💛 LET’s TALK ABOUT FINDING YOUR NICHE with Valerie Goodwin - Karen's Quilt Circle

[Music] when you start quilting there is so much to learn how to cut how to piece how to press how fabrics work together and with time we learn what part of the process that we like to do and the color zone that we like to occupy so then our quilting style shifts as we explore and grow into new styles and techniques that embrace it my next guest has made that journey and has found her niche after starting with traditional quilts valerie goodwin has taken her love of lines and shapes and has created stunning multi-layered matte quilts that are distinctly hers her quilts have hung at houston and paducah and in many exhibitions including the international quilt museum and i was lucky enough to see some of her quilts when she came to toronto and spoke at quilts at the creek and i am now so pleased to have her on the show so grab your sewing and a cup of tea and here's my interview with valerie goodwin [Music] well thank you valerie for being on the show today i know you're far away in florida but i'm just so happy that you're here i've met you before in when you came to toronto a couple of years ago for quilts of the creek that was a wonderful trunk show and i know everybody that took the class was just absolutely thrilled with it but i want to just start back at the beginning so were there any other crafters or cultures in your family growing up well my grandmother was a homec teacher she didn't quilt but she she knew how to sew and she's the one who taught me how to sew but there was a cousin who lived with my mother's family who was an avid quilter she must have made hundreds of quilts and so i think that perhaps i got that in my gene from her so at what point in your life did you begin quilting i began quilting uh in a kind of a kind of uh i don't want to unusual way i'll just put it that way i was teaching architecture and it was about 1994 that i began and then in 1995 i read an article from a a magazine called the journal of architectural education and it talked about how architecture students were asked to design a quilt museum and it began with them studying traditional quilt blocks that became diagrams that became rooms and spaces for a quilt museum and that sort of got me going just kind of took off from there my interest was was um sparked and uh eventually i learned how to how to quilt i learned how to quilt by making a sampler by hand and immediately i knew i wanted to do something that would relate to architecture in my background and so that set me on that journey to figure that out but in the beginning you were a traditional culture in the beginning i was a traditional quilter i made quilts for my all my relatives who graduated from high school make one for them and uh yes i i was a traditional quilter for a couple of years did you ever join a guild i did i joined uh quilters unlimited here in tallahassee florida and i was a member for um probably several years yeah so the quilting began when you moved back to florida not when you were in the north no right it began when i moved to florida that's correct but i learned to sew visiting my grandmother uh when we would travel to alabama during the summer to visit relatives so did you have a beginner mistake that you made as a quilter a beginner mistake was uh wanting to break the rules before i understood what the rules were for quilting that was my beginner mistake i remember asking the woman who was teaching the class how to quilt i would ask her if i could do it a certain way and she would say no no no no you know you have to learn how to quilt in the ditch before you decide you're going to do something else and so uh i shut my mouth because i remember telling my architecture students that you know learn what i'm going to teach you before you decide that you're going to be uh more original with it so was quilting something that you did to escape the grind of your day or was it something complimentary it was something complimentary definitely and for a long time i really look back on it but i was able to kind of juggle you know my career as an architecture professor and also as a quilter and then gradually became an art quilter so it was something that was complementary i would try and and kind of bring some of the things i was learning about working with um mixed media and fiber arts into some of the design electives that i that i taught so they really worked hand in hand did you find your background in architecture gave you a head start in quilting not at all not at all [Laughter] no not at all and you would think that being an architect and you know being driven by wanting to be very precise i had i struggled with being precise and that's why i um kind of struggled with um you know getting corners to match and all those other things because i found gradually i realized i wanted to be freer and more expressive and i learned the technique of fabric collage maybe two three years after us and so that sort of was the way i started to kind of change the way i i worked with fabric now there's no real syllabus in learning how to quilt uh no advancement up a ladder of levels did your background as a teacher did you find you drop some kind of structure into that for your own learning path that's a that's an interesting question probably i was probably more methodical about it um [Music] i probably thought about it as a design problem and would start with small ideas of variations on ideas and then find latch onto the one that i felt was something that i wanted to develop and then kind of develop it make it more specific kind of work the way architects work you know when they work in the profession you have to build your way up to doing something that is going to be definitive and that can be built and can communicate communicate information to your clients and people who are going to to build the project and so i think that kind of uh left brain thinking i brought to the fore for most of us in quilting finding our voice takes some time did you find it easier as