This and That • August 2025

August 30, 2025August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Since today is the 30th, I slid August’s This and That right under the wire.

For those who are new here (and thank you for subscribing) I often do a “This and That” post that contains a lot of small bits, updates on projects and pieces that don’t warrant their own post.

In other news…this is post number 1300. I started writing this blog in January of 2007. Thank you all for reading. And for your comments. And for being a part of my life for many quilty projects!

First up, on America’s Labor Day Weekend (Happy Labor Day, everyone!): a cool and calm photo my husband took near our home. He has a fascination for the flight of herons, and I loved this one, with all its blues.

I made my July block (churn dash, lower left) and August (star), both in this month. I’m using all my collected Sherri & Chelsi fabrics, some from her first lines. Sherri has started putting her quilt together, but I’m not sure how I’ll want to do mine.

I saw this while scrolling through some reels. As she tells it, when you turn 50, you are assigned a hobby.

I am so glad I was assigned Quilting, although I’m getting more and more interested in Geneology. And that group about travel actually sounds sort of interesting.

I went through my house and packed up four boxes of quilt books to send up to the Utah Valley Quilt Guild. My friend Lisa is the Librarian, and she said they’ll keep some and put others up for sale in their fundraiser.

Happy to for them be put to a good use.

And I’ve been putting these up for far too long. With this last one, I am at the end of the quilting on the center. And this is what I’ve sketched out for the borders of this New York Beauties quilt (yellow thread on the yellow border): We’ll see.

I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world that decides to (1) clean out a drawer or (2) lay on the sofa or (3) start a new project or just (4) doomscroll when there is a task awaits that is larger-than-my-tiny-brain-can-handle. After running out of things to procrastinate with, I finally started quilting the border this week. Big sigh, big relief.

The #ScrappyMeetsThriftChallenge soldiers on, with this installment. Or as I call them, my Economy Blocks.

I created a new page dedicated to this quilt so its easier to find the free patterns to make this. You can see “Economy Quilt” in the header, above.

Now here’s a random topic for you. I’ve been reading a lot about AI, and present here some clothing examples of bad photos, with arms that look like they were cut-out paper dolls, weird colors of skin, same model in same pose, clothing that fits oddly around the neckline. This is what they call AI Slop.

“Slop, at least in the fast-moving world of online message boards, is a broad term that [is] in reference to shoddy or unwanted A.I. content in social media, art, books and, increasingly, in search results,” wrote Benjamin Hoffman in a recent article in the New York Times.

While that article focused on searches done on a search engine, I found Kristian Hammond’s comment interesting: “You search for something and you get back what you need in order to think — and it actually encourages you to think. What it’s becoming, in this integration with language models, is something that does not encourage you to think. It encourages you to accept. And that, I think, is dangerous.”

Like we’re supposed to accept that this illustration above is a quilt? Hardly.

When an AI visual-creation platform first landed in 2022, I tried to tell it make a nine-patch block (on the left). That was a joke. I wrote in the email to my friend; “My first one was pretty weird, but I tried to improve my text commands, and the illustrations got a bit better.” My commands are in the text box, above. I tried it again this week, even though I’m sort of basically opposed to the use of AI these days (keep reading). The command was “nine-patch quilt block.” The results:

Nope. Couldn’t find one nine-patch in the mix. This is a serious illustration of AI Slop, which is pretty ubiquitous these days.

Like what is this??? (Also from my “nine-patch” prompt.) Love the “quilting needles.”

According to Natalie Fear, “A Google image search screenshot has ruffled feathers online after it showed more AI-generated results than real-world examples of baby peacocks…[T]he screenshot has sparked mass debate online, with many creatives calling for stricter rules for AI-generated search results to mitigate the spread of misinformation.”

This was published last year, and it’s only gotten worse.

Because of AI slop, I rely less and less on Google search, and type in -ai at the end of my search query quite often. I don’t want to be just “accepting” what is served up to me. And I use DuckDuckGo a lot more now, and even Reddit, as search engines.

Again, use -ai if you want a cleaner search.

Commenters on Reddit had this to say about AI Slop:
1) Slop is just a slur that you say after “AI” to show that you don’t like AI.
2) [Slop] refers specifically to AI generated creations that are clearly low effort engagement-farming spam.
3) Some people call everything that’s AI-generated “AI slop” as an insult, while many other people only use it to describe low effort, low quality content.

