00:00:00Cindy Dollar Brown (CDB): Thank you. This is Cindy Dollar Brown , todays date
is November 5th of 2011, it is 11:15 A.M. and Im conducting an interview with
Kay Marburger for Quilters S.O.S. Save Our Stories a project of The Alliance
for American Quilts. Kay Marburger and I are at the International Quilt Festival
in Houston, Texas. Kay, will you tell me about the quilt you brought today?
Kay Marburger (KM): My quilt, Lafayette Hero of Two Worlds, was my very first
quilt that I made starting from scratch. I live in Fayette County, the town La
Grange [Texas.] and in 2006 the city of Lafayette, Louisiana, decided that the
next year they were going to have a big celebration celebrating the two
00:01:00hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Marquis de Lafayette from France,
after whom their city was named. One of the things they wanted to do was have a
quilt exhibition and they were asking anybody, any town, any county with the
name of Lafayette, Fayette, La Grange, because La Grange was the ancestral home
of Lafayette, if they would make quilts and send them to this exhibit. The
invitation came to Fayette County [Texas.] and the Fayette county judge asked
me, because he knew I was a quilter, if our quilt guild might be interested in
doing that. I took it to the quilt board and they said, Yes, that sounds like
something we would like to do. We were a fairly young guild, only about nine
years old, and so the guild decided, yes they would do a quilt. They discussed
what on earth are we going to do for this quilt. The theme was Lafayette
00:02:00Hero of Two Worlds. Brainstorming went on, and there were several ideas that
people came up with and I had one idea, but my idea wasnt chosen by the
guild, of course I just had an idea, I really didnt have any idea of how to
go about doing it, I just kind of had a concept. The guild did make two quilts,
one for the guild but we couldnt afford to make another one and finance it
ourselves, so we asked the county if they would like to finance the quilt and
the guild would make it for them, and the county said, Yes. We did one
quilt for the county, and they did pay for it, but we could send four quilts to
00:03:00that exhibit, so I decided, Well, okay, Ill just make a quilt following my
idea. My idea was a silhouette of Lafayette standing with his feet apart, one
foot in the United States, one foot in France. I started thinking about that, I
really had not been quilting that long at that time and I really didnt have
an idea about how to go about doing this, but I just kind of sketched and just
kind of drew and then I kind of figured out by looking at maps and kind of
tracing the shape of the United States and France and kind of playing around
with enlarging things and I got my basic outline, or background design for the
quilt. I was going to have Lafayette, water, of course the Atlantic ocean
00:04:00between the United States and France, and the sky in the background above, but I
really didnt want to do all the detail on Lafayette so thats why I chose
the silhouette. I was kind of trying to decide what I was going to use on my
quilt, to make Lafayette. Black of course was the first thing that popped into
my mind. I just put that down as black, then I decided, Well maybe I ought to
use several different blacks, and just kind of intersperse them because I had
been collecting some water fabrics and some sky fabrics, and I knew that I was
going to use a bunch of different water fabrics and a bunch of different sky
fabrics. This, like I said, was my first foray into designing my own quilt. I
00:05:00selected a one and one-half inch square for Lafayette, or maybe it was two
inches, Id have to measure [laughs.] and just started cutting black squares
and then started sewing them together, small squares sewn together until I had a
big large piece of black squares. I started out with some sketches, silhouette
sketches, and just kind of played around with them. I had his hands out
stretched and he has a cape, to kind of cover up some of the detail, and finally
got my shape of Lafayette for the silhouette. I cut it out of the black, well
00:06:00before I did that I had to adjust him, I figured out exactly where I wanted the
United States and I wanted France and I kind of had to make sure his legs
stretched wide enough so that one foot would be in France and one in the United
States. For France, I had some fabric that had the Eiffel Tower on it, and I
thought that would be just great to use but then I checked out that the Eiffel
Tower wasnt there in Lafayettes time so I found a fabric that had little
fleur-de-lis on it, and was going to use that for France. For the United States,
