AQS Quilt Stars Trunk Show with Kathy McNeil

hello everyone and welcome to a very special episode of aqs quilt stars trunk shows i am so excited to be coming from quilt city usa that's paducah kentucky for those of you who might not know to be talking with my friend the amazing quilt maker kathy mcneal and today's episode is going to be sponsored by our friend handy quilter handy quilter is going to be giving away an hq stitch 510 sewing machine so make sure you keep an eye on this you watch all the way through and you can find out how to enter to win that machine a little bit later but first kathy i'm so excited to be here with you in your new home how are you today i am doing great today thanks for coming to see my new home and to see mike wilson thank you handy quilter too this is a very very generous uh sponsorship we really appreciate it oh yeah absolutely we are so happy to have that friendship and that partnership and i'm so happy to have this friendship and partnership with you and so i'm ready to get started i know you have a lot of great quilts to show us and you are even going to give us a little bit of insight into your process i am so i want to just show at the very beginning a little bit about how my quilts come together which might be helpful to you as we go through the different quilts so we're going to focus down here generally my quilts start with me becoming you know infatuated with pandas or very curious uh about a certain scene or subject and then i do a sketch so that sketch is then um it's and it's not always a very finely detailed sketch it's um just a fun sketch for me to get started so that i can actually have you know cut out a panda's ear i can't cut out a face but this sketch goes up on my design wall it just gets pinned to my design wall and then as i make each little part of that it gets pinned over the uh over the piece of paper so i make everything in units so here's this little guy he is all turned edges i used the apple click method with the applique tools to turn over all my edges i would then take his little face and i would pin or glue base that you know to the next uh next piece um put the ears in and then i can either pin and glue bases a little bit i used to be able to take it to the hospital with me and then sew it on my brakes so i always start with my main characters first or my main section of a landscape first so then he would just get pinned right over the little drawing and then for me it's all about just having fun and collaging so i might just fussy cut out a bunch of different fabrics and then it's just a matter of playing so there's nothing behind this yet so you know i might put in try a bush see what that looks like i'm going to write in here i'll want to have enough contrast so that what's ever in there won't just get sucked up in this black so that really helps me pick fabrics and not get lost too maybe we need just for something a little different we'll put a rock in there but you know all of this is just let's see where this could go no i don't like that maybe something darker so it's just a matter of playing and then once i get those where i would like them so i'm happy with something like that then i would simply once again come back and pin and glue baste all of this little section of landscape to this little baby panda then i would start in another area and do another section so when i drew this the two little twin pandas are just sort of sitting up looking at each other but when i was playing around with him i decided that this guy just kind of wanted to chill out so i actually laid him back so you can see that he was supposed to be sitting up more but for me this is very much like flannel board in sunday school where you could move all the little characters around my grandchildren can come over they like to play on the design wall and move little birds or things about but that's giving me an opportunity to not have to have everything so absolutely worked out at the beginning and i can just be playful and have fun so he's this section is now sewn together this section would be sewn together so now all i have to do is applique this section to this section and then only at the end would i then put in sky and water and that allows me to also audition all of that so that i'm really happy with how that water is going to look so many quilt artists build from the back to the front and i tend to build from the front to the back so that's a little bit different so i can show you on this next big landscape quilt a little bit how that worked too kathy i'm so impressed to watch how easy you make that look and i i can tell everyone who's about to watch all these quilts that you don't have any quilt that looks like another one of your quilts they're all very different they all use a range of styles and you're always surprising us so thank you for showing us that i know people at home are going to be chomping at the vet to try to do that and let's go ahead and take a look at your quilt can you tell us about this first one so i'm going to show you a couple of story book quilts first and so this one this quilt started with a dream about great big old trees so i live a little north of seattle and i grew up in the mount baker national forest so we have huge trees that takes like four people you know to put their arms around and i woke up one time and i was thinking about what these trees must have seen over their lifetime because they're you know several hundred years old and i wanted to make this beautiful scene because i'm a nurse i don't have an art degree but i did love to go out in the forest when i was a little girl and draw pictures from my fairy tale books first can you grab my one um so this is when i first thought of it i thought of a little girl sitting under this big old tree looking um at her fairy tale book and ready to draw pictures there's actually which person i tried to show you but there's little ghost figures quilted into this quilt there's a couple kissing under the heart under this tree there's a native american hunting in the woods there's a little farmer who used to live in this cabin but it's all done in white thread and it just didn't show up on the webcam but i'll show you some hidden figures later too but so this book i started with my main character which was the big old tree and you can see there's probably maybe at least 20 fabrics in that tree because any time that you have your main character you want to make sure that it really has enough pizzazz and interest or bigger size or something um more contrasted it's really going to function as your main character so and then i wanted to try about flipped forest so that's what i was playing with here