Interview with Sylvain Bergeron

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am doing a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Sylvain Bergeron [who lives in Oswego, Illinois.]. It is now 9:43 in the morning on March 1, 2008. I want to really thank you for taking your time to do this interview with me. Please tell me about the quilt that you brought today for the interview.

Sylvain Bergeron (SB): The quilt was actually an application of an idea that came through embroidery, machine embroidery. I have been teaching Embroidery Design software classes for nine years and I have been telling my students, some of whom were quilters, that they could add embroidery to a quilt as a design element, whether it is on the border, on the sashing or in the main block. I came up with thread doodles that is what I call them. They are little patches of four by four inches that you could use if you did not find the print, the fabric that you wanted. You could lay thread tracks on it, get the colors and the added benefit of texture because thread does have texture in addition to just color. I made about fourteen of those that I taught in a class how to make them and how you could find them. One of the blocks I really liked and I told my students I would play with it some more. I evolved from you can add embroidery to the quilt to the question "what is embroider is the quilt" and I have not seen anything like that, so I just wanted to see if on fabric, so I went along and spend two hundred and some hours to make the first quilt. When I saw the quilt I said okay this works, but I was not aware that this had not been done really before, so I was encouraged by colleagues to pursue the idea and entered it in IQF [International Quilt Festival.] in Houston. This is a series that I have done, it is five pieces, and there will be a sixth piece when I'm done. This piece we are talking about today is "Tied in Knots." It was at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in the fall of 2006, and won the Master Award for Thread Artistry, which was the first year that award was given, sponsored by Superior Threads. The way it works is that each block, four by four (inches), is embroidered separately and then it is pieced in a very conventional basic square sashing and I used what I call a window frame binding to give it a little more substance to the binding because these are really wall tableaux, they are not really derived from the traditional quiltmaking process. Growing up, my mother quilted some but she mostly made garments and projects for the house. Although there was sewing in the house, quilting was not really of the essence and I'm realizing a lot of men come to quilting without that historical background. We learn about it along the way, which is awesome, it is interesting, but we don't come through the tradition, so we don't know we're supposed or not supposed to do it a certain way. I just applied it and the way these blocks work, the embroidery works, it is not just self-enclosed blocks. Really each one connects to the next so the design is meant to flow. I used four layers of color, and [laughs.] and the joke in Houston is that no drugs were required in the formulation of the pattern and no drugs are required for the viewing of the pattern. I have a funny story in Houston, because if you step away from these quilts, this series, the layers of colors separate as you get about ten, fifteen feet away from the quilt, and if you move in a hemisphere, in a semi-circle in front of the quilt the twist of the thread and the arcs in the design of the quilt makes for instance a yellow motif and the motif will twist so the quilt appears to be shifting, depending on the angle of view and the amount of light shed on the quilt.

KM: Did you know that was going to happen when you designed it?

