Why do I do this? • February 2025 This and That

February 2, 2025August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

BlueSky comment: “What a great hobby (and don’t be upset if it’s more than a hobby). These quilts are beautiful. Quilting is fascinating to me.”

Hobby. Hmmm. (This person obviously doesn’t know quilters.) I did hit a goal of mine on BlueSkySocial, but that’s not really what I’m looking for on there. (And if you are trying to learn this new space, the advice I got on Reddit was to skip the on-the-phone-app and go straight to the computer, as it’s easier. They were right.)

I’m looking for more of a retreat from Instagram/Meta/Facebook conglomerate, accelerated by logging into Facebook and checking the following:

Off-Facebook Activity, or in other words, all the info from OTHER businesses, not Meta. They funnel my data to Meta to build my profile; I had about 25 different entities who were sharing my info with Facebook. From following the instructions on Facebook, I learned I could download what Meta knew about me, etc. which was kind of interesting and scary all at once.

They believed I wanted to see posts about dogs, sports, cars, cars and trucks, types of sports, and I stopped reading there. A few of my friends have close relationships with *their* pets, so maybe that’s why on that one. But trucks?

Apparently I speak English, Spanish, French, Swiss (I assume that’s zh?), have no idea what “pt” is (Portuguese?), Italian, and Korean. One of my “Locations of Interest” is Melbourne, Australia. (Hi, Susan!)

This is my earliest Instagram profile. My first Instagram comment was in May 2012, to my friend Krista, as it was she who got me started on social media in the first place.

The real treasure was a huge file of all my Instagram posts (images and caption). I’ve been trying to build some Chatbooks, but apparently that company doesn’t talk to the Instagram code like they used to, so it’s been just me, filling the pages of my books slowly. This will help me go much faster to get them produced and printed. I saved that file on my photos drive, and have promised myself I will be checking that Meta setting again sooner, rather than later. Note: This above info is only the data from the Meta bunch. I wonder what I would have found if I’d downloaded everything from everyone (shudder).

A few photos from this week, beginning Monday, ending Saturday:

Final series of blocks, cornerstones and sashing. The center of the quilt is Cat’s Cradle blocks, sashed with cornerstones and pieced rectangles. Quilt design: Lisa Alexander & Susan Ache

I still have to do the borders. In the fourth photo, I am auditioning fabrics as I was running out and was determined not to buy more (can’t, really, because most of our fabric shops have closed down in our town, anyway). I went through everything, and found a few strips in my string-piecing bin, some other contenders deep in the stash stacks. So tonight while I listened to The Thursday Murders Club, Book Two, I finished piecing this section. I hope there are no mistakes.

Just in case you need this info.

Back to the quilt. I’m a person who generally averse to buying pre-cuts of any kind, but then had to ask myself as to why I hadn’t done something with what few bundles of fabrics I had? The collection of grey-green-cream was probably eight years old, with some fading along the folds (but it didn’t seem to affect how it looked, once cut up into all those wee triangles). I wanted to finish the bulk of the piecing in one week. Many reasons for this, mostly because I remembered when I used to crank out these heavily pieced quilt tops. Could I still do it? And then I ran across this quote:

I do not believe there is an artist in history who hasn’t asked themself — at least once — “Why do I do this?” The designation of “creator” may make for a glorious calling card, but as an occupation, it involves a disproportionate amount of spirit-crushing struggle and relatively few rewards.
–Mary Gabriel

Current Events (you know we talk about most everything on here)

A word or two about January’s Current Events: Many of us on Instagram & BlueSkySocial have been writing about our “spirit-crushing struggle” this week. My feeds have been filled with memes:

I knew there would be a transition between President Biden and President Trump, and I expected some chaos, given how things were the last time he was president. But I didn’t expect what we’ve had, and the plane crash after all the firings of the air safety personnel was really hard to take. But many people I know and love voted for him. I will do my best to give grace, because of them.

However, I will continue to monitor the situation where DOGE was given full access to the federal payment system (confession: my hair is on fire over this one). I can see the irony in my fretting about what Meta has on me (above), as compared with what the government has. I don’t think there is anywhere I can petition and download a file to see what personal information is being given to the owner of Twitter, a platform I quit because I didn’t trust their ability to keep my info safe and secure.