with some light coming down um in the forest so all of this is just collage like i just showed you lots and lots of individually fussy cut strips and um one is appliqued over the top over the top over the top until you've got this whole section made and that section would slide behind a tree and i would hand up okay that so only at the end did the sky section go under there but so um just a very uh wonderful memory of when i was a little girl and this quilt now belongs hey this quote now hangs on my granddaughter haley's wall and you guys met her the last time we were together she was uh doing her own little out so if you'll notice come here haiti look at that again so this is my granddaughter haiti and um she's always my help on these zooms is technical help but this is her quilt now and i didn't know when i made this quilt that i was going to have a red-headed little granddaughter so i think that that's really fun too that's so cool it's nice to see you and i i you match your hair matches at least from here almost exactly so what a cool thing to have and and kathy i have to say you know you've kind of explained your process to us but just looking at this quilt as a whole i would never be able to pick out those individual pieces or anything it looks like a painting and you feel like you could just walk right into that forest toward the sun sunrise or sunset whichever it might be it's just really really stunning even coming through online here it looks like you could reach out and walk into it and i also have to mention i'm really intrigued by the borders that you use because it looks like a picture frame it does and and i wanted this to look like a storybook quilt so the border was actually lives off of a panel piece i think it used to have horses or something in it the panel was about this big i think it took me eight of those panels to cut out and sew them together to make the border around it and then i enhanced the color of it was very um very light so i used my inktense pencils and there's a free video of that on my website of how to use those to enhance the color of that border too but yeah kind of gives it that storybook frame it definitely does it reminds me of the storybooks i read as a little girl and you're so resourceful with the different tools that you use so it's really cool to see thank you we'll show you another one and thank you while we're paused to everyone in the family who's helping out i know we have your husband bruce behind the camera we've got the girls helping switch out the quilts and so we're always it's a family affair here at aqs2 so we're always excited to see the whole family it is always a family affair here too and um we're so lucky that our new house is just right across the lawn from my daughter and her family so especially in this coba situation it's just been a heaven for us so well this quilt so this one's a storybook quilt too this one's pretty um you know a fantasy sort of a quilt but it did start the inspiration for this was bruce and i were biking and in the pacific northwest we don't have a foxes or at least i never saw one growing up way up in the forest the whole time i was little and we were biking out on our san juan islands and we had stopped for a minute for a break and in the field uh suddenly there appeared this beautiful beautiful red fox and i was so excited because i had never seen one in person and um it was amazing i thought that she would be very elusive and just take off and run away but she actually sat down and we were i don't know where's how far apart [Music] 50 feet yeah not very far and she sat down and we just looked at each other and it seemed like it lasted a really long time i'm sure it was only a couple of minutes but she was so pretty she um was fat and fluffy she had a big bushy tail there's lots of bunnies out there so i think she was eating well but we had this sort of like little connection and that just stayed with me all day that that was such a gift that she had come to visit me and had stayed there so then the whole thing about foxes i started dreaming about foxes i started reading up about foxes and what it means in different folklore and different customs throughout other countries what it means when a fox comes to visit you so both in celtic um lore and also in asian war the fox is a shape so she can go back and forth between being a woman and being a fox and what she represents is the moon goddess and and when you see a fox what it says to you in both those cultures is you need to look very quickly and assess what's going on in your life and a lot of times foxes get the bad rap of supposedly they're very cunning and actually in gaelic the word cunning is canning it means the wisdom of knowing the wisdom of understanding and another cool thing that happened when i was researching about celtic fox lord was that the name um is can be spelled also shona means the fox goddess and guess what my oldest daughter's name is i know [Laughter] so this is um purple and um it's really fun the hardest thing about this quilt was doing all this kelp uh celtic knot work in the quilting was really really hard to get it to overlap so i used different colored threads to figure out which binding which part of the thread i was on you can see we have a little owl these are her little buddies um and the one thing i wanted to point out was this area right here so i made her and she had to be magic so i made her with her you know her big scepter her wand i had a little globe on top that was all going well but then i thought but how can i out of fabric make something that looks like it's actually you know delivering a magic something magical is happening and i was in despair for several days trying to figure out what i could do in this area and you know what i found i went on etsy and there's a lady on there who actually takes pictures from the hubble uh telescope and this is a supernova and she just simply prints those pictures on fabric so i ordered that i cut it up and that's what all of this is is a supernova and it can't get too much more magical than that so you're absolutely right and that's where my eye went to immediately was on that supernova that's really cool to see and um i was just enchanted by hearing all the things that you found out about foxes and the different folklore and everything and how you brought it into this quilt and it is magical when you look at it and and people now who are watching at home will know what i was saying when we first started which is from one quilt of yours to the next it's just stunning to see how different they are and you can tell that they're connected by sort of maybe a theme of for example these are sort of