I had several fabrics but most of them were too busy, so I fussy cut some of the
motifs on one piece of fabric and put them in a more solid, more of a marble
00:07:00background. I had some vignettes of the American Revolution Era in the United
States. When I kind of laid my United States out on my background, I decided
that I needed to add in the Great Lakes because that would just kind of finish
off the top area of the United States. On my sea I decided to cut the pieces in
parallelograms and I just cut up a whole bunch of parallelograms and just
started sewing them together end to end, and then putting them in strips. For my
sky I used squares and I used different kinds of sky frabrics for the squares
and just sewed them together. Then I thought I had way too much sky, I needed
to do something to the sky, so I had made a fractured flag, United States flag
00:08:00by another pattern but of course it was a much larger flag, so I figured out how
to make it smaller, on the idea as that fractured flag pattern and I made a
small United States flag and I was going to make a French flag with fleur-de-lis
on it, but checking with the era, that flag was not the French flag at the time
of Lafayette. I found out that the simple blue, white, and red one was which was
really a lot easier to make [laughs.] I put the flags on my sky background of
assorted fabrics and then just to make sure that you would know who this was, I
made a little label saying, Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds. This was the
00:09:00first time that I had extensively used a lot of fusible, that I did fuse all of
the elements onto the sky and water background, and then quilted it and I have a
Handiquilter, an HQ16, so I loaded it on my machine and quilted it. Then bound
it in little black edging so to kind of look like a picture frame. Our guild
sent off three quilts to the exhibit in Lafayette, Louisiana, and it was open
October through November of 2007. They send us an invitation, you know,
00:10:00Please come if you can, however that was about an eight to ten hour drive
from my hometown so no one went, no one was planning to go, but then my husband
decided that that would be a good place that we could try out his new
motorcycle; that we could take a trip there, and it would take us one day to get
there, stay in a motel, go see the exhibit, look around Lafayette, Louisiana,
and then come home, which we did. When we got to Lafayette [Louisiana.] and
found out where the exhibit was, it was in the Cultural Arts Center, and as we
walked up to it, looking up to the building, on the second floor in the building
00:11:00was a huge glass window and the first thing I saw was a reproduction of my
quilt, much more than life-size, it was probably about lets say maybe about
eight feet tall. It was you know, photographed and enlarged and I dont know
how they do stuff like that, but they do. I was so excited I just couldnt
believe it [laughs.] We took a whole bunch of pictures and then when we walked
in to the exhibit, and it was a small center, and the first thing you saw when
you walked through the doors into the exhibit was a table with the bust of
Lafayette and then they had a small crest that they were using, that they had
00:12:00been using throughout their previous information and you know, really for
probably about a year and a half to advertise this, and that was on the table,
and right behind the table on the wall was my quilt. They let us take all kinds
of pictures, and we did, but there were about thirty-five quits hanging in the
exhibit and of course I took pictures of everything [laughs.] and just really,
that was so exciting for me, to walk into a place and see my quilt featured like
that. They did publish a book that had photographs of all the quilts, and of
00:13:00course the information that we had sent with it, they ask for a little synopsis
of what the quilt was about. The woman that was curating that exhibit had told
us that they were going to try to find other venues for this exhibit. Since
there were quilts from France, Canada and the Netherlands and you know some from
the United States too of course in this exhibit, and the French, the lets
see, somebody from the State Department from the United States in the State
Department, I guess the French ambassador, I mean the US ambassador to France,
00:14:00his wife saw the exhibit and she thought that that would be nice if these quilts
could tour in France. They selected, she selected some quilts from that exhibit
to tour in France. Well this one wasnt selected to tour in France, but one of
the other quilts that our guild made was. Of course we were all excited about
that, and we watched the progress of that and that didnt happen until April
