Interview with Lisa Shepard Stewart

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Lisa Shepard Stewart. Lisa is in Rahway, New Jersey and I'm in Naperville, Illinois so we are conducting this interview over the telephone. Today's date is January 20, 2009. It is now 1:59 in the afternoon. Lisa, thank you so much for doing this interview with me today. I just think it is so wonderful that we are going to be talking about Fiber Artists for Obama on the day of the inauguration. Tell me about "Fiber Artists for Obama."

Lisa Shepard Stewart (LSS): Karen, thank you for the opportunity. It has been a real journey just being part of the Obama campaign and combining that with my own passion for fabric. It's been really exciting. Actually I started the group Fiber Artists for Obama when I was looking at his website in general probably back in March or April of '08 and realized how easy it was to create a group. I mean there was Chihuahuas for Obama, all kinds of groups, crazy ones and serious ones. You can just pick the ones that you gravitated toward or create your own. Fiber artists! I knew there would be so many expressions of Obama in the quilt world and I just felt it would be a fun way to combine my two passions, the quilting/fiber arts and this whole Obama campaign. So I created the group. I put together a logo, just using clip art and then I sent a little email out to some people that I knew, 'Hey, I'm starting this group--' I didn't even know what we were going to do yet, I just felt like fiber art and Obama was a great mix. It was really exciting day by day, to see people signing up for it and I'd confirm with my husband, 'Look there are two more people today.' It just kind of grew. Once we got somewhat of a group, I forget how many, maybe about 30 people, so we started sharing ideas of what we could do as a group. Should we do a group project? Should we do individual projects? At first it was a little daunting to harness everybody because we had so many different styles. Almost like a tapestry or a quilt, there are different elements that you bring together. We decided to do a quilt first and again being Fiber Artists for Obama, I also welcomed needle artists, knitters and crochet people, needlework people in general but mostly we got quilters and that was fine with me. We decided to do a quilt (naturally) so we thought that each person would contribute a block. Again with so many different styles and that whole mosaic theme that encompassed Obama's candidacy and his whole philosophy which I thought was great. The question was, how do we take all of that and harness it and make it a cohesive look. Then the emails started flying fast and furious on how to make the quilt look like everybody had contributed and make it visually appealing. It was a free for all; [laughs.] the email exchange was intense over I guess a couple of weeks. This was in May of '08 and we decided we needed some parameters. We wanted to have everybody have their own look and their own individuality naturally, but again have it look like it all belonged on the same quilt. We finally decided on the color purple-blue, like a violet color, to kind of bring everybody's blocks together. We were each going to try to incorporate that. Also we all decided that we would take a word or a phrase from the campaign, whether it was "Hope" or "Change." I chose "Fist Bump" [when Michelle and Barack bumped fists on the evening he earned the Democratic nomination.] We had all kinds of words, "Obama'mama" and "Positive" and "Hussein," "Go'bama," "ProBama," "Together," "Si, Se Puede" "Dream," "Unity," "Diversity," and more. We decided the blocks would be twelve inches square and then we would join them again with that uniting color of violet blue and then the sashing and the borders to kind of bring it all together. That is how it began. And it has been a real journey. There was variety in the details and techniques, but the blocks all really did work together. I think part of that is because of the color and the few rules we did try to adhere to, without having too many rules. I think it worked out beautifully!

KM: How many people participated?

