Tessellations: Where Quilting and Life Intersect

Changing Blogs--You might have to update your feeds

2010-04-26T20:41:00.000-04:00

It got too confusing having a blog with a different name from the podcast series, so I've moved my "Tessellations" blog to a new blog entitled "Quilting...for the Rest of Us," at http://quiltingfortherestofus.blogspot.com.

I've moved a lot of the blog posts from here over to the new one so many of the archives will still be available. And I'm not deleting this blog for awhile--I just won't be adding to it. Hopefully it won't be a problem for any of you!

Thanks, Sandy

Home again, home again, jiggi...ty....zzzzzzzz

2010-04-26T15:03:00.000-04:00

The flights all went smoothly, but they were crammed to the brim. The requisite screaming babies (I felt bad for the mom, but also, admittedly, a little sorry for myself!), toddlers kicking the back of my seat, trying to avoid touching the poor guy in the middle seat of our row, etc. I didn't sleep much at all on the red-eye from Seattle to Chicago so I'm on definite major sleep deficit here; unfortunately, napping doesn't really work for me. I wake up feeling worse than I started. So I'm just going to plow through and go to bed as early as I think I can get away with tonight.

I only listened to a couple more quilty podcasts on the trip home--some older episodes of "Jackie's Quilting Chronicles." There's no way I'll have time to listen to all episodes of everyone's podcasts so I'm having to skate through and only pick out a small handful of each. I enjoyed Jackie's; I listened to a couple of episodes where she talked about various tools and picked up some good ideas. Check her out!

I have this weird reaction to Dramamine hangover--I tend to eat my way through the next day. I think it's a mixture of carbo-loading from being overtired and trying to do anything I can to stay awake as long as possible. So I'm now trying to distract myself with playing a computer game and in a bit, I may go up and tackle my scrap bins and see if I can cut some into usable pieces. Working on my next podcast episode on scraps has inspired me! I'm a little worried about using a rotary cutter when I'm this tired, though. Way to lop off a finger!

After listening to all of these podcasts, I am realizing that I've never really posted pictures of projects in progress--just completions. So I'm going to use this blog a little differently in the future. So--more pics, more short entries with updates on projects, and lots of questions for everyone!

Meanwhile, to sleep...perhaps to dream...(of quilted sugarplums?)

There's no place like home...

2010-04-25T09:56:00.000-04:00

I'm starting my last day of my business trip. Head home on a red-eye tonight, so I just updated all my podcasts, especially the quilty ones!, and synched my iPod in preparation. I had a brief hope of doing a little touristy-shop-hopping yesterday during a break but didn't know any locals with a car, so I ended up staying in the hotel. Got a lot of work (real work!) done, though, so it was good.

I did have some odd moments here and there to keep working on my research for my next podcast episode. I'm learning a lot about scraps. Not sure if it's inspired me to do a "real" scrap project yet or not. I define "real" as using honest-to-goodness scraps, not precut packs (jelly rolls, charm packs)--I've done several of the precut type of scrap projects to warm myself up on how to pick scraps for a design and make it work.

I've got a quilt retreat coming up in a couple of weeks; I'm debating just bringing all my scraps and making myself take the time to cut them all to usable sizes. It would probably take me most of the weekend. Could I stand doing that? Hmmm....

You Know It's Probably Not the Right College When...

2010-04-19T17:56:00.000-04:00

...your daughter's eyes glaze over 5 minutes into the tour. Maybe the glazing started even before we left the waiting room in the admissions building.

Granted, I think I agree. On Saturday, I could easily picture her on every corner of that campus--eating in the dining hall, sleeping in the door room, sitting in the classrooms, hanging out under the tree in the middle of one of the courtyards, and especially hanging out in the library. Today, at this school, I had to squint to imagine her anywhere there--and even at that, my imaginary daughter-on-campus was blurry and not altogether happy. It's a great school--just probably not the best school for her.

She's not crossing it off the list yet; it just dropped way down, probably below a few undiscovered colleges that have yet to even be added to the list. My husband and I talked with her on the way back to the hotel and explained that college visits are sort of like dating--much of the reason you do college visits is to find out what you don't like, as much as finding out what you do like. She can't entirely put her finger on why she didn't like the school at this stage, but she'll figure it out, especially after she's got a couple more visits under her belt.

And by the way, the only store in town that sells fabric is a general hobby store and the couple of shelves of fabric were stuffed in among dusty shelves of yarn, toy trains and accoutrements, woodworking tools, kids' craft kits, and all sorts of whatnot. Hmmmm. Maybe there is a connection between "the right school for my daughter" and "quilt-friendly!"

It's Kismet--Is this the College for Us?

2010-04-17T21:22:00.000-04:00

So, my husband and I are trooping around the north country of NYS with our daughter visiting a couple of colleges this weekend. She's debating environmental sciences, biology, and anthropology. At the moment, she wants to be a park ranger or wants to be in school for the rest of her life (she tosses off references to grad school and PhDs and doesn't notice my husband and I clutching our chests and dropping to the floor over the thought of decades of tuition ahead).

In any case, we visited Paul Smith College today--gorgeous campus and does seem to fit her outdoorsy-personality. But was it perhaps kismet when we stopped in the college bookstore and there--almost immediately catching my eye--stacked amidst the rock music and computer magazines--were two quilt books?!?

I nabbed them and spoke with the clerk (a woman of a "certain age") about my surprise that there were quilt books in a college bookstore. Turns out that, until very recently, there was a quilt conference that used to be there each summer. I'm bummed I missed them! The quilt books are "northwoodsy" style--lots of moose, bear, and pinecones. But nice patterns and lots of applique templates I'll be able to repurpose into other projects if I choose not to decorate my house like a log cabin.

Kismet aside...

After the tour, we moved on to Lake Placid and spent the afternoon...in the snow...in April...poking around the shops in the village. And I stumbled across a small fabric shop tucked away in a little walk-in mall (a collection of about 6 shops in an alcove off the main street). It was very small, but she had a nice collection. I picked up several half-yards of some fabric appropriate for landscape quilts--something I eventually want to get into doing. Plus she had some great fabric on sale for 50% off, so I got a yard of that one (the floral), then she had a line of gorgeous muted tone-on-tones that I couldn't resist (the brown, sage green, and sort of steel blue that looks more intense in the photo than it is). Unfortunately not on sale, dang it. And a couple of other nice stash-fabrics.

So here's my souvenir of our trip...

I'll be giving a shout-out to the fabric store on my podcast and posting the link to the store's website in my show notes: http://quilter.podbean.com/.

Another day in Lake Placid tomorrow--trying to hike despite the falling snow--then on to Clarkson tomorrow. I don't know--if they don't have quilt books in their college bookstore, I may have to talk my daughter into removing them from her list. :-)

A Sandufo Finish!

2010-04-13T16:40:00.002-04:00

Back to one of my own UFOs (the "Sandy-ufo", or "Sandufo")--finally done! This one always felt like a really stupid UFO. I got myself all caught up in feeling like I should do more with it than what I really actually needed to do just to call it done. I bought the panel about three or four years ago, shortly after we first moved into our new house. Our house was in a development named "Cherry Hill Estates" and so, when I saw this panel named "Cherry Hill," it seemed destined. And I liked the colors. It was hanging as a sampler quilt at a small quilt shop that's since closed (Pickett Fence, for anyone from around these parts). In an amazing show of complete lack of creativity, I think I just copied all her border fabrics. It was cute--and I wasn't feeling like being overly invested in the project at the time.
I got the borders put on quite quickly, but then it stalled. "Do I quilt just around the blocks and lines, or do I quilt in all the blocks too, to try to make it look like real applique?" Hence, the stopper. I couldn't decide what I wanted to do so it sat, and sat, and sat.

Finally, last week, in a fit of "I just really want to get this done and off my shelf," I threw on my walking foot and just quilted all the straight lines. I did decide to get a little fancier in the border, though, so last night I sat and went through one of my practice quilt sandwiches using some free-motion, free-hand patterns that Janet Root had taught in the machine quilting class I took last month. I liked the way the leafy one felt, so I went for it. (See close-up.) I had problems seeing where I was going with the patterned border fabric, but then I realized, if I had problems seeing what I was doing, anyone looking at it would have the same problems, so any errors would be virtually invisible. Woohoo!

The front of the quilt looks pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. The back of the quilt--Well, that's another matter, isn't it? But it'll be on a wall, so who's to ever know?

Momufo finished--Sandufo well on it's way!

2010-04-03T19:10:00.001-04:00

Another Momufo done! Well, pert' near, anyway. I have to do a little work on the corners and slap a label on the puppy and then it's done. I had this one machine quilted at Mt. Pleasant along with the flag quilt and garden quilt (previous post). This one was just a pantograph--all over falling leaves. Can't see the quilting at all in this pic, sorry. It's a large quilt--took my husband and daughter both holding up sides of it and me standing way outside my front door to get this picture.

I tried a new method of binding that I'm either never going to do again, or keep practicing it until I get it right. Not sure which at the moment. It's the do-it-all-by-machine method, where you sew the binding on the back, flip it to the front and then use your machine and a decorative stitch or blind stitch to sew it down. I didn't quite get my front and back seams in the same place so I'm not keen on the way it looks in the back. The front isn't too bad. Not show-worthy, but I don't particularly worry about that anyway.

I have a couple of other Momufos left to do but they'll probably take me awhile to get to. One has a LOT of work to do but it's a really nice piece that Mom designed in EQ so I want to get it done for her. The other one is just a kit that she'd started--it's a nice springy piece with hydrangea fabric that I think is cute so it's not high priority, but probably fast once I dig into it.

Meanwhile, back to my own UFOs, or "Sandufos" for awhile. I got the borders on today so I finally have the top completely pieced on my square-in-a-square class project! Woohoo! See my blog post from March with a photo of the center part of this quilt finished--I explain how it all came to be in that post.
I just LOVE that border fabric. It's absolutely perfect for pulling in all the colors of the center. It's another Moda, although from a different line (this quilt started with a bunch of fat quarters from Moda's "chocolat" line from a few years back.) I'm a big fan of Moda. I originally intended to do mitred borders but decided at the last minute to do a slightly wider border, which didn't leave me quite enough fabric for the mitre. So it's butted, but once it's quilted you'd probably never even know.

I'm going to have it machine quilted at Mt. Pleasant as well. I've been living with this quilt for almost two years now--I just want it done! Can't decide if I'll have a custom job or just a pantograph. I've grown to like this quilt, but I'm not sure I love it, which is what I'd need to do to pay for a custom quilt job!

Most recent finish

2010-03-22T16:45:00.000-04:00

I named this one "Gardens of Memory" because working on this one really allowed me the chance to honor Mom's quilting memory; it's a particularly impressive piece. It's such a complex and wonderful quilt that I decided to have it custom quilted at Mt. Pleasant to really do it justice. They did a beautiful job--which, unfortunately, you can't really see in these photos.

I queried Mom's friends about this one and no one knows anything about it. We all agree that it has the feel of a possible "round robin" to it (meaning it gets passed from quilter to quilter and everyone adds a border until it comes back to the original owner to finish). But it could just as easily have been something Mom did on her own. The border feels very "Mom" to me--the colors, the way the applique was handled. I also think I may have seen scraps from the inner border--the green floral--in Mom's stash. It's a mystery.

So, if anyone knows anything about this--let me know!

Right now this one is resting on our guest room bed, although I'm not going to allow it to be a bed quilt--at least, not one that gets a lot of use. But I also don't have the heart to squirrel it away in storage, either. So I'll keep it visible for awhile and then put it away when the room is going to be used again.

Some other completed Momufos

2010-03-22T16:30:00.000-04:00

Mom had five tablerunners in various stages of completion next to her sewing machine when she passed away--Dianne (my sister) and I had guessed that they were likely Christmas gifts for all of us kids, and after checking it out with Mom's friend Marge we were right. So I finished all five tablerunners. Oddly, I don't seem to have taken pictures of them, although I thought I had. This is the only one I have in my files. They were all Connecting Threads kits, I think. This one ended up going to Dianne. (I took my best guesses as to which one may have been destined for whom.) Miraculously, I managed to get them all done by Christmas!

This quilt was the first momufo I finished. I chose to work on it during the memorial service as my own tribute--plus it helped me deal, to have something to focus on. It's a pattern named "Rose Garden Anniversary Waltz." I was fortunate enough to find the pattern in Mom's stuff so I could pull all the information from it for the label. All I had to do was put the binding on. If I recall, Wendy now has this one.
This next picture is the quilt label I've used on all of the momufos. The photo is one of my favorites of Mom--she's probably somewhere around 19 or 20, wearing a poodle skirt and sitting on the grass. I did some photo-editing to it ("posterized") and it works beautifully as a label.

The last picture is of two quilt blocks Mom had salvaged from one of her very, very early quilts. Apparently, it had been Dad's favorite quilt so when it started to disintegrate, Mom cut it a couple of the blocks out and intended to put them back into some sort of smaller wallhanging version. She had actually just talked with me about these blocks a few weeks before she died. We were in her sewing room and sorting through some stuff when we ran across them--she explained their whole backstory to me, and said, "I really want to do something with these because they remind me so much of your Dad," then proceeded to explain that The Sunbonnet Sue quilter represented Mom, and Overall Bob and the cow represented Dad. (Not that I needed her to point that out to me!) Obviously, I wasn't about to toss these blocks. After several weeks of pondering, I realized I could fix two problems at once--I'd also kept all of Mom's collectors pins from years of going to quilt shows and paid memberships to quilt museums, etc. So I put the blocks in quilting hoops and attached all of Mom's pins to hers. They're hanging on the wall in my sewing room now.

A few more finishes

2010-03-21T17:06:00.001-04:00

Dang. I forgot to take a picture of this one completely finished before passing it off to my niece. This is Mom's New York Beauty (Karen Stone design)--I took this picture for Mom when she'd just picked this one up (with a couple of others) from Mt. Pleasant's quilting service. The date on this picture is 2006, so Mom must have pieced this sometime around 2004-2006. This isn't the kind of UFO she'd have left sitting around for too long before having it quilted. (NOTE--later comment rec'd from one of Mom's friends, Gail, that it was probably 2000-2001 since Gail had made one at about the same time.) She was never able to get the binding on it, though, because her fingers had gotten so bad with the neuropathy. So I just finished the binding on it this January/February. This was the last of the "Mom UFOs" I had to finish for distribution. Michael Anna had dibs on this one and she just picked it up yesterday. My first curved binding, btw. (Note the two curved corners--the batting is sticking up but I trimmed that off.)

From here on in, any other of Mom's UFOs that I complete I'm either keeping for myself or giving as gifts. They all need a whole heck of a lot of work done to get them finished--therefore, she who does the work gets to reap the benefits!

To whit:
This is the first "Mom UFO" (guess I'll start dubbing these "momufo"s, pro. "mom-oo-fo", LOL) that I'm keeping. I have a lot of memories about this one. Mom and I had gone to Material Rewards in Dansville one Saturday morning several years ago. A big flag wallhanging was in their window and both Mom and I really liked it. So we each bought the pattern and chose fabrics (mine in more country-colors than this), and then went back to Mom's to start working on them together. I'd never done bargello before so Mom walked me through the first steps. Unfortunately, after that, it took me a couple of years to get back to mine and by then, I'd completely forgotten what I was doing and messed up so many times that I finally bagged the whole thing and filed the pattern away. I talked to Mom shortly after that and she had just decided to pull hers back out, too, to finish. I found the finished top in Mom's quilt studio after she passed away, and took it to Mt. Pleasant to have it quilted in January. I just got it back a couple of weeks ago and have finished the binding and label. Since this particular Momufo carries with it memories of Mom and I quilting together, it's a definite keeper. Plus I have nothing patriotic done yet for summer holidays, so it'll come in handy!

Then, since I needed a break from UFOs (mom's or otherwise), I decided to take today and treat myself to a completely new project, but one I could get done in one day.

I've had this prequilted fabric yardage on my shelves for probably 7 or 8 years. Finally got tired of it taking up space and decided to whip up a quick tote bag. First tote I've ever made. It wasn't hard, but the directions were written as if they assumed a certain amount of knowledge on my part that I didn't have, so I don't think the corners are quite right. But given that it's destined to be a gym bag, it's definitely good enough.

It was fun to do, and definitely rewarding to have a completed something-or-other after only a few hours, so I plan to do more in the future!

Vacation's Over--Progress!

2010-03-14T19:34:00.000-04:00

So the last time I blogged, it was to say I wasn't doing much sewing at the moment. I've gotten over that! Now I haven't blogged because I've been getting a lot done!

These pictures are of a project I've now been working on for almost two years, in a way. The centers of each block are the product of a year-long class I took at my local quilt shop. It was Jodi Barrows' "Square in a Square" technique and the class was taught by Peg Oppenheimer. Each month we were to complete four blocks with the options we learned that month. I never finished the last two months--Mom passed away before those last two classes and I just couldn't get my head together to complete the squares. I did keep going to class, though--although I'm still not sure I'm jazzed about the technique I did thoroughly enjoy the class and Peg's teaching. It's nice to be with the same group for a whole year, especially when several folks were from my guild. It gave me a nice chance to get to know some folks a lot better.

In any case, we were supposed to have our top pieced by our November guild meeting and Peg came so she could see everyone's results. I only had my blocks pinned to my design wall at that point--not at all even close to finished. So I brought my design wall, pins n' all, to my meeting. I'm looking forward to finally being able to bring the finished project!

I've named this quilt "Creeping Scope." This is a project that just kept growing and growing.

Without those last two months of blocks, it worked out to be just about perfect for a twin-sized quilt. I futzed around for a bit with how to lay them out and found a nice way to be organized and random at the same time. IOW, it looks random, but when you study it you'll see the sequence. Anyway, Bingo. Problem solved.

Then I realized that none of the blocks were the same size. So I referred to my Sharyn Craig book on "Setting Solutions" and decided to put the blocks on point and add corner triangles, then trim them down to size. Bingo. Problem solved.

Except--I pulled two different potential background fabrics out of my stash to audition them and realized that neither of them was enough for the whole quilt. OK, so I use both of them and alternate. Bingo. Problem solved.

Then I decided, OK, two background fabrics, very busy blocks, lots going on. Needs a sashing to calm it all down. Auditioned the brown--too dark. Auditioned the blue dot. Too light. Well, OK--we're going scrappy here, what if I used both colors? Brown sashing with blue stars in the corners? Bingo. Problem solved.

Now I'm mildly debating a border problem but I think I'll just end up doing the outside border as I'd originally planned, mostly so I can call it "done" and move on. Each of the above paragraphs reads as if they went a lot faster than they did. The final class was last June. So, OK--so that's not ALL I was doing that whole time--I'm also still finishing Mom's UFOs as I go. But still. I've been living with this thing on my design wall for almost a year now. It's time to let something else come out to play!

On Quilting Vacation--or Vacation from Quilting

2010-01-12T10:09:00.000-05:00

I had two weeks off for the holidays. Spent the first part of that madly finishing up projects for Christmas. Had thought I'd spend the last week of it (after Christmas) joyfully working on my own projects as a personal little quilt retreat. The reality is, I think I burned myself out before Christmas! I have one quilt that just needs the binding hand-sewn to the back--perfect TV project--and I haven't touched it; I have other projects I'd love to make progress on and haven't even pulled them off the shelf yet.

