Lively and Informative! Writing is like quilting in that there are an unlimited number of ways to combine, shuffle and recombine either words or fabric! My goal with this website/blog is to share my quilts and to talk about what inspires my passion for creating with fabric. As a well-know psychologist put it, “The creative mind plays with the things it loves.” I am fascinated by words and fascinated by fabrics. In these pages, I can immerse myself in both. I hope my quilts and my explanations will fill the bill of “lively and informative”. I intend to engage you in conversations and encourage your observations about your own creative efforts.
Fascinated by fabric from girlhood I’ve found my creative home in quilting. What I really love is finding the elements and putting it all together. I’ve long described myself as a mixed media collage artist—this allows me many options. I have no formal training in art. As a girl, I expressed myself in artistic ways including scrapbooks, collage, sewing and fashion. My talented mother, Marie, loved creating with fabric and I believe this love is in my genes or at least in my Scotch-Irish heritage. I learned to sew with her guidance.
What inspires me? Sometime it is something recycled, sometimes it is a pattern or a designer fabric. Sometimes it is a guild challenge. Since the early 1970s I have searched thrift shops and flea markets for “something looking for me”–something that calls my name! Usually it is a textile of some sort. I’ve been sewing for sixty years and quilting for the last twenty years. Two hundred quilts later I still feel the excitement of playing with fabric in my mind and on the design board.
Some of those quilts are small, others are large. Some I hand quilted and many I machine quilted. At times, I’ve combined both hand and machine quilting. My primary machine is the one I bonded with in 1969. With one of my first TWA paychecks, I took the bus to the Singer dealer in downtown Kansas City, Missouri and carried imy Featherweight home to my apartment on the Plaza. A quilting friend passed on her 1971 Bernina Model 830 to me a decades ago–this is the machine I count on for my machine quilting projects.
Many of my quilts are scrapbook quilts or memory quilts full of visuals and vital events in my life. Perhaps, too, I can describe myself as a visual historian. I want to record happenings and thoughts and attitudes that shape my life. Quilting is my grand adventure!
Paula, circa 1952, surrounded by the tools her parents thought important for a girl. Photo taken in front of our new tract house in Miami Springs, Florida–land carved from the eastern edge of the Everglades.
Jeanne and I also have a political blog at www.ecofeminismblog.org. We invite you to join us there at our Cedar Hill Report. You will see pictures of our homestead, our garden and learn about we have on our minds besides quilts.
Hi, Paula
I don’t think we flew together, but I remember you. We crossed paths in the crew lounge. I think that I remember you had another name at the time. Is that right? I started flying on Halloween, 1968. I buddy-bid with Pam Robbins Dennis for years. She flew for over 45 years. Would you remember her? I had to quit flying after 13 years with TWA. Do you remember Mary Ann Ayers? She, too, flew out of MCI. I enjoyed your great article; I will stay connected. Thank you, Paula!
Hello Janie,
I’m pleased that you took the time to read my article and to explore the blog enough to find this page. I hope you will sign up (http://paulamariedaughter.com/) to receive my once-a-week posts. Flying as flight attendants during those years does create a bond. Long hours in cramped crew lounges was definitely part of how we got to know each other. Since I started in March, 1969 and flew for 16 years I’m surprised we did not fly together. Yes, my birth name until 1975 was Paula Neilson. Of course I remember both Pam and Mary Ann. Are you still in contact with them? Any news you would like to share?
Thank you for contacting me. I do hope you will stay in touch, because we are connected by those years of cooperating as a team on those airliners. As flight attendants, we created an atmosphere of mutual respect for each other every time we armed those doors, sealed out the world and embarked on another flight together. Yes, we used to joke, “Another day, another tray.” But we depended on each other to work together and to live to see another day.