Calender Pages

3D flowers on small quilt

2012-01-30T07:30:00.002-05:00

This small, breath of spring, quilt -- or quiltie -- was sent to me recently as a swap. The flowers are clemantis and are made from artificial commercial flowers. The maker said that she searched for clemantis in home decor sections of craft stores but found none so she bought magnolia, trimmed the petals and painted them for the effect she wanted. I think they're very lovely although, in fact, clemantis is not a flower I have been familiar with. So I am educated as I am charmed by the little quilt which hangs on my design wall reminding me that we get closer to spring every day.

Lunar, Chinese, New Year

2012-01-23T19:31:00.003-05:00

I believe today is the beginning of the Chinese New Year. I purchased a couple of sheets of this US postage stamp today. The new year will be a year of the dragon. I hope it's not just me, but I cannot see a dragon in this design. I see a chicken. Am I nuts?

Nuts about the design or not, I'm being frugal to a point, at least. Postage goes up on January 27, meaning next week. All the recently issued stamps, including this one are "forever" stamps so they will be good once the price goes up. I now have a small supply and may buy another sheet or two before the price hike. It's a very, very small hedge against inflation but I mail quite a lot of letters. Pennies don't mean much these day -- even nickles and dimes don't mean much -- but I'm a child of depression era parents and frugality was fed me along with the cornbread and beans way back when.

Winter's First Snow

2012-01-22T07:33:00.004-05:00

We had winter's first snow yesterday, about four inches of fluffy white came down. Events were canceled, roads were trecherous and my great=grandson, Finn, who was too small to know snow last year, had his first experience of it. Says his Mama, "he didn't know what to make of it but he sure didn't want to go in." She's learning to be a very good photographer.

Predictions are for very warm -- like the low 50s -- tomorrow so today I'm gazing out at the carpet of white where sad brown grass was and looking at trees bedecked with white on their limbs. I have a couple of ongoing quilt projects that will let me sit at the sewing machine which is in front of a window and enjoy the day.

UFO Finished

2012-01-18T16:08:00.002-05:00

I finished sewing the blocks and putting them together a couple or three months ago. In the last few days I've quilted this strip quilt which is on drier sheet foundation and added the binding. I have yet to fuse on the label which will happen early tomorrow morning. It's twice the size in the photo because it's folded in half. Possibly a quilt for the great-grandson when he moves to "a big boy's bed."

Give and Receive

2012-01-09T18:13:00.009-05:00

Swap-bot, of course, is about swapping and I do quite a few quilt blocks and quilties. The two on this post are not the same swaps. The brilliant late July flower quiltie arrived today and was a shot of summer in Janaury. Maybe you can see there are beads in the middle of some of the flowers. I immediately put it on my design wall where I can have a bit of brilliant sunshine every time I glance up.

This black and white block was for a BOM swap. Making it yesterday reminded once more how much I love paper piecing. This block has 64 pieces. I did not have to cut any of them to size or with a template. I work with strips of fabric. And it all went together with most of the points meeting exactly. I could never do that by fussy cutting and sewing. I feel so much a better sewer than I really am.

In the works

2012-01-04T11:24:00.005-05:00

I love Stack-n-Whack! (There should be a trademark symbol.) Bethany Reynolds published her first Stack-n-Whack book in 1997 and has published three that I know of, and have. A friend gave me the first one and it sat for a while because I thought: never can I make anything that fussy. A couple years later the same friend gave me a large cut of a Hoffman fabric and in time, I made a stack-n-whack quilt using that fabric. That was so many years ago I've forgotten whether the quilt was sold or given away. I have a photo somewhere. It has a yellow background and was very cheery.

Why this ancient history? Because the fabric you see behind the stack-n-whack squares is the remainder of the large cut and because the squares are two of 24 I've made in the past month -- the first time I've had nerve enough to make this setting with diamonds and Y seams. Bethany's patterns using triangles were less challenging to cut and to piece. I have made several. I feel a childish glee as I sew the blocks together and watch the kaleidoscope patterns come together.

The quilt world is so large, has so many creative people and such a huge industry built around it now that new techniques pop up almost daily. Since let's say, 1997 we've seen broad use of long arm quilting machines, much tread painting, increasingly baroque combinations of piecing and applique, "modern" quilting and much more. I am a slow adopter in many areas of life including quilting techniques. Other people love variety, love taking classes, love new machines with new capabilities -- their enthusiasms keep the quilting world exciting. I return again and again to favorite techniques and patterns. I discovered Maxine Rosenthal's "One Piece" technique which builds on Stack-Whack to make excitingly designed quilts from a single triangle template and single fabric. But for this week -- well, maybe for the rest of this month-- I'm back to basic Stack-n-Whack and very much enjoying it.

Goodbye, 2011, Hello, 2012

2011-12-31T16:19:00.003-05:00

Here the old year slips away beneath a gray and drizzling sky. Seasonal, not symbolic. I enjoyed the year; it was quietly satisfying. Another great-grandson joined the family, everyone else is healthy, we are weathering the stagnate political and economic system and are watching and wondering about all the changing happening in the world. What a dynamic time to live in, even for people quietly going about their own lives.

The new year promises more of the same -- but then surprises arise -- another presidential election is coming. There will be changed big and small, on a global level, on a personal level (where small changes are more desirable than large one). I hope we will live with care and concern for everything from those in our homes to those in countries all around the world. We cannot ignore that we seven billion people, if not really connected all to all by six degrees of separation, certainly all connected by the kind of world it is today. We need to care -- care deeply -- for each other and for our earth.

Make it a Wondeful Chistmas

2011-12-24T07:22:00.004-05:00

Wishing all a beautiful Christmas eve and wonderful Christmas day.

An announcer on the local classical music station does not say, as most people do, "have a good day. He says, "make it a good day." You don't have to wait for someone or something else to give you a wonderful Christmas day. You can make it wonderful -- I plan to listen to The Messiah at some point during the day. Since Thanksgiving I've heard many [mostly tasteful] versions of the familiar Christmas music [not a Chipmunk around!] but hearing the whole Christmas section of Handel's masterpiece is a joy. I sit with some hand sewing and let the magnificent choruses wash over me. May you find an experience that is similarly satisfying for you which will make it a wonderful day.

Quilt for new baby

2011-12-19T14:06:00.004-05:00

New great-grandson, Cole Asher Winslow was born Wednesday night. I don't quite have this quilt finished. It's not a "baby quilt"-y quilt. Cory, his mother chose an owl theme for his "totem" - which is my word, not hers. She chose elephant for Cole's big brother Phneas, aka Finn, shown in the photo with new baby brother.
I felt lucky to find a flannel at the Black Friday sale at JoAnne's with an owl motif so that has become this quilt. I'm already feeling inspired to make him a quilt I think of as somewhat more serious that I'll attempt to make about the time the baby moves from bassinet to crib -- probably one without owls, more likely with farmyard animals or forest animals. But for now, I have to do a bit of hand finishing and the label and this quilt will be one of the little boy's first Christmas presents.

Quilt as Cover Art

2011-12-17T13:59:00.004-05:00

My quilt inspired by Charles Rennie MacIntosh, the Scottish architect, designer, is on the back of this publication from the Academy of Lifelong Learning [ALL] at The Cape Cod Community College. As sometimes happens, I actually think the photograph is more graphically pleasing than the actual quilt. Of the potential 450 purchasers of this anthology of writings and art work by members of ALL, the majority will not be aware of how modern quilting has branched out from traditional patterns. The photo and my article in the publication, "Warm and Fuzzy" will inform them and perhaps inspire some interest in local quilt shows. In the article I emphasize both how quilting has expanded in the last 40 or 50 years, that art quilting is an astonishing new development. I emphasize that, nevertheless, traditional quilting and the impulse of quilters to make bed coverings that bring comfort and warmth continues to be strong. I have often felt that I was born with a missionary's zeal for sharing the word about whatever I am enthusiastic about -- quilting is high on that list.

Show and Tell for non-quiting friends

2011-12-12T12:54:00.003-05:00

The flying leaves quilt which is in the header here, has led to spreading my reputation as a quilter to a group of people who are not quilters -- firstly to poets because the quilt illustrates the poem that is on it, but as of yesterday to a whole party of people, half of whom I did not know and many of whom know little about quilting. It's a pleasure for me to inform the uninformed that quilts are no longer just your grandmother's Dresden plates and the cheap reproduction quilts found in decorating catalogs.

I showed a number of my small pieces (in the series of which the small ones a couple posts ago were examples) and some larger quilty-quilts. The favorite was the one above, which is also one of my favorites but which I had put away and not looked at for many months. This is my Five Generations of First Daughters quilt, subtitled Mitochondrial DNA. The square old photo shows me as a barely visible newborn in my mother's lap, plus there's her mother and her grandmother. The color picture is my mother, myself and my first daughter. A double helix is embroidered in the print and, of course, the generations are tied together as you can see.

My modest attempts at art quilting opened the door to their awareness that we quilters have more facets and modes of expression than they knew previously. The host of the party would like one of my quilts to hang in a prominent space in the living room. There is no false modesty when I say I'm a quilter of modest gifts, but I am very happy to be a messenger about what is being accomplished by quilters throughout the world.

Two Circles of Flying Geese

2011-12-08T14:25:00.002-05:00

These paper pieced flying geese in a circle nearly stumped me. I had a very difficult time getting them to fly clockwise. As you see the ones on the purple background are being contrary and flying counterclockwise.

I persevered and finally got the geese on the dark navy to fly clockwise. Some deep psychological reaction to pattern prefers clockwise. I have circumambulated numerous cairns and chortens in Tibet and Mongolia clockwise -- ALWAYS clockwise. To walk counterclockwise is both insulting and bad luck. Think, too, of the arms of a swastika when canted clockwise are a blessing but when canted counterclockwise as did the Nazi's it became, for the rest of the world, a symbol of evil.

Of cousre, geese don't fly in circles, we all know about their familiar, noisy V shape flying pattern accompanied by loud honkings. I'm happy the local geese who fertilized our lawn much of late summer and fall have gone on to warmer climes further south.

Forgotten UFO now finished

2011-12-04T07:47:00.003-05:00

Three pieced tops were waiting to be finished -- two of them I remembered and was simply straightening piles of stuff when I saw this one that I had forgotten. An all blue crazy quilt using Benatrex foundation fabric from a kit someone gave me. Somehow I found myself with lots and lots of blue scraps. Another blue slightly less crazy quilt also awaits quilting. I think I'll do it in the next couple of weeks, it's sandwiched and pinned. They're both cot size and will go to a charity when done ... maybe with another of the UFOs that's about the same size and which I really don't like very much.

Black and White and Red All Around

2011-12-01T07:44:00.004-05:00

Love red and have a lot in my living room. Love the graphic oomph of black and white. This quilt is new and hangs, as planned, over my piano giving the living room a big shock of graphics for the gray winter days ahead.

The central square, called Nelson's Victory, and the smaller atilt star in the right lower corner were sent to me in swaps. Four others are Carol Doak [my heroine!] designs for paper piecing and the "buzz saw" design is from another paper piecing book. The quilt isn't Christmas-y exactly but since I don't do Christmas decorating this will serve very well for cheeriness.

Visual Metaphors

2011-11-28T08:23:00.005-05:00

I will be talking about quilting and visual images, using my diary pieces to illustrated. I kept a daily quilt diary -- making 4x6 inch pieces nearly every day of my 65th year. Each was a visual metaphor for something memorable about that day, some were very obvious, some more subtle. Here are four. Above was a day beside the ocean.

The second, obviously Black eyed Susans -- a three dimensional little quilt, for one of those September days when it seemed everyone's front yard had at least one clump of these flowers. I think these are more literal than intellectually metaphoric.

This is called "the moon was a ghostly galleon -- no highway man" Obviously it's a night when the full moon was partly obscured by flying clouds and the reference, most people will recognize, is the Noyes poem The Highwayman that nearly everyone read in middle school.

The final one is entirely metaphoic, an abstract reaction to hearing "joyous chamber music". All together I made about 350 little quilts that year. I've put twenty together into a wall quilt which these are all part of. I will probably print another few in a few more days.

A woven quilt

2011-11-26T16:47:00.003-05:00

This quilt looks like a quiet block quilt. It is not. I showed it earlier with another woven quilt -- that one was in bright turquoise and magenta. This one was purposely woven of quiet colors, whites, grays, blacks [mostly prints or tone on tone]. The strips of which it is woven were mostly an inch wide, some [at the edges] were close to two inches. They were all raw edge strips so the center is "hairy" with bits of thread from the strips.