an architect to find your voice like bringing that design background into play when you found the fabric collage did you immediately know that that was where you wanted to find your voice i knew that that technique was going to help me pursue the path i thought i thought i wanted to go in at that point and i i remember when i was working with traditional correct techniques i was trying to do i saw an aerial view out of an airplane and that inspired me to make one of my quilts but all i had in my arsenal i wanted to say all i had but what i had in my arsenal was traditional quilt making um techniques and um well i think i sort of captured what i wanted to i think it wasn't um quite where i wanted to go with um my interest in in interest in aerial views i guess and so fabric collage allowed me to be freer and more expressive and it allowed me to do what i was trying to do with another technique i personally have always loved maps and cartography and your map quilts are just stunning you've had lots of exhibitions at the international cult museum in that were you always do you think heading towards map making no i didn't know that that's where i would go and i advised uh later on that what i really loved was was lines and shapes in particular lines and and i think that i like the idea of lines being organized in a certain way because of my background and i think that's how it sort of morphed into the maps now that i think about it you've asked me that question i think that's what was going on in my head in the background now when you did your trunk show here at quilts at the creek when you started talking about laser cutters the room just started buzzing with excitement when did you discover the laser cutter several years ago i went to visit the gentleman who used to photograph my work and he worked over at florida state university and he worked in a program called the facility for arts research and i went to pick up my photographs and he gave me a tour and he showed me these laser cutters he showed me them at work and i decided well i think i can do something with this if only i could learn how to use it and at the time they were advertising um for a six week residency and i applied and so i got to play with the machine over six weeks and i tested over 30 kinds of fabrics to see which ones were cut best i i learned which settings worked best for this particular laser cutter machine and then i was on another pursuit to figure out how to use this technique in my work and it took me a while to kind of figure out um how to use it i said i would say i made a couple that were definitely duds but eventually i i hit my stride with that machine so how many projects do you start and then abandon like you you're exploring an idea do you continue forward with all of them or do you some of them you just say oh this isn't working well you know i just recently retired back in august of last year and i retired i would have to do some really smart juggling and so the time frame i had to work was really in the summer so i had to be really strategic and really move forward and make some work in the summer and so the answer to get back to your question sometimes my problem is i don't abandon anything i finish things that are not working i mean rarely do i just put something aside but i'm learning more and more that sometimes it's about the process and not completing the the product so that's that's just something that i've had to work out for myself so what is your process do you start with a drawing or is it totally organic i work both ways sometimes i start with a drawing um sometimes i might be inspired by something i see and i start to doodle and and as i get more specific about it the drawing gets bigger i just start playing with the fabric but then i let what's happening in front of me sort of morph and take me in that certain direction i find that i my work is tighter and and more planned out when i'm working on a specific map about a specific place because it has to be more accurate and so i have my series of more expressive more abstract maps and i have pieces that are narrative pieces and they try to tell the story of a certain event your african graveyard is so powerful is that your most well-known piece of work i don't know if it's the most well-known piece of work but i think it's something that's gotten a lot of attention and as a matter of fact it was just purchased by the international quilt museum at the university of nebraska i think it got a lot of attention because it did tell such a powerful story it is so evocative in like it just has a whole mood to it on top of the history that it tells and the map that it tells and as i've studied maps you know by the way that the lines are whether the the town grew organically or it's just some surveyor came in and drew the line so it has this whole multi-dimensional story as well as the multi layers within the quilt it is a fine fine piece of art but you don't need me to tell you that i'm sure thousands of people have told you that before but oh thank you um but even in a photograph because i think you must have the challenge as well that your work is so three-dimensional but a photograph just cannot possibly do it justice you know when i'm up close looking at your pieces there's you can look at them for hours because you just have so many things hidden within the layers it's just such a powerful piece even within a photograph on the internet so strong has your your color palette changed since you've been working with maps the the colors that you like to use i guess so if you look behind me the piece that's in the middle that's got uh sort of a white and and and blue and lighter colors i'm finding that my work is a little bit brighter and i don't know if it's because i've started using silk organza more and what you find are those kinds of colors or if it's something that is psychological in me but yeah i think my color choices have changed somewhat how do you decide on your scale like you've got maps can be small they can be huge at what point do you decide