When you are stuck, it is. I love those houses, but…No.
New favorite. I ordered two more yards.
I love having scraps of batting that are just the right size.
Letting us both rest after a few hours of quilting.
Here come the beauty shots. (Isn’t that little bee with the branch arms the cutest?)
I quilted whatever came into my head.
I haven’t measured it, I haven’t labeled it, but the saga of the Orphan-Blocks-into-Table-Runner is now complete. I’m sorry to say, it didn’t empty out my orphan blocks bin much. Now I have to think up another way to use some of those up. And I have to think up a name. These orphan blocks came from when I taught the First Monday Sew-day class of beginners about Square-in-a-Square, or Economy blocks.
I still love these little houses. Now I have the beginning of another quilt! Get the Pattern Lite here.
Happy Memorial Day Weekend.
Or, as my mother would say, Happy Decoration Day (some fascinating reading in this link). The weekend before Memorial Day, my mother and father would go out and decorate the graves of their grandparents and great-grandparents with flowers, the cemetary made beautiful with pots of mums everywhere. This is the gravestone of my Scottish gr-grandmother. I have two namesake gr-grandmother Elizabeths and I remember them both on this Decoration Day. While the origins of Memorial Day are generally thought to be about the war dead, because of my mother, I remember it also as a day to honor those long gone.
Picties and Verities, quilt #243 71″ wide by 78″ tall
Finally!
This baby has a new name: Picties and Verities.
What, you ask? Well, that phrase was in a poem I read about a thousand years ago, and I liked it and wrote it down and of course I can’t find it now, because that’s my life, when even what we had for dinner last night is cause for wandering around in the corridors of memory.
Verities, defined: a true princple or belief, especially one of fundamental importance. Seems to me that striving to be happy, knowing that the sun shines on all of us, as well as the idea that it’s always good to go home — with or without your trailer — just have to be some verities.
Picties, defined: For this one, I went to my husband’s college Oxford Dictionary, a two-volume set complete with magnifying glass. Pict (rare, it says, from the 1400s) means to paint or depict or represent. I would say all those bits of appliqué up there qualify as little pictures. Of course the Picts were also the ancient name of people from North Scotland, and are associated with elves, brownies or fairies. And possibly old grey castles with dungeons (an allusion to its working title: Trapped in the Dungeon of Cute). And since my great-grandmother was from Scotland, I own that heritage with pride.
I sewed on buttons last Saturday, while listening to my Guild’s program, and added, as is my usual, “Made in the time of Covid-19” for anyone who receives this quilt after I’ve gone to the afterworld to frolic with Scottish fairies. You’ve seen photos of this, but here’s a last batch of fun.
And since you’ve read this far, I now treat you to one of my husband’s beautiful photographs, taken the last week of January:
Aloe Blossom
We retraced his steps to take a look at it this past week, because in trying to identify what it was depended on what the plant’s leaves looked like: if they were cacti-looking, it was an aloe. If they were leafy, it was a kniphofia (aka Torch Lilly or Red Hot Poker). It’s an aloe, but it is a distant cousin to kniphofia, apparently. My husband Dave takes long walks everyday, bringing home pictures like this, reminding me of when my children used to bring me home bits and pieces of their days, spilling them out into the kitchen, a line or a thought floating backwards over their heads deep in the refridgerator.
It’s so nice to watch Dave gather his interests about him now, after having had his nose to the grindstone for years, bringing home the proverbial bacon to put in the fridge for those now-grown children. His process — of snapping pictures of whatever interests him and only later culling and choosing — reminds me of this quote from the artist Ann Hamilton:
“A life of making isn’t a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice. It is a practice of questions more than of answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do….Our culture has beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian, and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, aren’t easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren’t easily named, are categorically in-between.” (Ann Hamilton, artist)
Having had three finishes within a couple of weeks, and today teaching a workshop with the Surfside Quilters Guild, my next plan is to do some wandering myself, maybe some daydreaming and find those experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, yet are so critical.
