Quilts

Exhaustion

Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Life is one long process of getting tired. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

If you see a whole thing, it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. (Ursula K. LeGuin)

It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it’s the grain of sand in your shoe. (Robert W. Service)

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What does exhaustion feel like?  It changes, I think.  When I was a child it was at the end of a day of playing, of sun or making snowmen.  It was physical exhaustion of going full tilt with my brothers and sisters, and falling right to sleep.  When I was a teenager, I remember the sudden quiet after an evening of being at a dance, the sound expanding, filling the spaces abandoned by guitar, drums and voice.  This delicious quiet followed me home and I felt the weight of the blankets on me as I drifted off to dreams.  Young mother exhaustion is every kind: mental, emotional, and physical.  But instead of falling to sleep, you lay awake at night, worrying about all those things you can’t control, but want to: will they do well in school? will my husband finish his school?  should we take the new job?  should we move?  will the children marry the right person? and sleep eludes you for hours and you wake up more exhausted than when the night began.

This week’s exhaustion is a continuation of the last four, but rooted in a day that began too early, sitting at the laptop composing the second essay assignment, then another assignment, and another as I make my way through a new class and prepare for that day’s evaluation by a colleague.  It continues with a day-long-non-stop schedule that would not faze me if I were 40, but I’m not, and ends at a women’s gathering, getting hair tips from a lovely lass with lovely long hair, but all I can think about is that I’m tired and I need to go home.  Sleep is interrupted, fitful, with the aches that come from that not-40 place, and with the worries about all your children and their young families, and your parents, and a family member or two, the remembered exhaustion piling on in dreams that encumber, all parts of you feeling the weight of some other-worldly place.

So after my husband left this morning, I opened a Flickr file, ignoring the 5″ stack of essays-to-grade in the bag behind me, and clicked through photo after photo, my mind unscripted, my interests wandering.  I found a Flickr set of tiles from Portugal and wondered how our quilt blocks might have taken their cues from these ancient and oh-so-faraway constructions of mortar and glazed tile, pattern scrolling into pattern.  (I have no idea.)  But I liked looking at the grid-ness of it all, glimpsing some of our traditional and some of our modern patterns click into view.

And finally, I roused myself, delaying the grading for tomorrow to give me some space, for I took to heart the thought from Charles Haddon Spurgeon: There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work.

Which in my world, today, needs to be quilt work.

WIP

More WIPs than I Need

Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Yes, I did the time-honored tradition of quilters everywhere, that when you can’t finish what you’ve got going (Summer Treat, Lollypop Trees) make the leap and add to your stash.  Here’s my latest additions, along with their plans:

Does this give you a hint?  And I in my usual decisiveness, I couldn’t decide between the . . .

. . . pink, or. . .

. . . blue.  It was that farm truck that made me do it.  I owe a couple of Polaroid blocks, and I’m thinking that barn with the quilt would be a perfect candidate for a Polaroid block.  No firm idea for this one, but I am drawn to some of the blocks in my vintage Judy Martin book.

This was purchased to go with the other ocean-themed pieces my friend Rhonda sent me last year.  I have in mind a tote bag, but can’t seem to get to it, so I thought maybe I needed another piece to go with it?  You can see the problem with this way of thinking, can’t you?  

So how could I not get these tone-on-tone Riley Blake Chevrons?  Unlike Rita of Red Pepper, who shows you some stash and then snaps her fingers and the next day the quilt is done, I won’t be showing you anything soon.  I keep having little horrid thoughts cross my mind that interfere with envisioning this in its own quilt, thoughts like the fact that the handout on rhetorical thinking is over there on the computer waiting to be written for class tomorrow.

I fell in love with this Reina and her cherubs, so I ended up getting the whole bundle from Fabricworm:

I added a couple of pieces to this, and so totally want to start slicing through it. New fabrics have a way of dislodging some stuck places, getting you going again on a project.

I was stuck on Summer Treat quilt, because I only cut out enough for a fairly small quilt.  I’m used to lap-sized quilts and there this tiny thing was, plastered to my pin wall for nearly a month, because I had determined it was too tiny and needed to be larger.  Finally I said to my Dave, “Can quilts be small?”  “Yes,” he said in all his wisdom and experience (of living with a quilter for lo, these many years).  That was all I needed to start rummaging through the stash to find the right backing.

