If you could scroll down for just a second and locate on the right blog sidebar where there is a link to a video titled Create. This was taken from a talk from one of the leaders of my church, and if you are not a religious type, then substitute in your version of God for what Elder Uchtdorf says. I watch it everyone once in a while to remind me that what I do is more than stitching, or cutting up pretty cloth. Being creative is my connection to — and a conduit for — the divine.
I had an inkling of the power of a lot of creative women, when I attended Becky McDaniel’s class for her Crazy Cushion pattern. Yes, there was fatigue and frustration, but there was also a spirit of wanting to create (above, watching a demo).
My workspace. I had a nice visit with the two quilters at my table, Sandie and Marie (absent), and was totally impressed with the women in the Nite Owl Guild.
Becky was energetic, funny and taught some new skills: like working with a light table while paper piecing, and we all promptly handed over our cash to buy her cool flat light table, while stories swirled around about the light tables we had at home.
Yeah, we weren’t in this room, but the ping-pong table was. The class was held in the Senior Center for a nearby town and was a great place to have a workshop. Below, Becky’s table of supplies.
Even though I had all my sections pre-pieced, at this point I felt like I’d run a marathon, just getting that welting stitched in between the flying geese band and the cushion top/back. The band includes a handle for carrying (seen serpentining in the photo above).
More than one use for those binding clips.
Because of all my sewing beforehand, I was able to finish my cushion. Above, the photo with Becky McDaniels.
I posed my cushion with hers (the larger of each). Mine measures 14″ x 2″ and hers is 16″ x 3.” If you decided to take this class, do your homework beforehand, if you have done paper-piecing before, so you can have a finish, too.
And then outside in their gardens, before leaving.
Now I’ll have something to sit on when I go to workshops!
The pattern can be found on her website, along with more information.
Kaffe Fasset fabrics recently purchased at Blue Bird Quilt Shop, near me, including that cool stripe.
I use transluscent vellum paper by Neenan for my paper piecing because I can see through it and it rips off easily. I purchased a ream about 10 years ago from Kelly Paper, and it cost way more than I wanted, but hey–10 years use? Not bad.
When I was visiting the South Bay Quilters, they had one class in their line-up which intrigued me: Becky McDaniels’ Crazy Cushions class.
Covet.
I found a guild closer to me offering it, and the class is this coming Saturday.
But since I am not a quick foundation paper piecer, I knew I should get some done before the class.
This is what I use–it’s made by Neenah Paper.
I use a vellum paper, purchased at Kelly Paper, for my paper-piecing. I can see through it, and it’s crisp, so it tears off easily. I know the price looks high, but there are 500 sheets in there, and the last ream I purchased lasted me almost 10 years. If you go to order it online, use the number by the manager’s finger.
Once side of the cushion is Pineapple, and the other is called Star Jasmine. And then there are a lot of flying geese for the cushion sides.
We’ve also been movingmovingmoving stuff around upstairs and my quilting machine has a new place to live for a while, until I can figure out how I want to configure my sewing room.
I remember corresponding with another quilter and when I told her my sewing room was about 9 feet by 10 feet, she wondered how I could ever sew in such a tiny space. Well…it’s what I have. I will confess to having spilled over into the guest room, where that Sweet Sixteen is currently residing.
My daughter just built an RV garage onto their existing three-car garage, and I wouldn’t mind taking over that space, but she lives several hours from me, so (sadly) not feasible. Besides I’d have to share it with their vehicles. I guess I’m thrilled to have a room dedicated to my own messes, my own stuff, so it never occurred to me that my room was too small.
Works for me. Now I’m off to sew about a bazillion tiny flying geese and sew them into strips.
Recently I taught a class for my Home, Sweet, Home mini quilt. I snapped these photos as they were working; they’d all mostly prepped up their pieces before coming, and it made the class go quite smoothly. I loved all the different ways that people did their blocks (shown here at our Guild Meeting):
Here are most of them (some didn’t bring them to Guild):
It wasn’t until posting these up that I found two errors in these quilts. Isn’t it funny that you don’t see things…until you do? (Hint: it’s in the bushes.) I love the rainbow quilt made by my friend Lisa. I may have to make one for myself.
The evening of my class with Joe Cunningham, he had a lecture in the hotel, and since there were only four of us, he told the organizers he could hold up his own quilts and talk at the same time. So we began with a song of his (guitar and all) and then he pulled out his quilts. In between we got “four lectures in one,” as he talked about how he came to quilting. He’d started collaborating with Gwen Marston in 1975, and then she taught him to quilt. They were both inspired by the collection of an older quilter with her handmade quilts, a woman who kept the quilting tradition alive during the middle years of the past century. In 1990, he ended his collaboration with Gwen Marston, moved to New York, then to San Francisco to work with the Esprit Collection of quilts. He never left.
Lake Street House, by Joe Cunningham
He developed this quilting process working in conjunction with the people at Handi Quilter, where he could enter in a complex pattern into a computer and “tile” it back onto his quilt in the quilting. Each tile takes about 45 minutes to quilt, but creates all sorts of interesting patterns in the quilting. I asked him about the trend to matchstick quilting, and he had only one thing to say: “lost a chance to be creative.”
