Charles Cameron: Innovation and Inspiration in Modern Quilting

In this episode of Creative Crossroads, we welcome Charles Cameron, a modern quilter and engineer based in North Carolina. Charles shares how he balances his analytical day job with his vibrant quilting practice. Cameron's quilts, featuring bright colors and modern designs, have been showcased at QuiltCon and have won awards, including the first-place ribbon for his Sudoku quilt in 2022. He talks about his creative process, which blends structure and spontaneity, and how his design wall and PowerPoint help him visualize and iterate on ideas. Charles also discusses the influences from his childhood, how collaboration in quilting bees has impacted his work and his use of unconventional tools like painter's tape. He reflects on the evolving nature of the modern quilt movement and how the quilting community continues to inspire him. Join us for an insightful conversation about creativity, collaboration, and the joy of quilting.

Find Charles on Instagram: Charles@FeltLikeSweets

00:00 Welcome and Introduction to Charles Cameron

01:30 Charles Cameron's Quilting Journey

04:17 Balancing Structure and Spontaneity in Quilting

06:54 The Bee Project and Creative Collaboration

17:18 Designing Quilts with PowerPoint

20:47 Quilting Beginnings and Early Inspirations

21:02 Creating Unique Quilts for My Daughters

23:10 Involving Family in Quilting

23:43 Sources of Inspiration

26:30 Handling Creative Blocks

27:17 Designing and Pivoting Projects

29:57 Personal Quilting Philosophy

31:17 Unconventional Tools and Techniques

32:52 Long-Term Projects and Iterations

35:13 The Modern Quilt Movement

40:00 Final Thoughts and Reflections

Thanks for joining us at Creative Crossroads! Keep creating and we'll see you again soon!

Transcript

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 0:34

Welcome back to Creative Crossroads, everybody, and if it's your first time here, we're happy you found us. Today I want to introduce a good friend to you. Charles Cameron is a modern quilter based in North Carolina, and we first met in a group of online quilters during the pandemic and have become beemates and friends since then. Charles is an engineer by day, but a great quilter by night and by weekend, his work features bright colors and good color value placement, and he enhances traditional quilt patterns and creates modern designs. His quilts have been published and curated quilts and juried into QuiltCon. And one of his quilts, the Sudoku quilt. Received a first place ribbon in the small quilts category at QuiltCon in 2022. He's published and written quilt patterns of his own design. He gives guild lectures and trunk shows and workshops to encourage others to learn modern quilting. So welcome Charles, we're glad you're here.

Charles Cameron: 1:40

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure, uh, to be able to sit down and speak with you. It's a little bit awkward because I feel like we know all of these things about one another, already, but we always have such wonderful conversations, Ellen. So I'm really glad that we're going to capture it for the record.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 1:55

We do. And I'm really happy that we get to share it with others because I Learn so much from you and enjoy talking to you too. So it'll be fun to share. Can you Start out by telling us what you think creativity is what it is and what it means to you.

Charles Cameron: 2:12

Yeah Creativity for me, I think is one of those things that you don't necessarily do during the day I'm jealous of all those people that get to use their creative minds during the day. And that doesn't mean I don't I don't You know, love my job and, and all of that. But for me, I spend a lot of time during the day, um, just executing, you know, lead a group of people and we've got a mission and we've gotta get it done. And there's kind of a formula to it that you repeat. And, and so for me, the creative exercise is kind of being able to break out, um, of that mold just to, you know, express ideas in a way that. Um, allows some flexibility and, um, allows you to kind of meander down a path and go different directions. And, um, if you fall off the path, that's okay because you might find something really new and really interesting. And, um, so it's, it's just for me personally, it's a, it's a very different way for me to use the other side of my brain, um, that I'm not using during the day.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 3:09

That's really cool. And is, were you always creative? Were you a creative kid, or? Yeah,

Charles Cameron: 3:14

yeah, I was. I can remember, um, very early on, like, first grade, second grade, getting the Highlights magazines. Yes! And always turning to the, yes, and, and turning to the page of, like, the things that you can create at home. So I remember one in particular, like, stealing the tops off my parents deodorant bottle to make Easter baskets out of. And just, you know, Little things like that were always something I was, getting into loved, coloring, loved creating. So yes, I think I've always been that creative type.

Catherine Dutton: 3:46

Do you see pieces of that desire to create still pulling into your daily life now.?