storybook quilts or a pictorial theme but they're just also different and also surprising and it's just really fun to to see all right kathy so will you tell us about this next one yes so the next one so here's a another landscape so this is red rock country and um my sister judy and i uh when my momma died she asked us to spread some of her ashes in sedona it was one of her very favorite places to travel so my sister judy and i went there on a visit and we went up oak creek canyon where my little brother had spread the ashes and i was so amazed in this desert country um a red rock that when you went up that creek that there was so much greenery and it was just so beautiful and those rocks i mean for for a quilter it's all about color and the rocks were just glorious and they had all those different veins in it and i wanted to see if i could capture that with the creek this whole area so this quilt i won't ever sell this is a special quilt to me um so but i also had fun once again i like to hide all kinds of little details for viewers to find so after they kind of take in the whole quilt then i like them to come closer and start exploring so this quilt actually has seven little pocapellis um hidden in it bruce is going to show you a couple of them we'll come a little closer here so i just found some kokopelli fabric and then i cut it out and you can see there's two little coca pellets right here and there's five other ones hidden in the rocks along with some quilted um in hieroglyphic type uh images too that you find in that country from you know a couple hundred years ago or hundreds of years ago so but see all the different colors and different fabrics i think there's like 75 different fabrics in this quilt that's amazing yeah i can tell all the different fabrics that you used and i have to tell you the very first time we saw one of these quilts at our shows on the aqs staff was gathered around going oh look at the little guys the little coca fellas and so we were able to point them out and we all were kind of doing a scavenger hunt and so you're right it just makes it really dynamic and magical and something i want to comment on about this quilt you mentioned already all the different colors and everything but the way you have recreated the light coming in through that canyon is just really stunning can you give us any insight on how you plan out the way light moves in your quilts like this yeah i would love to so i teach landscape quilting and i have my quote class on how to take a photograph and then make that into a quilt and one of the most important things with landscapes is a sense of depth or perspective and what you need to do is usually you need to have a foreground area just like if you went to photography school you need a mid-ground area and you need an area that's you know way far away your most distant background area so foreground mid-ground and background and if you think of it that way then it's easy because that's how you choose your fabrics anything that's closer to you is going to have more detail because it's close to you and you'll be able to see it you know i can't see somebody's little designs on their shirt if i'm halfway across the room head needs to have more saturated richer colors so whatever your color palette is you know boost them up as you come forward and really mute those down as you go away and by muting those down it means you know they become lighter there's less detail um and really far away they almost get sort of fuzzy as they match up to the sky so it's simply a matter of knowing a few little tricks like that um and that i quilt class i think is really helpful for that so and in the foreground we really have these pots down here and you know they have incredible amount of detail on them so much so that i actually had to paint them i wasn't able to turn on those little tiny edges but but that makes it even the stream you see it gets lighter so that's a little helpful tip yeah absolutely because that's something that just draws me into that quilt is it looks like you have a light shining on it in the middle that light is so realistic and i'll tell folks out there who are watching that i quilt class is available online on iquilt.com and shop aqs.com you can get the dvd um and if you're an aqs member you'll save 20 on that so if you are interested in this kind of quilt making it's a great way to get started and kathy has so much information and a wealth of knowledge to share with you happy to do so okay let's get another one so this is an older quilt um and you and i talked about showing some of my less well-known quilts and this is another very a family quote that's really um close to my heart so as you know this um i have a two adopted korean children my adopted daughter um was on camera a little bit last time so when she was all grown up my baby girl and ready to go off to college i was just so you know so proud of her she just you know had she was amazing like my daughter my biological daughter they're both really amazing but i just you know it was my baby and she was leaving home and um i just loved her and i wish that so badly that i would be able to talk to her a birth mom and let her know that that maylie was fine and that she was such a interesting dynamic really smart um really fun uh girl and i wish that there was some way i could communicate that to her so i thought wouldn't how could i make a picture um which was sort of she was looking you know over our shoulder from somewhere and seeing that her um child that she had enough courage to let her go to a world of opportunities that maybe she wasn't going to be able to provide her and that how much she was loved so i made this quilt so it's me and meli and then the birth mom and her traditional korean outfit i covered her with silk organza just to try to see if i can make her a little more ethereal and push her back a little bit this is a big korean symbol back here there's a lot of asian sashiko designs into all of these little places so traditional quilted patterns from asia anyway um when bailey came home at thanksgiving she didn't know i was working on this quilt because i wasn't actually sure how she would feel about it um and i remember she came into the studio and she just stood there and she was silent for a really long time and i thought oh my god she hates it you know she isn't ready she didn't want to contact her birth mom and she is not going to like this at all and she finally turned to me try to say this she finally turned to me and she looked at me and she said mama you look so happy and that's always stayed with me that you know that hopefully i captured that part uh about how much joy she has brought to us