ID Number: TQ.2014.012
Name of Interviewee: Hilary Davies
Name of Interviewer: Glenda Smith
Name of Transcriber: Glenda Smith
Location: Elvington Village Hall,
Address: Elvington, York
Date: 1 July 2014
Length of interview: 0:38:02
Summary
Hilary’s quilt was made for the National Patchwork Championships Charity Class, which had the theme ‘In the Pink’. The entry proceeds went to Breast Cancer Care which was important to Hilary. She talks about her inspiration for the flamingo design, the fabrics and how she made and embellished her design. Hilary goes on to talk about starting to make patchwork clothes in the 1970s and fitting her interest in quilting around family life. In the middle of the interview Hilary talks about quilting equipment and new technology. Later she describes what challenges she thinks technology present for modern quiltmakers, and what quilts she feels it is important to save in heritage collections.
Interview
Glenda Smith [GS]: This is Glenda Smith and I’m recording an interview with Hilary Davies for the Talking Quilts project, and the date is the 1st July. Thank you, Hilary for agreeing to talk to me about your beautiful quilt which I have seen before and as you know, we’re recording interviews with quilters for a record of how quilters of the British Isles today approach their quilting and what influences there are on them. So, if you would be kind enough, please to tell me about this beautiful quilt that you have brought with you.
Hilary Davies [HD]: OK, well the original inspiration [background noise] for the quilt was at Harrogate 2011, I picked up an entry form for the National Patchwork Championships for 2012 and they were introducing a Charity Class and it was called ‘In the Pink’ and the proceeds from entering that particular class were all going to Breast Cancer Care, and I had a friend who was just getting over a breast cancer scare. She’d been relying on her friends a lot because she’d just lost her husband to cancer as well so it was a cause that was very close to my heart and I just felt that I had to make a quilt for this ‘In the Pink’ theme category and that was where I got the idea of the flamingo because its pink and I’m also a huge fan of Gloria Loughman and I’d long been wanting to have a stab at making something along the lines of her technique so I used her as an inspiration for the, style of the quilt and the ‘In the Pink’ theme because it was something that I felt very strongly about. The flamingo was taken, it was a photograph I took. I’d been down to a place called Colton Manor in, I think it’s in Bedfordshire, and a beautiful garden but they have flamingos roaming loose round the garden and they were beautiful flamingos and I’d taken some pictures of them so that actually from a photograph that I took of the flamingo in this garden and I just sort of had a go at designing something Gloria Loughmanish and that’s where it came from and then when I’d done the central panel I needed a border and I couldn’t decide what I wanted and I went on the Internet and I saw this fabric on the Cotton Patch website and it was just perfect for the border. So I kept my fingers crossed that when it arrived it looked like it did on the computer and fortunately it did, but then because it was batiks it just still looked a bit flat. So I then decided to add a few beads just to give it a little bit of sparkle and highlight one or two things and that just seemed to finish pulling it together.
GS: So you’ve outlined the flamingo
HD: Yes I’ve outlined the flamingo with a sort of sparkly pink bead and also all around the inner border with the same bead and then I’ve used a couple of green beads, or three different sorts of green beads I think on some of the background bits, just to really add a bit more texture and highlight it a bit, and yes it was great fun to make, I did enjoy making it. I was very lucky that I got a Judge’s Merit at the National Championship Patchwork Show and then I entered it in the Small Wallhanging category at Harrogate [Quilt Show] the same year and got second with it [talking over each other] it so that was very, very…
GS: So do you have any particular use for it now? Does it hang in your house?
HD: Not really, no, because I’m not really a pink person. I have to rush out and buy any pink material because it’s just not the colour I have in my stash, but, no, I sort of love it, hate it, in a way. I’m not wild about the pink because I’m not a pink person, but at the same time what it represents, and it went together very easily and it was fun to make, so I like it on that level, [GS: Yes], but I couldn’t put it in my house ‘cos it just doesn’t go with my décor, because I’m not a pink person, [dog whining] so I’m afraid it doesn’t really do very much at all. I’ve got a spare bedroom with a pile of quilts. I haven’t got room to put as many quilts out, not as many as I have, [GS: exactly] you can’t put them everywhere, so I have this pile which get rummaged through from time to time.
