Interview with Wilma Johnson

Karen Musgrave (KM): This is Karen Musgrave and I am conducting a Quilters' S.O.S. - Save Our Stories interview with Wilma [L.] Johnson. Wilma is in Harrogate, Tennessee, and I am in Naperville, Illinois, so we're conducting this interview over the telephone. Today's date is August 26, 2009. It is now 9:04 in the morning. We are conducting this through the American Heritage Committee of the Kentucky State Society Daughters of the American Revolution. Wilma is a quilter and she is a member of the Kentucky Path Chapter. Wilma, I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to do this interview with me. Please tell me about your quilt "Remembrance of America's Farmsteads."

Wilma Johnson (WJ): I made it as a wall hanging, but I didn't envision sleeping under it. When I submitted it to DAR, I submitted it as a wall hanging, but it came back winning as a quilt. I'm pleased about that. I suppose it was considered to be a quilt because there are factors of quilting in that and it's kind of larger than what you normally would think of as a wall hanging. It's made of pictures of old red barns that were once standard across the country on every farmstead. Those barns are deteriorating and disappearing from the countryside. Some of them you see are still in use, possibly turned into a potter's studio or an art gallery or a country museum. I've seen them turned into restaurants. They're still there if people can preserve them and use them in some way, but the farmer, the farming community is no longer in need of that type of structure. The big hayloft that was once used to store the winter feed for cattle is no longer needed. The feed is still necessary, but now the hay bales are stored out in the field in those big rolls and sometimes covered with something to help preserve the nutrients, but the cattle only use that small lower area of the barn, so the construction of barns now is only something that shelters the cattle. Those big red barns are impressive and were impressive and were useful for community. The people of the communities got together in the first place and raised the barn and went to the neighbors and built them a barn. The barn was always community. When it was empty, it was a place for barn dances, for large gatherings, for wedding receptions, for whatever the community, the farm community, needed a large area for. When the barn was being filled, it was again the community that got together and did the haying, put the hay in the barn. The women of the area got together in the kitchen to prepare the noon meal for the farm hands. When the barn was emptying again and had a few bales of hay or piles of stray, hay left in it, then it was a play area for the children. We built forts and playhouses. It was a great place for hide-and-go-seek, for tag, for finding a little comfortable place to read in a private area that was away from other people and away from some of the chores [laughs.] of the farmland.

KM: So now the pictures, how did you put the pictures onto the quilt?

WJ: We are from the Wisconsin area and the Smithsonian Institute realized that the barns were disappearing and they had a program called--what was it called? "The Year of the Barn" ["Barn Again! Celebrating an American Icon."] and they would have--I'm not answering your question. I'm diverging here of why I started it.

KM: That is okay, keep going.

WJ: Okay. It was about 10 years ago, probably, that I became aware of this and I started noticing the barns in the Wisconsin area and where we would drive into Iowa and Minnesota where I had family. I started noticing the barns that were no longer there, almost no longer there, and gray in color and boards disappearing, so we started taking the camera along and taking pictures of the barns that were distinctive and were being preserved to some extent in some way. I took pictures of the old dilapidated barns as well because they had character and they have a memory. I have a friend who says, 'Everything has a memory and if you listen, you can hear their story as well.' I believe that is true. Anyway, we took the camera along and took pictures of the different styles of barns across the country and then brought the pictures back to my computer and scanned them. I used a digital camera so some I scanned in and some I just transferred to the computer. I took off the things I call--well the advertising of the restaurants, the signs advertising the museum and I took away some of the bushes. I colored them all the same tone of red and some of them had been a grayish color when I found them but they were still in fairly good condition. I had to just replace a few boards and roofing materials with my computer. Then I printed them and used the heat transfer process to put them on white, a white, not exactly a square, I think it was about 11 [inches.] by 12 [inches.]. I used a size that fit the barn proportions so the pieces aren't exactly square but there are rows and there are 12 barns all together. I tried to do different barn styles that would come from different countries with the pioneers who came and built the barns they were used to having and working with in their country, the style they brought with them. Between each of the squares, I will call them squares. Between each of these squares, I put a band of red of the same hue as I had painted the barns. That tied them all together and I put a nice border around it and I made my own bias tape to put around it, which was, which I hadn't done that before. There is really no actual quilting to it except for sewing the squares together and putting the strips, combining strips around them and stitching around each barn and then of course through, after the backing was applied, stitching through all that to bind it all together. That was my quilt.

