My life is full of the most amazing people and today I want you to get to know yet another of them – Frank Palmer – Quilter and total BadAss!
I had a chance to visit with Frank about a million little things and some big ones as well… grab a cup of your favorite beverage and settle in to meet this dynamic quilter that I am thrilled to call my friend.
M: So tell me something exciting about you! ( Such a dangerous question!- I was feeling brave!)
F: Way back, when I was growing up in a small, fictional town in coastal Oregon, I found a mysterious textile in a creepy old antique shop…. I know that’s what people would like to hear, but in reality, I grew up in a nomadic family with no real permanence anywhere. The longest we stayed anywhere was in a rural area outside of a town in the Wyoming plains. The dirt roads were often rocky or muddy, and I didn’t enjoy being outside, so I focused a lot on doing the indoor chores. My mother had an old blue Morse sewing machine that she received as a wedding gift in 1961, and was not domestic in the slightest. She never knew how to thread it and the one time she tried to use it, she broke it. Meanwhile, I was always mending my father’s work clothes by hand, and eventually took it upon myself to learn how the machine worked, fixed it, and taught myself to sew. I made curtains from old sheets, and clothes from old curtains, and more clothes from old clothes. One Saturday, back in 1978, I was given a pile of woolen pants from a friend of my mother’s and cut them into squares, sewed them into a top, then spread it on top of an old Army blanket and tied it with yarn. It was ugly and fabulous. In 1982, when our dog died, my father wrapped the dog up in it and buried her, so I never saw the quilt again. But, instead of pouring my heart out on Oprah, I snuck into my parents’ closet and took some of their old shirts and cut them apart to make a new quilt, backed with a sheet and hand quilted in enormous stitches. I believed this was the most beautiful thing and surely must be worth a fortune. Looking back, with a critical eye, it wasn’t squared properly, the binding was poorly applied, and the quilt wouldn’t lay flat and always looked like it had a body under it. But I used it until it was worn to threads.
I moved out of their house later that year, while still in high school, working in restaurants after school and on the weekends. My mother kept her sewing machine, though she never used it in her lifetime. I saved my tips for a sewing machine of my own and one day, in a repair shop window, I saw a “newer” white Morse, much like my mother’s. I only had a hundred dollars, and when I asked how much the machine cost, the woman inside told me it was $149.00. I admired it for a moment, before thanking her and turning to leave, and she asked me how much I was looking to spend. I told her and she showed me a couple of other machines, and they were decent, but she must have seen my eyes traveling to the Morse, because she told me that I would be happiest with it. And then she sold it to me for a hundred dollars. I perfected my piecing on that machine, learned to machine quilt (from Harriet Hargrave) on that machine, and made over a hundred quilts on it before buying my first brand new Bernina in 1997. 
M: Well shit, now I am going to cry. That is a great story and I SO get it. I came to sewing from playing around with my mother’s Bernina after she dived too deep into a bottle and really needed meds for depression but those things were just not talked about back then! So now that you quilt for a living what are you loving about it?
F: It’s unlike any other. I’ve worked in a lot of industries, and the ones I have enjoyed most are jobs that I make something. At the end of the day, I want to see what I’ve done. Inputting data into a computer, while productive, isn’t satisfying on the same level. I also enjoy the surprise of seeing what I’ve created. When I dye fabric, I don’t know what it will look like until it’s rinsed, washed, dried, and pressed. When I quilt a top, whether it’s mine or someone else’s, watching the piece reveal itself is always pure magic. But the best part is when I can teach what I do to someone else. The light in their eyes when a technique clicks, or their excitement when they’ve created something they didn’t think they were capable. Those moments keep me in it. 
M: Yep, yep and yep. Thank god there are so many little magic moments in quilting since as an industry it can be brutal.. what sucks and what could you do without?
F:Hustling and promoting. A necessary part of the job, but not pleasant. Paperwork, accounting, trying to figure out web design (which used to be easier). And the assumption that I have a ton of free time because I work at home (so logically, I must not be doing anything).
M: So when you are feeling really pissy about all of it what thoughts make you feel better and keep you from stress-eating a whole cheesecake? ( not that I have ANY experience with that- ahem.)
F:
- Whatever is most recently finished gives me a feeling of pride, and the momentum to finish the next.
- I wrote a book (nothing to do with quilting) and it sold better than my brother’s book.
- That very first quilt, even though it didn’t have batting, was bound with a zig zag stitch, and is buried under a tree with the bones of a collie
M: So I know you are not home eating bon-bons all day, so tell me about what you are doing right now and what the hell is coming up for you.
F: I’m currently enjoying the creation of smaller quilted artworks, some based on fabric recreations of existing art, tattoos, and strange things lurking in my head. Quilting large quilts is still a huge passion, and I can’t foresee a day when it will ever grow old. I would love to expand my teaching curriculum to national shows, and eventually, go back to having the space for a longarm again. They do make my work go faster, but for now, I’m good with finishing quilts on a domestic machine. There aren’t a lot of us left who do it professionally, but the detail work is easier for me, and my clients love it. They keep me going.
M: So this is the part of the show where I say super nice things about you and pimp your name about so you can get all the teaching gigs you want and the ability to buy all the fabric! Actually, in all seriousness I know that you are available to teach and finding the right gig is important to you ( like me) so for those looking to walk on the BadAss side get in touch with Frank and request a teacher packet from him…. I mean really how can you pass up someone so freaking adorable and holy hell, he makes his own freaking tater-tots!!!
No… I mean like he REALLY makes his own tater-tots! ( Am I the only person totally blown away about this??)
Frank my darling it has been amazing let’s do this again very very soon!
If you want to learn more appropriate and inappropriate things about Frank you can follow him on his Facebook page Full Frontal Quilt and dyeworks or have a sexy tryst with him on Instagram @fpalmer0526