GS: One day you might have a granddaughter.
HD: Yes, yes, absolutely.
GS: So, can you tell me about your interest in quilting generally. [HD: Oh gosh] When did you start? How old were you when you made your first…?
HD: I made my first patchwork piece, although at the time I didn’t really realise I was doing patchwork, I would have been a teenager and I made, it was when, in the very early ’70’s, round about 1970 probably and there was a fad for doing hexagons, and that was what I knew it as, hexagons, I didn’t think that was patchwork, and I actually made a maxi-skirt out of hexagons, but not with cotton, oh no! It was velvets and brocades and anything I could scrounge off my mum and her dressmaking friends that were odds left over from, ‘cos we lived in Iran and so they went to a lot of cocktail parties, so they made dresses from these fabrics you see, and I did complete this skirt and I even wore it, but then, sort of, early ’20’s I looked at this thing and it was out of fashion and I regret it to this day that it went out and I wish that I’d kept it and I just can’t believe, but you do these things. And then, I’ve always done crafts and I’ve dabbled in lots of things but none of them really gave me the satisfaction that I discovered when I took up patchwork and quilting in 1990, and that’s it! I’m bitten by the bug and I get all the satisfaction I need out of doing it.
GS: I know you have many other interests, about how long a week would you say you spend quilting?
HD: A lot more in the winter than the summer. As much time as I can, depending on, better if I have a deadline to get things finished. If I don’t have a deadline I get things up to the point where I could quilt them. If they were wallhangings, I’ll probably carry on and do it. If it’s a quilt I let it sit for a couple of years before I get round to quilting it, but, golly! Hours a week? It does vary but I will try and get at least four hours a week, but it would be more in the winter if I could get away with it.
GS: So can you tell me what is your first quilt memory?
HD: You mean the first quilt I ever made?
GS: Yes. Did you ever see one?
HD: I think what probably got me into it was I used to take my boys regularly to the local library every week and while they were choosing a book I would go in the craft book section to see what I could dabble in next and I can remember picking this book up, actually by Julia Foster, the actress, and she had written this patchwork book, and I took this home, actually it was incredibly simple patchwork, but it was that that got me started and I thought “I could make a quilt like that”. This was pre-rotary cutters and boards and things, and so I made a quilt for my son, and, too terrified to quilt it, so I just tied it, and that was it then really, I just went from there, self-taught.
GS: So you are self-taught?
HD: I’m self-taught. When I started there weren’t that many workshops around anyway and I couldn’t afford to do them, not just money-wise, but actually time-wise with having two children. You know, you’re running around all the time. And so I was very much self-taught. I used to go to the Harrogate Exhibition which was huge in those days and was really inspired by the amazing quilts I saw, particularly Linda Straw was a huge influence. I just loved her work and I did actually later on go and do a weekend’s workshop with her down in Leicestershire, which was fabulous.
GS: So there aren’t any, or are there quilters among your family?
HD: No. My mum was an embroiderer, and she was a dressmaker and so I did do dressmaking, and embroidery was one of the things I dabbled in prior to finding patchwork, but I like, although I do do some traditional patchwork, I do love the design process. I can’t draw, but I like to take photographs and use my photographs to then develop my quilts, and a photocopier and tracing paper play a huge part in this because I can’t draw. But, yes, I have an enormous amount of fun doing the designing stage.
GS: Lovely. So have you ever used quilting to get you through a difficult time?
HD: Yes, yes. Both my parents, well this quilt for one with my close friend, although thankfully, she’s in remission, [talking over each other] but I also, I lost both my parents to cancer within seven weeks of each other, [GS: Oh goodness] and I did find that being able to go and bury myself in my sewing room and particularly to think about designing a quilt [GS: Yes] and everything did help enormously. Yes.
GS: So how much impact on your family does quilting have? Do you lock yourself away?