The piece is hand quilted with large stitches in the center, thus holding all the strips securely in place. The border is machine stitched. I like quiet colors and simple quilting occasionally in the way that I love coming upon Alice Martin's very quiet paintings in MoMA or other modern art venues and finding something more complex and careful than Robert Reiman's all white and/or black paintings. Martin's are very simple white paintings with meditative pencil markings. Not that I'm implying this very simple little quilt compares with Alice Martin's work, but that was my inspiration. I have more strips -- a large collection was sent to me by my friend, Lynn, many years ago and only this year have I begun to use them. This quilt now hangs near the dining table so I can contemplate it when I have meals.

Illustrating a Poem

2011-11-20T13:59:00.005-05:00

Moved by an experience last Tuesday I wrote a poem, then made a quilt and added the poem to i

At the MFA

An overcast autumn day, warm and wet as spring --
from a window above the Japanese garden
I mistook many-colored lilting leaves
for a flock of fast flying birds.
Only laggards fainted
upon raked gravel
writing a random calligraphy
reminding me
summer had flown.

The entire quilt has become the blog header. Above is the left half of the quilt, and here is the right half. I'm sorry I cannot get a clear photo [inadequate light, camera moving] but the white strips flying below the "birds" and drifting downward, are the lines of the poem.

The MFA of the title is the Museum of Fine Art in Boston where I was on Tuesday, Truly for a moment the mass of leaves flying on a gust of wind -- not falling but rushing past my sight -- seemed a flock of birds actually flying north.

Another Paper Pieced Star

2011-11-16T19:34:00.003-05:00

Designer Carol Doak has come up with so many paper piecing patterns for stars that I don't think I'll ever run out of different ones to make and if I should I could, of course, always do them in different colors -- I usually don't use the colors of her illustrations. This one is for a swap and meant to be bright and festive for the holiday season. That's one down -- I'll be making another -- different but the same idea, some time in the next week. Making the Doak stars from her two major books of star patterns is, for me at least, almost as addictive as eating peanuts.

Inspiration from others' quilties

2011-11-13T10:05:00.005-05:00

Two quilties I recently received in swaps. The flower above was painted with soy based paint. It will hang on my design wall as a reminder that very often less is more. The tulip [or whatever the flower] is artistically painted and nicely quilted. Although the quilter apologized for not yet being a proficient free motion quilter, the background quilting is fine, it adds to the piece and that should be it's only aim.
This black bordered little quiltie, which is a bit larger than the one above, uses yo-yos as flowers very effectively, with the basic black and white scheme. Their various sizes keep it from being static and the flowers, commercial artificial flowers taken apart and held on with a bead in the center of each add the cheery color that make the quiltie fun to look at. This one will hang on the design wall to remind me not to be too serious, that especially small pieces, like quilties, are opportunities to have fun with design.

Same method, different results

2011-11-10T14:55:00.003-05:00

I made this block exactly the same way I made the block in the previous post -- except at the last step I rotated the pieces differently and came up with these pinwheels.

In this case there was not enough contract in the blue batik and the gray-green one, there are four pinwheels but only the two with high contrast show. I never stop experimenting and never stop learning.

Improvising a block

2011-10-30T14:31:00.003-05:00

The challenge was to improvise a block. I believe the idea was to do something modern with bright squares on white and I like some of those and eventually did one -- sort of -- but was not at all happy about it as a block. What I did first was this one which doesn't look improvised at all. But it was.

I started with four 5x5 charm squares, all batiks, two were blue with purple in them -- they were different batiks but the colors were the same intensity -- the other two were pink with purple and a pinky-apricot. I sewed them together and then I cut off half of each of two sides, switched them to the other side and sewed them together and then I did the same with the two sides I had not cut. So I then had a different block which I then cut diagonally corner to corner each way so I had four pieces. I switched them around and sewed them back together. Then I cut the four corners from middle seam to middle seam and switched them and sewed them back together. That produced the inner block. If I had done some different switching it would look a bit different.

By then the 9-1/2x9/12 inch block that resulted from sewing the original four charms together had shrunk to 7x7 and I needed a 10x10 inch block, so I added the border which is a third blue batik.

This was fun, a little bit labor intensive, but then isn't all quilting somewhere between a little and very, very labor intensive? Last spring I purchased several packages of batik charms about 120 total and all different. I have a stash of batiks collected for a few years so I could make a complete quilt as I made this block, it would be one of those multicolored creations that really fascinate me. I also like projects where I can do a block or two a sewing session over a longish period of time until I accumulate enough for a quilt. I think I have just talked myself into making a quilt constructed in this way using only those batiks. Check back in 12 of 18 months for a progress report.

Autumn quiltie

2011-10-27T13:26:00.003-05:00

This darling little quiltie was sent to me in a swap. It has a crazy quilt background in subdued matching colors and then the pumpkin nicely satin stitched to the whole. I really appreciate when people send me tasteful pieces that are well done. This is now hanging beside my door -- my only seasonal decoration. In the apartment building where I live some people get extremely enthusiastic about buying the seasonal junk that's all to available and decorating their entry ways. I'm happy to let them do the creative work, I like something low key near by door.

Big Birds on Main Street

2011-10-23T17:45:00.005-05:00

Walking on Main Street, which I haven't done for some weeks, maybe months, I stopped to enjoy these two birds which are on either end of a bit of a plaza in front of some stores. The pedestals are a couple of feet high. The birds themselves are about 3 feet from tip of beak to tip of tail. They are a collage of shiny metal, maybe aluminum. They have that sort of familiar, slightly scruffy feeling I see in the gulls that hang out on the beach I walk on often. So, in a very different medium from flesh and blood and feathers, these birds, nevertheleass, have an authenticity that I really enjoy.

An Autumn Quiltie

2011-10-20T17:20:00.004-05:00

The same fabric in green and in gold seemed to ask to become a falling leaf quiltie. Unsure what else to do I simply added a wide border. Our leaves are about at that stage -- turning brown, not yet off the trees, mostly.

This is a example of something that happens to me quite a bit: The fabrics were given to me, I remember by whom and that it was a very long time ago -- at least ten years. But I never forgot I had the fabrics and always knew a time would come when I would want to use them. I have more left, I might so something similar next fall ... who knows?

Stained Glass Wndow

2011-10-13T18:11:00.004-05:00

A quilter sees quilts everywhere.

This lovely stained glass panel was hanging in a window of one of the the Wood's Hole Oceanic Institute. I could only think what a lovely design for a small quilt!

National Seashore Quilts

2011-10-09T17:21:00.004-05:00

On this absolutely gorgeous Indian summer afternoon, Rachel and I went to the visitor's center at he National Seashore in Eastham to the 51 quilts made by the Bayberry Quilters to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the seashore being made a national park. I had seen the quilts at our August show but Rachel had not seen them. They are an impressive demonstration of pictorial quilting. All individual, using a variety of techniques. I think it's an impressive show.

I could resist taking a photo of this woman's wonderful jacket with a huge butterfly printed on the back and lightly embellished with black beading. I'd LOVE to own and wear that jacket.

A couple of pictures of what a gorgeous walk we had are on my Big 7-0 blog.

What's in a name?

2011-10-06T18:13:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I read one blog and it leads to another blog and it leads ... you know what I mean, I'm sure. Doesn't that happen to all of us?

I reached Sweet as Cinnamon, the blog by Dawn, an Australina quilter who asked how did you choose your blog name? Since my name is June Calender and that sounds fake enough -- but I've managed to get used to it in all my years of living with it -- I felt Calender Pages would be entirely appropriate for a blog that I intended to post on fairly regularly. So the name kind of came with the territory. Not very creative but comfortable for me.

Sometimes these surfing adventures lead to unexpected questions and unexpected delights. And often I wonder just how many quilt associated blogs are out there, seems to me it could be pushing the million mark. We quilters are all over the world and you only have to think of the popularity of show and tell at most gatherings of quilters to realize that we love to show what we're up to, tell others how we did it or why and look at see what others are doing. A chatty bunch, really. I love it.

Win Redmond, art quilter

2011-09-29T17:25:00.003-05:00

Win Redmond is a fascinating art quilter who spoke at the Bayberry Quilt Guild on Wednesday. Her trunk show was historic, from her earliest traditional quilts in the late '70s through experiments of many kinds, often with 3D piecing, always with a wonderful sense of color and balance, to her current work, which has even been in Quilt National, which she calls "holographic". This is in quotes because it is not a true hologram such s appears on so many of our credit card logos. It is a different kind of 3D work done with digital photography, thermofax imagery and with layers of transparent organza with printed photographs over layers of the same or different prints in a collages manner, separated by a certain amount of space, so that the image is marvelously 3D and both distinct and mysteriously changed. They do not photograph well, even with the best professional cameras so my attempts were miserably inadequate. The one above is a bare hint of a fairly early piece she did using her constantly evolving technique.

Hearing about, in her own words, and seeing her evolution was fascinating. She has that impulse of a true artist, all of her work is personal, intuitive, spontaneous an at the same time extremely painstaking. Her early pieces were attractive and extremely well made with an innate sense of design and color; but her current pieces, which are relatively small -- which are perfect for framing and displaying in a gallery or a home wall, are brilliant. Like much modern art, they really must be seen to be appreciated. I was entirely delighted to have been able to see them and to hear her speak of her learning process.

Mini log cabins

2011-09-25T12:39:00.003-05:00

This mini log cabin is only 9x9 and is made of rather narrow pieces of selvage. And I swear it is squarer than it looks in the picture. I am still a klutz with a camera. It will be sent as a swap in the next couple of weeks. The only thing I like about doing these small quilts and the only reason I do them is to try something I've never done before, in this case working with such narrow bits of fabric. I like doing it in a log cabin because I do not feel I must make every "log" exact the same width as others. As I've often written I like randomness -- I like it in quilts and I like it in life. That is to say randomness within order. Only within a context of randomness can we experience serendipity which is so pleasurable whether it is a parking space suddenly becoming available near the door of the mall or having a phone call from a friend just when you're thinking of the person.

Reversible "Pick-up-Sticks" selvage quilt finished

2011-09-22T18:14:00.005-05:00

This bed size "Pick-Up-Sticks" quilt has been in my mind for months, and in my sewing room for many of those months as well. The blocks are 5x5 and the "sticks" are selvages from my sizable collection. This photo was taken on a gray and misty day, but you get the idea. The detail below shows the selvages better. The batting which I find very easy to use of an 80/20 cotton/poly blend.
The quilt is reversible to a pretty yellow background spring flowers print with stripping in a variety of colors that are in the floral print. It was a "quilt as you go" so each block was completed as I went along. There are 140 blocks altogether and the quilt has narrow borders, a pink print on the pink side and a yellow gingham on the other side.
The method of putting the blocks together is from Sharon Pederson. It's a method I enjoy as I enjoy the quilt as you, so that, although the whole thing took quite a lot of time, when it was put together I did not have to think about quilting. During the making I relied on randomness -- a factor I love in quilting. The selvage pieces and their arrangement are random, the stripping colors on the yellow side are random and the arrangement of the blocks in the final quilt is random. Thus randomness invades the rigid grid of blocks and gives me much satisfaction as a relefection of an ideal life that is structured and yet free.
I very much enjoy using the selvages with their special makes: names of the design, and the designer, and the manufacturer. I believe I saw the "Pick-up-sticks" pattern in a Quilter's Home magazine where is had a white background and was in an article about "modern quilts" However, I've had this old rose fabric for a long time, and managed to used almost all of it in this quilt. Sometimes using up something that's been in the stash since time immemorial gives one a very good feeling.

A new technique- woven quilt

2011-09-17T11:57:00.005-05:00

Many, many a moon ago I received a bag of fabric cuttings, left overs from projects of my friend Lynn who was doing a lot of quilting at the time. She has since moved on to making gorgeous jewelry. She was in the habit of not hoarding a stash but periodically cleared out her sewing area and sent me what she knew she wasn't going to use, lincluding some very generous cuts of nice fabrics. I thought I might eventually do some strip piecing but, in fact many of the srrips were only an inch wide. So the bag found a spot in a closet and was semi-forgotten. Once I sorted it by colors which went into individual bags within the big bag.

I have seen a few woven art quilts and thought maybe I would try that. In the last couple of weeks I've dipped into that bag, ironed the strips, made one 11x10 little quilt -- above -- in the jewel colors. Jewels needed some sparkle so I added small bugle bead to the junctures where the strips meet. It's a subtle effect -- my first impulse is often to be too subtle or reticent and that may be the case here. But actually I like this little quilt. It has been set to a swap partner.

I have also begun another in neutral colors which I think I will quilt with a fairly heavy embroidery thread and rather large stiths ... maybe in a muted color. I've got other projects in the works so this will wait a but. Meanwhile these two did not even use half the strips of fabric I have so I suspect it will become a series, probably with each one different in some essential way.

