I've written a lot about accomplished women and I must confess that these posts flummox me. In this short space, I never know whether to draw your attention to the woman, her work, the story of her past, or the possibilities in her future.
To illustrate this quandary, let me introduce Cathy Fussell, a lifelong quilter who learned to handle a needle before she memorized her math tables. She remembers being four and pranking her father by sewing buttons onto his handkerchiefs when he wasn't looking. She has spent her entire life on the Chattahoochee-Flint-Apalachicola watershed in Georgia, and its terrain figures heavily in her topographic quilts. Her husband's paintings inspire her patterns. So do the words of William Faulkner. Cathy lectures on quilting, blogs about quilting, and leads quilting workshops. Two years ago, she was commissioned to create a quilt for First Lady Michelle Obama. She traveled to Washington D.C. to present the quilt to Mrs. Obama, who, by the way, was the fifth first lady that Cathy had the pleasure of meeting.
I ask you, which of those interesting facts deserves its own paragraph?
And then there's this anecdote Cathy shared about her days teaching high school English. She would come home bone tired, turn on Court TV, and labor over her quilts while listening to the live coverage of courtroom prosecutions. In her mind, she referred to those pieces as The Menendez Brothers Quilt and The OJ Quilt.
I bring my own baggage as an unpaid writer to this post, so I wanted to know how Cathy went from quilt hobbyist to professional artist who supplements her retirement income with quilt sales. Cathy said that a few years ago, she was invited to join other artists -- real artists she called them -- in an open studio art sale. To her complete surprise, Cathy sold several thousand dollars worth of quilts that day. "It got me off and running," she said.
Finally, I must contend with images -- in this case, photos of the former cotton mill, which is now Cathy and Fred's studio space and home. The two of them live in a geometric rectangle subdivided into squares, like one of the quilts piled on Cathy and Fred's sofa. Cathy's family once raised cotton, so "because the loft is a cotton mill, it is important to us."
Cathy purchased this "hearts and gizzards" piece unfinished on eBay. It took her two years to hand quilt it. I asked Cathy why she feels compelled to finish a long-dead stranger's quilt when she has so much modern quilting of her own to do. "I love the history and the mystery," she said. "I want to honor their work by completing the piece. And I'm a process person. I'm not in a hurry."
Natural light pours in through the factory windows, ideal for a woman with a reputation for making tiny and precise stitches. Looking out beyond the trees, one can see Alabama on the other side of the Chattahoochee River.
Cathy purchased this old, unfinished quilt with the signatures of the original seamstresses written in pencil on the squares. She researched the names on Ancestry.com and surmised that the quilt likely originated in Springfield, Ohio. She invited other quilters to an old-fashioned quilting bee to complete the quilt, and now hopes to travel to Springfield to return the quilt to its place of origin.
The quilt on the wall above is titled The Alabama River at Gee's Bend. It represents Cathy's first real attempt at free quilting. "Not long after I began the echo quilting I'd planned, everything started to shift and creep and crawl," said Cathy. "The result is quilting lines that wound up looking a lot like topographical lines, or, in my mind, furrows in plowed fields -- cotton fields."
The cotton mill where Cathy lives once processed the denim for the majority of Lee jeans manufactured in the 1970s and ‘80s. Cathy said to me, "If you wore Lee jeans in high school or college, they probably passed through this building first." Cathy thinks about the weavers who worked here as she talks to her own sewing machine, coaxing it along.
This quilt was inspired by a Gee's Bend quilt owned by Cathy's daughter. Cathy made up this pattern, and calls it "Lazy Tumbler." It's an improv quilt, with no measuring and no precision. "This is the quilt that freed me," said Cathy.
What I most loved about Cathy and Fred's loft is how nearly everything in it was made by hand. Cathy told me that moving from the family home in Buena Vista to Columbus required a strenuous thinning of possessions. "It was freeing," said Cathy. "I'd pick up an object, and think about it. And then I'd let it go."
Cathy made this quilt during a six-month sojourn in Oxford, England, using a cheap Singer sewing machine that she purchased and lugged home on the bus. I love the abstract lines and how the curved hand stitching creates an effect of undulating motion.
This vignette includes a photograph taken by Fred of Pasaquan, the visionary art environment created by fellow citizen of Buena Vista, Eddie Owens Martin, also known as St. EOM. After St. EOM passed away, Cathy and Fred devoted themselves to caring for the estate for nearly thirty years.
Cathy named this quilt the Graphic Novel Version of William Faulkner’s "As I Lay Dying." The lack of color, save the flames that lick up the side of the barn, enhances the grim nature of Faulkner's story of a dying woman in Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi.
The pillow above with the pattern of concentric circles is a miniature version of the quilt that Cathy made for First Lady Michelle Obama. It is based on the painting by Alma Thomas, which hung in the Obama White House dining room. You can read more about Cathy's process stitching that quilt here.
Here we are now at the end of today’s post. On the subject of what makes Cathy Fussell tick, I think I can offer one last paragraph: she is curious; she is dogged; she experiments; she makes do; she is not afraid of wrinkles – in time, on her face, or under her machine’s needle. She keeps pushing the fabric forward, pressing down on the pedal, turning the bulky mass this and that way, until finally, something utilitarian and beautiful is before her.
And on those beautiful quilts that Cathy makes, she said it best:
Quilts are about history and art and politics and stories and patience and beauty and community and economics and place and expression and freedom and transition and family and warmth – and love. And they’re feminized and devalued. All that is why I’m so into quilts and quiltmaking.
Here's is Cathy's website. You can also follow Cathy on Instagram.
Kicka%$ Quilts Not Even Close to Boring
If you need more quilts today, check out this post from my trip to a quilt exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.