so oh my goodness kathy i'm like i'm like tearing up at this too that's just a beautiful beautiful story and i know that you know that her birth mother would be so pleased to know the life that you've given her and the joy she's given you and it's just a really really beautiful quilt and you can tell by looking at it the feelings and the emotions of the two mothers far across the world from each other and that that daughter that they both loved so it's just such an incredible story and i thank you for sharing that with us so i named it courage because love takes courage in many forms so okay oh that's so lovely and yeah you do look happy i can say that that's true so this one i got it so one of my very dearest friends that um i was you know we had babies together and the kids have all grown up together they're all you know have their own families and stuff now but about five years ago um she got that horrible phone call that said that she had breast cancer and would need a mastectomy as soon as possible so i was working in the recovery room then and the surgeon i had chosen for her um had said that they wouldn't be able to do her surgery for two weeks and that period of time when you know that you have cancer in your body and you just want somebody to get it out of there is incredibly stressful and i noticed one day that he had a cancellation in his schedule so we got her surgery moved up uh to only for three days and just like all quilters when we really love somebody and they're hurting and and we don't know what else to do we make them a quilt so um i really messed myself up moving her up because then i had three days to try to make her a quilt a lap quilt so um but you she was being so incredibly brave and when we were in the pre-op holding area you know she was doing great and it was all about her daughter's wedding that was coming up and then as they came to get her the tears started rolling down her face and i was able to take this quilt out of a bag lay it on top of her on the stretcher and it went off to surgery with her it also went with her for all her follow-up treatments she decided to have breast cancer reconstruction and i was always by her side and it still hangs on the back of her couch so i borrowed it from her from the back of her couch and after a year when it was finally all done she said to her girlfriends she said you know i feel like i'm getting my life back and i'd really like to go dancing so i decided that um i would love to make her a quilt that took me a little bit longer but captured the amount of grace that i thought that she had faced that year with so i decided to make her the firebird from the ballet and the firebird is very much like the uh phoenix and the harry potter books it's a symbol of renewal and regeneration so bruce posed with her and and i made i captured the firebird from that russian ballet there's a little russian building right back here and you can see her foot is stepping out of the darkness the hardest part of this quote was her face i actually hate doing uh people and faces it always was really difficult for me but the thing i want to say so this book won a national award for best machine quilting but the thing that's really important to me is that katrina loves these quilts equally one was with her every single day of that very difficult year still hangs on her couch like i said and this one very fancy on silk dupioni you know took me probably 600 hours and won a big award and when i talk about these two i have pictures of them and i share when i go to guilds and what i like to say there's a beautiful quote by mother teresa and she says not all of us can do great things you know not all of us are going to cure cancer or win a nobel prize but each of us can do small things with great love and quilters are the best in the whole world at doing that we respond to every disaster we make hundreds of thousands of mass in this country and we i'm so proud to be a culture because we truly give give give in very very many small ways with lots of love so that is such a true statement and such a beautiful sentiment i have to make a comment about your friend and how brave she was and how wonderful of a friend you were to her and i can't believe you made that one quilt in three days but it's true that you know something that is simple and is with you is just as important as something that's won a national award because we put all of our love into it and quilts aren't just important for their technique or for their perfection they're important because of the love we put into them and because of the people that they wrap around and the beds that they sit on and it's just so so wonderful to be able to work with quilters and quilt artists and feel that love and know that we're all doing something good for each other so that's true quilters are the best people and we are so proud to be able to support them and and work for them yeah you know it's just i truly as a nurse um many of my patients open heart patients all the kids in the pediatric work i've got books from the local grill guild and i truly believe that you know they really have a lot of inherent healing properties because every stitch has that love in it so that's absolutely right and and kathy i'm going to take a quick break um right here and just i know that you have other quilts to show us and i'm so excited to see what you have to show us in the second half for now i want to say to everyone once again our sponsor for this wonderful trunk show is handy quilter and handy quilter you might not know makes home machines in addition to long arm machines and their sit-down long-arm machines so today they are very very generous to be giving away an hq stitch 510 sewing machine so all through the month of november you can go online to quilt week.com trunk show and enter to win that sewing machine it's going to be given away to one lucky winner and that's a home sewing machine which has over 1600 stitches a nine by six workspace it's a perfect machine for whatever you do whether you make a simple quilt to give to a friend that you love or something that you want to win a national award it can do it all so be sure once again go to quiltweek.com trunk show to enter for that and now let's have a word from our sponsor handy quilter hi i'm johnny from handy quilter's watch and learn quilt show have you heard about our newest machine it's the moxie it's a 15 inch throat space and comes on an eight foot frame perfect for a beginning quilter or for someone with limited space to learn more visit your local retailer or handyquilter.com thank you so much handy quilter we are so happy to be partnering with you and now kathy when you're ready