And lately, we’ve been hearing more and more and more about the downsides to AI.

Like the energy it consumes (a tongue-in-cheek approach).

Such as what it’s like when a Data Center is built down the road from you.

Like the amount of natural resources it eats up.

Also more on that here.

The problem is that AI, a general term, is integrating itself into our world.

For example:
• I like the clean-up tool on my iPhone photos. Is this AI?
• Doing a search on a search engine. Is this AI? (It is, if you don’t type the three digits -ai after your search terms.)

• Reading on social media and liking that picture of a young woman at a sewing machine. Is this AI? (from here. Be sure to read Weeks and Ringle’s text on this Instagram post.)
I think AI will slide in all around us, whether we are cognizant of it or not, and whether we need it or not. And might make mistakes that could be hard to fix. I love Kyla Scanlon’s recent post about how people feel about AI.

For me, it’s mixed.

Is AI all bad? Perhaps not. Genealogy research is putting it to good use. Here in the quilting world, we already have an “AIQuilter.” I enjoyed reading Sherri’s take on this subject, on her SherriQuiltsALot blog. Julia Wachs, on her website, also does an analysis of a few AI “quilts” and how to avoid purchasing AI-generated quilt patterns, which are sketchy at best in the instructions aspect. But to balance it out, this blogpost goes all in on the AI-design concept.

I just know that when I sit down to design, when I open up my Affinity Designer software, I’m not using 10x energy. Or 10x water.

Finally, Lastly, CanWePleaseStopTalkingAboutThis, my favorite definition of AI’s LLM (Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT) is that it’s “just a bag of words,” so no need to make it your friend, or take it seriously. I’m sure it does have its benefits, which we will discover as time goes on, because whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay.

When my brain is futzed out from all of this, I return to earth, to retreat to the fascinating brilliance of this real world. I return to the human level of making. Like quilts.

Or like a dress, or something. My sister’s been hot on this clothes-making for some time (inspiring me) and you know I’ve been sewing, too. But now I have a couple more pieces of fabric and want to make something else. Oh, what to choose? Hart’s Fabric has an extensive pattern collection, as does Oak Fabrics in Chicago (plus they both have fabric). Another place for both fabrics and patterns is Harmony, a fun shop in Provo, Utah.

Or a piece of writing for the Carrefour Quilt Show? It is being held next month in the Alsace region of France. This year is their 30th Anniversary, and since I’d written about it here in this space, they contacted me to see if I’d like to write something for them. I would! and I did. You can find the first post on their blog.

It’s in English, as well as French and German.

Maybe I’ll see you there?

In the meantime, I’ve got a border to sew, squircles to prep, and everything in between. And I’m not using AI for any of it.

Happy sewing!

NOTE: None of the illustrations or photographs you’ll find on this blog are AI, UNLESS I LABEL THEM AS SUCH (like the silly raccoon, above). None of my quilt designs or patterns are AI, either. It’s all home-grown, here!

Something to Think About · Textiles & Fabric · Travels

When You Can’t Create You Can Work

June 1, 2025June 7, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Henry Miller, a writer in the early part of the 20th century, devised a list of rules for himself when writing his first book (Black Spring). I found this whole idea while zipping through an exhibit in Kraków, where a designer tried to incorporate pieces of his so-called Eleven Commandments. One of them, “When you can’t create you can work,” was printed on ribbons and strips of whatever. Of course this phrase caught my eye, and I paused a nano-second to snap a photo then moved on. Tourists! (Look at the end of the post for Miller’s complete list.)

So it’s been that kind of a week, still snowed under by jet lag, I didn’t feel up to creating not one quilty idea. But I could work.

Our weather has started to turn to the hot, dry summer kind of weather, which means that the seersucker that I stashed back in October was going to have to get cut up into my summer nightgowns, using the same pattern that I’ve been using for half my life.

I usually only make two at a time, but this time went for three. I scavenged ribbons, which necessitated digging deep into the garage (more on that, later). The laces bordering the woven ribbon (pink/blue) were picked up on a trip to Austria, a millennia ago. The woven ribbons were purchased when I working at a local fabric store before I had my first child, and when they had wonderful local fabric stores.