SB: No, no. The first one I did were pure circles, so four circles offset from each other, yellow on top, red underneath, and then blue and then green. As you walk about ten, fifteen feet from the quilt, if you look over your shoulder sideways and just keep walking by, the circles spin, because they look like the back of a CD, and that was the one, that was the joke about the drugs came up. No you don't need to take anything. [laughs.] From that one I evolved and opened up the design. It was funny. I came with no quilting background basically. This is my second art quilt. I had made my first and only traditional quilt from old blue shirts that I slashed in five inch squares and then made about a bed quilt to keep my son warm at night. It is called "Old Blues" and when I made that first quilt out of a man's large size shirt I found that you can get nineteen, five inch squares. [laughs.] If there is no worn spot. I can get reliably. When I was six squares to finish the grid, I went to the closet and I said, 'Here is the right blue color.' Pulled the last shirt, slashed it up and made a quilt. That is the only traditional quilt I have made. It was done in the traditional fashion to keep a child warm at night. From there I went into the embroidery and posed the question (what if embroidery is the quilt), and then I had to prove it to myself. The joke in Houston was I'm a guy, I had to prove it. [laughs.] I put it out and then when people saw this. I work for a sewing machine company, and they sponsor an award in Houston, so they're in touch with quilting and all that and one of the people told me you need to enter this in Houston. I was like, fine. [laughs.] I did not know. I knew of Houston, but it is like you run a fifteen hundred meter in your neighborhood, and somebody says look you need to apply for the Olympics, and I was kind of doubtful. They surprised me, the fact that there was so much interest in something like this. What I realized is that it opened up a new design space in quilting. I don't say that with any bragging intended, it is just that embroidery is just very visual. It is like you had drawn it, and the fact that the thread is layered, if you did the same thing with a print it would not work, it would be flat. Because it is thread, each strand can catch the light and return it, and I told people in Houston use your flash. The more light you throw at one of these, the more color you get back. The whole point of this was a demonstration exercise and the rest is basically I was lucky that the contest and the award were available to match at the same time, but it was just a demonstration piece. I have done it a larger version, a larger piece of this series that was in Houston in '07, and they get very heavy. [laughs.] I decided the middle size is more manageable because the thread is actually heavy. So it is color and line which is what I like and actually as I said in Houston that the key influences in my mind when I entered the quilting field. Before making any quilts, my artistic mind invested part of its attention into quilting when I saw Caryl Bryer Fallert's work. When I saw the "Solar Corona" I stopped breathing for a few seconds. I was taken, and then when I saw Libby Lehman's "Thread Play." As I said in Houston she put the two magic words together, thread and play. There is three miles of thread on this piece and it is sixty-eight inches by forty-five more or less. The one I did for Houston this year was I think seven miles of thread. I have one in Tokyo right now that is five miles of thread. It uses a lot of thread because that is the entire design. The only fabric I use for this series is the navy, there is only one fabric used for the background and the sashing and the backing, everything.

KM: Is it cotton?

SB: Yes, it is a solid cotton and everything the whole color is thread. That is what people don't realize when they first see the pieces, they ask, 'How did you get the color?' and I only say, 'It is all thread.' I just think the second question or a closer look and then they can see 'oh wow it is all thread.' The third influence was John Flynn. His piecing is maniacally precise and very geometric. I like abstract geometrics and lines and colors, so these things kind of bubbled in the slow cooker, these things bubbled in my head for two or three years and then pop, it happened. I made the first one. I was told you have to keep up with it. I just made it to see it, and lucky for me it worked. I enjoy doing this. Knowing that there was an exhibition coming up in Tokyo [the 9th Quilt Nihon Exhibition.] I made a piece to submit, to enter the contest, and knowing the precision of the Japanese are known for I went in Zen mode. I systematically forced my machine to half speed, [laughs.] so I would take my time and it worked. I took the time, I enjoyed it. I'm pretty high speed by nature, and sewing is one of the few places where I can enter the zone and slow down to a half speed and actually enjoy it. It took me a little while to learn that, but it actually, it slowed me down, and I'm in this kind of suspended zone. You are in the Zen. So the one for Japan actually I literally applied that as a principle and said that this is as much the journey this time. The block--the basic block was already created I just had to execute it. That was my best workmanship so far, so I was happy to see that knowing who you are making it for influences how you are making it.