i'm so excited to see what else you have to show us once again um i want to thank handy quilter and um and i hope i get to enter too that would be amazing so good luck everybody okay so this new quilt is called artistic license so when i teach landscape quilts i'm always always saying to my students you know it doesn't have to look exactly like the picture in fact your job as an artist is to put your own self into that scene you know put something that's part of your memory um put your favorite colors put you know your little hidden uh treasures or objects you know i they struggled so exactly to try to replicate it and i said you know if you want it to look exactly like this and blow up this photograph and hang it on the wall your job is to interpret that in fabric and bring yourself to it so i was in france um before covered i had the amazing job of getting to teach on um for quilt seminars at sea on their cruises and we were in france one year and i just love these old villages scenes with all the half timbered buildings and i wanted to um there was when bruce and i took a picture in colemar france we were watching there were different artists that were standing on the bridge and they were painting this little scene at this canal and i saw that different ones were interpreted in a different and i thought that would be a really cool way to make that statement about artistic license so if you can look at what he's painting he's painting a night scene in the daytime there's snow i'm not sure how much you can see snow and all the little buildings snow falling down and so he's painting a winter scene in summer and he's painting a night scene because he's seeing it with his own special unique way of seeing things and that's what we really want to encourage is and i think that's what people love about quilting is there are so many styles and so many techniques and such diversity and that you know we really want to encourage so um he's painting away but this quilt um was probably one of my hardest quilts i have ever made because it you had to do that um three-point perspective and with all of these little uh wood timbers things and stuff to get this one to have that depth and perspective um was a bloody nightmare and it was just so so hard um but i'm very pleased with how it came out and it won a award in uh at the last houston show but it's just this beautiful little uh village scene i love this quilt and i can imagine that trying to put all of those directional lines in it while you're trying to maintain the three-point perspective i'm just imagining like getting into it and being like okay i have a plan and then being like oh no so i can totally understand that emotion but i have to say i've seen this quilt and i've looked at this quilt so many times and it never occurred to me that he was painting the opposite of what he was seeing and so that's such a special part of it that we do we see it with our own perspectives but i was always just so stunned by the way you manage to make the painting look structurally different than the rest of the quilt because i i mean i can it looks like it's not quilted as heavily it looks like you've used um did you actually paint on the fabric yourself i did i painted it so i actually painted this scene and then it actually has some black tool over it just to um you know bring this forward and push that back a little bit so and it's only partially painted so some of it's sketched in some of it's painted because he's in progress yeah that it's just really really unique and fun to look at and once again you know every every single one of your quilts is so different and exciting to look at so this is definitely one of my favorites this and it is all applicator so you know i would make him as a unit and i painted this you know then his arm gets sewn to this you know and then i just started with the buildings um and would make one building and then when that was completely made then you know it would just get sewn to the next building behind it until we got to the cathedral so well that's what i was i was curious about because a lot of your quilts you can tell you can point out okay that's an applique unit that's an applica unit but this one there are so many fused together and and one you know all the buildings touch and so it doesn't look i couldn't parse it myself and it looks like it was a lot of work and but it turned out to be really really unique and magical thank you okay so remember how hard this one was for me and how end of it i was just like ready to tear my hair out so then you did something harder this is the one that came after it so this one is like okay we're gonna do something just crazy and fun and i'm not even gonna draw a picture this time um i love music um i often think that it can express feelings better than even talking about it um there's something about it and i love cellos um so i just decided to start with a big cello shape so um i sketched out a big cello shape but then i just started throwing stuff in there so i filled it in with some little blocks here and i had some fun here all kinds of different fabrics um so and you know then we put the french horn on there oh my gosh if you can ever get away with not working with golda mei um it's like putting socks on a rooster it is miserable [Laughter] well kathy i have to say just pause for a second i played french horn all through high school and you never see a french horn in a quilt and i was just so excited when i saw this one because i thought i felt very represented and loved yes so lots of fun you know i don't know crazy keyboard um and you know i just a couple guards are things and stuff so but i wanted bruce to come in close on this one because i also had a lot of fun with the quilting on it so one of the things i love about the modern quilts is um that you know everything doesn't have to be perfectly symmetrical from one block to another block or another area so with the modern quilting you know you can go behind the figure you can come on top of something but you're just kind of making it up as you go along so there is some ruler work here but but it's mostly just free motion and um it's just fun there's a lot more straight lines so it's not so scary like trying to do perfect feathers or anything it's just lots of fun little squares or triangles you just take your you know your little omni grid uh square or whatever you're using and you know i put in here's a little what are those things called i'm blanking on those treble clef um there's little bits of music so the background is crazy pieced out of all kinds of little different fabrics um and then um i had the last inspiration was to put little dancers in there