Wee quickies, aka "quilties"

2011-09-14T17:21:00.004-05:00

A second try at a painted quilt -- this only 6x8 -- quilted first, then given a thinned coat of white acrylic. When that was dry I lightly traced a photo with carbon paper and then went to work with Sharpie markers to "paint" the pepper, garlic and tomato. The tomato was my problem, getting depth was hard -- in fact, I had a bit of help from Rachel who used a bit of the acrylic and a bit of lead pencil for highlights and shadow. Still not very satisfying. I like this idea and will try again another time with different edibles

This little quilt, about 8x10 was made with selvages on a background, it's called, as ou can see at the bottom "A Quilter's Bookshelf". Not an original idea but one gleaned from The Selvage Blog [see sidebar and click] which shows all sorts of wonderful ideas. This is my second attempt at this particular idea as well. I'm not entirely happy, will try it another time, perhaps, with a different background fabric.

I have another small quilt just finished but will save it for another day. I am very sensitive about words and dislike when things are given diminutives which sounds like baby talk and that they cannot be taken seriously. So I don't call these "quilties" except in the context of challenges issued by others.

Big Cats Finished

2011-09-08T10:07:00.004-05:00

In the picture the quilt is not finished -- should the sun find its way out from behind the clouds again, I will take a picture of the finished quilt and replace this photo of it unfinished. I am relieved to have it done. Quilting around the cats was a pain It's currently hanging on a wall here, partly hidden behind the piano because I wanted a change in that space even though it's about eight inches too long.

The cats were designed by Deborah Kochinsky whose animal drawings I like very much and whose quilt design kits -- just the animals, no fabric -- I have used now and then over quilt a few years. I probably will do others sometime but I think from now on they'll be quilt-as-you-go blocks. My patience for certain kinds of work seems to be waning.

A Summer Visitor

2011-09-04T18:07:00.003-05:00

Walking with Rachel yesterday afternoon we saw this butterfly looking like a lady in a very chic "little black dress" with touches of gold around the edges. She fluttered away before I could take a photo.

When we returned nearly an hour later, she was still in the same area and this time posed for me. I don't remember ever seeing one with this sort of marking. I'm an admirer [as the quilt in the header attests] but an ignorant admirer.

Seeing this butterfly reminds me that one of ny summer "maybe" projects was another butterfly quilt as the one above is the only one I've made and I gave it away to someone who truly loved it. That maybe didn't happen although it is still a "one of these days" possibility.

A Shrine piece for Jan

2011-09-03T13:27:00.003-05:00

Jan, who lives not far away, mentioned that she is looking for a female figure to add to a small home shrine. I asked what she thought about Tara -- White Tara specifically. She is Yankee Protestant, of which denomination I do not know. She is open to the world of female figures but I didn't think a Tara would necessarily hold any interest. But she said yes.

I immediately thought of hte Tara because Ruth, with whom I was roommates in Tibet sent me a panel of various Tibetan figures, all seated in lotus position, mostly the male gods. Actually I have many questions about this panel, it is far from authentic looking to me. I wonder wher ethe designer got his/her impressions. I even wonder if the original inspiration for this Tara might have been a male god. She has no breasts although they could be hiding behind her arms. The Tibetan Taras are not portrayed in a meditation pose but dancing, and they have youthful melon-ike breasts

Anyway, I have this fabric and I love and respect fabrics even when the design is quetionable so I have made a few small pieces like this. The colors also set my teeth on edge a bit but some embroidery with gold colored thread helps and the jewels are real beads I added. And the border -- well, that may b as much a mistake as the colors in the panel, and although it is not the traditional Chinese brocade silk used for bordering thangkas, it is in the spirit thereof.

I will give it to her soon. I hope she will find a use for it. I must say I find much American adaptation of Buddhism in bad taste and irritatingly commercial ... so what else is new in "the American way"?

Art Quilt Masters, Volume II

2011-08-29T07:35:00.002-05:00

Martha Seilman has put together abother volume of magnificent art quilts. I love and often return to volume I of Masters, Art Quilts, and Volume II is another brilliant display of quilt artists' work -- about six pages per artist so that one can study variations and changes in the work of these artists. Seilman includes a brief but well written, very informative, statement about each artist. Very, very brief comments about intent, theme and method by the artists themselves are included. The materials, as well as the designs, are often new and interestingly used. Anyone interested in quilts as art will be as intrigued by these beautiful photos as I am and will wish, as I wish, that it were possible to see each quilt "for real" in order to know the textures which cannot be photographed and understand in an immediate way how size and shape add their importance to the works.

Unfortunately one cannot go to every show, see every piece of art, in lieu of that ability looking at pictures excellent photographs is an available substitute, especially when the book lie on the coffee table and can be paged through at random -- but a book will always be only a substitute.

More pictures from World Quilt Shop

2011-08-22T12:06:00.003-05:00

This fascintint quilt with its crowd of staring people is called The Followers by Marelene Shea from the US.

I'm very partial to circles, which I find difficult to make. I love that this quilt is in four different pieces. This is called Dancing Circles by Lynn Gonzaga from South Africa. My two most favorite quilts from South Africa were hung in a place where I found it impossible to take a picture and I couldn't have done them justice.

Janette Rayment's quilt with more circles is called Muslin Masterpiece. And below this deceptively simple quilt by Bendette Mayr is called beaches.

AS I wrote before, these are not so much representative of this magnificent quilt show as they are pieces I wanted a photo of for reference because I found them inspiring, especially this beach scene and the first one in the previous post. It's a "hey, I can do that" sense that they gave me.

World Quilt Show, New England IX

2011-08-20T12:25:00.003-05:00

"Fall Evening" by Janette Kelly -- This is the first quilt I took a picture of having decided I couldn't photograph the most complex so I would photograph ones I might have a hope of learning from. I didn't note her country

The second quilt here is "Hot Town, New York in Summer" Janet McCollum. Again I didn't get her county but I did remark to my daughter "that was not a typically hot day because there is too much green. We were struck by a shade of green we don't like and a shocking pink we also don't like and that they looked perfect in this quilt in the quantity they were used and with the other colors in the main section of the quilt.
Several jackets and matching dresses were made by Linda Schmidt who also showed half a dozen quilt -- a mini one woman show. This, obviously is Van Gogh inspired, but was done brilliantly and not surprisingly is called Starry Starry Night"
I was so full of quilt visions in my head by the time I got to bed last night, I couldn't sleep for some time and so wrote this poem.

Quilts from Israel to New Zealand
from Germany to Japan, and, of course, American
hundreds, literally, and all superbly made
by machine and some stitched by hand
old and new techniques, abstract,
traditional photographic and didactic,
frankly beautiful
funny and thoughtful
far more than eye candy
a display if creativity demanding
respect, awe and understanding.

Most photos tomorrow.

Two-sided quilt finished

2011-08-17T06:35:00.004-05:00

At last I've finished this quilt. I love doing two-sided quilts -- love using up lots of scraps, in this case, blue on the front and green [and blue-greens] on the back and some true red fabrics I also had. The squares are meant to be a bit wonky, in fact I though I was being wonkier than they really turned out to be. I didn't measure the quilt, but it's not actually square, rather, about 50x56.

I'm on a bit of a roll now and making two two-sided little quilties. They won't take long, happily.

Harder, longer work than anticipated

2011-08-13T17:32:00.004-05:00

I have often written that quilting takes longer than I think it will -- always. I'm writing the same thing again. The not very complicated, not very big quilt I'm making was one I was sure I'd have finished yesterday or today at the latest. But it's not done, and probably won't be done until Monday even though I expect to work on it tomorrow also. I'm eager to get on with some other quilts and feeling pressured also to get the sewing room picked up and neatened so I can do some much needed ironing. In the matter of how long it will take to make a quilt it's a matter of live and not learn.

Fishy Art

2011-08-11T17:37:00.005-05:00

The Cape Cod Cultural Center in Yarmouth is showing twenty fish, each the same basic fiberglass shape but each differently interpreted by a different local artist. I didn't jot down names but the third one was done by an art teacher at Sturgis Dharter School where Rachel works. It had the most imaginative decor without going overboard as a few did.

The Fish have been displayed at various locations for at least a month and now have been gathered to be previewed before an auction next week, with proceeding going to a charity.

Some clever company is in the business of making fiberglass bases and marketing them to organizations or cities with the idea of having various artist do what they want with them -- paint, collage, etc. There were quite a variety of methods in this show, and I actually photographed the tamer ones. The fish below with a female face -- some kind of mermaid I think, is only a suggestion of how wild some where.

It's a fun idea. I first encountered it in NYC about 6 or 7 years ago when life size cows began to appear all over over Manhattan's streets painted in exotic ways. I got in the habit that summer of carrying my camera and walking various streets I wouldn't normally in order to discover more cows. I have an album of them. I understand Seattle did pigs one year. I saw one horse but it was a loner -- perhaps there were horses somewhere else.

Nwational Seashore Challenge Quilts

2011-08-09T12:13:00.006-05:00

This first quilt was the view's choice of the nearly 50 challenge quilts honoring the National Seashore's 50th anniversary. The many fabrics making up the water were beautifully handled. Crows are at least a numerous as seagulls in this area.

I apologize because I'm not a good photographer and these quilts, all 16x20 were hung three deep, so the higher up one I had to hold the camera over my head and the lowest ones mean I had to squat or kneel which wasn't feasible with the numbers of people trying to look at them. So I mostly odd angles.

This one was my personal "viewer's choice" I like the simplicity of the water and the stakes that are sand barriers.

I haven't been in the areas with the little cabins in the dunes which have become legendary thanks to the artists, poets and writers who lived in them and still do in the summer time. It makes me a little nostalgic for something I've neer experienced.

The last one reminds me of times I've walked on the beach in chilly weather. It's an exhilerating experience. All the quilts are being moved to the the visitor's center at the National Seashore and will hang there until sometime in October.

The thing that thrilled me most about the whole Bayberry Show was the skill and ingenuity and beauty of this set of quilts. I think the subject struck home to everyone and called forth their greatest creativity.

More from Bayberry Quitlers Guild S how

2011-08-06T18:36:00.005-05:00

This charming quilt is three dimensional with balls of yarn and knitting needles. It was viewer's choice in the small sized quilts even though there were some miniature quilts that were truly awesome. The quilt was called "Lamb in the Wool Shop Window" and was made by quilter Elsa Hahn.
I just can't resist taking photos of optical illusion traditional quilt patterns. I love this quilt for its simplicity and the games it plays with circles that are not circles.

Tomorrow some awesome National Seashore Quilts.

Bayberry Quilters Guild Show

2011-08-05T12:17:00.005-05:00

This vintage quilt it called "Good-bye, Eleanor Briggs" and is owned by guild president, Carol Salnero, with a photo and brief history of the Briggs family, including a note that the quilt was made by Nellie Briggs. There were other vintage and antique quilts but this one looked so modern with a bit of optical illusion that I thought I might some day like to make one somewhat like it using smaller size pieces. Very often the old patterns are the most dramatic and satisfying. For me this was one of the most dramatic in the entire show of about 300 quilts.

The general tone and atmosphere of Cape Cod is, unsurprisingly, New England traditional and that was the overall tone of the show even thought many quilts showed influence of current day quilting teachers and their techniques as well as many quilts having been long arm quilted. Color choices are contemporary but on the soft side for the most part. One could say that it was mostly a "pretty" show with both the positive and negative implications of the word. I enjoyed it but didn't find it exciting. I didn't take many picture and will go back tomorrow an hour before closing [when I need to be there anyway to pick up my quilts], and take some more photos, especially of the considerably more inventive National Seashore Anniversary quilts -- mostly fairly naturalistic but very inventive and well done.

Two prolific long time quilters were featured with their own show space. One was Paula Tuano, the other Mary Wheatley. I only have this picture of the brightest quilts in the entire show, which is Paula's "Serengeti Sunset."

More photos in a couple of days.

A Couple More Mosaics

2011-08-01T17:02:00.005-05:00

As promised, a couple more mosaic pieces. This one is called, [though it's an oxymoron] Sunset Rising. I believe the artist's last name was Brown and I'm truly sorry I don't have names correctly. It's a lovely piece of work. Patrick's favorite of the show. I can see a Sunset but the rising part I don't get.

i must admit I fell for the cleverness of this piece, which certainly had trees in the title. Although you cannot see it well in the photo the tree trunks are knives set into hte mosaic blade side forward. I don't usually fall for such tricks but I thought it worked here visually if not in any symbolic way.

The mosaic show was in an elegant Victorian mansion called Highfield Hall where many cultural events take place in Falmouth. One room had an historical display about the very wealthy family, the Beebes, from Boston who built a compound here. Another huge mansion was torn down but another building remains and is a theatre. The compound even had its own farm to product most of the food the family needed when in residence. Such ostentatious living of course continues today in it's own way. Walking through the mansion, I could not imagine what they needed all those rooms for but they seem to have been a fairly large family.