In a book I read this week, I found this: “Good work is a stay against despair” (Terry Tempest Williams). I need to work. I need to create. And even though it can make me wonder Why Do I Do This? once in a while, I still want to pull fabric from bins and stacks, cut it all up and put it back into a new order.

I’ll leave you with some pretty blooms from my February garden.

And a wonderful conversation with Peter Brown, the man who wrote The Wild Robot. (illustration from here)

Getting Unstuck • This and That December 2024

December 13, 2024August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

What do sunflowers have to do with getting unstuck? And why on earth does the term “Fibonacci” sequence come into play?

I happily pinned up this quilt, finding some cheerful plaid backing in the never-ending stash closet. I rolled it up, set it on the machine and…then what?

I printed off the quilt in a 50% saturation, and started doodling. Some ideas came right away, but I became stuck on the petals right away, finally breaking through those with the sketch in the upper right (“yes”). But those giant centers!

So I decided to go to the source: the sunflower plant. And on the way I found out the official name (Helianthus annuus, L.) and then I added the search term Fibonacci to the mix, and found myself deep into mathematics. This site, which combines sunflowers and coding, had some beautiful arcing designs of the path of the sunflower seeds. And the picture above came from a website called Synchronicity, which was a fascinating read. When I watched the video explaining this principle, I learned a lot, getting only a little bit lost at the end when square roots entered the picture. That I didn’t get more befuddled is a tribute to my high school math teachers.

I went into my Affinity Designer program and using their spiral tool, I drew this. And when you know, you know. I think I will add a little bit of arcing grid at the tops of the petals (shown in the sketch, above), but we’ll see. Sometimes Mies van den Rohe said it best: Less is more. (Also said by Robert Browning, apparently.) So now I can get going, after being stuck. Sometimes it just takes a bit of time to figure things out, and while I am certainly One Who Likes a Project, I’m thinking maybe I had too much going on at this time.

Like the church Christmas breakfast that I agreed to be in charge of. Our church had always done nighttime parties, but this year we tried something different, asking the members to gather Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. Here is the church hall night before, as we finished decorating and setting the tables. The real Christmas miracle was that we handed out the recipe for 14 breakfast casseroles and all they all came in looking the same, save one (they’d used a tin foil pan, rather than a glass pan).

Again, if you know, you know. That so rarely happens!

On our way there, we picked up the cinnamon rolls/sticky pecan rolls from our grocery store (Ralph’s). Thank you, Ralph’s, for your baking. We served the casseroles and sweet rolls with fruit salad, orange juice; we entertained people with a coloring contest and a piñata. We all had a great time.

I finished off my time in a bee with an old favorite: the Block Lotto birds blocks (she asked for three).

We did some decorating with nutcrackers, little figurines and quilts. Yes, that’s our “tree” there on the center small table.

Molly Christmas has joined the guardians of Christmas: an angel and Santa. They are in my office during December, keeping it festive.

One morning while my husband was out, I felt like making hummus. In he walks a few minutes later with the freshest pita bread I’ve ever tasted. Good karma, I’d say.

Go to Trader Joe’s right now. You NEED these.

We made a stop here, too, at See’s Candies, looking positively celestial.

Thought this was a nice pairing. If I manage to get out of my pajamas yet only go walking for 30 minutes a day, I evidently leave some benefits on the walking trail. Is less…more…in this situation? And who dreamed up that chart on the left anyway?

One nice thing about darkened skies/shorter days, is lighting candles, with the tablecloth from your mother and your Christmas dishes on the table. And soups seem to be on the menu a lot. Above, my husband made Creamy Spicy Pumpkin soup (topped with squares of ham and peanuts), which we served with baked puff pastry squares, topped with roasted fennel bulb and brightly colored persimmon wedges.

