Luke Haynes at MD this Month

I met Luke via Facebook. Our online introduction quickly lead to real life spicy wings at Pok Pok and a delightful chat over sticky fingers. Luke is one of the most delightful people I have ever met, full of enthusiasm for quilting, design, wings, and new friends. He was pretty easy to convince to come at teach at MD, even with his recent move to LA. He is flying up especially for this class!

Luke was first someone I discovered on thequiltshow.com. It is an online TV show with Ricky Timms and Alex Anderson that featured MD about a year ago. When I watched our episode, the other half of the hour was Luke. Then I really discover his amazing quilts. Kayne and Jay-Z? Are you kidding? Brilliant! And some of his other collections wow me just as much.

Luke kindly agreed to answer a few questions for me and I thought you all might like a little peek into his charm before you spend the day with him in his upcoming class.

How do you answer the obvious yet interesting and important questions about your work: quilting is often looked at as a craft and produced by primarily by women, how did you decide this to be the best material and process to express your ideas?

Actually the gender bias didn’t cross my mind until it was toooo late. I grew up in a family and community that didn’t offer too much in the way of traditional roles so I was able to just make or do what was interesting and years later that was quilting. after spending some time aware of the paradigm of quilting I made a series of quilts called “Man Stuff” where I made a bit of humor out of that question and stereotype.