Teacher Interview

The Meeting Place

Meet
Lisa Boyer

When QuiltWorks Today magazine expressed an interest in writing an article about me, I was thrilled and honored. But after my initial elation, apprehension set in. What could they possibly write about me? I have such mundane, everyday answers to common interview questions: How long have you been quilting? Sixteen years. What kind of batting do you use? A cotton/polyester blend. What are you inspired by? Everyday objects. Have you won any prestigious quilting awards? Embarrassingly, no.

Since I have had a close relationship with the wonderful staff at Chitra for over four years now, I felt free to call them and voice my insecurities. That's when they suggested, "Why don't you write the article about yourself? Then you could ask and answer your own questions."

What a fabulous idea: me interviewing me! I can avoid the "prestigious quilting awards" question all together! I could keep my batting secrets secret. I would ask questions that I would love to see in interviews with other quilters such as "What sort of hot dish do you bring to quilting potlucks?" Most importantly, I could ask myself in-depth personal questions that no one would dare ask me, such as "How old are you?" What follows is the resulting interview:

LB: How old are you? Lisa: None of your business. Next question.

LB: Hey - wait a minute. This isn't starting out very well. What happened to all those in-depth, personal things you were going to reveal? Lisa: Okay, I'm 44. But keep in mind that's only 28 in quilter years. For every year you quilt, you get to subtract a year from your chronological age.

LB: Have you won any prestigious awards? Lisa: Gee you're a tough interviewer. No, I haven't But the truth is that I rarely enter contests. I am a quilt show drop-out. When I think of what I love to do, I think of "quilting" as an active verb. This relieves the pressure of feeling like I have to produce a spectacular finished product. I love the process of quilting, from touching fabrics to looking at beautiful colors and feeling the excitement of a new project. I love gliding scissors through fabric as well as sewing seams and even ripping them! The finished quilt is just a happy bonus at the end of that process.

I'm not an artist and have no formal art training. My background is in science and math. I don't like to think of my quilts as "art" but as "fabric parties" or "blankets with an attitude." I rarely enter quilt contests because it takes vision, talent, and discipline to make an award-winning quilt. I just like to goof off with fabric! Do they give prestigious awards for that?

LB: I don't think so, but they certainly should! Can we start a petition? Lisa: Yes, let's. Unfortunately, even if we both signed it, we'd have only one signature.

LB: You've been a quilt teacher for several years now. What is the most important lesson you teach? Lisa: If there were one gift I could give to everyone of my students, it would be the gift of courage. I'd like to give them all a magic potion to turn them all into mad, wacky quilt scientist for just one day. Then I would send them on a mission: Be brave enough to make a 21st-century fold art quilt with images that reflect your world today. Instead of using a pattern of images that are at least a century old, use ones that record our current times. Women in the 1850s quilted images from their world, not from the 1750s. But why do images from the past have a respectability that images from the present don't? How many quilters do you know that are drawing and sewing pictures of their blenders and food processors? Probably none. Unfortunately, it's tough explaining to fellow quilters just why I'm piecing my blow dryer or appliquéing a picture of my toaster. I can't draw, so my pictures are funny, lopsided and downright tacky. But in a hundred years, some quilt historian will can them "spontaneous and whimsical." That's exactly how I want to be remembered.

LB: And wasn't it these quilts that inspired your book That Dorky Homemade Look: Quilting Lessons from a Parallel Universe, which is available at the finest bookstores and quilt shops everywhere? Lisa: Oh yes, it's funny you should mention that, and thanks for the plug. That reminds me. I used to live in Petaluma, California, and recall a woman there who was selling about 50 meticulously pieced quilts form her beautiful Victorian mansion. They had been sent off to some foreign country where they were exquisitely quilted. She displayed most of the works throughout her gorgeously decorated home and had a few spill into her gorgeous backyard garden. Although it was glorious to see all those quilts hanging in that setting, I was distracted by a tattered old quilt that covered up her picnic table. The fabrics were a horrible acid green with huge pink and brown nine patches. I loved it, but who would ever make such a thing? When I asked if it was for sale, she was not all amused. I took her narrowed gave and pursed lips as a "no."

LB: So of all those beautiful quilts, you like the dorky homemade one the most? Lisa: Exactly. I will always be attracted to the weird and wonderful. "Beautiful" quilts are nice, but I don't feel an overwhelming desire to make one. I want to make fun, quirky, silly, homely, doofus quilts. Mine are like the Nerdy Girls of Hometown High, not the Homecoming Queens in the College of Quilting.

LB: Hmmm...I sense a real life parallel here. Touchy about something? Lisa: I don't want to talk about it. Ask me what sort of hot dish I bring to potlucks.

LB: Okay, what do you bring to potlucks? Lisa: It doesn't matter because no one eats it anyway! I bring healthy dishes like Spinach Tofu Soufflé and Creamed Kale and Lima Beans, but more often I'm simply told, "Just bring the paper plates." That reminds me of a question I knew you would never ask. Did you know I have this uncanny ability to pick out the perfect size Tupperware® container for leftovers? Really, my friends test me on it and I amaze them every time.

The sparkling gray background fabric inspired Lisa to Make "Argyle Stars" (48" square). She got especially playful by carrying the central fabrics into the border and the pieced border.

"It's fun to use Hawaiian print fabric in traditional blocks and see what happens," says Lisa Boyer, who slipped in some batik fabrics in "Hawaiian Rainbow Baskets" (56" x 66"), perhaps thinking we wouldn't recognize the difference.

Lisa finished quilting this quilt on the evening of September 10, 2001. While sewing the binding the following morning, she flipped on the TV and was horrified by what she saw. She says, "I called the quilt 'September Butterfly' (50" x 61") in honor of those souls who were set free that day and sewed a tiny American flag on the back."

"I thought my student's idea of setting my keikis in separate blocks and adding sashing was a wonderful idea, so I made my version of her version!" exclaims Lisa. She embellished "Hula Kids" (52" x 61") with tiny fish made from coconut shells, tiny toy ukeleles, and beads made from coconut and glass.

Lisa's Northwind quilt is still in progress in her sunny studio.

Lisa Boyer is a quilter and teacher who lives on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. She has been a regular contributor to Quilting Today and now QuiltWorks Today with her column "Quilting on the Light Side." Her hilarious essays are compiled into her book That Dorky Homemade Look (Good Books, 2002). It and her whimsical patterns are available on her website www.lisaboyer.com

Past Profiles:

Meet Lisa Boyer

Meet
Lisa Boyer