Traveling in third world countries, as I have done, rubs on our sensitivities. Before going to the mosaic show we stopped briefly in an moderately high income enclave of homes where Patrick measured a window he has been commissioned to replace with something fancier. There are sections with houses twice the size of the homes in this area but I know that many, many areas like that one exist all over the Cape. Large but not enormous homes, all probably elegantly furnished, all on lots with plenty of trees and plantings provide privacy from their fairly close neighbors. Most of the owners are professional and business people; they are well educated, intelligent, usually kind and honest people, some are involved in the community or their churches. I know and have known many such people and like them.

Such affluence makes me queasy, I sense a feeling of entitlement and complacency. I get a similar feeling in gigantic grocery stories and in malls, especially the upscale ones. We -- a certain layer of our society -- have this but we don't need it, we have it because we can. I am not in that economic strata but have been. I am not jealous; I am thinking of tiny houses in Nepal, markets with empty shelves in Zimbabwe ... I know there is no tit for tat economically in our world and it makes be profoundly uncomfortable. I know that the inequalities grow, that the blindness of the haves to the plight of the have nots increases. The disparity will become worse both within our country and especially within the world.

'Who knew?

2011-07-30T11:49:00.006-05:00

A couple of days ago, I went with daughter and son-in-law, a glass artisan, to Falmouth here on Cape Cod to see an exhibit of work my many mosaic artists. The show was a revelation to me because mosaic conjures floors as in St. Marks in Venice or in Roman ruins or else walls with pictorial subject. There were references and modern takes on both but mostly the pieces were wall hanging pieces, nothing larger than 3x4 feet, if that. Thus surprise and lesson #1: modern mosaic artists use their craft to express the same kind of artistic impulses as painters and textile artists.

Many pieces were not just pieces of ceramic tiles. Lots of other materials were incorporated from strips of bronze to semi-precious gem stones, to river rocks to glass and ceramic beads and even including broken tea cups and vases. As to be expected sometimes it worked better than other times. Lesson #2: mosaics can incorporate a wide variety of materials.
I only took a few photos and am sorry I did not take more [I'll include a couple more tomorrow] Also I only jotted down a few names of the pieces and none of the artists' names which I'm sorry I omitted. The final piece had a name I liked a lot, "What the Leaf Peepers Don't See" - I had been drawn to it because of it's autumnal brilliance and because it is entirely squares used as fabric might be used in a quilt. Of course the ceramic surface gave the piece a sheen not even silk can give in textile work. A bit more tomorrow or the next day. Lesson #3, more photography is needed and a notebook in which to jot names.

What I see at my feet on my morning seaside walks

2011-07-28T17:47:00.004-05:00

My 16x20" collage for the Bayberry Quilt Guild's challenge to make 16x20" quilts to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Seashore, which includes a great part of the upper cape. I chose to gather shells and various bits of flotsam from the sands as I take my morning walks beside the sea -- about 25 miles further west but the same sea, same variety of stuff.

My basic fabric, which can be seen on the binding, was, for the body of the quilt quilted and lightly painted with a mixed acrylic paint to get approximately the color of the wet sand just at the line where the tide is receding and leaving behind the wrack -- mostly shells but a great deal of both fresh and old seaweed. The seaweed is various wool yarns, the rest are found materials. The general rules said there were no restrictions on method or materials so I didn't attempt to use fabric to represent the shells and other materials, they are real. All had natural holes in them, created by abrasion and other creatures, except of course the gull feather. Everything is sewn down. I did not use any kind of glue. It's hanging here at home and all seems very solidly attached.

One must see it in natural light to see the variations in the seashells which very much fascinate me when I'm walking. Nature is a very subtle colorist, very good artists can imitate nature but the real thing is best is endlessly varied. I love the shapes, also, of the battered shells, like the spiral inside of the welk shell, all worn away but the "spine" which I think is beautiful. It will be, along with possibly 50 others, shown at our guild's show a week from now, and then all the "National Seashore" quilts will go to the visitor's center for display until October.

Quilt National 2011

2011-07-26T06:51:00.004-05:00

Eye candy to savor again and again. I just received the catalog from this year's Quilt National which I quickly looked through, stopping now and then at especially arresting quilts.

Quilt National is the biannual show of art quilts from around the world held at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio. I have been lucky enough to go to some of the shows -=- thus I know that the catalog is a satisfactory substitute for actually getting there but ultimately a frustrating substitute because, just as no photograph can do justice to an oil painting, photographs are even less accurate representations of fiber art where the surface is extremely important. Photographs always distort the viewer's sense of an artwork in terms of size and volume.

I cannot get to Ohio this summer so I will, over the next several weeks take time to read what information is given in the book [not really enough to satisfy me] and it will lie on my coffee table to be picked up now and again and looked at until I have almost memorized the quilts. Seeing fine art quilts is, to me, not different from seeing fine art of any other genre. Many make indelible impressions adding to my knowledge of human creativity and to the concept of beauty.

And it's not even the "dog days" of August yet.

2011-07-23T18:34:00.002-05:00

This picture of Elliot, an English bulldog, just arrived in my email from a friend who says the picture is unposed -- as it is impossible to get Elliot to pose for anything. It's hot over most of the country and even dogs have coping mechanisms. I hope you all have your own ways of keeping cool.

Camden, Maine

2011-07-21T14:20:00.005-05:00

Taking friends' advice can be iffy, but for our recent trip to Maine friends proved as good as gold. One told me to stay overnight in Camden on the coast an hour and a half from Acadia National Park. What a lovely town it was! A seaside, harbor town nestled in hills, as can be seen from the state park nearby with it's Mount Camden from which this photo was taken. The main street was given over to touristy shops and restaurants -- where we had a good dinner and saw interesting work by many local artisans. It was also full of flowers. The picture below was just one of many flower boxes in front of shops.

The town had the most elegant -- and beautifully kept-- city park I've ever seen with perfectly placed benches for looking at the harbor or the flowers or for relative seclusion while reading a book. The library sat at the edge of the park. There was a lovely statue of home town girl, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. I was totally charmed. Another town a bit further down the road had a sign claiming, "most beautiful small town in Maine" and perhaps it was, but only a little more so than Camden. That town perhaps had more graceful old houses but that was about the only edge it had as far as I could see.

Beautiful Maine

2011-07-18T12:33:00.005-05:00

Somehow I never got to Maine in any of my travels. That omission has been corrected. Rachel and I spent a beautiful four days mostly in Maine. My stereotypical picture was a rocky shore and the shores ARE very rocky. Not all with sculptural formations like the one in the picture but the shore is very different from here on Cape Cod.

A friend recommended stopping in Camden on our way up to Acadia National Park. It was definitely one of the most charming towns I've seen. It has a large, fairly formal town garden with a statue of Edna St. Vincent Millay who grew up there. There's a charming harbor, the stores and inns have beautiful flowers. Our motel had a B&B type breakfast with popovers and blueberry muffins, a small stone beach and lots of lounges on the rolling lawn.

Acadia has the highest mountain on the East Coast, Cadillac Mountain [named for the explorer]. 360 degrees views, on a clear day, which it was, are forever. We climbed Acadia mountain, 100 feet shorter but quite a strenuous climb, brag worthy for someone my age. Spectacular too and nice areas in pine forests.

On another friend's advice we eschewed Bar Harbor and stayed in small and quiet Southwest Harbor which was having it's annual flamingo festival -- the kind of rather silly event only small towns can pull off with high spirits -- the streets, shops, houses were adored with all kinds of flamingos. [No, not a life one to be seen]. We skipped the half hour long parade for the view from the mountain and a long walk on the rocky ocean shore. We had wonderful food, wonderful weather and good driving. A great trip.

A home for the parrots

2011-07-12T20:11:00.004-05:00

This quilt with fused parrots is one of my favorites because the colors are bright and I like that I repeated them on the back as well. I made it a couple of years ago and have not used it. Like many it's waiting for the right home to go to. I've found the home for it. And thus I have made a bit more space on a shelf for future quilts.

I'm going to visit a college friend over the weekend, actually someone I've seen only once since graduating from college a looooong, loooong time ago. The couple had careers and no children but they've had a parrot most of that time, a long-lived bird that seems to have aged less than his human housemates, or so I'm told. So I will give them this quilt and will feel it's found a compatible home.

Taking it out reminds me how much I like the particular quilt block and that I have a set of appropriate blocks for another almost all cut out and awaiting a few additions to their baggie of potential works. That will move up a notch in my mental queue of quilts to make.

Quiltie -- Quilter' Bookshelf

2011-07-08T06:41:00.003-05:00

This is a small quiltie, about 6x7". The "books" are selvages and the border as well is a selvage although the part with the color dots is on the the back. It was made for a swap-bot partner and is now in the mail on its way. The idea was borrowed from a post last week on the Selvage Blog [see right sidebar].

Although the idea of miniaturizing things [like quilts] in this way seems a bit juvenile to me, I must admit it's fun to sit down and complete a project in a couple of hours, even doing a bit of hand quilting, which I enjoy doing but don't do with larger quilts because I am unwilling to spend precious time doing it I might if I were a TV watcher but I am not. So I'd rather be reading.

One For the Family Album

2011-07-07T08:38:00.003-05:00

An "Aww, so cute!" photo. I try not to do this king of post often but this is one for the family album. 14 month old Finn and 4 year old cousin Sophia. What more need a great-grandmother say.

Roses and Hydrangeas

2011-07-03T12:27:00.006-05:00

My eagerness, around about February and March, for spring to come is because I am besotted with the summer flowers on Cape Cod. Starting with the forsythia which come first, and then the other spring flowers and now with summer at it's outset, the glory of roses almost everywhere. I don't believe I could ever grow tired of the changing spectacle of flowers in lawns wherever I drive on Cape Cod.
Now the hydrangeas are in full glory and they last quite some time, as you see there are lots of blue ones but there are also white ones [fairly rare actually] and pink ones and some plantings as you can see below where all the colors mix. Also I see lots of day lilies and tiger lilies, impatiens, petunias, geraniums -- I even have some hanging on my patio, and many other flowers, that I can't always name. To grow flowers must be a mark of the goodness in affluence, even minor affluence as small homes have flowers, perhaps not as showy and abundant but individually just as beautiful.

So What's the News?

2011-07-01T17:44:00.002-05:00

Here are pictures from the "news" of Hillary Clinton arriving in Madrid in a nice navy suit, a frilly white blouse and a white Scrunchee holding her hair back. This is news? This is something we should be concerned about? What woman hasn't had a bad hair day when all she wanted to do was get it out of the way and look fairly neat? I think she lopked pretty good and really don't give a damn if she pulls her hair back with a Scrunchee or plain old rubber bands.

I am appalled at the things that AOL choose put out as "news" on their home page that I have to go through to get to my email. Yes, I"m glad to learn the weather and glad to hear about various political events, even glad to know that Prince Albert of Monaco has finally taken a very attractive wife. But they plaster so much idiotic junk on that page it leaves me wondering just what lame brain makes the decisions about what is important enough to send out to unp-jillion readers. These are mental junk food, like Cheese Doodles and Cracker Jacks.

W.I.P.

2011-07-01T10:54:00.003-05:00

This is one of two Works In Progress [WIPs], the other is the blue squares shown a few posts back. Both are at or nearly at the stage for quilting. This is a design by Deborah Konchinsky [I think that's misspelled].

Any time of year that is my least favorite step, and in the summer when it can be hot and humid, definitely not something I want to do for very long at a time. While quilts are almost by definition "warm and cozy", warm and cozy is the opposite of what I want to feel most summer days. So it will be some time before I show this when it's finished, or the other on either. But I have a head full of quilt tops I'm thinking of making. That's my favorite part anyway. I have two completed tops, one wall size, one bed size from last summer that I haven't convinced myself to quilt yet. So it goes.

Poor Scarecrow

2011-06-27T10:37:00.004-05:00

Recently Barbara of Folkways Notebook [see side bar] showed some scarecrows which reminded me of this lady who might possibly have been called a scarecrow until she was disrobed about a month ago. For two years I've been passing her standing rather enigmatically in an untended lawn of a house that seemed occupied. She wore a skirt and blouse and a very long strand of plastic beads. Naturally the weathering she endured left her clothing in sad disarray and more and more tattered as seasons passed. But now, while her hair-do stands up to wind and rain far better than mine does, she reveals her severely anorexic body and I long to see her clothed again. I drive past her several times a week and keep an eye on her. I"m sure the house behind her is occupied but the occupants are not into gardening as nearly all of their neighbors are.

Maariner's Starts Finished

2011-06-23T08:44:00.005-05:00

When quilting, everything takes longer than you think it's going to take. But this quilt is finally finished - except the label. I'm not sure what I'll name it. Those who look at this blog over a long period of time have seen all these stars before -- months ago. At last I'm glad to have it finished. I'm even wondering if there is a wall in my house wide open enough to hang it for a while. Perhaps ...