HD: I’m very lucky that my boys now are both grown up and so are not at home, and the job that my husband has, he’s self-employed, but he’s away quite a lot at the weekends with business, and so, especially if I’ve got a bed sized quilt that I want to quilt I psyche myself up in the week leading up to this weekend and I think, “Right he’s away so I can spend two days just quilting”, because I haven’t got to worry about making a meal for him, because there’s only me and the dogs, I can stop as and when I want to, and if I can spend two full days getting started on the quilting, by the end of the second day you’ve got far enough on that, you’re in the swing of it and you can see that you’re getting somewhere. Whereas if you just do an odd half hour or an hour here it goes so slowly that you don’t have chance to get in the rhythm and I find that really quite, you look at it and you think, “Gosh! Is that all I’ve done? and I’ve still got all this to do”, so I do try. I have done it when my husband’s at home and I’ve warned him what I’m going to do, and provided he’s pre-warned he’s quite happy with that, if I have something specific that I’ve got to get finished.
GS: Have you ever had any amusing experiences with your quilting, or with your teaching? I know you’ve done some teaching.
HD: Oh yes, I have done some teaching. No, I don’t think so, really. I don’t think there’s been anything particularly amusing, no
GS: Are there any aspects of quilting that you don’t enjoy?
HD: Yes, I don’t like the layering process. I like doing quilt tops and I do enjoy doing the quilting although I always have to psyche myself up when I’m about to start the quilting, but once I start I love it and I wonder why I get myself so worked up about doing the quilting, but I don’t like the layering. Although now I’ve got one of these tacking gun things, it’s not as bad. But when it was tacking it, ugh! Down on your hands and knees, I hated it.
GS: Now, I know the answer to this but I need to ask it anyway, [both laugh], can you tell me which quilt groups you belong to?
HD: Priory Patchworkers, of which I’m Chairman, and I’ve been a member of since 1990, and I’m also at the minute, I’m sort of a member of a little group at Millington who are just, I’m helping them get started, although I’m not envisaging being a long-term member there, because it is a bit of a trek. And I’ve got that much on my plate and also they’re a very tiny group and there’s no room for sewing machines and I feel I can only teach so much because I now mainly, whereas I did start doing everything by hand, since I got my Bernina sewing machine I now like to do everything on my sewing machine that I can possibly manage to do.
GS: So what are your favourite techniques and materials?
HD: I do enjoy what I call, reverse machine applique which is the sort of Linda Straw type style of applique. I love doing that and I quite like foundation piecing as well because it’s very, very accurate.
GS: Mm, it is. A lot of people don’t like that. Have advances in technology influenced your work at all?
HD: Oh yes, yes .I mean obviously from when I started, rotary cutters and boards, a massive, massive improvement, even though you thought you were cutting things really accurately with a pair of scissors, it’s nothing like with a rotary cutter, and I think getting that first Bernina sewing machine was just a revelation, [GS: Yes] because the one I’d had before was a lightweight Singer that I did a bit of dressmaking on, but it really wasn’t a very good sewing machine at all and only did straight stitch and a sort of zigzag.
GS: So, can you tell me about the studio, describe the studio space in which you work?
HD: You mean my sewing room. It’s very small. It’s about eight foot by, I don’t know, six and a half, seven foot. It’s not so big and it’s crammed to the gunnels. If I want to cut out I have to take my board into another room in the house, but I have plenty of space. But I do love this little room because it is my space, and it’s lovely and cosy in the winter, and I do have a design board in there, which I use a lot. As I say, it is very, very cramped but I’m very happy in there and I could while away hours. And while I’m quilting I’m thinking about other projects, or the next one or whatever and I find this little room, because I know that it’s my space I do find it very therapeutic in there. [GS: Yes] It’s a total mess but I do more or less know where everything is. Every now and again I have a massive tidy up, then I can never find what I want.
GS: You use a design wall, how do you go about designing your quilts?