LSS: We actually had fifteen blocks completed by the deadline of June 13, 2008 and we didn't have a very big window of time to get it together because we did want to have it completed and we knew we would need time to have the blocks joined, plus the sashing and finishing. We didn't want to drag it out for too long because then lives get in the way and we wanted to keep up the momentum. We wanted to get it done! Each person signed the front of her block, including name, city and state, so that we could always see who is involved. One of our members, Diana Bracy volunteered her aunt, Mary Bowman [laughs.] to join the blocks. She was the first person to see everything together so I think that was kind of fun for her I think. We decided to donate $5.00 each to Mary for supplies. It worked out really well. At first I was hoping really that we would get more than fifteen, but when I saw the ones that we got I realized that was the right number, and it was going to be a beautiful quilt. Even if we only had four blocks, however many blocks we had, it was going to be great. [The participants include (in alphabetical order): Diana Bracy (Las Vegas, Nevada), Carolyn Bunkley (Detroit, Michigan), Gerrie Congdon (Portland, Oregon), Cherryl Floyd-Miller (South Carolina), Lynette S. Jackson (Marietta, Georgia), Erma Johnson (Chicago, Illinois), Caron Lage (St. Cloud, Minnesota), Monna Morton (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Sharon Rogers (Decatur, Georgia), Lisa Shepard Stewart (Rahway, New Jersey), Susan Shie (Wooster, Ohio), Jacqueline Stafford (Suitland, Maryland), and Rita Strickland (New York City, New York); Blocks sashed by: Mary Bowman and her daughter, Stephanie Scott (Riverside, California); Borders, quilting and binding by: Maria C. Shell (Anchorage, Alaska).]

KM: What are the plans for the quilt?

LSS: The quilt actually traveled to Quilt Festival in Houston, to be shown there as part of an exhibit of political quilts. Naturally, with Quilt Market happening just before the election, there was a whole lot of hype for political quilts. The quilting world always reflects what is going on at the time so that was naturally just a big theme. We actually have it going to another exhibit, called "President Obama: A Celebration in Art Quilts." This one will be in Silver Spring, Maryland at the Cafritz Art Center of Montgomery College, from February 9 through March 5, I believe of this year. That is going to be a huge event and I believe they are doing a book. I just got an email that an exhibit publication may be in the works, and that is going to be one of the major stops for this quilt as for all the other ones that are involved in it. After that, it's showing from May 8 through July 10 in an exhibit called "Invisible Thread" at the Faso Gallery of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri. The director, Sonie Ruffin, is presenting an all-out fiber art event with various artists, with classes and special events. I'll be at the opening event on May 8, and I'll be teaching during that first weekend, too. Can't wait!

KM: What will ultimately happen with it?

LSS: We intend to present it to the First Family. Until then, it's available to the FAFO [Fiber Artists for Obama.] group members who have an event or would like to borrow it to have it shown. Right now I believe that these are the only two events that we have confirmed, but as people kind of put more events together then we would like it to travel more. Once that dies down, we would like to present it to the first family. It's also scheduled for inclusion on one or two online "Obama Quilt Galleries." Don't you love that phrase?

KM: Who quilted it?

LSS: The quilting was done by Maria Shell in Anchorage, Alaska. She did the borders, did the borders, the quilting and the binding. She really did a phenomenal job on the quilting. I mean the texture and movement she added to it really unified the blocks further. Everyone did a really fabulous job.

KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking.

LSS: I started quilting about ten years ago and I probably started unlike most quilters. It all began as part of my job requirements, believe it or not. I worked for a company called HTC (a manufacturer of sewing and craft interfacings, battings and stabilizers and stuff like Stitch Witchery). I was the creative director and part of my job was to test the products, write instructions, make projects and all that. So I came into the quilting as a professional necessity but I kind of took to it personally. I just love it, especially the African textiles, which is what I consider my specialty. I would take African fabrics and plug them into more basic quilting techniques. For instance, watercolor quilting where you arrange two inch squares to create an impressionist painting, with the light, medium, and dark calicos. I instead used African prints, each is vibrant and rich and you would think they'd fight each other. But when you have them in that scale of two inches, it really gives the technique whole other look. I began to kind of play with African prints in other techniques, classic blocks like Drunkard's Path, anything like that and getting the really different results, so I just kind of took to that and have been doing it ever since.

KM: Tell me about Cultured Expressions.

