The only male at a TMD lecture on quilts

It hit me immediately. I felt like a hippie at an NRA convention. Quick, puzzled glances from students at Quinn Auditorium Wednesday afternoon told me it was unusual for someone like me to be there.

In a room full of 60 young women, all students of Textiles, Fashion Merchandising and Design, there were no other men in sight. If that wasn't enough to announce my presence, I didn't share the expertise of these fashion gurus. They could tell by my attire that I'm not going to make a GQ cover.

I stumbled in the room on the soles of my beat up New Balance sneakers, donning ripped gray cargo pants and bright blue Schuylkill County Fair t-shirt. A Red Sox cap suppressed my scraggly hair as I tried unassumingly to find a seat in the back.

I brushed off my awkward entrance and focused on the task at hand, learning everything I could about quilt making from a guest speaker, a Connecticut artist named Denyse Schmidt.

She discussed her modern interpretations of traditional American quilt designs through a slide show and discussion as part of the TMD's spring lecture series, co-sponsored by the Honors Program.

Like URI's Fall Honors Colloquium, the TMD spring lecture series serves as both a class and an open lecture to the university and surrounding community. But I doubt they see too many non-TMD majors like me.

The soft-spoken Schmidt presented her colorful designs, explaining her block patterns and the freedom of the varied lengths of their sides. The blocks shrank away inside one another, changing colors to offer contour, providing an abstract feeling to a functional product.

Schmidt's design moves from primarily standard blocks and squares, to colorful, bar code-like strands running vertically. She even incorporates her graphic design background by using lettering to "write" proverbs across the quilt.

Because she designs quilts but does not make them, Schmidt approached one of the last remaining groups still producing quilts with handcrafted authenticity -- the Amish. While the quality of the Amish quilts was high, so were the prices. So Schmidt had to find a more affordable way to produce her designs.

Her operation is now being moved to an all-female factory in India, where her quilts will be produced more affordably, thus making them more accessible. In the meantime, she will continue to craft higher-end artistic pieces for her regular collectors.

Her work had come under fire by some American quilt makers because of her decision to move the operation to India. This, her critics argued, would take away from the tradition of American quilt making. But Schmidt was steadfast in her belief that by making her work more accessible, she was promoting American quilt making rather than contributing to its death.

Schmidt stressed the idea of making traditional designs contemporary as a way to honor the past and not "reinvent the wheel."

"I don't see it as taking away from the history of quilt making," Schmidt said. "I think it brings more attention."