HD: Well, if it’s traditional, I’m lucky enough to have EQ7 on the computer, so I do use my computer for the more traditional things if I’m designing a more traditional quilt. But if I’m doing some sort of applique wallhanging I do love designing my own things. As I said before, I enjoy taking photographs and using my photographs as my inspiration to then develop a quilt, [GS: Yes] and I mull on things for however long it takes. I’ll get a seed of an idea and when I’m out walking the dogs or I’m in the garden, my brain is going and thinking about it, and one day something will click and I’ll grab paper and pencil, and as I say, I do work a lot, because I’m not very good at drawing I do work a lot, I blow up my photographs and then I’ll trace off and then it might develop from there. I do use the photocopier a lot.
GS: Excellent. Now, how much would you say you spend on quilting a year?
HD: Ooh! I don’t know. Far too much! I have a big spend at Harrogate [Quilt Show]. Harrogate is my big shopping opportunity of the year, because you’ve got the opportunity to have lots of different stalls and things that you maybe don’t see. I do usually go with specific things in mind, things that I find difficult to get locally, and if I’ve got in mind a particular project that I want to make, I will go round and collect fabrics in the colours and designs that I want for this future project, which might take two or three years to actually get going, but I’ve got the fabric. But, gosh! I would think I spend in excess of £100 easily at Harrogate [GS: I bet you do!], probably towards £200, and then I think ooo! And then the rest of the year actually, unless I need something specific, other than things like freezer paper and, not Bondaweb, ‘Heat and Bond’, I would think I probably spend between £50 and £100 at Creative Grids for wadding, ‘Heat and Bond’ [GS: Yes] and little sewing bits like that, and the wadding. But again I do sometimes get wadding at Harrogate. It depends what I’m wanting and how much I’ve got.
GS: That’s right. Harrogate is so close as well. So, can you tell me what do you think makes a great quilt?
HD: Oh golly. I think what draws me primarily to a quilt, initially, is colour. When I think, when I go to Harrogate, or I see somebody’s quilt, the primary thing that draws me to the quilt, I think, is the colour and then perhaps the design. I think they would be the two main things, and very often, they might then, once you start looking at them, either beautiful quilting, or, I don’t know something, but I think colour primarily.
GS: And what would you say would make a quilt appropriate for a museum or a special collection?
HD: Oh golly. I think, obviously, in terms of an older quilt, something that has some provenance, has a story and a sense of history about it and I suppose something that they haven’t already got in the [GS: Yes] collection is important . I do appreciate museums don’t have a tremendous amount of space to take every old quilt. But I also think it’s important to have contemporary stuff because what is contemporary now will be an old quilt in [GS: Yes] 50 or 100 years’ time and I think it’s important to have a record of what is being done now. So I think it would be good if those opportunities to collect some of our top quilters’ work, people who their work’s showcased and are well-known. If we were lucky enough to get a piece of that, I think it’s important [GS: Yes]. And I think these groups that the Quilt Museum has, the Contemporary Quilt Group, the Miniature Group, they’re all important because that’s what’s going on now [GS:Yes]. And wouldn’t it be wonderful it 100 years ago there’d been someone collecting what people were doing then and we could look at the collection now.
GS: Absolutely, and, as you say, had a provenance with these items, my goodness. So whose works are you drawn to? Which quilters?
HD: Gloria Loughman very definitely. Linda Straw, I don’t think does a lot now, but I do love Linda Straw’s work. I think they’re the main two whose work I would really go out of my way to see.
GS: And they’re mostly applique, so are you drawn more to applique in your own work?
HD: I think so, yes. I think applique is my first love, although I do love Katharine Guerrier’s scrap quilts, and I’ve recently made, I haven’t got it quilted yet, a quilt top, and that was a lot of fun to make, and was quite a revelation actually, how I was using fabrics, some of which I thought were quite ghastly, and yet now they’re in this quilt it looks, I’m really pleased with it. It looks lovely and it didn’t matter that they were horrible when I was cutting these little patches [GS: Yes] and I think I will do some more of them, and I do like her work as well.
GS: And this quilt you’ve brought with you today, that’s machine quilted?