too so these are little ultra suede little silhouettes of different types of dancing well and i know it's going to sound like i'm just gushing but i can't help it because the background i thought was one piece of fabric that you found like just a really cool dynamic piece of fabric but you pieced it and it comes together so well and it's so cohesive and yet it doesn't detract from the applique pieces at all and this this whole quilt just kind of gives um sort of a feeling of improvisation and feeling of freedom and looseness like the music that you might listen to so that's really cool to see and this is another one where when we saw it um at a contest we all were like oh that's cool who's that it's kathy mcneill you know it was just so different than what we had seen before so this is another one that just really shows the depth of your talent and the different techniques that you use and it's just you could look at it for hours well um or you could not look at it at all so one of my daughters uh really doesn't like it and the other daughter really loves it oh how funny that's hilarious well you know at least you've got one who loves it you know no it just shows you know that we all have you know beauty is in the eye of the beholder but it's fun to play it's fun to just jump out of your box sometimes do something a little crazy a little fun try a new technique um you never know where it might take you so that's absolutely right and while you're switching that out i'll tell people at home um you know if you're wondering what to get started on to work with or if you're not feeling super inspired use that advice and just play it's time right now to just play and see what brings us joy and make something that might be a little bit different might be a little bit out of our comfort zone but it's something that we can put some time into and a little bit of joy into so i hope that everyone plays too with what you're making and it's so important to play and i do really want to talk about that a little bit too because i really am a nurse at heart i'll always be a nurse i love to be in a nurse my oldest daughter is a nurse practitioner so i'm going to talk about that a little bit too so this quilt is called enzo so i just got really um inspired by the modern quilters and at first i will admit with some guilt that i was a little rudgingly about the whole thing and like really seriously and then you know it was so exciting because it was bringing so many younger cultures into our community whole fabric lines were being designed around it you know it was a really wonderful uh older quilters who are done you know doing the same old thing all the time really got out jumped out of their box and decided to play so i wanted to be part of that so the next this quilt and the next one or sort of my more modern interpretations but in asian calligraphy one of their most important symbols is an enzo so the goal of the artist the calligrapher is to load up his brush with a nice big a full brush of ink and then putting himself in that zone where you're freeing your mind of all of the stress and anxiety that's going on in the world and just allowing yourself to get involved in creating and creativity so you take that with that mindset you're taking that brush and the goal is to make one big circle with never coming off of the paper and just completing that flow all the way around so that's that's why i love this symbol um bruce has a black belt in taekwon and aikido so um one of enzo came home one day on his christmas card from his sensei and i wanted to try and do that i put the plum blossoms in because i wanted to say uh of a way to say that my appreciation for this style of quilts was really blossoming but so this is my enzo and then on the outside once again are all those uh traditional sashiko designs and these were marked and then i quilt all my own quilts on my domestic quilting machine but i could be tempted to use a handy quilter too so um but anyway um what i want to say is that there's so many studies that have been done from medical studies that when we get into that flow in that place in that zone where you're just having so much fun and you're playing with the shapes or having so much fun with color and you are able to just you know take a deep breath and leave this very you know difficult challenge that we're all facing in the world right now behind and just get into that zone of creating whether you're quilting or gardening or cooking whatever it is that does that for you there are many studies that say your blood pressure comes down your heart rate comes down your serotonin levels go up which is like taking an antidepressant and it is so good for our long-term memories as we get older to take on these interesting new challenges and and be playful so get in the flow get in that zone you know make time to do this it's a gift that you're going to give to yourself and to your families it's really good for us not something to feel guilty about that we went in while we were quilting this morning for you know three hours it's really important that's right and it's good for you not only mentally but physically because like you said your blood pressure can go down your serotonin levels can go up because you're doing something that calms you and that brings you joy and i think that's a great message to everybody especially right now during this time to like you said not put pressure on yourself and guilt on yourself but remember to go back to your roots of why you started this in the first place which was because it was something you loved and to create something that you love now let me ask you a question about this quilt just really quickly here i noticed the ring around the enzo there it looks like a gold ring um how did you do that is that couched or um is that a thread that you quilted so um i actually quilted in the circle first and then because that circle that little line circle was raised then i was able to paint that in with inks um so their tsukiniko gold ink there but having it raised away from the rest of the background in case your hand is shaking and you're about to mess up was helpful so yeah absolutely and i think that that's a really important design element of the whole piece because it sort of offsets what you already made it makes it not so um symmetrical that you feel like you're just looking at a circle within a circle and it really kind of brings the whole piece together so so interesting how a little line of quilting and those inks can make a big difference in it but i love this quilt it's it's another one that really stands out as different from what we normally expect to see and we think we're looking at a kathy