I've poked away a little bit at my Sisters of the Square class quilt--that's the year-long, once-a-month class I took over the 2008-2009 academic year on Jodi Barrows' square-in-a-square technique. We were supposed to have it done for show n' tell at our November guild meeting because Peg Oppenheimer, the class teacher, was able to come to the meeting and since the vast majority of us in the class are also in our guild, it made sense. Well, it was a busy time for me, and my personal jury is still out on whether I like the technique or not anyway, so I didn't get mine done in November. I got 9 or 10 months worth of the blocks completed, blew off the last couple of months' worth (it's big enough without them anyway), added setting triangles because none of the blocks came out the same size, trimmed them so that they're NOW all the same size, then pinned them to my design wall and brought my design wall to the meeting insead.

Now I'm trying to get the sashing done, then borders, then I'll probably take it down to Mt. Pleasant for machine quilting. I think I actually like the way its turning out, which is a surprise because I really didn't like it all year long. But the setting triangles really help, and I think the sashing will be a nice touch. Got great border fabric for it too. So I may end up liking it in the end!

Anyway, I've only spent about two hours total sewing over the last couple of weeks--quite a change from my pre-Christmas frenzy. Apparently I needed a break. I travel a lot this month so I'm not expecting great strides in any thing until February. Hopefully by then I'll have gotten my quilting mojo back. I have a lot of sewing going on in my head--just need to get it into fabric!

No Top 10 Lists Here, But...

2010-01-03T11:21:00.002-05:00

I'm spending a last blessed day of vacation poking around into other people's business...in other words, catching up on reading some blogs. I noticed a few folks posting their versions of "top lists" of 2009 in recognition of the changing year. I hadn't really thought to do that but 2009 was an eventful year for me and my family on a number of levels. So it probably would do my soul good to do a little bit of a summary of what I've learned through surviving 2009.

1.) What I don't know can't hurt me. As my son started college this fall, and my husband and I agonized over his "transitional issues," as I began calling them, I had to keep reminding myself that if he were out of state on campus I wouldn't even know about most of what he was going through. I even reminded my son of that at one point, when he complained about my husband and I having an opinion about his actions. "If you stopped coming home every weekend, we wouldn't even know this was going on. Since we know, we get to speak up." It was said jokingly, of course, but on the flip side I would occasionally say to husband or myself, "If he weren't home, we wouldn't even know, so let's act as if we don't know." Not that my son gets up to serious shenanigans, just worrisome annoying ones that remind us constantly that 19-year-old brains aren't entirely developed yet. Sigh. In any case, there is such a thing as blissful ignorance. I'm learning to live into that reality.

2.) I'll pay in 30 years for what I do to my body now. Not that there's any guarantees in life, but watching my mom struggle with a series of health issues over the years made me more inspired (once I was dealing more effectively with the depression of losing her) to try to get myself healthy now so I have a better shot at being healthy later. Not all of Mom's health issues were self-induced, of course, but some things were aggravated, I suspect, by the sedentary lifestyle she lead and which I have largely inherited. Exercise first, quilting later. That's my carrot.

3.) I won't get better until I try. I had put off a lot of quilting projects because my skills weren't up to them. I had UFOs on my shelf because I was afraid of ruining them. But the motivation of finishing off Mom's UFOs to give to my sibs or include in the general distribution made me tackle projects quickly without agonizing over them like I used to. Need to learn a new technique to finish this project? Hop to it! Do the best I can and move on. Consequently, I learned several new techniques this year, improved significantly in other skills, and mostly, learned #4.

4.) No fear. At least when it comes to quilting. There's still a rather traumatic experience with a high ropes course last winter that reminds me that I truly am terrified of heights and, frankly, I don't need to overcome that fear to live the rest of my life quite happily. As I said in the debriefing afterwards, "I've embraced that fear and I'm good with it. I don't feel the need to prove otherwise, to myself or anyone else." However, from a quilting perspective, it's a different matter. The fear of ruining something with my lack of skill was piling projects up on my shelves with great speed. Now I'm ready to tackle them and finish them off. The couple already on my walls have an error or imperfection here and there, but no one else but me notices them--or, at least, they're kind enough not to mention it and I'm quite OK with that. I definitely have fears in my life--the number of sleepless nights I've had over my kids or other situations attest to that--but I've not really let them stop me from doing things. So I'm applying that same principal to my quilting. Here's for a fabrically-related-fear-free 2010.

I miss Mom terribly. I'm miss my son when he's actually away from home for an extended period. I miss my nephew who lived with us for three years and just moved out this summer--although comes back once a week for laundry and a decent meal. Our family has had a lot of changes in 2009, and I'm sure 2010 will bring a few more. But hopefully what I've come out of 2009 with will stand me in good stead for whatever happens in 2010.

And now, exercise completed for the day, I'm off to spend the rest of a cold, blustery, wintery day at my sewing machine, with a healthy stew bubbling away on the stove for later. Can't imagine a better way to spend the rest of my last day of vacation. (BTW, added a couple of wintry photos taken out my window today to the photo album below. Nothing exciting--I'm not willing to step outside in this just to photodocument it!)

So it's not a seagull, but...

2009-12-26T11:59:00.000-05:00

Now that the gift has been given, I can post a photo. I never did figure out what I was actually remembering with the seagull kit for my aunt-in-law, but regardless, I punted and made her a tablerunner that will work on her sunporch year-round. Simple, but turned out nicely. I'm finding great benefit in tablerunners--they're a good way to reduce my stash and fast projects. Good way to practice machine quilting, too. I just have to make myself a couple now that I can keep.

Today is the day-after-one-Christmas-two-days-before the next. I'm allowing myself a partial pajama day, although we're going out to a movie later this afternoon so I'll have to get myself presentable at some point. Meanwhile I'm playing a computer game my daughter gave me yesterday and we're all regrouping. Tomorrow we'll be back into prep-day for Second Christmas, but it shouldn't be hard. The house is already relatively clean so it's just doing a little touch-up and the grocery shopping.

Today I was planning on getting the binding on the last of Mom's full-size quilts I need to finish for our family distribution, but it requires learning a new technique. I'm not sure I'm up to that--still feeling mentally fuzzy. Back to the computer game for a little bit--maybe after lunch (leftovers from Christmas dinner!) my brain will turn back on.

Manufactured Memories...Where Did That Seagull Go?

2009-12-21T20:45:00.000-05:00

Here's a wierdism. The other night I was laying in bed thinking through Christmas gifts and who I still needed to do something for, when I had the perfect idea for one extended family member on my husband's side. "Oh--wait! Mom had that great kit of the seagull wallhanging that would be perfect for her! That wallhanging would be perfect for her cottage home by the lake!" I was so excited--I even thought through my schedule carefully to figure out when I'd have time to get it done before Christmas day. I knew Mom had probably gotten the kit to do for the cottage but I figured Mom would be just as happy seeing it used as a gift for someone who lived on the lake year-round. I had to force myself to stop thinking about it in order to drift off to sleep--the perfect gift for someone, and yet another kit off my shelf an into the world! Can't get better than that!

Two days later, I had a few minutes to spare so I decided to find the kit and look at what all was involved so I could figure out the schedule. I scurried into my office/sewing room and checked the shelf where I store the various kits I now have. Huh. Not there. I turned and pawed through my shelves holding fabric and project boxes--some random things are tucked in here and there. Nope, not there either. I proceeded to go through each shelf and stack a second time, a third time...then I trotted down to the basement to see if perchance there were still any bags of Mom's quilt stuff left own there--knowing there weren't because I'd just hauled the remainder out to a consignment store three weeks ago.

Nothing. No seagull anywhere. But the memory is still so vivid! How could I so perfectly remember holding a kit in my hands and thinking about how Mom had probably wanted to use it and deciding I'd keep it because it was pretty cute....and now it's nowhere to be found? And now, even though I'd felt a little stressed about whether I could get the project done in time for Christmas, I'm really disappointed that I apparently don't have the project to do at all!

The best I can guess--besides me somehow completely manufacturing an entire episode of my life--is that I inadvertantly mixed the kit up with the things I gave away to the consignment shop. So now I'm left with the question--do I order the kit again knowing that it would still be the perfect gift for her, even if she gets it sometime in May rather than Christmas? A much less exciting thought to keep me up at night.

Digging out from under the pile of projects

2009-12-19T00:57:00.000-05:00

I'm currently on leave from quilting, but probably only for another day or two. My incredibly productive late summer/fall came screeching to a halt when I got the last of the Christmas gifts done and only had one of Mom's quilts left to finish for the distribution that will happen the week after Christmas. At first, I needed a couple of days to reclaim my sewing space--putting piles of scrap fabric and batting away, cleaning off surfaces, de-linting the sewing machine...basically, letting the dust settle again for a bit. I never felt stressed about getting anything done--it was just continuous, almost machine-like work. I loved it. It felt great seeing the pile of UFOs on one shelf turn into the pile of completed projects on the other shelf. But when I quickly finished the last of the projects the night before my guild meeting when I'd get to display them all at show n' tell (a natural, built-in deadline!), I suddenly...just...stopped.

Then I cleaned and reorganized, which is for me a way of bringing closure and welcoming fresh beginnings, plus a way to settle my thoughts and make space for what might come.

A few days later, I went on a shop-hop with my BFF and BQF ("best quilty friend") Kate. It was a shop hop that Mom and I had made a tradition the last few years--we'd take a day in December to hit some of the Amish-owned fabric and gift stores downstate and then eat at a wonderful Amish-themed restaurant (not sure if it's actually run by Amish but boy, is that great comfort food!). Kate was a willing and eager accomplice in keeping the tradition alive. Earlier in the week I'd wondered whether I might get emotional, but strangely, I never really did. Kate had come with Mom and I once or twice, so it wasn't much of a mental transition for me to be going with Kate rather than Mom. And Kate and I loved having the day to really catch up with one another in a way that daily emails can't always cover. We talked about Mom and memories of previous trips, of course. And dang if I didn't find some of the fabrics I'd inherited from Mom on bolts in the shops--which was quite handy as I set about buying coordinating fabrics for them. As Kate said, "See, your Mom is still leaving you clues!" Yep, I came home with a stack of new fabric (although I feel the need to report that the bulk of it was on huge-a-mongous sale, just to make myself feel less guilty for posterity!).

So now, sewing room clean and organized, new fabric neatly folded, labeled, and stored, I'm feeling that breath of fresh air sweeping through my brain. I've taken a pause. I've regrouped. I've stopped focusing solely on finishing Mom's UFOs the way Mom may have wanted them finished, and I'm now reintegrating my own projects, thoughts and imagination.

That being said, Mom taught me a lot over these last few months. I'm really not exaggerating when I say that every project of Mom's that I finished either taught me a new technique, or taught me how to use a new tool or new aspect of my inherited machine. Sometimes I had no choice. Other times I was quite intentional about it: "What new thing can I try on this project?" My skills have increased significantly. More importantly, my confidence in myself as a quilter has grown hundredfold. Does it have something to do with constant practice? Most definitely. But there's a niggling little part of me that has to admit that part of it is also that I can't go running to Mom anymore to tell me how to fix things. I have to figure it out myself. And I did, consistently, figure it out myself. I tackled problems that would've been stoppers for me before. I ripped whole parts out and re-did them. I came up with creative solutions. I actually machine-quilted in a contrasting color thread so you can see the quilting--something I've never been brave enough to do before!

Now I'm finding myself pulling my own UFOs off the shelf with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. A project I'd set aside because I was afraid of ruining it with my poor machine quilting skills is now done and hanging on my wall. Other ones are sitting on deck, and I'm hankering to get at them. I'm still pondering the start of something new, but I'm apparently still in a place where I need to draw mental closure to a whole lot of unfinished business. So for now, I'm tying up loose ends.

The next six months will most likely not be nearly as productive as the last six months have been, but I'm good with that. Things are falling back into order. A rhythm is being reestablished. The hole of loss will always be there, but it's being blanketed by pretty fabric that Mom and I both loved. And that's OK.

Imagining the Past

2009-10-23T09:03:00.003-04:00

Two more UFOs down, still a stack to go. I was on the road a lot in October but managed to have projects at a point where I could bring some with me and work on them at night after meetings. It was stress relief and productive all at once. Gotta love hitting a double.

Yesterday I brought one of the antique quilts back to the appraiser, Beth Davis--I had only gotten a verbal appraisal on it the first time around but Beth had written a note, when she sent me the written appraisals on the other two, saying she was hoping I'd decide to get a written appraisal on the Lone Star as well. Then my BQF, ("Best Quilting Friend," who in this case is a regular ol' BFF dating from my elementary school days as well), Kate mentioned to me a few weeks later that Beth had commented to her at their guild meeting that Beth hoped I'd bring the Lone Star back. It was clear the Lone Star had made an impression on her. She doesn't get enough for these appraisals for her interest to really be in the money--it truly is a passion for quilts. So I called her up and made the appointment.

That is always such a fascinating experience. You can learn so much history from a quilt. Probably only quilters would get that jazzed about the detail in the conversation, but it is just so amazing what you can learn by looking at fabric and stitches! I still don't know who made this Lone Star. It's 1940s, and neither of my aunts recognize it at all. But Mom never bought an antique quilt that any of us know of, so it has to be family. My best guess is my great-grandmother since we know for a fact she made another one I have from a few years earlier--same level of skill, but very different style, so it's hard to tell for sure. I guess her sister also quilted, so it might be the sister's instead. I'll probably never know.

What Beth could tell, though, was that this was a quilter of great skill. Lone Stars are a difficult pattern, and this was one completely hand pieced and done beautifully. All the places where the multiple seams meet lay flat--the biggest pitfall with Lone Stars. It may have been from a kit, as those were popular at that time. But it's got a very unusual color combination, one that Beth had never seen before, and the quilting pattern was also very unusual and unknown to Beth. Doesn't mean it wasn't all with the kit (many kits come with a quilting pattern), but it could equally as well be original to the quilter.

But what turned out to be the most interesting part of the conversation revolved around stains on the quilt. It's not at all unusual for antique quilts to have stains on them, but this quilt has a very unique pattern of stains. The stains all appear on one particular fabric (orange), and only where that one fabric appears in the same row all the way around the star points. Plus, it's quite obvious that the stain was in the fabric before it was pieced into the star. It looks very much like something got splashed on it--it's a watery sort of stain. Beth and I imagined all sorts of scenarios about those stains. Did the quilter--I'll call her "Q"--spill something on a stack of diamonds waiting to be pieced? Was fabric so expensive at the time that she couldn't replace it despite the stains? Are the stains a clear indication this was from a kit (since kits only include exactly the amount of fabric you need and not a thread more)--and Q had to plow ahead even though she was now using damaged fabric? Did Q even see the stains at the time, or are they something that only came out with age (and would break Qs heart now if she could see them)?

I found myself running all sorts of film reels about those stains through my head on the drive home. For some reason, the stains make my relationship to Q feel even more real. Whether it's to imagine her knocking over a drink with her elbow and getting really ticked off at herself for doing it, or to imagine her seeing the stains later and feeling heartbroken that some things just go wrong no matter how you try to avoid it, I'm there.

No matter how you slice it, I have some talented quilters in my family tree. Now I really need to step up to the plate!

En Fuego

2009-09-29T06:59:00.001-04:00

I got the binding on another of Mom's UFOs last night. I've now got two prepared to take with me on an upcoming biz trip to finish off at night when meetings are over. I just have to make sure I've got the right color thread on hand. I'm beginning to understand why some quilters have hundreds of spools in their stash--for some reason, even though I feel like I've got plenty of thread, I never have the right color for the project I'm working on. The thread my LQS carries isn't what I need for this task so I'm either going to make a trip across town to the other LQS that carries thread I like or I'm ordering it online. Not sure which would be the better choice at the moment.

Unfortunately, I think I sabotaged myself with the 10 projects I chose to list for my UFO challenge at guild. I shouldn't have any problem finishing 9 of them, but the 10th has a lot more work to be done and I really don't see me getting it done by mid-December. Oops. Oh well--9 out of 10 isn't bad!

I'm home again tonight (a night without a meeting seems like a luxury these days!) so I'm hoping to get a lot of work done on another UFO of Mom's. Definitely "en fuego!'

Fiddling Around...

2009-09-27T18:28:00.003-04:00

I made a lot of progress on some more of Mom's UFOs today. But I'm not posting pictures yet--so I decided to post pictures of my recent trip to Puerto Rico. It was all business, but hey--business in Puerto Rico is still better than business at home!

I also updated my album of "completed projects." Realized I was a bit behind in that. Hopefully in the next couple of months I'll have a lot more pictures to upload into that one!

Two More Finishes!

2009-09-16T20:27:00.002-04:00

I had two more finishes in the last 10 days--both UFOs of Mom's. Interestingly, each one pushed me to try new techniques, new methods, even a new foot on Mom's machine. So yes, Mom is definitely still teaching me how to quilt.

I have another one ready for the finishing touches--just have to buy the right color thread to get the binding sewn down. And I've got some renewed inspiration for knocking off a couple more as soon as I can find the time. I'm in a real spate of travel right now--why is it that I always get motivated to sew when I have the least amount of time to do it?

I'll post pictures eventually...note the previous comments about lack of time...

Deciding what I'm willing to take on

2009-08-27T10:53:00.003-04:00

It's been a long, busy, hot summer--it's really just been this past week that I started feeling at all myself again. I still have very brief moments of amnesia (one symptom of grief that I'd forgotten experiencing after Dad's death until I fell into it again afer Mom's death) but they are fewer and further between--plus I've found some new coping mechanisms and am keeping much better track of work conversations and projects so that when I do find a blank spot in my memory I'm more easily able to backtrack and reclaim missing pieces of my life. I'm also feeling much more positive again--my usual fairly peaceful outlook on life has begun to return. I'm starting to feel back to normal.

Still sad when I read a quilt magazine or think about the next project I'd like to start, since I know I can't talk it over with Mom anymore. But as my husband reminded me, it won't be long before quilting stops feeling sad and starts feeling fun and healing again. And it already is--I just still have to work through the sad first.

Meanwhile, I found more UFOs of Mom's during the final clean-out of the house prepping for the estate sale a couple of weeks ago. 6 of them, if I recall the number correctly. These had been safely tucked away in a closet, not left sitting in her sewing room, which makes me think that either Mom particularly liked these projects or she had specific ideas in mind about who they'd go to or how she'd be finishing them. No clues left, of course, as to either concept. So now the tally of Mom's UFOs sitting in my sewing room is up to about 15.

15 UFOs.

On top of the 6 or 7 of my own UFOs that preexisted Mom's leaving us.

I came to a conclusion the other night as I was pondering my drive to finish Mom's projects on her behalf, and my desire to finish my own projects because I really like them, darn it, and want to have them done. And the fact that I'd really like to be able to start new projects and it was incredibly depressing and mind-numbing to think that I might spend the next year simply finishing UFOs, one after another, and not have the fun of starting new projects.

My conclusion was that I really didn't WANT to spend the entire next year working on UFOs. So my secondary conclusion was that I was willing to pay someone else to do it.