HD: Yes
GS: How do you feel about machine quilting versus hand quilting? Which do you do? Do you do both?
HD: I do, do both. I started, when I eventually plucked up courage to quilt, I did find the quilting incredibly daunting to start with, and my first, and my second and my third quilt were hand quilted. They took forever. They are not well quilted. I did enjoy it, I found it very therapeutic, but through learning the technique of reverse machine applique I then started to do some machine quilting and I’ve really got hooked into that. I still find it daunting to start something, but I enjoy pushing the boundaries out and seeing what I am capable of doing. But the main thing is, I get things finished because I find it quicker [GS: Yes], and that is the main reason why I machine quilt. I am at the minute hand quilting something, not well, but it’s not a special quilt, but I’m enjoying doing hand because I can’t sit with nothing to do on an evening, even if the television is on in an evening [GS: No], there are very few programmes that I devote my whole time to, so I like to sit with some sewing, and this hand quilting I’m finding really nice on an evening [GS: Yes]. I’d never exhibit it because it really isn’t very good, but it’s just keeping my hand in and I’m finding it very therapeutic. I think I will never say one’s better than the other because I don’t believe that to be true. I think they’re both equally difficult to master and I think they can both look beautiful.
GS: Yes, yes. What about longarm quilting? Would you ever?
HD: I don’t think I would ever, but I don’t have a problem with longarm quilting. I can well see why people do it, but I do enjoy the satisfaction of making my own quilts from start to finish [GS: Yes]. I do enjoy the quilting process and even though you might have a bit of a fight when you’re doing a large bed quilt under the sewing machine, I usually manage, and for me it’s the satisfaction of doing it [GS: Yes]. I’m not saying I might not be tempted once or twice for things that I need to get finished, but I think some of the longarm quilting is lovely, but at the same time I think, sometimes I look at a longarm quilt and for me, and I think this is a personal thing, it lacks something. It just lacks… it lacks something… it just lacks that bit of character that a hand, or machine on a domestic sewing machine quilt has.
GS: Yes, I absolutely agree with you. So could you tell me now why is quilt making important to your life?
HD: Oh my goodness. Gosh. Well, it keeps my brain going. I actually find it exciting, it makes my brain work. My brain is always thinking about the next project, designing it, even if I’m still on with goodness knows how many other things. I like the way it works my brain, I like the outlet for a bit of creativity, even though I’m not the most artistic person in the world, but I still love that creative aspect of it and it’s tactile and exciting to get these fabrics and to be trying to make fabrics work together, and the cutting out and the thrill of a new project. Don’t you find that, starting a new project?
GS: Oh! Absolutely.
HD: And then the satisfaction when you’ve got something finished and I’ve yet to make something that hasn’t got a mistake, and usually the way I get round this is when it’s finished I bung it in the spare bedroom for six months and forget about it and when I next look at it I know there’s a mistake, but very often I don’t remember what it was or where it is, and I look, and I’m not saying that I look closely to see where the mistake is, but I look at it and I think “Well, actually I can’t see the mistake shouting at me”, which I could when I threw it in the room
GS: And nobody knows.
HD: And nobody else knows unless I tell them. And then the satisfaction that I’ve made that. I have a lot of pleasure doing it. [GS: Yes I know exactly what you mean] I think if you’ve had a hard week or you’re feeling a bit stressed, to go up in my sewing room, and I’m in this little bubble, and I just switch off and I think quilting.
GS: Yes I know exactly what you mean. In what ways do your quilts reflect, or do they, your community or region? You’ve said, actually, that you get ideas when you’re out walking.
HD: Yes, I mean, for example, I did the Chinese Whispers Challenge this last year for the Loch Lomond Show, and when I got the photograph of the previous maker’s quilt it looked to me very much like the lighthouse down at Dover, the white cliffs of Dover, and it inspired me to do my quilt, but again I wanted to work from a photograph from a region that I personally knew, and I had some pictures of Bempton, as we often walk out there {GS: Ah, yes] and so the white cliffs, what I thought were the white cliffs of Dover, in my quilt became the white cliffs of Bempton with the birds and all that. And so I do, I wouldn’t say necessarily my region, because some of my quilts have been based on the Lake District and other countries, if I’ve been away on holiday. But yes, I do like to… my quilts are designed, the ones that I’ve designed, are round my experiences. I have made quilts for other people or causes and what have you, so, yes.