I truly loved using Carol Doak's paper pieced Mariner's Star patterns. And I loved choosing the colors, the specific fabrics for each star. I had a number of false starts. Even when I thought I was done I decided one star block just wasn't doing it for me and made another. It's the great variety of colors and fabrics that pleases me most. It was an exercise in color and mostly I'm pleased. So, hurray! On to the next.

[PS - changed the photo because I was able to have someone hold it up outdoors so I wouldn't have to stand on a stood and shoot it on the floor which inevitably distorts the dimensions.

Tather's Day

2011-06-19T17:12:00.003-05:00

My father died over 30 years ago. It was an unusual highway accident. About a year before my father-in-law had died in a freak accident. Since then I have believed firmly that accidents happen and there is absolutely no reason; they happen to good people who in no way cause those accidents. Both men died almost instantly. Both men had recently retired and were enjoying a more leisurely life than they had ever had before. Neither were very prosperous but both had sufficient income to feel comfortable with their means since neither lived in any way extravagantly and planned to continue their frugal lives with their wives of many, many years. They died too young, both in their early 60s and both healthy. Their widows were devastated but lived on within a community that supported them. I won't relate the accidents which were in no way their fault and could not have been avoided. Deaths at that age were not unusual, women often had examples in the community for how to cope with widowhood. And they did. Grown children were in the period of building their own careers and families and they did so.

My father had worked hard all his life. He stopped going to school after the 5th grade in order to be of use to his parents. He was the second of seven sons, of which only four lived to maturity and one of them died in his twenties of tuberculosis. He came of age in the Great Depression in a part of the country where being a farmer was a way of live where there was enough to eat. You and your wife had a garden, you had pigs and cows and chickens. Perhaps you did not have much else; but nobody around you had much either. There was no disgrace and, within the rural white Protestant community of the eastern Midwest where a couple of generations past the emigrant experience, not many set their sights on success beyond having a well tended farm and a decent house.

Many years later when I tried to explain to the a son of a European immigrant that my family did not teach me ambition, I was met with incomprehension. I believe my parents were content with what they had achieved; I believe they truly loved one another and their children -- although this particular one they did not understand. As one grows older, the maturation of the seeds of early lessons, especially the lessons of example, are seen in all their importance. My father and mother were honest people, they worked hard and they were content. There was no drama in my family, no alcoholics, no outlaws, no naked ambition, no raw sex, no aextremism of any sort. How very odd such a family seems today -- and what a gift to a child, even a somewhat rebellious child who had other ideas and wanted to leave, wanted to see the world, wanted to achieve a different kind of success. Their example, solidly American WASP, solidly Midwestern, strangely brings me closer to Buddhism than anything else they could have taught me. Ego was not very important and emotions were often repressed as if they were extraneous ... and often they are, it seems to me.

So on this Father's Day I remember my semi-illiterate father visiting me when I lived in a big house and had a big library of books. He chose to read what I remember as (incorrectly I think) J.W. Cash's Mind of the South. A book of literary criticism, a subject of which he knew nothing. I supposed "south" caught his attention. He read with his lips moving. It filled an hour or two of a dull afternoon. Had he had an education, been a different person in a different milieu, who might he have been? It doesn't matter. He was a good, honest man, he worked hard, he loved his wife and children, he died too soon.

The Sad and the Beautiful

2011-06-16T10:38:00.005-05:00

Sharks don't inspire pity, as a rule, but this little sand shark, washed up on the beach and partly eaten has a very, very sad look on his face. I can imagine him as a wailing ghost haunting the seashore at midnight. It was a bad day for these little harmless fishies, there were two of them on today's walk.

On the other hand, my short drive to the beach has been glorious for a week or so since it's rhododendrun time here. This is just one home set behind it's riot of rhodies.

WIP -- on hold

2011-06-14T15:31:00.002-05:00

Stash busting is a major agenda item for the summer. So I pulled out a batch of blues -- light and dark and some in-betweens -- and started a quilt. I figured I'd make 6 inch blocks until I ran out of stuff that would work. I've got a light blue gingham [print not a woven one] and a dark blue that are the outer strips with three others inside. As you see in the picture. I really had no idea how big the quilt would become but thought it would probably be throw size.

So for four days I've been cutting and sewing in an ad lib sort of way. I really enjoy this, making decisions at almost every minute -- what will go next to what but within the general plan. If i get very philosophical, which is prone to happen when I'm sewing for a few hours I get philosophical. I see that I love freedom within a structure, that's the simplistic answer. It will do although I natter on in my head about how that's worked within my life and so on and so forth ... pretty boring to anyone but me.

So as of this afternoon I've got 72 6" squares, they've been ironed and neatly cut to exactly 6". So when they are sewn together they will be 5-1/2 inches. which will be a nice throw size quilt, considering that I will add at least 3 inches of border and I've decided to put about a 1 inch stripping between each square - which will be a rather deep crimson. This will cut the slightly cloying and monotonous blueness -- besides it will use up some red I'm happy to get out of the stash as well. There will be a semi-interesting back but I'm not dealing with that yet. In fact, at this point I'm setting this project aside to get on with putting together the multicolored paper pieced stars [Carol Doak patterns] that will be the show quilt I will have for the Bayberry Quilter's show in early August. More on that anon.

herefore the title, a WIP [work in progress] now on hold. I"m a Gemini, I like to work on more than one thing at a time. I get bored sticking to a single thing for too long. I have two other show quilts to work on as well, one small enough to take only two days the other problematic enough that I sometimes worry that I ought to throw in the towel on it. But I'm not ready to do that ... quite yet. More on that anon also.

Wake Up Call

2011-06-13T06:14:00.002-05:00

Nothing to do with quilting this morning -- after coffee I actually looked in the bathroom mirror and -- EEK! It say to me, "Go get something done to your harir!" So that's today's plan.

Reading American Quilter magazine

2011-06-10T12:05:00.007-05:00

The more things change the more they stay the same, or perhaps they inspire a counterrevolution. The magazine of the American Quilter's Society came a few days ago. I must congratulate the editors on their open minded approach. This national organization, headquartered in Padukah, Kentucky produces three [maybe four now?] big competitive shows a year. The winning quilts are somewhat "traditional" in style, that is to say they are not "art quilts". Rather they celebrate consummate skill by individual quilters. The July issue is fat with pictures of prize winning quilts. As I look through them I feel, as I've felt at quilt shows lately, that quilters aiming for prizes are making more and more baroque quilts. The complexity of design, quilting [whether hand, home machine or mid/long arm machine] is sometimes stunningly complex. Many are lavishly embellished with crystals, metallic threads, and three dimensional work.
Near the front of the magazine is an article about a new nationwide quilt organization with local guilds called The Modern Quilt Guild. Go to their website themodernquiltguild.com. The photos on this post are by their members and give you an idea how UN-baroque they are. The pink is by Heather Jones and the green one is by Marylene Burns. These are young women, mostly in their 30s who have been quilting a short time in most cases. They chose to produce what they think of as a "modern" simplicity. Their quilts often use a great deal of white and solid color fabrics with extremely simple geometric designs. They seem popular with the shelter magazines for I have seen similar quilts both advertised and used in decorating rooms in such publications as Elle Decor.

I find this a refreshing change. I've been a watcher of changes in the quilt world since the early '70s. I am sometimes distressed by the "baroque" quilts although more often awed at the skill. I love the strong statements of these modern quilters. They remind me of my oldest books of "new quilts" that were printed in the '80s with strong designs not so very different. Didn't someone say "what goes around comes around"?

Stash buster quilt finished

2011-06-07T14:34:00.003-05:00

This strip quilt made a nice dent in the accumulation of pink and lilac fabrics I have and found rather blah. I like them better sewn together like this. For the base of the rectangular blocks I used drier sheets that I had accumulated for quite a few months [used less than 2/3rds actually. I had to press them as most were somewhat wrinkled. The scent is gone, at least as far as my nose can tell. The back also used up a couple of rather odd ball dotted fabrics, one blue with large yellow dots, the other a lot of close-packed pastel dots.

I'd like to make a few quilts about this size -- larger than crib size, suitable for a child's bed or as a throw. I'd like to continue the stash busting process for a bit. I've been cutting pieces today for a quilt that will take quite a few more than what I've cut so far. Before that one which will be a lot of small squares, I'll do a blue one of squares in squares -- perhaps some of the center squares will be rectangles and maybe even a few circles. I've got a lot of blues I'd like to make a dent in and after that there's green and then brown. I have these mental spells of ambition that do not always translate into action.

Watercolor crayons and other embellishments

2011-06-05T17:54:00.005-05:00

This little quiltie is about 11x11, it's for a swap. I am trying new things with each of the monthly "quiltie" swaps. In this case I finally cracked open the a box of watercolor crayons I purchased at a quilt show in March. Can't tell? No, but I can.

The background fabric was a decorator fabric swatch. The floral pattern was of the barely there sort, just hinted in very pale pastel. I attacked it with my crayons, following the lines already in place but deepening everything. Then I appplied the water and brushed it so that the crayon lines mostly disappeared into an impressionistic floral picture. It's much more interesting than originally.

Then, of course I added the embellishments: the two fused butterlflies, the purple flower shaped buttons and the two bees. Oh, and I didn't mention that I had quilted it onto thin cotton batting before starting this process. Then when I ironed the coloring to make it permanent, the typical quilted puffiness flattened, and even more so when I ironed on the butterflies. Lastly I added the border and backing which is another green print. My feeling is that it's on the blah side but I didn't want to add more embellishments. I wanted to suggest a quiet summer day with a faint drone of bees and maybe some crows in distant treetops and the sun on the flowers. It will be mailed to it's recipient tomorrow.

Embellished jeans jacket

2011-05-31T09:44:00.004-05:00

I've been meaning to have someone take a picture of me wearing this jeans jacket that I fussed butterflies onto. But I keep forgetting so I just photographed it on a hanger, front and back. As anyone who has fused when quilting knows, it's a piece of cake. The hard part is finding just the fabric with the design you want to fuse. In this case I'd forgotten I had a small piece of butterfly printed fabric that was exactly the right colors and the butterflies did not overlap one another and were a good size. So, as Mary Poppins was wont to say, "spit-spat" that was that.

In all my long years I've never owned a jeans jacket before. The casual lifestyle here is changing my ways. I found this jacket at a Goodwill store [on senior discount day for under $5]. It's a fabric with a lot of stretch also so it buttons nice and snug but doesn't look strained. There's a softness to the fabric as well, not the frequent denim stiffness. I'm happy summer seems to be arriving so maybe I won't be needing the jacket much until fall. But that's fine. I love summer.

Diane Hire, Oxymoron Quilts

2011-05-28T06:20:00.003-05:00

Diane Hire, the Renegade Quilt group member who thought up the idea of Oxymoron Quilt and edited the book showing the 40 quilts which were displayed in several of the big quilt shows from 2000 to about 2004, was the speaker at the Bayberry Quilt Guild meeting this week. She chose to give her lecture and slide show about the collection which I found very interesting. I have had the book for some years and returned to it occasionally because I didn't understand just what was going on in some of the quilts. Diane's talk clarified that. Along the way she described the many different approaches to creating something from a prompt used by these quilt artists. I'm always fascinated by the creative process. Diane is a comfortable and practiced speaker.

As speakers at the meetings are asked to do, she gave workshops the following days. I rarely take workshops and had those days full anyway. One was called "Come Play With Me" which is the title of another books she's written. This dramatic quilt was hanging for us to see. Many of her smaller quilts were displayed on tables. Unlike many uptight quilt makers, she was comfortable with the quilts being touched, with people looking at the backing and asking questions. I noted that she likes using buttons as embellishment as I do. She's used a number of freely improvisational styles. I think I would have enjoyed that workshop. The Oxymoron quilts book is entitled Absurdly Logical, Oxymoron Quilts and is now out of print but still available at Amazon.com. I'm only sorry I didn't take my copy and ask her to autograph it.

A Rare Occurrence

2011-05-26T16:01:00.003-05:00

I thought I'd show a picture of my daughters and I because it's a rare occurrence for us to all be together. I'm sorry this picture if a big blurry it was taken with a new camera before we got the hang of letting the auto focus do its thing.

Leslie, on the left, was here for a week from California, her birthday was in the middle of that week. I'm not telling her age but the next one if a big one. My birthday follows in a couple of weeks now and then Rachel's [on the right, of course] is a month later. We're all getting old enough that we don't announce the numbers. I figure I'll wait until 90 to announce the number proudly -- that is well in the future. And I'm not tattling on them either.

I was chatting with a couple of women this morning -- all over 60 -- and we all agreed that numbers actually tell nothing about the age we are. I'll be pondering this subject in greater depth in the next couple of weeks. After all I started this blog to hold myself to a certain level of truthfulness. But fudging is always a temptation that I sometimes give in to.