of 08 to, through the summer of 09. Then, the quilts of course, the quilt
was touring in France, came back, and about a month after that it came back,
00:15:00from that long tour, we got a letter from the women that had curated the exhibit
originally and she said, The DAR Museum in Washington, D.C. would like to
showcase these quilts in their exhibit, she said, All of the quilts. I
was so excited about that, we all were, the whole guild was because all three of
these quilts, you know, were now going to be in Washington, D.C. We had
already given the one to Fayette County [Texas.], and you know Fayette County
had to agree to loan their quilt to the museum in Washington, D.C. which they
did. Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds, plus the other two quilts from Fayette
00:16:00County [Texas.] went to Washington, D.C. April through September 2010 and hung
in the DAR Museum in Washington, D.C. a special exhibit, and they called their
special exhibit Honoring Lafayette, Contemporary Quilts from the United States
and France. Once again there was going to be an opening to the exhibit and
they asked if we would like, you know, invitations, and so I said, Yes, sure
would, April the 15th was going to be the opening night, but you know I live
in Central Texas and its going to be in Washington, D.C. at night, and
theres definitely no hopping up there [laughs.] you know it would be at least
00:17:00a two day trip and in the middle of the week. I wanted the invitation because
Im going to put this in a scrapbook. When the invitation came, you know we
had the return address, the DAR Museum Washington, D.C. and I knew what it was,
I opened it up and when I pulled it out of the envelope, the front graphic on
the invitation to the exhibit was my quilt, Lafayette, Hero of Two Worlds and I
know, you know tears just sprung into my eyes, then I got so excited and that
was a day or two before our quilt guild meeting, so when I went to the quilt
guild meeting, and I did call the other gal who designed one of the quilts,
00:18:00because she had wanted an invitation too, and I called her and said, Did you
get your invitation? and she said, Yes! and of course she was excited
too that my quilt was on the cover of it, but when I took it to the guild
meeting and its show and tell time, I walked up and I stood in front of the
group and I said, I got this in the mail, and I opened, took the envelope
out, and I pulled the card out of the envelope and held it so everybody could
see it. Everybody was all excited about that too.
CDB: How wonderful.
KM: It went to Washington, D.C. it hung in the DAR Museum and I didnt go to
the opening night, but I did go to Washington, D.C. [laughs.] in the summer and
00:19:00saw it hanging there.
CDB: Did you go on your motorcycle?
KM: No we did not [laughs.] No my husband said he was not going to Washington,
D.C. but it was fine, I could go. I went with a friend and no we really dont
do cities too well [laughs.] we prefer wide open spaces.
CDB: Is it unusual for you to do some much historical research and you know,
have a theme like this for a quilt?
KM: That was the first time I did anything like that, but we had been given a
title, or a theme, and asked to follow that theme, or there was another theme,
the Friendship of Washington and Lafayette. As we were trying to come up with
ideas for the quilt, then for any, all of the quilts, we did a lot of research.
00:20:00I really havent done that type of research before, not for a quilt because
most of the time I would just find a pattern that I like, and pick fabrics that
I like, and just make a quilt. I hadnt thought about designing things or
making up my own designs or ideas.
CDB: This one you described as you did several sketches and drawings, do you
have a background in drawing or art?
KM: No I dont. Ive always felt like I wasnt a very good artist, that I
couldnt draw realistic pictures, but although I love to doodle, and I doodled
00:21:00all the time, and I think that has helped me in my quilting, but as far as
artwork, you know its one reason I selected a silhouette [laughs.] so I
wouldnt have to fill in facial features for one thing that I think are very
hard although I really admire them in all of these quilts that I see, especially
here at Festival.
CDB: How do you use this quilt now that its back from its national tour?
KM: I havent really done anything with it. I have it stored at home [laughs,]
and I might, I really dont have any plans to do anything with it, its
00:22:00just, I love it. You know I just pet it every once, I get it out and kind of
play with it a little bit.
CDB: How did your interest in quiltmaking begin?
