Rolling Right Into a Ditch

Sometimes when you're on a roll, as I was with the selvage jacket, you suddenly roll right into a ditch and - phfft! - dead stop. That's what's happened this week. Long days at work, so that I get home later than I like and am always hungry, because I don't really eat lunch -- a 90 calorie container of yogurt is NOT sustenance, it's just a gesture to recognize the tum-tum has its needs too. So I eat when I get home and, feeling a big tired, I give myself time to read quite a lot and sip a slow cup of tea at the end. Then it's DARK! We're two whole months away from the winter solstice but it's getting dark earlier and earlier -- I know the time will change but that doesn't make much difference in these dark days when there's very likely to be cloud covers.

Well, being a farm girl, born and bred, when it's dark the chickens go to roost and the day is essentially over -- you know, we get older and return to the roots of our earliest training, extraneous layers tend to peel away and we get down to the essence. If you don't believe me, you're under 65 and haven't carefully observed those who are in the over 65 category. Not that we don't learn a lot by living our lives, but it's the paint on the canvas. Without the canvas it would be so many flakes of pigment scattering away in the wind. ... Hmm, I've got this far with this metaphor and haven't thought it through further. It's best to stop -- perhaps this should have been a post on my other blog. But then I have a different subject for it this evening. Come check it out too.

Too much sewing

May I indulge for just a little bit about this wonderful batch of fat quarters (and some larger piees) from a private swap. It's just wonderful! I love having so many great new fabrics to add to my stash. The other half of the swap says she's pleased too; I hope so. It makes me very happy! It doesn't exactly make me a "cheap date" but I really don't need to win mega-millions to be very happy.

As a cautionary note, let me explain why I have been limping all day. In my job I use a foot pedal constantly to listen to the stuff I'm transcribing. The pedals are similar to piano pedals. Yesteray while working on that selvage jacket I spent 4 to 5 straight hours at my sewing machine using the pedal which is a different sort of pedal. I prefer to sew barefoot. I only work at transcribing barefoot a few really miserable days of the summer. It took only a little reflelction to realize that the serious aching in the ball of my right foot today when I walk is from a protesting set of muscles that was sadly and relentlessly overused yesterday. It triggered a memory and I realized this had happened at least once before. From now on I'll try to remember to keep my shoes on when I'm sewing for lonvg unbroken periods of time.

Selvage jacket

The kennel quilts will have to wait probably until next weekend. In my cleaning spassm, putting away summer, getting out winter clothes, I came upon a sweatshirt purchased early last summer for the specific purpose of turning it into a quilted light weight jacket. About 18 months ago at a quilt show I met a group of women from a Connecticut quilt guild who all were wearing quilted jackets. Each was different but all had been made from the same basic pattern, or non-pattern. in fact One took the time to explain how easy it was. I have kept her words in mind for all this time and now I'm borrowing her directions, which she said where not original to her group but was unsure where they had originated. Start with a over size sweatshirt. It has to be at least somewhat over size because it gets smaller in the making. Thus I had purchased a large sweatshirt. When I found it folded with other things I tried it on and, indeed, it was large enough to be uncomfortably sloppy worn as is. Then a coupled days ago I had the ah-ha! eureka! moment. It can be a selvage jacket. I have lots of selvages because 3 or 4 wonderful women, whom I've never met in person, have sent me bags of selvages.

Here are the steps accomplished so far today -- and it took a good part of the day.
1. cut off the bottom ribbing.
2. cut off the cuff ribbing on the sleeves.
3. cut off the neck ribbing
4. find the exact center front and cut straight up
5. cut up each side at the seam and continue cutting the sleeve seam
6. open out the sweatshirt. [This is the feeling of skinning an animal for its pelt, but is a lot less bloody and requires no killing [obviously] Much better of the soul and the karma.
7. Then sew chosen design onto the sweatshirt. I started with a sleeve as you can see. I continued until I had sewn selvages all over the sweatshirt, and then I sewed extra pieces along the shoulder seams and on the inset seams of the sleeves. And now, I have turned the sweatshirt with the inside out and will prepare to put it back together along the side nad sleeve seams, as soon as I trim them neatly and pin them careful in place.

