We called
Terry White last week to get the scoop on her new book,
Enhance Your Quilts - Embellish!
and got to talking about how she started quilting.
"Art and threads have always been a part of my life," says Terry.
And what a life! There were artists and seamstresses throughout Terri's family, and she used to play dress-up with the magical costumes her grandmother created for Mardi Gras. Terri also remembers always having paints and crafting supplies around the house. "I could draw when I was little," she explains, and adds that - in her mind - embroidery was just drawing with thread. By high school she was knitting, tatting, and doing crewel work, embroidery, and applique. Then she got her first quilt book when she was just sixteen after it arrived as a book-of-the-month club selection. She was heavily influenced by several books that Terry says were "ahead of their time," including
Jean Ray Laury's
Quilts and Coverlets and
Constance Howard's Inspiration for Embroidery.
Terry started making art quilts back in the eighties, long before they were embraced. She often feels sandwiched between two generations of quilters, she says. When she first joined a guild in her twenties, the "old ladies" looked at her wondering what she was doing there, she remembers. There was even a discussion about a minimum age requirement for membership!
By the time art quilting was made popular, largely by younger quilters, Terry says some thought she had become the "old lady." She was even called a "troublemaker" by a doyenne of the industry for breaking the rules of quilting.
"I love what is happening now...the the younger women are
coming in...coming up with their own new colors and feelings. It's fun."
Terry is interested in the history of quilting, and points out that it's not that long a history. If you look back to the beginnings of quilting, she adds, American patchwork is all so different. Quilters have always made creative choices, renamed blocks, and experimented with color. "If you took them out of context, you wouldn't call them traditional quilts at all."
She adds, "People who call themselves traditional quilters - what does that mean? Is it because they use blocks that have a name? Because they use old-fashioned looking fabrics?"
Terry used to do all her work by hand until injury to her hands made her move to machine work. But "even when I quilted by hand, I was always doing embroidery and adding beads and embellishments." It's not the same work she used to do, she clarifies, but a continuation of it.
Enhance Your Quilt - Embellish! is Terry's third book, and the book she says she's been waiting to do all along. She started with
Thread Painting Made Easy
in 2008 because it's her favorite technique, but mostly because the people she was teaching to were most intrigued by this method. She followed that with
All Beaded Up by Machine
later that year.
Each book has a similar outline and idea: it introduces a method for decorating the surface of your quilt, and the technical ways to make it work. She covers all aspects of how to set up your machine and which materials work best. "Technical boring stuff that you'd love to live without," but which make the learning curve easier.
"I've experimented with all these things so [you] don't have to.
I don't lie and I don't leave secrets out. I tell [you] everything."
Lessons follow, teaching the different techniques. The first two books have some patterns included, and the new book has over a hundred suggestions for "embellishmentality," as Terry calls it. Each book finishes with an Inspirations section to get you moving.
Thanks, Terry, for taking the time to chat with SeamedUP! We hope your new book is a raging success!
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