What do quilting and wood carving have in common?
The answer: Fraser Smith.
Fraser is a master wood-carver
who creates unbelievable quilts
on a box of glued wood.
He joins us today via Skype
from St. Pete's Beach, Florida.
Welcome to Sewing with Nancy, Fraser.
- Hi, Nancy. Thanks for having me on.
- This is quite exciting.
When I saw images of your quilt, which--
of a quilt sculpture that you did--
or wood carving, not sculpture--
wood carving that you did, which our viewers
can see right now, I thought, "That's wood?"
And I'm just so impressed with this.
Could you give us a little summary
of how you started working in this medium?
- Yeah, well, basically I started as a kid.
And my father ran a sawmill, and we always had wood around.
- And he also had some carving tools,
and he liked to carve a little bit,
and he got me carving.
And then, I went to college
and was taking sculpture classes.
I was thinking about being an architect
but took some sculpture classes,
ended up working a lot with wood,
and basically decided after school that I didn't want
to be an architect and started just carving.
And the subject matter I use is--
it really started out with sort of things that we have
that we hold-- keep in the back of the closet,
like an old jacket or a--
you know, something that we'd wear
that we have memories-- that we're connected with.
And so that was the idea
in the beginning,
and so I did coats and hats
and sort of things that we'd save.
And then in about 1987 or '88,
I was sort of sitting around
thinking, "Well, what could I do that sort of has
"that same feel but has a lot more chance
for artistic expression and things like that?"
And I thought, "Well, why not a quilt?"
Because a quilt
is the sort of thing that we hang on to,
and no matter how threadbare it gets,
we'll still fold it up
and stick it away somewhere
and keep it, because we've used it.
- And you use basswood
to create the-- your wood sculptures.
- Yes, it's-- it's sort of--
it's sort of medium-hard, medium-soft.
It's not-- - Sure, mm-hmm.
- It's the same stuff they use to make,
like, popsicle sticks and stuff like that,
but-- and so it carves easily,
but it's also sort of homogenized.
It doesn't really-- really look a lot like wood once--
once you've carved it and stained it
and stuff like that.
You got to get close to see the graining.
- And what we can't really appreciate
is that your pieces are large.
You start off with a large piece of wood.
And they're heavy. - Yeah, it's--
Yeah, I start off with--
you can't find a block of wood
that's either 5' wide
or 3 1/2' high.
Basically, I take blocks that are 4" thick
and cut them to the length or width that I want
and then glue them up.
A usual piece will have four blocks, five blocks
of 4" basswood, and it'll weigh--
it'll start out around 170, 180 pounds.
- And then you go through the sculpturing process.
Walk us through that, please.
- Well, I've got a couple of tools here.
This is what I start with.
It's just an angle grinder
with a blade with three teeth on it.
And it really removes a lot of wood fast.
That's what I use to get the shape.
So you've got the folds
and the waves that-- of a quilt hanging.
I use them-- I show them hanging from a rope
because I like the idea
of it sort of being a casual thing.
- Sure.
- And people walk into the room and think,
"Well, why is this quilt here?"
First off, and then also,
"Why is it hanging over a rope?"
Well, there's that effect, but, also, it gives more
of a three-dimensional quality to the whole thing.
So I'll use that tool to-- to get that shape of the folds.
Then I take out this tool, which is a similar tool,
but it's just sandpaper, and it smoothes it down.
- Mm-hmm.
- At that point, I start drawing in the pattern,
and I design it on the computer,
and I'll get the computer to print out the templates,
life-size, just like a real quilter might do.
- Yeah, interesting.
- And then I'll simply draw that pattern on the piece,
and then I start carving with tools like these.
You know, they're rotary shaft grinding tools,
and that's what I use to make all the stitches,
the puckers, the details--
the surface detail that you'd find on a real quilt.
And then there's a whole lot of this.
- Mm-hmm. - The sandpaper.
- The sandpaper, sure.
- And you just sand and sand and sand and sand,
and that's what's really makes it look like cloth
rather than a carving.
- They're so amazing-- the folds,
the dimension, the texture.
I'm blown away by your works of art, Fraser.
- Well, thank you.
- And thank you for sharing this with us,
and we'll look forward to seeing more of your artwork
as you finish it and your process as you go along
as we follow you on social media.
Thank you for joining us
and sharing this great idea.
- Well, thanks, Nancy, for having me.
- You're welcome.
And thank you for watching at home.
Watch this program again
or any otherSewing with Nancy program at NancyZieman.com,
and we'll see you next time.
Bye for now.
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