Textiles & Fabric

Commerce, Downtown LA-style

Elizabeth E.

Between Ssexxy Accessory and TU-TU fashion, I knew I’d arrived in the garment district of LA.

Unlike how I imagine NYCity’s district, with racks of clothes being pushed around by runners between showrooms and ateliers, I also knew I was in LA’s district by the smell of grilled onions, fresh for the pupusa take-out lunches. Other tip-offs are the mannequins, neatly lined up, bottoms-out, advertising their wares in a cheeky fashion, pockets and decorative stitching all in a row. There were also extremely fluffy dresses for First Communion, stacks of white T-shirts and colorful socks, as well as hanging garments lapped shoulder to shoulder so they looked like a headless-legless line of chorus girls, flapping in the hot LA breeze.

I was traveling up Maple Street to Michael Levine’s–any sewer’s mecca. I needed large buttons and Jo Ann’s and Hancock’s weren’t offering anything with any kind of style. Getting to LA is half the adventure for those of us out in the sticks.

Most of us on Highway 60 were pushing 70 miles per hour when a small white car suddenly swerved right, overcorrected, swerving to the left, sideswiping the pick-up truck in front of me, then hitting the cement median wall. At that point, the principles of physics took over, scattering the bumper pieces into the faster lanes, and propelling the car back across four lanes of traffic, where it screeched and crashed into the right-hand wall; several cars stopped to help. We all crept slowly around the debris, then like true Angelenos, picked up speed again. A car with the license plates “Ms. Spedy” swept by me on the right. It was a miracle no one was pulled into the accident. The cynic in me supposed, “texting.”

It reminded me of the pick-up truck traveling next to us when Mom/Dad were taking me to the airport last week. A loud explosion, and the shreds of the tire went flying–one right over our windshield. Dad pulled over to the right to give the swerving truck a chance to maneuver, then we slowly moved back into the traffic and on our way.

Back to the buttons. I crept around the block, looking for a meter and found one! Quarters to the rescue, but it wouldn’t accept them. I pulled forward the next empty one. Ditto. The two shop owners brought me out a bag to put over the meter, and said, in a lilting reggae-ish patois: “Some folks park here free all day.” I hurried over to Michael Levine’s, bee-lined for the buttons, where I found what I was looking for. On the way out, I noticed their quilt fabric section. Another day, I thought, until, walking back to my car I noticed a parking lot right next door. One free hour’s parking with purchase from Michael Levine’s.

I’m not dumb. I moved the car, and headed back into the store.

After a pleasant interlude, I headed home, trying to escape the city. It’s common knowledge that if you’re not out by early afternoon, because of LA traffic, you won’t get home in any timely fashion (as reported on the news radio on the way in: most commuters in Los Angeles spend–waste–70 hours per year in traffic, down from last year’s 72 hours).

No mishaps on the way home. I used to do these little jaunts more often, but work, family and church responsibilities had filled my time. So, a sort of an adventure–silly little one–but a welcome respite from the norm.

100 Quilts · Quilt Finish

How I’m Spending My Summer Vacation

Elizabeth E.2 Comments
  • Some have asked what I’ve been doing lately.
  • First, I did all those things I left undone during the last two semesters of teaching school, even finding some un-read Christmas cards in the basket as I went through them. And one bill.
  • I read the middle third of my father’s memoir, edited it, and went up to Utah to visit him. I read the last third of his memoir, edited it and am headed up there on Sunday to visit with him.
  • I gave a talk in church.
  • I had some home renovations performed.
  • I had the five floorboards replaced where they dropped the counter slab tear-out.
  • I cleaned up after all the workmen (not a sexist term; I promise they were all men).

Steepy Mountains • Quilt # 73 • see post here

Daisy Star Quilt • Quilt #76 • finished June 2009

And a couple of other things, like a skirt (which I have to fix a bit) and stuff.

How’s your summer vacation going?

Quilts · Something to Think About

Life’s Pretty Fragile

Elizabeth E.
my daughter and her daughter

Several years ago my husband and I took a year’s sabbatical to live in Alexandria, Virginia, while he worked at the Dept. of State. While he worked, I tried to revise my grad school novel (pitiful thing), visited museums, walked all the sights that D.C. has to offer, gazed at the monuments and joined a quilt group.