And this is how he labels/signs his quilts: his name and the year stitched into the top.
I’m on a Quilt, by Joe Cunningham
Both Joe and Luke Haynes, another art-centered quilter who is male, seem to be quite adventurous in the use of large blocks of particularly unattractive (ugly?) fabric and making that fabric hew to their vision of the quilt, an approach worth learning. So much of what I see is that we quilters are the ones commanded BY the fabric to the end result, rather than the opposite tack.
Something else I noted in his approach — that I also see in Luke Haynes — is figuring out the space where quilting and the art world collide and how to use that tension and friction.
(Of course, I’m fascinated by the mundane: how he folds his quilts so there are no creases.)
Kiev Protesters Quilt, by Joe Cunningham
Detail, Kiev Protesters Quilt
He talked about how a quilt is allowed to say several things: I love you. I’m thinking about you. Memorial quilts. But he was fascinated one day by the blockades in Kiev, and how those who were protesting just fell to sleep anywhere.
For me this quilt reminded me of what he said in class: that he makes a quilt to see what it will look like.
Bicameral Lovers Knot, by Joe Cunningham
Log cabin blocks are in the background. Look up what bicameral is, if you don’t know.
New York Beauty, by Joe Cunningham
Back of New York Beauty, showing the quilting
Mountain/Mountaineer, by Joe Cunningham
Luke gave him some of the leftover Log Cabin blocks from his recent exhibit, and Joe made them into this quilt, minus the mountaineer. His wife walked in where it was hanging and said that he needed a figure there, so Joe gave it back to Luke, who added the climber
Crazy City–San Francisco, by Joe Cunningham
Back of Crazy City–San Francisco
Crazy City–the Creek, by Joe Cunningham
Back
Tar Patch Quilt, by Joe Cunningham
Detail and Signature
He covered so many topics that I can’t write them all here, but they were fascinating and I thought about them all the way home, such as (I’m paraphrasing):
If a piece of art looks like art, then it’s somebody else’s art. [Can’t we apply this to our quilts?]
The brilliance of quilts in the colonies [our early American colonies] was in the egalitarian nature of it. It wasn’t just for the rich, which it had been earlier when quilting was done in imitation of European quilts, but it was for the masses.
These women changed the definition of a quilt from a commercial item to a gift. The quilting, done around a frame, cost no money. Because of this, it remained in the realm of women and was invisible to the men, especially the merchant class.
Quilts from Europe in the earliest days were of four types: whole cloth, honeycomb (think EPP), strippy or medallion. From there, we invented blocks. From four types, we know have over 400,000 different patterns, an independent realm created by women.
And finally: “We make quilts like everyone else…unless you don’t want to.” A trap door exists for us to escape the sameness and make our own vision.
I love classes where I have as much for the brain as I do for the creative, visual, tactile side of the equation, and this lecture certainly gave me everything. I’m so glad I was able to go, and so glad QuiltFest brought out this great speaker.
Early this month, I got up at very early in the morning and drove an hour to the Palm Springs Convention Center (well, really, the hotel next door) as I was scheduled to take a class with Joe Cunningham during the recent Quiltfest Oasis Palm Springs, with its emphasis on Modern Quilts. Libs Elliot was also teaching, but I was interested in Joe because of a video I’d watched about him and his quilting long ago. He was on Craft in America, a series on PBS, and as he was the only quilter in the series at that time, I was amazed that he was teaching within an hour from my house. I think I registered for QuiltFest on the first day, I was so excited. To explain the video above: it was a lovely quirky thing, but he brought his guitar and sang and played for us. Now I wish every conference class had live music like this: classic tunes, played on the guitar. He even took my request and played Blackbird (by the Beatles). It was lovely.
To get our class started, he talked about how he approached quilts: “I think of something I want to “do” and then see how it looks. The reason I’m making it is to find out what it looks like.” He has a strict process, including the idea that since we are making chaos in our cutting and sewing, and it would be good to limit our fabrics to control the chaos.
So what was the class? Basically it was the stripped down version of that joke we quilters all make: we cut fabric apart and sewed it back together. However, first we had to choose our fabrics. He’d told us to bring four 1 yard pieces of fabric; I brought six or seven, but really it was a relief not to haul my stash to a class (the usual). He went around the room, and by what he said as helped us choose, I noticed the following ideas:
avoid things that look like they go together (like using fabrics from one line or designer)
neutral ground is good
high contrast between the three fabrics is good
look for a variation in scale and visual texture
He then gave us a handout with a specific way of cutting and sewing the pieces back together. I got to work.
We all sewed all morning, and before I left to get my lunch, I had the stack of blocks (above) all finished.
Lunch was at Sherman’s Deli, which was just around the corner from where we were working. Three of us went over and got salads, then sat out on the pool deck at the hotel, enjoying the beautiful day. Then it was back to work.