KM: Ive sewn since Ive been in high school and I sewed a lot of clothes
for myself, for my children, and we live in a small town and we had a fabric
store there for a while, but you know finally the lady, you know she was ready
to retire and she closed it. Then this quilt shop opened up in La Grange
[Texas.] in 1998, thirteen years ago, and I wandered in during their grand
opening because I knew they would have fabric, and when I walked into the quilt
00:23:00store I was just very, very surprised at the colors of the fabrics, they were so
vibrant, and the feel of the fabric, thats probably the first thing I did was
you know reach out and touch the fabric, one of the bolts. I walked through the
whole quilt shop, I looked at everything that was there in the quilt shop and of
course the young lady that opened the quilt shop was there behind the counter
and she knew that obviously I enjoyed fabric and she asked me if I quilted and I
said, No I didnt, and she said, Well we have classes, and were
starting a quilt guild, why dont you come and find out what were all
about. So I did, I walked into the quilt guild meeting and I saw a women
there that I knew, I went over and sat down next to her, and she had this quilt
00:24:00in her lap, and I said, Oh I didnt know you quilted, and she said,
Well, I took a class at the Quilters Cottage, and I havent ever done
anything on a machine but this is all done by machine, and she said, It
was quick and it was easy, and I looked at it and I said, I could do
that. I signed up for that class, because it was being offered again, and I
went into the quilt store and I looked around for fabrics and I selected my
fabrics and just really enjoyed doing that and then I had to get everything all
cut before you could come to class, so I did. I went to the class and I started
00:25:00out you know, following the directions and it was a six hour class and after
those six hours I had half of the quilt finished [laughs.] I went home and I
finished that quilt, by the next day I had it finished and I was so excited
about it and I really enjoyed doing it and I was hooked from then on. I decided,
Well, Im going to do some more of this. I was working part-time but as
classes would come up at the Quilters Cottage that I could take, I would take
a few more classes, and ten incorporate that with some of the other things that
I had learned. I didnt have a background in quilting, no one in my family had
00:26:00ever quilted, I didnt grow up with quilts at home and I was just amazed.
Id look at these patterns and Id think, Oh my goodness I could never do
something like that, but I decided Im going to do this and I love the
fabrics, I love looking for just the right fabric for the right project, for the
mood, for the quilt that goes with the other colors.
CDB: What was that first quilt like? Do you remember it?
KM: Yes, oh yes I do. That pattern was called Grandmas Cuddle Quilt and it
was a quilt as you go. You cut your strips, and they were on the diagonal, they
00:27:00laid across the square on the diagonal, but you had your background fabric, the
square, you had your batting, it was a square, and then you had your strips that
you laid on that square diagonally, one down the center, your focus fabric down
the center. Then on either side of that you laid a strip, right sides together,
sewed it down, flattened it out with an iron, laid that next strip on there,
flattened it out, till you got out to the corners and then you did the other
side, then there was a technique in the class where they showed you how to put
them together. Once I got the hang of it, after I did about one block, it was
just straight sewing, and I thought that was just great.
CDB: How has your quilting evolved from that first quilt?
00:28:00
KM: Well that first quilt only had about six or seven fabrics in it, and it was
the same square, twelve times, and then you know sashed and bound. I soon found
that I liked lots of different fabrics in my quilts, that I was happier making
maybe that same block, but in other colors or in other shades of the colors, not
the same thing over and over. I liked, I really enjoyed the piecing. To me
its a challenge, its fun, its interesting, its exciting. One of the
first classes that I took after that class was a foundation paper piecing class
00:29:00because the woman that ran the shop, she and her mother had designed a
foundation paper piecing patterns, miniatures and so I picked out a pattern and
I read what you needed and it said, An assortment of colors, and I kind of
scratched my head, I understand an assortment of colors, but I was thinking,
how on earth can you just put all of these colors together? I talked to
the instructor and she said, Well just bring your scrap box and all you need
is small pieces because it was a miniature, and she said, Youll
probably have lots of scraps. Well I didnt have just a whole lot of scraps
because I kind of scaled back on my sewing and I just didnt have that many
scraps around, especially cotton scraps, but I brought what I had. When I went
00:30:00to the class and started learning how to foundation paper piece, these little
bitty I think they were like, maybe the whole thing would end up a four inch
square, there would be four little two inch square pieces that you would put