I grew up in a family where my father and mother were both craft people. My father could make anything out of wood. He could build a house from foundation to chimney cap. My mother could take an adult jacket and make a child's winter coat out of it, and always measured twice, cut once. It applied in woodworking and in sewing. So I had very good examples that way, and I find it easier to apply them now that I'm in my mid-forties [laughs.] than when I was in my teens or twenties, you know, and taking the time. I am trying to show my son how to take his time. Actually the one for Tokyo, part of it was a teaching moment for my son. I mean I enjoyed doing it, the whole process, but my son is thirteen and I was telling him, we are trying to get him to applying himself more at school and get the best results he can. Of course, a thirteen year old that can take a little convincing. So I was telling him if you have an idea and you are willing to work at it and ten percent inspiration, ninety percent perspiration, you might be going half way around the world and watch people looking at your idea. It is not about the pride of doing that, it is if you have an idea and you are willing to work at it, you can give it to people and let it go, then it will travel. I was seeing other people's quilts, it starts something in you, and if one day somebody comes back and tells me they saw my quilt and they decided to try something because of it. I'm a teacher at heart. That will make me happy. I'm on to the next thing [laughs.]. I enjoyed it, but I don't have enough walls in my house to put all the quilts up. That was another purpose. It was really to see it, to see a picture made. It was a lot of fun. I have been lucky. Having the right idea at the right time. I have noticed since that if you enter a judged contest for instance and the same piece, this one, won a major award in Houston and in another show nothing, because the judges favored a different slant, maybe more traditional or more this, more of that, or less of this, and I find that because it is new, basically it is a new technique. It is not necessarily understood the first time. That is fine. If I have to sell the idea that embroidery can be the quilt, it could go back fifteen, twenty years ago, completely machine made quilt, including the quilt stitching. Harriett Hardgrave, who was a pioneer, she had to fight. She had to push the idea and thanks to her now some of the best work in the world is all machine made. Some of the best work in the world is still handmade. I bow to the people who have the patience to make a whole quilt by hand. I don't have the time, I don't have the patience. [laughs.] I bow to them, they have something there. But there is beautiful machine work. Caryl Bryer Fallert does all the work by machine and when I look at that, I hope I can do it half as well one day. It is great to see the world of quilting. I've been following it for eleven years now, more since I have been working for a sewing machine company, and to see how it has evolved, it is exploding. To me it is like a super nova of colors, shape, techniques, and then there is no limit to where we are going with this. It is great because it opened the door for me, the fact that it has opened up so much. You see all the art quilt shows now. I did get questioned in Houston on this, that it is not a quilt. You can't put this one on a bed. I know it is too heavy. The one that I made this year weighs like sixteen pounds, as I found out when I shipped it to the quilt show. They have to weigh it to charge you shipping. I thought of first putting the circles, the ones that spin on my bed that was the original idea. Then I realized I would have to install a railing in my bedroom because once you walk in and you see the quilt on the bed, you would get dizzy, the room would be spinning in front of you and I decided that wouldn't work, so the quilt hangs on my wall above my bed. It is perfect there and it is also smaller. [laughs.] Sanity prevailed there. It has opened, the fact that the quilting world is literally exploding, this thrust of creative energy. Even the old traditional designs, the grandmother garden, the Log Cabin, they are being spun in so many ways it is awesome. You look at that, and if you look at one square inch of that quilt, 'oh, I can do something with it.' You never know when an idea will spin closer and then come back. When I taught those doodles, in fact it was on a cruise that was organized by a lady who does embroidery software classes, so I showed the students. I like to teach on the cruise ship, the backdrop is beautiful. [laughs.] I'm teaching this, we are talking how do you do this, how do you do that, we are having fun, it is like being in the kitchen and you are showing one of your friends how you don't follow the recipe and you do something different. We are talking and I held up the one block, and I said I like this one and I want to play with it some more. One lady was at the award ceremony in Houston, she was the first one to walk up to me after we were done and they say go stand by your quilt to answer questions, and she walks up to me and she says remember me? She was in that class when I held up the block and I said I will play with this one some more. It is like the world just went whooshing, I had this big whoosing of three years coming to a point, and I hugged her. [laughs.] That was like, 'wow, the world is a small place in time in space.' That is what I'm trying to teach my son. He is very creative and he is at the age where, thirteen years old, he is not comfortable in that body because it is changing too fast for him. I remember that age. I did not believe I had any artistic sense. I made candles. I might have baked bread. I did a whole bunch of stuff. I did not accept the fact that I had artistic abilities, and I would like to see classes that let children play, no end result in mind. Not that you have to make a costume, you have to make this, or a painting. Here is a bunch of stuff, make something out of it, whatever it is, small or big, I don't care. If it means something or not I don't care, just play with it. Quilting for me is very seasonal. I do not quilt in the winter. When the light goes down my energy goes down. I teach evening classes, have a daytime job. I'm a single parent half the time so people say, 'When do you find the free time?' I say, 'Time is not free. You have to buy it. There is a price.' I don't have TV. Twenty-seven years and no TV, and people say what do you do? I recover that time. I don't quilt every night, I don't quilt every week, I don't quilt every month, I am a slow cooker and then this idea will fall in my mind and then when that spark hits, I will go and take a week off from work to finish a quilt for Houston for instance. I will get at it and then it is fever pitch. Balancing the fever with the Zen. [laughs.] That has been the tricky part. My sewing room is like an artistic sweatshop. When I go at it I do it in concentrated periods. I get up at 5:00, run embroidery blocks until 7:30 when I leave for work, while I'm mixing some breakfast, shower and everything, run the machine and then come back, and when I come home at night I will be up until 11:00 or 11:30. I will do that for about a month to get a piece done, and then I'm tired and I need a little break. In the summer I'm more outside and so on, but that is when I capture ideas. I run a ratio for about one quilt I make I have about ten ideas describing others in a word processor document that are waiting and I do hope to make them. So the joke now is official I can not afford to die I have so many projects. [laughs.] That used to be an abstract idea, when people would say that and I couldn't relate to it, now I do. I don't come from the quilting world and I am quilting though because it allows me to make a tableau and this square fashion is perfect for that, in this series especially. I'm an innovator. I have always known that, I don't follow the recipe. I would read enough to know what to do with a certain type of chicken, with pork, and then after that let's do what feels right now. Usually it works after you've cooked long enough and all that, but with quilting luckily there are enough people who know, and I teach at a local quilt shop, lucky for me if I have any questions on any technique I can get help. I can not encourage people enough to go to the quilt shop and keep the quilt shop alive. Make it a point to buy something from there once in a while, because that way the experts will be there, available. You go to the big chain fabric and craft stores and often times the person who is cutting the fabric does not sew or they try to hire people who do but they don't necessarily sew, but the local quilt shop they will be able to help you. When I came to the basic technique, I was able to get my questions answered and demonstrations and so on, so it is kind of two worlds that came together. Lucky for me it worked, so I will keep on making them.