Today I'm going online to track down the contact information for long-arm quilters that will pick up and drop off at my local quilt store. There's a few of both my and Mom's projects that I don't particularly care how they're done--in fact, the faster and sturdier the better, as they'll be utility quilts here at home (mine) or at the cottage (Mom's). There are a few other projects that either I can pretty quickly and easily finish off on my own machine, or warrant a little more thought--that even if I do ultimately take them to a long-arm quilter, I'll want something a little nicer than your average pantograph design.

This may not seem like a life-changing decision, but in some respects it's a marker of my own progression through the stages of grief. When I'd been finding the first UFOs, I really wanted to finish them on my own so I could feel more of a partnership with Mom on them. Now I'm realizing that Mom didn't think she could even finish all of her own UFOs--she'd sent a lot of projects out to long-armers over the last few years. So I'm still partnering with Mom in that I'm doing what she most likely would've done anyway. And there's a few of her projects that I'll still be doing on my own and those are good enough for me.

And the biggest partnership is that I'll still be making more of Mom's quilts available to her children and grandchildren to enjoy. She'd be happy about that.

Surprised by Heritage

2009-06-29T17:05:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was pulling quilts out of the room where Mom had stored them in preparation for bringing them home to photograph them for our online photo album--we're posting pictures of heirlooms and potential heirlooms so all the sibs can go through them to indicate which they'd have interest in. I was short on time that day, so although I'd inventoried some items at the house, I had decided I'd grab the quilts and take them home with me to finish at a later date. I emptied out a bureau where I knew she kept many of her quilts, then noticed what looked like more quilts sitting on the upper shelf in a closet. They were mostly in plastic bags, so although I could tell they were probably quilts I couldn't see much more than that. I shooed Mom's cat off the top of them and started pulling them off the shelf and handing them to my daughter, nieces, and nephew (the day's designated helpers) to load into my car.

As I pulled one bag off the shelf, the bag opened a little bit and I realized that I had probably found an antique quilt I'd been keeping an eye out for. It's a crazy quilt that we weren't positive whether it had been given to Mom or was only on loan. We'd found some paperwork about it, but hadn't yet seen the quilt. I tugged open the bag a little further.... Yep. Definitely a crazy quilt. I handed it off to one of the kids, warning them to be particularly careful since it was likely an antique, then continued to pull the rest of the quilts off the shelf. I noticed a couple were unfinished pieced tops, so I thought maybe one of them was a set of blocks that had been given to Mom by the same person as the crazy quilt--the plan had been to finish the blocks into a quilt. All we knew about the blocks was that they were supposed to be from the 1850s or 1860s--nothing about pattern or colors or anything. I glanced at the unfinished tops and although they didn't look quite that old to me, I don't know much about fabric-dating so I shrugged, again warned whatever kid took them from me to be careful, and moved on.

When I got home, the quilts were sent up to my sewing room while the rest of the car load went to the basement. I was far too exhausted to even think about the quilts anymore that night--I just commented to Chris that I thought I'd probably finally found the mystery quilt and blocks, and then didn't pursue it any further.

The next day, though, I planned to do some sewing--which necessitated moving the quilts which had now been stacked all over my cutting table and surrounding floor. I decided to check them out before I moved them, and started pulling them out of the bags. The first to be opened was the crazy quilt. Yep, definitely an antique crazy quilt, so that mystery was solved. Found it! However, Mom hadn't included any further documentation in with the quilt so I still didn't know if it was actually hers or not.

Next, I flipped open one of the unfinished pieced tops. Huh. Very strange pattern. Could it have been 1850s? Possibly, but I wasn't quite feeling it. Still trying to be optimistic, though, I decided that maybe I wasn't understanding the documentation correctly and the blocks weren't supposed to be that old, or maybe I was just way off in my very little knowledge of fabric dating. I dubbed it the "Paramecium quilt" (The applique pattern is truly unique). The second unfinished pieced top was more attractive--a variation on a Dresden Plate. Still didn't look old enough to me, but hey, what do I know? Neither top had any documentation on them at all.

The next quilt I opened was finished--a beautiful Lone Star. Clearly hand quilted. I had no idea of the age of this one because it's all solid fabrics (prints are easier to date), but Mom had pinned an index card to the side of it that simply said "Antique Lone Star." OK, well, thanks, Mom. I could've figured that much out! No indication of the age or the maker.

Next, a huge--HUGE--and extremely heavy quilt that's appliqued tulip blocks. Very cute, and to me it looked definitely 1930s. I've seen enough 1930s reproduction prints to have a pretty good sense of that time period, and the fabrics weren't new enough to be repros. No documentation.

Finally, I pulled the last quilt up to my cutting table and flipped open an edge. Oooh. Pineapples. One of my favorite designs. Clearly hand-quilted. Wow--look at that quilting--wonderful! I felt myself start to get a little choked up as I opened the quilt further and began to take in the full effect of the pattern. It's gorgeous. Here I am, someone who has never been an afficianado of antique quilts per se, and I was very swiftly falling in love. I kept flipping it open and scootching it around on my cutting table, and suddenly came across another pinned label in Mom's handwriting. This time, the label was from the Big Tree Quilt Conference--Mom had obviously displayed this at one point. The label read: "Name: Thistle Quilt. Maker: Mrs. Bixby. Year: 1891. Owner: Shirley DeMott--Shirley's great-great-grandmother."

I burst into tears.

Stuffed in the back of a closet, hidden from view and nothing Mom had ever mentioned to me that I could recall, was this beautiful piece of my family history. An antique quilt from the 1890s? You've got to be kidding me. Mom--why hadn't you told me?

I grabbed the antique quilts and layed them all out on my bed so I could see them better, then ran to find every family member in my house at the moment and dragged them upstairs to see what I had found. I still choked up every time I looked at the pineapple/thistle quilt. We looked for signatures or any indication whatsoever of who had made the unlabeled quilts, to no avail. Later that night, I called my Mom's best friend Margie and asked her if she knew anything about these quilts. She remembered that my Aunt Jean had given Mom two of them--they were family quilts. Since Mom never bought an antique quilt to the best of my knowledge, my only assumption can be that they're all family quilts (except the crazy quilt).

I called Aunt Jean (Mom's older sister) next. She had owned the tulip quilt and the pineapple/thistle quilt--she'd inherited it when their grandmother, Grandma LaBelle, had passed away. She'd used the tulip quilt on her own bed and the pineapple/thistle quilt had been on my cousin's bed. She'd given them to Mom when she moved to Florida. She said that Grandma LaBelle had made the tulip quilt, but had no more information on the pineapple/thistle quilt than what Mom had put on the label. She knew nothing about the other quilt or pieced tops. I also called my Aunt Ginny (Mom's younger sister). Aunt Ginny didn't know any more than what I'd already been told, although she mentioned to me in a later conversation that Aunt Flo and Aunt Lea (Grandma LaBelle's sisters) had also been quilters, although Aunt Lea less so, apparently.

I decided at that point to take all of the quilts to a quilt appraiser--not so much for monetary value, although we probably needed to know that for the estate--but I really wanted to know what time period they came from to see if I could figure out what relative may have made them.

The results of the appraisal? That'll be the next blog entry lest this turn into a novella!

Two Laptops...Twice the Fun...?

2009-06-17T22:48:00.003-04:00

Non-quilting post, sorry. But here I am in a hotel in Valley Forge, having spent the day in staff meetings. My old laptop was getting...well, old...so the board took up a collection to pay for a new laptop for me. I picked up said new laptop at the computer center today, and am now sitting here in my hotel with two laptops open and running in front of me trying to get something...anything!...to work. The new one is having problems with the wireless connection but chunks happily along hardwired through ethernet; I also couldn't get the new design software we now own to load properly.

So I decided to try to load the new software on my old computer for the time being, and was watching that install while catching up on email on my new laptop. Said old laptop, after a couple of hours, told me that it had installed "with errors," which now turns out to mean that only some components of the new software actually work.

Now I've got two partially working laptops. Bully for me.

I know this will all work out and I'll be able to fall in love with the new laptop. It's just growing pains. Ick.

A bright spot of the day was running into a former colleague while in the building--she'd met Mom all of once years ago but immediately gave me a huge hug and told me that she'd cried when she read the prayer request that had gone out about Mom's death, then regaled me with her memories of the time she had met Mom. Which, honestly, was pretty amusing after the fact, although not so much at the time--Mom had gotten terribly lost in the massive amount of construction at the time, trying to get back to the building after visiting a long-lost relative in a nursing home about an hour away, and my colleague had to "talk her in" since I only vaguely knew my way around at that point. Thanks to the colleague, Mom made it safely to the lobby and we skipped our original evening plans so I could take her out to Cheesecake Factory at the mall and relax her with a great meal and a glass of wine. Yes, and cheesecake. I pondered later how I was glad that Mom and I had decided to make the road trip down here together for meetings once so we could hit the Amish quilt stores in Lancaster county on the way home; I wish we could've done it more often but life happened.

So tonight I went to Cheesecake Factory myself. A toast to you, Mom.

Finished my first Mom UFO!

2009-06-03T21:42:00.001-04:00

So today was a banner day in two respects--got my sewing room back in shape, plus finally cleared enough space out to slap the label on Mom's quilt and call it done!

Mom's quilt is from a kit she bought through Keepsake Quilting. If you can't read the picture of the label I made, it's "Rose Garden Anniversary Waltz," Rose Garden fabric collection from Maywood Studio, designed by Marti Michell, (c) 2005. Mom finished it sometime in 2008, had it quilted at Mt. Pleasant in York, and I finished putting the binding on last month.

I chose a jewel-toned blue binding to pick up no the narrow blue piping that frames the center (inside of the inner border). I couldn't find the same blue fabric, unfortunately, but got one that's close enough as long as you don't peer at it too closely.

The photo I used on the label is one of Mom when she was probably in her early 20s or so--I did a little photoediting to jazz it up some but it was a wonderful photo to begin with. Great poodle skirt!

In terms of the usual theme of my blog, "life lessons through quilting," I'm not sure I actually learned any particular lessons through putting this binding on. But it was a good healing process for me, not that I'm entirely healed yet but doing slightly better than before. I had taken this quilt from the homestead while Mom was still in the hospital, hoping she'd have the gratification of seeing it finished. That was not to be, but I got the binding sewn on before the memorial service so I could work on it through the service--which was about the best way I could think of to honor Mom. And then it took me a few nights in front of the TV, curled up under it's weight and warmth while handstitching the back down.

I like the label best I think. Love seeing Mom young and stylin'.

It's finally done!

2009-06-03T20:24:00.001-04:00

After weeks of pressing and folding, cataloguing and sorting, and eventually building a new shelving system and having my other shelves reinforced and bolted to the wall (!), my sewing room is finally usable again! Now let's just see if I can keep it looking this way.

I used Rubbermaid's "Homefree" series of adjustable wall-mounted shelves for the fabric, if anyone's curious. Perfect for what I needed, and easy enough to repurpose things from shoe and tie storage to yardage and strip storage! Note that my fabric is sorted by the ROYGBIV system (kinda sorta). We'll see how that works for me. Strangely, even though I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed by the amount of fabric I now have in my stash, I look at it and realize I'm still only at a fraction of what Mom had. Someone told me once, "That's because she had 30 years to accumulate." I'm not sure that explains it. I've had 10 and I only had a significant jump in size last month! I suspect it has more to do with expanding to fill your available space--as in, nature abhors a vacuum. Mom had a basement, so she filled a basement. I have these shelves. That's it. Something comes in, something has to go out.

OK, so to point out a couple of nifty little features of the Shelving System Remix. Note in the second picture the hanging rods at the bottom--nice place to drape my UFOs to keep them slightly more wrinkle free! (And to hide the bins stacked behind them--nice side effect.)

Note the two canvas pull-out drawers normally meant for scanty unmentionables. (Well, my unmentionables aren't particularly scanty, but that's a different kind of blog altogether.) The top drawer holds my entire fat quarter collection--what used to be tightly crammed in two fairly large plastic bins. Woohoo! The second drawer holds my jelly roll and accumulated 2 1/2" scrap strip collection. Another woohoo! Some of those were in a plastic bin, some were just stacked wherever I could find room on the old shelves. Much more enjoyable to look at now. Most of those jelly rolls are from Mom--she must have hit a sale because I found an entire shipping box full of them in her sewing room. I'm sorry she didn't get to enjoy having them. They're like candy.

And this final picture was my last Remix brainstorm--the pull-out tie and belt rack makes a great place to sort strips when I'm working on a project! Well, OK, we'll see how often I use it. But it's a fun thought.

So--my cutting table is finally cleaned off, my sewing table will be shortly (just a random collection of scraps I have to deal with), and I have plenty of elbow room. I'm good to go!

Just a Spoonful of Sugar...or Something

2009-05-25T21:37:00.005-04:00

I could really use a spoonful of sugar right now...or maybe something a little stronger. Or Mary Poppins just waltzing in and clicking her fingers. Yiminies.

My sewing room has descended into complete chaos at this point. I had been making such good progress on the fabric; my shelves were looking more orderly, I could move from one end of the room to the other with only having to sidestep a couple of stacks of books and one 8' table holding the fabric-in-waiting.

But I realized my wall-mounted set of shelves that holds the quilt library would soon be going the way of its matching set of shelves that holds my work library--early last summer, that set of shelves threw itself out of its anchors and onto the floor with a very dramatic crash, splintering of wood, and not a few choice words flying out of my mouth once my heart had returned to it's correct anatomical position. Fortunately, no animals or humans were near enough to get hurt, although I did have to jump in and very carefully pull some books off precarious positions lest it rip more of the wall out as the rest of the shelves came down. With only a few minor bruises and cuts, I saved the rest of the shelves and restacked everything, and then got on the phone to a handy-person I'd worked with on Mom's house. "HELP!," I sent up the flare. He and his son came about a week later and described the best possible fantasy for me at that point--sturdy shelves that would hold all the books I need and stay exactly where they were meant to stay. Woohoo! And fix it he did.

So now that I knew I was probably doubling the weight of my quilt library, I figured that set of shelves could probably use some reinforcing as well--especially since (like the first shelves) they had NEVER looked entirely level to me but I'd figured it was some optical illusion. Nope--neither set was level. And they'd been professionally installed, too. Go figure. Steve measured this current shelf for me and realized that the center had sunk down and pulled the bottom a good 1/4" out of whack. So yes, those shelves were probably counting the days until they could also leap to their death. But he'll work his magic on them as well.

That being said, DH and I joke that these are now probably the most expensive sets of shelves we have ever owned. And no one but family sees them! But hoo boy--our house could get swept away in a flood and those shelves would still be exactly where they were supposed to be.

Steve is coming in probably starting tomorrow so I had to remove everything from on and around the shelves and find places to stack it. And this is the same week that I plan on changing out my current stash shelving to a different set of wall-mounted shelves (I have high hopes for the Rubbermaid "homefree" series!). So my sewing room will continue to get completely trashed before it gets better.

Just so you can be on the journey with me, here's some pics of where we're at at the time of this writing

It starts out so neat and organized at the top of those shelves, and then turns ugly as you get towards the floor.

The table pulled in for temporary staging as I move everything around. Can't wait to get that puppy back down to the basement were it belongs again.

The offending shelves in question. They look so innocent in this picture--but notice how far away from the door trip they are on the top, and then look at the same spot on the bottom. Definitely not a great install! Keep your fingers crossed that this set of shelves works as well as the last one does, and that my own shelving experience later this week goes smoothly and is the shelving system of my dreams!

Progress!

2009-05-18T11:05:00.002-04:00

Teals and blues are now done!

And I've decided I need to completely reconfigure the shelving to hold it. I'll be shopping for one of those wall-mounted do-it-your-self shelving systems this week. I guess it's worth the money for the shelving to hold all the free fabric.

I had a good chuckle when one of my non-sewing sisters looked around Mom's quilt studio at one point, before we'd started taking anything, and said, "Wow. I guess Mom had a few hundred dollars worth of fabric, eh?" You should've seen how wide her eyes got when I corrected her, "Try a few thousand." You know it's more than a hobby when you look at the price tag. :-)

The Maiden Voyage

2009-05-15T21:16:00.003-04:00

Tonight I finally sat down at the sewing machine that I've inherited--Mom's Janome MemoryCraft 6600 Professional. The "professional" simply means, in this case, "more machine than Sandy can handle." It's a little intimidating. My other machine--my former only machine--was also a Janome; I am, after all, Shirley's daughter and she was a Janome girl so I became a Janome girl. But mine was slightly-better-than-purely-functional. It's computerized, it's got a few fancy stitches and nifty do-jobbers and thingies, but it's a pretty straightforward machine. I really like my usual machine; I was quite ready to use it for several more years. At least until we finish paying college tuition, anyway.

But now I've got one of Mom's machines and my former machine has become my portable-take-to-class machine, tucked away in a corner with its dust cover. I guess it's earned a bit of a vacation.

I've had the 6600 installed in my sewing cabinet for about a week now, the new plastic insert in place, the knee lift inserted...but it took me awhile to get up the courage to sit down and start playing. Part of it is emotional, of course. But part of it is also hearing my Mom's voice every time any of us got near her machine when we were kids..."Be careful! That's not a toy!" For years, any time an offspring used her sewing machine, we'd manage to jam it. Mom got understandably a bit gun-shy about us coming within breathing distance of them. Even after I had been quilting for years, I maintained a bit of a fear-factor when it came to Mom's machines. I've known she had some pretty cool new machines for some time, but I never asked her if I could try them out. What if I jammed it???

I read the manual cover-to-cover yesterday over breakfast. I reviewed it again this evening sitting at my desk. Finally, carefully, I approached my sewing cabinet, sat in my chair, opened the manual at my side, and addressed the machine. I began to familiarize myself with all the buttons, toggles, do-jobbers and thingies. Finally, I was off and running--playing with embroidery stitches, writing silly messages with the monogramming features, setting it at high speed and letting it rip just to see what happened. Yes, I could still hear Mom's quick intakes of breath as she nervously watched me messing with buttons and craning my neck to see behind the needle as the patterns developed ("Honey, be careful!"), but I could also see her smile as I figured out all the nifty new tricks this puppy does. "Isn't it great? I was really excited to get that feature when I bought it." And that very satisfying whisk and thunk of the automatic thread-cutter? Our hearts were both pounding with excitement over that one.

As I shut down the 6600 a few minutes later, figuring that I hadn't jammed anything yet and probably ought to quit while I was ahead, I felt a bit sad. This is Mom's machine, and Mom should be using it. But I also felt inspired--challenged--motivated--to work on my technique to be worthy of having it.

Global Warming...Contributing to Climate Change

2009-05-14T23:03:00.004-04:00

I'm thinking I'm pretty close to creating a micro-environment in my sewing room with all the steam my iron is kicking out these days. I'm still pressing fabric from Mom's stash, working my way through by color family. Neutrals? Check. Reds? Check. Between all my task lights, the computers that live in the same room, and the steam iron, my sewing room/home office is a good ten degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and my hair takes on a rather unattractive frizzy curl when I walk in the door from the hallway.

Every time someone opens the door to come in, I half expect a tornado to develop in the region of my ceiling light.

Ah, but the visual comparison of sloppy, casually folded stacks of fabric laying in waitful repose next to the regimented, ready-for-action measured fabric soldiers awaiting my next command makes it worth it. I would almost think that there was a light compulsive gene that ran in my family but after going through Mom's stash, I know I'm much more anal about these things than she was. Even my collection of 2 1/2" strips from scraps is neatly folded in a bin. Mom's? Well, not so much. Although we all have our own personal compulsions. Mine is for as scrupulously organized a work space as possible. Mom's was quite clearly for gadgets. I'm not sure those two compulsions play well together.

