“What’s odd about commencement is that so many people think of it as the end of something, the end of high school or college—but that’s not what the word means at all. It means the beginning, the start of something new.” Will Schwalbe, (from The End of Your Life Book Club: A Memoir)
So is there a commencement for quilts? We celebrate their ending, their finishing, the last stitch. But are we really celebrating the ritual of folding away of a set of squares (or in this case) poppies, and moving it out of the way? Those unique blues that I collected all one year, that particular dye lot and color which was found everywhere, and now, nowhere — so I hoard and treasure and measure the pieces of it I am using. For when it is gone, it is gone. Is this the same as the ending of a high school education? The finishing of a quilt? The end of a season?
And from the same book:
“David K. Reynolds, who had, in the early 1980s, come up with a system he called Constructive Living, a Western combination of two different kinds of Japanese psychotherapies, one based on getting people to stop using feelings as an excuse for their actions and the other based on getting people to practice gratitude. The latter therapy has its roots in a philosophy called Naikan, developed by Ishin Yoshimoto. Naikan reminds people to be grateful for everything. If you are sitting in a chair, you need to realize that someone made that chair, and someone sold it, and someone delivered it—and you are the beneficiary of all that. Just because they didn’t do it especially for you doesn’t mean you aren’t blessed to be using it and enjoying it. The idea is that if you practice the Naikan part of Constructive Living, life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not the few things that go wrong” (ibid, 211-212).
So as my husband (chief Quilt Holder) and I took the quilt down to be photographed at what we call the Butterfly Alley, we repeated a few rituals: get the quilt-holding sticks with the clamps, determine if the light is right, find a parking place and watch people’s faces as we unfurl a hand-made quilt in an urban setting, wait for the wind to die down, and take the photos (with lots of “up on the left — the other left!”).
So maybe the commencement of a quilt is a beginning of sorts. We have our rituals for this process: labels, photos, blog post. We fold up the extra blocks and tuck them away. We clean up the cutting area, and perhaps, as Yoshimoto intimates (above) that we find stray moments of gratitude. We are grateful for our tools. We are grateful for the colorful cloth. We are grateful that we have a wonderful community of quilters, of friends, of people who understand the need for quilt stores, quilt shows, and quilts. My quilting life has been a series of small miracles, full of so many things that have gone right.
Like a quilt of poppies in a field of French blue–
This picture illustrates my vexation. On the left, and using the color swatches in the top row, is Version 1 of this block. Not happy with how the ombre effect worked out, I tried Version 2 of this block (on the right), using the color swatches in the bottom row. So, first, color broke my brain.
Color
I’d envisioned this block to be a representation of that time in the evening when everything is settling down, with glowing shades of pink and yellow and deeply colored purple. On the left in the background of the rays, you can see that range of hues goes just so far. Then there is a huge color jump from the light pinks to that dark coral at the far left. Likewise in Version 2 on the right, there is a progression from soft yellows to corals and pinks, then another color jump at the end. I faced that sort of thing ages ago when I made Annularity. I ended up making two of these quilts:
Do you spot the anomaly in color? It’s at the very bottom, the warm-lavender diamond just to the left of center. That quilt went to Paintbrush Studio, because it was made from their first drop of their solids line. In the version on the right, made for myself, I pulled the exact blue-lavender color from another solids line that I needed to make the transition flow smoothly.
This is because we live in a world with limitations. And fabric colors, especially in solids, are one of those things. The fabric line, my favorite — Painter’s Palette by Paintbrush Studios — has since fixed that awkward color jump and they now have a perfect blue-lavender.
But now there’s a jump in the pinky coral tones. But I’m really giving this fabric line a workout: I’m creating color in my Affinity Designer program, using sliders and sampling colors from photos to get the exact color that I want in my designs. But the fabric manufacturers are working with cloth, dye, finishes, and budgets and no, they can’t make every color. (This is why I believe some people dye their own fabrics — just to get that precise color they want. But I decided long ago not to go down that road.) If this really bugs me, I may just buy it from another line, but I will be sure to prewash it twice to try and mimic what I have (both for colorfastness — the PPSolids are incredibly colorfast) and to shrink up the weave a little (PPSolids have a tight weave with a nice hand, or feel, to the cloth). Who am I kidding? I’ll just use what I’ve got.