LSS: Cultured Expressions is my company, promoting the creative use of African textiles. I started it with my first book, "African Accents: Fabrics and Crafts to Decorate Your Home." The book actually is ten years old this year, believe it or not, and I still keep doing the math. It can't be ten years already! [laughs.] It just went way to fast and I had too much fun. It was published in 1999 by Krause Publications, and it's really the first book to showed people how to decorate their homes and actually make things using the African fabrics. I'd been in the sewing/craft industry at that point for about 10 years already and I realized that there were plenty of books that showed you how to make pillows or make curtains or table settings, but none of them really addressed a culturally relevant look. They were all very formulaic: 'Take this flower and this stripe and this plaid and here's your room.' Kind of pretty, but not my look at all. If you came to my house, you would see like mud cloth and Korhogo fabric from the Ivory Coast and you would see Kuba fabric which is hand woven raffia from Central Africa. I sewed my own pillows, made room screens and things like that. "African Accents" came about when people began to ask me 'Where did you find that pillow?' It was something made of mud cloth, fairly simple and I would say, 'Well I made it.' 'Well, how did you make it?' When people see the combination of African fabrics with simple techniques, it really gets their minds going. They begin to think more creatively about things that they can do. It is really a dramatic work because the fabric does a lot of the work for you. You can do a really cute pillow, or a very easy quilt block and the fabric is so dramatic it does the work for you literally, [laughs.] which is what I kind of like. African textiles are great for beginners too, in that sense.

KM: Let's go back to "Fist Bump". Tell me how you put it together. Tell me about the creative process that went into creating "Fist Bump."

LSS: I thought the fist bump was just a great moment. Just the fact that they used that form of, I guess you can call it an affectionate kind of a gesture. I thought it was fun. A lot of people had never seen or heard of a fist bump which I also thought was fascinating. [laughs.] Part of the cultural divide maybe, I'm not sure. Anyway, it just showed how comfortable they were with each other and I just liked that whole moment. I thought it was kind of funny that it became such a big deal in the media. Reactions like, 'Oh my god what are they doing? Is that some kind of a secret signal? So I took that as one of the big buzz words of the campaign. I did a photo transfer of Barack and Michelle as they were bumping fists and I thought it was great that she wore a purple dress actually because we were doing that purple, indigo, violet theme as the cohesive part. I thought, 'Okay perfect! It's a great picture, I can use it.' I also photo transferred the text on the top, "First Family" and the bottom, "FISTBUMP," in really bold letters. I placed them over a deep purple batik circle, almost like a moon. I love full moons. You see a lot of circles in my work. This was more of a dark full moon, against the lighter blue background. Something else I incorporated towards the top of the block. There is a piece of gold metallic, almost like a mesh fabric that contains a little message of protection for the Obama family, written on muslin. It is a very simple handwritten message, folded and placed inside the gold fabric and stitched to the block. I had been doing that little kind of hidden message amulet kind of effect on some of my work and it did give a little more power to the piece and a little more of myself I guess. I was just starting to experiment with putting little messages in quilts, whether I might write it sometimes and roll it into a fabric bead and hide it into a corner. At the same that this whole thought was emerging I was doing the block and I included it there. I just did some hand stitching with embroidery thread, just some running stitches on the block and some little yarn knots, that kind of thing. It is not a heavy technique kind of a block, but I felt it was pretty powerful.

KM: Would you be willing to share what you wrote on your little amulet piece?

LSS: Not really. [laughs.]

KM: That is fine.

LSS: It is just a little message of protection like I said for the family because they just needed the protection. I think a lot of people are contributing to the same vibration and I think there is so much protective energy around the family that they are going to be fine, I really believe that. Just doing my part for the spiritual cause, you could say.

KM: Tell me why full moons. What about full moons attracts you?

LSS: Full moons. I think it is just the spherical shape. When the full moon comes I just find myself staring. I could stop what I'm doing and I'm just like transfixed for however long. [laughs.] It feels calming yet distant feeling that I get. I just love full moons. The first quilt I ever did had one. My favorite quilts that I've done all have some representation of a full moon. I have one with an appliqud lime green moon. It's just my thing. [laughs.] It comes out in the quilting.

