One of hte most beautiful autumns

Driving on Rte. 28, a two-lane road, lined with trees in greater proportion than the various homes and commercial areas along that 15 mie stretch, I was constantly in awe of the magnificence that has fallen upon Cape Cod for the last three or four weeks.  Even the years I lived upstate in New York where brilliant foliage is  expected, I sometimes saw great hillsides blazing in these reds, oranges, and golds and bronze, I never felt so enveloped with gorgeousness.  Of course I have no photos of those specific trees because I was driving and I didn't have my camera with me anyway.

The conjoining of crisp nights and mild days (although yesterday was bitingly chilly) has given us an autumn that blazes in brilliance. I kept interrupting my passenger's conversation to exclaim on the beauty. I wasn't trying for silent awe but I was excited to be able to share the spectacle with another person. Usually we have the nasty end of some hurricane (last year, memorably, it was Sandy) that tears the leaves from the trees, or the balance of chilly and warm just doesn't happen.  This year is a gift. I'm delighted that tomorrow I have another 10 mile drive on a two-lane road.  Much too soon the leaves will fall and then the snow will also fall (not too much, I hope) although it, too, has its kind of breathtaking beauty.

New England Quilter's Gathering

A Quilter's Gathering is an annual quilt show inviting a number of New England quilters and quilt guilds to participate.  For the past couple of years it has been held in Manchester, Vermont at a convention/exhibition Radisson hotel. I went with the Bayberry Quilter's guild yesterday, boarding a bus at 7:30 and returning about 6:30.  The quilts shown here are not typical of those at the exhibit; they are ones I managed to  get photos of before the battery of my camera  quit.  I was flustered by the camera problem and didn't write down the name of the quilter.  I like the Warhol-inspired set of  faces , the colors and the skill using different fabrics.  I recently tried such an effort and found it devilishly difficult.

I like the selvage use in the tree -- this tree was trimmed with Halloween symbols because superstition was one theme of a groups of quilts and because the show was Thursday, Friday and today (Saturday) spanning Halloween.  This is not a holiday I care to celebrate so I was turned off by the embellishments.  But I was happy to see the selvages used. The same woman also made a cloak and a hood using selvages.  I am regular reader of Karen Griska's blog, (see side bar).  And I enjoy using selvages in quilts and am dreaming of making one later in the winter.  

The show has an aura of New England about it; the earth, sky, forest tones of the fabrics, the frequent traditional block styles, a certain quiet strength and reticence. For me the most beautiful quilt was called "The Shell Collector" by Bethanne Nemesh of Allentown, PA, almost a whole cloth quilt, a central panel of quilting that showed her two children at the ocean and a border that showed seashells and such -- all in light blue and sandy beige, all expertly home machine quilted.  The only pieces were an interior border of triangles to separate the central square from the border. 

An astonishing quilt was called "Insanity" a compulsively pieced, reversible quilt with tiny stars about 3 inchs square in gold and dark blue, made by Dan and Carol Perkins of Rangeley, Maine. Dan did the piecing and Carol the quilting.  It had 13,500 pieces of fabric, none of it paper pieced, points of the stars perfect (I think, I certainly did not examine every one).  I just hope they had time to get out of the house and have a social life last winter when the quilt was being made.  It was jaw dropping, I'll admit.  But the overall pattern was too much like printed wall paper for my taste.

From a vender I purchased the catalog/book of  the 2013 Quilt National exhibit and spent the drive home reading the artists statements and looking at those important art quilts and thinking about the quilt world where in textiles are used so variously -- all the  fairly "quilty" quilts I saw during the day and all the works of art, each attempting to make a statement of some profundity, at Quilt National.

Karen Eckmeier, the lucky lizard quilter

Karen Eckmeier, was the speaker today at the Bayberry Quilt Guild meeting. She has won big awards for her work at the annual Houston Quilt show.  As she talked it would seem her work is simple and easy for anyone to do -- I don't think so. When I went up at intermission to look at the pieces she had brought along they are majorly complicated.  She says she just plays with fabric ad builds her tiny towns easily -- with roofs, houses an windows.  Hardly "just".  These are highly complex constructions, arranged with a great design sense and a wonderful eye for color.  They are balanced, whimsical, extremely detailed and breath taking when one is standing close to them.





Besides her tiny towns she talked about her landscapes -- which are, indeed small quilts.  They are comprehensible to me,  I can see how she does them and I can see the appeal of "accidental" landscapes, not knowing at the outset just what kinds of curves and lines you are going to cut -- but first you arrive at your work table with a selection of fabrics that will work well together and you experiment for a few years to get the sense of just what kinds of curving lines will work. 
Her work is fascinating and I can well understand why it was award prizes.  Her talk did not at all convince me this is something I want to try.  

The guild's theme for next summer's show will be "scrap quilts".  Delightfully during the show and tell period at the meeting 80% of the quilts shown were scrap quilts --- not because of the theme but because that's what the women happened to make.  Many were stunning.  I think the next guild show will be a  delight -- the more so since I like scrap quilts more than any other kind of quilts.