The next day I chopped up all the fennel stalks and treated them like celery, in making a mirepoix of onion, fennel stalks, carrot and a bit of garlic, with a wave of kosher salt and a grind or two of pepper. Cook on low heat in 3 tablespoons butter and a wave of olive oil until the vegetables are translucent but not browned; then add in 2 quarts of chicken stock, a teaspoon of fines herbes, and a shake of celery seed. Simmer for a bit. I then added half of a chopped yellow bell pepper, 8 ounces of pasta, and one more carrot, thinly sliced. Simmer until pasta is done, then add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Last thing: my daughter (who was baking for the thousands this week) called up to ask if my recipe for cheesecake had sugar in the crust. It took me a while to find it as I hadn’t made it in years. It came out of this bible of cooking, the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, which I bought when I was in college. Click on the recipe to get the whole thing.

Happy mid-December!

Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Patterns · This-and-That

This and That • October 2024

October 28, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

This month last year I saw an eclipse and cranked out not one, but two quilts to the quilter that month.

And this year?? A slog through covid, which still lingers with the double whammy of cough and fatigue.

So what a difference a year makes. Oh, maybe I’ve got a triple whammy with the brain fog, which is real. But at any rate, here we go with a This and That, which I haven’t done in a while.

Because I was just hanging around a lot, coughing, I read one book (Orenstein) on my digital reader, and one (Garten) in Real Book form. I learned a lot from both, including the tidbit that Garten and Martha Stewart at one time were friends. But mostly I loved a lot of what Orenstein wrote when she was making “the world’s ugliest sweater.”

“We hang by threads, we lose the thread, we pick up the thread, we have common threads, we thread through crowds, our reasoning is threadbare—and that is not even starting on metaphors involving sheep, wool, fabric, weaving, sewing, knitting. Textile analogies loom large in our world” (Orenstein).

and

She quotes Catherine McKinley, a writer and curator: “This idea that the end product is more important than anything [is] an erosion of something fundamental, of that intense combining of the spiritual with all the other aspects of our lives (McKinley, qtd. in Orenstein).

It was too hot in October, bookending our summer that began all the way in May, which was also too hot.

As you might suspect, this word appeals to me. I’m an autumn-sort-of-girl. (TIL=Today I Learned)

Have I sewn anything? I participated in a bee, and just about half the blocks were unusable. So with my fever-covid-fog (FCF) brain, I unpicked some that were too small and re-sewed them, I was happy I purchased more fabric than I needed, so I could make-from-scratch a handful more. One quilter had eye surgery and I was happy to make hers for her. I was sent some blocks half-finished, and finished them. Some blocks were a couple of weeks late, which gave me angst because of my FCF-brain: I’d grabbed a slot with my quilter so I could have this back for the holidays, and time was slipping away. I decided, in the end, that maybe I’d picked too complicated of a block for some of the quilters, or maybe it was just a bad-karma month for a lot of other people. That happens. But in end, as with most quilts, Mercato Square was finished. I sent it off, after agonizing about which quilting panto to use. Stay tuned.

I sewed my October blocks and November blocks for the bee. One more month to go. I put a tip-sheet on how to make the strawberries and it’s a free download. The block on the right has been around for a while and pops up in different iterations.

Here’s the first example I have for you, from 2013, and I screen-grabbed some of what this quilter wrote:

The above is from a blog titled D & D Adventures (it’s defunct now).

I did a version of cut-block-insert-strip, Criss-Cross Quilt, that uses larger blocks, some with the insert going diagonally and some, vertically/horizontally. I don’t know if you remember, but there is a 31%-off coupon for any one thing in my pattern shop, so if you want this version (or something else), grab the coupon and get it (it expires on Halloween).

This time around, the Queen Bee sent us to Amber of Gigi’s Thimble, where she has a free tutorial, and her quilt (shown above) is so beautiful. I’ve used Amber’s tutorials before and they are solid. Speaking of quilt patterns, there was a recent kerfuffle online about a pattern maker who resisted the idea that other people could make patterns similar to hers (not copied…just similar). I think, unless it’s a direct plagiarism, ideas get recycled and re-worked. I also check Barbara Brackman‘s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. If it’s in there, it’s been done before.

And I don’t think I posted about these blocks?