how big they're going to be really that's very pragmatic it's it's it's what would fit on my design wall when i started working with the laser cutter it's what would fit in the laser cut bed uh i'd have to work things out based on that size and i would have generally speaking i would have to work you know i don't do really big work the work you see behind me is about the size i usually work the ones that are on the yellow wall and um that's because i need to get i used to need to get things done in a certain time frame and so that's why they couldn't be terribly big do you still make traditional quilts it's been a while i've been thinking about it though i've been thinking about well what happens when i get up in a up farther in age than i am right now and i can't do all the things that i'm doing i i find myself thinking well i probably will go back to doing traditional quilts by hand just to have something to do that's creatives to fill my time do you put labels on your quilts i don't i signed my work uh using a free motion i sign and i dated and i put the title somewhere in the piece do you ever put other little hidden symbols and things like that in the quilt as well no not really no so did you ever enter quilt shows at the beginning i did one of my early pieces was in paducah and i had a couple of pieces in the houston show but my work now i don't think well if the houston show were still functioning i don't think that it would be accepted because the type of craftsmanship is not sort of the way that they would expect it to be would it suit cook on i don't know i don't know that much about quiltcon i've been i've been wanting to learn more about it i don't know it's something i would have to look into i don't know here it's in georgia so you'll be able to drive up there it is in georgia okay here so you you can take a drive up there one day have you passed on your love of quilting to any family members no one no no i'm the last of the line when you were in toronto you talked about you were going to retire did you retire last year i retired in august of last year i retired a little early because of the covet situation um and i was fortunate that i could do that so yeah i um i've been i don't know how many six or seven months i suppose so how was your day your quilting day changed now i'm struggling to find a groove uh i used to have this this this notion that i was just gonna be so prolific and i was gonna like wake up early in the morning and just walk across the house into the studio and just spend all my time working working working and making stuff but um i find that i don't get up quite as early i get involved in a little bit more housework than i thought about and also the popularity of online teaching has taken up more of my time so i've been doing lots of virtual teaching i and i just created a class for cnt publishing's creative sparks platform and that will probably launch next week and so the class is called mapping personal places so that goes live so i've been spending um a good chunk of my time doing that but starting to think that i need to have a yearly strategy where i devote certain number of months of the year to just doing art and then a certain number or chunks of the year just doing the the workshops and so on so i am trying to put that in place kubit is brought a a number of stressors into our lives but i think the that it also has brought this ability for us to take these workshops far away like now though i i wasn't able to take your workshop when you were here in toronto now i can take your workshop online and i think that's a it's been a great opportunity for quilting now you can teach in australia without actually having to go there yeah there's some pros and cons i mean if i could travel to australia to teach obviously i'd rather do that but it is interesting how people have sort of latched on to to that and understand that that is a way to learn things virtually have you done a lot of traveling for quilting in the past yes i have taught in switzerland australia a couple times in canada i may be teaching in new zealand and i may be in luxembourg so yeah teaching has taken me a lot of places that i probably would not have gotten to go who knew that there was a quilting community in luxembourg well they have a quilt festival and so they've asked me to exhibit um my work uh there and so it was supposed to be last year but you know covet took over so hopefully it will be next year do you have a favorite quilt probably the piece the first piece that i'd cut her that i was pleased with it's called structural dialogues and it's the first piece that i did where i explored the translucency of the material i explored what it would be like to have light shine through it it's the first piece where i explored the interaction of the different um map layers and it is the first piece where i abandoned the use of the batting so to me it was a brave piece and it it's it's so it really uh i learned a lot from doing that piece did it take you a long time no it took me a few weeks and i did it um actually as a sample for a class i was teaching at the architecture school it was called soft architecture and so the students were making these layered pieces that were meant to hang and animate architectural space and so i made this piece for them while they were making their pieces just to show them what they could do with the material so it took about six weeks i say i would say to do that piece now you say that you used to cram a lot of your work into the summer time does that mean that your works are done fairly quickly when i say i worked in the summer i would do certain get them finished enough so that i could finish it over the course of the semester during my free time relaxing with my family watching tv and so on so what's the the steps in making a map quilt do you sketch it out first do you work on the back layer for a couple of weeks and then everything else is superimposed or is it all one piece that you're working on constantly uh usually it starts with one layer of silk organza