together for this pattern. I just started laying out fabrics that I thought
would go together and soon I had little piles of fabrics that would go together
and I watched the other ladies in there to see what they were doing [laughs.] I
made all these little, it was a jack-in-the-box pattern, and I made all of these
squares and the pattern called for you to put them together in a big square or
00:31:00big rectangle but I liked vests and I wanted to make, wanted to use those in a
vest, so I took another class that talked about using squares, or using quilt
pieces, pieces of quilts and making, putting them into clothing, actually that
one specifically putting them into a vest. I took my squares, I had them all
ready to go, you know I made them, and learned how to put them together and add
solid fabrics or the fabric around it so that it would go into, make into a
vest. Really, I use the same thing on this vest that I have on today, this was
00:32:00not my first attempt [laughs.] and I put it all together and here I had this
vest, and I knew I had to line it and I was so excited about my sewing and I
didnt really know how to quilt then, and I hadnt really done that much
quilting except for that little bit on the machine and I didnt know how I was
going to machine quilt what I just did, because it was a lot smaller and there
were a lot more angles and a lot more lines. That first piece, first vest that I
pieced, I didnt quilt, I just sewed the lining in it and [laughs.] just
started wearing it like that. I did learn how to quilt by hand, that was the
next thing I did, Okay Im going to have to figure out how to quilt these
00:33:00things by hand, so I took a class on handquilting and then started
handquilting, you just have to keep quilting and quilting and quilting and I did
really enjoy the handquilting. I could sit and watch TV or rather quilt, but it
was in my lap, but if youre watching a football game, you can always look up
when theres loud noise and keep right on quilting by hand, and I could do it
in the car, and I could do it in the airplane. At that time, they really
didnt question if you walked on the plane with scissors and needles or
anything like that.
CDB: Do you have a favorite process or technique now?
KM: Now I dont handquilt because it took so long to finish just the small
00:34:00things and I did mostly baby quilts or small wall hangings, and so I decided
that I wanted to learn how to machine quilt and I tried free-motion quilting on
my sewing machine, and it still took quite a while to do it and I had to
maneuver all of that fabric, that bundle, that rolled edge of the quilt, I had
to maneuver that through my sewing machine. I was making like twin bed size and
queen size bed quilt tops and taking them to a longarm quilter to have them
quilt it. One day I went to pick up one of those from my longarm quilter and
00:35:00there was a for sale sign in the front of her house, and she said, Oh were
selling everything and we bought this nice RV, which was parked in the
driveway, she said, Were just going to become full-time RV-ers, so I
said, What are you going to do with your quilting machine? and she said,
Well, Im going to sell it. So I ask her, then I just said, Well,
you know how much would something like this cost? and she had a Gammill, it
was a large one, and she gave me a price, and she took me into her studio and
let me look at it, and when I saw how big it was I thought, Oh I dont
think thats going to fit anywhere in my house, but I took measurements and
I went home, and I measured. Sure enough, it wouldnt fit [laughs.] It
wouldnt fit in the bedroom that I could have dedicated to it, and so you know
00:36:00I called her back and said, Its too big, it wont fit in my house,
and she said, You know you just need to go to quilt festival,
[International Quilt Festival in Houston, TX, about 100 miles from where we
live] which was like about two weeks later, she said, Just go to quilt
festival, and she says, Look at everything they have because, she said,
You know you might find something. So I did, in 2004, I came to quilt
festival and spent you know the whole time here, looking at every machine that
was available. Now I had my dimensions of my room, and I knew the amount of
space you know that I could commit to this machine. [laughs.] I located one that
I thought fit my room the best, and it was the one that I now have, it was a
Handi Quilter, and at that time they just had the sixteen-inch ones, so I
00:37:00ordered a Handi Quilter and a table and it took it about a month to get there
and my husband helped me set it up, matter of fact Im really no good at
putting things, pieces of furniture together and that type of stuff, and we had
to take out the video on how to load the machine, because I had ordered videos
about quilting and how you go about doing it. He had never even seen a quilting
machine, the only ones I had seen, I really hadnt paid any attention to, and
I was more interested in you know maneuvering the machine, not how it was set
up. We watched that and John started assembling it upstairs in the bedroom, the
00:38:00bedroom that I was going to be using, and it took sveral days to get everything
in place and get it together, and of course all of my friends were [laughs.]