Technique
And the other reason I was struggling is technique, or “how I sewed it.” In that Version 1, above, if you use your critical eye you can see that the narrow green band seems more “lumpy” that the one on the right. When I was majoring in Clothing and Textiles at Brigham Young University (a major no longer offered), we had to make a wool suit. Our teacher had worked in the industry and precision was her specialty. I resewed the lower front corner of my jacket with its sloping curve from center front to hem probably four times, but in the end she still gave me a B. She wrote on my grading sheet that she knew I worked hard on it, but it still wasn’t as smooth as needed.
It wasn’t necessarily my skillset that wasn’t up to succeeding, it was my technique. I needed to slow down. We all are familiar with this feeling when we finish the center of a quilt and then its borders. Borders? And we throw on just something, and then it’s quilting, and then it’s the binding, which apparently many people don’t like. They just want to Be Done.
So I slowed way down in my sewing of the narrow bands on the Version 2 block. Pressing carefully, using a different order of construction, improving my technique as I went.
This is not a hard block. So choose your colors carefully, use your best techniques in sewing, and it will go well. That’s all I wanted to say on this, but I do include my tips and tricks for the block and sewing it together below.
This is what my cutting table usually looks like, however I crop out the mess when I post photos, to keep the distraction level down. There’s a free pattern for Block One in my PayHip shop, where you can also pick up the patterns for all the blocks. Don’t forget to look at the other posts about this quilt, all found on the Master New York Beauties page.
Thanks for reading, and good luck with your colors and technique, in whatever you are stitching–
Tips and Tricks for Block 10: Vespers
Many other of the New York Beauties posts give you specific instructions on how to make that ray section; feel free to look at them for more help. We now pick it up after the parts are ready to be assembled. Please read all the way through before beginning.
Arrange the pieces so you’ll pin the INSIDE curve of the rays to the OUTSIDE edge of the narrow curved band. The Cereus block (9) discusses this. Divide the ray section and the small upper band into four sections, marking with pins, or finger pressing. Pin.
Sew a scrap, and at the edge, line up the two pieces to sew. I use a clay tool (the handle is nice and big) but you can also use a stiletto. Keeping the right-hand edges aligned, S L O W L Y stitch 1/4-inch away from the edge, easing in the fullness as you go. Remove pins as you go. To be truthful, It’s easier to put the concave on the bottom (the curving-out piece), but I think I flipped it for this photograph. The post on Cereus shows what I mean.
Press the band away from the rays.
Now we’ll attach the corner quarter-circle. Again, divide the edge into fourths. And made sure you are sewing the INSIDE edge of the narrow curved band to the outside curved edge of the quarter-circle.
All pinned up. The purple (convex side) will be placed next to the feed dogs:
Again, I use a scrap to get started. I nudge those two edges on the right together with my clay tool and sew in a quarter-inch seam, slowly.
I like dimension in my blocks, so that seam is pressed under the quarter-circle. (I’m sure you’ve noticed the pieced wedge in the center. My order from Keepsake Quilting hadn’t arrived when I was making this sample.)
Readying the next joining: outer narrow band to the lower edge of the rays.
Preparing the last seam: narrow band to outside corner. All those curved edges have bias, with the grain on the outer edges because I cut them like this:
All finished. In every step I took my time, keeping a good technique and not rushing.
Trimming is keeping several balls in the air at once, juggling them all.
First thing to check: your center. Make sure that diagonal line is as close to center of that center ray as you can get.
Next, go for the bright green arrows, seeing if you can get the outer edge of that band as close to 9 1/4″ as you can. On both sides.