Mount Vernon Quilters became the place for me every Tuesday afternoon. The Bees, where we’d meet and just quilt–always hand piecing or applique–were alternated with our Business Meetings. We were one of eleven chapters of a much larger guild, Quilters Unlimited of Virginia, a group totaling around one thousand members.

However, our chapter was small, and I’d say the average age was retirement, with a few young quilters around the edges. I grew to love them and their interesting meeting snacks and amazingly, they took me in and loved me too. It was very hard to leave that little nest. So, in a way, I didn’t. I agreed to serve as Newsletter Editor–but from California–land of the fruits and nuts and machine piecers. Blogs were just starting to come on line at that time, and I set one up for the ladies of Mt. Vernon. It was completely radical–something they really liked–and we became known for our “with-it-ness” all around our greater Quilters Unlimited Guild.

After two years, Beverly took over. I’d never met her–she joined after I had gone–but I taught her everything I knew about blogging. She caught on quickly, asking her son for help when she couldn’t figure out long-distance what the heck I meant about copy-paste, or control-C-control-V. She made it her own. When I went back for a visit last year, I met her and her disabled daughter Catherine. Beverly was as sweet in person as she was on the phone.

Catherine died last week, in her sleep.

Her mother had tucked her in under a flannel chenille quilt made by one of the Mt. Vernon quilters, a slight breeze coming in from the window–and turned out the light. But in the morning, Catherine was gone. I wrote to Beverly to express my condolences and she wrote back:

It was so unexpected. Catherine seemed to be thriving–I really thought she’d outlive me. She was a happy young lady that made me smile everyday and never disappointed me. She was totally innocent–I called her the “barometer of good.” It will be so difficult as I have wrapped my life around her… it’s going to be quite an adjustment. Cath asked for nothing but love, and she got plenty.

So, to help Beverly out, I’ve picked up the blog for a while, trying to fill her shoes, and probably making a mess while I do it.

Life is pretty fragile. Perhaps we all need a quilt somewhere.

Sewing · Something to Think About

Blessing Dress for my Granddaughter

Elizabeth E.

I made this dress for my daughter’s blessing many years ago. She asked me to get it ready for this child’s blessing. It had aged some, with the lace turning creamy, and Barbara asked me to get it white again. I’m too old to take it all apart and sew it up with new lace, so I remembered about Rit Dye Remover. One night found me cooking dinner, simultaneously boiling up a dress in a pot on the stove.

It worked! After ten minutes stewing in the solution (which made our kitchen smell like a beauty parlor) everything was crisply white again, better than magic, and I found myself thinking about the idea of being made new again, utilizing the twin blessings of forgiveness and repentance.

I think back to that woman who made the original dress, me–some three decades ago. What was I concerned with then? Certainly raising the children right. My last child hadn’t even happened on the scene and I was ankle–no, knee-deep–in kids and house and home and relationships and fatigue and worry and sickness and health and picnics at the “gun park” (Westpoint, NY) and serving others (a tiny church in Newburgh, four church jobs and 4 other women I was assigned to visit with each month) and chaos (two boys and a baby girl) and isolation (we lived in the hills about 70 minutes away from NYC). Add in a strange marriage, a dog that kept running away, missing my mother and father and family, and probably a lot of wondering about just how it would all turn out.

I remember my parents making the trek out East to see me, bringing me a new set of scriptures in beautiful blue leather. They are still a treasure, although I moved on to a new set some years later. I think about that gift, what was being said in two books on crisp thin paper. Maybe they were saying: this is the best gift. Stand with these and you’ll figure everything else out. All that you’re going through can be made sense of if you apply what’s in here to your life.

Did I understand then about forgiveness/repentance? I thought I did. I thought I had a pretty good handle on things, wobbling as I did through an off-balance life.

But the woman who holds the child’s child in the photo above has a better view of those early years. (It’s certainly not as good as that baby’s great-grandmother, but it will do for now.)

Forgiving others, not withholding that critical component of the Lord’s gospel. Repenting when possible, because I figure I’m always in need of forgiveness. And somewhere between those two, a intense gratitude for these principles of life, a realization that the Lord has given me a chance to be happy, be thankful, in spite of scars, in spite of scarring.

It’s what makes life work. It’s a life’s work.