Charles Cameron: 3:54

I think so. I always kind of tell a funny little story where, you know, I can also remember in second grade, second grade must've been a very formative period of time for my creativity, but I remember like, always wanting the 96 box of crayons. You know, my friends had the big box of crayons and I only only had the 32 and 32 is great. Don't get, don't get me wrong. Um, but I think that just being constrained in that way, um, is something that I've always kind of tried to build out of. So, you know, I find myself today trying to use as many colors as possible and use really bright colors and, um, you know, try to break out of any kind of constraints that exist, whether it's color or otherwise.

Catherine Dutton: 4:36

I love that.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 4:36

I hope, I hope people will look at your work on Instagram or on your website. You use color in great ways. I just, it's really inspiring and we'll, we'll leave links to those things so they can check it out. Thanks. That's great. So we talk sometimes about the balance between structure and spontaneity and it sounds like you, you like to break out of that structure. Is there a balance? Do you use both? What do you think?

Charles Cameron: 5:06

Yeah, it's a really great. Question. I think so. I do very much use both. Um, and I find in different projects, I might rely on. On spontaneity and in other projects, I might rely much more on structure. So as you mentioned in the beginning, I'm trained as an engineer. So I really do like, especially it's been a lot of time during the day, um, trying to put things in particular boxes. You know, how can I make this as fast as possible? Or how can I set up an assembly line? You know, to either chain piece or do my cutting or. Any of those types of things. So you'll you'll see certain projects that I've done in the past that were really focused on how to be as meticulous and precise as possible. But then I think the fun comes maybe sometimes at the end where you spend all this time being, precise. And then at the end, you, take your rotary cutter to it and whack it into a million pieces and then sew it back together based on how it looks on your design wall. And I think it's the marriage of those two that I think is maybe. I won't say unique. For me, other people do this, but it's the part that I like the best. I think that's perhaps what makes some of my work recognizable is it's this kind of intertwining of those kind of two parts of, spontaneity and precision. That makes sense. One of my favorites was when we sent you B blocks, and

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 6:25

this may have been the quilt that we had that started this whole conversation. Yeah, we were, we were out to dinner at QuiltCon one night with a small group, and I asked you, whatever happened to those bee blocks? Because it had been a few months and, and, if people know me, when the bee blocks, sometimes I'm sewing them together before they've all arrived. That's right. that's just my process. And I hadn't seen those and I wondered, and you, you said, do you remember what you said to me?

Charles Cameron: 6:53

Tell me, remind me. You

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 6:54

said, you said they're marinating on my design wall. And I was like, what does that even mean? I'm like, that's so foreign to me. Nothing marinates on my design wall. If it's there, it gets sewn together. Wham, it's done. That really got me thinking about how different everyone's processes are and it fascinated me. And what you ultimately did with those blocks, the way you cut them, that's so cool. Maybe you could describe the process that you used with that quilt.

Charles Cameron: 7:27

Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. So that particular project, and I'll tell you, like, in the bigger context, this particular quilt was one of the first times that I had worked as part of a bee, right, where I gave up a little bit of control of the process, right, because I would say prior to that project, I, when approaching a quilt, I spend a lot of time in the design process. I spent a lot of time thinking about what it's going to look like and drafting it out and mocking it up on the computer. And like, I will get to a point where I'm completely happy with a quilt, um, before I order any fabric or cut any fabric. That was my approach prior to that. Um, but growing, you know, as I'm growing, of course, that was a part of the process. I had to give up a little bit, right? Um, so the first big quilt that I did with Quilts Unscripted Bee was one where. Um, I had a palette of colors that I was interested in working with, and they were somewhat unique. They weren't your normal, color palette, which I think some of the folks in the group commented on, and appreciated, that challenge. I started off with 12 solids, and I sent everybody in the B three of them. So, everybody got three colors. They didn't know what all the other colors were, and nobody got the same group of three. So, the idea was, everybody was going to create their own. piece. I think I asked everybody to be inspired by their, favorite piece of abstract art or favorite abstract artist. which was fun, gave the team a lot of flexibility, but in the end, it was going to, kind of create this cohesive color palette, you know, when it all came back together. And so, which it did, and I got the most beautiful blocks back. I mean, I think really everybody, at least it appears, spent a lot of time and effort and energy, pulling out fabrics that were similar to the three that I sent and kind of really thinking about. Yeah. How to put them together in a unique way. So I got these 10 blocks back, relatively the same size, but not all. And that was fine. That's part of the process. And when I put them up on the design wall, of course, your first inclination is just find a neat way to arrange them and sew them together in a way that makes them look pretty and boom, you're done. and I find like, I found that I spent so much time kind of moving them around because sometimes, Block A and Block B made good neighbors, but when I put Block C up, there was a part of Block A that, I wanted the two to connect, so I just, for a very long time, like you said, when they were marinating, was really moving the blocks around the design wall to see, what interesting combinations I could get, whether it was an interesting color combination, or, motifs that looked like they flowed from one block, to another. And got to the point where I was really happy with how it looked. nonetheless, because I had done this, um, you know, this technique of giving everybody sort of patches of color, it really did kind of look like patches of color. And so I started to think, how can I, you know, how can I mix this paint up? Uh, a little bit. And so the way to do that was sew them together, cut them apart, and sew them back together again. and so that's what I did. I did that a couple of different times, actually, before I came up with the final layout. And it was a great deal of fun. It was a It