Impulse Quilting

2011-05-23T14:42:00.005-05:00

With three UFOs needing to be finished in the next two months I'm feeling antsy and decided to make a pink quilt that would go quickly. Why pink? Because somehow too much light pink has entered my stash, also lilac and some dusty rose. I don't like pink very .] [Very bright pink is a whole other story

While surfing quilters' blogs a few days ago I came upon someone who showed a strip quilt and wrote that she was using dryer sheets as the stabilizing backing. Light Bulb Moment! I've been saving dryer sheets but didn't really know why -- it's that acquisitive thing again, the "waste not, want not" frugalista training from parents who were shaped by the Great Depression. Ah-ha! I could use up the dryer sheets and the pinks by making a strip quilt.

I love making scrappy quilts and strip quilts are about the pinnacle of scrappiness. I love, love, love having a pile of strips [or squares or triangles for other patterns] and making an instant choice of fabric every time I sew a seam. So far I've done a dozen blocks. I'm aiming for a single bed or throw size quilt that will eventually be given away to some charity. As I said, I am not fond of pink.
This little tool is my latest love. I purchased it at the Empire Guild show when told by a paper piecer that she uses it to flatten seams as she pieces. It's more adaptable then most of the mini irons. I have a couple mini irons and don't like them very much. But this little roller flattens seams enough so that when a block is done it can be ironed to really flatten the seams. Love it.

Hand Painted Purses

2011-05-19T11:57:00.009-05:00

Hand painted purses have fascinated me for many years. The purse above was purchased at least 20 years ago and I've used it for semi-dressy occasions over all these years. It's a little too small for every day use and it's special enough to me that I want to save it for occasions, even if they happen to be no more unusual than dinner or a concert.
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This purse was found at a flea market about five years ago. It's just an unstructured sack and I've used it as a summer purse for most of it's life. I'm happy to say it has not worn or weathered, the colors are still true. It has a nice long strap so I can wear it cross-body which I very much came to prefer when living in NYC so I could always have the purse safe when holding a subway or bus pole. My only run in with street crime in many, many years was having a purse snatched from my shoulder by a couple of teens as they ran past me. A long, cross-body strap prevents such losses.

The purse in the narrower photo came into my possession this week at a Goodwill store. I nearly missed it but spotted it when I was at the check out counter. It's signed inside by the painter, and is structured enough to have two generous pockets inside and a sizable flap held in place by a snap -- also a nice long strap. Also, it's got a different design on the back [below] than on the front. Like the others, I expect it to be in my possession the rest of my life and I expect to use it often with much enjoyment.
All three purses are a study leather [cowhide, I assume but don't know] have well attached straps and are lined with a fairly heavy fabric. I very much enjoy design and color. It lifts my spirits to wear an interesting purse [or scarf, of course] with an otherwise simple outfit.

Edward Gorey House/Museum

2011-05-14T18:21:00.005-05:00

Edward Gorey's drawings and whimsey seems to have affected my daughters much more than it did me. I don't specifically remember reading his books to them -- perhaps they read them mostly after they were in grade school. Anyway I have totally ignored the fact that his home is now a museum and is less than ten miles far away. Today my daughters and I sentd something over an hour in the house and perusing the current exhibit which is about his involvement in the performing arts -- designing sets, logos, program illustrations and so on for plays and ballets and other arts. They loved it and remembered fondly many of his drawings. I seem to have been largely oblivious.
The house is a deceptively large Cape Cod type and is filled with memorabilia. It is also hosted by some of the most pleasant personnel I've found in any museum. They gave tours, they chatted and they flirted a little bit. It was entirely charming - so was the enormous cat that lives there, so were the many little touches that made the time a series of delights as we went from room to room. Sometimes something wonderful is right under our noses and we ignore it for no very good reason at all. That was the case with this wonderful little museum.

Another Experiment

2011-05-11T06:44:00.003-05:00

I've been in an experimental mood lately and here is another. I made a couple of squares with poets and their poems but I haven't been happy -- largely because I don't like the look of my own handwriting. It took a while for this slow old brain to realize, hey, I've got printable sheets of fabric and there are a ton of fonts on my computer.

So I made this small prototype yesterday with a visible but not particularly pretty font, and a short and somewhat amusing Emily Dickenson poem. I think I've found my answer since I really do want to make a dozen squares like this with poets, preferably less well known than Dickenson who is surely America's premier woman poet. She does not much personify what I'm trying to say with the selvage format -- that women poets are too often marginalized and ignored in the world of "commercial" poetry. I don't mean Hallmark cards, I mean academic, really, the poetry that gets printed for the college student to study and use as his or her guideline for what poetry is supposed to be. They DO study Emily, but very few other women poets.

The very good thing is that I can format the poem on screen -- trying out different fonts and even different colors of print and I can print the picture of the poet at the same time. Then I can cut it up and incorporate it in the quilt. It takes me a while to understand that the technology exists for my use, even for my creativity. Hurray!

Flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la

2011-05-06T09:53:00.004-05:00

This new quilt is an experiment. For about 24 hours I thought I'd chuck it out because I was very unhappy with my planning of how the second layer of material I would cut through worked, and I didn't like the black background -- still don't. But then I decided to carry on and see how it would turn out. I like the hand dyed top fabric and hated to just discard it.

Finally I decided it is a step in the learning process and hung it up to live and learn with it for a while. The title is, as above, "Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, Tra-lal" The squares of quilting should be more consistently equal but I decided I wanted to cut the X-es into the top and second layer in the kind of random way flowers, even when planted neatly in a flowerbed, do not come up all perfectly aligned and the same size. When trying to iron the "flowers" open they never fold out exactly and they often bounce back to nearly closed. I like that it suggests flowers at different stages but I think I'll take it down and do some more ironing. My final decision was to add the half dozen flower shaped buttons I had in my stash. I think sometime I will make another version and work on the under-layer colors. It seems to me utterly counterintuitive to sew these layers together and then to cut into them leaving the raw edges. But it's a wall quilt and the fabrics are tightly woven so they will not ravel. So another step in the new techniques road.

122 Quilts in a Month

2011-05-04T05:50:00.004-05:00

The call was issued at the February meeting of the Bayberry Quilters Guild for quilts for tsunami victims in Japan. The same call was issued by an organization in Golden, Colorado to all quilt guilds in the United States.

At the March meetings of the Bayberry Quilters [they meet on a Tuesday evening for working women and on Wednesday morning for those who don't have day jobs] 122 quilts were collected. Some had been made during that month, many more came from stashes. They were all sizes, from crib size for babies to queen size quilts. They were a wonderful variety of colors, styles and patterns. Although Bayberry's treasury was willing to pay the postage to the collection point in Colorado, a request for donations to defray the cost brought in $336 of the approximately $450 needed for UPS chargers -- and UPS gave a discount for this particular shipment which was several large boxes.

This is only the latest example of generosity. Bayberry, like Empire Quilters which I belonged to in NYC, has ongoing charity projects to give to locally needy people and organizations. Quilters are a generous species. After the Katrina catastrophe thousands of quilts were donated.

Like many quilters, I have more quilts than I need, the top shelves of my closets are full of quilts and there are some under beds as well. I make them for the joy of making, of seeing colors and patterns go together. If someone I know would like to have one, I give it to him or her; if a call comes for donated quilts, I pull out one or two or three. As I write I remember a couple of quilts in my UFO box that I ought to finish -- they are only tops right now. They will be good quilts to have on hand the next time a need arises. And I have so many ideas for quilts I'd like to make and such a lovely stash of fabrics waiting to be used. Being a quilter is a special kind of joy in itself.

First Birthday Party

2011-04-25T15:23:00.004-05:00

This first birthday quilt was a joint effort. It may be a wee bit premature but when I went to a quilt show last summer with my daughter, the birthday boy's grandmother, we saw a version of this quilt at Debra Kaminsky's vendor booth and Rachel said we must make it for Finn [four months old at the time]. A few months ago Rachel and Cory arrived to go through my stash and pick out all the fabrics for the quilt -- color choice was largely Cory's input. Then Rachel went home with the patterns for the letters and the animals which she fancy cut and prepared for fusing. She brought them here and together we chose which background blocks for which letter. I fused them and sewed the blocks. Rachel arranged the animals on the border -- they are not in alphabetic order -- and I did all the finished except giving it over to Rachel again for hand finishing the binding. Viola! Done for the first birthday party Saturday.
We are, of course, convinced the kid will be a genius of some sort but I did notice that the cupcakes -- in frog guise -- interested him far more than the quilt. Cory and Rachel made these -- it's a family pun, the last name is Todoroff. Unlike other toads [and frogs] collected by the family, these disappeared by the end of the party.

Red and White bandwagon

2011-04-23T06:44:00.002-05:00

The big red and white quilt show in NYC a few weeks ago is still coloring the world of quilters blogs. I needed a quiltie for a swap. I feel victim to red and white virus. So I made this: it's about 8x7, in the "try something new" vein. The little strips of red sewn on the white ground are raw edge, at the ends I've pulled the white bobbin thread up and tied it with the red top thread and left the ends a couple of inches long, thus giving the surface a "hairy" look.

The idea came from one of the posts on the 12x12 blog [in the sidebar, at the bottom] Then I finished by bordering with a red and white stripe and a red and white print on the back. It's really a very simple little quilt. I think the drama of red and white makes it interesting. When I do these tiny quilties I usually feel inspired to make larger versions for myself later on. That may happen with this. Quilties feel like sketching or doodling to me. Since I care about words and their uses, I think the rather childish diminution of the "ie" ending is appropriate and yet distasteful. I'd call them "quilt sketches".

A Question about Orange

2011-04-19T14:46:00.004-05:00

I noticed a lot of orange at the MQX show of which this is a fairly delicate example. Sometimes the orange is called "cheddar" which is appropriate enough. In one little area two very orange quilts were hung side by side. The one below that looks like many panels has a lot of orange, you'll note. I happen to like orange but I've never made a quilt that was predominantly orange. I'm not sure I want to either, it would clash with just about everything -- unless I decided to change out the red in my abode to blue.

My impression is that most people don't really like orange as a predominent color -- or is sensibility changing as, for instance, is the sensibility of Japanese quilters who are currently making lots and lots of taupe quilts? I hope a few people will respond with their feelings about orange. Am I trend spotter? What fun that would be.

More from MQX

2011-04-18T18:42:00.005-05:00

Three more quilts -- again, by no means the most stunning ones -- rather ones I like for my own quirky reasons. Above is Lyn MacAffrey's "Girl By the Sea" which I liked for it's simple picture [I said, "I could do that"] I heard Lyn speak and show slides of many of her quilts a few years ago. At the time she was doing highly romantic scenes, princesses and so on, painting the faces very realistically and putting them in flowery forest glades. I like the straight forwardness of this quilt. Here the quilting was skillfully in keeping with the simplicity of the subject -- a real, wholesome, likable looking young woman.

Martha C. Hall's "A Little Peace" was one of the few in the show that did something other than normal rectangles. I like the cheeriness of her colors and the scattering of circles. I didn't understand the name but that's okay. I was glad to come upon a quilt with a contemporary feeling. Again the quilting was fairly dense but not distracting..

Cathy Spenina's "Ribbons of Hope" caught my attention because again, I thought, "I could do that." The ribbons are not actual ribbons, they are fabric cut and appliqued very neatly. It looked like a wonderful exercise in mark making as practiced in a sketch book. One could play at sketching a lot of motifs until one was pleasing. Again, my refrain, quite a lot of machine quilting, but nothing that distracted.

These choices of quilts to photograph say much more about my taste than about what was at the show. I am still concerned that some quilters are so entranced with what big, new, very expensive machines allow them to do so that the self-expression that comes across to me is not aesthetic pleasure but too, too much, quilting for its own sake, not to express oneself -- being controlled by the machine rather than truly controlling the machine to your end of creating something beautiful. By the way, in the heavily quilted pieces, often a great many small crystals had been added [hot glued in most cases] Sometimes the quilt became a piece of bling, sometimes it was restrained enough to add richness as I think the quilter intended.

Machine Quilting Expo - Providence, R.I.

2011-04-16T15:11:00.005-05:00

The Machine Quilting Expo in Providence, R.I. which I saw Thursday was one of the best shows I've attended for several reasons: the venue was just the right size for the show, the lighting was the best I've seen and there were not too many quilts to really look at and enjoy. On the other hand, I consider machine quilting such as is practiced now and was very, very much on show there, a totally different genre of quilting -- one I do not aspire to but can look at with astonishment while I try to balance my aesthetic reactions. Mostly I think, as a new technology, many people are going overboard and not balancing the graphic appeal of the quilt with the extreme quilting. More about that another time.