Mom's quilty-friends came out to the homestead yesterday, at my invitation, to go through Mom's quilty stuff and take whatever they wanted. At first they were hesitant; I don't know if they were worried I'd burst into tears or that I'd leap off my stool and say, "Hey, I didn't see that one before! Mine mine mine!" I reassured them that, as for #1, I found it quite comforting to know that Mom would be so happy that people she'd loved and quilted with for so many years would be using her things; as for #2, although I did ultimately take one additional piece of fabric that everyone else had passed over but still tugged at my aesthetic center, I was very much aware of the stacks and piles awaiting me back home that I had yet to find space for. I already have everything I needed and wanted, and I was glad to be able to share the bounty. As I had suspected, sitting and listening to Mom's long-time compatriots and watching their joy in being able to take physical remembrances of their friendship with Mom was at times healing, at times a hoot. I hope I can someday look back at 30-year-quilty-friendships and know that, in that way as well, I had turned into my mother.

Thankfully, they made a nice dent in what was left after my sister and I both went through it. Now all that remains to be done is to clean out my Mom's summer sewing studio up at our family cottage near the Thousand Islands and combine it with what's at home, and then set up the quilter's garage sale. "All that remains...." A smallish phrase for a rather daunting task.

On the docket for tomorrow night? I do believe I'm feeling a teal mood coming on. Watch the Weather Channel for news about unusual weather patterns forming in Western NY.

Tribute to Mom

2009-05-13T14:55:00.002-04:00

I wrote the below for Mom's memorial service (held Monday, May 11). I asked my long-time friend and quilting buddy Kate to read it on my behalf, since I didn't think I'd make it through it. Sure enough, she had just barely finished reading the title when I broke down, so I'm forever grateful for her being willing to "be me" for those few minutes that day!

What I Learned about Life, I Learned from My Mom—
Especially When She Taught Me How to Quilt

Mom taught me that while having perfectly matching points is a nice thing, it’s better to know when good enough is good enough.

Mom taught me that sometimes a little tough love is needed—that something that won’t cooperate often just needs a bunch of pins, a really hot steam iron, and a stack of heavy books. Mom also taught me that, like in quilting where colored markers can be my best friend—it is, indeed, often possible to cover up mistakes so no one is ever the wiser.

Mom taught me to see the possibilities in everyone and everything—that even the most difficult fabric can be a thing of beauty when it’s given the right opportunity.

Mom taught me that, while following the pattern and following the rules can be helpful when it suits my purpose, I should feel free to put my own unique spin on it, tweak the pattern to my own ends, throw out the rules if necessary, and sometimes just make it up as I go along.

Mom taught me that not knowing how something would turn out should never stop me from starting it anyway.

Mom taught me that I can always learn something from other quilters—even if it’s just a little thing. So she taught me to enjoy meeting new people and to be insatiably curious—to always keep my ears, eyes, and mind open.

On the other hand, Mom taught me that the most beautiful quilts are the well-used ones; that while meeting new people is good, making them a part of my life is better; that life-long friendships have a depth and breadth that can’t be matched.

Mom taught me that eclectic is good—fabric, techniques, and styles can come from all over the world and should all be part of my repertoire.

Mom taught me about the importance of hospitality—from making teachers and participants at quilt conferences feel welcome and appreciated, to making anyone who came by the house, expected or unexpected, feel immediately at home. Plus, Mom taught me that one must always have a boatload of Christmas and Easter decorations.

Mom taught me to see the whole as the sum of the parts—that random bits and pieces can be pulled together into a cohesive unit and achieve a single goal. Scrap quilts and committees share a whole lot in common.

Mom taught me—much to my husband’s chagrin—that you can never have too much fabric or too many books. The girl with the most gadgets wins!

Finally, Mom taught me that while striving for show-worthy perfection is admirable, what’s more important is surrounding the people I care for with beauty, warmth, comfort when they’re sick, and love they can wrap themselves up in.

And Miles to Go Before I Sleep...

2009-05-09T18:55:00.001-04:00

So here I am, in the middle of the rather daunting process of adding what I took from Mom's stash to my own. I decided to wash all of it, which then means my way-too-persnickety eye for detail kicks in (to put it crudely, I can get anal about certain things) and I end up wanting to iron most of it, so that it will look "just right" when it's finally on the shelf. So it's taking me for-freakin'-ever.

The first two photos at right are most of the fabric waiting to be pressed and folded, sitting on my cutting table and on the side of my sewing table. And this isn't all of it. When I took these pictures a couple of days ago, I'd already worked my way through part of one stack, and some of it was still in the laundry.Picture #3 is sort of a "before and after" shot. I needed to get at my cutting table and sewing machine so I emptied off my storage shelves and moved the fabric-in-waiting, so now you can get a feel for the neat, tidy, organized stacks of fabric it will eventually turn into. Note, however, the distinct lack of enough shelf space for my new stash. Picture #4 is folded and labeled (by size), but in the midst of being sorted and reshelved. I'm going to have to do some reconfiguring of my sewing space to fit it all in.

Once-upon-a-time, my stash was small enough that I kept it sorted by size--1/2 yard stack, 1 yard stack, etc. With what I took from Mom's stash, I have at least doubled my stash, if not tripled it. I was going to be careful about what I took, but a good friend and fellow quilter told me I'd be sorry, and just to go for it. So I took her at her word. I may also be taking her name in vain as I try to figure out how I'm going to store all of this! In any case, it now seems to make more sense to organize my fabric by color now. Using this folding method, it's pretty easy to tell at a glance a ballpark of how much of each fabric I have anyway, just by the size of the folded piece. Plus I label it anyway.

In picture #3, you can see that one area of Mom's stash that I decided to take full advantage of was her neutrals/background fabric. Just a few weeks ago, I'd been thinking that my small, well controlled stash was actually somewhat difficult to work with--trying to make a quilt only from my stash was virtually impossible, because I didn't have the right mix of fabrics. I found that going through Mom's stash was a real learning process for me--I paid close attention to the types of fabrics she had, what she tended to buy larger quantities of versus what were relatively small cuts, and so forth. I'm also keeping in mind how she had it organized as I reorganize mine. I guess, since I can't ask her for advice anymore, I have to learn by observing. Not quite as good, and certainly not as satisfying, but she's still passing on her wisdom to me, so I'll take it.By the way, even though about 75% of the fabric in these pictures is from Mom, my sister also took at least the same amount of fabric as I did, and there's still a TON left. Mom's quilty-friends are coming by this week to go through and take "remembrance pieces" for themselves (yes, you do grow to associate certain types of fabric with people), and then my afore-mentioned friend will be helping me put the rest in a quilter's garage sale.

Mom always laughed at me when I told her I was determined to keep my stash small. Now she's getting the last laugh.

I'm pausing in my stash-action in order to get a binding put on one of Mom's quilts--the first of her UFOs I'm tackling. I imagine that might be my next post.

Grieving and Healing at Once

2009-05-07T18:06:00.003-04:00

My mother passed away on April 27. Three weeks ago at this point, but feels like a lifetime. So much feels changed--even that which didn't have anything to do with Mom feels different now. I won't go into details. My sister covered it pretty well in her blog, "Cumulus," http://cumulus.blogspot.com/2009/04/all-shall-be-well.html (the obituary is given in her post after that). Where my sister left off chronologically in the "All Shall Be Well" post began another week of up-and-downs, Mom looking like she might fight back to a certain extent, but then slipping away. We spent our final weekend with her in the hospice room at the hospital, reading to her, listening to her favorite 40s music, holding her hand for hours at a time. Although a tremendously difficult time, I also feel so grateful that we did have the opportunity to say goodbye, to hear the stories of her friends and relatives as they called us during those days, to share memories, laughter, and tears with my sibs. I still haven't wrapped my head around her absence yet--and I know that will take some time. It took me almost a year to feel mostly back to rights after my father passed away, with "moments" extending for years after that, and his passing, by the time it came, was much more expected. Mom's leaving us is sudden, wrenching, like a conversation we were in the middle of, interrupted, and never finished.

The loose ends are innumerable, and yet I have no regrets. There were unfinished things, certainly--projects we were working on together, conferences we had registered for together, things we had planned to do which now won't get done. Or, at least, won't get done by the two of us together. But that's life--that's being human. There is never a time in our lives when every single conversation we've ever wanted to have will be had. There is never a time when we will have done every single thing we want to have done. After all, doesn't every completed plan bring it's own host of new hopes, new dreams? Doesn't every finished conversation lead to new discussions, new questions to ponder, new avenues to explore?

I've discovered, in this period of losing my mother, that I'm not a big fan of the "live like every day is your last" philosophy. It feels too pressured, too intense, too unnatural. Mom would've hated it if I'd approached every conversation with her like I might never see her again. I'm not entirely sure Mom loved having our "goodbye" conversations in the hospital. (In fact, I'm fairly certain she was pretty ticked off by the whole situation. But that's Mom--she hated limitations.) But for all that, when Mom's ability to communicate was so limited in those last days, she was always able to get out "I love you," and she did that every time she saw us. And that's what matters--that she knew I loved her, and that I knew she loved me. And therefore, no regrets. Things I'm sorry we weren't be able to do together? Things I still wish I could talk to her about? Certainly. But no unfinished business, nothing between us that should've been said and wasn't, nothing that I wished I'd done, or she'd done, differently.

Mom taught me to quilt. I moved from picking quilts out of books and catalogues and asking her if she "could make that one for me," to asking her advice on what would be a good first project. I did it initially to give her something to take her mind of Dad's illness at the time, but it stuck. I was hooked. And as time wore on, I loved having something that she and I could share like that. During the years, I've frequently called her with questions like, "Mom, how do you square a block," or "Mom, I ran out of fabric two pieces too soon--what do I do?" or, "Mom, is there a way to make a whonky block straight?" Mom taught me the right way to do things, and then she also taught me how to fix it when you did it the wrong way. Certainly seam rippers can be involved, but other times a black Sharpie or a good steam iron, a bunch of pins, and a really heavy book will do the trick. Thanks, Mom, for teaching me to know when "good enough is good enough."

Which brings us back to my renewed commitment to this blog, to Tessellations. One of the first things I did, after Mom had her initial double-stroke, was to stop by her house and pick up a number of her UFOs, knowing that no matter what happened at that point, she'd be unlikely to ever be back to quilting at that level of detail again. At that point, I was hoping that she'd be able to see them finished. Now I still plan to finish them, and have since taken additional ones to finish, in honor of Mom. Partly because I know it annoys Mom to no end that she didn't get them finished before she passed on, and partly for my own healing process. I also know that several were intended as gifts to my sibs and I like knowing that I am able to help Mom give those last gifts. Knowing that Mom was pleased that she had indoctrinated one of her daughters into her beloved quilting world, knowing that Mom enjoyed swapping ideas with me, fabric, patterns, and going on quilt-related trips together, knowing how much enjoyment we both got out of playing show n' tell with each other, I feel like the best way I can honor Mom is to finish some of her UFOs, and begin taking myself as a quilter more seriously. I feel more inspired to build my skills now, to be worthy of the large amount of fabric I inherited from her stash and her beloved quilter's sewing machine that she'd only been able to use for a short while. At some level, at least for the near future, I almost have the sense that I'm quilting for two--I'm doing it for me and for Mom. And I can only hope that I do her UFOs justice.

I'm finding myself playing "WWMD?" as I begin the process of working on her UFOs. What Would Mom Do? I imagine I'll be thinking that a lot for the rest of my life--in quilting, in parenting, in a lot of my decision-making. WWMD?

So Tessellations will become my journal of finishing Mom's UFOs, of trying to answer WWMD at the same time as I allow myself freedom to add my own thoughts to Mom's projects. As I think about it now, Mom was fascinated by tessellations in quilting for a time--I'm sure I'll find some tessellated patterns among her completed quilts. So that's entirely suitable. I also look at the title of the blog as newly redefined, at least for a time, as "Tessellations: Where Mom and Me Intersect," as my quilting and hers combine.

I won't always have profound things to say. I'll post when I finally have all the additional fabric added neatly to my stash (still a work in progress), or I'll post a frustrated rant about not finding a fabric that works. I'll also atill do my own projects here and there. But as I go through the journey of finishing Mom's projects, I'm sure I'll be learning about quilting, about Mom, and about life in general. Probably mostly about Mom. And I'm looking forward to that.

Waiting for the sun again...

2009-02-10T18:02:00.002-05:00

My quilting motivation has quietly slipped out the back door, taking along with it my motivation for much else. I could really use a good dose of sunshine. In lieu of actually quilting, I'll be going to my guild meeting tonight to look at other people's accomplishments, living vicariously. What's really pathetic is that I'm co-facilitator of our guild's UFO challenge and I haven't finished a single UFO myself yet. Yiminies. I even had today off and couldn't get myself up those stairs to touch my machine--although probably a good thing since I'm recuperating from a pretty intense weekend at business meetings. I would've ended up with a finger under the needle or slicing through a block or something. Sometimes knowing our limitations is important.

This winter has been particularly difficult in terms of feeling the affects of the season. It feels like it's been a long time since I've seen the sun and could walk outside without crunching through several feet of snow with a thick crust of ice on top. In reality, it's only been since the beginning of January. We didn't have a lot of snow before the holidays but it's been pretty consistent afterwards. I guess it's just been too consistent for too long. I'm struggling!

Time to go get myself pulled together for the guild meeting. Here's hoping I get a little quilty-sunshine in my life by laughing with a great group of women!

Changing Focus

2009-01-05T12:34:00.002-05:00

It's the start of a new year and I'm tweaking several areas of my life--one of which is now this blog. I didn't post very often because I felt like I had to have profound thoughts in order to do so; but the reality is I don't have profound thoughts very often (!) and I originally started the blog just to give me a reason to write for something other than work. I enjoy writing, so therefore I'm just going to write, darn it!

So this blog will become much more daily thoughts, little updates on what I'm doing both in terms of quilting and in terms of "the rest of my life" (which makes it seem like quilting is a much larger part of my life than it often has the chance to be!).

I'm taking a lunch break now from my first day back at work after a blessed two weeks of vacation! Re-entry is always a little tricky, what with wading through dozens of emails and trying to remember where I was on various projects. But the vacation was wonderful. I spent the first week at Disney with the family, then (of course) celebrating Christmas over the course of a few days with various family gatherings. The second week was much more relaxed and I got significant work done on a new quilt project.

The new quilt project is a wallhanging I designed myself on EQ6. Nothing terribly complicated--it's a bear paw block on point as a center medallion, with a border of flying geese followed by a border of log cabin blocks, then a narrow inner and a wider outer border. Pretty standard stuff. What makes it special is three things:
1.) I designed it specifically for a set of fabric coordinates I'd been drooling over and then rec'd as a Christmas gift last year from my quilter-Mom. I couldn't find a pattern I liked that I felt really used the coordinates well, so ended up using EQ. First time I've ever done that.
2.) It uses my three fave blocks: bear paw, flying geese, and log cabin. First time I've made a bear paw block.
3.) This is the first project I've made from a design I've done on EQ. More or less, the first time I've designed my own quilt.

I have one other wallhanging I made without using a pattern but it was very early on in my venture in quilting and is only snowball blocks, so I don't even really say that I "designed" it, since design wasn't much of a factor. I also have lots of other designs I've done on EQ that have never seen the light of day--I use the program mostly like a coloring book, but now that I'm seeing how it works to make a design on my computer screen come to life, it'll be easier next time, I'm sure.

I'm loving working on this wallhanging, which I've dubbed The Katerina Project since the fabric line, or maybe just one of the fabrics in it, was named "Katerina". I've only got the center medallion and the first border done so far. Hoping to get the log cabin pieces cut tonight, maybe have the border done sometime next week since I'm out a lot this week and am traveling this weekend.

So that's it--just a quick update on my life. No profound thoughts. Hard to be profound when my stomach is growling; I'd better go eat lunch before I start gnawing on my mouse!

Pinwheel update--I'm an idiot, but not as much as I thought I was

2008-10-29T21:10:00.002-04:00

So it turned out to have nothing to do with math trauma. I really did mess up in the cutting--apparently I used the wrong line on the specialty ruler. Clearly points to how scattered I was during the month of October with a bunch of travel and nights out, doing the block "catch-as-catch-can" in the rare occasions I was home.

Why does it make me somehow feel better to know I made a stupid mistake rather than experiencing a more deep-seeded geometry issue? Yep, still ended up tossing out the original pieces since there really would've been no salvaging them (not being a miniature scrap saver, anyway). Started again with two new fabrics since I had none left of the originals. And these pinwheels, although still tricky to get points together and keep everything aligned, are going beautifully.

But at least I know I wasn't being a blockhead. I was just being an idiot. I can live with that.

Well...Doh. Math Trauma Strikes Again.

2008-10-29T10:44:00.003-04:00

I was just on another quilting retreat last weekend--this time with members of my guild. A few of us are taking the same class together at our LQS--a year-long, once-a-month class on Jodi Barrows' square-in-a-square technique. We were swapping stories about our successes and not-so-successes finishing each month's homework. I told them that I'd been doing great until I ran aground on pinwheels last month--the points in the center of the block were nowhere close to meeting. Assuming I'd made some major cutting error or something, I was afraid I was going to have to toss out the pinwheels and start again.

One woman said, "Well, maybe you should try turning the pieces around--sew different edges together instead."

My math-traumatized brain had never thought about the geometry of the block, and that perhaps just a simple turn of each piece would solve my problem. So last night I sat and ripped a bunch of seams out, and laid out the pieces on my cutting table with different edges coming together. Sure as tootin', it's looking a whole lot more workable now.

I still can't completely understand the geometry of it. Just like I can't figure out the math of my stack-n-slash quilts. You're supposed to stack like-sized pieces, make one cut, move the bottom piece of one side of the cut to the top, sew the pieces together, make a second cut, move the bottom of the same side to the top, and do it again--repeat as desired, each time moving the bottom piece to the top so you end up with randomly pieced blocks. But for some reason, by the third slash, and sometimes even the second, I'm getting repeat fabrics in the same block. I number pieces, keep close track of where they are, and it still happens. So by cut three or so, I'm going to the bottom piece and then grabbing the next one as well, or two, so I'm moving a stack of two, three, or four pieces from bottom to top to get them to randomize again. Why should such a simple concept be so hard?!

Not that the stack-n-slash really bothers me in the long run. I've now made two really fun quilts with a "layer cake" pack (40 10" squares) of batiks, and I have a set of flannel fat quarters I can't wait to tackle with the same technique. It's a great way to get a fun quilt fast. But the fact that it didn't strike me to turn those stupid pinwheel pieces in a slightly different direction bugs me. Why didn't I think of that?

I pinpoint my math trauma back to a difficult teacher in second grade, who liked to hold individual students up to collective ridicule. I didn't get my homework done one night because I didn't get the concept--the next day she told the class that because I didn't get my homework done, the whole class was going to lose out on a special activity she'd planned for the end of class. Who ever thought that was effective teaching methodology? A whole year of her in our Math Lab was a brutal experience for me. To this day, crunching numbers gives me a stomach ache, although I have to do it all the time. My husband always comments that he doesn't understand why I hate math so much--my very logical, very systematic brain should take to math like a fish to water. Enter Second Grade Teacher Trauma. I can do math when I decide I have to, but usually I avoid it like the plague. I was thrilled when my kids both turned out to be great at math because I could ask them my math-related-quilting questions. "Help me figure out how many pieces at X size I can get out of this X sized piece of fabric?" Since they're close to moving out of the house, though, I bought myself a Quilt-Calc and let electronics do the work for me.