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 10:33

looked like fun. And you included us in your process and shared what you were doing along the way. and it was just fascinating the way you think like an engineer. Imagine that!

Charles Cameron: 10:44

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Thank you.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 10:46

So tell us a little bit about your space that you create in, because I can see it behind you, but our listeners can't see it.

Charles Cameron: 10:52

Well, what you're seeing is the organized portion. So I have a nice, nice shelves behind me. And you can see my bobbins are behind me, all arranged in color. And I've got a design wall up here that I'm working on. what you can't see are the piles of fabric that are all over the floor. And the trash cans are overflowing with scraps because I can't see them. Uh, to take it downstairs. So, so again, it's kind of this mixture of precision, and being organized. But yeah, like, sometimes the creative, uh, mess happens, as well. And I don't let myself get bogged down with, with either of those, right? Um, sometimes, you know, I find I can work in a very kind of chaotic space. but then there are other times where I need to set aside a day or two, just to kind of bring everything back, to the baseline. Um, I will say another couple of things. I, put this design wall up, it's been about a year and a half to two years now, and made one just out of the four by eight foam board that you can get at the hardware store or whatever, and covered it with, some flannel fabric, which is great. And I saw a great tip. Instagram about attaching it to the wall, not with, bolts or screws, but with the 3m sticky, sticky pieces. I'll tell you that was the best piece of inspiration I ever had. So I work a lot more from a design wall now, than relying solely on, creating it all beforehand. and that's been a really interesting kind of pivot. in my journey.

Catherine Dutton: 12:18

How have you seen that change for you? Like that's going to be a big shift to go from I've pre planned everything in fabric to I'm going to allow for some redesign.

Charles Cameron: 12:31

Well, like I was mentioning with that previous project, I think that has been a requirement almost of being part of a bee project. And so really those two kind of went together when I, when I first got those group of 10 blocks back that were absolutely beautiful. You know, I, I needed a way to, to marinate. I needed a way to have them marinate. And so really putting up the wall was the, was the way to deal with that, you know, kind of creative challenge. And since then, every bead project that I've worked on since has started off that way. Like, just putting things up on the wall and, giving them some time to marinate, and move it around. So I think the two have kind of, gone, hand in hand. Hmm.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 13:12

I feel like collaboration has impacted your independent quilting as well.

Charles Cameron: 13:17

Yeah, in a number of ways, but let me give you a couple of examples. So in particular, participating in the bee has been a huge step change for me, personally, creatively, because what the bee has offered is. These challenges, right? Like every month, um, you know, we get this wonderful prompt and it's not something that starts off in my brain, right? It's something that has started off in somebody else's brain. and so part of the challenge there is like incorporating, you know, well, first the fabric that I have on hand, I try to always use my scraps. but then like, what are the experiences that I've had or the techniques that I've tried that I'm comfortable with or perhaps the techniques that I want to try on a, you know, an upcoming poll, I use the bee challenges as a way to kind of test those out. So the collaboration part has been really great, right? Because I'm, in a B you're, you're not only working by yourself. You're really kind of exchanging ideas a number of times throughout the process. And so that being part of the B has been an incredible. way to explore collaboration. There's lots of different ways that we can collaborate, especially in quilting, but, the format that we've created, has been wonderful for me. But, but then, yeah, so let me finish the idea, right? as I have used several of the months. prompts as a way to explore technique. Right. So in particular, there was a prompt that, Isabel, gave, several years ago, I think two years ago. I had an idea in my mind of something that I wanted to do for a fabric challenge quilt, but I used her prompt as a way to kind of tease out some of the techniques, modify the technique or the idea that I had in my mind. So that collaborative project really earned, you know, really led me to putting together, a quilt on my own.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 15:11

That's really great. That's really great.