I’d given the Jemima Puddleduck buttons to my mother, which she gave back to me at some point. (Three for only one dollar??!!)

I found them in my button box, still wrapped in the tissue paper the shop lady in Britain had wrapped up for me. Before JoAnn’s closed, I would have felt guilty for stashing away all these treasures. Now I feel sort of proud of myself. We quilters are funny people.

Last time she was here, my daughter said, “Mom, you need to clean out.” Implied was the rest of the sentence: “Clean out before you die so I don’t have to.” Message received; rafters cleared. Working on the rest…later.

This standing quilt hoop was a heart breaker to leave at the thrift store. The boy taking this treasure from my husband turned it upside, and one side of the stand fell out onto the floor. He kicked it to the side and dumped the rest into the bin. (Perhaps it’s best if we don’t watch what happens to our treasures.)

Sick and tired of podcasts and newscasts, and realizing my stubborn jetlag was still with me — which answers the question about why it took me soooo long to make the nightgowns — I started listening to a new book, recommended by my sister. So far, so good. I will say that I have gotten things put away from the trip, but so much else needs to be dealt with, primarily the emails. Thank you for your lovely notes on the Kraków churches!

I could have used this Pasmanteria (the word for this kind of a store in Czechia) when I was hunting buttons and trim for the nightgowns. Yes, I found a fabric/notions store while traveling! I purchased the usual: two thimbles.

Alphonse Mucha window, St. Vitus Cathedral

I’ll leave you with this two glorious stained glass windows from the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, along with (below) this tiny wrought iron work of a woman spinning thread into cloth, from one of the chapel gates:

Happy Working, if not Creating–

Here are the ELEVEN COMMANDMENTS, if you are interested:

Work on one thing at a time until finished.
Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’
Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
When you can’t create you can work.
Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

This little PatternLite pattern is a reminder of what we see when we get out of our own town.

You can find it in my Quilt Shop, on PayHip. Enjoy!

Something to Think About

Creatives Talk

September 9, 2020 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

Somewhere between the shock of a pandemic shutting the entire world down and its ripple effects, and this month’s realization that this quarantine stuff — if everyone plays nice — will probably go on for another year, I found an article where two creative forces, the designer Iris van Herpen and the choreographer Damien Jalet had a conversation.

It was May 2020, and after holding our breath since mid-March, we slowly began to exhale, wondering how we were going to get through this, would we ever get through this, and how to pick up the pieces of lives, covid-style. And then this article came into view (one in a series from The Big Ideas in the New York Times).

As you can see from van Herpen’s designs, she is not your average fashion designer. So this excerpt surprised me (Damien Jalet, asking the question):

Stanley Kubrick said that some of the artistic failures of the 20th century came from an obsession with total originality, and that innovation didn’t happen through abandoning the classical art form of your own discipline. . . Does the question “Is what I’m doing original?” ever come up in your creative process?

*cotton quilt blocks from 1890, from here*

At one point in our quilting world, we quilters spent a lot of time and spilled a lot of ink (figuratively speaking) over this issue. We were rabid with the question of who came up with this idea first? Who was the first one on the planet to draw a particular block, make a particular quilt, yada yada yada.

Ms. van Herpen replies:

Nothing comes out of nothing, so the craftsmanship that we master we can attribute to a long evolution of craftsmanship and innovation combined throughout so many centuries. And we are looking at that constantly. So in that sense, I don’t believe at all in originality. But at the same time we are combining it with technologies of today and newer techniques… Without the knowledge of the traditional craftsmanship, we would not be able to integrate these new techniques at all. So they really need each other.

Nothing comes out of nothing. This implies that we quilters, without the history of what has come before us, would not be able to create our designs and our quilts. In her words, “we really need each other.”

Back to Kubrick’s idea. I remember in my earlier days striving mightily to create something totally my own, something that had no origin from anything that we were familiar with. Anywhere. My early attempts were, as he says, “failures” as they “came from an obsession with total originality.”

