Interview with Marsha McCloskey, March 13, 2008

Partial Transcript: This is Karen Musgrave, and I am doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Marsha McCloskey. Marsha is in Eugene, Oregon, and I'm in Naperville, Illinois, so we are conducting this interview by telephone.

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey describes her creative process for designing and making the touchstone quilt, "A Day with Beebe," which involved using fabric from the person she was honoring to get a sense of that person's personality. She describes the quilt, including the symbols that appear in it and some minor construction errors, which she decided to leave in, as a reflection of the "Forgetting Piece by Piece" theme of the exhibit.

Keywords: "A Day with Beebe"; Alzheimer's: Forgetting Piece by Piece

Subjects: Quilts

Partial Transcript: There is a CD that accompanies the exhibit, and the artists were all required to record their art statement, because there's an audio component.

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey discusses her artist statement and the process of making it and its content. She uses the death of the protagonist in the movie Blade Runner as an analogy for the loss of memories by Alzheimer's patients.

Keywords: Artist statement; Quilt shows/exhibitions

Subjects: Alzheimer's disease

Partial Transcript: What do you plan to do with the quilt when it comes back?

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey discusses what she will do with her touchstone quilt once it is returned to her, how she started quilting, and the impact of home renovations on her quilting time.

Keywords: Broken Dishes - quilt pattern; Machine piecing; Machine quilting; Singer Featherweight sewing machine; Time management

Subjects: Quiltmakers

Partial Transcript: Now, someone else quilted Beebe's quilt. Is that typical of you now?

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey discusses having long arm quilters finish quilting her pieces. She has developed her quilting experience into a profession and teaches quilting workshops, designs fabric, writes books, and features her work on a website. However, McCloskey says that she never learned to machine quilt well. She prefers to send her quilts out to other people in order to have them finished by more skilled quilters. Musgrave mentions the early taboo of long arm quilting, but McCloskey notes that there are very skilled and artistic long arm quilters.

Keywords: Long arm quilters; Long arm quilting; Published work - Quilts; Teaching quiltmaking

Partial Transcript: What advice would you offer someone starting out?

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey says that her advice to people starting out as quilters is to be guided by their passions and to try to find a particular small area of focus where they can develop real expertise, such as McCloskey's experience with the Feathered Star quilt. Because the craft encompasses so much, the biggest challenge for quilt makers is to choose what they will do. McCloskey predicts that quiltmaking will continue to cyclically go through periods of revival. She thinks that marketing at the time of the interview was pushing very simple quilts, so as to draw in younger people with little or no experience, but predicts that new quilters who continue to quilt will eventually want to move on to more difficult patterns.

Keywords: Feathered Star - quilt pattern; Star quilts

Partial Transcript: Describe your studio.

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey describes her home studio. When asked about the relative tidiness or messiness of her creative process, McCloskey says that she prefers to start working in a tidy space, but once she gets into the project "all bets are off." McCloskey discusses other quilters who she admires including Judy Mathieson, Gwen Marston, Judy Martin, and Sharon Yenter. McCloskey says that the most important influence on her work are earlier quilters who worked from the 1790s to the 1920s.

Keywords: Design walls; Fabric stash; Gwen Marston; Home studio; Judy Martin; Judy Mathieson; Quiltmaking inspiration; Sharon Yenter; Studio

Partial Transcript: What do you think makes a great quilt?

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey discusses the aesthetics of a great quilt. She says that it "holds your attention" due to how much is happening in it. She says that her family thinks that her quilting is neat, but also "takes it for granted." No one in her family is interested in taking up quilting themselves.

Keywords: Family; Quilt aesthetics

Partial Transcript: What are your plans for your quilts?

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey expresses concern about the long-term disposition of her quilts. She usually gives her quilts away, rather than selling them. She has some quilts she uses in teaching and some she would like to hold onto, but others she would like to go elsewhere. She believes that some of her quilts should be in museums and mentions that a museum did, in fact, buy a group of quilts that included one of hers. When asked if she thinks of herself as an artist or a quiltmaker, or if she makes that distinction, she replies that she does not. There are elements of both art and craft in her work. McCloskey adds that she is also a businessperson. A lot of her quilt designs are intended not for her own use, but for that of other people. McCloskey says that she enjoys writing, and that her writing is largely technical, as it gives specific instructions. She finds her teaching experience informs her writing.

Keywords: Quilt Purpose - Gift or presentation; Quilt Purpose - Teaching or learning sample; Quilt design; Quilt patterns; Quilts as gifts; Teaching quiltmaking

Subjects: Art and craft debate

Partial Transcript: Do you belong to any quilt groups?

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey says she belongs to her local quilt guild, but she can hardly ever get to meetings and has not yet found a local small quilting group. She is still technically a member of a small quilt group named the Monday Night Bowling League in Seattle, where she used to live. That quilt group includes a number of other writers, with most members designing quilts and writing for the Patchwork Place, a business run by Nancy Martin. McCloskey names several of the other members including Sarah Nephew, Nancy Martin, Mary Hickey, and Joan Hanson

Keywords: Joan Hanson; Mary Hickey; Monday Night Bowling League; Nancy Martin; Patchwork Place; Quilt guilds; Sarah Nephew

Partial Transcript: Why is quilt making important to you?

Segment Synopsis: McCloskey says that it is hard for her to explain why quiltmaking is important to her, as it is so much a part of her life, and she has been doing it for forty years. McCloskey addresses the topic of unfinished projects, since she thinks many quilters work on multiple projects simultaneously and feel guilty about the ones they have not finished yet. She gives as an example a quilter who said that it took her two days to finish a quilt, but that the second day was seventeen years after the first. McCloskey herself has several quilts that she set aside and then developed the design idea for completion years afterwards. McCloskey thinks that these delays are sometimes due to the quilter's realizing that she does not yet have the skills necessary to finish the quilt in the way it should be finished. Quilters in that position may put the quilt aside until they feel that they have the necessary skills. Sometimes quilters may not have the "right fabric" and that fabric might not appear for a significant period of time. McCloskey argues that it is important to know when a piece of work "just isn't ready to be finished." In a quilt book McCloskey wrote in the 1980's, she talked about triple feathered star quilts. She says she always wanted to make one, but did not know how to draft a pattern for one. It took seventeen years before she could design it. McCloskey sees the creative process as something that takes its own time. She says that even when she puts aside projects, they remain active in her mind, as she considers different possibilities for working with them.

Keywords: Design process; Feathered Star - quilt pattern; Time management; unfinished objects (UFO)

Partial Transcript: I do believe personally that we in America are much more product-driven than process-driven.

Segment Synopsis: When Musgrave asks McCloskey if she would agree that in the United States we are "much more product-driven than process-driven," she replies that quiltmaking classes typically focus on completing something. She asserts that if a class focuses more on learning how to do something than on completion, that fewer people take it, "because people want to know that they're going to have something to show." In response to Musgrave's comment that she hopes it will change, McCloskey says, "Well, it's not getting any better." She adds that her approach as a teacher is to give people the opportunity to make something, while they're learning the skill or the process, in the hopes that they will take more than the quilt away with them from the class.

Keywords: Quiltmaking process; Teaching quiltmaking; quiltmaking classes