KM: Tell me how did you come to quiltmaking?

SB: I came from the embroidery side and I saw a lot of people who were quilters.

KM: I know, but how did you come to the embroidery? How did this path? How did you get on this path?

SB: I came to the embroidery through my current job. I am actually the webmaster for a sewing machine company.

KM: You can say Bernina.

SB: Okay I work for Bernina. I went to Ag [agriculture.] school. People go 'how do you get there from ag school?', I studied the potato Irish famine disease, the potato blight and I was a grad student at Cornell and I realized that the world of research was too repetitive, to dronish for me. I wanted to work with people, so I want to teach computer workshop at Cornell and from there what happened is that I was teaching people to build websites. The joke was when Al Gore invented the Internet I was there. [laughs.] I was teaching people how to build websites before there was web design software. There was no front page. There was no DreamWeaver, nothing. We used notepad and copy/paste everything and I sewed as a hobby. I learned to sew right when I finished college actually. My philosophy is that you jump in the deep end. You don't wait for people to fill the pool. [laughs.] You learn a lot that way. I came from a garment and Home Dec and making a wood carrier for the woodstove and give me something to mend. I love mending because it is a fun mental game where how can you, how do you build a bridge over a running river type of thing. You have never done it before and you have to get across, so that is a lot of fun, because it engages your faculties, it is a very positive challenge. I was, I came to work for Bernina as a webmaster because I sewed, actually I had submitted a project to them and there was embroidery that was in 1996. I had never touched embroidery in my life. Back then it was like Peter Rabbit that we put on a tee shirt and a sweatshirt. I mean it is great for, big part of the market is grandmothers do this for their grandchildren, and it is often for that. It is not my thing. I am more abstract that that. Artistically I'm very abstract and geometric. I love geometry. Actually one story I told when I won the award for this quilt, when I was nine years old I wanted a Spirograph, you know the geometric spinning tool. My sister asked for the same thing. We were six kids and my folks wouldn't buy the same toy for two, so [laughs.] lucky for her, she got the Spirograph. So after about $10,000 worth of equipment, I have a Spirograph and I'm making quilts with it. [laughs.] Really that is what it is. That is the reason why I wanted the Spirograph. I was attracted to those repetitive lines. My last piece is for Japan and the last sentence of the description was "complexity out of simplicity", and actually I would like to apply it, I believe in that in life, every year I hope to peel a layer off, so when I am old, when my teeth are falling out, I will have reached a level of simplicity where it won't bother me any more. Out of the deceptively simple concept is an image. You can look at it in a thousand different ways and you will see a thousand different pictures, so I like that. I have always liked simple concepts that are kind of assembled in 3-D and even through this medium I have tried to achieve a 3-D result and with the layering of the thread it is possible. It would not be as easy with layering fabric or with just flat print, but with the layering of the thread actually you can. It started from the embroidery world teaching embroidery design software and then when the software evolved to Versions 1, 2, 3, 4, and as of Version 4 they introduced a quilter program in it. We had a training at the office before we go and train the shop owners, so I'm in the training and of course I knew how to use the software, I was teaching on it, so I look at the menus and okay. I was fooling around with it and I tell people play is the essence. I tell my students today too, when I teach a software class, you might not make anything, but you will learn one, two, three techniques that on your next project a light bulb will go on and 'ah ha!, I know how to do this.' Yet you just "wasted an hour" or spent an hour fooling around with it. That is how you learn how to use the tool and then when the day you actually need the tool you know it. I came through that route in embroidery. My slow cooker was in the background, this is not what I want to do, this is not what I want to do, what if, what if, and then one day when I did those doodles, that was it, I had enough building blocks that the spark hit, like the hay was dry and the spark hit and then it happened. It went, in about a month I made the first quilt and that was kind of a demonstration piece, the thread technique was actually different, it was heavier which worked for that design but I wanted more translucence between the layers of color so I came down with the stitch track, it is a straight stitch that goes out in an arch and then it comes right back onto itself. So it is actually two stitches where the first one is a triple straight stitch which is more dense so the top color would cover up the bottom colors more. It may look like it is spinning, but it did not let the colors come through. My technique has evolved.

