Butterfly Quilt

Ann Beardsley

Butterfly Quilt, 72 x 84 inches

Interview by L. Valena
August 24, 2023

Can you please start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

The prompt I responded to was a sculpture of a cocoon. It was lime green with gold intertwined, with a woman's face painted pink and blue with a butterfly right in the middle of her forehead.

What were your first thoughts and feelings?

I saw the pink and the blue, and thought maybe it was about gender. It's a cocoon with a butterfly, and maybe this cocoon doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl. Maybe it's about the blossoming of one's personality. So I went with butterflies. They make butterfly quilts, there are dozens of varieties of them, so I thought I could make a butterfly quilt. I was initially thinking of starting with a pattern that had some kind of black stripes around some of the butterflies, to indicate that they were still partly in their cocoon, but that got too complicated, so I went simpler. The pattern came from an outfit called Brown Bird designs. I went with that, and used the colors from the prompt.

I love that some of these butterflies are blue, some are pink, some are both, and some are neither. Given that gender is a spectrum, and some people don't fit into either box.

Right, some are neither. One is going this way instead of that way. I had fun with that one.

Do you want to talk about how these themes manifest in your life?

I honestly don't know! I'm politically liberal, and there's been such a backlash against these things. I've just been seeing things with a more open feeling than I used to, because we're just so divided. What someone does in their own life, which has no effect on [people who are anti-LGBTQIA+] whatsoever, why are they so upset about it? I wasn't sure if you wanted to talk about politics in your magazine, so I shied away from it a little when I first started thinking about it.

We don't shy away from that. Do you want to talk about how your own gender expression revealed itself over time?

I'm who I am. I'm cis female, I've been married for forty-three years. I'm seventy-three years old. When I grew up, nobody talked about it. I just grew up that way. I'm female, so what? It's never really affected anything.

Got it! Tell me about your quilting life. How did you get into this?

About fifteen years ago, my husband and I owned a house down in Georgia. We were thinking of selling it, but because we had bought it at auction and had done some upkeep ourselves, it was worth more than we expected. So we thought we'd go down and live there for two years to get the tax benefits. Instead, six months later he found a job down there, and we ended up staying twelve years.

It was coastal Georgia in a county with one stoplight, very rural. When I first got down there, I didn't have a TV, and I needed something to keep myself busy. I'd always sewed, since I was a kid in 4H making aprons. A friend suggested that I try quilting. So I hand-quilted a quilt. I never want to hand-quilt one again, but I liked the idea. So when I found I could use my sewing machine, I just started piecing tops together. It sort of became an obsession after that. I just fell into it I guess. I'm a cloud; I float from one thing to another. Maybe someday the quilting thing will run its course and I'll pick up something different.

I like the idea of being a cloud! That sounds like a lovely way to be. If you were interviewing yourself right now, what would be the next question you would ask?

I usually fall back on these questions: what do you regret about your life, and what don't you regret?

Wow, I would love to ask you those questions!

I regret not following a more scientific career. I was raised to be a teacher, nurse, secretary or housewife, and that didn't prepare me for a more modern life. It didn't prepare me for analysis.

Is there a particular type of science you would like to study?

Way back about ten or twelve years ago, there was an outfit called Mars One. I was a candidate to go on a one-way trip to Mars, and I had to study. I was in my sixties, and had a really hard time remembering all the science. I wish I had been an astronaut. If I could do it all over again, I'd be an astronaut.

That's so cool that you wanted to go to Mars! I've never spoken to someone who even put that application together -- tell me about that.

Well, they went bankrupt because I think it was actually a scam. Maybe it wasn't a scam, but they didn't think it through. I just thought it was the coolest idea. I would have been willing to leave my husband and kids and go on a one-way trip to Mars. I figured sending old people was their best shot, just in case it all blew up. It didn't work out, and that's okay too.

I'm sorry it didn't work out, but I think it's really cool that you were open to it. What kind of life were you imagining for yourself on Mars?

They had it all worked out, the living quarters and doing experiments. Four or six years down the road, another group of people would come and expand. Who knows, maybe Elon Musk is still working on that.

Yeah, who knows what that guy is up to. And what do you have no regrets about?

Husband and kids. Being open to new things. Sometimes they don't work out, but that's okay.

Is there anything else about your creative path that you want to talk about?

I give away most of my quilts. Friends who are going through surgery. Recently, we stayed with friends in Colorado, and rather than send them a bottle of wine to say thank you, I sent them a quilt.

That seems very loving.

It's an obsession. I read a story about a woman who died, and when they had a service for her, they asked everyone who she had made a quilt for to bring them and hang them on the back of the pews. I thought that was a lovely idea. It would have to be a pretty big church at this point.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

Just do what feels right to you. You have to try different things until one feels right, and then just go ahead and do it. If it doesn't work out, what have you lost? Not much. A little time, a little effort.

Call Number: M79VA | M81VA.beaBu

Ann Beardsley lives in Charlotte, NC, and spends her time sailing, walking, and reading, when she isn't making quilts. She grew up sewing with 4-H and graduated to quilts when left on her own for six months without a television. She was inspired in this by her daughter Kelly Walsh, who was featured in the Spring 2023 issue of Bait/Switch. She is the owner and founder of Nurse in a Bag (www.nurseinabag.com).