Charles Cameron: 15:13

I've seen a couple of the other members actually not now that I think about it, they'll get an idea through a prompt that they've worked on, you know, so a prompt that somebody else has made, they've made a block, and it turns out so interesting or they have enjoyed the process of that particular, you know, putting that particular block together that they have used it to make. something later on. Yeah. It's a theme for us. I think it's a theme.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 15:36

It's fun. And we stretch each other and learn from each other. So it's fun to see where things go.

Charles Cameron: 15:42

That's right.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 15:43

That's really cool. Catherine, you were going to say something,

Catherine Dutton: 15:46

you know, I was, I'm so curious about the project where you took those blocks and then you cut them up again. Yeah. Was there hesitation for you in doing that?

Charles Cameron: 15:56

Absolutely. And like,

Catherine Dutton: 15:57

and like, how did, how, and how did you work through that? Because I think sometimes we look at blocks that someone else has made and it's like, Oh, I don't want to, I don't want to make it any less than, but in doing that, you made it better. I think so. And I

Charles Cameron: 16:13

think that, I'll tell you, there were, I think two or three things that might have helped, um, with that first is I did have this idea of cutting up blocks. Even when I wrote the prompt. I did make mention of it in the monthly prompt, I think I said something like don't get too attached to your block because, you know, I may cut it up. So I was giving permission for people to like, if they were really upset about their block, well then just send me maybe a one that you spent a little bit less time on or something. I don't think anybody actually did that, but so I did give a little bit of, of forewarning. I think the other thing that made me a little bit less restrained in cutting those blocks up, it was that that particular challenge, the particular prompt, was to create an abstract block. So there, a lot of those blocks were ones that, of course they were gorgeous, and of course they were wonderful. But you could have turned them 90 degrees, and they would have been equally as beautiful, or you could have cut them in half and match them with another block, and they could have been equally as beautiful. I wasn't interrupting, at least from my perspective, wasn't interrupting kind of any of the creativity or the flow that the maker put in that particular block, but don't get me wrong, like having that huge panel of these beautiful blocks that people had worked For a long time on, and I had taken kind of months to marinate on. Yeah, the first cut was, uh, the first cut was a challenge. But I will, that was, it was definitely, you know, measure twice, cut once type of project. I, you know, had planned all my cuts out, and I knew exactly where I wanted to cut, and I'd measured it, and that's where the engineering side kind of stepped in. So it wasn't, um, it wasn't an improv cut, let's say it that way. Fair. Okay.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 17:52

that's thinking of that quilt specifically, but any of your quilts, how do you know when it's finished? How do you know when you're done?

Charles Cameron: 17:59

Great. Yeah, great question. So I think, like I mentioned, a lot of times I'm designing. I'm doing it all electronically first. I'm doing it kind of, I like to use PowerPoint. That's my design tool of choice. It's nothing fancy, but it can do 95 percent of the things that the fancy, drafting software can do. Um, but, but like I said, so I'm usually spending a lot of time kind of in that drafting part. So once I get to a design that I'm interested in, the quilt is really done. it just needs to be constructed, in that regard. So there have been other quilts that I've done that were, more improv or, that I was doing, on the design wall. And I think it's just more of a feeling. Um, I think I do look for things like. is the color value, distributed in a way that is right? Either, homogeneously distributed, or am I going from lights or darks, or something like that? Or, I'm looking for, is there movement in the quilt that is interesting, or makes sense? So I think I'm applying a lot of those kind of artistic basics, line, color, shade. And for me, then it's just more of a feeling. And I think that is, that's the creative part. That's the not engineering part of my work is that just being intuitive with respect to calling it finished.

Catherine Dutton: 19:17

Makes sense. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you use PowerPoint to design? I'm sure that is, that's fascinating.

Charles Cameron: 19:25

Well, if you think about PowerPoint, it really is kind of like, illustrator in that, you can create a grid, you can make the slides as large, as small as you want. You can put, all kinds of geometric shapes in place. So you can put squares or drunkard's paths. you can put quarter circles. You can put triangles that are 60 degree triangles or 45 degrees. You can make all of those shapes in PowerPoint. And similarly, you can color all of those shapes in the way that you can in other design software. So you can make solids, you can import, manufacturers prints and you can color The squares and the triangles, the fabric swatches that are available online. So, it did take me like a little bit of thought to do. but PowerPoint was something that I use often at work. So had had some of those skills. and yeah, really, it just, it became this really great tool. inexpensive tool.

