Something to Think About

Loose Threads–Krista’s Questions, Answered

Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Krista, of KristaStitched, challenged a few of us bloggers to answer some questions:

1.  Starch or no starch?
I always think of our clothing and textiles teacher who warned us about little bugs who would come to feast on the starch in our fabrics.  So I rarely use starch on fabric I’m going to store away, but do use it occasionally as I’m appliqueing, or assembling a quilt.

2. Prewashing or not?
Didn’t used to, until a bunch of reds (shown above, along with my Japanese toys) wouldn’t stop bleeding into the rest of the fabrics (I think it was right after formaldehyde was banned as a fixative).  Now I like to throw them in the washer right as I come home, dry them until damp and press them up.  I lay them out on the guest room bed until they are fully dry, then fold them into 12″ squares (approx) for storage. I guess it’s a way to get a jump on playing with the fabric.

3. Solids or prints?
Done both.  I’ve made a lot of Amish quilts, so have had my love affair with solids already.

4. Dogs or cats?
A cement rabbit, who sits under the end table in the living and doesn’t poop, eat, or move.  I visit a friend who has two cats.  I have to throw my clothes in the dryer when I get home to remove all the cat hair.  Had a Golden Retriever once.

5. Big quilts or little quilts?
No preference really, but not a fan of king-sized quilts.

6. Thrifting or buying new?
Both, but probably buying new, because at this point in my life, most of my stash might be considered vintage.  Kidding.  Sort of.  I used a scrap of my very first quilt in my Scrappy Stars.  It’s that blue/white piece of fabric on the right, above, and was purchased in 1973, and is over thirty years old. (Gosh, I sound ancient.) In that same quilt, I used some sheets, too, but I don’t have any scraps of that, but if I did, that would be something.

7. Wood floors or carpet?
Both.  And tile, too.  And I’m always cleaning up spots in the carpet.  What is it with this?  Where do they come from if you don’t have pets or grandchildren hanging around?  I’m always accusing my husband, but really, I have no idea.

8. Beer or wine?
Neither.  Chocolate. Heck, yes. (I’m just quoting the chocolate bar in the photo above.)

9. Staying in or going out?
Some of each.  Sometimes if you’ve been in too much, you’ve just got to bust out and do something a little different, like when we went to see the Big Rock being moved from out our way into Los Angeles.

10. One fabric line per quilt or mix and match?
I love how the bundles of fabric look when one line is displayed, but haven’t ever made a quilt where I wasn’t rummaging in my stash, looking to add a piece or two of something else.

11. Watching tv or listening to music?
I like watching movies so I can sew on my EPP.  I like listening to tunes while working in the sewing studio, but also like listening to books. My 84-year-old mother chooses the books.  She nails ’em, as I love everything she picks. And oh, BTW — I totally look like this when I’m listening to my music, complete with the pink lights in the background.

Rachel, over at The Life of Riley, is playing along too.  Hop over there and see what she’s written.

If you’d like to answer Krista’s questions, drop me a note in the comments, and I’ll update this post with your blog address.  I had more fun answering these than I thought I would–thanks, Krista, for some great questions!

WIP

Scrappy Stars–WIP Wednesday

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

When I get these blocks all up here in a row, I like to look at them.  I look at them when I’m talking on the phone.  I look at them when I’m supposed to be grading.  I look at them even though my lesson plans aren’t done yet.  I just like to look at how far they’ve come and how fun it is to use up fabrics that are already in my closet.

We had a little of that going on at dinner last night, too.  I had Two-Can Tomato Soup on the docket, and in rummaging around in the freezer, found some very forgotten French bread from our local bakery shop.  So I cut up the slices into 2″-wide “fingers,” brushed them with olive oil, ground some salt over them and broiled them until they were lightly toasted, then floated them on the top of the soup.  Like the stars above, you have to gussy up your leftovers, so I called them “croutons” — in the manner of the French — and also garnished the soup with a little bit of cream and chunks of avocado. Yum!

