MS. HARTWELL: Quilting is a living art, when you touch fabric, it's like, you can touch a piece of velvet, and that says one thing to you, and you can touch a piece of cotton and that will say another thing to you. Fabric has a life of its own; it has an energy of its own. All due respect to all the water colorists and people with oils and acrylics, but there is something about the cloth that it has a soul; it sings to you and even if it doesn't -- even babies you know, when they, -- I saw a baby crying in her fathers arm and she was just doing this; she was rubbing her hand up and down his shirt because it talks to you; it can be soothing if it's smooth; it can be sensuous if it's satin and smooth; it can be rough if burlap; it can make a statement for you if you take burlap and you put it on a figure. Well you don't like that figure; that's a very harsh figure because you've made that figure out of burlap; the way I did with those figures in back of my aunt, you know. They did not deserve fine stitching. And so, I put those people, who were so mean to her when she had AIDS, I put them the way I saw them, small and jagged ends. So children, they feel that in fact, and they play with dolls; they know it's comforting; that's why Linus in Peanuts had, as a security, his blanket because it talks to you.
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