
EB: Do you use software for any of your quiltmaking at all?
SF: No, no, no. I just use a standard sewing machine. No, no busy stuff. No I don’t have a design program or anythink. I have friends that I can call on for that [laugh]. And I use paper, you know inch paper and draw, that’s about as technical as I get. I suppose when I’m writing patterns up for my students I use, obviously I create a document and I can insert shapes and things to demonstrate, you know, to, to how a block should look, that’s about as technical as I get. Yeah, I, I’m not a big… if somebody shows me and I have time to get used to it, but I’m not particularly technology-minded.
EB: Do you keep a lot of your paper designs?
SF: Yeah, I have notebooks and it’s something I encourage my students to do, is I have a notebook all the time I’m making the quilt I will write amendments down or scribble things or… just you know an aide memoire like ‘don’t sew to the edge of this seam’. And I find that very useful, and I have various A4 folders with things I’ve torn out of magazines. Not necessarily patterns, it might be a picture of a garden and I like the colour combination in it or something so, and I think that came from my City & Guilds. This, the, the, they’re not, by no means are they sketchbooks in the sense that a lot of patchworkers and embroiderers produce: sketchbooks that are probably more beautiful than the quilt, but they aren’t notebook, they are, for me, scribble books.
EB: So you talk about going to quilt shows. What do you look for in quilts in terms of craftsmanship?
SF: I think a quilt should be put together well – she says looking at a quilt and instantly seeing where three points don’t meet – but I’m not fastidious or obsessive about points meeting. And I think that goes back to my enjoyment of social quilts: they’re made to be used, they’re made to be loved, they’re made for you to hang on the wall and to be proud of and I think it’s really rude if somebody comes up to your quilt and says, ‘Hmm, those two triangles don’t meet’. So I like the workmanship to be competent and to reflect the ability of the maker. I have huge respect for some of the international and national quilters who sew stitch-perfect quilts every time but I also have a huge amount of respect for that person who has the bravery to put their little quilt into a big quilt show and I don’t think you should stand in front of it and say, ‘I wouldn’t have used those colours’ or ‘That quilting is a bit wonky’ because somebody loves that quilt and for somebody that is a huge success for them. So I, I’m a bit anti judging quilts in quilt shows unless you want them to be judged. I think you should be able to opt out of judging and I think possibly everything being judged puts people off putting quilts in because we don’t all make quilts for that reason. So yeah I look, I look for competent, competent craftsmen. I look for interesting use of colour, I look for different ways of stitching. I quite like surface design. Having said I don’t particularly like longarm, I like some of the clever hand stitching that’s done, the decorative hand stitching and some of the straight-line quilting. In the last quilt show I went to there’s obviously a bit of a theme coming through quilting at the moment just to do straight lines up and down quilts but to vary the distance between the quilts and it was very effective on some and not so effective on others though. That was quite interesting to look at.
EB: So what would you say makes a good quilt then?
SF: A good quilt… I think a good quilt is fit for purpose. If you set out to make a quilt to go on your child’s bed, at the end of the day you’ve chosen, or perhaps you and the child have chosen the fabrics, you’ve chosen fabrics that you know are representative of your child’s interests, you’ve put it together, it fits on the bed and it stands up to being jumped on, vomited on and all the other things children do on a quilt, it goes through the washing machine and it’s loved, then I think that’s a good quilt. On the flip side, if I go to the NEC and I see a piece of work where… I can remember going and there was some beautiful work made out of bamboo cloth that had been, I think they were Chinese, either Chinese or Japanese quilts, and the workmanship was stunning. But what I would have done with that quilt I don’t know. As a piece of work it was stunning, but to me it didn’t have the quality that a quilt that’s made for a purpose has. It should never be exhibited again [laughter].
EB: And do quilt shows, quilts, always have names? Do you name your quilts?
SF: Purely as a way of sorting them out for classes. If they’re not a teaching quilt they don’t get a name. So for example the quilt that I’ve talked about today is a blue and white sampler quilt because it is blue and white and it’s a sampler quilt. And if I’m trying to advertise what it is that makes the most sense to the people. I’m afraid I don’t give them beautiful creative names, they’re just quilts.
EB: What do you do with the quilts you make?
SF: They, they stay at home in a collection of boxes and blanket boxes. I give them, I give them to members of my family, I give them to friends, I give them away as presents. But I have to say most of them are at home. I have a large, I have like a timeline of quilts from my very first one to the most recent one. They don’t always end up fully quilted quilts. Quite a few of them are tops, which is good because they wouldn’t all fit in the box otherwise if they’d all got wadding on. So yeah, they’re there. Every now and then I get them out and have a look at them.