GS: So what do you think about the importance of quilts in British life?
HD: I don’t know that I do particularly think anything about it. I mean, obviously they’ve got a history, as far as I’m concerned, people made quilts because they needed a warm coverlet on the bed and that’s very much part of our social history. The fact that some women then started to make them look attractive as well, so we’ve got that as a legacy to see. From a quilter’s point of view I think they’re very important. From somebody like my husband, for example, I don’t think he’d give it a minute’s thought.
GS: It probably keeps him warm though, at night.
HD: Well, yes, it does, but I don’t think he thinks about it, if you know what I mean. I don’t think he’s thinking “I’m under a quilt and many years ago people started making these quilts”.
GS: Do you have one of your quilts on your bed?
HD: I do sometimes, but it’s not on my bed during the day because my dogs go on the bed, and so I don’t like them getting on my quilts, but I have an old counterpane that the dogs go on now. It’s mainly I’ve got a summer quilt on and then come the autumn when it starts getting a bit cooler and I’m not ready for the winter quilt. I need a bit more layer and I’ll throw one of my quilts over the top of the summer quilt. But that goes on at night when I’m going to bed, and it comes off and gets put away during the day when the dogs lie on the bed. And if I’ve got people visiting I always put a quilt on their bed, but I don’t leave the quilts on the bed because my main bedrooms are all south facing and the sun pours in and so I don’t like to leave them on the beds all the time. I only put them on when I know I’ve got visitors and they’re using the bedrooms.
GS: So you said that you have a pile of quilts sitting in the spare bedroom, do you also give quilts to friends and family?
HD: Oh yes. Yes, all my best quilts I’ve given away. That’s [pointing to touchstone quilt] the only one I’ve got left.
GS: What about your boys, do they…?
HD: Yes, my elder boy’s not really bothered about them, but my younger boy, I mean I did make them quilts when they were small, and my younger boy is now on his third quilt, and in fact asked me to make him a quilt a couple of years ago, a big king-sized quilt, which was lovely. I would never tout to make quilts, but if they ask me to make them I’ll happily make people a quilt, and also he does like them. He’s my fiercest critic, my younger son, and he’s nicked all my best quilts [laughs].
GS: I bet that makes you feel really good though.
HD: Yes, it’s lovely. He actually wants those quilts, and so, bar one, he’s got all my best quilts. I have made quilts for my brother and sister-in-law, [GS: That’s lovely] and my mother-in-law.
GS: And my last question is: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quilt makers today?
HD: I think, in a way, the biggest challenge is the fact that we are living in a time when we are so lucky to have such a huge feast of fabrics and so much technology at our disposal that I think there’s a danger we could lose our way in we’ve got such a wide choice, and what I do think is good, but I also think it’s a challenge, is that gone are the days where we have people preaching that it’s hand quilting or it’s not quilting, and you’ve got to do 20 stitches to the inch, and they must all be even stitches and they must go through all three layers, and if it doesn’t it’s no good. And I love the fact that actually anything goes, [GS: Yes] but with freedom I think it also is a challenge because we could lose some of the more traditional skills and maybe try to be too clever. I don’t know. [GS: Yes, I see what you mean] We just are saturated with technology. The other thing I do worry about actually with modern fabrics, I do worry about their longevity. A lot of fabrics, and I’m talking good fabrics, I’m not talking about ones that you’ve bought cheap somewhere, I’m talking about proper quilting cottons that have cost quite a lot of money, and they do fade [GS: They do]. And I wonder, how many quilts that are made today, that are used, I’m not talking about ones that are wrapped in tissue paper, [GS: Yes] how many of them will actually be around?
GS: Yes, mm. Thank you very much indeed for talking to me. It’s been absolutely super and really helpful. Thank you very much.