When I complete this series, the next quilt, it is a personal quilt. My best friend, my soul sister died of breast cancer eight years ago, and I miss her more every year. I had a photo of her and I will digitize it with about one inch size thread dots and will render the picture just with thread dots, but each one will be separate. I am going to do a quilt as you go. The dots will be raised above the background so she will raise out of the quilt, one memory, fragmented memory is one dot at a time and it is only by stepping back that you will be able to see the whole her. Her name was Chantal.

That one, for the back, for the label I show you the label, I tell people I have more fun with the labels. Its, I will be remembered for anything it is for my labels. The label is distillation of the design so in this case, in this piece you can see that it echoes the shapes, you can see on the front, and I used the salient color of the quilt, the dominating color to actually do the writing on it. These are panels that are pieced together, so the labels are fun, because it is really when I'm doing the quilt or sometime before I am designing the quilt I let everything decant and what is left at the bottom is the label. I tried to grab the key elements of the quilt.

So for this quilt, everybody who knew her I will have them sign a memory block, memory pieces of fabric, and assemble the frame and the back to make the label. It will be a personal quilt. Then there is twenty some more I have ideas for. It is fun and I was told I had the bug when I walked into the exhibit in Houston last year. I go to the bathroom, to the kitchen at work to get a glass of water and come back to my desk with two more ideas. My assistants, my two assistants quilt both of them. I would describe what I want to do and they look at me like 'you need a sabbatical.' [laughs.] I would love a sabbatical. Once you start, again the word is play. If this, I couldn't afford to do this for a living. I need my full time, my daytime job. This being that you actually need the job with benefits. At this time, I love my job, I love what I do. It is very technological and it is exposing me to all of this. This is technology, but to me technology for its own sake means nothing, to me it is a design tool and the quilted software for instance is my canvas. I can change the color background on it so I can actually create with the fabric color I want and then I can literally design right off of there. By the time I see the quilt I can see the entire quilt on the computer. When people think that the computer is an abstract thing, I tell my students, pick one thing you like to do with the computer. All my students are in their fifties, sixties, sometimes seventies, and they will say I hate the computer or I wasn't born with a computer, it is easier for the younger people and all that, just find one thing you like to do with it, whether it is emailing with your grandchildren or your children or a pen pal, anything, find one thing you like to do and you work through the kinks of the keyboard and the this and that, and by the time you are done with that you can now open up to other things you like to do. I say, you like to do embroidery that is a perfect way to learn how to use your computer. Keep it simple. My goal is actually to show that the technology is a tool. The electrical sewing machine is a tool and you know in the quilting world I have become aware of the debate between machine made quilts and hand made quilts and so on over the years, and how they are evolving. People have to remember that the first, the number one sold model of sewing machine about 1948 and 1955 was the electric motor, just a single motor, not a machine. People were retrofitting motors on all the treadles. Like art quilting is more accepted now. There is a segment of the quilting public who doesn't necessarily appreciate or is not interested or doesn't value art quilting, but the way I look at it, the first day and I'm pretty sure it was a mother who went and actually bought fabric from the store in town or from the catalogue instead of using scraps from shirts and garments to make quilts for the bed, the first time a mother actually scrounged and scraped to save in order to buy fabric to make a special quilt, all color coordinated, whatever the design was, was a wedding bed quilt for her daughter, an art quilt was born. Because that quilt was not going to be used every night. People would keep it for special use. It was made to a bed size where today they're made for walls in most cases, but an art quilt was born and there is that connection still to keeping your children warm and making something beautiful for them. Actually my first project, I had forgotten. I don't consider it a quilt, but my first quilted project was an art project, was an American flag that I did. I designed the stars for embroidery and I finished them up on a navy wool and I called them federal colors because those were the colors, a dark navy wool and then I used kind of a tea dye colored flannel, but it has a little stripe in it, vertical stripe for the thirteen stripes and then the red, the red stripe has a little black fleck in them. From a distance you don't see any of that, it just looks like the white has yellowed and the little specks create a rippling visual effect, and I used a feather stitch to assemble everything together, and I gave that to a colleague of mine because he got his citizenship right after I got mine. When I became eligible for citizenship in 1998 I applied because I wanted to be able to vote. I had been in the U.S. already for a decade.