Id had it there about a week, and we had a guild project, we were decorating
some place for Christmas, and everybody came over after we worked on that to see
my machine and to see how I had it set up and then I spent about a month just
learning how to use the machine, and just doing simple quilting designs; like
stippling, and loops [laughs.]
00:39:00
CDB: Do you take in other quilters projects now that you have the big machine
or do you just focus on your own projects?
KM: No I dont. I just do my own projects and Ive done things like quilted
some quilts that the guild was going to, the guild put it together then were
giving it away for our various charity projects. We did a lot of quilts of valor
and you know I quilted them, but not, Im not for hire [laughs.]
CDB: Your quilts are very artistic, so what do you think makes a quilt
artistically powerful?
KM: It has to have a theme and I feel that it has to have a recognizable theme.
One reason on mine that I put that title, in addition to the fact that I needed
00:40:00something to fill up that space was I wanted people to know what I was trying to
tell them, and I think if you look at it, then you, Oh yeah, I get the
idea. I think the choice of color is very, very important, I think the colors
need to be vibrant enough so that they catch your eye and Im not necessarily
opposed to pastel colors or more muted colors. I definitely think there is a
place for them, but Im just drawn to brighter colors.
CDB: Have any quiltmakers influenced you in your work, or mentored you?
KM: Ive had just a couple of mentors that have really helped me. One of them
00:41:00just kind of, our guild has a bee, once a week, you know a bee, and its from
ten to four at a church and people come and bring their projects, whatever
theyre working on and its, anybody in the guild can come, so there are
different people that come. It was on a day when I wasnt working, so I
started going and I would always take my projects and one person in particular
Jo Knox was, she was always there, and you know she watched what I was doing and
she would give me little hints. Shed say, Theres an easier way that you
00:42:00could do that, or she said, You know, you might want to try this, and
she gave me color selection ideas. When I would have problems, she, if I would
ask her shed always tell me and you know she was the type of person too that
if I didnt really agree with her, that was okay [laughs.] it didnt ruffle
her feathers any at all and sometimes I didnt follow her advice, but most of
the time if I didnt follow her advices [laughs.] I thought, Oh yeah, she
does have a point there. She has always encouraged me too, you know whenever
I would try something new, and she still encourages me to do things that I
havent done before and one of these days I might even try some appliqu that
00:43:00you actually stitch down by hand [laughs.] but Im not wild about hand
appliqu. Everything in my Lafayette quilt is stitched is appliqud down, but
its machine appliqu using invisible thread, in most cases I think I used
invisible thread on that. Another person that had helped me quite a bit with the
foundation paper piecing was the owner of the quilt shop there, was Kristi
Grigsby, and she and her mother Jackie Asbill designed a lot of the patterns
that they had sold. Ive done a number of foundation paper piecing projects.
00:44:00
CDB: I think were getting close to the end of our time, so Im going to ask
a couple more questions then Im going to ask you if theres anything you
want to add at the end. Why is quiltmaking important to your life?
KM: It gives me a creative outlet and Ive never really felt that I was just a
wonderfully creative person but I like to do things and I like to make things
and I made a lot of quilts and given them as gifts and I enjoyed doing that
because Im usually thinking about that person whenever Im working on a
project that Im going to give away. It just gives me a good feeling inside.
CDB: In what was do you think quilts have special meaning for womens history
00:45:00in America?
KM: Women have been quilting for a long time, and just quilting myself, although
no one in my family quilted, I feel like I have a connection with people that
have quilted years ago and I feel like they too were trying to express their
creativity and their individuality in the quilts that they made while providing
something useful for their family. When I make quilts and give them away or like
for baby quilts, I encourage the mothers to use them [laughs.] use them and wash
them and use them and wash them because I just feel like thats a connection
00:46:00with other people.
CDB: Well thank you so much for coming today. Is there anything that youd
like to say or question I didnt ask you that youd like to talk about?
KM: No, I cant think of anything.
CDB: Okay thank you. Id like to thank you Kay Marburger for allowing me to
interview you today for the Quilters S.O.S. [Save Our Stories.] Project, our
oral history project and our interview concluded at 12:02.