KM: Do you belong to any art or quilt groups?

LSS: I'm a charter member of the quilters guild in my area which was, they usually meet in Montclair, New Jersey which is the Nubian Heritage Quilt Guild and I say a charter member because I was there kind of from the beginning but I haven't been to a meeting so long. [laughs.] I guess forgive me for missing the meetings just because they know things are hectic with the business and all that. If I had to think of, whether I had a home base for quilting that would be the group that I would think of. I'm involved in a lot of lists online. The Fiber Artists for Obama obviously is one of the lists I'm involved with and also the QuiltArt list. Are you familiar with them?

KM: Um, hum.

LSS: QuiltArt and there are some others that I just try to keep up with and see whose doing what and when I get a chance I click on someone's blogs, keep up with people who are doing different things and events that are coming up. There is so much information out there it's hard to keep up. That's my only like regret [laughs.], that I can't just suck it all in at once. It gets hard, but I do try to keep up with things and people. Not so much at physical meetings because they are just hard to get to for me but the whole online experience has really changed fiber art. You can exchange in so many ways that you couldn't before, to connect with people. I mean there are people I consider friends whom I've never met face to face. I think that is kind of the dual power of the internet and fibe arts together, so that is kind of fascinating.

KM: Let's go back to Fiber Arts for Obama. What has happened with the group since the quilt has been completed?

LSS: It's definitely time for a new project! I'd love for us to do another quilt, or possibly fiber postcards? Something tied to a charitable contribution or other community service goal would be a natural progression for us I think. While we were doing the first quilt, one of the non-quilters in the group said, 'Well hey, what about us? What can we do?' and I didn't want to seem like I blowing it off because the quilting was really my focus, and she did fiber arts but not quite quilting. I said, almost going back to Obama's theme, people getting involved and starting their own thing if it's not in existence already and I tried to impart that. I'm not sure if anything else had been done with the group on the non-quilting level. Then, since mid-July I hadn't been involved with the group at all. My father had a massive stroke and my priorities shifted overnight. I just kind of dropped out, was very preoccupied with that so I wasn't as active as I would like to have been. Diane Bracy, Susan Shie and some other members kept it going and I really do appreciate the continued momentum. Even though I founded the group, I didn't have to be there every second for it to continue.

KM: How many people are involved in the group?

LSS: We have 201 members, believe it or not! When we were getting the guidelines together for the quilt back in May '08, like I said e-mails were going fast and furious. We probably had I would say maybe thirty or forty at that point. The group has just grown and I think there is some offshoots. We do have a basic mailing list that I follow via digest, every day you can see the conversations and it was quiet, but we're picking up speed again! I think people have just been inundated between the economy, the holidays and just life in general. There are still some activities going on.

KM: Do you see the group staying together?

LSS: I believe we will. I think right now that people are stopping to take a deep and well-deserved post-inauguration breath. It is the reality now and we can exhale just a little bit. That it's a reality. It's "Yes We Did" and yes, we will continue to do more. So, I think we are about to see the next wave of Obama inspired artistry. I was a vendor at the Philadelphia [Pennsylvania.] International Art Expo back in November and it included all kinds of Obama art. Really not much fiber art but there were a lot of painters, sculptures and that thing and if I could count the number of Barack Obama inspired or Obama family inspired art pieces there were, it was amazing. I don't think that is going to go anywhere, whether it is fiber art or otherwise.

KM: Why do you think he has inspired so much art?

LSS: I guess because he gets to the core and connects naturally, it's like effortless. Like I was saying to my husband last night, he was just Chosen. It goes beyond even election results, he was chosen by higher power long before the primaries, [laughs.] like nothing could stop him. I think people are just ready for it. It is just interesting how many people are ready. Today I was watching the inauguration like everybody else, and the sea of people on the screen was extremely surreal.

KM: It was amazing.

LSS: It was very interesting.

KM: Describe your studio.