Slowly I began to remember that when I was in college, in photography class, one of my professors noted that we don’t have to be original, that most of the best ideas are really only 10% new — anything more and they would be too far out of the mainstream to be accepted or enjoyed. An article on The Next Web reiterates this:

There is no such thing as a new idea. One of the most beautiful things about humanity is our ability to build on each other’s ideas, making small tweaks and giant leaps into new innovations. That doesn’t mean your ideas aren’t potentially interesting and even important — just don’t ever call them “original.”

The idea, that I don’t have to be original or new or startling or gee-whiz-bang, and that I can just make a solid quilt with good color choices and a somewhat fresh take, is a relief.

from Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Quilt patterns: a four-patch block known as a Lattice block

This month’s Gridster Bee Block, chosen by Bette has its origins in a Churn Dash variation, known as Puss in the Corner, from Nancy Page in the 1920s:

I admit, sometimes I doodle around and then hit Barbara Brackman’s book to see what our early quilters did, and often what I think is something I’ve discovered, is actually on the pages of the Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. There’s a whimsical sort of — well, of course — that goes on, but also another link from me to those women long ago. I honor this connection to our “classical art form of [our] own discipline.”

Happy Stitching!

Something to Think About

Making: Another view

October 31, 2019October 31, 2019 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

Recently I attended a lecture by David Taylor (at PIQF), which was humorous and interesting. One interesting fact was, that while he did these incredible quilts with very detailed applique and quilting — most taking about a year to complete, when he was at home when he wanted to relax, he did very different work for himself. He worked on the Piecemakers’ Calendars.

(A photo of his Christmas Chickadee is on the left.)

My husband and I had just had a discussion about this, about how I, as a pattern maker and creator of original quilts, sometimes make other people’s patterns. I had a hard time explaining myself, for both facets of my quilty life give me much pleasure. Why wouldn’t I alway make my own designs? I have tons more ideas than what you’ve seen, many more ideas to explore.

So I was intrigued by David Wu’s article titled “In Praise of Mediocrity.” His opening lines hooked me: “I’m a little surprised by how many people tell me they have no hobbies. It may seem a small thing, but — at the risk of sounding grandiose — I see it as a sign of a civilization in decline. The idea of leisure, after all, is a hard-won achievement; it presupposes that we have overcome the exigencies of brute survival. Yet here in the United States, the wealthiest country in history, we seem to have forgotten the importance of doing things solely because we enjoy them.”

Wu goes on to say that he believes it is because we afraid “of being bad” at our hobbies. If all the joggers are supposed to be marathoners-in-training, or all the painters supposed to be the next Rembrandts, that places the pressure of linking our identity to our hobby, with the result that we feel “you’d better be good at it, or else who are you?”

I just finished the last of my Guild visits for the year, and from early on this year, I worked into my lecture a quilt that I think it a distinct “failure,” on so many levels: the colors don’t work, the pattern is good, but the fabric choices are all wrong, the quilting is meh. But I show it in among my fancier quilts just to say that not every quilt is a home run, and most quilts don’t make it into the top ten of national shows.

Wu notes that in always striving to be excellent in our hobbies, it becomes more like work. We lose “the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it….But alien values like ‘the pursuit of excellence’ have crept into and corrupted what was once the realm of leisure, leaving little room for the true amateur.”

The people in my quilt workshops are always comparing their efforts with my samples, some of those sample having been made multiple times, so they are fairly free from errors. The result is that I often leave them up on the front table when I’m chatting with the students about color choices, or design choices, wanting to see what they want to put where, what colors they want to make their quilts.

If we, or our students, or the women at retreats, or the neighbors around the small sewing circle feel like we have to be excellent at everything we do, isn’t this like being “trapped in a cage whose bars are not steel but self-judgment”? Wu does not think that becoming good at something is terrible: “I don’t deny that you can derive a lot of meaning from pursuing an activity at the highest level. I would never begrudge someone a lifetime devotion to a passion or an inborn talent. There are depths of experience that come with mastery.”

I want all my students to want to sew, to enjoy the process. So what if the quilt doesn’t ever leave your bedroom? Is it less wonderful if it never gets into a show? It hopefully is the making that is the pleasure, or as Wu puts it: “a real and pure joy, a sweet, childlike delight, that comes from just learning and trying to get better,” finding “exaltation in the mere act of doing.”

Happy quilting!