KM: How did you quilt it? Did you do it by hand or machine?

WJ: Machine. It's completely machined. The digital camera, the computer artwork, the stitching, I bought a real nice machine to do quilting and to even stitch equal spaced lines across the quilt if I ever do that. I'm prepared to do that [laughs.] if I ever do a quilt that needs that type of work.

KM: This took you four years.

WJ: Well, with traveling around the country and choosing. We didn't just set out to travel and find the barns. When we would see a barn that was really interesting and fairly well preserved, we took that picture and then I took it home and worked on it. Yeah, it took four years. I did other things in between of course. I didn't sit down and work on the quilt everyday for four years [laughs.] as you can imagine. Just thinking about how to put it together and what barns I needed and what I needed to be trying to interpret with the quilt. That took four years.

KM: You have barns from Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee?

WJ: Yes. We lived in the Wisconsin area for thirty years. My husband lived there forever, but we lived in that area. We both taught school in Madison, Wisconsin, so teaching school we didn't travel a lot during the school year but did during the summer. We had relatives in Missouri to visit. Then we go through Iowa, and I have a sister in Minneapolis. I come from a family of nine siblings and they're scattered. My dad was a construction worker and moved a great deal, so as we grew up and left home, we scattered around the country too. I have a brother in New Jersey, a sister in Texas, a sister in Minneapolis, a brother in Minnesota, and a niece in Israel; we are scattered. [laughs.] It is nice that we get to travel around and see things like old barns, but that's why the pictures are from many, many areas. Then we moved to Tennessee six years ago and we traveled back and forth in this area too, still having property in Wisconsin. We just got back from there again. I keep watching for barns. I may do another quilt of the barns of Kentucky. They are tobacco barns and the quilt barns are very interesting. I gave a program about the quilt for my DAR chapter when we got back from Washington. I thought as I was preparing the program I need to have something in there about the Kentucky/Tennessee barns as well. So we went around and took pictures of those barns with the quilt on them. I need to do a quilt of the quilt barns. [laughs.] I'll think about that. It won't be done next year or the next because I do other things and I think about, as every quilter does I'm sure, what to say in the quilt.

KM: What are your plans for this quilt?

WJ: It is right now hanging in the Bell County Historical Society Museum. There was a picture of me with the quilt in the newspaper last week with the announcement that it is on display in the museum. Otherwise, when they no longer want it there, which I'm sure it can hang there for a while because I'm the treasurer of the museum and our DAR regent of our chapter is the president [laughs.] of the museum this year and next year. So it's going to be allowed to hang there for a while. They had it in the library. Every year they have a quilters' display and a book sale at the same time. The quilters' display is to just bring people in. I had it there last year just for a day and everyone liked that. Everyone commented on it and I was very pleased. Otherwise, when it's no longer displayed somewhere I will bring it home. I had it in my laundry room for a while when we first moved here. It's not a quilt that I would put on a bed because there are so many different parts of it and it's not the right size for anything that I would have a place for.

KM: It is 61 inches by 52 inches.

WJ: Right. It could be a kind of a throw for, to cover up while you're sitting on the couch watching TV, but then it would get messed up. I have other things to use to, more knitted things that my mom made that wouldn't get destroyed. [laughs.] The quilt being white, very white and red, I would be afraid it would get dirty and I really like it. It's not to be used. It's to just be hung up and admired.

KM: Tell me about your interest in quiltmaking.

WJ: When I was in probably fourth or fifth grade, we lived in the country and we had a 4-H Club where we went and made things. I guess the first thing I made that I could call a quilt was a kind of a potholder that you put the pieces together and padded. Then my mother, as I mentioned earlier we had nine siblings in our family so she was quite busy with other things, she always saved pieces of material, of things, dress scraps and things. I think she never had time to complete a quilt but she had these little circles that she cut out and she was kind of circling the edge of the circle with stitches and gathering them up into a little puff. [yoyos.]. She had boxes of those that she had intended to make into a bedspread type cover. I don't think she intended to make it into a warm quilt. I boxed those up and sent them to my sister in New Mexico about four years ago and I don't know what she has done with them. I hope she finished working with them. My grandmother always had a quilting frame in her living room that she worked. She always had a quilt on it partly done. I never really saw her working with it either but we weren't around her very much. She lived in a different part of the country. My mother-in-law also did quilting. My husband's mother. She had a quilting frame. She did the piecing of the quilt, and the designing and the quilting and the piecing, then she took the cover to church and the ladies did the quilting. She did some beautiful pillows for me that I have. They are kind of a Crazy Quilt pattern made of pieces of velvet, all colors and the pieces are kind of a criss-cross stitch in-between the pieces, bonding them together. Each of the velvet pieces has a flower embroidered on it. I value those pillows. She is gone, but her pillows are still here. My sister-in-law still makes--my husband's brother's wife makes quilts for her grandchildren. They are beautiful. They are made of blue jean material that she gets from Goodwill or that the kids have outgrown their blue jeans or something that they wore and loved. She incorporates things from the blue jeans into the quilt. She has one that's Winnie the Pooh quilt so it has little things from the blue jeans that had a Winnie the Pooh or Eeyore on them and she puts the buckles on in a patch. She keeps the stitching from the blue jeans as part of the decorative part of her patch. It is hard to explain but it's really nice. I would like to try that some time too.