The above quilt is by Barbara McKie whose pictorial quilts I've been looking at for 25 years. She embraces technology and strives to make the most of it to create a picture. Sometimes I've felt she has more technical expertise than aesthetic taste. In the case of "White Winged Dove" she has thread painted the head and breast brilliantly [click to enlarge and then click again to double enlarge]. The background of the piece is machine quilted in a way I found distracting. There were half a dozen bird quilts done the same way, with intricately thread painted and/or quilted birds and a background of leaves that was distracting, they were by various people. This was the most magnificent of the birds.
This vase of flowers is aesthetically blah, it was done by a group. The workmanship was fascinating, the flowers are three dimensional of lighter weight fabrics. My camera is not sensitive enough to capture the dimensionality which I thought was masterful. Again two clicks will help you appreciate it. And you'll see some of the fairly typical dense machine quilting on the background.
I took a dozen pictures [a lot for me - partly because the audience was sparse enough so I didn't have to juggle space to take a picture]. This is an example of white work done entirely by machine with no 1/8 of an inch not quilted -- it's impossible to show the astonishing amount of work by Cindy Needham who was the featured quilter with many white work quilts each more elaborate than the other -- all in a tasteful way. They are masterpieces of over-quilting. What Cindy, and quite a few other quilters. are doing with whole cloth quilts is mind bloggling. Just thinking of the hours they spent being extremely precise! For my part, I cannot conceive why anyone would do this but obviously there are people who must enjoy it.

Besides many white work, whole cloth quilts in intricate patterns, there were many black and dark colored ones on which great varieties of colored and metallic threads were used. Miles!!! Truly, miles of thread. Not many appealed to me and I knew I could not hope to capture them on my camera so I took no pictures of them.

Likewise many traditional or contemporary quilts were heavily machine quilted, sometimes to good effect and sometimes the quilting so overshadowed the quilt itself one felt sad about all that work to an ugly end. This is all a matter of people finding a balance as this new technology is available. More on that another day.

Just plugging away

2011-04-12T05:28:00.002-05:00

This selvage tote bag was being carried by someone at the Empire Guild show. I had a case of Sudden Envy and thought I'll make one. I will. But not just now.

From the stasis in posts here it seems I'm not quilting much -- in fact, I'm just plugging away at WIPs [works in progress] and that not as much as usual because the last three weeks or so have been unusually busy. I will be going to a big Machine Quilting show in Providence, R.I. in a couple of days with a busload of other Bayberry Quilters and will probably come back with more photos for my own inspiration that I'll share here on this blog.

Meanwhile I've spent a lot of what spare time I've had writing stuff. A little [very little] sample of it is online for the week. If you look to the sidebar on the right you will see Time Goes By, a blog I read by Ronni Bennett, and on her left hand sidebar is a box to click for the Elder Storytelling Place -- do click and you'll find a short story of mine. I am plugging away just now on a novel with a couple of elderly characters but this short story is one of the few I've written with an older woman as a main character.

New Toys for next new technique

2011-04-07T14:20:00.003-05:00

At the Empire Guild's show, I browsed the venders -- of course! -- and restrained myself although the African and Indonesian fabrics were siren songs I could barely resist. What I did purchase was crayons -- three kinds. I keep seeing wonderful things people do with crayons and paint on their art quilts. I don't know quite what I want to start with but I want to work my way into a portrait of some sort, but I will probably start more simply.

The beautiful blue fabric the boxes are laying is from a part of a bolt of decorator fabric I was recently given by a person who doesn't understand quilting fabric but does understand heavenly blue. Such a beautiful color! I'll eventually find something I want to use it for.

Spring Flowers Popping Up

2011-04-06T11:47:00.005-05:00

The book Twelve by Twelvee showed a version of this technique. As usual I don't leave well enough alone, I had to put my own twist on it. As soon as I saw the idea of cutting through a couple of layers of fabric and turning the corners back to look like a discovery or, in this case, flowers coming through the grass, I had to try it. Below are the layers of fabric, without another pink because I decided I didn't want the green back [same fabric as the front] showing in the square. So this little quiltie [it's 8x8 inches is really five layers of fabric, the top four having been sewn together in squares and then clipped through and lightly ironed open -- enough so what shows in each case is a variety of the pink-yellow-blue and green.
Frankly I think it is a good abstraction of flowers popping up in the grass. I was recently given the ribbon that says "happy spring" and decided to add a strip o it to the top and to make hanging loops with it as well.

This was fun, although harder to open out than I expected -- I needed a third hand to accomplish the job efficiently but was quite unable to grow one on the spur of the moment when needed. I have an idea for making another, only three layers, I think. I learned that I'd have preferred the end results if the green top fabric were uniformly the same shade on the back and front which it's not. It's interesting to me to cut through some layers and not do reverse applique but leave them raw edge. I have a little fear that the person to whom I am supposed to send this piece will not understand what I've done and will find it very weird indeed as a quilt.

Alligators in the NYC sewers

2011-04-02T07:28:00.004-05:00

I wish I had posted this yesterday. When in NYC over the weekend I actually did not see this -- but I wish I had. After all the years of hearing about alligators in the New York City sewers and it being debunked consistently ... They're crawling out, and they're BIG!

No, he's not real, but looks real -- he's a sculpture and his dopplegangers are coming out of man holes in various places in the city -- or so the article I read said. He's meant to look entirely real -- some April Fool's joke. They'll be there a while. I love it! I love that city with all it's variety and sometimes screwy sense of humor like the street signs I've always loved that say, "Don't even think of parking here."

More from Empire Quilters' Show

2011-03-31T09:45:00.006-05:00

Here are four more photos from the Empire Quilters Guild show last weekend. As before these are not always my favorites but ones that I liked for a specific reason. All four here will be seen to better advantage if you click to enlarge them and then click again to see details. The above is In the Spotlight by Renee Fleuranges-Valdes. Its dramatic impact speaks for itself. She had a second quilt with other African figures that was equally impactful.
This is Forms by Judith Plows. It is an interpretation of a photograph of her house. I love the clean planes and I especially love the square leaves that cover the tree [a "trick" I might use some day] These leaves echo the modern angularity of the house.

I took quite a few other photos but some caught the back of a viewer's head or were shot at a bad angle or had a shadow on them -- that is the hazard of a very successful show when many people crowd around the exhibits and also try to photograph them. Happily at this show the lighting was mostly few satisfactory. Bad lighting at quilt shows makes me very crotchetty.

A leaf again--only a partial view of a 4-part quilt called Vivaldi, the Four Seasons. In this case all were these large leaves but appropriate colors for the seasons. I loved especially the very close quilting and, in this which is summer [I think] the fabrics were very beautiful colors.

Finally below is a favorite, partial view of Jane Broadus's Rats Recycle for New York. [you must double enlarge this] For readers who are not New Yorkers, I will assure you this is an exaggeration although I was rarely walking the streets in the wee hours so might have missed a sight like this. I saw Jane and she told me there are 108 rats on the quilt and she "loved sewing on every one." Nobody is crazy about rats but as she shows, they have their niche in the ecology.

Inspiration

2011-03-28T17:22:00.007-05:00

I went down to New York largely to see the Empire Quilters' biannual show which is always a very good one -- and it was once again. There were many wonderful quilts but I took photos largely of ones that were not in every case my favorites but ones that inspire me to try some aspect of what the quilter did. The above is "Eucalyptus" by Babara Hull. I love her colors and fabric choices but what I want to try is the reverse applique that she did. She did very fine embroidery around some of the leaves.
"Starry Batik Path" by Sylvia Hughes seems a very traditional quilt with the alternating plain squares and the star squares but I really love that kind of quilt and I've loved that star pattern for years. The quilt offers an opportunity to use a variety of batiks from my stash and would give me a much delight to make. I probably will do so ... but I can't even imagine at this point how I'd fit it into the many things I want to do.
"Solar Burst" by Laurenda Liang is especially interesting because the light colored points are three dimensional -- she made all of them separately. They are sewn down by the central circle which I believe was appliqued after the background stars were sewn, and then the very tips of the light stars' points was just tacked so the points seem to float atop the rest. I love that look. Something that would be time consuming but fun to do.
Not really last, because I have some other inspirations I may show in a few days, "Bamboo" by Susan Kraster was a queen size quilt. In just a minute one can see how simple the block is, but how very effective it is. This can be a scrap quilt with even more fabrics than the palette Susan used. I think the red stripping is very effective. I am fairly certainly I will try this block ... when I get a chance.

The frustration is that there are so many good ideas, especially for someone who already has a large stash and loves make stash/scrap quilts. I'll write a bit more about the show in a few days. I'm very, very happy I was able to see it.

Bayberry Guild Speaker

2011-03-23T17:10:00.006-05:00

Today's speaker at the Bayberry Quilters Guild meeting was Sarah Ann Smith from Maine. She is especially known for her journal quilts but also teaches other aspects of quilting. Today's lecture and display of her work was the journal quilts; she brought quite a few she had made and exhibited in the Houston show. She also had a slide show with many examples of other quilter's journal quilts. For anyone who doesn't know, Journal quilts are usually the size of a piece of typewriter paper, i.e., 8-1/2 by 12 inches. Although there's no rule and anyone deciding to make her own set of journal quilts can chose the size that suits her.
The first picture is a self-portrait Sarah Ann did, I especially like the yellow hair that escapes the frame of the central picture. It is a nice likeness. I think we all could relate when she said it took a good many photos to get one she liked enough to work with.

The next picture is one I especially liked because she not only found a way to do a quilt about night, but she put her family -- in silhouette -- in the picture. You may have to click and enlarge the image to see the family well. I love the way she handled this element.
The last picture is from as series about the elements, here, it's fire of course, with the Firebird. Sarah Ann used the journal quilts to experiment with all kinds of new techniques which included a lot of use of sheer fabrics and unusual surfaces like Angelina fibers, heat treated Tyvek, couching, beading, all kinds of machine thread work and much else. It was usually in service of an image even when she did a series to work on her color sense.

I would have loved to photograph more but many other women were trying to get a good look and I didn't want to stand in everyone's way. I did explain to her that a year or two before I first heard about the journal quilt project, I had decided to do a journal or "diary" of daily quilts, only 4x6 inches to record my 65th year of life. It was a good year and I knew it was going to be one of a kind. The diary quilts were, of course small and some were extremely simple, but each related to that particular day in some way. I missed a few days, but only 10 or 15 total. I have them, of course. I Xeroxed many and made a book of them. I don't really know what else to do with them -- I put 20 went into a wall quilt. I've thought of writing a verbal journal about the year and using them as illustration but I don't think I am inclined to do that -- they served the expressive purpose I needed at the time.

The Art Quilt Collection

2011-03-20T17:59:00.005-05:00

Amazon's superior marketing intelligence [such as it is] told me I might also like this book since I was purchasing the Twelve by Twelve which I wrote about a couple posts ago. So I purchased it too and put it aside until I finished enjoying the Twelve By Twelve [enjoyed very much!]

This is a different breed of cat as they say. The full title is The Art Quilt Collection, Designs and Inspiration from Around the World. It contains very nice photos of nearly 150 art quilts which gives a good idea of the enormous variety of approaches to art quilting. The quilters are from around the world, with a really nice selection from Europe and far more than you might expect from Israel [since it's a very small country], I didn't see any from New Zealand and only a couple from Australia [I know there are thriving art quilt groups in both places]. There are a few from Japan. The American ones leave out a lot of extremely well known at quilters, perhaps on purpose. It's a lovely book to look at -- what I call eye candy. There are short artists' statements, there are no bios of the artists. There are 4 to 6 little sections on techniques which are clear and interesting. I am not sorry I have this book as I love looking at the great variety and getting acquainted with art quilters' work I did not previously know. It is in an entirely different category than the fascination and information in the Twelve by Twelve book. The forward by Linda Seward [a name unknown to me and there is no information on who she is in the quilt world] gives me no idea how this collection was pulled together. I really want to know a lot more. Meanwhile, as I say, it's lovely to look at.

Yum! Unbelievable!

2011-03-19T06:16:00.004-05:00

I should have taken a picture, but it looked very much like this stock picture -- the flan, called something like "puden" in Portuguese -- meaning pudding. But not just any pudding and not just any flan either. I can go rapturous about certain chocolate desserts and sometimes even a hot butterscotch sundae, but yesterday's FLAN was so good I couldn't believe it. I was beyond word and resisted the urge to confine give in to childish gurlges of pleasure.

A few women from my writing class were here including Patty who shops at the Brazilian specialty store which I generally don't go into when I shop at the fresh produce store on the other side of the parking lot. Words fail me when I wonder how to describe the flavorfulness of the flan -- yes, the huge puddle of carmelized sugar sauce was wonderful but it was the flavor of the super eggy, super sweet flan itself that was better than any other I've ever had. I have a not very big piece left -- happily each person took some home -- and I will share it with my daughter so she can taste this amazing flan also.

Before and after the flan we had a wonderful female gabfest -- and some talk about writing [alas, they helped me convince myself that I must do some major rewriting of the opening of the novel I've written about an elderly quilter] but a lot of talk about concerns of seniors. Two of the women are in ministry/care giving professions and deal mostly with needy older people. I'm happy people of their sensibility and character are working with others who are ailing and needy.