EB: And do you have a particular criteria to give them as gifts?
SF: Yeah, I, I like to think that the person I’m giving it to is going to love it and look after it. So I tend to give them as a wedding gift or a graduation gift of some… an event. I tend to give them away to mark an event. And if somebody is desperately in love with it, you know, and a birthday’s coming up then I might give it to them. I don’t give them away easily. They are, they’m, they’re my quilts and I’d like them to be looked after in a particular way – says she that doesn’t wrap them up in acid-free tissue-paper or anything like that [laugh]. They just go in a box and a mothball. But yeah, no, I find them quite hard to part with. If I, if I make it specifically for somebody then I don’t have any trouble giving it away. But if it’s something I’ve made and enjoyed making, I think because I make so many things as samples for classes it, you know, you sort of, you hold on to those because the thought of making them again is just too much. And if I’d had the time to make something just for me then giving it away sort of defeats the object of the purpose of me making it for me.
EB: Do you rotate the quilts that you have on beds at home?
SF: Yeah, partly so that they can be washed but also so they don’t fade too much. We face south, so the, my bedroom gets a lot of sunshine and, and they do fade so I try and change them around a bit. And also so that they don’t, you know the ones in the box don’t get too creased. They can come out and see the daylight every now and again. So, yeah, I do change them round, they’re on all the sofas downstairs and periodically they, they move off the back of the sofa to be folded on the sofa to be used as a cuddle quilt and I’ll put something fresh on the back of the sofa, so you know they get worn and washed and changed, yeah.
EB: What are you currently working on?
SF: I’m currently working on a quilt that will be a wedding present. It’s a layer cake, in blacks, whites and greys with a turquoise block as part of it. My friends got married in the Caribbean, they asked for a quilt in greys, whites and blacks and I know her dress was blue, and she likes blue so I put a little bit of blue into it just to lift it. So that’s a quilt that I’m making for someone. Another project is I’m completing a table runner and tablemats with a Christmas theme which will be for a class, and I’m taking away with me a sampler block which all of the blocks have an Amish or Amish connection and I’m making it in plain fabrics with sweet-pea colours and a black background. So that’s for my new project. That’s three projects [laugh]. Not one but three!
EB: And when you’re not quilting do you read about quilting, do you have quilting books at home?
SF: Yeah, I obviously read books about quilts, I read books which have quilts in like The [Last] Runaway, quilt, Tracy Chevalier’s book. I belonged to a book group run at Quilty Pleasures by Liz Betts where we read books with a textile theme, and that was great. We read books about Biba, we read books about traditional British quilting, we read Jo Baker’s Longbourn which is about the, the modern take on Pride and Prejudice but textiles were talked about in there. And I read magazines about quilting, and I was given the book about the 1718 coverlet which I’ve read, and I know that I’m getting some new books for my birthday, one of which is the Kaffe Fassett book based on the Heritage Collection. I shall be reading that.
EB: Are you a member of any other quilt groups?
SF: I’m a member of The Quilters’ Guild, obviously. I belong to the Horsham Quilters and I belong to Ouse Valley Quilters. I belong to The Quilt Lofters which is a little stitch group I belong to so, yes, four.
EB: Quilting is a hobby that’s provided lots of friendships?
SF: Yes. It’s one of the best things about learning a craft is the friends that you make. And through teaching a class I’ve actually made friends of students. Some just past through and others, you know repeat clients and others, I now count as friends rather than students. And you meet people at shows, you meet people at the groups, you don’t become the best friends but you might sit and have a cup of coffee with them at a show or whatever, and sometimes you just sit down at a show and start talking. You know, I went to the Knitting and Stitch Show at Olympia a couple of years ago and arrived and decided I needed a cup of tea and sat down and both, a lady, another lady sat down next to me and she, we just both looked at each other and said ‘Phew, where do you come from?’ And from that started, you know we sat and chatted for half an hour, about where we’d come from, what we did, that kind of thing, so yeah, I think it is a very social, a very social craft because you can do it and talk. You don’t have to, you know you’re not, you do have to concentrate, but you don’t have to completely focus on what you’re doing, a bit different. I think if perhaps you’re a painter that the silence is part of your craft, part of it. Maybe some people would like to be quieter [laugh] – they don’t stand a chance with me!
EB: You mentioned your students. Thoughts on teaching: what are the good parts?
