Sewing

Hot Mitts, take two

May 24, 2013May 24, 2013 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Just a little something I put together. . .

. . .for my daughter-in-law Kim, who, when I posted them on Instagram said she liked them and “hint, hint.” I was happy she wanted some! They were for her birthday.

I used Malka Dubrowsky’s fabric again, as it hides cake-mix-on-thumbs really well.

I liked how the quilting looked from the back, on the heat-repellant fabric. Click *here* for a pattern and how-to’s.

My husband and I drove in and attended my nephew’s graduation from University of Southern California, known for its well-endowed education in an academic sense. In other words, lotsa money at this place. Congratulations on finishing law school!

They had a little reception afterwards and it was like a garden wedding–and delicious.

But we took off and met the rest of the family at Bottega Louie, where this cool-looking St. Honore caught my eye in the dessert case. Instead of trying to figure out how to get it home in one piece, I bought macarons in five different colors, and shared them all weekend with my husband.

But I have bigger news about this family gathering in the next post. (No, I am not pregnant.) Stay tuned.

Spoolin’ Around

May 21, 2013May 21, 2013 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

This is my latest Schnibbles quilt: Spoolin’ Around. Sherri, Sinta and I assume, Carrie, pick the Schnibbles pattern we are going to use, but then we all go to town putting it together in our own inimatable way.

I changed up the borders a little, because I wanted mine to all line up a little more, creating a different corner look. Read *here* about my fabrics, including using some sheets from the Porthault design vault.

Spoolin’ Around, au natural

I feel like I’m also creating a Tea Towel series, but really I’m not trying to. It’s just that this towel from Padua, Italy was blue and white and the top just called out for this to be used here. St. Anthony is a Big Deal in that town, as you can tell by his likeness, his basilica, his . . . We went to Padua to see the Scrovegni Chapel. Getting this tea towel was a side benefit.

I quilted this during the last week of class, while listening to Barbara Demick’s novel, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, and I quilted and quilted. Not perfectly, but that’s also the beauty of making these small quilts–nothing’s so terribly precious about them. They’re fun, not a chore. And I aim to keep it that way, just enjoying the process.

I struggled with the border choices: green soft plaid, or yellow spheres, or red/white dots? Not sure I’m entirely happy about this, but I did want something that wasn’t so serious.

I split the sleeve on the back, because I didn’t want to cover up the words.

And I kept their label: Puro Cotone, because I liked it. I used bits and pieces of the border that was cut off from the top of the towel around my label. I have to say it’s a bit wild looking, but again–I was having fun, and that’s not a bad thing when you are quilter. And that’s my June 1st deadline Schnibble, finished a bit early!

This is #114 on my 200 Quilts list.

Blog Strolling · eQuilt Universe · Something to Think About

To Reply, or Not to Reply? Blogging Buzz

May 17, 2013 Elizabeth E.22 Comments

I guess the first thing to get out of the way is to ask one of the big questions:

No, that’s not it.

The big question is: why do you blog?

And if you are like most of the blogs I see in Blogland, the answer falls into these categories:

making a living at quilting
want to make a living at quilting
will never make a living, but still have hope
pleasure of sharing my quilts
love to write and would write about making tires, if necessary

And then the next question:

Wrong.

Here it is: What do you expect of the people who visit your blog?

Should they leave a comment? Visit only? Not steal your content (it happens)? Not copy your ideas without attribution (it happens)? Which leads us to the really big question:

(from *here*)

When I first started my blogging adventure, in September 2006, I didn’t even enable comments, coming as I was from the “pure” experience of a Creative Writing degree where it was always expected that you would write from within yourself. Soon after that, the digital world exploded and during grad school a few years later, even though we were still yearning for that isolated writing experience, the reality of the market now loomed large, and we had classes on marketing, selling your novel, pitching stories, being aware of What’s Out There.

And that now is the world in which we quilt bloggers find ourselves, I think, which means that the pure excitement of sharing our quilts, our ideas and just chatting up the room seems to be slowly sinking into the swamp of Making Connections, Pitching My Stuff, Pick Me! Pick Me!, and so on. I think I participate in all of everything, as do most of us. But I was quite struck by the thoughts on Carrie Nelson’s blog, LaVieEnRosie, about how so much of blogging has become about advertising. Carrie is one of my heroes in the way she blogs truthfully about her life, so I really perked up when she next said:

With blogs, I’m also betwixt and between about responding to comments. I feel horribly – terribly! – guilty when I don’t answer each and every comment with an e-mail but since I can’t bring myself to send just a quick “thank you for commenting” – I think we all know I’m a bit chattier than that – do I answer just some? And if I don’t get to it right away, is it awful to respond a week or ten days later? That might be worse than not answering it at all. So I stick my head in the sand and hope the e-mails answer themselves.

Sometimes I think that comments are just comments–not requiring a reply. When I leave a comment like “Great quilt!” I don’t really expect a reply at all. But other times I’ve been pleasantly surprised when a reply has come, and over time it has deepened to a correspondence of some sort. However (and she peers over the top of glasses), I know several bloggers who feel so swamped by their own success, of the imperative to thank everyone who comes by, that they withdraw from blogland, retreating back to their studios to Make Stuff, which is — if you think about it — the main reason to have a blog. And I also cringe a little when I happen on a blog where they cheerfully say “I want to grow my blog!” as we are expected to carry away a task from that honest goal, and as I slink away I feel guilty, because certainly one of the true pleasures of blogging is building a community of like-minded folks.

So, does this strange cultural custom of expected replies to comments enhance your appreciation for a blog? Do you leave comments regardless of whether the blogger will answer you back? And if you blog yourself, do you feel compelled (and I chose that word purposefully) to answer back all your commenters?

Do Tell.

Quilts

Entering the Grading Galaxy

May 15, 2013 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

(She moans. Loudly.)

But! I will return, because I excel in Grading Avoidance–a skill not all possess, but my guess is if you are a college English Teacher, you probably do. GA, we call it around here.

But I’ve been working on some things.

Like a visit to Arizona to see two of my children and their families over Mother’s Day Weekend. Grandchildren are the frosting on the cupcake of life, or so the sign in my kitchen proclaims, and my husband and I had a lot of fun, but came home tired. Mothering is a young woman’s game.

Received this greeting from another son and his wife on Mother’s Day, as they took a belated honeymoon trip to Paris, France. (I’m pretty sure he’s on the Eiffel Tower.) The card says, “Happy Mother’s Day from Paris.” Awwww. He’s a keeper.

Received my chicken fabric from Spoonflower, along with two textbooks for next year (Yikes! Already??) , and this:

To paraphrase something my students would say, I was like what? I was thinking what is all this? And I was feeling awesome as I lifted it out of the mailbox. I won for participating in the Schnibbles parade last month on Sherri/Sinta’s Another Year of Schnibbles, and had sent off my mailing address so they could send my prize. And What A Prize:

A bountiful harvest of Moda precuts from Avalon by Fig Tree, Simple Marks by Malka Dubrawsky, boho by Urban Chiks, Double Chocolate by 3Sisters, La Belle Fleur by French General, Maison De Garance by French General (those last two were layer cakes), 200 Blocks from Quiltmaker Magazine (a book), and a lovely hand-written note from Ms. Schnibble herself: Carrie Nelson. I was overwhelmed by her generosity and stunned that I even won at all! I have now lots of fun fabrics for lots of fun projects–all thanks to Miss Rosie’s Quilt Company. I feel richly blessed to be a part of the quilting community, as well you know, because I say it over and over and over. And even if I never win anything more again in my life (which is very likely), this one time, hey, I did.