and then i will lay down laser-cut either lines and shapes and i found that certain materials work best have you ever heard of avalon it's a non-woven product and it uh comes in white it comes by the roll or comes in and sheets and you can paint it and because it's um non-woven when it cuts you don't have the frayed edges and so that might be one of the layers so it's an opaque layer another map line layer might be where i've cut silk organza so you can actually cut cut silk organza if you uh have put down a layer of adhesive you know like misty fuse on the back you can cut really fine lines and so i like that effect those lines being translucent others being opaque and the final step is to add the stitching so each one of those lines um have to be couched down so if there's a lot of hand sewing involved and that adds another detail another layer to the piece and do you have a plan ahead of time or are you just working through it piece by piece i usually have a plan but that plan is not a contract so sometimes i might sketch it and then i might bring it into photoshop and play around with it and then print it out and sketch over it and go back and forth so i find that i've started to embrace um you know both working and planning by hand and also doing it digitally working digitally and work digitally to plan it and then working digitally to actually make it meaning i use the laser cutter so you talk about the design elements and then design principles and how often are you standing back and going is this balanced does this have emphasis or is that just all in your head and you're just working through it do i ask myself that question out loud occasionally but i do like to stand back and look at the work and once you've become familiar with the pieces they sort of become second nature so if you look at the piece and you say that's not working then sometimes i might analyze it and think about what those things are and that might help to give me those answers you've got this beautiful work behind you this with the it looks like a river going through it and the map layout how difficult is it to do something very different from that do you have to consciously make decisions to say okay that's that one now i'm going to do something totally different or i'm going to do that but i'm going to change something i'm not i don't feel like i have to change i feel like i can just explore and expand on and maybe morph into something else um the piece that you're that i think you're talking about behind me the one that's right behind my head i think that's it that was done with recycled laser-cut map lines and i had no idea whatsoever what was going to happen with it i just started laying on the pieces removing them moving them around painting on them stitching removing i mean it was just a very organic process and i really enjoyed making that because i didn't know what i was going to end up with and there were times when i was really um it was like oh my god what is this and uh how am i gonna pull this off and it was really a challenge but uh it was an enjoyable challenge so when i'm making a quilt i like it best at the beginning and at the end and i find it gets uglier and uglier uglier until i get that binding on that issue like do you have these these moments oh there's the there are those hot mess moments that's what i call them but you know with my process of layering you can lay something on top of what's not working or you can pull it off uh if it's painted you're laying something on top of it if it's fused and you haven't stitched it you can pull it off so my thank god my process is forgiving in that way and so yeah you have hills and valleys it's sort of a bipolar process right you're really happy manic at one point and then you're down in the pits of whatever and you feel like you know this is not gonna work so that's just part of the process that you just have to get used to it do you find that you've got a backlog of maps that you want to make that you've got more ideas than you can produce yes if you look behind me over here there's a stack of books that have in them and they are they go back years and um i think someday there might be some that i might pull out and decide i want to work with them so are they inspired by the places that you've traveled to or are you more inspired by pictures or concepts pictures and concepts and just really mostly i'm inspired by the way lines and shapes engage each other yeah the more i think about it i think that's what really really drives me i just really love that aesthetic you have some work that i know that they're aerial views but they've almost looked like buildings standing upright are you playing with that idea often there was a point in time where i was exploring that idea of composing my work so that you show multiple views of a place and that's something that architects do in some of their presentation drawings and so i've used that device in the past and i expect that you'll see it again in the future do you have a bucket list of quilts that you want to make no i don't have a bucket list but i have ideas floating around in my head on my bucket list would be to do uh public work and i was fortunate enough to get a commission to do a piece for a museum uh and it's going to be eight feet wide by three and a half feet tall and it's going to be double-sided and i'm working on the maca mock-up of that right now and it's really exciting to be because i'm going to look at what you just talked about showing multiple views i'm going to use the laser cutter i'm exploring translucency and light and shadow and i'm going to get to tell a really really powerful story so in that big of a piece you'll do that in sections that's correct i'll do that in sections yes so is that new for you or have you done a large piece like that before i did one large piece it was a commission to work for jack walsh who is an avid art quilt collector and this that particular piece was about seven feet wide by almost five feet tall it was a triptych and so this is this will be the second time