Catherine Dutton: 20:22

I love that. I think that's such a great way to use something that it's already accessible to you. It's accessible to many people. You're not paying an extra monthly subscription fee for it. And so yeah, just use what's there.

Charles Cameron: 20:36

Some of the things that I like to do is like, once you get, you can even do this with, patterns, you know, patterns that you've purchased is you can mock them up, relatively straightforwardly in, what I like to do is maybe make it, one color story and you put that on a slide. and then you do the exact same. outline and make it a different color story on the subsequent slide. And then you can just kind of go back and forth between the two to see which you like better. And so I do have, you know, if you went into my desktop, you'd see it covered with all of these quilts. And a lot of it is just like looking at different iterations. That's the other thing that's really nice about it is that you can iterate and iterate. And then you can say, Oh, I don't like where I went. I can go back four steps because I've got it saved four slides ago. and you can go down a different path. So for me, it's been a great tool and I'm not selling it as the best tool or anything, but it certainly has worked well for me.

Catherine Dutton: 21:27

No, I love it. I love the idea of using a tool that you've already got, that you already know how to use. That's right. That's exactly right. That's awesome.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 21:36

So do you ever make a quilt more than once? Do you ever make several of those iterations?

Charles Cameron: 21:41

Oh, yeah. So, um, early, early in my quilting career, and you can see, you ladies can see that I'm doing my air quotes. Early in my quilting career, I, you know, like many of us started off using patterns, other people's quilts. Pattern. Sure. I started off with, a couple of the Then Came June patterns by Megan Buchanan. One in particular that I really enjoyed was the, Sienna Burst quilt. it was my first foray into half rectangle triangles, which I found quite challenging, actually, in the beginning, and many of us did. Well, that particular quilt, um, it was right around the time that my girls were, like, Six, seven, eight, nine, you know, so in this really creative period of time, and I could get them to sit with me in full fabrics and we could talk about different colors. So that, um, then came June quilt, the Sienna, Sienna burst. I actually made twice. Um, and I made it in exactly the same color way. So that the color way is not what I changed, but how we placed the colors was completely different. So in the first quilt that I made for my daughter, Charlotte, who is the first born Me being she's the rule follower and we had some very precise ways that we placed color. So we had like the whole first row of blocks were blue blocks and then the whole second row was, um, these green blocks, etc, etc. Well, when we made Alice's quilt, Alice is my second born, and Alice thinks every day is a party. And Alice doesn't want to follow rules. We did something completely different, you know, so we didn't pay too much attention to, you know, having precise places where the colors were. we kind of moved them around more Sudoku style, you know, trying to make sure that the colors were evenly represented in all the robes. Uh, in columns. So, so that is one example of a quilt that I've made, multiple times there to be fair to the two girls, but also to, you know, just kind of, um, not represent, but, uh, highlight their two different, ways of being.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 23:44

Do your girls participate in your design and your quilting often?

Charles Cameron: 23:48

On and off, on and off. They certainly will tell me what they don't like, which is always, it's helpful, right? It's helpful. Constructive criticism is always helpful. I will say Alice, my, my younger daughter, um, she will, she will actually like to sit down and she'll help with like a community block. So like if there's a, you know, a quilt project where everybody's making a block, she'll have The time and the patience and the intention to make a block, which is a lot of fun. That's cool.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 24:16

That is great. So where does your inspiration come from? Where do the quilts come from? Just out of your head or?

Charles Cameron: 24:24

Where do the quilts come from? I think they've come from a couple different places as I've kind of, you know, moved through different eras, if you will. early on when I was just doing patterns, of course I was choosing. Patterns that were relatively easy and straightforward. But what I really enjoyed about them was playing with color. So where a lot of the quilt patterns that are on the market today. Well are kind of one of one of two kinds with respect to color. They're either. Hey, you know You're gonna make this block 20 different times and I want the central figure to be the same color in each of those 20 blocks Right, so you got to go get a half a yard of this color in two thirds at a bit about Or, you know, what some of the modern quilt pattern designers are doing today is they're saying, Hey, I want you to cut the same number of pieces out of every color, out of every fat quarter that you have, and mix and match them. and I found that to be a really interesting way to approach a quilt. Moreover, what I liked to do in the beginning is rather than move things around randomly, I was really trying to make patterns. with those colors. So I would, you know, pull the patterns where I could do everything from, you know, 20 fat quarters. but instead of moving the pieces around randomly, I was pretty particular about having all the reds in the first row and the oranges in the second and kind of creating this secondary pattern with color, on top of the geometric pattern. So I think that was one thing that I really, I like to do early on. another thing that I've really kind of picked up on is just scrolling through Instagram. And not necessarily looking at other people's quilts, which I think is a wonderful thing to do. Don't, don't get me wrong. But where I also get a lot of inspiration is looking at like old architectural posters. Or, different types of tile. Or, I spent some time looking at fonts. Different types of fonts that have interesting curves or shapes or things like that. So, there have been a couple of quotes that I've made where just kind of scrolling through Instagram has given me an idea. And it's one that I try and it spends a fair amount of time, um, trying to, trying to retool into a quilt design or a quilt pattern. What do you do? And I think the third go, go ahead.

