Introduction by: Joy Waggener
Publicity Chair for 2009 Quilt Show
Featured Celebrity Quilter Wendy Hill lived in Nevada County for a decade before moving to Sunriver, Oregon in 1996. She now belongs to the Mountain Meadow Quilt Guild and was selected to be honored as a Master Quilter. Here, in her own words, Wendy tells how her creative sewing skills became the foundation for her imaginative and innovative quilting.
Written by: Wendy Hill
In her own words....
My earliest memories include drawing with my Dad and making a bow-tie quilt for my doll with my Mom. After that, I was on my own with sewing: my grandmother’s love of fabric skipped over my mother and landed directly on me. By the time I took a sewing class in ninth grade, the teacher felt obligated to break me of my bad habits, but she couldn’t take away the confidence earned by teaching myself to sew.
In high school, I made a raincoat out of bread wrappers, a bikini bathing suit with tablecloth vinyl, and a faux-fur coat with bound buttonholes, something my sewing teacher said would be impossible (wrong!). At age 19, I made my first quilt as an adult. I remember asking myself, ‘how hard could it be?’ But in 1971, there were few resources available. I started with an appliqué baby quilt, then drafted and constructed a super king size, corduroy quilt replicating the floor of the Taj Majal. Making a quilt was easy, but mastering skills and exploring ideas became a lifetime endeavor!
By the time I moved to Nevada City in 1986, I’d been making bed quilts and quilted clothing for 14 years, without much knowledge of the outside quilt world. I continued to be self-taught, relying on my confidence, sewing skills and common sense. Using traditional patterns, I made functional quilts, but I also included silk screening with fabric paint, bending ribbon to cover raw edge curves, embellishing with embroidery, using silks-satins-velvets-synthetics, making reversible quilts and quilted clothing. My isolation from the larger quilt world meant there was no one to tell me I couldn’t or shouldn’t combine these methods and fabrics.
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In 1985, I made a quilt that changed the direction of my quilting. I made an original quilt, intended to hang on a brick wall, called "Bricks Gone Wild". With a new perspective, I brought out a book purchased twelve years earlier: Quilts and Coverlets- A Contemporary Approach by Jean Ray Laury and Gayle Smalley (1970). I had to wonder why it took me so long to realize I could merge my art background with my love of fabric.
By the time I joined the Pine Tree Quilt Guild (PTQG) around 1987, I was no longer making bed quilts or using traditional patterns. I think of 1987 as a pivotal year in my life. My son Lucas was born and I turned my attention to making original quilts. Now that I knew about the larger quilt world, I wanted to be a part of it.
At the same time that PTQG disqualified me for overdyeing the fabric in my challenge quilt, I entered a juried quilt show for the first time. The American Quilter's Society 6th Annual Show & Contest included two of my quilts: "Cube Fantasy 2" with overdyed fabric to make 54 shades of gray; and "FANtastic View" with three dimensional appearing Grandmother's Fan blocks, designed with 'computer assisted design' software. My quilts have been included in numerous juried, judged, invitational and solo quilt shows ever since.
Soon my quilts were in print: magazines, compilation books, and books by Christine Barnes, Katie Pasquini-Masopust, and Karen Combs. In October 1997, my first book, On the Surface, Thread Embellishment & Fabric Manipulation, with C&T Publishing, arrived on bookshelves. Since then I've authored three more books with C&T Publishing- Two-for-One Foundation Piecing, ©2001; fast, fun & easy Incredible Thread-A-Bowls
©2005; and Easy Bias Covered Curves, ©2006.
An incident in a Dansk Outlet store a few years ago made me appreciate imagination. The sales person insisted I couldn't use the steeply discounted saucers as plates for appetizers. The cups were long gone, but this salesperson patiently explained that these were indeed saucers, meant for cups, as if I lived in a cave and didn't know better. But to us quilters, we know that saucers can be plates and a pile of fabrics can be a beautiful quilt, if we only let our imagination show us the way.
In the past few years I've gotten carried away (okay, obsessed) with Tyvec, circle patterns, zippers and new variations of the log cabin pattern. We have a wealth of products and information to draw upon, but sometimes this abundance is overwhelming. It's simple to make a quilt. We already have what we need to begin- imagination. It just takes a lifetime to learn from experience and play with ideas!
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