KM: We should say you are Canadian.

SB: I'm Canadian by birth. Yes I am French Canadian, but I have been a citizen since 2000, so I'm a CanAmerican now. [laughs.] Then I told my colleague, I told him you can't vote and that is no good, you are eligible now so you should get your citizenship and he said, 'You are right,' so he did it. After his induction ceremony that first Monday after that when he came to work, I presented him with his first American flag. His wife who was American, she was tickled too because it meant a lot. You can become full participant in society. Before that I was a walking case of constitutional violation. I had taxation without representation. [laughs.] That was the first, actually, first time I designed a quilt, the design was dictated by the flag, but I had to, I combined embroidery and the quilting and put that away and five years later I made my first art quilt. I am a very slow cooker that way. Those ideas will go to the background and one day, the wave will come back and something will be born out of it. It has been a lot of fun. It is creative play that is all it is really. Lucky for me, when it comes to the award, you never know when people will recognize your work or not. Don't do it for that, do it just to see your idea out. Usually when you have an idea like that, people want to see it, because people are interested in ideas. Especially quilters, they are very generous of their time of finding out how did you do this, how did you do that. Garments sewers are sort of like that too, people who sew like to share stitches. There is a common thread running through, and it is great. In Houston last year, there was a joke, the security guard told me, he gave me two thumbs up, he said good crowd control. I told him I needed the electric slide song on a CD with a boom box because for people to see the quilt. I would have them stand back about ten feet and then go sideways, and then it would look like a group of people learning to do the electric slide. [laughs.] We had a lot of fun, that was the exercise portion of the program. [laughs.] I like to--I will explain my technique without any problem to anyone who asks me, then it is okay, what are you making, and I want to find out what you are making. It is unbelievable, you walk the quilt show, in Chicago the IQA [International Quilt Association.] show comes to Chicago in Rosemont [Illinois.] and just to walk the aisles and see, if you ask seven hundred people what is your idea of quilting, you would be getting a completely different idea, and you could spend hours on each one. I take my son to the show to see it.

KM: What does your son think of your quiltmaking and your quilt in general?