Catherine Dutton: 26:35

No, go ahead.

Charles Cameron: 26:36

I was just gonna say then I think, I think the third type of inspiration is just the collaborative inspiration as we were talking about. It's, you start with not an idea. Um, you're kind of given an idea by somebody else, and then you, meander around that for a while and exchange back and forth. And all of these I found to be a lot of fun, right? And they, all of those styles I think have started to overlap, in my approach and then also go, you know, go on different directions. So it's, it's just a lot.

Catherine Dutton: 27:04

What do you do when you can't find that inspiration or when you're not feeling that inspiration?

Charles Cameron: 27:09

You know, I have to admit that's never been a problem. I tend to be one of those people that I've got a million ideas and just can't find enough time to mm-hmm. Um, to get through them all. I also will say I do like to start and complete a project, so I very often will not have more than one or two, projects going. and I'm always kind of thinking in the background of what the next thing's gonna be. So, lack of inspiration, I have to admit, has not been a challenge for me.

Catherine Dutton: 27:37

That's awesome that you haven't had that problem.

Charles Cameron: 27:41

Yeah. Thanks. I wish I could tell you what that was or what vitamin I'm taking that I don't know.

Catherine Dutton: 27:47

It's probably your morning tea or something like that. Right. Yeah.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 27:51

Have you ever had an idea for a project and it just didn't go the way you planned and have you ever had to abandon an idea?

Charles Cameron: 27:59

You know, I don't, um, I don't, I don't recall abandoning. So certainly I've pivoted. Um, pivoting I've done, you know, quite, quite often. Um, but I will say again, I'll go back to this idea of, I spend a lot of time in design. So, I might abandon something there if I can't zhuzh it or get it together or have it come out where I like. but usually, If I've purchased fabric and I start sewing, it's, it's going to get finished. It's going to get finished.

Catherine Dutton: 28:32

Can you talk about a time that you have had to make that pivot?

Charles Cameron: 28:36

I think, yeah, I'll give you an, uh, I had, um, I have this quilt that I made a couple of years ago. It's called Take the Stairs, if you happen to be scrolling, through my Instagram. And the original idea for this quilt came from a poster. Uh, that I saw on Instagram, or excuse me, on Pinterest from the 1960s. So it was this 1960s black and white, poster. And the poster was just all of these, squares in a grid. So it was a grid. and then each of the squares in the grid was a slightly different size, larger or smaller than its neighbor. And it created this really interesting, negative space because it was all squares, you know, it was all 90 degree squares, but because they were all slightly different than their neighbors, it really did look like the negative space was kind of waving. and moving. And so that was kind of the idea that I wanted, to play with. So when I first started, so I sat down at PowerPoint and started to make a grid and, you know, make all the little parts of, um, you know, squares that were different sizes. And, but I did spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out what's the right, um, Orientation of all of these little squares to get a really interesting, negative space. so I certainly didn't want to replicate what the, the, the poster, the architectural poster was like, I thought that that was too much of a cop out. but so I really, what I started doing is placing them randomly and that, that wasn't working. what I landed on actually was taking those squares that, you know, went increasing and decreasing in size. And I arranged them in a maze. all the way through the grid. and that ultimately was the design that resonated with me. And it took several iterations. to get there. But like I said, once I locked in on that and bought the fabric, it was, it was made. You're good to go. Yeah, good to go.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 30:30

That's so great. Are, are all of your quilts made just for you and your family, or do you ever do commission work or work for other people?