LSS: My studio? Do I have to? [laughs.] Quiet chaos. What is interesting with my studio is that unfortunately it combines the business and my own personal studio spaces A lot of times I'm preparing either for a trunk show or to vend some place or prepping for a workshop. I do some workshops here in the house and I travel all over and do them also, so studio is always in a state of flux, whether it is merchandise or samples being made, whatever. It is not as much the quiet creative space I would like it to be. [laughs.] I may have to find a second space in the house, the under used dining room or some place, and just have a place where I can just create for me. I need that. With that comes the need for time to just create for me, so it's a challenge. It is not your average studio because it is so business based, even though I love it as a business, so no complaints!

KM: Tell me about the workshops you teach.

LSS: My African Mosaic workshop is my most popular. I actually have a kit that people use in the class, based on the 2-inch watercolor technique so you are using the pre-printed fusible grid interfacing, like Quilt Fuse With that, you get 200 squares of African prints already pre-cut into two inch squares, which is kind of key. [laughs.]

KM: Do you cut those?

LSS: I have them cut. The company who does it is worth every penny, I'll just put it that way. [laughs.] people often ask me if I cut them myself, 'Please, I don't sleep as it is.' I couldn't possibly cut 2-inch squares.

KM: I was worried about you. [laughs.]

LSS: I really don't sleep enough as it is, but it's fine because it is my truest passion. So I send out 200 one yard cuts of fabric and it all comes back nice and packaged and cut up and pretty and I just love them. I have that done professionally. Once they're all cut up, my mother helps put the kits together sometimes. What's funny about the kit is that I showed an African Mosaic quilt as one of the projects in my first book "African Accents." In my instructions, I'm telling people. 'You'll just need 238 2-inch squares of African print.' I started to do the trunk shows based on the book, when the book first came out and people are saying, 'Lisa, where are we supposed to get 238 tiny squares of African prints?' Then the light bulb went off, and o created the pre-cut kit, which is a big head start. From there, I encourage people to add their own scrapes to it, whether they are African or not. I have some samples that include things like velvet and ultra suede and just all kinds of fabric, all kinds of textures in the two inch squares and it really makes what I call an African mosaic. That is probably my signature, my biggest class that I do. I've done it for three people. I've done it for twenty-five people at a time. It is just, people always have a different look, no matter if they have the same kit in the class they all come with a different look and it is a really exciting kind of process and they kind of, some people kind of tough it out because what you are doing is your arranging the square by color. The first thing you do is you sort out your reds, your greens, or yellows, blues all that. You start to build the quilt square by square. You build on the grid, which is the quilt fuse interfacing. You are building it and then you fuse it down and then you do your stitching. In the process, you are learning about color coordination and color value and it is a whole like color study. If you are not good with color it is a great class to take because you will learn more about how to put the colors together and if you are great at color it is just fun and you have a good time and you laugh. We have African music playing in the class and it is cool, it is a lot of fun.

KM: How do you balance your time?

LSS: I try to do what has to be done, but sometimes that gets in the way of what I would like to do, so much as possible I like to make them the same thing, or at least try to convince myself that the gotta-do and wanna-do lists are one and the same. [laughs.] I don't know. I really don't sleep as much as I should, like most people. When you love what you do and you are passionate it almost doesn't feel like work so you are driven, even when it's paperwork that I'm doing its still fun, because when others react to and appreciate the mission of Cultured Expressions. It just makes my day so I just deal with it. Make another cup of Earl Grey and keep going. [laughs.]

KM: Whose works are you drawn to and why?

LSS: I don't know if I can even think of specific people, but I know that I'm drawn to work where I can really feel something about the artist just by looking at the work. When I kind of feel "something" and it communicates with me in some way, then I'm drawn to that artist. It varies by the piece, not so much by the artist. I would have to think about that.

KM: Do you have any favorite blocks within the Obama quilt?