Busy but Beautiful Autumn

Blame this unusually beautiful autumn for my lack of posts to this blog.  Also blame how busy I have been - but part of that has been taking every opportunity I could to walk on the beach, until today, it has been barefoot although earlier in the week my toes got very chilled. So it's time for the sneakers again  and that's a sign.  The rose hips are a sign, in fact, this photo was take about a month ago and the hips have had enough chilly night to have shriveled and lost their smooth skinned loveliness -- not unlike a number of women I know.

I've had little time for quilting because I am very busy with the Academy for Lifelong Learning at the Cape Cod Community college, taking classes and teaching my writing skills class. Besides which this is the time my very, very competent committee is helping edit the submissions for the 2013 "Reflections" anthology of student writing. It's both fun and frustrating -- fun because people have such a variety of things to write about, frustrating because the rules of punctuation and, in too many cases, good grammar have long been forgotten -- shriveled, perhaps like the rose hips. That's why I decided few years ago to teach a skills class.  But I will quickly admit that some of the committee members are teaching me rules of punctuation and grammar that even the good old Word program seems to ignore. 

Quilting has not entirely gone bye-the-bye.  I've made blocks for my guild's BOM and for swaps -- mostly black and white blocks because collecting them leads to interesting quilts.  And I have a couple of special projects in the works, one a double sided batik quilt with dark, rich colors on one side and light and bright colors on the other.  It's about half done.  I love best the active part of choosing which color will go beside which. Although these are not scraps of batiks but 5 inch squares, it is the same process as scrap quilting when every piece added is a decision. 

Paula Nedelstern, Bayberry Quilters Guild

 

This breath taking quilt was on display at the Bayberry Quilt Guild meeting today although with a couple others of Paula Nadelstern's latest kaleidoscope quilts. I first heard her speak and saw her early quilts nearly 30 years ago.  She found her love and her specific skill and has pursued it all this time, making one quilt at a time -- in her two bedroom apartment in the Bronx with the kitchen knee deep in fabric.  She is a an easy and informative speaker, her enthusiasm for her quilts and for teaching her method which sounds easy enough but is, many have found, devilishly difficult to pull off.

She has a wonderful informative website where one can see many more of her works, she's written three major books about how to make kaleidoscope quitls, and she has become enamored of the actual kaleidoscopes and had invited the Cape's largest vender of kaleidoscopes to the meeting with many of his wares. 

In the above quilt, as you can see quickly, she is playing with chaos, with breakin the images -- this is new and for me a little unsettling especially as she showed beside her magnificent "Akron Quilt" which is in wonderful blues  with three large kaleidoscopes, all whole and magnificent.  It was truly a great pleasure to her her talk and see her quilts -- many of which she showed as slides, of course. The one that was selected one o the 100 best quilts of the 20th century she has given to the American Folk Art Museum.

Just bits and pieces

My sewing room is like rush hour traffic, all starts and stops.  The only think I've finished in the last month besides  few single blocks to swap is this askew log cabin wall hanging.  Each 12 inch block has 30 pieces of fabric and as you can see I chose gray and hot pink.  It was fun to make but, truthfully, it won't hang on the wall very long because every once in a while when I walk past it not really looking at it, my peripheral vision goes a haywire and I feel a bit off kilter.

Right now I have two quilts in need of quilting, not my favorite thing to do, one that needs a lot of rethinking and fixing, and a reversible batik quilt made of 5 inch charms, light on one side, dark on the other, about 1/4 put together.   I'm liking it and it's easy enough but time is not available enough.

That's okay, in the winter season quilting is a part time thing. I have the set of embroidered blocks about a third done -- I must begin doing them again so I can get the rest finished over the winter by working on them a bit each day  -- well, a few days a week -- so I'll have it completed by early next summer as I want it for a show quilt next August.

First Best Friend

By now reminders of my age come not in a trickle as they have for years but in more of a steady drizzle. A little lightening strike happened about ten days ago with the death of Linda Oatman Townsend who was my first best friend. That was first grade (we had no kindergarten in our small school). She became Lin in later life but is always Linda to me. Only 35 or so children in our first grade class and, of them, a large proportion were together right through 12th grade. Only Linda and I went to college from high school. (A few others did later on). Always friends but not "best" friends as the years went on.  She lived in town and I lived on a farm; I couldn't go to her house to play although once or twice she came home with me.

Interests changed, personalities firmed up, boy friends intervened.  In Indiana University we lived in different dorms and never saw one another. Not really again until out 40th high school reunion.  By the 50th (a few years ago) the internet had entered our lives and Linda took on the role of communicator. She had retained strong ties to her home town and to many of our classmates, as I had not. She began emailing monthly updates. A great many of them spoke or cancer, heart attacks, deaths of class members. She, herself, was frail, with COPD. I knew a little about her career s a teacher in Covina, California, but not much.

She went into the hospital to have a hip replacement replaced.  Did well enough to go to rehab a few days after the surgery, then collapsed and died. I have not heard except a conjecture of internal bleeding, a culpable surgeon or hospital.  Whichever, she is being buried in her hometown near her parents.  She had a full and active live in Covina but she was a hometown girl. Our lives have barely touched each other for over 50 years, but I feel nostalgic and wish we had stayed more in touch. The several other deaths of classmates have not struck such a doleful note for me.  And, of course, the sense that she shouldn't have died just yet is sobering. It can happen to any of us.