WIP

WIP–New Projects

August 24, 2011September 13, 2011 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Lee! The ever fabulous Lee! has hosted us all, once again, on her blog Freshly Pieced. Many thanks!

I always seem to have billions of things I want to quilt, to sew, but somehow don’t think to mention them on this blog. Not that I’m going to start right now because I have to leave for school in 10 minutes and I haven’t eaten lunch nor brushed my teeth. I DID finish the grading, though.

But what I did pull out and work on this week was my version of Rubrik’s Crush by Ashley, of Film in the Fridge. I’ve loved this ever since she showed it on her blog in a sneak peek, so I waited until it was published to get my hands on her pattern. It’s a perfect way to show off large-scale prints, yet still have that patchworky feel to the quilt. So I started cutting it out. I got ONE square cut out before I had to stop and move on to other things. Pathetic? Not really, because at least I STARTED.

Where she used Horner’s line of fabrics, I’ve had some Amy Butler Love fabrics lingering in my closet. Plus a few others.

The other thing I’ve been working is my Quilt Journal. It’s been a long process getting the photos ready for this book, getting the book ready (as per my father’s advice, I had a larger spiral added to the spine). I gathered up all the photos I took–one of which involved a trip to Arizona–and bugged/pleaded/asked the other children for photos of the quilts I had made. My eldest son Chad (shown here holding an Amish Sunshine and Shadow quilt) and I photographed quilts in the conference room at his work (no one was around, nor using it). I’ve tried to only include completed quilts in this process, but a couple of tops crept in. A few quilts are gone forever, with no photos, only memories. They are also listed.

It was interesting writing about the quilts that I’d made over 35 years ago, and about how much came back to my memory–the feelings, the frustrations. Each quilt has two pages: the first one with its number (keyed to a master list) and the “verso” where I show the back and include any extraneous photos or details. Writing in this, and sticking in the photos, is an especially satisfying venture.

My total count at this point? 91. If I get going on this Rubrik’s Crush quilt (or the Christmas quilt–see snapshot below), I’ll have some more to add to my list.

This is my goal.

Don’t Just Do Something. . .Stand There

August 20, 2011 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

The title of this post is taken from an LA Times article of the same name, and it extols the idea of “down time,” or “space time,” or “staring at the wall and watching the paint dry” time. A quote:

The short story writer Grace Paley also spoke up in praise of idleness. “I have a basic indolence about me which is essential to writing,” she said in an interview. “It really is. Kids now call it space around you. It’s thinking time, it’s hanging-out time, it’s daydreaming time. You know, it’s lie-around-the-bed time, it’s sitting-like-a-dope-in-your-chair time. And that seems to me essential to my work.”

Another related article talks about the importance of idle time. A quote:

Until recently, scientists would have found little of interest in the purposeless, mind-wandering spaces between Mrazek’s conscious breakfast-making tasks — they were just the brain idling between meaningful activity. But in the span of a few short years, they have instead come to view mental leisure as important, purposeful work — work that relies on a powerful and far-flung network of brain cells firing in unison.

Maybe that’s what’s going on with me today–just can’t seem to get traction in my off-time. I’ve decided it takes WAY more effort to start a project than it does to finish one. I may decide something different tomorrow. But for now–I’m just standing here. Doing nothing.

**illustration is done by Christopher Serra / For The Los Angeles Times

Sewing

FSF–Shopping Bag/Tote

August 19, 2011 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

Finally!! Something to show for Finishing School Friday. I was despairing of ever having something to show again, as school has started and I’ve been slammed with busyness. Today was the first day I’ve had to take a breath.

I was able to work on this shopping bag/tote that I’ve had cut out and partly sewn for over a week now. I wasn’t really happy with it during construction, but decided that today, before I started any other sewing projects, I would finish it. I remember long ago standing in a new dress in front of the mirror while my mother was sitting on the floor, marking my hem with straight pins. I didn’t like the dress at all. I thought it didn’t flatter my perfectly fine 17-year old teenage-girl body in the ways I wanted it to, in order to catch Dan Ord’s eye at church. I don’t know what I wanted, but I didn’t want this. I must have said something to this effect to my mother (not mentioning the boy, of course), who mumbled through the pins in her mouth: “Don’t judge a dress until you get the hem in.”

She was right, of course, about this and so many other things. I wore that dress out, and yes, got the boy. But in dressmaking and in life, we have an idea in our head of how the end will be, but somehow what we are working on, and what our vision is, have a parting of the ways. Maybe it’s because we want it to be finished, to be done. And we are called away and so the quilt, the bag, the dress sit, unfinished. But I kept at it all afternoon, doing loads of laundry, talking to the man who came to replace our windshield (rock divots from our trip to Yellowstone), and made a batch of cookie dough.

It began last May with Carrie, a friend, who came to stay with one of her friends, Gina. We hung out together for two days, goofing off, playing, eating pastries at 4 p.m. in the afternoon and ruining our dinner, but who cared? When she and Gina left, they presented me with two swaths of quilt fabric: the raindrops print in blue and green and the wild floral print. I loved them both, and couldn’t decide between the two for lining the bag. So, I used both.

I finished the last of the top-stitching a few minutes ago, shook it out, and wow. I liked it! It’s the old put-in-the-hem principle at work, one more time.

In case you didn’t go and visit and read about being my slammed by school post on the other blog, here’s one of the pictures for you, a dreamy pastoral sunset scene, taken in Paris, Idaho. Enjoy, and have a good weekend!

WIP

WIP–Red/White Table Runner

August 17, 2011October 3, 2022 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Even though my week was somewhat stalled, due to Lack of Personal Energy (that even chocolate and caffeine couldn’t fix), I did force myself to some progress on the Red/White Challenge blocks. I wanted to make a table runner, but didn’t know how it would come together. I played around with a lot of ideas, putting the blocks on point, but in the end, it was all about getting the blocks to interact together. I love how they seemed to “converse” when they were up on my pin wall and I knew if I put them on point, that conversation would vanish.

So I made a mock-up of the blocks with a checkerboard border.

Then I kept switching around the order of the blocks until I got an arrangement I liked.

Stitched together and pinned–ready for quilting! It’s good to have something smaller to work on, because school started this week. For those who don’t know, I teach English at a local community college, and this semester (they rotate our classes) I’m teaching Introduction to Literature. We’re diving into poems right off the bat, so I thought I’d offer up this poem by Billy Collins, as a tribute to what students in literature classes can do to a poem.

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

from The Apple that Astonished Paris, 1996
University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville, Ark.

But the most important thing of all is, it’s my daughter’s birthday. Because she developed pari-partum cardiomyopathy upon the birth of her last child–a life-threatening disease–I celebrate every birthday I can. Happy Birthday, Barbara!

And if you’ll indulge me for one more, here’s my husband and I with most of our grandchildren, taken at the last family reunion. I LOVE glow necklaces!