KM: How many hours a week do you quilt?

WJ: I don't quilt any specific hours. I do a lot of other things. Right now, I'm not quilting at all. I paint a little. I sculpt a little, and I do glass work a little. We built our own house. I take care of the garden and I'm really involved with the Bell County Historical Society. When I finish talking with you, I will go over there and take care of my treasurer duties for this week and volunteer for a couple of hours as docent over there.

KM: You had to write an essay to go along with your quilt.

WJ: Yes.

KM: Is that a difficult or easy process for you?

WJ: It was easy because I was telling the story of the old barns and how they were important to our history, of the history of America, of how the people were involved with the barns and the barns were essential to the community. The barn was the first thing that the farmer built of any substance. The house could come later, but the barn to shelter the animals and the food was essential. I found it really interesting that the people brought their style with them. Some had these cute little cupolas on the top. Well, [laughs.] they weren't built to be cute little cupolas I'm sure. They were sometimes weathervanes, to circulate air through the hay or straw I imagine. Straw wasn't stored up there.

KM: Have you ever entered before?

WJ: No. I've entered poetry. I've entered stories that I've written. I had not entered anything in the fabric. I entered sculpture once.

KM: What do you find pleasing about quiltmaking?

WJ: I have a whole lot of material that I've collected in preparation for quilting. When I go to a fabric store, I always sewed my own things. I don't anymore, but I still go to fabric stores and I look for fabric that goes together, that appeals to me, that says something about something in my life. I have this collection of fabric that some day I will get to. Well, maybe I will. Last year the museum was doing a historic project with some grade school children and I gave a lot of my fabric to the teacher, who was going to be working with the children, and they did some patchwork things. I don't know if I will. Yes, I do know I will get back to quilting but it's not one of my priorities. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about quilting. Right now, I have a sculpture half done on my kitchen counter that I won't get back to today, tomorrow, or even the next day. I kind of go in spurts of what I'm working on. It won't be quilting this year. [laughs.] Because I know what I have planned for the rest of this year that I want to finish that sculpture that is on the kitchen counter and that will take a while.

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

WJ: No, there really isn't. I have a roll of padding downstairs all ready for my next quilt and some times I think, 'Oh that is just taking up space, when are you going to get back to that?' I will get back to that. I think one of the questions you asked, 'Have you ever given quilts?' Before we moved, I had a rope bed, the old antique kind that you strung ropes back and forth to support the mattress that was filled with cornhusks or something else. I left that bed like it was and put an inner spring mattress above the rope and I gave it to my niece when we moved here. The quilt that was on it went with the bed, which I hadn't made, but my mother-in-law had and it was beautiful. I loved both the bed and the quilt and she sleeps on that and under that now. No, there is nothing that I really don't like about quilting. I don't get back to it because well maybe it's an excuse. I really do have a lot of other things that I like to do and I have to make time for everything and sometimes things that I really like get squeezed out. They have to take their turn. [laughs.]

KM: What do you think makes a quilt artistically powerful?

WJ: Artistically powerful. I think it has to have something in it that means something to the maker and it has to say something that other people can relate to. A long time ago, I always thought the Wedding Ring quilts were beautiful and maybe I'm not looking at them the same way now, but they aren't as intricate as I thought they were. They don't say the same thing to me know that they were saying. I don't know that I really like the modernistic quilts that just are a splash of color and then another splash of color in a different direction. That is saying something to someone and someone is going to appreciate those, but I think each person who makes the quilt, or sees it, interprets it with their own historic life.

KM: What advice would you offer someone starting out in quiltmaking?