Basically it was to put all the blocks up on the wall, and make them work together. Well, at first I felt like the story about the classes at QuiltCon 2015 with the Gee’s Bend Quilters. All of the quilters sat there, expecting the Gee’s Bend Quilters to tell them how to sew. But after their opening of a hymn and a prayer, they turned to the women in the class and said, “Well, get to sewing!” (Told to me by someone who was in the class)
I fully expected to just make blocks according to Joe’s directions and have it stop there. But amazingly, the language of design he was schooling us in started to make sense. That first picture was just blocks slapped up there. But then I could see the possibilities in mine, that he’d showed in someone else’s. And I began to arrange them to some remarkable inner vibe and weirdness. Here are some of the other arrangements happening around the room:
More music, more switching things around. He was always available for help, but I wanted to try this strange magic all by myself. After cutting, arranging, sewing, it just wasn’t happening. Then I took a photo, flipped it 180 degrees and it was like the tumblers in a lock falling into place.
I look pretty tired
This is where I was at the end of the class, at 4 p.m. I’m sure you are saying “what???” and I actually sort of agree. I’m not really an improv person, because frankly I just never got that religion, but this technique of his was actually quite fun, and I didn’t waste the gallons of fabric I usually do when trying to do improv.
Our class.
Everyone cleared out, but the organizers let me stay and work, since I was signed up for the lecture that night and really had no where to go. I had a lunch with me so I wasn’t worried about dinner, and just wanted to keep going on the borders. I had a great piece of greyed circles fabric with me, and I thought I would try to see if it could meld on what I was working on. So I started by extending blocks of color out from the quilt, and filling in with the circles. I got to the above right photo and it was five o’clock and I wanted a break before the lecture (plus ice my sore shoulder).
The nice guys at the pool deck bar let me have some ice, and I sat outside watching the gauzy curtains on these poolside bed/canopies float in the slight breeze, while eating my dinner and icing my shoulder. It was a great break. This conference was also on the same weekend as Desert Trip, that music festival with all the oldsters playing, and it had decimated the attendance at QuiltFest. There were only six people in our class (amazing) and it turned out there were only four at the lecture that night (see next post).
So this is where it all ended. It’s not a huge quilt–maybe 33″ square–but it was a good experience in trying a new method. I thoroughly enjoyed myself!
NOTE: If you are looking for the Uppercase Magazine and fabric giveaway, it’s *here.*
Last weekend I had a chance to take a class from Gwen Marston, who is retiring this year. I have several of her books, and have long been an admirer. It was held in San Luis Obispo, so my husband brought his bike and came with me to help with the driving and so we could enjoy the town. It was held at SLO Creative Studio, a place where they hold classes, teach long-arm quilting. The place was filled with tables and long-arm machines, and touches of Gwen were everywhere, as in the quilt, above. It was fun to see in person.
Just to show you I’m a bonafide Gwen Fan, here’s the quilt I made, inspired by hers.
She started the class a bit early, telling about where she lived, giving us a couple of stories, then launched into the class, which was sewing traditional small quilts. It was fun to hear her talk–she’s very entertaining–and of course, I loved all the small quilts.
Here are some students trying to figure out the sizes of pieces.
Our charge was to get cutting, get sewing. She challenged us to use traditional methods, of cutting a bunch of squares, bunch of triangles, saying the new ways didn’t seem to cut much time from the construction.
The quilts all stacked up.
A couple of her labels. She used to roll the fabric down into a typewriter, type out her label, and then sew it on. Well, they weren’t really labels–they were typing on the sleeve. I enjoyed working in the traditional methods, but I must admit my eye was drawn to this series of baskets (below), made by a student in the previous day’s class.
I took my lunch outside to get a break from the classroom. They had us order in from a local sandwich shop, Ben Franklin’s, which was great. Then I went back in and I sewed and sewed and pressed and sewed the old fashioned way.
I can’t say it was any faster, but it didn’t seem to be slower, either. But I’d have to say it was a more inaccurate to sew together a bunch of squares, than to make strip sets, and measure out my HSTs and know where I was going. I didn’t true up any squares, but just threw it together, so it’s a bit wonky. But I did get something done, which is not always possible when sewing away from my usual space. I seem to have patriotic on my mind, as it was Friday, of the 4th of July weekend.
My husband, after enjoying his bike ride, picked me up and we ran an errand to Betty’s Fabrics, a nice shop in town.
While in SLO (as they abbreviate their town’s name), we also went to their Thursday night Street Market (the night before class) and had barbecue. After class we visited the San Luis Obispo Mission (above), and tucked into the museum to see their exhibit. I loved the mixed media piece below.
And there was a quilt in the exhibit, too!
In the plaza in front of the Mission, a live band was playing (this town has all the fun!). We were able to get a seat out on the patio at Luna Red next door, and ate our happy hour appetizers while enjoying the music. (Black Bean Hummus, above)
After, we sat on the bench just outside the Mission, talked about the bikes in the “bike parking lot” out front, and enjoyed the evening. My husband is most understanding about the quilt passion that seems to leak out of me all the time, as well as being very supportive, which I appreciate more than I can say. Sitting there on the bench, watching the passers-by and just visiting about nothing much, was the perfect ending to a weekend away.
Sometimes it is the small things that matter most.
Recently I taught a class for my 
