Sewing With Nancy

Today's Nancy's Corner guest, a physician prescribed quilting as part of the healing process. The order wasn't written for a patient but for herself. Please welcome Michelle David who joins us via Skype from Boston. She's overcome a debilitating illness with the help of a therapeutic process of working with color, fabric and thread. Great to see you, Michele, welcome to Sewing with Nancy. Thank you so much for inviting me, Nancy. I'm looking forward to this interview. I want to say hello to your viewers also. They'll be glad to meet you too, Michele. The interesting thing is, as a physician you prescribe things, medicines. But your medicine to overcoming illness was quilting. Exactly, I was very ill around the end of 1999. Actually, one of the reasons I was very scared was I couldn't read and reading was my passion at the time. I couldn't concentrate on words. So, I was reading about a quilting class in our town. I took a class with a very good teacher and she taught me how to quilt. At the time, she taught me traditional quilting with plates, doing exact 1/4" seams. So I created my first quilt. It's traditional American patchwork but the color combinations are certainly your unique choices. Yes, exactly. I grew up in Haiti, and in Haiti, we love color. The Caribbean sun makes everything so bright. You walk down the street and there's painters in the street. The street is essentially a large, huge art gallery. I grew up with color, so I love color. The rest of your quilting artwork certainly has great color in it. You then kind of pass by the traditional quarter-inch seam allowances after this first attempt, didn't you? Your first project. Right, exactly, I completed the project. My first quilt was sort of a large quilt, very traditional. My teacher didn't think I could finish it being my first class. But being competitive, I actually completed it. It's quilted and it's done. But I just realized I really did not enjoy making traditional quilting. I loved seeing them, but I didn't enjoy making them. I happened to go to the New England Quilt Museum and they had an exhibit at the time called Oxymoron. It was fabulous. It just opened my eyes. That was my first exposure to art quilting. I just essentially went home and started quilting again. I've been quilting ever since. I'd like to show our viewers some of your other quilts. The "Tears of Blood" Haiti quilt that you created. Tell us about that quilt. That quilt came about, because right after the earthquake which was a very terrifying moment I mean, immediately after the earthquake like every other Haitian, we couldn't find family members. I started calling all the international organizations to go on a medical mission. About four weeks later I went to Haiti on a medical mission practicing in the hospital in Port-au-Prince. My brother took me on a tour of Port-au-Prince he still lives in Port-au-Prince. I saw the devastation. I just felt I had to create a quilt to witness what I was seeing. That's why the quilt is in the shape of the Haitian country. The sea, you can see is red to say we really were crying tears of blood and all this blood we were seeing in the hospital and also witnessing the stories of the patients themselves. A lot of times, they were many, many wonderful volunteers that didn't speak the language. So when I was treating them I just had to listen to their story. They needed to tell someone their story. So I heard and heard many stories. I felt this quilt is a witness to those stories. Beautiful. Then you've done some portraits. The "Haitian Goddess" we're going to talk about that one briefly and "The Lioness," those are bright. I love the characterization of them. The "Haitian Goddess" is called Erzulie Dantor. It's a quilt that actually was made-- It was the second in a series. The first in the series was about my mother. And Karen Bresnahan invited people to submit quilts for an exhibit called "I Remember Mama." I created that quilt as part of that series. Erzulie Dantor is a Haitian goddess who is a woman in love and is also very strong goddess a very feminist kind of a goddess. My mother was a feminist. She grew up in a patriarchal country. She raised three daughters to be feminists to take care of themselves. So, this is really-- That's why I created a quilt about my mother. Michele, I want to thank you for being our guest on Sewing with Nancy. It's an inspiring story, beautiful quilts. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for inviting me. You're welcome. For those of you who are joining us you can find out more on nancyzieman.com about Michele's story, watch our program again find out social media. Special thanks to Eileen Roche for being with us for "Machine Embroidery in Six Easy Lessons." Bye for now.