After that I will take a 1/2 yard piece of fabric, I haven't decided what color to use yet but it may be a black print because I wear a lot of black pants once summer is over. I will make bias strips and bind all around the outside, including, of course, the sleeve edges. Then I will probably make tabs for buttons [because I really don't want to make button holes] and will sew on four [probably] largish buttons.

Oh, and before that I'll add some of the bias to the inside shoulder and side seams and enclose them so that the inside has a nice neat look too. I've been thinking about pockets because I really like jackets with pockets. Haven't made up my mind, but I might make selvage covered patch pockets for both sides of the front -- we'll see. Probably 3 or 4 more hours and I'll be done.

Of course it didn't HAVE to be selvages, it could have been random patches, crazy quilt style or anything a quilter's fertile imagination could dream up. As "they" say, the possibilities are endless.

Kennel Quilts

Never heard of kennel quilts? Or maybe your dog has one, but by default -- some worn out rag of a quilt [one of those cheap Chinese Smithsonian Collection rip-offs that are still in all the big box stores?] I think I will make a couple or few kennel quilts this weekend. In my quilt guild newsletter was a note from a woman whose belonged canine companion has got to dog heaven. She is volunteering at a shelter as a foster care taker and says that she would like donations of kennel quilts, approximately 14x18 for the floor of a kennel cage. She says having quilts makes the doggies more adoptable. I wonder about that but it surely makes them happier to have something softish to lie down on. And their lives are not full of joy in a kennel.

I awoke this morning with an ah-ha PING in the brain. I have a UFO that surfaced in housecleaning a couple weekends ago. I've put a little time into it but not worked up any enthusiasm. It was an idea that just didn't work out. BUT I could take some of the squares and some pieces of older ugly fabric -- I've been trying to get rid of what once was appealing but with time has become ugly. What to use for batting? The note writer suggested an old comforter but I don't have anything to sleep under in my house except quilts. While the brain was buzzing I realized that I have a couple of terry towels, one has turned ugly in my eyes and another turned spotty in the washing machine with bleach added at the wrong time. They can be cut up and become filling. So I shall tackle that idea this weekend and come up with a few kennel quilts and my ever thrifty tendencies will be satisfied that the UFO can be put to some use. Pictures anon.

Raising the Bar - or following fads

November Issue of Quilter's Newsletter Magazine arrive some days ago and I delved into while I was eating dinner. I don't usually read editorial comments which usually just preview articles. But Jan Magee, the editor, says, "A swing toward intricate quilting and elaborate embellishment is raising the bar for those quilt makers who wish to enter contests and win." I totally agree. I have no ambitions to enter contests and win, though I like praise as much as the next person.

I am both bothered and perplexed about this trend in the quilt world which I have been a part of and watching since the 1970s. Even with long arm quilting -- which is mostly done as a paying service by the owners of the machines and usually is not done by the maker of the quilt top -- the making of an especially notable quilt has become a very, very labor intensive creative endeavor. And if one does the quilting, on home machine or by hand plus the embellishment a quilt can account for vsst numbers of hours. It can also be quite expensive. Who are the women with the time and money for this craft? I know quite a few of the well known names are indeed professional quilters who create and teach, sometimes design fabric lines, write books - it is their life. Okay, I understand that and I enjoy watching their work change and develop for many of them are truly artists or certainly highly admirable craftspeople.

But what of the aspiring ones? Where do they find the time? Are most stay-at-home women/wifes/mothers who have the time and the expensive machines and use the expensive fabrics - or dye their own -- and buy the expensive notions? This is a kind of "monied leisure class" [although I understand they're working hard] that is unknown to the majority of American women who must live in two-income families or if not married must work at full time jobs. Can those working women hope to accomplish the kind of quilt Magee means? Maybe if that's all they do in their spare time for a couple of years.

But what about all that quilting and embellishment? I also read Quilting Arts Magazine and I am often aghast at all the stuff it takes to embellish even small "art" quilts. Also I'm also aware of the popularity of many other kinds of crafts, most especially scrap-booking and the renewal of interest in knitting and various kinds of beading. All this creativity is a necessary outlet for women with imagination who otherwise feel trapped in a world of things -- all the junk at malls, all the gadgets, all the prepared foods so that even cooking is not a creative outlet unless one makes a conscious effort to make it so. Isn't all that embellishment and even all the fussy quilting essentially a fad? A make-work way for commerce to sell more stuff? More beads, more special threads, more special fabrics, more notions, more expensive machines? There was a fad of sergers a while ago, now it's felting machines and there are other things at the periphery of my attention. And the expensive long arm quilting machines!!