Charles Cameron: 30:39

I have not. I have not. And I'll tell you, some of that is just the time I have available to do it. Quilting for me is a creative endeavor and it's a hobby, and so because of that, I don't want to be bound by what somebody else wants me to do. I don't want to be bound by somebody else's timeline or somebody else's color palette, um, or, or any of those, types of things. Now, I will admit I'm in a unique situation where, you know, I don't rely on quilting as my job, you know, it's, it's, it's a free time, thing for me. so for that regard, yeah, I'm usually making quilts. for myself or for my family and largely ones that I can at this point, I like entering them in shows. So I like spending the time to really think about. Um, you know, what does this quilt mean? What is it going to say? What are the techniques that need to be used to express this particular idea? so yeah, I'm making quilts largely as a means of sharing and communicating an idea, without having to give them away. LAUGHS

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 31:40

Oh, that's great. That's something else. And it left me.

Catherine Dutton: 31:46

Are there any unconventional tools or techniques that you've incorporated into your creative process?

Charles Cameron: 31:51

Love that question. Um, you know, I think I'm still kind of, I'm still young. I'm still a young quilter. So I do rely heavily, I think, on things that are already out there. I do like, painter's tape a lot for a number of different things. So that's maybe my one unconventional tool. I like to use painter's tape for foundation paper piecing. So rather than pinning the fabric to the paper, I like to tape it. I think it gives it a much smoother. So that's really helpful. I like to use it for, straight quilting lines. I'll use painter's tape first and quilt along, that line. Um, lots of great, lots of great uses for painter's tape. before I had the design wall, I was painter's taping a lot of things to the wall. it means the design to move things around. but yeah, otherwise, I'm a, you know, I'm a, I like to use pins. I like, nice sharp scissors. I like a rotary cutter. I have gotten into the AccuQuilt, so I do have an AccuQuilt, the small one, the AccuQuilt Me, I think it's called, Go, and I like that for making just small pieces to start with, um, so I have the die cut that will give you a one inch finished half square triangle, I've used that in a couple of projects, and I have a custom die that I had made to do the one finished one inch drunkards paths. so the curvilettes, I really like, I spend a lot of time doing that if I need a hand sewing project.

Catherine Dutton: 33:26

Have you made many of those? Curvelets?

Charles Cameron: 33:29

Curvelets I have, I have about 700 at the moment made. I don't have a specific endpoint, although I have done the math that, you know, if you're gonna make like a throw sized quilt of all one inch squares, you need about 4, 000. squares. So I go through, like, I ebb and flow. I'll spend some time, making a bunch of that, like, uh, uh, glue basting a bunch of them, and then sewing them, and then trimming them, and then I get tired, and I move on to something else, and then I come back to it. So it's a long term project without an end goal. but it is a little fun, it's a lot of fun, and it, you know, occupies, it's sitting in the back of my brain marinating.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 34:07

Do

Charles Cameron: 34:08

you

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 34:08

have a I have to confess, I love hand sewing, and I love that kind of piecing, and I tried like heck to jump on your Curvelettes bandwagon, and it just didn't work. Just didn't fly in my world. Well, I will

Charles Cameron: 34:20

tell you this, one, I applaud you for trying because I think it was a lot of fun. I had a great deal of fun chatting with you about it when we spent our time together and you did do a couple really nice little projects.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 34:32

I did.

Charles Cameron: 34:33

With them. I

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 34:34

did. But that, that was all, yeah, and you were, you were a great teacher. You were a great teacher. It's no reflection on you that the curvelets did not take hold for me.

Charles Cameron: 34:44

It's something fun when I want to be away from the machine, you know? Do you have a plan

Catherine Dutton: 34:51

for how you're going to put them together? Or is it just, I've been iterating on that.

Charles Cameron: 34:56

I've been iterating on that as well. so I do have a couple of rules for when, as I've been sewing them together. Okay. So, each curvilet pair gets a solid and a print. So one part is a solid, one part is the print. And they also have to be from the same color family. So, when I'm sewing two pieces together, they're two red pieces or two orange pieces or two yellow pieces. So, having that constraint, has kind of informed where it might go longer term, you know, might it end up being just kind of a color wash where all the colors are grouped together? That could be really interesting, I think. I don't know. I'm, like I said, I'm marinating on it. We'll see where it goes and ultimately what I have, you know, when I, when I finish.