SF: The good part is actually meeting people. It is a good way to meet people. And I think the best bit – it’s the same as when I, you know I’m a primary school teacher – it’s when you get that look on someone’s face when the penny drops. And I think every teacher will tell you that’s why you do the job. That’s why you stick at the job. It’s that moment when, not necessarily just because of you, but because of the set of circumstances of which you are part as the teacher, it all falls into place. And there’s also that point where you get, you always get students it doesn’t matter what they do, and it doesn’t matter how many times you try and help them or whatever, they’re always the one that cuts the corner off and they shouldn’t have done or whatever, and that ability to sit back and laugh at yourself in a supported environment and to learn, take that forwards, you know, that is another good bit of teaching. To have instilled enough confidence in somebody that when they make a mistake that they can look at it and laugh. And just say ‘Oh I’ll get another bit of fabric and we’ll stick that colour in there instead.’ I think that’s a great thing.
EB: You mentioned quite near the beginning of the interview about funding in adult education being cut. As a teacher is that something that’s been an issue with your current teaching?
SF: I… there is hardly any adult education funding for what I consider to be traditional crafts in this country, and I think that’s a huge shame. I’ve noticed increasingly – obviously I’m getting older so my students are getting younger – that people are coming through without any knowledge, or very little knowledge of sewing. I can ask, I can say to someone ‘We’re going to do a running stitch,’ and they can look at me completely blankly. Now that’s not true of people I teach in their sixties, seventies, eighties; these are people in their thirties and twenties. I think schools have improved again, I think there’s been a bit of a change so hopefully that you know that will iron out. So … I feel it’s a huge shame that nationally we don’t have more funding for our textile heritage. It’s, I think it’s sadly seen as, in a very belittling way, as something women did at home. And it was a crucial part of what women did at home. If they didn’t do it their children would have gone to bed cold, they wouldn’t have had clothes to wear. And yet some textile things like gloving, I might be wrong, but I feel it’s because it was seen as a crafts thing that you did an apprenticeship and you were male and you earned a living from, have museums and things dedicated to it. There – any textile museums tend to be private ownership, tend to be in dire straits financially and an awful lot of it is locked away in boxes and stores, and I think it’s a shame because it, it’s, it’s something that is in our culture and, and, the, it’s not the expertise as much that we should be sharing and enjoying but the collaborative nature of textile work. That it is a, it’s an ice-breaker and it’s a way to earn money, it’s a way to do all sorts of things and it should be celebrated and I don’t think it is. And I think it’s a crying shame that adult education has been cut to such an extent that people can’t even access it. I run private classes and I run classes in shops and I know there is an audience out there that I don’t reach because they can’t afford my fees. And I think that’s sad. [Beeper sounds, break in interview]
EB: {interview introductions] Hello Suzanne. So question for you; What, Is there a quilt that you think ‘I wish I had made’, or particularly as you like historical quilts, are there quilts out there that are on your, your to-do list?
SF: I think the wholecloth quilt that my mother-in-law gave me actually. I look at it and think, ‘I wish I’d made that’ or made one like it. I’ve no idea how long it would take to make that quilt and how I’d go about marking it or anything, but that, that is one. And again, because of the, the history attached to it, it, its come, you know, I’m the third generation to have it so you know it’s that sort of, that link with the past. So I think that’s probably one I’d like to have made.
EB: And what’s the biggest challenge you think you face as a quiltmaker today?
SF: Other than smuggling fabric in [laugh] on a regular basis…? I think time is always an issue. Finding time to, to make my own quilts, finding time to extend my own skills, to continue learning. And… probably my back isn’t great and at some point I’m probably going to have to change the way I make quilts so yeah, the usual medical issues that go along with quiltmaking. Either you get arthritis in your hands or your back gives out, or your shoulders, or your neck so, yeah I think probably some physical aspect of it I would see as a challenge.
EB: Among your students, do you have quilters who have overcome things like arthritis, find their ways that they can still make quilts?
SF: Yeah, I work with, just coming to groups you meet all sorts of people, I mean they come on their walking sticks, they you know they overcome quite big physical disabilities, but I do work with two people who I visit on an individual basis, I go to their homes to work with them, both of whom have medical conditions that would make it difficult for them to work as part of a group or to attend a class regularly. Getting there would be an issue for them, concentration would be an issue, and their own self-esteem is an issue because their, their conditions are quite limiting so they, they feel that they, if they went to a group they’d be stopping others from getting on. And I sadly think is something that perhaps people with mobility issues and things feel where actually when you go to classes often that isn’t the case at all. So yes I do work with them and it’s very rewarding working with someone who is overcoming a physical difficulty to do something that they love and to, to, to feel, to have the same sense of the pride and achievement that perhaps those of us that don’t think about it have, take for granted. And I’ve had one or two older ladies whose fingers have become very arthritic and have moved to machine work because they can no longer do hand sewing. So it’s finding ways for them, and I find quilt-as-you-go is ideal for people with arthritis and things in their hands because it’s a small project, they can go at it at their own speed. They’re not trying to manipulate a king-size quilts through the throat of a domestic sewing machine.
