Running Stitch - A QSOS Podcast

What makes a quilt “sing”? Join us for this episode of Running Stitch, with our guest Denyse Schmidt, to explore that question and more. We’ll talk about what it means—for an object OR its maker—to be ‘authentic’.

Denyse is a groundbreaking quiltmaker, and the designer of numerous patterns and fabrics, the author of Denyse Schmidt: Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration and Denyse Schmidt Quilts. We’ll revisit her 2012 QSOS interview, explore the places and eras that inspire Denyse’s work, and end our conversation discussing her upcoming fabric line, “Five and Ten”.

Some people made sourdough, some people got pandemic pets. Sarah Steiner became the @pandemicquilter, learning how to quilt from youtube and Instagram, and making over 20 quilts since summer of 2020 after not previously knowing how to wind a bobbin. Sarah joins Running Stitch host, Janneken Smucker, to listen back to QSOS interview excerpts about how quilters learned their skills during earlier eras, sharing how the pandemic inspired her to quilt.

We’re kicking off a new season of Running Stitch, focused on the intersections of technology and quiltmaking. But it’s not just about computers and digital sewing machines! In this episode we’re going back to the roots of quilt making to discover how our nostalgic ideas about quiltmaking as a pre-industrial craft is just that: nostalgia. In fact, quilting as we know it exists because of the Industrial Revolution. New innovations like the factory-made sewing needles, cotton sewing thread, and eventually the sewing machine, created the environment in which quiltmaking flourished, democratizing the art from a form that only wealthy women could participate in, into one that women across economic classes might enjoy.

Our guest is Dr. Rachel Maines, a visiting scientist in the Cornell University School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a seminar associate at Columbia University. Along with her many articles on needlework and textiles, she is the author of The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction and Hedonizing Technologies: Pathways to Pleasure in Hobbies and Leisure.

Other than the sewing machine, what tool has been the biggest innovation in quiltmaking? Yes, that’s right: in this episode of Running Stitch, we’re talking all about the rotary cutter.

Our guest is Kristin Barrus, a PhD candidate at University of Leicester and a quiltmaker. Kristin’s work explores 21st century quiltmaking through the lenses of women's studies, fan studies, and anthropology. We’ll talk with Kristin about the origins of the Modern Quilt movement, and she also shares with us the fascinating history of how quilters came to use--and love--the rotary cutter.

Learn more about Running Stitch at www.quiltalliance.org/runningstitch

Visit Kristin online at www.kristinbarrus.com

Quilters S.O.S. – Save Our Stories oral history interviews often include the question, “What makes a great quilt?” Running Stitch host Janneken Smucker asks today’s guest, quilt historian Merikay Waldvogel, to answer this most challenging question, while they also listen back to other interviewees’ responses. What’s the answer? Good planning? Lots of fabrics? First place ribbons? Immortality? Tune in to hear from one of the world’s foremost quilt authorities, who has seen 10,000s of historic quilts, and finds something to like about each one.