During the couple of decades I traveled all over the US (and beyond), teaching and lecturing about quilts for quilters’ guilds and at conferences, I met hundreds of quilters every year. The conviviality among the students in my workshops was one of the many pleasures of my job.
Quilters told me often that half of what drew them to quiltmaking was the process itself (the fabrics, the patterns, the joy of making). The other half was the friendships they made with other quilters.
I made lots of friends myself in the quilting world over the years: students I clicked with, colleagues teaching at the same conferences, hosts who put me up in their homes, guests on “Love of Quilting,” and, later on, special friends I made during the seven years I served on the Quilts of Valor Foundation board of directors, my QOVF friends.
I also now have writing friends—fellow writers who discuss plot, character, and dialogue (among other topics) in the same enthusiastic way quilters talk about quilt blocks, border treatments, batting and binding (among other topics). I now count a number of novelists (published and not-yet-pubished) among my friends.
In 2019-2020, I was in a yearlong novel writing class via StoryStudioChicago. I traveled to the Windy City from Iowa (and other locations) once a month to meet in person with the twelve other members of my cohort. Our teacher was the wonderful writer Rebecca Makkai. By March, 2020, when Covid changed in-person everything, we had met eight times. Zooming wasn’t the same as being together, but it was better than nothing.
One of my Novel-in-a-Year friends is Marie. She’s a wonderful writer whose manuscript is now complete. I’ve have the pleasure of reading it, and though she does not yet have an agent, I’m confident her narrative will be published one day. Then, others will have that pleasure as well.
Marie recently launched Blanket Gravity Magazine—a free online literary publication for people who struggle with mental health. An offshoot of Blanket Gravity is Blankie, on Substack. Blankie publishes essays, fiction, and interviews on art and mental health. Marie recently asked if she could interview me about quilting and mental health, in an “Artist Chat.” I jumped at the chance.
Here’s a photo of me with one of my quilting AND writing friends, Frances O’Rourke Dowell, who visited Winterset last summer during the Iowa Quilt Museum’s Iowa Quilt Festival.
And here’s the interview conducted by my friend Marie.