So this is my current work in progress this week.  Our church had its semi-annual conference (here’s a link to my favorite talk about not judging) and I streamed conference while I had lead-foot-itis on the sewing machine, sewing while listening.  Keeps me awake during the less-than-favorite talks.  I usually like to have a conference quilt finished up by the end of the weekend, but this one’s growing in my mind — maybe it needs some appliqued borders? — so I couldn’t finish it up.  Just thinking grand here.

I am posting this on the Freshly Pieced Fabrics blog, where Lee, our amiable hostess, always puts out the welcome mat for us quilters to share what we are working on.    I missed it last week because I was in the fog; happy to get back to it this week.  Thanks, Lee.  (And a big congrats to her for her quilt was juried into the Modern Quilt Guild Showcase!)

Blog Strolling

Copyright Loose Threads

Elizabeth E.9 Comments

This is my final post on copyright, hopefully.  But it comes because not only did Ms. Spain put up another post on her blog, the New York Times ran an interesting editorial on stealing, which, in discussing the charges against Megaupload, a music file-sharing site, started out with this thought:

From its earliest days, the crime of theft has been understood to involve the misappropriation of things real and tangible.

From there the Times article notes that:

When Industrial Age Bob and Joe started inventing less tangible things, like electricity, stocks, bonds and licenses, however, things got more complicated. What Bob took, Joe, in some sense, still had. So the law adjusted in ad hoc and at times inconsistent ways. Specialized doctrines were developed to cover the misappropriation of services (like a ride on a train), semi-tangibles (like the gas for streetlights) and true intangibles (like business goodwill). . . . In 1962, the prestigious American Law Institute issued the Model Penal Code, resulting in the confused state of theft law we’re still dealing with today.  In a radical departure from prior law, the code defined “property” to refer to “anything of value.” Henceforth, it would no longer matter whether the property misappropriated was tangible or intangible, real or personal, a good or a service. All of these things were now to be treated uniformly.

The article goes on to discuss illegal music file-sharing, but it turns out that most don’t see this as stealing: “lay observers draw a sharp moral distinction between file sharing and genuine theft, even when the value of the property is the same.”

But the bit that jumped out at me was this line:

People who work hard to produce creative works are entitled to enjoy legal protection to reap the benefits of their labors. And if others want to enjoy those creative works, it’s reasonable to make them pay for the privilege.

So, if you sell me some fabric, haven’t I paid for that privilege?

In True Up’s post, titled “Fabric and the Man,” written some time ago, she notes that the use of licensed fabric cannot be restricted after its sale, pointing to a website of Tabberone, who discusses this at great length.  I was also referred to this website by a comment left here by dmdezigns and her view is that:

Once a fabric has been sold, the copyright holder can’t control what’s done with it.  You can resell it, make something with it, sell what you made, etc and they don’t have any control over it.

Which brings me to the picture at the top of the post.  It was sent to me by my friend Rhonda, who has been following the copyright muddle. We wondered if greed, or commerce, or as my Dad would say, The Almighty Buck, is the motivating force behind all of this.  We in the quilt world have enjoyed a pleasant sort of comradery thus far with sharing being the operative word.  Perhaps in the new attempt to get at a slice of the Quilt Commerce Pie, we’ve brought this on ourselves, as many commenters expressed their frustration with people selling quilt patterns of blocks that have been around since forever, yet claiming original design.  Ms. Spain, in her latest blog on this subject tries to smooth over everything by extending an olive branch to Emily Cier, sort of saying “no hard feelings, eh?”

Except this last weekend, as I was working on a scrappy quilt I pulled a range of favorite fabrics from my shelf to cut up into strips.  But I paused when it came to Kate Spain’s fabric.  I thought about all that I’d read over the last couple of weeks, paused, and put it back up in the closet.  I don’t know if my reaction parallels any of yours, but I’m much less inclined to use her fabric now.  Or buy it.

An unfortunate, unintended consequence.

Tutorial

FSF–iPad Cover

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Okay, this was me this week.  Lost in a fog.  I even forgot to post on WIP Wednesday, which is usually like a religion to me.  Suspected sinus infection.  Exhaustion.  Suffering from What-Day-Is-It-itis.  Verified Foggy Brain condition.  But today, the sun it out, the day is pleasant and I have a mani-pedi scheduled in an hour.  All’s good.