LSS: I love, well Diana Bracy's block, and exploring the text throughout Susan Shie's work is always an adventure! Diana's block was placed in the center and I loved that because she actually has a message in it. Not a hidden message like mine, but front & center, it's more of a statement, and I'd feel comfortable saying that she sums up the sentiments of the entire group in this excerpt. [pulls up the message on her computer but cannot read it.] ["--We have embraced the diversity of each Artist's work in celebrating the joy of creating our quilt to share it with the world. Special thanks go to everyone that has participated in this historic project. June 6, 2008,'' Diana Bracy, Las Vegas, Nevada.]

KM: You can add it.

LSS: Her passion about the whole project is infectious! Every time she sends me an email you can just feel her emotion in it and it is great. Just communicating with Diana is a treat. You get to be friends. You get to understand what drives people and what ignites them and all that. Just from this project, so it was kind of fun to meet people on that level who not only have fiber art interests but also your political or social values and that kind of thing, it is just, you can see how many people are out there and how many people do really care and are concerned about it, but we have been almost kind of like been asleep it seems like. It is just kind of fun to see that the people are connecting and you do have things in common. It strengthens you in some way.

KM: Do you think of yourself more as an artist or a quiltmaker or do you even make the distinction?

LSS: I don't really make that distinction, but I think that is up to the artist/quilter to kind of define themselves. I don't think it is for me to say that someone is an "art quilter" versus a "regular quilter." If pressed to decide whether I was an artist or a quilter I would say I'm an artist who works in fabric and I think that, yeah, I think that would be it. My main outlet for art is fiber and fabric related but I do other things. My favorite is the fabric because I can mold it and I just feel a connection with the person that made the fabric. Again, because I'm using African fabrics, sometimes I personally know the people who actually made the fabric ' I travel to Ghana to get it, or they ship it to me. I also deal with African fabric and bead importers based in New York knowing that it is actually from the Continent- the earthiness, the smell of the mud cloth, the wax crumbs that remain on the jacquard batiks. I see that as art already, so I take their art in the form of fabric and transform it into whatever I feel it's is destined to be, a quilt or a handbag or some special gift. People say, 'Are you a quilter?' [laughs.] So, yeah, I'm an artist who quilts.

KM: Is there any aspects of quiltmaking that you don't enjoy?

LSS: I'm just not crazy about the quilting to be honest, the actual quilting of the piece. I have some that I've sent out, and the ones that I've done myself are lightly quilted [laughs.] and for me it is the piecing that gives the major visual aspect. I mean the quilting is visual too but the whole, whether it is appliqu or piecing or embellishments, bead work to me, that's the real fun part of it and the part that I feel is most expressive. When I reach that point, the quilting is more like something I have to quilt it to hold it together. It is a really utilitarian step, not as much the creative part. Which is why I greatly appreciate those who do make the quilting a part of the art, like Maria, who did our FAFO [Fiber Artists for Obama.] quilting, to bring everything together and make it look cohesive and beautiful, so that obviously goes far beyond the utilitarian function of the actual quilting stitches. For me, it's just like at that point I guess I've already shot my creative load. [laughs.] Once the top is made, I just want it finished magically.

KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out?

LSS: I would say don't get caught up in techniques so much. People have been quilting for centuries before there were books, before there were templates and rulers and all these arbitrary kind of things you might feel you have to do. Those are the quilts that really to me mean a lot because they embody the spirit of the person who made it, which to me is the most important thing. It is not so much that you've got a perfect seam. I'm not really impressed or excited by that. I mean, I'm not advocating train wreck quilting methods here, but just relaxed about it. The kind of rules that you might encounter when you are entering a quilt to be "judged," that kind of thing just doesn't have much meaning for me. Have fun, express yourself, collect fabrics you love, use quality materials and supplies. All the fabrics should speak to you and you're your personality out. If you like it crooked [laughs.] that is fine, let the piece evolve. I always joke that the rulers in my studio have dust on them because I really don't like to use them. [laughs.] It is the creative and expressive part of quilting that I love, and a lot of the students I've encountered are beginners who maybe really never thought about quilting, but now that they see it done in African fabric, maybe that is what inspires them. They just want to have fun with it and make something and again they are not so much driven to do like a perfect block. don't get caught up in the rules. When it comes to art, I'm not a rules person. There are enough rules in life so quilting shouldn't have too many. [laughs.]