EB: Are there any particular classes you would like to run?
SF: I would like to… do more… it, it’s, it comes down to funding again. It, it’s doing quilting in areas where the thing that’s stopping people is the financial side of it. And also the lack of perhaps sewing as a history within their own families and a lack of visiting exhibitions and museums. So in areas of social deprivation, without being patronising, without doing the ‘Oh poor you’ routine, I would like to be involved in a voluntary-based sewing whatever where they can make a quilt, and not from scraps, where they actually have new fabric, new wadding, a nice sewing machine to use, maybe only in situ but like all of us they get the buzz from going and getting something new to them, something smart. There’s lots of, sometimes there are people that go out and it, and they have a big basket of fabric and it’s the scraps that nobody else wants – and it looks like the scraps that nobody else wants! There aren’t the colours there that they can do beautiful colour-toned, colour-matched creative pieces. Their quilt will be lovely, but it will always look like the quilt that was made from scraps that nobody else wanted. And I think sometimes we’re, that’s unfair and that there ought to be funding out there to allow people to come and do it from new, those of us who are able to do that.
EB: Does, do you think this feeling comes from how quilting makes you feel?
SF: Yeah, I think it is that quilting gives me a huge amount of satisfaction. I find it great for winding down, for, for, making, you know, like I’ve said, making friends and, and all those things are often issues in areas of social deprivation where boundaries have gone up, where neighbours don’t talk to each other, they’re, you know people in those environments suffer great stress, they suffer from isolation, they don’t make friends easily, and I think any form of textile work that would make something that was useful for them like a bed cover or a bright wall-hanging that would cheer them up on a grey day or, or get children involved in something that ultimately would lead them perhaps to making their own clothes, be able to do running repairs so there’s, not the make-do-and-mend cos that always makes it sound like the Second World War, but that sort of self-sufficiency environment that makes you feel proud cos you’ve done something, you’ve not relied on somebody else to do it for you. I think it’s important, and I think it does come from my own quilting, the things I enjoy about quilting. It is the… having the opportunity to be creative and I’m fortunate that I can go into a quilt shop, as we’ve discussed before, and spend X amount of pounds without – I do worry about it but I don’t have to save up and I’m not depriving my child of a meal if I do that. And because I’m a teacher I’ve worked with families where, where the opportunity for creativity is incredibly limited because of the pressures of everything else. And the difference it makes if they have the opportunity to do something creative, to that family’s relationships is huge. I think there should be more.
EB: And how, how’s quiltmaking important in your life? And if we can look at a couple of areas, look at quiltmaking important in your life outside teaching, and then quiltmaking important as a teacher.
SF: Outside teaching for me it’s at times it’s been the thing that has kept me grounded. It’s, it’s been, when things have been tough – bereavement, stress, anxiety – all things that we deal with on a daily basis, it has been the thing that has been my safe place. It’s been the thing I can do that gives me half an hour away from whatever it is. So for me as a person it, it’s a huge stress-buster. It’s also a way that I can express myself creatively, which is good for my self-esteem. As a teacher I have watched students blossom. I’ve watched people come in who are obviously having a really tough time at home open up to people within the group and talk about an issue and had people in the group say, ‘I’ve been there. Have you heard of…? What about…?’ so that they’ve given that supportive environment to that person. And I’ve had people who have come to classes who have made friends, who have moved into an area, known nobody, perhaps moved as a result of a work, you know, moved with their job, maybe don’t, you know their children have already flown the nest so they are you know isolated in their homes and they come and they make friends. And, you know, the next thing you hear is that they’re, you know they’ve taken off on a quilt trip to America or something and are having a ball. And I just look enviously cos I’m terrified of flying so it won’t be me [laugh].
EB: So would you say finding out about patchwork and quilting has changed your life?
SF: I think it’s given me a focus on one technique. Within patchwork I am a butterfly but within textiles I’ve actually honed down and sort of thought ‘yeah this is the thing that feels most comfortable’. It, it involves all of the things I like; there’s stitch in there, there’s fabric in there, there’s colour, there’s design. Whereas I never quite found, I found embroidery, even free embroidery I found a bit, a bit restrictive and there was a limit I found to what I could do with it whereas with patchwork, you know, I still meet people who go ‘Ooh, you make quilts do you? Oh that’s nice,’ and you know there’s that little pat on the head, but then you know a lot of other people say ‘Oh, have you seen, what about…, have you done…,’ you know whereas I think embroidery they just presume you make church kneelers or tray-cloths. Yeah, I think quilting’s given me a huge amount both as a teacher and as an individual.
EB: Thank you.