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Piece O Cake

Insights from Becky

How did you learn to sew?

My grandmother sewed all my clothes and my mom sewed some. I learned some of what I know from each of them but I probably learned more from my home ec class in high school. I learned to quilt in a class taught by Janette Meetze in Tulsa, OK, about 22 years ago. The skills she taught me have served me very well over the years.

Have you always appliquéd or were you a piecer first?

I was a piecer first – and exclusively pieced for about 2 years. However, once I began appliquéing seriously I haven’t time to piece as much. I was just thinking this morning, though, that I need to make a quilt for my bed… that I will piece.

Becky, I’m told that you create a lot of the original artworks for the appliqué designs. Are you trained as an artist? What is your first love – sewing or drawing?

I have a degree in interior design and I did a lot of drafting when I was working on that degree. I was able to take a year’s worth of art classes at the University of Tulsa about 20 years ago and that is where I learned more about drawing.

I don’t actually “draw” the way you image an artist “drawing” (with pencil on paper, by hand) as much as I would like to. I draw the patterns for our appliqué directly in my computer using my mouse. I use Adobe Illustrator. I actually enjoy this process, but not as much as I enjoy sewing and working with fabric.

What is the first thing you remember creating? Have you been creative since you were a child or did you discover your creativity as an adult?

I have a Christmas ornament that I had to have made in pre-school when I was 4 or 5 years old. It is made from two pieces of red oil-cloth cut to resemble the head of a hobby horse.The two sides are sewn together with big stitches of white yarn. I love that thing even if it is showing its age!

Yes, I have always been creative but sometimes what I made was pretty forgettable.

Like the rest of us! I’m sure we all have some wonky things we made as children stashed away in the closet.
Piece O Cake has certainly been a successful partnership. How do you design together when you live so far away from each other?

Linda and I each have ideas about what quilt we want to make next. Linda has gotten very good at telling me what she wants – and I draw it for her until it is correct. It works the best when we are in the same place for this process.

It’s a little easier when I draw for myself because I can see what’s in my head.

Your new book is a very different kind of project for you. Tell us about it and why you have chosen this new, looser direction?

We think of quilts as explosions of color—but quilts are also about lines. Where one fabric stops and another begins, a line is drawn.  An artist can make a line more interesting by varying its weight and density. For example, a pencil line on rough paper is much different from one drawn on smooth paper. A painter can make a line sharp or feathered. It’s hard to do any of these with a seam line.

In 2005, Ami Simms invited me to submit a quilt to the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. (For more on this wonderful project, go to www.AlzQuilts.org.) I gave a great deal of thought to the kind of image I would use in my quilt and decided that I would approach the quilt as if I had Alzheimer's. I knew that if diagnosed, I would still quilt, but over time my sewing abilities would diminish. 

I designed a traditional appliqué block for the quilt. The center block is as perfect as I could make it. As I moved away from the center the shapes, colors, and stitching become much less precise. I didn’t use a pattern for the border. I randomly pulled scrap fabric from a pile and haphazardly cut stems and leaves. I used heavy black thread for the border appliqué. It’s almost hard to look at… but I believe this is one of the most interesting quilts I have ever made.

In making this quilt I realized that I am so used to following my pattern that not doing that was hard. But the more I sewed, the more I found myself enjoying the freedom of not following the lines. It was not about being sloppy, it was about making more interesting lines in the quilt!

Since finishing Trying To Hold On, I have been very interested in playing with the lines in my quilts. I put away my ruler and cut freely with my rotary cutter. I measured by eye. You’d think this would make things faster, but it didn’t for me. It did engage a different part of my quiltmaking brain and that was both fun and invigorating.
Artists are very aware of negative space. It is defined as the empty and seemingly unimportant background space in a two- or three-dimensional artwork. In fact, the negative space surrounds and supports the positive space. You can’t have one without the other. The quilting equivalent of negative space is the background fabric. Linda and I are known for piecing together different fabrics—prints, plaids, stripes, and solids in all manner of colors—to use behind our appliqué. We have always preferred a more active negative space.
The quilts in this book push that idea a little farther. The negative space is more heavily pieced and asymmetrical. The seam lines are organic—they are not ruler-straight. The outer edges of most of the quilts are cut by hand. These quilts are not truly square. The organic outer edges enhance the lines in the quilt rather than boxing them in. 

This book is about the process of working in a freer and more organic manner —stepping away from the sharp lines and measurements that come with rulers and feeling free to alter the appliqué pattern if it suits you. However, we all know that there is no one perfect way to make a quilt. For that reason the instructions for the quilts in this book are written so that you can work with straight lines and a ruler if you prefer. In either case, it is our hope that you enjoy thinking about the design of your quilts in a new way.

John Flynn, Sue Nickels, Hollis Chatelain and I have all participated in the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative in one way or another since it began. We had dinner together at the North Carolina Quilt Symposium a few weeks ago and managed to challenge each other in a head-to-head, whose-quilt-can-raise-the-most-money grudge match. We are each making a mini quilt especially for this challenge that Ami Simms will post on the AAQI site for auction in mid-November.

I am working on my quilt now. It is a mini-version of Passion Flowers from this new book and it’s pretty darned cute! It would be fun to win this challenge but, more importantly, I also want to help raise as much money possible for research toward finding a cure for this awful disease.

You also design fabric for P&B Textiles. Do your quilt patterns have an influence on the designs you use for your fabrics? Do you have a new range coming soon?

I think our color sense influences our fabric designs. We generally design fabric that we want to use in the quilts we make but we don’t design specific fabric to go in specific quilts. We are working toward doing more fabric but it will be a while before we have a new collection. There just hasn’t been time for everything ! 

How do you think has fabric design changed over the last few years? Do you think that this has had an effect on the fabric market?

Fabric trends change and that has always been the case. But there is always fabric that I want to buy and use so the fact that the colors and designs on the fabric are always evolving seems normal to me. The thing that makes me the most crazy is that good fabric comes and goes too quickly.

I’m loving the fact that dots/spots are still in high demand! I’m buying as much as I can because eventually they’ll be gone and I’m still going to want to use them.

I’m with you! I can’t get enough spots I my stash.
What has been the best thing about having a blog? Do you enjoy blogging?

I do enjoy blogging. I didn’t think I would… Linda is the one who suggested that we needed a blog and we both thought she’d be the one doing most of the posting. But, as it turns out, I enjoy it and she has trouble fitting into her day.

I have never kept a journal – but I always wanted to. I think it’s because I type a lot better than I write by hand. Blogging is my journal and I do it as much for myself as for others.

What are you working on next?

We have a book that will out in a little less than a year called My Whimsical Quilt Garden. It’s way cute! The primary quilt in it is one of Linda’s – I have a smaller version of it in the book. Those quilts are finished and the manuscript is at C&T going through the publication process.

I’m working on a quilt that will come out in a year or two – no title on it yet but it’s fun! And we are also working on the quilts for a Christmas book that will be out in a couple of years. It’s good to be busy!