Aren't we women, as always, treated like by commercial like dupes? "They" think we'll buy every kind of cream to make our skins look young, every kind of diet pill, every new fashion fad, every new kitchen gadget, every new sewing/quilting gadget. Are our quilts more beautiful, truly more creative, more expressive of ourselves because we've added a bunch of beads, because we stipple quilted the thing until it stands alone instead of lying nice and soft and fluffy on our beds to keep us or our children and grandchildren warm?

Frankly, I'm tired of going to quilt shows and looking at unnessarily heavy quilting, looking a beads in the center of every flower, and all sort of stuff bonded on. Let's hear it for self-expression but let's look at who's telling us what's "in", who's influencing our choices. And let's think about what we really LIKE to make and have in our homes.

The O.P. Mother-in-law phenomenon

O.P. stands for "Other People's" because this is about lovely things that have come to me in part because they once belonged to someone's mother-in-law. Saturday the mail brought a package from a penpal, who I've never met in person, but a correspondence compadre who sent me this silk scarf and another beautiful one that I was less successful photographing. They, along with others, had belonged to her mother-in-law, deceased for some time. We've been writing long enough that she intuited that I like scarves - I have a whole bureau drawer full, all divided by color into plastic bags so I can find what I want. I was surprised and delighted and began thinking of other O.P. mother-in-law possessions.

These two bracelets belonged to women who had died before I ever heard of them. The art deco bracelet with a filigree bell which I think is the wonderful, walked into my house over 40 years ago. A friend had been with her husband cleaning out the husband's mother's home. "Do you like this?" she asked. "I hate it." It really wasn't her style. "I love it," I said. "It's yours," she said. I've loved it all these years.

The other bracelet was a trade. I had a few quilt hanging on a clothes line when I was having a moving sale before coming to NYC. A couple in a very loaded van stopped. The wife wanted one of the quilts. "But we've just spend our cash on gas," the husband said. They explained they'd cleaned out his mother's house in Michigan and were taking all their van would hold home. "I know," said the wife. She disappeared into the van and came back after a while with this bracelet. "It's good silver. Would you trade the quilt for the bracelet?" I did. And I've worn it with pleasure for about 25 years.
junkjunkjunl This last silver bracelet I add although it never belonged to a mother-in-law; it was a bit of the spoils when I was helping clean out another deceased woman's belongings. It is Mexican from the era -- art deco again -- when William Spratling was reviving the Mexican silver industry in Taxco. It is not his design, it has a different name stamped on the back. I do not wear it as often, only because it just fits my wrist and has a clasp I cannot explain but which is difficult to undo because of how snugly it fits. I think it's an amazing bit of silversmithing.

When Helen Squires spoke at the Empire Quilt Guild she showed a very beautiful quilt and told the story of acquiring it: She had a quilt shop in northern New Jersey. One day a man came in and said, "I have a quilt I want you to buy." He produced this astonishing quilt. "How much do you want for it?" she asked. He said something incredibly low. She bought it. Why was he so willing to part with it? He was married to a second wife and, said Helen, "Did you ever hear someone say, 'If she made it, it goes out'?" So it's not only mothers-in-laws, loved or not.

Selvage quilt once more

I really do like this selvage quilt and I'm restraining myself -- with some difficulty -- about starting another. So much else to do first!!! So this is the last time I'll post this -- the photo was taken by a good photographer with a good camera at our show and tell last week. She even manages to flatter me.

Cindy Russell is both photographer and web master for the Empire Quuilers Guild - anyone interested in quilt resources should click the link to the right. The site is not only guild info but a resource center and SO easy to navigate. Cindy is half of Hamlin Rose Photography with her husband. They produced both a CD and a book of Urban Inspirations, out guild show two years ago -- excellent work. I'm really quite proud to be a part of the both. And that is why I must not make another selvage quilt until I finish my 900 piece star quilt. Another guild show is coming up in March and I want that to be a worthy addition.