Last, and only if you can, the bright blue arrows are asking you to see if the inner narrow band measurements are the same. Or similar.
Then trim off the excess. I designed the pattern so you would have some “play” on that outer edge.
Okay, that’s all for this block. Make 3. Will I use both blocks? Probably. In our lively quilt, I don’t think anyone will object:
I put them both up in our progress chart, and they are fine. This is all to say that if you make one and want to make a shift in colors of the same block, it will be fine. There’s another double-colored block up there now!
I’m not by nature a terrifically tidy sewer, preferring to let my (ahem) creativity spill all over when I stitch. But doing one of those collage quilts where you iron on the fusible interfacing then layer it up, is a new level of Mess. I will clean it up when I’m finished, but here’s where I am now. I started this because the Utah Valley Quilt Guild (I’m a proud member, just too far away) hosted Emily Taylor, aka the Collage Quilter, as I mentioned in this post.
cherries! BEFORE
Yep, it was a total fail. Because Steam-A-Seam is like working with plastic, I just peeled all that stuff off and started again…with fewer fabrics. Or, as Mies van der Rohe used to say, “less is more.” Boy, howdy, but maybe not in these fruits.
I got the hang of it on these strawberries. It seems like every time I switch to a new fruit, there is a new learning curve.
All the watermelon sections finished. I read all sorts of cautions about not pressing them TOO much before they are on the fabric, so these are sort of tacked down and lightly pressed.
The fabric selection for the center proceeds apace, with the lower three fabrics picked up in Utah, when I went up there for Dad’s memorial. The cross weave pattern on the fabric on top was the right scale, but too burgundy-ish and cream-ish to be right. I like the second one — a bias-printed plaid — a lot (especially the colors) but was worried the scale might be wrong. It’s a good backing or binding fabric, though. Daisies are in the running, but am leaning to the fourth one down: the double-plaid. My brain is on auto-pilot now and that’s what the pattern designer had. Fine. I’ll do whatever’s on the pattern (haha).
Next up are peaches, pears and grapes, and happily my friend Susan of PatchworknPlay sent me her beautiful watercolor so I could figure out pears. Then we’ll see about putting it all together.
We left very early in the morning to fly up to Utah and arrived well before the time the memorial would start. So we spent some time walking around the plaza near Temple Square in Salt Lake City, admiring the flowers (below). While I loved the tulips (multiple varieties and colors), I also loved these little ones at the end, which look like a cross between a daisy and a baby mum. Anyone know what they are?
Since you’ve already seen a photo of my dear aunts, here’s another one of us with my sister Christine, an artist from New York, just after the memorial. My sister Susan talked, as did two of my brothers, Andy and Scott. We also heard from three grandchildren.
After the memorial and the family luncheon arranged by my lovely sister Cynthia, I went to my son’s, where I found my granddaughter deep in T-shirt-quilt construction. She’d watched a YouTube video, gone to JoAnn’s to get interfacing and figured it out. She’s like that. And…after trying to help her cut the strips for the sashing, we went to JoAnn’s to get a new cutting mat, new rotary cutter and a couple of rulers. (I told her to hide them from her family.)
We went in her Tesla and she showed me some of the modes on her screen, including one where you can embarrass your friends. She also used Auto-Drive, or whatever it is called, to get us to JoAnn’s. I was alternately freaked out as well as thinking: this could come in handy when I’m older!
Later, she sent me a photo of her completed first quilt, her voice on the phone full of excitement.
Homeward bound later that night, I took photos out the airplane window, a time-honored practice. I had really struggled all week with getting the layering of shadow and light in the fruits I was making, and in looking at this nighttime scene, I thought it would be good practice to try to figure out where shadows are delineated, and where light glows through the dark.
I thought about the talks at my father’s memorial, the stories from his grandchildren and his children about how his life was — how our lives are — a combination of light and shadow. But the lessons we learn as we travel through these darker places teach us humility, strength, and the power of saying “I’m sorry,” as well as the incalculable blessing of forgiving one another (and ourselves) for failures.