Twelve by Twelve , the book

2011-03-16T07:04:00.003-05:00

The Twelve By Twelve group have been blogging and challenging one another to make 12x12 inch quilts on a specific subject [two months deadlines] for almost as long as I've been writing this blog. I discovered them not long after they began their blog and have been a faithful follower -- mostly a lurker. After two years their work became an exhibit at the big annual show in Sydney. Now the first two years of work is a wonderful book that is only just available here in the US -- I ordered it on Amazon soon after I read that that it would be available in March.

I am very much a book person -- I love having the solid object in my hands so I can read a bit when I'm having coffee, flip back and forth through the pages to remind myself which quilter is which. I had seen all the quilts on the blog as they were "revealed" but now I almost have them in my hands. I hope someday to see the exhibit somewhere. No matter how good, a photo is a weak imitation of a quilt.

The book is meatier than most quilt books which makes it especially exciting and worthwhile. In the same Amazon order I got another book of art quilts but have only glanced at it so far -- it's full of wonderful quilts with short artists' statements and I'll write about it in a week or two. But now: Each of the Twelve has a "chapter" in which she writes more intimately about her own participation in the group and what it has meant to her. She also discusses her creative process in reference to one particular quilt. At the end of each chapter is a bit of information specific for the reader about how the reader can form her own group, or about quilters' blogs, etc. And of course the photos! The quilts themselves. I get a sense of each artist's style, of her creative journey through this group. These women were almost complete strangers to one another when one started the group, they live on three continents. Over the two -- now three -- years they have made opportunities to meet, not yet all together. They are both respectful and supportive of one another's work and they write openly of their false starts and their learning process. The book becomes a role model for any quilter who is just beginning to venture into art quilting. It's a source of inspiration for any quilter who wants to go beyond traditional quilting.

Sometimes I buy books full of art quilts, look in awe at the work, usually have little idea of the process by which the work was made, and wonder a few weeks later if I spent my money wisely just to look at pretty pictures. This book is so much more than pretty pictures! I continue to follow the blog -- see the side bar of this blog -- and have begun to think of them as a group of people I almost know personally. They have individual, personal blogs which I often read also where they write about other things in their lives, both as artists and as individuals, so the sense of community is broadened. They are as much a part of my quilting life as are the members of my local guild. The book will "live" on my coffee table where I can pick it up often.

Study for future quilt

2011-03-12T07:49:00.003-05:00

How to capture my fascination with the spew of seashells and seaweed on the beach that I study when I walk there -- that is the challenge I've set myself for a small quilt challenge put to the Bayberry Quilters by the officials planning a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the National Seashore here on Cape Cod. We members of the guild have been asked to make quilts 16x20 that depict something about the National Seashore. The quilts will be displayed first at our guild show the first weekend of August and then move to the visitor's center at the National Seashore to hang until sometime in October.

I immediately thought of showing the horseshoe crabs that I find so fascinating when I find them washed up on the sand. They are many sizes from "babies" 3 or 4 inches across to "ancients" 10 or 12 inches with blackened, and often encrusted shells. I had thought of printing photographs on fabric and appliqueing them to a quilt. So far my printer has not been cooperative -- it's very picky about the papers it will accept.

Secondarily, I knew I wanted to create what looked like wave-washed sand and add other shells and seaweed. I have a piece of upholestry fabric that is almost okay but it needs some toning down. So I painted it with thinned acrylic. In this trial piece I think the tone is too white and I will use a tan on the eventual piece. I'm happy with my free quilting with high loft batting that gave me the sense of the wave washed sand. I have other upholstery fabrics with seashell prints. The colors needed to be toned down with pencil and marker -- but I think I will get pastels or blendable crayons to use on the next piece. Then I searched through my small stash of crewel yarns and found a green for the seaweed -- it's not as bright as the fresh weed but that's okay. It's usually tangled with shells so I have tied some shells through the holes that were in them when I picked them up. This one quilt is only about 9x9. When I make the larger one, I may find a way to include a horseshoe crab shell, I will make sure that the shells I cut from my printed fabric to applique are species found here and not something exotic from Aruba or Tahiti. I'm even thinking that there may be some clear fixative I can spray in spots to hold a sprinkling of actual sand on the surface.

This really is a labor of love. I have only discovered the joy of walking on and studying the seashore in the last couple of years. It's a delight to think about how to make this experience work within the small scope of a quilt. The next one will have the elements this has but will be different. I have until August but will get to work on it before long, after I've thought about this a bit more.

Hand Knit Mittens

2011-03-10T18:25:00.004-05:00

These mittens are the result of a private swap. A talented young woman in Canada made them for me in exchange for some selvage/pictures for her children's rooms. They are made of wonderful thick wool and the red has a nice bit of blue tone in it. They fit perfectly and feel wonderful! When I thought of it, I've reached my ripe old age and have never before had hand knit mittens. Better late than never in this case.

I'm hoping the weather will remain warm enough not to need mittens but there's no guarantee of that. If I can get in another nice walk by the ocean this weekend I'm sure the mittens will go with me. And I'm sure I will wear them a great deal next winter. I'm as delighted as if Santa himself had popped into my mail box and delivered them. No one in my whole family was a knitter; it's a rare treat.

Colors for fun

2011-03-06T08:10:00.004-05:00

If I were into perfection I would not show this quilt. That bowed lower hem was not intentional, in fact, it looked perfectly straight on the work table. The final shape has to do with unequal amounts of quilting, plenty in the middle and almost none on the edges. I hung this and thought about simply cutting all the edges off and doing a very slender binding - I might yet.

In fact this is basically a doodle -- I had all these bits of color in little scraps I didn't want to throw away so I cut them into rectangles,1x2, and played with them. I had no plan about balancing the circles and the rectangles, just wanted to see what my playing would produce. This is it. I enjoyed putting the colors in different places. As I say, it's in the nature of a doodle. And, if I live with it like this for a while and get bored quickly, then I will probably cut off the borders and simply bind the central rectangle with the interesting little stripe I have along the edge or simply with black or a bright color that will be turned to the back.

Another poet, on the margin

2011-03-03T11:11:00.003-05:00

Here is another of what will be nine or twelve squares of selvages with quotes from and pictures of women poets -- the poets who, whatever prestigious prizes they have garnered, seem to remain on the margins of academic recognition as poets. This is Mary Oliver, who has won a Pulitzer Prize. She writes nature poetry, mostly about Cape Cod. I was dismayed to hear an academic dismiss her recently as of less interest than certain male poets he preferred.

This piece like the one I showed a few weeks ago of Kay Ryan, is unfinished. The photographs are paper, I will copy them onto fabric and sew them on all in good time. I suspect I could eventually made 50 blocks because I suspect I can find fifty women poets who are not rated as highly as I think they deserve to be. But I will probably only do a dozen, and perhaps try to find a venue in which to display them.

Surely Spring Is Coming

2011-03-02T11:31:00.004-05:00

Hello, Robin Redbreast! As I sat sewing this morning I became aware of a couple of birds hopping about on the brown grass and lo! First one robin and then another, and they seemed to be finding some tiny morsel beneath the matted old brown grass and the few springs of new green grass pushing up. The sun was bright and beautiful but the temperatures are in the mid-30s. The tree tops across the street are dancing in the blustery wind that keeps me indoors and not out having a walk which I very much want to take.

Besides the robins there were some glossy black birds -- no, not the crows that appear early in the morning, maybe these were grackles although I thought they were a little small for grackles. Does insect life begin to stir with the warm sun on the old grass? Oh, my, there is so much I don't know about the natural world.

I have a bunch of quilt projects in process but nothing worthy of a photo yet. But soon I think.

Sunday poem

2011-02-23T19:25:00.004-05:00

Beth of the One-Minute Writer choose weekly winners -- she gives a different prompt each day. I usually write something although sometimes I can't think of anything so skip it. A recent prompt was to write a poem about Sunday [or sundae] which proved to be quite easy because the day before [Saturday, obviously] had had a Sunday feel and I had gone walking on the beach -- a did many dog owners who, this time of year can let their dogs off leash. I love watching dogs who are cooped up indoors most of the time enjoy the freedom of a Saturday -- or Sunday afternoon. So I wrote the following poem which Beth chose as writing of the week:

On Sunday

The dogs take their people for long walks,
showing them how to use the freedom of being out, off-leash.
Dogs always rejoice at freedom;
their people more often will not cavort and dance and skip.
People have taught dog "sit, stay."
People refuse to learn from dog
"Leap. Laugh. Wag your tail."

I may spend some time making it a better poem. It's something I feel like saying well.

Two more painted quilties

2011-02-21T13:40:00.003-05:00

I liked the acrylic painted/ Sharpie drawn pear quiltie I showed a couple of posts ago and I sent it away in a swap. So I decided to make another and experiment with a different quilting pattern. Actually I think the pears on the former one were better and the diamond quilting didn't work as well. Live and learn -- that's why experiments are done.

I prepared two squares -- both of these are 6x6 inchies -- in the same sewing session. So then I tried the moth on the second one. I guess I got carried away with the bright colors -- neither moth nor butterfly look like this. I'll call it "impressionistic" and pretend this was the in my head -- but it wasn't but again I was experimenting. I have another experiment in mind on a bigger scale. That ones not ready t.o be attempted

Another inchie quiltie

2011-02-15T15:35:00.004-05:00

I protested but I did it again. This is a second quiltie made with twenty inchies. This time no buttons -- I literally used all my really tiny buttons on the first one. These squares mostly have flowers so that will serve as the "extra added attraction." This time I brought the backing around to the front to make a border a little over an inch wide which is meant to give a bit of substance to the quilt -- oops, quiltie. This is for a second swap and, I think, will not be repeated.

I admit I'm beginning to see some attraction of the little squares but I prefer something a bit bigger and have, as I wrote before, something in mind that I will work on in the near future. Right now I have a couple other projects in process and those brightly colored paper-pieced stars are still on my design wall waiting to be quilted and put together and I'm working up the ambition to do that.

I look out at nice blue sky and think I should be getting some exercise walking. Then I look at the tree tops which seem to be suffering the arboreal version of shaken baby syndrome. The wind comes in mean tempered gusts and slaps around whatever it can find -- I actually watched as the decently weighted metal lids of two garbage containers flipped up and over -- these are not little garbage cans the likes of which are in danger of rolling down the road. These are containers about 5x5 square and 5 feet tall in front, 6 foot in back and the lids covering that expanse are sturdy. In short, it's not a day to try walking in that wind. We're promised it will die down by Sunday and also be warm -- sounds wonderful. I hope it comes true.

Quilties, inchies

2011-02-13T09:02:00.004-05:00

Recently learned terms: Quilties. Inchies. I don't like them. Cute-ifying things isn't my style. Making miniature quilts, yes. That I understand and have seen some very amazing ones both new and antique. The journal quilts and the postcard quilts, these also I understand and have made many. But why this apparent need to infantilize a craft or art work? Do people think it makes quilting less serious? Less frightening? Does it sound like fun as opposed to a bit of work? Maybe other people have other feelings. It's words and what words imply that bother me. I believe profoundly in the importance and power of words and definitions for what we do. I prickle remembering how the women's movement of the '60s and '70s struggled that women and their work should not be marginalized as unimportant. These words seem a regression that we are sheltering under like wet cats in the rain.

BUT I have made what is called a "quiltie" with appliqued raw-edge "inchies". And I love it. I enjoyed arranging the colors, enjoyed using the smallest buttons at the bottom of my button collection as embellishment. And I'm going to go cut out another set of inchies for a second one on the same background fabric and I have plans for a third that will not be inchies but different and larger and I won't call it by any diminutive, I'll call it a little art quilt. These names as I'm using them here are for swaps in which those are the operative words and most of the above is my not at all subtle protest.

Confucius said that understanding begins when we have 'rectified names".

UFO for now

2011-02-09T19:02:00.002-05:00

Mostly blue, somewhat Log Cabin-ish in constructions, this crib sized quilt needs another border, probably a narrow one which may be a fold-over of the backing fabric ... WHEN it's finally sandwiched, backed and quilted. I finished this much today and ironed it and it goes into the UFO bag for the time being. I don't feel like doing the finishing right now.

I may look for a place that accepts crib size quilts and does the backing and quilting -- the Empire Quilters to which I used to belong did that. I could always send it to them. They present dozens of quilts to homeless families every year. I'm sure others do too. I'll explore what Bayberry Quilters do. I'm too new to know all the projects yet. I'm glad to have used up some fabrics I'd cut into for other projects and felt somewhat bored with. There are a couple of mega-boring calicoes in it. I'm happy to have made a teensy-weensy dent in the blue stash. I'm always curious how something will look when it's finally together because I just don't have the visual imagination to figure that out in my head.