Catherine Dutton: 35:37

Yeah. Oh, I cannot wait to see that as it develops over time, as it develops. Yes. Yes. Cool.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 35:45

Great. So what inspires you are there are specific artists that you're following books that you're reading podcasts you're listening to,

Charles Cameron: 35:57

you know, um, let's see, I want to give you a good answer here. So I do, I certainly follow a lot of My fellow quilters on Instagram and I do think that that's great motivation in a number of different ways. So not just inspiring because like I see an idea and I want to try it, but just knowing that there's so many people, wonderful people, warm people, creative people out there. experimenting and developing this skill as their craft, or their art, I think is really wonderful. I find that really inspiring, that people are engaging in conversation, with quilts, you know, making their, Statements on just how beautiful the world is or using it as a way to make a political statement or some other way to comment on the world I think is a really wonderful thing for us to be doing and a great way to engage in conversation. And so I probably find that the most motivating and inspiring. I'm also a member, of the Triangle Modern Quilt Guild, which is, one of the chapters of the MQG. I joined that guild about five years ago, so it was about a year, after I started quilting. And again, it's, just such a warm group of people with all these amazing ideas, and histories and techniques that they want to share. And so I find that to be more, motivating than any, like one, you know, any one artist or any one idea or any one book. it's, I think this is kind of collective. Conversation that's going on out there and the way that the modern quilt movement is kind of changing, right? Like, I think just the way that it has changed and grown and matured in the five years that I've been, part of the community, has been just super, super inspiring to see people embrace new techniques. to get so much more meticulous, with their work. Try new and interesting color combinations. Like, all of these things I just find fascinating.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 38:04

But talk a little more about the changes you've seen specifically. What do you remember from when you first came around?

Charles Cameron: 38:11

Yeah, I think in the past three or four years, the quilts, that I have seen at QuiltCon, or even the quilts that I've seen people preparing to enter to QuiltCon. Let's, let's not leave those out of the conversation. I think are ones that people are spending much more time With time thinking about time, creating time quilting. I think we're getting much more intricate in our design and execution. I think there are a lot of people out there that are really, you know, every year trying to go above and beyond to improve their technique to improve, um, the message that they're trying to say to come up with some sort of, creative design element that's different, or adds something to the conversation. so yeah, like I can remember walking the show in Atlanta, two years ago and just kind of being blown away thinking, oh, we've leveled up the quality of the quilts that we are, making, they were, smart. They were really smart. They were thought through. They were, speaking to one another. They were pulling in previous examples, but giving them kind of a new twist, in turn. And I think it's just the start. I think there's so much more, that's going to come down the pike, so many more opportunities with the incredible tools that we have available to us. All of the fabrics and notions And thread colors and like people getting into embroidery and repurposing and like there's just, we're just, I think, at the beginning of this modern quilt movement.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 39:52

That's a great perspective.

Catherine Dutton: 39:54

Yeah, I have seen that shift in the modern quilt movement as well. And I think I've been part of it for about 10 years and it's just, it's so neat to see it's truly evolving and I like that because if we called it the modern quilt movement and we stuck with what was happening 10 years ago, it would be the 2014 quilt movement.

Charles Cameron: 40:16

That's

Catherine Dutton: 40:16

right. Not the, not the modern quilt movement. And I think that's something that's really fun about being involved in this is that it is going to be an evolving movement. And shifting. Hopefully it stays that way.

Charles Cameron: 40:29

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Catherine Dutton: 40:32

Yeah. Awesome.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 40:34

Well, do you have anything else that you wanted to touch on specifically that we missed?

Charles Cameron: 40:41

I think we've hit all the angles. I mean, I can talk about quilting for days, but I know that your podcast is limited, but I just, I really enjoyed, you know, the opportunity to get. Getting to chat with you and sharing some of my thoughts and ideas. And I hope people will find them interesting and not trying to sell anybody that my ideas are the right way or the best way, but I always think it's interesting to see and hear about how other people, do their work, approach their work. And, sometimes I find that, Oh, that's really fascinating. I got to try something new and other times. And that's okay to say, no, I think I'll leave them. To be the expert. Absolutely. I invite you and all your listeners to do exactly the

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 41:25

same. Thank you. That's really great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate, you making the time today to just chat with us and share your perspective. That's what's been fascinating, talking to different artists, is hearing so many different perspectives and so many different ways to approach our art, and I think that's so cool. That's why we're here, right? It's one of the wonderful things

Charles Cameron: 41:47

about being part of this community.

Ellyn Zinsmeister: 41:49

Exactly right. Well, thanks, Charles. We appreciate your time and thanks to everyone for coming and listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, you might go back and listen to a few that were posted previously. Um, we're learning a lot from each other. Everybody have a great day and we'll see you next time on Creative Crossroads.

Charles Cameron: 42:11

Bye.