mcneill quilt and i'm excited to know that you kind of jumped into the modern quilting thing and you were maybe a little skeptical at first as a lot of people are and that you found an appreciation for it and you were able to let your love blossom yeah so this is my daughter maybe's quote this is one that she wants so they each get to pick whatever they want so can you adopt me as one of your daughters because they're all getting a lot of quilts how wonderful that everybody can share the love of it though that's really wonderful that you are giving them away and that they're finding cherished homes so this one's pretty modern very modern um this one's called bliss and joseph campbell said something about if you find your bliss um it'll open doors for you that you never realized were closed so versus bliss is climbing mountains and my bliss is quilting so um i tried to put a mountain shape here you know sort of a rising moon shape and then i love trees so these were sort of representative trees but basically you know really good design i love teaching classes on design and i love it when aqs lets me do that um is basically down to interesting lines interesting shapes and interesting colors and modern quilts have all of that they're really powerful you know graphic designs often so this one once again i really had fun with that modern quilting style i have a a new dvd my newest dvd that chris and i produced is on modern quilting because there are just so many straight lines you know some intersecting circles we don't care if they overlap they don't have to be perfectly symmetrical they could overlap they can get bigger they can get smaller um and it's just it's so much easier um to quilt those this in this style so i i love this modern quilt i um i'm really pleased with how it came out so i love this one too it it's just amazing to me that you didn't really make modern quilts and then one day you were like i'm going to try to make some modern quilts and then you made two really really stunning modern quilts that really incorporate the elements that you think of when you think of modern quilting which is simplistic quilting designs something that you can look at and maybe it doesn't look so complicated to the eye but when you sort of think about the construction of it and you look at the way that it's built it becomes something that's really really dimensional and i love looking at this one in the way that again you've managed to offset it so that it's you have a knack for design in that way because it to me i would be like okay i'm going to put on a mountain and this mountain is going to go in the middle and then i'm going to put in the sun and it's going to go to the side but it becomes so much more dynamic to look at with the way you've offset it and the way you've created it and again another tribute to what you love and what bruce loves so i really do love this quilt and um i love those modern quilters and i love sharing their enthusiasm so it's really fun now that that i know kind of what they're playing with and doing it too well as you're switching out i'm going to say um kathy one of the things that i think i love most about you and there's a lot of things but one of the things that i really love is just the joy that you bring to everything that you do and and you know people who are watching won't know this but every time we talk you're just so joyful and so kind and so loving and that comes out in what you do and what you create because like with the modern quilts you were thinking okay i think i could find something fun to do in this and so you just tried it and that's just a great example to all of us is to find joy and just live your life in a way that you can make something joyful and we all are going to try to be more like you kathy in that way well not more like neither thank you so much but when people come up to us filters and they say no i don't have a creative bone in my body and you have such a gift you know you're amazing with color you know your gift is just you know how you quilt uh how you do your quilting designs and i know that my greatest gift is that i found something that i truly love that when i wake up in the morning and if i have time to quilt it makes me so happy and think of how many people we know that have never found something that just brings them such joy and makes them so happy and that's our greatest gift and i love that quilters share that and teach others and um and you know and embrace all kinds of styles and techniques it's all good it's all fun it's all wonderful that's absolutely right and it really does it shines through in what you create thank you well after um after um my quote with the two horses one in paducah um i did i still love horses and that one um was sold but when we were once again on that trip to france um i fell in love with a donkeys and um i was thinking that i really like to have a miniature donkey someday but they're a lot of work so what if i just quilted some donkeys and i love how they dress them all up you know with flowers and ribbons and stuff and then there were all these geese running around with the donkeys in these beautiful little old stone you know farm yards so when i came back from that trip i decided to do a pair of donkeys and this quilt's called long ears because a lot of people who love donkeys call them just call them the long ears so and this is my little couple and they're all dressed up for a party and the geese are all dressed up and there's about seven little gosling talking all around on the fences the grandkids had fun with those just pinning them up on the wall and so they hopped all over this scene but um but this one is just another one of those um kathy back under the tree um playing with her storybill her fairy tale books and and trying to draw those kinds of pictures so yeah it's very it's very um whimsical and fairy tale like and i love those donkeys too i want to reach out and pet their ears they look so soft and i'm a big animal lover like you are i had to tell my husband the other day that i nearly ran off the road because i was trying to look at cows in the truck next to me so very good so and um last time we were on together um i was saying that haley had helped me make all of these prairie points so when i was trying to figure out a border i wanted to do something a little bit more than just the traditional sort of fabrics so how many did we make haley there's like a lot of fairy a lot of breakfast she got really good at helping me fold them and and i earned them so lots of fairy quests probably around 100 prairie points or something so that was lots of fun so um this um quilt will uh hopefully when we open back