SB: Actually when he saw the first one, this one last year, he was going to be twelve and with boys, nothing is cool anymore. [laughs.] He used the word "it's cool", so that, this is my harshest judge. [laughs.] Actually, in many ways that was my best validation for the work, he thought it was cool, I mean and also for him he is forming an artistic mind, so it was cool. He had done some sewing projects, I'm not sure he will stick with it, but he has tried. When I teach at the local store, he will come with me. They will put him to work. They have him change light bulbs, they put him to work, and actually he likes doing that, he feels a sense of value. Kids love participating in a grownup project and they do at the local store that is something I would encourage people to look for. Most quilt shops have a quilt for a charity or community causes. At the local store in Naperville here, they make quilts for children at Edward's Hospital or Central DuPage and to children, they bring a quilt so it makes a difference. There is a lady who is there on Saturdays. She is one dynamo of a lady. She is retired and she gets there. She gets all the fabric prepared to piece blocks. Last time I was there they got my son down for about an hour, hour and a half and he pieced blocks together. I noted that he was applying himself and he was being more methodical and careful and while a good machine makes for good results, still he was applying himself. So the work, the quality, what I call the quality of work ethics, because to me work when it comes to quality, you want to do it right. I could see where his eyes thought something about it, [inaudible.] [laughs.] He just sits down there, they show him how and he feels like he has to do it right, and he wants to do it right, it is working. Actually, through both my parents, both being craft people, we learned how to work and do it right. I have seen my father put his big hands, who would handle wood and nails and cement all week long, he would pass his hand on a table after he sanded it and he could find if there was a micron that needed to be sanded and he would go back and redo it. I remember that from early on. Actually not long ago I had to do a railing for my house, I bought it unfinished, just raw wood and I sanded, stained it, and I was able to do it. My father passed away over twenty years ago, and I believe it is his memory, I was going way, way back seeing his work and I found out that I knew how to do it, even though I had never done a railing, never had to stain work like that. I have done stain work, I've done varnish, but never like that, and you learn from people you have a chance to work with. What I would like to do next is find somebody who has been quilting for a long time and spend some time with them to learn, just like piecing, I keep my piecing simple. It is not really what my Zen so far, but I'm getting a little more into it every time because I'm taking my time now. Slow down. [laughs.] It comes natural early on, but it is a little easier now, so I hope to be able to sit down with people and learn how they do it. I might even want to learn how to do hand piecing, because then you can do it anywhere. Mostly for small pieces. Actually, I don't consider it quilting, but when I was married one of our first projects, the first year my wife and I were together, we made potholders for the clan, for the tribe. We both came from big families, six children each. Big tribe. Some people are still using those potholders. We were using that fabric. We even bought some fabric at one point to make fancy ones. [laughs.] Towels, we used corduroy that was meant to cover a couch as a slipcover. Corduroy makes the best potholder fabric. [laughs.] Some of my relatives still use those potholders. You make something for people. It is an everyday thing. I mean potholders, it is going to get burned some day, it is going to get ketchup spilled on it, something, people still get attached to them. There is something to the making of things that I learned from both my parents. The last year my father was alive, that year at Christmas all the presents for all the children, every one of us, my mother had made something by hand, one or two pieces each, and my father had made things by hand. This is not just an example. I consider myself the son of my father and my mother, and when I make things by hand, it is not like oh I have to live up to the standards they set, no way. I want to do this. It is part of me. It is part of who I grew up to be. When I form the image of myself growing up, making things and making things for other people was very important. This, these art pieces are for my own enjoyment, visual enjoyment and hopefully other people will enjoy them as well, but in a way I get more satisfaction when I have trimmed the last stitch off that old quilt for my son, or when we do a pillow cover for his bedroom. A few years ago I bought a beautiful batik dragon. It is called a Chinese Lung, a beautiful dragon. The lady who did it. I can't remember what state she is in, but if I need her to get other quilts, I'm going to look for more pieces. I wanted to make a wall quilt for my son out of it, very simple, I used a stitch regulator and just outlined it as much as I could and then I spun a border around it based on the colors in the batik, just stripes swirling around the border and put that on the wall, I made a cornice with a kit and put red and black silk on it and we dangled Chinese lanterns and put Chinese danglers on both ends. He likes it. I repainted his room while he was away at Christmas with his mother and her folks and he came back and he says 'wow.' I think he is used to it now. He is a thirteen year old. The funny thing is that whenever he brings a new friend home they see his room and I hear "whoa". I know it is a new friend in his room when I hear the 'whao.' For me it was not about getting wow, it was about wowing him. I wanted his room to be special, what parent doesn't want to, but he also learned how to balance designs and he likes to help in conceiving the design. I hope I'm planting a seed within him and then we will see. Whenever he makes something he refuses to use one my older machines, which I would give him one to use, like the mechanical old fashion sewing machine. He likes the touch screen machine better so I can't blame him, I like it too. [laughs.] It is not about technology. Although the technology is so good now that what I see on my computer screen is exactly what you see on the table today [quilt]. You can now formulate an idea and validate it on the screen and go with it on fabric. Ninety percent of the time it is a needle going through fabric and the humming of that motor and then piecing it and pressing it and all that stuff. That is still quilting, but you can often see it and you literally do it on screen and then execute it on fabric afterwards. That I hope is something that I can just show as an example and hope that more people will play with that.