These were spools blocks done in April, and I made a tip sheet for those, too.

Lisa Spool of Thread Download

from here. Lisa has all the blocks arranged from the Gridster Bee. These are large blocks, not tiny, and what a good way to use up all those long skinny scraps of fabric!

For silliness’ sake, I opened one of my Molly blind-box toys. It was one of those days when FCF-brain was in abundance, I was tired, oh, and about a billion other things, and it was only lunchtime. I make a big deal out of opening these little toy boxes (Baby Molly stands about 4″ tall) by taking it in to sit by my husband in the office and asking him to watch. It was love at first sight with this version, but the motto on the card told me everything: “I can handle it.” (Like, get a grip on things.) The Molly store is far away from us, so I bought two and saved one for Bad Days. Or Good Days.

I have been a collector of political trinkets for ages, even buying one for George Bush from a vendor on the street when we travelled in China in 2001 (after the fact, I know). I have a tin in my trunk holding badges going back to Nixon, the first President I ever voted for (my generation was the first batch of 18-year-olds to get the vote). So when Carol sent me these, I am quite happy to wear them to wherever I go, trying to put country over party, having voted both ways in my life. But won’t we all be happy when these interminable election cycles go away next week!

Please notice I am wearing my Halloween vest in the photo above. I get to wear it about 3x a year, and it makes me smile.

Last October, I was also in Bologna eating persimmons with nuts for breakfast. My husband, Dave, found some more persimmons here at the street market, and we’ve been enjoying them. We peel them, dig out the giant seeds (some varieties have them, some don’t), cut them in half and add a few nuts. Be sure to wait until they are really really soft. If you have a tree, here’s some info and then my version of Persimmon Bread.

I had to look up when my mail-in ballot would be counted. It’s been counted! We’ve used mail-in ballots for a while, and they are so convenient. Last cycle we took them to the drop box at our county building, but this year? The mailbox in front of our own home was so appealing to this FCF-brain. But on balance, we have stupid stickers. After seeing other states’ versions online, our state needs to step up its game.

This year I’ve seen several quilt-a-longs (to get the free patterns you have to agree to sign up for the mailing lists of all the people involved). This one that I’m interested in right now, the #sweaterweathersampler, led me to the QuiltScouts, where I found these badges and stickers. They have more badges, but they ask you to be “on your honor” in buying only the ones that apply. I qualified for most of them, which is what happens when you’ve been quilting for a bazillion years.

On a day where I was feeling better, I opened up my bin of painterly fabrics that I’ve been collecting for a while. I had wanted to make the first pattern (below).

But since they didn’t have any of that panel left I improvised, still using fabric from Shell Rummel (along with William Reue, and snippets from Deborah Edwards & Melanie Samar). I just noticed they’ve updated the pattern (on the right) to accommodate the newest panel and line. My only advice is to lay it out on a large flat surface when stitching everything together. I just sewed, like normal, and when I finished, the left side of the quilt was about 6″ longer from the right, and I still can’t figure out how that went wrong (FCF-brain?). But I fixed it, and have finally figured out how I want to quilt it.

This is me, on the patio of our City Hall building on the Saturday where I went from “being over covid” to feeling crummier and crummier by the end of our tour and rebounding into covid, a ~~surprising~~ frustrating experience. But at least I have this cool photo of this inset medallion, because you know us quilters: always looking for pattern and color wherever we can. And I’m happy to have covid in 2024, not 2020, when we all suffered through the horrific pandemic. And interestingly, that’s the time period of Peggy Orenstein’s book, which brought to memory how awful it all was, and to what a debt we owe so many who took care of us all.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Orenstein, when talking about the mortification of being judged (often harshly) for what we make, which often discourages us:

The alternative, and the best defense against those potentially psychologically lethal blows, is to focus more on experience than evaluation: to resist “good” and “bad” altogether and instead ask questions, identify what works, wonder what can be improved. It’s recognizing that the gift of creativity is in the way it challenges you, allows you to make meaning, enriches your life.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Cozy Winter, from the journal Les Nouvelles, published by France Patchwork, issue 160. Seen at the Carrefour European Patchwork Quilt 2024 show.