So, it was a "doh" moment with the pinwheels. But now at least maybe next time points don't match I'll look for a simple solution rather than chastising myself for being a screw-up. That being said, I haven't actually sewn the pinwheel pieces back together yet. That's tonight's job. But I'm hopeful. And you know what? Quilting has taught me that yes, sometimes math can actually be fun.

Doing What Mom Says

2008-10-02T21:58:00.002-04:00

I finally finished Month 3's homework from my year-long Square-in-a-Square class tonight. I'm actually on Month 4 but Month 3 gave me fits because I ran out of background fabric before completing all four blocks we were supposed to do, so it ended up languishing on my cutting table before I had the time and energy to deal with it.

Finally tonight, acting under my prime directive to Avoid Reverse Sewing At All Costs, I made the pieces for a fourth block using a different background fabric, and then scattered the pieces through all four blocks. So now I've got four blocks, all with mostly the same background fabric and two pieces with different background. Kind of nifty, as long as I ignore my "must be orderly and make sense" side.

But that wasn't What Mom Said. You see, Month 2's homework blocks turned out very pretty from a fabric point of view, and I like the block itself, but due to plentiful bias edges, the blocks were whonked. Bowing, uneven edges abounded. I believe these were the blocks that were the subject of a previous post, named something like "When you can see it coming". I've debated for some time whether to pull the outside strips back off and redo them, but see my prime directive above.

Finally, tonight, after I finished the other blocks and was putting everything up on my design wall to check my progress to date, I heard my mother's voice in my head. "Block them," she was saying. "Pin them down and steam the h*ll out of them." Well, Mom doesn't typically use the h-e-double-hockey-sticks word, although I'm sure if I'd paid more attention while she was in her sewing room while I was growing up I probably would've heard them. I think every quilter has her potty-mouth side when dealing with bias edges. In any case, Mom has taught me every trick in the book to cover some mistakes and make other ones look intentional. This time, her words about the usefulness of a good, hot shot of steam to bring blocks into line were ringing in my head.

So I did. I pinned every one of those blocks down on my marked pressing pad until it began to look like a medieval torture device for heretic fabric, doused them with coats of spray starch, and then went after them with as much steam as my iron (handily named "SteamXpress") could punch out.

My dog went into hiding. She's not keen on my iron (it's fallen on her head a few times so she's understandably concerned), and she's even less keen when it's a fire-breathing dragon iron. But now the iron has been put to rest and I've stacked every heavy book I could find on my shelves on top of the tortured blocks in hopes that they'll straighten up and fly right by tomorrow morning, returned to orthodoxy. Medieval practices over, my dog has slunk back to her bed next to my computer desk, still eyeing the iron warily in case it should lunge at her from its perch in another unwarranted attack.

Let's see if Mom was right. I certainly hope so, since throughout my efforts tonight I was using this as an object lesson to my almost-18-year-old son who was sitting in the same room playing a computer game. "See? Even at 43 I'm following my mother's advice. Always do what your Mom says, son, and you'll never go wrong." If the blocks don't turn out nicely square tomorrow morning, guess what? I won't be telling him!

Allowing for Randomness

2008-09-28T15:59:00.002-04:00

In my continued "cleaning house mode", I guess it must be, I decided to tackle my scrap bins today. Not entirely sure why the mood struck, but hey, I'll ride it as long as it lasts.

I believe I've mentioned before my desire to keep my stash under control...at least until my kids move out of the house and I have access to a couple of new closets! But even so, I'm not much of a collector; I tend to be pretty good about sorting and getting rid of stuff in general. I hate useless accumulation--it slows me down and annoys me. So although my stash is definitely growing, it's doing so quite slowly and it still fits onto the two shelves I have designated for it (even if I have to occasionally use a little judicious stuffing here and there). I am actually pretty proud of myself for not letting my stash get out of hand.

Since the beginning of my quilting days a few years ago, I could hear generations of quilters' voices in my head sighing, shaking their heads in disbelief, or gasping in astonishment at my wastrel ways every time I started to toss out scraps from my projects. Yes, I know: to be a true quilter, shouldn't I save even the tiniest corner of fabric in case it should come in useful? How dare I toss out that 3" square! Someday that might be exactly the 3" square I need!

Problem is, I do extremely little applique and I'm not a big fan of true scrappy quilts. (Nicely color-coordinated scraps are one thing. But true scrappy is just too much mayhem for my orderly little mind.) So scraps were accumulating and not being used. I relegated my smallest scraps to my "tails" bin--the scraps you use to start a chain-stitching row. But I replace them almost as fast as I get through them so there's not a tremendous sense of accomplishment--no piles getting noticeably smaller, no sense of making headway. Just a constancy of fabric presence in the bin on the side of my sewing table.

I have recently gotten into the whole "jelly roll" thing, though--2 1/2" strips. I've gained new appreciation for scrappy using jelly rolls, but the jelly rolls are usually pretty coordinated so my orderly self can still be happy. Today, I thought, "Why don't I just start slicing up some strips out of the scraps? At least they'll be in some shape to use more quickly that way."

So I pulled a book by one of my fave designers off the shelf (M'Liss Rae Hawley) to see what size she based most of her scrap quilts on, and started going to town. 2 1/2" strips, 1 1/2" strips, 7" long with varying width strips for a particular pattern in her scrap quilt book that I decided I liked, all starting to accumulate in newly neatly labeled bins.

OK, so I only got through about 6 or so folds of fabric in the time I had--some of them were much larger than I thought they were. But it's a start. Not sure what to do with the fabrics I no longer love--so I'm cutting them into strips and hoping that they'll be "ooh--just the perfect touch!" when I get into some future project. But perhaps now that they're cut into standard sizes I could also pass them onto other quilters at silent auctions or guild give-aways more quickly. A small handful have been set aside untouched because they're in colors that might work for an applique Christmas project I have on my to-do list. But the rest? Hopefully within a couple of weeks, if I stay diligent, my current scraps will all be chopped neatly into easy-to-use sizes and ready for projects in the future.

Somehow scrappy seems less intimidating when it's neat and tidy and ready to go. I can allow for randomness in my life...as long as it's organized.

Ahhh...clean...

2008-09-26T18:18:00.002-04:00

I haven't been able to touch my machine in some time. I've been traveling for work, or out of the house for meetings, or working late, or taking a little yellow fuzzy thing outside every hour or so to try to avoid clean-up duty.... Progress in many areas of my life, but not in quilting.

So last night I finally had a free night. No one home, even. Just me, two dogs, a cat, and a guinea pig--one dog, cat, and guinea pig nicely left me alone. Little yellow fuzzy dog kept trying to sleep right between my feet no matter where I was sitting or standing. Cute, heart-warming, but a little inconvenient.

All day long I dreamed of an evening spent at my machine or cutting table, finally getting to fondle fabric. At the end of my work day, I shut down my work email and closed out of the many and varied software programs I'd been skipping back and forth between, stretched, took a deep cleansing breath, and then--eyes alight with excitement--looked over at my sewing area to decide just which project I would tackle.

Hmmm. What's that stack of files and folders and binders all over the ironing board? And what are those piles of CDs and cords and a random garbage can sitting on my sewing table, crowded around my sewing machine? And my cutting table? I averted my eyes.

All of my ins-and-outs over the last several weeks, hurried switching from one bag to another more appropriate to the current meeting or trip, piling no-longer-needed files next to will-be-needed-next files, had left my sewing area looking remarkably like a compost heap. (The garbage can on the sewing table is due to afore-mentioned yellow fuzzy. Easier to put it out of his reach than keep fighting him over it.) As I assessed the situation, I saw my evening of zen-sewing slipping from my grasp.

Strangely, though, as I ended up designating my sewing time as cleaning-sewing-room time, I found myself nearly as satisfied as I would've been sewing. There's something very peaceful about a house in order. I put a stack of copied patterns from magazines in their final resting place in a 3-ring binder, I finally added a few new book purchases to my spreadsheet library tracking system, and I measured, labeled, and put away new fabric that I'd either bought or been given as gifts. Each of these steps helped me remember moments of excitement over the last few months as I'd opened a new box from the book seller, or ripped birthday wrapping paper off a gift. I flipped through magazine pages to remember which projects I imagined making for which niece or nephew, and yes, fondled a whole bunch of fabric.

And now my sewing area is ready again for the next time I find myself with an unexpected free evening, or even a free 15 minutes. Next time I'm ready for it, it'll be ready for me.

The process inspired me to get other houses in order--my work "house", for example, in which I'm suddenly once again a little overwhelmed with trying to attend to a myriad of seemingly disconnected details. I have some spreadsheet tracking systems to create. I have been given permission by my supervisor to set aside a certain amount of time each week to develop my skills in certain softwares and techniques that I want to improve, so I need to enter those times in my work calendar. In my home life, I have some closets I need to attend to so that our rush-out-of-the-house can be a little less stressful; I need to adjust some family and volunteer calendar issues so we're a little more cohesive. I have some pondering to do on some forests so I can improve the individual trees. I don't mind being busy--in fact, I usually prefer it. I just want my busy-ness to be with direction and order rather than flying all over the place with a lack of clarity about what I've actually accomplished when I'm done.

So as I took a couple of hours last night to put my sewing house in order, I'm making a promise to myself that I'll take some time this weekend and in the early part of next week to get my home and work houses in order. It would be nice to have a sense of peace again!

The Power of Play

2008-09-02T21:09:00.002-04:00

So if I were writing this in a newsgroup or message board I'd have to start it with "OT"--or, Off Topic. It's not really about quilting. Sorry. But it's about puppies. And who can resist a puppy?

A few days ago, we brought a new addition into our menagerie--an 8-week-old Golden Retriever puppy named Sam. He's about as fuzzy and cute as a puppy can get. Spencer, our almost-four-year-old of indeterminate ancestry, isn't sure this was such a good idea. She spent the better part of the first 48 hours completely avoiding him and giving us baleful looks. She was particularly offended when I brought him up into my home office yesterday--she has definitely viewed that as her special space with Mom. No way I can avoid it, though--I have to have him within site to be on puppy patrol when no one else is home. So Spencer and Sam are engaged in a very careful territory dance in the office, trying to figure out which corner of the room each of them will be claiming for their own. She's never nipped at him, but she did growl and bare her teeth at him a couple of times when he didn't quite figure out that "enough was enough".

But outside? Outside is a different matter. Yesterday, for the first time, the two dogs actually played together. My husband got them started, wrestling with both of them together until they finally just cut out the middle-man and went off on their own. Now they pretty regularly play together when they're both outside. Sam can't quite keep up with Spencer yet--she's got a lot of energy and he's still just a sleepy little baby boy. But they have fun in short little chunks of time.

Inside? Spencer's still trying to figure out just why she has to share her people with the encroacher. But she's slowly warming up to him. She doesn't run quite so far from him when he tries to lick her chin, and she doesn't give us quite so heart-breaking a look whenever he comes near. They were even sleeping within a few inches of each other earlier this evening, although she had her back to him. Baby steps. Baby steps.

All of this has made me think about the power of play. I've often used that premise when I've been working with volunteer teams--in the same manner as the proverb states, "the family that plays together, stays together," the teams that play together tend to work better together. Seeing it in action with the Canine Kingdom in my home, however, really drives home the point. It is through play that Spencer and Sam are slowly becoming friends. It is through play that we can be closer to our family, our friends, our co-workers. Come to think of it, it's through play we become closer to ourselves--isn't that what quilting is all about, after all? Aren't we just playing with colors, patterns, techniques in an effort to allow our creative selves full reign?

Ah, I was able to bring it back to quilting in the long run. I guess I'm never that far from the topic, am I?

When You Can See It Coming...

2008-08-31T12:54:00.002-04:00

What is it about us as human beings that makes us sometimes completely unable to stop ourselves from doing something we just know is going to end badly?

I was working on some "homework" from a quilt class last night and I could tell, as I was sewing the last strips on each block, that I was going to end up with whonky blocks. There were plenty of bias edges going on and I knew the strip I was attaching to the center of the block was a little too long, and that while I could certainly stretch those bias edges a little bit to make it fit, there would be a point of no return. Yet I continued to stretch and sew, and hoped for the best. After all, I'd cut and sewn everything exactly to the instructions, hadn't I? Maybe the teacher knew something I didn't and it would all work out in the end...ahem. Blocks finished, and seeing edges wave back at me, I spray starched the heck out of them, steam pressed them, and put the heaviest books on my shelves on top of them on the ironing board and left them overnight.

They're nice and flat today, but there's a clear bow in the outside edges. I either do some reverse sewing, or consign myself to grief when I try to attach all the finished blocks together at the end of the class next spring. What could've been maybe a ten or 15 minute fix yesterday before it went so far awry is now going to probably take me at least 45 minutes to an hour, if I don't end up having to recut some strips and start further back in the process.

I could see it coming. But I didn't stop myself.

Similarly, when my son woke up this morning, I gave him all of about 5 minutes before I mentioned a speeding ticket he'd gotten a couple of days ago. I wasn't yelling at him, simply mentioning to him that the only job he was going to have from me today was to fill out the information on the ticket and get it ready to stick in the mail. All in a very reasonable voice. Even so, before I even opened my mouth, I thought, "He's always cranky in the morning. Maybe I should wait an hour or so before bringing this up." But something in me (admittedly, the part still a little ticked at him for getting the ticket in the first place) just didn't want to stop myself. Yes, there was a subtext to me not stopping myself on that one that's entirely different from the subtext in the quilting incident. But both have the same basic problem--why can't I stop myself when I know something is probably going to end badly?

Fortunately, I just got a couple of eye-rolls and a bit of a snitty voice from my son. It could've been worse. And my quilt blocks can be saved--it's only fabric and a little time, after all. But it made me think of all the times we human beings make decisions we know are unhealthy, or we know will be dangerous, or we know will probably just make situations worse...and we don't stop ourselves. Although we may get some immediate benefit from our poor choices (sure, I was glad that my son was at least momentarily as annoyed about the ticket as I was, even if for different reasons), we know in the long run we'll probably regret having made whatever the decision was and may even have really dug ourselves a hole that it'll be very difficult to get out of.

And so another life lesson from quilting. Hopefully next time I'll stop myself before I sew a piece on that I just know is going to cause me grief later, and next time I'll stop myself before I say or do something I just know is going to end badly. Meanwhile, I have to go find my seam ripper.

Conversations

2008-08-27T22:09:00.002-04:00

I just spent an enjoyable hour or so reading other people's blogs. Some are sisters, some are friends, and some are complete strangers whose blogs I'm finding through links--from other blogs, mostly, although also from quilting websites.

There are those who naysay the blogging trend--their opinion is that blogs are simply is a venue for people to feel they're important enough that others would want to hear their opinions. Which begs the question, why is the naysayer's opinion any more important than those of the masses of bloggers?

Sure, there's several blogs I visited tonight that I don't feel the need to go back to, but there are lots of TV shows I don't bother watching again and lots of radio stations I don't ever listen to and lots of books and magazines I don't read. That doesn't mean I don't feel people should produce TV shows or radio stations or books or magazines. They have every right to. And I have every right to choose how to spend my time.

What I find fascinating about blogs is the ability to have conversation. Yes, it may be mostly one-way, but if you become a follower of blogs you find that there's actually interactivity there. Not only in the "comments" option, but in the way one blogger will refer to another blog, or to a prior conversation with a comment-maker, and so forth. And with the blogs written by naturally good writers, you get insights into slices of life that you may not experience yourself. For example, tonight I visited the Berkshires, New York City, and somewhere in California, all within about 15 minutes of one another. I defy Expedia to set that trip up for me.

I don't tend to find myself heading to quilting blogs that are just a list of projects, unless I know the blogger personally or it's a quilt artist I particularly enjoy. But I did find some quilting blogs of people doing something similar to this--their blogs reflecting on their quilting within the context of their lives. One woman grabbed me right from her profile--her sense of humor and unique perspective on life jumped out in the first sentence. I learned from her almost immediately--I'm going to be following her blog partly out of enjoyment, and partly as a way to improve my own writing by analyzing what I'm liking so much about hers.

So tonight is a short, less personally reflective blog entry--one that simply extols the value of blogging as an art form and a conversation.

Playing Catch-Up

2008-08-24T14:22:00.003-04:00

It's been about a month since my last post but since I was out of town on business for two of those four weeks it doesn't quite count, does it? I took last week as vacation and intended to use it as a personal little quilt retreat at home but it didn't quite work out that way. Life tends to get in the way. My son had wisdom teeth removed, I had meetings related to my volunteer work with the Karen and Chin communities, I took my daughter and some of her friends to a local amusement park, and I had a bunch of friends over one afternoon, so I only ended up with one sewing day. But as I reminded myself, soon enough I'll be empty nesting and have all sorts of time to spend at my sewing machine so I only slightly feel bad about my lack of quilting productivity.

I did manage to finally catch up with my guild's block of the month challenge (woohoo!) and I put together the backing for a quilt that I'll be giving a niece for her bday later this week--one of those "open your present, and then hand it back to me so I can finish it!"

But today was probably the most productive--I finally managed to get my new cutting table put together! OK, so I bought it a year ago, and the box has been leaning against a wall in my sewing room, providing a convenient shelf for works in project. Now I need to find a new limbo location for my UFOs, but at least I'm no longer negotiating a warped cutting surface. The old warped cutting table is being relagated to the basement where it will find redemption as a "gift-wrapping center".

I don't have much worthy of pondering at the moment, other than the sense of satisfaction one gets when one finally finishes something that one has been tripping over for a year. I'll work on getting back in my Tessellations Game and be profound again soon enough. Time to flex my furniture-putting-together-mojo again building a desk and bookshelf for my son's room...

Some very random thoughts

2008-07-21T18:49:00.003-04:00

I've added a slideshow of pics of my projects at the bottom of the blog, which necessitated changing how many posts show on the page when you visit. So now you'll only see the most recent post and will have to dig through archives to find older ones.

To be very honest, part of the reason I haven't been writing lately is because I'm trying to take the concept of "summer" very seriously this year, and that means actually walking away from my computer when I'm done with work for the day and doing other things like sitting in our rope-swing hammock chair with a mindless book, hanging out in the pool, or--yes--even quilting. My quilting is a little less exciting these days as I'm playing catch-up at the moment. Trying to catch up with my guild's block of the month activity (I think I'm finally up to April!), catching up with finishing up several UFOs that have been languishing as I've been in a flurry of new creativity, and catching up with sorting and neatening up my quilting area after said flurry. I'm trying to knock off a lot of unfinished business now--I'm traveling for business for a couple of weeks in August and am taking that immediately following week as vacation. No one else in my family has the week off so I'm planning on spending it as a quilt-retreat-at-home; I want to get all the old stuff done now so I can have fun with something new that week.