I once titled a quilt: “Shadow Owes Its Life to Light.” We have no shadows that aren’t connected to light. Light, as heard in my granddaughter’s voice, when she finishes her T-shirt quilt top. Light, when watching my niece Brittany cuddle her new baby. Light, when my sister-in-law Julie, who nearly died last year, is sitting at the table, telling us stories about her students. Or my 92-year-old aunt, all of five feet, lighting up a conversation with younger nephews, the young men towering over her.
Oh, how I will my miss my father, just as I have missed my mother!
May their memories be a blessing for life in the world to come– (from here)
The terms are popularly used when discussing how we interact with the internet. We receive Push Notifications, which means that someone, somewhere is sending us information or things that can be helpful. Or not. We can choose where we go, pulling information to us in terms of blogs (like this one, thank you). We can also pull information from bank sites, news sites, school and medical sites so we can gather information or read for pleasure.
We are familiar with push-pull in our own lives, aside from the internet. For example, when I go to a Guild meeting like I did this week, and have to show up early to set up the book sale, take minutes, make sure the substitute photographer is squared away (because the regular one didn’t show up), serve on the Nominating Committee (hallelujah — we got our President-Elect!), it is a push because NONE of those jobs are what I officially do (I run the website). Some activities in our lives are push-pull: volunteering, for example. Or paying attention to the weeds in the garden because you want to plant flowers.
But if I can plan an appliqué project, take a 3300-mile road trip visiting family (and grandson Alex, below) and enjoy time with my husband, I’d call it mostly a pull.
This idea of push-pull on the internet was discussed in a radio interview of Kyle Chayka with Ezra Klein. During their discussions about the nature of the internet these days, as well as Chayka’s newest book, Filterworld, I became interested in this idea. What is pushed onto me, and how does it affect how I feel about the quality of my life? And what is the effect of all that pushing? Chayka feels like it changes how we view things on the internet, and why — perhaps — our eyes glaze over quickly:
CHAYKA: “I mean, most of the encounters we have with culture online are pretty bad, I think. We do have much more choice in what we consume and all of these other possibilities surround us. But what we lack is that kind of museum-like experience or movie theater-like experience where you do have to sit with something and think about it and puzzle your way through it without flipping to get an answer.”
EZRA KLEIN chimed in: “And the problem with the push internet is it’s not really under your control, right? It’s about what the force pushing is doing. But as that became bigger, people stopped doing the things that allowed the pull internet to exist. There aren’t so many blogs anymore. Not none, but there are fewer. People put their effort — because it’s the easier way to find audience and eventually to make a living — into the algorithmic spaces. And so there’s simply less of this other thing there to explore.”
Top finished: April 2024
CHAYKA: “I think a feeling I’ve been having a lot lately is that scarcity is often what creates meaning. When you’re surrounded by infinite possibilities, when you know around the next corner is another video that might be funnier or more to your liking, you’re never going to sit with the thing that’s in front of you. You’re never going to be forced to have the patience, or the fortitude maybe, or the kind of willpower to fight through something and figure out if you truly like it or not.” ~ Kyle Chayka
Sitting with the thing in front of you. Museum-like experience. Algorithmic spaces. Push is not under our control. Scarcity creates meaning. Puzzle our way through it.
How much of our life is a “push” experience? How much of our activities and interests are “pull”? Do we value our time at the machine, or with cloth, or with the needle because it is a “scarce” activity? Or because we had the patience and stick-to-it-iveness to finish the stitching, the quilting, the cutting?
I guess it could be both. I guess it could be all.
Final image: Made in the 1600s for one of the popes, this smallish curio cabinet is a classic example of sitting with the thing in front of you until it is finished. Although I have to admit that if I were the cabinet-maker on the other side of the centuries, it might be feeling like a push. And that’s how it goes, right? I saw this in the Getty Museum in March.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 