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish · This-and-That

Quilt Finish: (dreaming in color)

July 28, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

I have a 2-D Brain.

Yesterday we went to our town’s Maker Space which was filled with all kinds of machines from sublimation to a movie studio to laser cutters to several 3D printers, and it was on this last enterprise that they decided to train us. We filed into the computer room, filled with all kinds of computers (nice ones!) and opened up the program and started to design. I mean, I tried to design. The plane on which I was creating was wobbling all around, and then it would leave my screen, floating around.

Many of the design tools were like my Affinity Designer at home, but not really. I just couldn’t figure this thing out, even though I was madly clicking and trying. It was then I realized: I have a 2D brain. My final project in my Digital Art class many years ago was titled, Leaving Flatland. I won’t bore you with the details, but that exhibit came back into my mind as I sat at the fancy computer, desperately trying to leave flatland. At the end, I deleted my file of 3D doodles, and we went on a tour of the building. The very next room was a room filled with sewing machines.

Now we’re talking.

(dreaming in color) • Quilt number 289 • 24″ square

I’d been thinking about flat quilts this week, as I kept calling this “the flat houses quilt” while I was working on it. I wanted it to be a smooth 2D plane, where color would be the focus through repeated shapes. Simple. Flat. Repeated. Colorful.

In the 3D world, they did have this concept of printing something to help you print, a circular idea which still is rolling around in my mind. But that’s sort of how my patterns evolve: I am making the quilt as I’m writing the pattern, each process a support and discovery for the other. I originally imagined this as a large wall quilt. And then maybe I wanted it a bit smaller. And smaller yet, to fit a particular corner of my sewing room. And I wanted to try some reverse appliqué. I wanted it to be made in grunge fabrics. And I wanted to be able to make it with the windows >inset< rather than >applied.< By the time I was finished with the quilt, I was finished writing the pattern.

I spent time on three patterns this week:

This one, because it was old and needed a make-over. How old? It didn’t even have the one-inch key on the templates, as I didn’t know how to make that item when I first started out.

This one, because although it was mostly finished when I posted about the quilt last week, I needed to finish it up for someone who asked about it. This has three different sizes and looks.

This one, because it was finished, and I was ready to post about the quilt.

Like many of you, I watched the Paris Olympics opening ceremonies, and like some pundits, declare Mongolia’s outfits far and away more beautiful and interesting than some larger nations’ costumes (like why does the USA always seem to have the same ones, over and over?) I got a kick out of the boats on the Seine, and the various parts that sort of held together with luck and a prayer, but that last song by Celine Dion was incredible, as was the lighting of the cauldron. I loved it all.

The athletes have been featured in many different ads (Sara Blazer for Dior).

I knew it would happen: Christmas prints are finally back to Christmas green and Christmas red, after veering through pink and turquoise and whatever. While it was fun for a while, I’m happy to see these colors come back.

And this kept us on edge this week, too. This roaring fire was too close to my neighborhood and too big, and too fast and frightening. Our city’s firefighters tamed the beast, started by three teens with fireworks. As one boy was running away (as caught by a security camera), he turned and asked “Do you have a fire extinguisher?” The man of the house answered, “You are way beyond that now,” as the kid jumped into a silver pickup with his friends and roared off.

I signed up for a class at our local-yet-national quilt show, Road to California, one where I wouldn’t have to think too much, nor buy too much, nor cart insane amounts of gear: blackwork embroidery.

A friend advertised on Instagram that she was So Done With This Quilt and did anyone want it? I was second in line, and this week it showed up. Absolutely gorgeous work, with every point pristine and every flower in place. I hope I don’t ruin it, but did order pattern and fabric to try and finish it. That will be my winter project.

This is my summer project, with my friend Leisa: a Halloween quilt. We are both suckers for Halloween quilts.

Quilting, while listening to PBS Newshour, which discussed Biden’s stepping away from the race, and Kamala Harris’ ascension to presidential candidate.

(This has turned into a This and That Post, sort of unintentionally.)