WJ: Find out as much as you can about the technique. I watch a lot of quilting programs on TV for how to do things. On Internet, I read this Nancy somebody teaches quilting. I get a couple of those a week I think. She teaches how to do the binding, how to cut things the most easy way without measuring every single piece of fabric and how to get things squared and things like that. So somebody starting, either go to a class, which I've never done, but either go to a class, belong to a sewing group, belong to a quilting group, even if you're a beginner and if there is nothing like that near you, then there are programs on TV and on Internet. I couldn't live here in Tennessee on the edge of Kentucky without Internet. You can do anything with Internet. [laughs.] A beginner, find the fabrics that you like. Try things and if it doesn't look good to you then it doesn't have to be permanent. Try another pattern or another color fabric that goes with what you need it to go with.

KM: Describe the place where you sew.

WJ: I have a laundry room in the basement. It is a walk-out basement so it's not truly a basement, but it's the laundry room. I have two large tables in there that I call folding tables but my sewing machine is on one of them. They are large farmer type tables, probably four feet by six feet. It was kind of a bare laundry room when we moved here and we built cabinets around the perimeter so I have places for all the fabric and my thread is in another one and I have embroidery thread up on top of the cabinets. My machine will do embroidery too if I ever get to that stage. I have everything there. Also in my laundry room is a filmstrip viewer that I told the museum that I would look at old newspapers and transcribe everything that pertains to genealogy. I'm the registrar of my chapter and I'm way into genealogy both for my family and for anybody else who wants to join DAR. Our chapter had eight members when I came four years ago, we now have thirty. We now have thirty [both laugh.] and we have more wanting to join, but people weren't finding them and helping them. I'm helping them. Back to my laundry room. This humongous viewer is in part of the laundry room. Drawers in places for storing things around which I find really helpful, but things get put in a drawer and out of sight and then you forget about the quilt and start working on the viewer instead, but I haven't done that for a while either. That's the laundry room and the sewing room. Everything I've always done is self-taught. I'm looking at this questionnaire [Quick Questions.] again, 'Are you self-taught?' In everything I'm self-taught, in my computer and genealogy, but I use other resources to teach me, I don't just bungle around trying to learn by myself. In school, I taught computer to first, second and third graders and I taught myself how to teach them. [laughs.]

KM: In what ways do you think quilts have special meaning for women's history?

WJ: For women's history. Well, I haven't thought about that, but in the early days especially the quilts, I imagine, were mostly made of leftover fabrics from the family growing up. I remember looking at quilts that my grandmother had made that you can recognize the dress that somebody wore and the shirt that was no longer worn by somebody else. It seems kind of trivial for women's history but it's the history of the family. Not just the history but the memories that the family can have as they sleep under a special quilt that was handed down in the family.

KM: Tell me about the quilt that you sleep under.

WJ: Actually, I bought this one. We go to some auctions, I've bought quilts at auctions that are very, very old, but this one was a newer quilt and I bought it bigger than the bed because I use it as a bedspread. It's not pieced, but it is quilted. The quilting stitches are there and it's got roses embroidered throughout it, and scalloped edges hanging down bedspread like. I love it. The other quilt in our other bedroom is pieced. It has pastel flowers in each of the different fabric pieces and strips of fabric sewn together. There are some squares of white intermingled among the eight inch squares with hearts embroidered on, small hearts embroidered on those in a kind of flower design but they are hearts and stitching. It is a light quilt. It's not for winter. Well maybe winter down here.

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

WJ: Let me see. Well I think I've told you about everything I know [laughs.] and some things that you probably didn't want to know.

KM: What does your family think of your quiltmaking?

WJ: They think it's fantastic. They think it's quite an honor to have won this award and it is. My family is scattered. We just left family in Wisconsin. We stayed with family in Illinois and now we are here. I have family here that are four or five generations ago, but they are still third or fourth or fifth cousins which we acknowledged and they are enthralled too with my quilt that I have won an award for. They are very supportive in what I do in anything really. They were all interested that the picture was in the Middlesboro Daily [News.] paper last week.

KM: So you are a celebrity.

WJ: Yeah, a celebrity, yes. Our paper here is so good about putting things in the paper. Our DAR chapter gets things in the paper quite regularly.

KM: Excellent. I want to thank you for taking time out of your morning to talk to me.

WJ: Thank you for taking your time for this and I hope it was somewhat coherent.

KM: Yes you did a good job. We are going to conclude our interview at 9:49.