up shows then um i'll be able to share this one with people too it hasn't hasn't been on the road yet so yeah i can't wait to see it in person and the prairie points bring a really unique aspect to that and and for some reason they seem to connect the kind of cottagey traditional um aspect of the quilt anyway to see a traditional quilt element that way so another great family affair thank you haley for your work on those prairie points sometimes you know when you can't figure something out just try the wackiest thing that comes to your mind like okay well i'll just put some prairie points in there pointing you know inside and see what happens with that and then the last time so this starts in the big reveal it's our last quilt so remember last time i showed you the little girl that i was doing crazy cooking on yes i do oh my goodness you it's come so far and i'm so excited to look at this one for those of you who are who are watching and maybe didn't see the first interview we have a video up in our quilting stars videos with kathy mcneal where we did a tour of her studio and she showed us when she was working on this quilt so i'm so excited to see it now so her her little dress is all a crazy quilting so it's crazy feast and i haven't done that for a long time so then i put in all of those wonderful hand embroidered crazy stitches have lots of fun doing that but this quote is about a little girl who's giving a present to santa instead of the other way around it's called the gift and i have great fun with santa's outfit um doing some sort of like scandinavian sort of different designs and stuff on it um and it's got lots of embellishments the little party points up here are three dimensional so i've got the top done you can see and now i have to i'm auditioning borders and trying to figure out what we're doing next so um even the bunnies have little gifts to give so i absolutely love this quilt it's so sweet and it's just like looking into a storybook and i didn't realize at first that she was giving the gift to santa how sweet is that what what um inspired you to make this are you just thinking about christmas or what made you want to create this quilt christmas is my favorite holiday my mama loved it and i always decorated heavily for it and made five thousand cookies that we can't eat anymore but um i this is i think my sixth winter uh christmas quilt um the other ones have all gone to new families and homes but this one is going to stay in the family um and there's lots of special little um treasures when i started with a little girl she was gonna be a little scandinavian blonde little girl and um my adopted daughter maybe said well why does she have to believe bottom bomb so now she has black hair and there's just some little different things it's the one that i made during copenhagen the one that i made while i was in shawna's living room so all of the everybody had sort of part of it um the face i had a complete meltdown for like over a week but i couldn't make it and everybody was so supportive or would come and give me little comments or well you know when you add this or add that so um it's going to stay in the family and i'm and i have lots of fun with it so i just wanted to give you a little peek of where we had come since last time we talked so well that's such a special quilt and can i um get you to tell me just for a second about that pieced background i think that's really unique and beautiful um i love those piece backgrounds and um because they do add a sort of a dynamic element and anytime i have a composition that actually actually has a fair amount of sky in it you want to be really careful that in some way it doesn't just fall flat you will put one big piece of sky fabric in it and this size it's going to have a tendency to just fall flat so sometimes mixing different fabrics or you know painting over some fabric using my fabric gates that i love so much or doing this because then i can you know change i can go from lighter to horizon line to darker as i get up so these i actually pieced all by myself on the sewing machine they're not applicated like everything else is because i'm not very good at piecing but um so these are all just little two two and a half inch diamonds and um from lots of different fabrics and then i did paint the little snow on them so but don't look too close the points don't match always that's okay you wouldn't be able to tell anyway because you're right it just creates a dynamic background scene and i imagine if you did just use one big piece of fabric it would detract from the detail and the complexity of the rest of the quilt so i'm so excited to see this one and i can't wait to see it when it's totally finished you'll have to show us you'll have to send me a picture or something so that i can see it and i wish i could just reach out and touch it because so much of it looks like it's tangible and and tactile and and fun so it's it's been such a pleasure to look at this it's full of joy just like you and kathy i've had so much fun today i've loved seeing all of your quilts and talking with you i have to say i definitely miss you i miss seeing you in person i usually get to see you at least once a year yeah i know it's gonna be a it's a long time i miss all my quilters i miss my dear friends like you that i've worked with so big hugs to you uh liz and big thanks to everybody out there we will be back together that's right i can't wait for that day and um one more thing i want to just say thank you again to handy quilter for sponsoring this program we are so excited to be able to partner with you and also if you haven't yet which i know that you haven't because you've been watching this uh this wonderful this wonderful trunk show go to quiltweek.com trunk show to enter to win that hq stitch 510 and before we say goodbye kathy could we maybe get your granddaughters and your other family helpers in the view so i can say hi to them i don't know bruce can you get around the camera you bet i can i've got a tripod perfect thank you so much dana wants to come to paducah not this coming christmas but the next christmas for sure oh i would love that so much you guys can come to my house thank you thank you to everybody and it's been so fun and i can't wait till i see you all again so from quilt city usa this has been quilt stars trunk shows thanks to kathy and we'll see you next time you

Channel: quilttv

Views: 3,589

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: AQS, QuiltWeek, Quilt, Week, American Quilter, Quilt Show, Paducah, American Quilters Society, Quilting, sewing

Id: lews85vfOGY

Length: 61min 23sec (3683 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020