KM: What do you think is the biggest challenge confronting quiltmakers today?

LSS: Well I know for me, it is time. I mean it is not anything where I'm worried about people criticizing work because again I don't operate on that level. I do it because I like it and I want to show people what they can do and encourage other people to be creative on their own. I don't know if there is so much challenge in quilting. We have so much available to us in the way of fabrics and embellishments and great sewing machines, and in the way of inspiration. We have "support groups" whether they are online or local guilds, or national and international events to immerse ourselves in! So I'm not sure quilters are really lacking for so much, but for me it's the time issue. If we can get over that hurdle and just allow ourselves the luxury to spend an afternoon quilting and not worry about the gotta-do lists and all that, I think that would be great. I'm working on that life is short! [laughs.]

KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking?

LSS: They enjoy it. They think it's pretty cool. My husband came to assist on two of my quilting retreats in Jamaica at a holistic spa. Talk about merging your interests. I love the whole spa thing and massages and all that, and I love to travel. So I found this spa in Jamaica called Jackie's on the Reef, a holistic spa so there were no TVs and no clocks. I first visited in 2001 to kind of decompress after I wrote my second book in 2001, "Global Expressions," and I knew it would be a great place for a retreat. I got to be friends with the owner, Jackie Lewis, and I said, 'I would like to bring a group down here and maybe do some quilting and do a retreat kind of thing.' It is a small place. It only holds twelve people, so you can get an idea of how intimate and nurturing the atmosphere is. You get there and you can just fall apart, and the staff takes care of you, it's great. We agreed if I could get maybe eight people we could have an exclusive, have the whole place to ourselves. I did that and I've been doing that for about five years now. So I was starting out to say that my husband came with me on a couple of these retreats and he actually did a little quilting too. Between the gourmet food and the relaxation and the spa treatments you've pretty much got your four nights and five days planned out. He loves my work. When he met me in 2003 he ws pretty impressed. He had never seen anything like it, and everything so that was kind of fun. [laughs.] My mother and my mother-in-law [both non-quilters.] sometimes come to shows where I'm vending, and they drop lingo like "fat quarter" or "raw edge appliqu" with my customers, it's pretty amusing. My brother apparently was impressed enough with my work early on to let me to use his house and his dog, Dusty, for the "African Accents" photo shoot. So that's a good sign. I haven't made a quilt for him yet, but I guess I probably should. Dusty is actually the company mascot. [laughs.] He made his debut modeling appearance in the book, and this year, on my blog is his holiday greeting. He is always willing to take a cheesy picture with a quilt or some fabric for his Auntie Lisa. [laughs.] That is always fun. My four-legged nephew is very much a part of the business.

KM: How do you want to be remembered?

LSS: Oh my! [laughs.] As somebody who inspired other people to be creative on their own, to at least try to make something. I enjoy what I do and I decided to get other people to enjoy it and see that they don't really have to be stressed out all the time. They can just have fun and just relax. I want to be remembered as somebody who is not into perfection. I think that perfection is really overrated. Life surely isn't perfect, just make the most of it, and put your own mark on it.

KM: Is there anything that you would like to share that we haven't touched up?

LSS: Let's see, I can't think of anything, I will probably think of something later. [laughs.] It's been a real experience to get involved with the Obama movement in such a personal way, and whether you voted for him or not, whether you like him or not, I hope everyone takes advantage of the intense energy surrounding us and contributes something to keep it going on a higher global level.

KM: I want to think you for taking time out of your day to talk to me.

LSS: It's been fun, I appreciate it.

KM: You were wonderful.

LSS: Thank you.

KM: It is now 2:39.