I did attend my first-ever quilt retreat last month and although my first day was a test of endurance, I pretty quickly got into a rhythm and accomplished quite a bit. And I've already signed up for my guild's quilt retreat in the fall. I'm hooked! A couple of the photos in the slide show are quilt retreat projects--one of which I completed beginning-to-end during the retreat itself, the second one I started on the last day and finished at home a couple of weeks later. (Look for the triple-rail on point in reds and greens, and the stack-n-slash in batiks, if you know what those are!)

I will say that one thing I've learned about myself in the last year is that the quilting techniques I love most are the ones that pull me completely out of my super-organized, pre-planned mode that tends to be the rest of my life. In "normal life", I prefer to more or less know what's happening next, I live by to-do lists and spreadsheets and my surroundings are pretty well organized. But the things I enjoy doing most in quilting are almost always the free-form, the random, the "just run with it and see what happens next" techniques. Very releasing! I suppose that's a left-brain-right-brain thing although I can never remember which side of my brain is supposed to be responsible for what. But there's something to be said for the fact that if I have to spend my day attending to my organized self, I will relax most attending to my "bag the organization and just have fun" self!

So, speaking of summer, it's time for me to walk away from my computer and go do something completely unproductive--be a beach bunny in my own back yard. Catch ya on the rebound, hang ten, don't worry, be happy, n' all that. Dude.

The Lectionary of Quilting

2008-06-08T21:27:00.003-04:00

OK, so for those of you who don't know, it's time to 'fess up to the fact that in my other life, I'm a preacher. Well, part of the time. I used to do more preaching when I was serving in a church. In my current denominational role I preach on occasion. But as I was getting ready for my next quilt project tonight I found myself reflecting on a long-term debate that moves through the circles of the ordained.

There are those who are "lectionary preachers" and those who are not. The lectionary is a three-year cycle of Scriptures assigned to each week of the year. The basic idea is that if you preach through the lectionary, in three years the congregation would have heard most of the Bible. It ties in closely with the seasons of church life, and there are Christian education curricula also based on the lectionary so that there's the possibility of the entire congregaton, "cradle to grave", learning about the same Bible passages on any given Sunday thus hopefully producing feisty and educated conversation at home following church.

Well, that's the ideal, anyway.

Those who aren't lectionary preachers prefer to choose their own sermon series, perhaps walking through a particular book of the Bible over a period of time, or exploring a topic, and so forth. Non-lectionary preachers tend to look at the lectionary as restrictive, not connected enough to the life of the congregation; they also feel that it leads to pastoral laziness as the Scripture is handed to you each week. While I was in my seminary training, I actually spent a bit of time in each of these schools of thought--for awhile, pro-lectionary, for awhile anti-lectionary, back and forth as I continued to explore who I was as a clergy-person in training.

Post seminary when I was preaching consistently, although I did sometimes do my own sermon series and chose Scriptures and sermon topics due to events happening in the life of the congregation at a certain time, I more frequently tended to be a lectionary preacher. Preaching from the lectionary forced me to work with Scripture passages I might not otherwise choose. You know, the tough ones. The confusing ones. The ones we sort of wish weren't in the Bible in the first place. If I were to just always choose my own passages every week, I'd probably lean towards my favorite books of the Bible, or at very least those passages with which I was comfortable, that I felt like I knew what I was talking about, and so forth. And eventually, my congregation would probably get pretty bored and my own preaching skills would lose their edge.

Switch gears.

Tonight I was pressing fabrics getting ready for a class I'm taking in a couple of nights. It's a "strip club" class (and yes, I catch the irony talking about being in a strip club in the same blog entry I've addressed my preaching life). In other words, it's a class that uses 2 1/2" strips to create a quilt. I had tried to find fabrics myself but had very limited time to search so I ended up taking the easy way out. The quilt store where I'm taking the class had prepared some jelly rolls (collections of 2 1/2" strips wound into a roll) specifically for the class. It has the exact number we need, and they're all Asian fabrics as the pattern we're using is entitled "Orient Express". It felt so much like cheating, and I was concerned about having a quilt that looked like everyone else's in the class, so I'd tried not to take that route. But in the long run, the time crunch won out and I ran down to the quilt store a few days ago, nabbed the required jelly roll, chose a couple of accent fabrics, and was good to go.

I'm pressing the strips tonight, thinking, "how in the world are these going to work together?" You see, the jelly roll is true scrappy. The only common thread is that they're Asian or can pass as such. There's no rhyme or reason to the colors or patterns. I kept catching myself glancing over at my stash in hopes that somehow a nice coordinated set of Asian fabrics, just the right amount for this project, would miraculously appear.

Nope, it's going to be scrappy. And immediately the difficulty of this class struck me. The pattern is easy, the technique is easy, and buying someone else's pre-made jelly roll is easy. But I'm going to have to deal with fabrics I'm not comfortable with; I'm going to have to struggle through making a block look good given that nothing seems to relate to anything else. I'm going to have to work through the seeming disconnectedness and figure out how to make it all hang together.

That's not the way I usually function. I like to make things coordinate. I like colors to play nicely together and I like to see a natural progression from one part to another. I even like how well the "suprise fabric" plays into and lifts up everything else. But for this class I can only deal with what I've been handed and see what happens. Much like the lectionary. And just like I found myself finding depths in Scripture that I'd not really understood before as I had to work my way through it using the lectionary, I imagine I'll learn that scrappy really is beautiful--that I can really do it myself. I'm starting to look at my stash a little differently, thinking "if I cut a strip off of that one, and that other one there, and there's that gorgeous one over there that I've never known what to do with..." and imagining what my next scrap quilt might look like.

So learning and growing involves challenging ourselves with stuff we normally don't like. Things we typically avoid. The hard things. The confusing things. The things we wish weren't in there in the first place. And finding the beauty within.

(Maybe I'll post a picture of the completed quilt top from this class later on and we'll see if I did find the beauty within!)

Let's Start at the Very Beginning...

2008-06-02T16:19:00.002-04:00

I'm sending myself back to school. The last couple of quilt projects I've worked on have ended up a little hinky here and there, and I'm not entirely sure where I'm going wrong. I'm doing my 1/4" seams correctly, and I feel like I'm cutting accurately. Pressing may be an issue--I have a suspicion that I'm a bit too assertive with my iron. But altogether, I figure it's probably not such a bad thing to stop what I'm doing and go back to basics for a bit.

I've ordered a DVD for beginning quiltmakers that got rated very highly. I'm looking forward to when it comes--should be in another couple of days thanks to Amazon Prime. I am more of a visual learner--although I can, and do, certainly rely on books quite regularly, it's always helpful to be able to watch someone actually doing something and with DVD, I can back them up and make them repeat themselves as many times as I want without them getting annoyed at me. My mom taught me how to quilt that first summer--she walked me through many of the basics, and I still occasionally call her up with the "What do I do now??" whining or the quick check on "how do you handle..." questions. But I don't live close enough to her to have regular in-person training sessions and I can only occasionally take classes at my local quilt store. An academic at heart, I figured that it was probably time to take myself back to school and walk step-by-step through some of the beginning skills to pick up those little niceties that I've forgotten or missed along the way.

It's not that I want to become an award-winning quilter. I have a friend that has entered her (excellent, fantastic) work in shows a few times and hearing her talk about trying to get something done on time or re-reading the regulations about size and sleeves and all that just makes my stomach hurt. I don't need the stress. But I have come to the point that for me to be able to push my own artistic envelope forward I need to be able to rely on my own skills. I want to get into art quilts, and doing more with photo transfer, and funky things with wedge rulers and fusible webbing and Angelina fibers. I've dabbled, but have always ended up running head-long into the wall of my own inabilities. What I can picture in my head and what I have the technical skills to actually create don't quite meet yet, and I find that frustrating. I'm holding myself back from really being able to allow my creative self to explode.

So how does that relate to life? Well, I suppose, in that there are times when perhaps we need to take ourselves back to basics. We still have new landscaping that we're slowly filling in--and I'm finding myself having to relearn much of what I thought I already knew about planting and growing because the soil and water levels are so much different here than in our old yard just a few miles away. I'm in the process of watching dog training videos (see the last post about Cesar Millan!) to take myself back to the beginning with our current dog to see if we can get rid of a couple of bad habits, and hopefully pick up tips for when we get a second dog which we're hoping will happen sometime this summer. I'm in a slightly slower period at work so I've been spending time in some of my layout and photoediting software programs trying to fill in the gaps of my technical knowledge there too. So I suppose there are several areas in my life at the moment where I'm taking advantage of the opportunity to go back to basics, review what I already know, fill in gaps, pick up new tricks, and get myself on a more solid foundation to be able to expand from there.

I remember in college registering for a music theory "101" class. In addition to being in band and chorus throughout my elementary and high school career, I had taken private lessons in violin, piano, flute, and a smattering of other instruments through the years--flute being my primary instrument and the one that carried on into adulthood. But I'd never learned formal music theory--I only knew what I had picked up by playing. So I decided in my freshman year in college that I should really learn music theory and registered for the class. I went to the first session, read through the syllabus that was distributed, and realized I knew 3/4s of what was going to be taught. It felt like it would be a waste of time waiting for the last couple of weeks of the semester when they'd finally get to the parts I wasn't as clear on, so I dropped the class that afternoon. To this day, I carry a vague regret that I didn't tough it out. For one thing, it probably would've been an easy A! But more to the point, to this day, I still only know about 3/4s of the beginning music theory level knowledge--probably less by now through the natural attrition that occurs when one doesn't use it. To this day, strangely enough, I still occasionally find myself in conversations with practicing musical colleagues and once in a great while I still have to nod my head and smile and pretend I know what they're talking about. Because heaven forbid they find out that I don't. After all, I was an accomplished flutist for many years. I should know these things despite the fact that my flute has been gathering dust in my closet for about five years now.

I suspect most of us are in a similar position. Because of our busy-ness, the need to produce quickly, we learn what we need to know to accomplish whatever it is we need to accomplish, and then we move on. Which is fine--I've learned a lot that way and become fairly proficient in some things. But sometimes it behooves us to round out our knowledge, go backwards for a time to fill in gaps, or to simply dedicate ourselves to continued learning just for the sake of learning. That's what I like best about quilting, I think. There's always new things to learn. So I'm dedicating myself over the next several weeks to simply focusing on the basics to lay a good foundation for learning all the wonderful, fun techniques that are out there in front of me.

The Quilt Whisperer

2008-05-13T14:37:00.002-04:00

I've found a new fan club to join. I'm seriously into Cesar Millan as the Dog Whisperer these days. I began watching his show on the National Geographic Channel late one afternoon when I was exhausted and there was nothing else on and I'm always game for a good dog show, and I was immediately fascinated. The things this man is able to do with dogs...and the ease with which he helps his clients and by extension his viewers understand the dog psychology behind it...is just amazing. But what's most amazing is that what he's doing is actually so ordinary and so common sense once you understand what he constantly says: "A dog is a dog, not a human." There's really nothing amazing about it.

Ok, so in our house we've never treated our dogs like babies or little people. They have always been dogs. And, consequently, we've never had dogs with severe behavior problems although our Spencerpup has a couple of odd neuroses floating around the edges. And often when I'm watching the shows I can immediately pick out what the owner is doing to create the problem (the woman who had dyed her frou-frou dog's fur pink to match her entire wardrobe and home decorating scheme was an easy answer, admittedly). Watching Cesar present his trademark "Calm Assertive Pack Leader" self to the dog in question leading to almost immediate resolution to the behavior problems--apparently your average dog really does want someone to be in control. As Cesar puts it, it's a matter of creating a balanced dog.

Calm Assertive Pack Leader. Hmmm. Where do I get me some of that?

OK, so I'm pretty much a pack leader with Spencer but that's not such a big deal because she's the quintessentially submissive pack runt and basically looks to almost everyone as her pack leader, including the painters, the UPS man, the Jehovah's Witnesses.... I'd like to think I'm a pack leader with my kids. Hmph. On a good day.

I've had recent reason to be taking to heart the Dog Whisperer's lessons about energy in the room and balance. He talks with dog owners about what sort of energy they're giving off--and how the dogs pick up on that and it shows in their behavior. If you're nervous about them acting up, they'll assuredly act up. If you're panicky or excited or fearful, you have a panicky or excited or fearful dog. But if you're calm and assertive, you'll get balance in return. I know that's true with my family as well. If I'm giving off negative energy, I'll either get it back in spades or everyone will retreat to their respective hidey-holes--not in panic, so much, they are teenagers after all, but in a strong sense of self-preservation. "Mom's in a mood. Lay low." I may not really feel stressed in my own body, but I'm apparently spewing it off in my aura or energy fields or whatever other new-agey phraseology you might want to give it. And when it's bad enough that I do actually feel stressed? Watch out. Conversely, however, calmness and a sense of your own personal power brings balance.

I've not been quilting lately, and I've realized why. I need to be in more of a calm, assertive, pack leader state to quilt effectively. Otherwise my quilts fly all over the place with nervous energy. I have one project I'm working on as a gift for a friend that was reported to be "One Afternoon" in the magazine. I'm going on about 10 days now. But that's because I almost immediately messed up one thing that should've been pretty obvious had I been sufficiently paying attention, and then realized I'd never purchased one of the necessary fabrics because I hadn't been sufficiently focused in the fabric store (and don't have a solution in my stash), and then just barely managed to stop myself before I added insult to injury by trying to muddle through skipping a step or two because surely I could still manhandle this thing into submission even though my focus was still all over the place and my nervous energy was slowly but surely building higher and higher with each passing moment. One more false move and my partially-pieced project would've turned it's snarling teeth on me and drawn blood.

But oh, how I long to be the Quilt Whisperer. How I desire to take one look at a quilt-gone-bad, immediately ascertain the psychology behind why it went wrong, give it a quick mother-dog-bite-simulation with my hand and a sharp "ssshhht!" to pull it's attention on me, take a breath and reach deep inside me for the Calm Assertive Pack Leader, and have that quilt follow me in obedience until its completion.

It's not the quilt's fault. It never is. I need to recall the lessons of Cesar and draw forth the Calm Assertiveness necessary to succeed. Beyond quilting, that would hold true with most of life. I need to recall the calm assertiveness I've felt in the past, times when I've been able to achieve good things, or at very least acheive things, even when it felt like life was spinning wildly out of control.

Ssshhht. Here I am. Calm Assertive Pack Leader Sandy. That's me.

It's all in the training.

2008-05-01T13:00:00.004-04:00

Comments notwithstanding, I may have been in the States for over a week but I haven't been in MY state until just a couple of days ago. I got home from London, had three days to regroup, then skipped town again for business. It's nice to finally be home for awhile!

But it's a good thing for this blog that I had to spend some time in the mid-parts of this great country o' ours because "a funny thing happened on the way to the forum" and I suddenly had great content for Tessellations at hand.

I was doing a series of speaking engagements over the weekend, traveling from one event to another through two states. I had no sooner gotten off the plane than my host and chauffeur for the weekend whisked me off to the first engagement, a two hour drive away. Still high on Dramamine and my head spinning from trying to figure out where I was and what I was doing, we parked near the door of the church where the first event was being held and unloaded our technical equipment to run PowerPoint for my first presentation. We slung a variety of computers, projectors, and other bags over our shoulders and power-walked through wind and spattering rain into the church, entering via the social hall, quickly conferring about schedules and how to organize ourselves for set-up and presentation. I was no further than two steps into the social hall when my eyes immediately landed on a gorgeous quilt folded over the back of a bench on the far end of the room.

"Oooh!" I interrupted whatever I'd originally been saying, "Look at that beautiful quilt!"

My friend/host spun her head from side to side..."What quilt?"

"That one right there," I responded with a quick bob of the head in the appropriate direction, my arms too full with equipment to be able to point. She continued to look around even as I began to make my way to the quilt, equipment burdens and schedules momentarily forgotten.

"What quilt?" She asked again, her voice sounding bemused and, admittedly, maybe even a little frustrated with my distraction. She watched where I was going and finally saw it. "Oh, that quilt," she said, somewhat dismissively as she returned her concentration instead on finding the person organizing the event. Her tone of voice recalled me to what I was there to do and I turned in my tracks, heading back in the direction of the sanctuary as the leaders of the event, having spied our entrance to the building, began introducing us as the speakers.

The quilt was forgotten as my friend and I rushed to get flash drives and computers and projectors talking to one another (unsuccessfully, as it turned out). But an hour later when our presentation was finished and we returned to the social hall to pack up our equipment and say our farewells to the participants in the event, I finally had the opportunity to check out the quilt. Another woman noticed my interest and my curiosity was finally assuaged as we chatted for a few minutes about the pattern and quilting and the story behind the quilt (Log Cabin, machine quilted, done for a celebration of some sort in the church).

After we left, beginning another two hour journey to our next destination, my friend and I joked about how I'd visually locked in on that quilt the second I'd entered the room whereas she hadn't been able to see it until I had actually pointed it out to her. It wasn't until I was back on the plane for my return trip home several days later, however, that I thought about what that small incident pointed out.

We see what we're trained to see.

Because I spend so much time and energy engaged in quilting, I have essentially trained myself to notice quilts, quilt patterns, even color combinations or geometric designs that somehow relate to quilting, everywhere I go. It's no surprise, then, that the first thing I notice when I walk into a room is the presence of a quilt. Equally telling, my friend who isn't a quilter didn't notice it until it was especially pointed out to her. She may have eventually seen it, of course, but it still wouldn't stand out for her the way it did for me. Her reaction points out the opposite truth to this statement:

We don't see what we're not trained to see. Or the corollary statement, we don't see what we don't want to see.

How appropriate a realization this was to me as I was flying home from my weekend spent making a series of presentations on the topic of sex trafficking. This global scourge is something that happens in every country including the U.S., but is something that the vast majority of us don't want to think about and may even simply refuse to see. "That's something that happens over there," we might say, "or in cities," if we live in a rural area. Just a few days before I traveled to make these presentations, however, a series of newspaper articles was printed in one of their local papers about police having broken up a sex trafficking ring active in small towns through the eastern part of the state. It listed the small towns the traffickers had set up brothels in, and several women present at some of those speaking engagements lived in or near those small towns. Some of those small towns only had a few hundred residents, and the photos of the "brothels" showed that they were just regular homes on regular streets, near gas stations and sometimes even churches. Houses that any of us would walk by several times a day and not think twice about what was happening inside. People reading those articles, and those present at my speaking engagements, now had to see what they hadn't been trained to see. They had to realize that yes, trafficking even happens in Small Town America.

The moral of the story is that we see what we want to see--which means that sometimes we have to train ourselves to see certain kinds of things. I still don't want to see evidence of human trafficking, but I've had to train myself to see it. But more ever-present than the big global issues like that is the day-to-day "vision" we have. I have worked with teens for over twenty years, and the old maxim is true--you often get the behavior you expect to get. In other words, if I look at a kid and see a troublemaker, I'll have a troublemaker on my hands. But if I look at the same kid and see a basically good kid that occasionally messes up, I'll be working with a basically good kid. Or if I see a kid that has real attitude but that attitude indicates a traumatic childhood or a dysfunctional home or difficult relationship issues at school...then I can work to break through the attitude to get to the heart of the matter. And stepping the topic down even more, if I look at a rude waitress or store clerk and see only the rudeness, I may react rudely myself. But if I see a harried person who's had a difficult day or is stressed over things at home or any other number of reasons behind the rudeness, I would be more likely to react with patience and understanding and alleviate any possible difficulties with the rest of the conversation.