And I finished up my iPad cover.  Somehow.  A blue ikat with a little happy surprise inside.  Front.

Front, with flap open and shy little orange bird looking all coy.  Like an idiot,  I cut it too close (there were some alterations after I had it quilted–double rats!!) and the other birds are peering out from underneath the bias edge binding.  But I love them all anyway.  Velcro sticky dots, which ruined a needle (you’re warned).

And the treasures peeking out: the iPad and a stylus.  Okay, I’m enjoying my iPad, but I love my laptop.  I’m sure it’s like anything–takes a while to figure it out and get it under your techno skin.

Here’s how, in a few easy steps:

Whack off a piece of fabric (I pieced the back for a little “interest” as shown here) about 3″ larger on all sides than your iPad. The piece on the left is row-quilted in varying widths. The piece on the right is trimmed up.

I flipped over the trimmed up piece so you could see that I am lining this with some birdy fabric on the upper edge and using Minky down below.

I thought I should lay them out to show you what my final dimensions were before I sewed them together (yep, I’ve already started with the binding).

The back, which includes the extra for the flap is 13 1/2 ” tall and 8 3/4″ wide.  The stylus case is 6″ by 1 3/4″ and the front is 11″ tall by 8 3/4″ wide.  I think the “body” pieces could be cut to 8 1/2″ wide if you want a bit snugger fit.  The way it is now, there’s some skootch room (the one I made for my husband is skin tight, but he says it’s fine).

Make your binding by cutting a bias piece of fabric 1 1/2″ wide.  I seamed a bunch of strips together to make one long piece  (add up the dimensions if you must have an accurate length–I’m guessing mine was in the 45-50″ length).  Take it to your ironing board and press all seams OPEN, then press it in half along the length.  Now press both raw edges in to the ironed fold, making double-fold bias tape.  I offset the folded edges slightly, so that when I laid it against the raw edge of my quilted piece, the back would be slightly longer.

Bind the upper edge of your shorter body piece.  Bind around the stylus case.  I left those edges square.  That was a nutso thing to do, so on the back body piece, I wised up and placed  a spool of thread to mark a rounded edge.

Sew on the stylus case on the front, centering it.  Stitch around three side, leaving the side open.  I realized I would be slipping this case in and out of my school bag/church bag/whatever purse when I put it into use, so I tried to incorporate the stylus case where it would be out of the way, yet accessible.

Now line up your front, shorter piece on top of the longer, back body piece WRONG SIDES TOGETHER, leaving the extra on top (where my birds are) as the flap.  Stitch down one side, using a 1/4″ seam allowance, then across the bottom, then up the other side, stopping where the front body piece ends.

I know a lot of sewists (sewists?  can you get used to that word–I can’t! I still like “sewers”) make a “lined sack” sort of arrangement for their cases (yes, I Googled “iPad Cover Tutorial” and there are a lot), but I wanted a quilted body and a smooth interior which would be fuzz-less for the iPad.  [Once we had to make a little trip to Apple when the pocket fuzz from my husband’s pockets clogged up the earbud port.  Apparently this happens a lot.]

Begin stitching on the binding about 2″ down from the fold of the flap.  Here I’m going around the flap outer corner, and that sweet yellow bird is keeping an eye on me.  The bias binding really goes smoothly around corners.

After sewing on the bias, turn it over and try not to curse when you notice all the places that didn’t get caught in your sewing.  Re-stitch those, which is another reason why I chose a colorful fabric for my bias binding.  It hides mistakes.

I had not planned to put on Velcro dots, preferring instead to simply fold it over, but row-quilted fabric apparently has a mind of its own, and it’s comparable to a two-year old’s who wants the Skittles from the back of the cupboard.

So on they went, obscuring two of my favorite birds (rats!).  I ended up putting a third dot in the middle, hand-stitching it to the stylus case, but machine stitching it to the flap.

So now I can be cool with my ikat fabric cover.  And not worry so much.  I may yet get a black foldable cover but I looked at the ones in my local store and wasn’t that thrilled with them.  This is fine for now.

And I’m out of the fog!  Happy Quilting this weekend.