KM: Describe your studio.

SB: My master bedroom is my sewing studio because it is the only room big enough to hold my two embroidery machines, my regular sewing machine, my overlockers, my cutting table and the little computer desk there. Luckily now sewing machines use USB sticks so whenever I do my design work I don't even bother hooking up the cable which I have. I just put it on the stick and take it to the machine. It is north faced. It has three windows. My house is the cheap cardboard modern construction suburban house. [laughs.] With plastic siding, but the first time I walked in it had windows. My basement would give me a bigger sewing room but I slept in the basement for eleven years as a kid and I'm sorry but, we also stored potatoes in the unfinished portion but I think, for me I would rather have the potatoes in the basement, I do not like being in the basement, that is me personally. So north face is ideal because I don't get direct sun on the fabric and machines and so on. It gets hot in the summer because it is under the roof, so this last summer I found that if I had to chill that room I would have to freeze the house. So this last summer I got a window air conditioner. It's high efficiency, you know, quiet. Actually in one of my quilts the workmanship suffered a little bit because it was eighty-five, ninety degrees in that room at 9:00 in the morning and I had to work there all day. I realized [that.] the air conditioner cost me $100.00 and it is very high efficiency so it doesn't cost much. I close the door and only refrigerate that room. Otherwise I'm Canadian, I don't like air conditioning. I like the breeze. It is my master bedroom and I wish it was bigger. One day I want a sewing room that I have to wear rollerblades to go between the stations. [laughs.]

KM: That would be fun.

SB: [laughs.] My bedroom could be a ship cabin, a bunk, because that is fine with me. I'm an early riser and the minute I'm out of bed I'm out of my bedroom, so it could be the smallest room possible. I would like to have space in between stations, because that space is where your mind is able to unfocused from the material around you and it is processing in the background. I tell people, people ask me sometimes, you are both left and right brain aren't you, I say oh yah, you should see the sparks in the middle. [laughs.] It's one of those where when you stop looking at something, you are tracking. Your brain is freed for at least a few seconds to assemble something. I'm very visual, so my brain goes through a lot of images and I would like to have a little more open space. Luckily I have the windows right there. When I piece I open the windows and the breeze is coming right over me. I will have that sensation like a place. It is not just the quilting. It is not just the breeze. It is not just the natural light. It is all of that together. The being, the being in the space and the atmosphere, the ambiance, which is very functional, but with the breeze and the light and the project of making something, that is a unique experience there. I can only get it there. I love it. I can sew for a half an hour or hour there and I come out of there with no worries in the world. My time at peace. [laughs.]

KM: Believe it or not, we have talked for forty-five minutes. [SB laughs.] Is there anything you want to add? I always give people that chance.

SB: I would say if somebody, it doesn't necessarily have to be with quilting, it could be with cooking, anything making things, there has, to me there is nothing more worth the time in the world than to stop, cancel an evening what you were planning to watch, let Tivo record the program and make something. There is a Zen in making that we don't get anymore, not just because it is active. It engages all the senses that gives us the whole self, the whole body. The self is what where we are as a physical being, and when we are engaged physically in something like this, we usually make something beautiful out of it, be it very simple, a coaster or a wall size quilt, the scale is really just a matter of degree, but making something, there is a Zen in it. There is a quality. There is a state of being we reach there that we can not purchase. We can not visit. We can not acquire. It can not be given to us, we have to make it. The free time doesn't exist in this day and age. We have to make it. I like to print my calendar on stretchable material. [laughs.] Just open up more time, making something. When I'm old [laughs.] if there is one nugget of wisdom that I could pass on to my son or my grandchildren, it would be that, make something, as simple as it is, fold a piece of paper, make a paper airplane, make something. The rest if just a matter of scale, but make something and you can make it with somebody else. You can give it to somebody, there is a whole bunch of ramifications from there. Making something is where I get the most enjoyment in life.

KM: Thank you so much for taking your time to do this interview with me, and it is now 10:32.