I'm working on training my eyes to see things differently. What do you see?

Oh...and...

2008-04-13T11:29:00.005-04:00

We had a very pretty morning a few days ago and as I was cleaning photos off my camera in preparation for my trip I forgot I'd taken some of a young Japanese maple in our backyard in the morning sun...

On the road again...

2008-04-13T11:12:00.002-04:00

I'm writing this just a few hours before our family is boarding a plane to London for spring break. My husband and I had always planned that we'd go to Europe for our 20th anniversary. Said 20th anniversary was this past fall--and when time came to actually plan our trip we realized that we really only probably have a couple of years left of the proverbial "family vacation"--kids n' all, as our son is a junior in high school and our daughter is a freshman. So we shifted our plans a little bit, adjusted our savings plan, and the kids are coming with us on the trip. It may not be the traditional romantic anniversary get-away but it has its own romance--after all, our kids are the product of our 20-year-long odyssey together so it only seems appropriate they be part of our anniversary celebration. Besides, we'll have plenty of time for romantic get-aways once the kids don't want to be tagging along with Mom and Dad on vacations anymore.

What does all this have to do with quilting? Admittedly, not a lot. In fact, my life has had little to do with quilting lately. I finally recovered from my illness, had a couple of productive weeks of good health and dabbling my toes in sewing here and there, and then Mom ended up in ER and having emergency surgery...and everything else fell by the wayside again.

However, I did have the foresight to use my upcoming week-long absence as an opportunity to have my machine serviced so I dropped it off for a cleaning and general tune-up a couple of days ago--first time I've had anything done to it since I bought it a few years ago so it's about time. But other than that, I've had to be OK with the fact that I wasn't getting any quilting done. It wasn't so much not having the time as it was not having the energy and, therefore, no real desire. And I'm OK with that. All things need a rest on occasion. Even things we normally see as fun. All I felt like doing after leaving work to see Mom and meet with doctors and all, was sitting on the couch with my laptop either playing mindless computer games or messing around with digital scrapbooking--my other creative hobby.

With the emergency of Mom's surgery past (she's in a rehab unit now and we have every reason to believe she'll be home again within a week), I'm now regrouping. My usual fear of flying has taken a backseat to my great anticipation of being forced to sit still for several hours and sleep! I've loaded up my iPod with all sorts of really interesting podcasts (not a few of which are quilt-related) and am planning on a nice period of limbo between the here and the there, the home and the vacation, the bustle of getting out of the house and the bustle of trying to see as much as possible in the few days available to us.

But there is a quilt connection to being in London--since the exchange rate is such that we won't be buying souvenirs I plan on taking a ton of photos as my souvenirs. I plan especially on looking for architectural details that may inform my quilting at a later date. I've seen many demonstrations of creating quilt blocks around tile patterns or using mosaics as a quilting design. I doubt my skills are up to that yet but I can always stock up on photos for the day that my skills catch up to my imagination! I'll probably end up with a wad of vacation photos that are mind-numbingly boring for anyone else to look at but I'll think they're pretty darn cool.

So I guess the "life lesson from quilting" in this blog is two-fold: 1) Sometimes we need a rest even from the fun things--a chance to regroup, to do something different, so we can return to it fresh; and 2) inspiration from quilting--or any creative expression--can come from anywhere, even the grout between tiles or the edge of a cornice on a building.

I'm off to finish packing, making sure my camera and iPod are completely charged and ready to go. Oh, yeah, and some clothes. But those are only the after-thought. My electronics always go in first!

Signs of Health

2008-03-19T21:29:00.005-04:00

You know you're a quilter when...you decide you're on the road to health when you finally feel up to handling a rotary cutter.

I've been sick since I returned home from Thailand with bronchitis, 4 weeks ago. I had a small handful of halfway decent days the second week when I thought I might be on the way out of it...but then apparently got hit with a second cold-type bug on top of it and the two things didn't play together nicely, so I ended up in bed again most of last week. Since I work at home, it's unusual enough for me to take one sick day let alone four in a row. Yeesh.

As frustrated as I was to be missing work and to have to keep cancelling out of events and responsibilities and to have to keep relying on my husband and kids to take care of everything while I was sacked out in bed for days on end, I was probably most put out over the fact that even the thought of standing at my cutting table or sitting at the sewing machine exhausted me. Sharp edges and serious cold medicines? Not a good mix. No, the closest I got to sewing for 4 1/2 weeks was the pages of my quilt magazines and one evening messing around with my quilt design software.

This week, I'm starting to feel like maybe I've turned that corner again, for the second time, but hoping it sticks this time. I'm also doing better at listening to the advice of my family and my doctor who have all told me to keep laying low this week. Do only what I need to do--don't send myself into a tail spin again.

Do only what I need to do.... I need to have my hands on fabric. So tonight I put the binding on my son's quilt; that felt fairly straight forward and like something I could feasibly handle. I got all the way through it until having to make the ends meet. Never an easy part of the binding process for me, I knew that it might particularly hitch me up tonight. And yep, I sewed them together together all twisty-like, and not in a creative way. I ripped them out and had a brief debate with myself about whether I should try again when I remembered everyone's advice to lay low and reminded myself that there was no rush; the binding could be finished just as easily tomorrow night when I was fresh.

So the last four weeks have been a long lesson in learning to listen to my body, to practice the art of self-forgiveness, and to just be patient. I have to remind myself to give my body the time and space it needs to get healthy again. Like when I was on sabbatical, I had to remind myself it was OK to have a couple of weeks of non-productiveness, although I do confess to spending much of that time watching a lecture series about the Middle Ages on DVD so that I could at least feel like the time wasn't totally wasted. Admittedly, I believe I dozed through quite a bit of the 11th century.

But I've been able to play with fabric again today even if just for a little while. And since I got a shipment of new quilt books and a surprise gift of fabric from my sister today as well, I'm going to go celebrate my stuttering return back to the quilting life with a little time in a comfy armchair petting new fabric and dreaming of future quilt projects.

Under the Influence...

2008-02-24T06:17:00.005-05:00

...of jetlag, sleeping pills to combat the jetlag, and various cold meds to combat the cold made worse by the plane that caused the jetlag.... I'm home from Thailand and am still processing all I saw and did. I'm not sure how coherent I can be just yet (see sentence #1) but hopefully over the next few days and weeks I'll be able to find the right words and phrases to express some of the more significant moments. It was an amazing trip. For some background, you may want to do some reading up on the situation in Burma, especially in regards to the Karen people. Here's a recent article: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/on-the-run-with-the-karen-people-forced-to-flee-burmas-genocide-432267.html.

We met with many people and visited a wide variety of places, but to stay true to the purpose of this blog....from a fabric perspective, there were definitely some highlights. I was able to watch a Karen (pronounced, "kah-RYN") woman using a traditional back loom to weave fabric in a traditional Karen pattern. A back loom literally surrounds the weaver with a wooden brace across her back and the threads stretched in front of her, tied to a wall or other solid object in front of her. This particular weaver's body looked like it had melded itself into that position from years of weaving, her fingers moved the various shuttles through warp and weft quickly and assuredly, the complex pattern appearing before our eyes without us even really understanding how it was happening. (These photos don't pick up the intracacies of the actual pattern well--sorry.) Yes, she was partially there "on display", but we weren't in a tourist spot--we were at a school in a women's organization office which works to help the Karen women support themselves through traditional handicrafts. So this weaver was representative of a culture past and very much future--a people embracing their tradition to help ensure that tradition is able to continue unfettered for generations to come.

Later, in a somewhat more "touristy" spot (although still way off the beaten trail), we shopped at a store run by a Hmong woman (pronouned "mung"). The Hmong are another group who have a history of being refugees--they originated in southern China but spread south into Laos, Vietnam, Burma, and Thailand; due to their opposition to the communist regime in Laos in the late 70s, thousands of Hmong there were forced from their homes and fled to Thailand; many were later resettled in other countries around the world including the U.S. Several thousand remain in Thailand to this day.

The Hmong woman we met was selling clothing, purses, and a wide variety of clothing that she told us she had made by hand. I'm not entirely sure I would've believed her--it always sounds like a tourist-oriented sales-pitch and she had a fair volume of goods for sale--until she sat down to very quickly fix an article a woman in our group wanted to buy but had found a problem with a seam. The Hmong woman's fingers flew with that needle and thread and she had fixed the problem in mere seconds. It was suddenly very believable that she could've made all of those items herself in a fairly limited period of time. After I finished paying for my purchases, her face broke into a wide grin and she excitedly grabbed my arm and said something in her native language that I mentally translated into great thanks for the income I'd just ploughed into her business! I had also remarked earlier to another traveling companion that I was always a little skeptical about "traditional clothing," wondering if people really ever wore those clothes anymore except in high ceremony--until we were driving through the countryside in the miles around that little store and I saw all sorts of men and women wearing clothing exactly as she had been wearing and selling--as they farmed, carried huge baskets of harvest on their heads, led obedient cattle with ropes, and carried out the tasks of their daily lives. So yes, traditional clothing sometimes truly is traditional clothing.

I guess maybe I'm a bit too skeptical. There truly is such a thing as tradition left somewhere in the world. I come from a fairly mongrel American background so I don't have much ethnic tradition left in my own family history. I've married into a smattering of it in my husband's family but there is still little we can point to that's distinctive to anything other than a general euro-Christian-American-middle-class culture. On the other hand, the Karen and Hmong women, and the Kachin, Chin, and other refugees around the world who work to support themselves in this way are, in general, barely making a living. I don't want to glorify their lives in any way--it's a hard, unimaginable life of never being sure what's going to happen tomorrow. And yet they keep their traditions alive--they hang onto them, perhaps even more so, in the face of uncertainty; the weaving and the embroidery and the ethnically-distinctive patterns remind them of who they are and where they came from when all that was familiar has been ripped from them.

And one way I can support them is through purchasing their goods and adding my own creativity to theirs by making quilts out of their fabrics. And everytime my eyes land on those fabrics on my shelves or hanging on my wall in a completed project, I will remember women the world over who struggle to put food on the table, who have been thrust from their homes and villages and chased across the countryside into strange lands, who deal with life circumstances I can't even begin to imagine, but whose fingers nimbly trip over the threads bringing beauty to life.

Departing soon...

2008-02-07T16:43:00.000-05:00

In a couple of days, I leave for a two-week trip to Thailand. It's funny (funny-ironic, not funny-ha-ha) how much time I've spent preparing for this trip when you put it side-by-side with how long I'll actually be there. But shopping, doctor's visits, and pharmaceutical supplies aside, I think I'm now ready.

I couldn't resist--I spent a little time today googling "Thailand fabric". I've seen some of the traditional tribal weaving, but I wasn't as sure about what other fabrics may be considered specialties in Thailand. And of course, it's silk. Hadn't really thought about that but it makes a certain amount of sense. I'm not sure how much time I'll have for shopping--I'm on a mission trip, after all, not a tourist jaunt--but I'm definitely going to be keeping my eye out for some authentically Thai fabric while I'm there.

The reason for my trip is that our city, like many others around the country, has received a sizeable number of refugees from Burma; those refugees come here after living (sometimes for many years) in camps in Thailand spreading up the long border between the two countries. In addition, my denomination has historical ties to Baptists in Burma, so many of the Baptist refugees are seeking out our sister churches in the cities where they're being relocated--my church among them. Over the summer, our church's attendance increased by about 100 in a few short months, and we now collectively sing hymns in English, Karen, and Chin every Sunday.

I have been volunteering with the families who have located in my city--working with a large network of volunteers like me who are all hoping to make the refugee community's transition here to the chilly northeast as comfortable as possible. Because of my denominational and professional ties as well, I am going on this trip wearing a couple of different hats and will be listening with a couple of different sets of ears!

In any case, one connection I made with some members of the refugee community was when I received the first request for a sewing machine. As I asked around, it turned out that the Karen Women's Organization--active in the refugee camps--ran sewing classes in some of the camps to help teach marketable skills to the refugees. Women and men both avail themselves of these classes. Once they're here in the U.S., some of them are then able to work in tailor shops or clothing manufacturers to earn their living. (A little background: The Karen are one of the ethnic groups in Burma--it's pronounced "kah-RYN". Although there are many different ethnic groups from Burma in the refugee camps, the Karen are disproportionately represented because they've been historically oppressed in Burma.)

Several women and a couple of men had asked if we could find them sewing machines, so I put the word out on my quilt guild's newsgroup and on our local Craig's List, and within a few weeks I had received 7 machines, yards and yards of donated fabric, reams of thread, and passels of zippers and other notions. After having distributed a few machines to people I knew had specifically requested them, I brought the rest to church this past Sunday and invited members of the community to take what they needed. Within ten minutes, it was all gone.

I was struck once again by the connections we can make with one another in the most unlikely of ways. Those quilters who donated machines and fabric were thrilled to be able to help out fellow sewers. Those who were the recipients were thankful for the ability to practice their art and have another possible avenue to self-sufficiency. I am very much looking forward to perhaps meeting leaders in the Karen Women's Organization while in Thailand so I can know more about their sewing classes, as well as all the other work they do.

In fact, much of my trip to Thailand will be awash with meeting women who work hard to help other women and girls find self-sufficiency. Poverty, war, lack of education, and health issues all work together to force women and girls (especially) out onto the streets--forced to beg, work in strip clubs, or sell themselves to earn enough to support themselves and their families. I am looking forward to the opportunity I'm going to have to meet some of the incredible people who have devoted their lives to eradicating human trafficking, to ministering to women and girls coming off the streets, out of the bars, and away from situations of abuse, and to helping to provide education, health care, and job training so that all might have the opportunities to support themselves with dignity.

It's just two short weeks. It's taken me several weeks of preparation to get ready to go. I imagine it'll be years before I have an inkling of what it all means once I return.

On Legitimacy

2008-02-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

Nope--not the baby kind. I am confident in my parentage and I certainly remember every second of my two children's births so I'm not talking about lineage legitimacy. I've been reflecting for a few days, however, on the sense of our own legitimacy. At what point do we feel like we really are who we are?

My husband and I got engaged after we'd only been dating about three weeks. Now, mind you, we'd been friends for about three months before (I'd been dating a friend of his--gasp). But still, all things considered, deciding we were going to be together the rest of our lives happened pretty darn quickly. We did have the benefit of a 2 1/2-year-long engagement, however, since we wanted to graduate from college before getting married. And it all worked out in the end--we're in our 21st year and definitely looking forward to the next who-knows-how-many-decades together. But we joke sometimes about how, when we were first engaged, we used to say, "We've been together for three months now--does that make us legitimate yet?" "We've been together longer than either of our longest prior relationships--does that make us legitimate yet?" On our 20th anniversary we decided that yep, we were pretty much legitimate now. But there was clearly a sense in our early stages that no one would take us seriously as a couple until we'd been together for some indeterminate period of time.

I am part of the Baby Buster generation--I was born a little after the generally agreed-upon final year of the Baby Boom. This meant that I grew up younger than almost everyone around me. I'm the youngest child, the youngest cousin, the youngest offspring in most of my parents' circle of friends, and so forth. Actually, it was many years into my adulthood before I finally stopped being the youngest one in almost every room. In my profession, age matters--and older is better. I was the only one of my friends who did a happy dance on my 30th birthday because, as I said, "People will finally take me seriously!" Actually, what I was to find was that didn't really start happening until I'd passed my 40th birthday. (We are very aware of ageism as a society in respect towards older adults feeling passed by for youth, but there's a very present and real ageism in our society in which younger adults aren't taken seriously either.) It's only been relatively recently that I began to feel as if people were taking me seriously as a legitimate adult.

I have a 17-year-old and a three-weeks-away-from-being-15-year-old. I've always known that I was a mother and really enjoyed that role, but I realized a little while ago that I've only recently begun taking myself seriously as a parent. I think part of the mental transition is that my most clear memories of my own parents come from my teenage years--so now that my kids are teenagers I can see myself through their eyes a little more clearly. I remember what I thought of my parents at that age, so I can pretty much guess what my kids think of me--which, admittedly, is a somewhat frightening mental process to undertake! Fortunately, I had a good relationship with my 'rents and my kids seem to feel that they have a pretty good relationship with my husband and I, so I think it's OK. I used to feel a sense of surprise when I handled a parental situation well, or when my kids did something right--as if it was purely by accident. But in the last couple of years I've sensed a change in myself. It's almost as if I approach situations thinking, "OK, I've done this before. I can do this again--maybe even do it well!" I've learned from past mistakes and just have a stronger sense of who I am in relation to my kids. I definitely feel myself approaching my parental role a little differently now--with more confidence than in the past--because I actually think of myself as a legitimate parent.

And then, finally, there's the quilting thing. I think I mentioned in a previous post about not being sure when I could finally call myself a "quilter". Like my husband and I in our engagement phase, I had a vague sense that I would only be able to legimately call myself a quilter when I got to some indeterminate point--was it completing a certain number of projects? Was it spending so much time per week? Was it having been doing it a certain number of years? Was it having reached a certain skill level? I didn't know--I couldn't have told anyone what I was waiting for. I would easily define my mother as a quilter, but I'd follow it up with "and I've made a few projects myself," or "and I'm exploring it a little bit" or some other casual, but obviously dismissive, comment about my own engagement in the sport of quilting. It's only been in the last year or so that I've actually been referring to myself as a quilter or quilt-maker. I actually said to someone just yesterday, "My mom and I are both quilters." And no, I couldn't entirely tell you what changed. But somewhere along the way I began to think of myself as a legitimate quilter.

Ultimately, I think, it comes down to this: I am who I am. I'm legitimate. I don't have to pass any particular tests or cross any imaginary boundaries to be able to be seen as who I am, either. In fact, one of the things that age has taught me is that people don't tend to think about me nearly as much as I used to think they did! (It takes us a LONG time to outgrow that teenage sense of everyone watching and judging every little move we make, doesn't it? Now I can say, with confidence, that if someone truly is watching and judging every little move I make, they need to just get a freaking life!)

Doesn't mean I'm not still aware of what image I may present to the world--and I still attend to that concern in my professional and personal life when it matters. But the rest of the time I can now say, with freedom, my husband and I were a legitimate couple when we went on our first date; I was a legitimate parent the second my first child was conceived; I AM a quilter, darn it, and have been since I fondled my first bolt of fabric; and I have certain wisdom and experience that others can learn from no matter what age I am. And I can learn from others no matter what age they are, because they're legitimate too.

So the next time I find myself thinking I don't have the credentials to call myself something or another, or that I don't entirely measure up to some imaginary rule, I will remind myself: I am legitimate. To paraphrase Descartes, "I do, therefore I am."

I Think I Can't...oops...

2008-01-30T11:53:00.000-05:00

Over lunch yesterday I was watching a recorded episode of Simply Quilts, and Alex's special guest was someone who does a lot of work with batiks. She was walking us through a relatively simple pattern for a quilt done with batiks, and I was thinking, "That's pretty--I could easily do that. Maybe I'll go online and download the pattern."

Just a few minutes later, Alex had the guest talk about some other quilts she'd brought along with her: a wide variety of patterns, although all using batiks. I haven't entirely been bitten by the batik bug yet--just a little bit nibbled--but I was struck by the beauty of the way the guest had put colors together and how she'd used relatively simple block patterns that really highlighted this unique fabric. Looking at one particularly nice one, I thought, "Boy, I wish I could figure out how to do stuff like that. I'm not good at that kind of thing."