All the colors in the quilt are here.  I may even bind it with this for a touch of whimsy on the front against all those solids.

And while this is primarily a quilting blog, and today’s post is primarily about Quilts in Progress, I realized that my tiny universe of quilts is nothing compared to bigger Works in Progress.

Like the elections in America, getting off to their post-Labor Day horserace to the finish line in November.  I assigned my students the task of watching either the keynote or the nominee’s speech for either party, so last week was the Republican’s turn and this week it’s the Democrat’s turn.  I have to say I am enjoying the speech-i-fying, but more importantly, I am enjoying the fact that we have elections at all.

And how about this for a work in progress?

Cue the Karen Carpenter songs.  The reception was done on a shoestring because they are both students (that’s why I was the photographer), and frankly they both look like a couple of teenagers, but their lovely smiles and obvious tenderness for each other reminded me of why weddings make us cry.  Talk about a work in progress.  Theirs has just begun.

So, like a bride tossing her bouquet, bequeathing to another this task of beginning, I wish you all the best in your Works in Progress, whether they be candidate speeches, or packing school lunches, or starting a quilt, or yes, even finishing one.

Happy Post-Labor Day.  Happy Quilting!

100 Quilts · Books

Scrappy Stars!

Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Scrappy Stars, full view

I can finally write this post, as I caught Dave before he picked up his latest Donna Leon book (see the picture at the end for my stack).  I used to have this perfect photography studio, but then we had to replace our garage doors and I can’t staple a white sheet onto it any more.  So, I have Dave hold up the quilt for me in the back yard.

Here’s the requisite languid beauty shot: Quilt Draped Over Something.

The back.  You know that fabric you have that you love love love and it’s been sitting sitting sitting on your shelf for too long?

This was mine, so I put it to good use on the back of this very red quilt.

My quilter, Cathy of CJ Designs, did a meander over the star points and a star on a rolling wavy line in the borders. I had wanted to quilt this myself and imagined some glorious feat like Angela Walters accomplishes–all detail and punch and wonderfulness.  But in the end, I traded “Done” for “Glory,” as the pragmatic side of me realized that summer was o-v-e-r and if this quilt was to be enjoyed, I needed help on the quilting.

The label:  Scrappy Stars • No one sees what is before his feet: we all gaze at the stars.  –  Cicero

This is my number 100 of 100 quilts.  Now I’m starting on my second batch of one-hundred quilts.

I’ve arranged this stack of Donna Leon books I’ve finished in order of publication, with Death at La Fenice the very first one she published.  Notice how we get the paperbacks from used books stores (via Amazon and Abe Books online).  ( That second one is titled Death in a Strange Country.) There’s a lot of her books out there. So far, Acqua Alta is my most favorite, but I do like her subplots and characters. I’ve made a note to buy little almond cakes while we’re there, as they only appear around the first part of November — a piece of trivia gleaned from one of the novels.  At any rate, I look forward to reading more of these as soon as I can.

Creating · Something to Think About

Garden of Your Mind

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

I don’t generally post videos and other things on here, but I read about this on Becky Goldsmith’s blog (Piece O’ Cake), and fell in love with it. I have felt lately like my brain is shattered glass, little pieces of hard crystal, each piece labeled with teaching tasks: grade quizzes, make logical fallacy handout, create MLA test, create MLA handouts, conclusions, lesson plans and this week, prepare for evaluations.  Even in sleep these glass fragments are embedded in my dreams and I wake up making To Do Lists for the day.  It’s wearying to say the least.  It reminds me of having a new baby, while trying to care for the older children as well.  Every part of you is taken, spoken for.

I only want quilting to be this way, to be deliciously immersed in creativity and process and product.

So Happy Labor Day to you all, and take some time to think up new quilts in the garden of your mind.  And to those who never grew up with Mr. Rogers playing in the background–well, it may not make much sense to you.  But as Becky Goldsmith noted, this video is the best use of auto-tune ever.