i've worked this big i saw one in the quilt museum that you had done a tr triptych have you done many of them that's the only triptych that i've ever done now which what quilt museum are you speaking of you had an exhibit at the international quilt museum and i thought i saw one of yours there i think that might have been on loan there okay yes i think it was on loan there right that's that's the piece have you ever worked in a series of quilts there was one year i was invited to do a solo show at um ginsler architects in washington dc and i was able to get a sabbatical and i worked on a series of of quilts it's called the cartographic collage quilts and you can see them on my website and so that was very satisfying to kind of be to have a chunk of time to work on one idea and to do it do a set of pieces based on the same concept gonna circle back to your your time in your classroom because i can remember in the trunk show you mentioning using the quilt block and imagining a room and now every time i go into a room i imagine it as a quilt block it's amazing influenced my life and that i have always right from the very beginning i have wanted to bring texture and depth into my quilting and just wondering if there were any other exercises from quilting that you brought into your classroom well i think i showed some in the uh in the in the lecture where they would make a paper quilt block so to speak and they would make an object out of it that was three-dimensional then they would um transform that into a space to display their quilts i've done other kinds of projects like the one i just talked about in my soft architecture class where they had to really make a fabric piece that would you know sit in a space so that was one project i remember doing one group project with the students where we divvied up a a what's called a it's a it's a nollie map and it's a black and white map of rome dunbar i think it was this 15th or 16th century and so we cut it up and they all had to do a part of it but they had to make sure that the the the pieces uh matched up and so that was an exercise and being more collaborative but to get back to your question i don't know that i can think of a specific project that i would recommend to you that would sort of help you with what you're trying to do but i can think about it and get back to you tell me about your workshops and your lectures what are the topics well as far as the lectures are concerned there are four of them one is called mapping narratives through fabric paint and thread and it really talks about how quilts can tell a story and how art can tell stories another one is called cutting edge explorations and that's where i talk about how technology influences art and how it's influenced my work there's one that's called a dialogue between quilting and architecture and it talks about my journey in trying to kind of marry the two things and to have architecture my work as a quilt artist and there's another one called the complex composition and that's where i talk about how quilts and how you compose it and how and how multiple views of a thing or a place can actually be a well thought out composition and also add to the storytelling of the piece so and all those i offer in person as well as uh online and then i have four workshops three or four so one is called map haiku and that's where students make maps of amer of imaginary places inspired by haiku that they write during the course of my class one is called and then that i do explore different uh fiber art techniques in that class and another one is called the complex composition and that's where i teach uh some of the the techniques and design thinking that i spoke about in that lecture that i described earlier and all of it can be found on my website www.valeriegoodwindart.com there is a specific place in the website that lists the virtual classes as well as the in-person classes and if you look on latest work you'll see some of my laser cut pieces and you also have an amazing instagram feed yes i have i sort of got myself in the habit of picking a theme every week and i look for works of art that are inspired by that particular theme as well as i post my process work and some other you know sort of miscellaneous items and that is instagram it's valerie goodwin art as well what are we exploring this week eggs uh that was last week that was last week cardboard sculpture i really love your feed it i find it very inspiring thank you thank you thank you very much for being on the show today i really appreciate your time and all the everything that you've said is just so helpful thank you so much karen for even thinking about me i really enjoyed my chat with you [Music] i hope you enjoyed my interview with valerie goodman i will put her contact information a link to her website and her instagram in the notes below soon she's going to have an online course and she already has a book about her map collage technique called art map quilts and i'll leave a link to that in the notes as well i know as i continue to explore quilting and what i like to do i'll remember this conversation to trust my inner voice and see where it leads me next up on karen's quilt circle is ursula mcclintock from ldh scissors and we are discussing everything you need to know about your scissors and your rotary cutters so be sure to subscribe so you'll be notified when it goes live if you like this video please give it a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell beside the subscribe button so that youtube will notify you when i make new videos you can also find me on facebook instagram and pinterest at jessica dunquiltz and of course sign up for my newsletter on my website at jessicademquilts.com so take care and i'll see you next time

Channel: Just Get it Done Quilts

Views: 25,288

Rating: 4.9475985 out of 5

Keywords: quilting, karen brown, just get it done quilts, quilting tutorial, beginner quilting, fast and easy, diy

Id: pt26X-hA2Nw

Length: 36min 0sec (2160 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 26 2021