Uh, what?

I stopped at the realization of what a negative message I'd just sent myself.

OK, here's where I give you a little backstory. I have led workshops and written program sessions on creativity. I have been invited as a guest speaker at women's events and asked specifically to speak on creativity. I've written countless articles (mostly for women and girls) on creativity. My saying is, "Creativity is only looking at something in a new way." My pet peeve is women who say they're not creative, and I expend a tremendous amount of my personal and professional energy in trying to help them see otherwise.

And yet my first thought when looking at someone else's creativity is, "I can't do that."

Doh.

Of course I can. I just have to get over myself. I do normally think of myself as a creative person--although my creativity tends to show itself in much more pragmatic ways. I'm able to view problems creatively, set up creative organizational structures for groups...basically, I'm able to look at things in a new way and help people find new ways to address issues. But artistic creativity has often felt like a completely different thing for me, and an area in which I'm less confident in my abilities.

I vividly recall my mother once saying to someone, "Oh, I'm not creative", completely discounting the several stacks of beautiful quilts she had made over the years. But simply because she typically followed patterns rather than designing her own, she saw what she did as something less than creative. And yet she took those patterns and made them her own--used her own fabric choices, tweaked sizes, or block placement, or border treatments--what turned out was not just a carbon copy of what the designer had originally created. And yet my Mom didn't see what she'd done as creative. And might I also comment here, raising 5 kids and several foster kids on limited budget and in a self-built house and subsistence farm in the country required a tremendous amount of creativity!

I realized a few years back that my admiration for my Mom's creativity and my sadness that she couldn't see that in herself is quite a bit of what has inspired me to preach the word of creativity to women and girls today. I firmly believe that a lot of women have been trained to see what we do as "less than"--we do crafts, not create art; we have hobbies, not artistic passions. We are very quick to discount our own talents and explain them away as something that's not really all that and a bag of chips. And that's why my knee-jerk-reaction to what I was watching on the television--"Oh, I can't do that, I'm not that creative"--really surprised me. Dang it, practice what you preach, girl.

Why is it that we relegate artistic creativity to the experts? Why do we relegate anything to the experts? How does someone become an expert, anyway? I'm not knocking artists--there are several quilt artists whose quilts I pore over in fascination and try to learn everything I can from seeing how they put fabric, stitches, and embellishment together. But why is it that I see what they do as something so completely removed from what I do?

I have to remind myself to change the tape in my head from "I wish I could" to "I want to--how do I get there?" and from "I can't do that" to "Gosh, I could do that. What do I need to learn to get to that place?"

I have often gotten called in as computer tech support for various members of my extended family and a fair number of people I work with. They all know I spend the better part of my life on my computer and use a wide variety of software, so they call or email me with questions. Most of the time, I can figure out their issues and help them solve them. One of them said to me once, "I'm sorry, but I've never been trained on any of this." To which I responded, "Neither have I. I'm just intensely curious, and positive that any software I buy should be able to do what I need it to do, so I just keep poking away at it until I figure it out."

I'm not afraid of computers, so I'm able to work easily with them. After watching the Simply Quilts episode yesterday and thinking through all of this, I realized I had to apply the same thinking to quilting. It's only fabric. So what if I screw something up? I can always try again. No one ever needs to see it. If I even end up throwing it out, is that such a big deal? And it's not nearly as expensive to replace as a crashed computer!

So I'm planning on embarking on a journey of getting over myself. Stop thinking in terms of "cans" and "can'ts" and thinking instead of "hows" and "let's trys". There is no such thing as failure...it's all "a learning experience". And if some projects end up hitting the trash can, that's just a good excuse to make another trip to my favorite local quilt store, isn't it? How can I lose?

....Pause....

2008-01-28T20:22:00.001-05:00

I did some machine quilting tonight. That's something I always approach with great trepidation. My skills are pretty bad, but yes, they're improving with use. They're also improving because I'm no longer assuming it's a skill I should be able to pick up quickly. Rather, I'm being much more intentional about playing around on a practice quilt sandwich (if you're not "in the know", that doesn't involve ham on rye, which would do unspeakable things to my Janome; my quilt sandwich is a small practice quilt made out of fat quarters I'd decided I'd probably never use so they may as well give their lives to me improving my stitches). I'm also s...l...o...w...i...n...g down. No longer do I blithely stuff my next quilt victim under the needle and plow away at top speed. Now I roll a little at a time, gently easing my quilt friend a few inches at a time while entreating it to play nice with me.

And every now and again, I pause. Take a deep breath. Regroup. Reposition my hands, take another deep breath, roll my shoulders, remind myself to relax, and move on.

Hmmm. Yet another life lesson.

I started back to work today after my three month sabbatical. Last night I found myself dreading what I would find waiting for me. I'd had a few hints here and there (I hadn't completely cut myself off from communication) but I wasn't sure how I'd react to it, or if there were nasty, hidden surprises. But the day went along as if I'd never been gone. I caught up on projects, moved some other ones along, began a couple of new ones, and even found myself feeling excited again over certain possibilities. Part of what made the day go well, I think, was that I had very conscientiously taken the time to pause--something I haven't always been good at doing. Went to the gym early, before work--an active pause but a pause nonetheless. Throughout the day, occasionally reached down to pet my faithful doggie laying at my side--a pause with a very grateful recipient. Allowed myself quick 30-second daydreams of what quilting I'd get done after work. I was very careful not to slide into my usual "head-down-blinders-on-nose-to-the-grindstone" mentality. And I was just as productive, if not more so, than usual. What a surprise.

So after my workday was through, I sat down with one of my machine quilting books, reminded myself of some technique tips, practiced on the aforementioned quilt sandwich--none of which were things I usually did before--then began work on my wallhanging. It's a simple quilting pattern--that's all I can handle right now. Since the wallhanging looks a bit like a mosaic wall in an Italian villa, I'm doing vines climbing from bottom to top with leaves hanging off in random intervals. I chalked it out just to have an idea of spacing, but I'm not being rigid about following my own design. After all, the chalk will erase and no one will know what my original intentions were, and there's great beauty in that fact. But still, I chalked one out on the practice quilt just to make sure I'd know where I was going from point A to point B before working on the real mccoy. And then I began.

Every few inches, I'd stop with needle down, breathe, roll my shoulders, reposition my hands, glance up at a distant point to relax my eyes, and then slowly start in again. Another few inches, breathe. Another few, breathe. And after I had only one complete vine done...stop. Quit while I'm ahead. Don't put some arbitrary deadline in my head. Just...breathe. I've done enough for the night--I've gotten my quilt fix and made progress. I can pick it up again tomorrow evening.

I remember my flute teacher telling me once that, in music notation, the rest is the most important thing--it allows the notes to be more of themselves, more prominent, heard more clearly. Without rests, the notes will just run into themselves, tripping one after the other, and the listener will get exhausted. But the rest makes you stop and really hear what it is you're listening to. In quilting, even the most experienced, excellent machine quilter takes frequent pauses to allow him or herself to regroup. Without those rests, the stitches would tumble into one another, skipping and tangling, and one would end up with a mess rather than a work of art.

Why wouldn't daily life be the same way?

My quilt has been gently moved off to the side of my sewing cabinet and the machine is shut down. I'm going to catch up on emailing some friends and spending time with my family. A pause is a beautiful thing.

The Joy of Community

2008-01-25T10:15:00.000-05:00

I spend much of my life alone.

OK, so that sounds pathetic, but it's actually just a statement of fact. I work from home--so when the kids go off to school and the husband heads out the door for his office, I have blissful solitary peace. Well, almost solitary--the dog waits patiently for me to finally ensconce myself at my computer so that she can curl herself up in her little bed at my side. She gives me dirty looks if she thinks I'm dawdling--she likes her schedule. The cat comes to visit when he feels the need to remind me that his food bowl is empty and would I please take care of that RIGHT NOW. But other than furry friends, and the occasional visit from UPS or the meter-reader, I spend my day by myself. And I'm perfectly okay with that. There's a strong hermit gene that runs through my family--we're all serious introverts--so the fact that I've been working from home for about 7 or 8 years now suits me just fine.

And most days, email relationships feel like real conversation. I'm happy enough with literary friendships rather than face-to-face meet-ups most times. But then I go to my quilt guild meeting and realize how much I've missed being actually in the same room with other people who have gathered together around a shared interest and simply want to have a good time.

I've been a part of my guild--or, rather, "bee" since we don't have bylaws and don't see the need for them at the moment, gol dang it--for about two years, but my attendance was very hit and miss until this fall. I travel for work and somehow my travel seemed to frequently fall on that second Tuesday of the month. Or the kids would have stuff going on. Or whoever was assigned to make dinner that night (notably, the offspring) would manage to drag out a very simple recipe for several hours and I wouldn't be able to get out of the house on time. And although I found it mildly frustrating, I also hadn't connected with enough people in the guild yet to truly feel part of things (see the introvert comment above) so I didn't miss it so much.

But this fall I managed to attend several meetings in a row, including our Christmas banquet, and ended up with a couple of guild members in a class I took at our local quilt store during the early part of my sabbatical. Fellow guild members were beginning to learn my name and I was beginning to learn theirs. I was being greeted by name, and able to greet others by name, when I entered the room. One person began saving a seat for me. Suddenly, I was part of things. I had a community.

And then last month it started looking like I wasn't going to be able to go to my guild meeting due to conflicting family schedules, and I almost cried. At that moment, I realized how important those meetings had become to me. I bribed my daughter to let me go to my guild meeting instead of taking her to her optional event (she's easy--all it takes is the promise of a trip to the bookstore!) and later told my entire family that from now on, they are not to plan anything involving me on guild meeting nights. They need to work around me that one night a month, contrary to the rest of the month when mostly I work around them.

I felt guilty for all of about five minutes, then I realized how important having a community is to us as human beings. I have other communities, of course--I'm very fortunate to have a close and fun extended family on both sides of my marriage, and my husband, kids, and I have no end of great times together. I have a church community and a work community too, but while they're both wonderfully supportive they also both come with responsibilities that occasionally start feeling overwhelming. My quilt guild, on the other hand, is just a fun bunch of women that enjoy quilting. We expect nothing of one another than just to laugh, admire one another's work, and have a good time.

I've heard horror stories of some guilds that still have the old-fashioned quilt police and members who make snarky remarks about one another's quilts, but my guild is not like that. I wouldn't bother going if it was. We spend the bulk of our meetings laughing, and every single quilt that is shown gets it's fair share of "oohs and aahs" and applause, regardless of the skill level or quilting style of the person showing. I can attest to that because mine are definitely at the beginner end of the spectrum and I occasionally have very visible errors--and yet I still get applause! And as hokey as it sounds, that feels really good.

So I no longer feel guilty about prioritizing my guild meetings. If I had a card-playing group or a book club, I suspect it would fit that same need. But for now, my bee will suit me just fine.

Great Expectations

2008-01-24T18:13:00.000-05:00

I was recently discussing with my husband my surprise at discovering how much satisfaction I was deriving from quilting. I was trying to express that it was more than just enjoying myself doing it--it was more than appreciating the aesthetics of pretty fabrics or the sense of pride from a nicely completed project. There was something deeply fulfilling and extremely relaxing about the process for me.

Later, it struck me. Fabric doesn't expect anything from me.

I am in the stage of life that most of us hit sooner or later--lots of people needing lots of things from us lots of the time. Work, family, extended family, volunteer responsibilities...Like many women (or men) my age I'm sure, I sometimes go through weeks or whole months where I feel as if I'm constantly disappointing people that I can't do more, be more, accomplish more. Logically, I know no one probably actually feels that way about me--that's just my own stuff to deal with. But there it is--my overly-responsible-guilt-genes won't listen to my logic-genes, darn them. I wish they would.

But when I'm alone in my sewing room with stacks of fabric under my hands, I don't feel guilt. Or, at least, I don't when I haven't promised anyone I'll make them something--but that's another blog entry. I managed to finish all promised projects several weeks ago so lately it's just been me and whatever the heck I wanted to do whenever the heck I wanted to do it. And all that lovely fabric. With no expectations of me.

Fabric doesn't ask to borrow the car or forget to turn in homework. Fabric doesn't need me to meet a deadline (which is why I absolutely refuse to be part of a round robin right now!). More importantly, fabric doesn't expect me to behave a certain way, believe particular things, or be a particular kind of person. Fabric needs nothing from me other than my adoration--which I'm happy to give.

The first few weeks of my sabbatical, I treated quilting much as I had all my work deadlines--I worked in a frenzy to clear my shelf of as many of the UFOs that had been gathering dust as possible. I gave out a slew of Christmas gifts and when the last UFO got the binding sewed on I breathed a deep sigh of relief. Now I didn't have any UFOs expecting my attention! I had no unfulfilled promises to other people sitting on my shelf! I was free!

Before I rushed into the next project, though, I had to stop and remind myself that I had no deadlines now. There were no expectations about the next quilt. I could take my time and maybe even do a slightly more complicated project rather than choosing everything by how fast I could get it done. I had to keep stopping myself from mentally planning fifteen different Christmas gifts for next year. I repeatedly told myself, "Quilt for yourself. Just see what happens." And I suddenly slowed down, and saw the light.

It is possible, in some cases, to define my own boundaries. Although people may have expectations of me, I don't always need to meet those expectations. But to be honest, in my particular case, I know perfectly well that very few people have expectations of me that are higher than the ones I have of myself. And I need to cut myself some serious slack. I joked with my personal trainer (see the introductory blog post) that I tend to be an "all or nothing" kind of person. If I can't do something full out, I tend to end up not doing it at all. I fully immerse myself into things until I burn out. I tried to be SuperMom/ SuperEmployee/ SuperVolunteer until I found myself getting SuperCranky.

My trainer gave me words of wisdom about the gym that I've begun applying in other parts of my life: Something is better than nothing. OK, so I may not have time for a full 60 minute workout. But if I can get there for 20 minutes, that's 20 minutes more than if I hadn't gone at all. I may not be able to give my son the car every time he wants it, but I can give it to him some of the time and ask him to find rides the other times. I may not be able to meet every need in my volunteer responsibilities, but I can prioritize which ones I am able to meet. My sabbatical is over so I won't have as much time for quilting as before--but something is better than nothing. I've retrained myself to think in 10 minute chunks rather than gnashing my teeth because I can't get hours at a time.

I've begun working on lowering my expectations of myself, and on redefining my ability to meet other people's expectations. I'll obviously continue to struggle with this all the time--I am who I am, after all. Meanwhile, when I start feeling overwhelmed by the world I'll remember how good it feels to pet the fabric in my stash and I'll retreat to the place where no one expects anything of me. And I'll just be.

By way of introduction

2008-01-24T17:30:00.001-05:00

I'm just coming off of a three-month sabbatical. During the sabbatical I had a work-related writing project to occupy my time, but I had also set myself the goal of getting myself into better physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Physical health is straightforward enough--sign up with a personal trainer and be attentive to what I'm putting into my body. Check, check. But emotional and spiritual health? Hmmm.

At the same time, I knew I'd be spending more time quilting simply because I'd have more time. What I didn't realize is how large a role the quilting would play in attending to my emotional and spiritual health. It wasn't until my sabbatical was drawing to a close that I realized how much I had learned from the practice of quilting itself. This blog will be an ongoing exploration into those learnings. Without trying to turn quilting into some sort of metaphysical experience (there are any number of ways other people might have similar experiences), I simply want to offer my own reflections on life through needle and thread.

My first foray into quilting was in my late 20s or, maybe, early 30s (isn't it sad when you're old enough that entire decades begin to flow into one another, rather indistinguishable?). I was living at home again briefly with my folks while my husband was off to boot camp for the reserves. Since I'd always loved coloring in geometric design coloring books in high school and college--nothing turned me on more than opening that brand new box of crayons and seeing their sharp little points with all the artistic possibilities in front of me--it seemed like the jump to using fabric would be a quick and easy one.

Ahem.

My mom ended up finishing that wallhanging for me. Although choosing the pattern and being able to put fabric into a colorful order gave me goosebumps, slogging through the technical detail of quarter-inch seams and "pressing-not-ironing" was a little too much for my, at the time, very impatient self. Coloring in Dover coloring books was much more of an immediate gratification high.

Enter a change of life. Years later I had a full-time professional career, a husband with his own full-time professional career, and two older-elementary-aged children. As I grew more fully in the role of mother, I found myself wanting to connect with my own past and learn more about how I was like--and unlike--my own parents. Growing up, my parents led us through a sequence of what I now refer to as "Craft Epochs". At various times we'd tumbled rocks and made jewelry, my Mom being the recipient of the bulk of our dubious efforts--thank God it was the 70s and ugly jewelry was all the rage; my Dad built a homemade loom for weaving, then a potter's wheel with a ten-ton-cement wheel you turned with your feet (woe betide the child who tried to stop it without help); leather tooling; candle dipping; string art; print-making.... the list goes on. Now an adult, I found myself going through my own series of artistic epochs: song writing, various musical instruments, painting terra cotta planter pots, jewelry making. Although I enjoyed each in its own way, every one felt like just a hobby--something that was moderately entertaining and a nice break from my routine life, but nothing that really defined moments in time for me.

A few years ago, my father was ailing and I was spending several weeks over the summer with my mom, helping out. I gave myself the excuse that having my mom teach me to quilt (again) would help her keep her mind of my Dad's failing health but, in reality, I think it was keeping my own mind off it and desperately needing that connection of mother-to-daughter in a difficult time.

Whatever it was, this time it caught. I completed my first wallhanging and ended up painting the entire first floor of our house so that it would go with the wallhanging now prominently displayed. I can look back at that now and know that when you decorate your house to work with a particular quilt, you're truly a quilter! In any case, once the painting was done, I was off and running.

Or, rather, haltingly stumbling along.

I tell people "I've been quilting for 7 years, but only quilting for 2 years". Although I completed that first wallhanging in 2001, the next several years were very hit-and-miss for me in terms of actually sitting at my sewing machine. I didn't have adequate space or time to really be productive, and so although I enjoyed quilting I also found it very frustrating.

In 2006 we moved to a new house and I was able to designate a larger area as my quilting workplace and, more importantly, it now remains set up at all times. I'm more able to work on a project 10 minutes at a time rather than having to take 30 minutes just to get myself set up. My kids have grown less dependent upon me and, indeed, my son now frequently strands me at home without my car--which means I now sometimes have whole chunks of time with nothing calling to me except my Janome. The first part in the new house that I finished unpacking and setting up was the sewing area. I began to feel productive once again.

And then came sabbatical. I was able to finish off several old projects (UFOs) that had been languishing--some for years--as well as complete several new projects. I still spent time writing every day, and in the gym, attending to my other goals, but I began to schedule in quilting time just as I did everything else on my calendar.

Although for years I struggled with calling myself "a quilter", I now do it gladly. I'm not a good quilter, mind you, and I will be very candid with my mistakes and frustrations as I go. I still feel very beginner, although may now be finally dabbling my toes in intermediate. However, I often go to sleep planning quilts in my head, and I check the mailbox hoping for a fabric catalogue. So the fever has caught.

So there it is. You can see the stash of my experiences piled up on the shelf. Time to see what we can make of it.