And P.S. Blocks 4, 5 and 6 of Shine: The Circles Quilt are now back on the blog, free to all.
I know you are thinking, no — praying — that someday soon I will be through with This Quilt, and believeyoume, you are not the only one hoping and praying that I can add it to my list of Three Hard Quilts of 2019 to be completed. I’ve finished two Hard Quilts and I’m determined not to put any other quilt up on that design wall until I slay this Patchwork Dragon.
So I’m here to report progress: Section Three AND four are finished, hallelujah, but I’m celebrating probably less than you are because I have two more sections to go and I get stuck on the smallest things.
Like the flying geese in Section Three.
The approach I took the first time I made started this quilt was to pull every fabric out of my cupboards, strew them around and clip a square of this or a square of that and piece it into this quilt.
I occasionally try that approach again. Which doesn’t work, again.
The best approach is to see what you’ve already thrown into the first two sections, then replicate that, either via color/value or the actual fabric, if you can find it the mess. The completed flying geese, above — which you can see is sort of an amalgam of all the geese I tried.
I’m finding the paper piecing templates from Sarah of SewWhatSherlock very helpful, if you want to get yourself a set.
I also learned that I am truly stuck, lunch helps. And maybe read the newspaper. And then start in on the big shapes, letting the detritus come later.
I can work in new bits here and there, like this woman with her bird.
Or some fun repeated shapes, the appliquéd half-circle echoed in the fabric. I can’t decide if this yellow is a fancy front window, or two hidden doors, camoflauged, or a re-planted tunnel under this European-style gate to the city.
Then I charged into Section Four — and why not? the whole sewing room is already a disaster — hand-sewing clamshells and fussy cutting blocks, and cutting multiples of the lower section strips but finally deciding, and now these sections are sewn together: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4.
To recap:
My motto: Making progress, square inch-by-square inch.
My Small World Quilt, a pattern by Jen Kingwell. Mess in the sewing room, by Elizabeth Eastmond (me).
How’s that for a title? This post is all about the official competition of the Patchwork Meeting, and I have a sampling of the quilts in the contest. I purchased the Catalogue from the organizers and it was interesting that it is printed in three languages: French, German and English (yippee!). The contest theme this year was “Journey to the End of the World” and all the quilts were to be 35″ wide by 47″ inches tall. This was the first indication that it would be a different type of competition than I had been used to seeing in the States.
Car in main parking lot
I realized quickly that this would represent all different nationalities, cultures, countries, skill levels (generally really high) and all types of construction. I chose to notice not only their interpretation of the theme, but also the how and the why they chose to use the materials and techniques they did, always hoping to learn something new. These quilts are in no particular order. You can note the winners by the small rosettes in the lower right corner.
Tatiana Varshavskaya’s In the Beginning. She is from Hungary. Her artist’s statement wrote from the perspective on a three-year old, with “continents to conquer, horizons to overcome. Free, without anchors or restraints, you venture forever in the infinity of childhood’s imagination.” She finishes by writing “You are three years old, and sail to the unknown with a paper boat.”
Small Boat, Small Trip, by Sandra Van Velzen of The Netherlands. She writes “Not so long ago the length of your trip depended on the size of your means of transport. Nowadays planes and the internet seem to make the world smaller and the trip longer.”
Gabriele Yoeller, from Germany, created Finistere evoking “France, Bretange…where the sun goes down and the land ends. Even the Romans called this land: ‘Finis terrae.’ Before you: only water. Is there something else? New worlds…or a monster?”
A quilter from Spain, Eva Arrelano Martin created Into the Deep, an “homage to the effort of thousands of workers who spent and sometimes lost their lives in the their trip into the [great cavity] of the world.”
Two Americans, Jim Smith & Andy Brunhammer made “June 19th,” celebrating Andy’s birthday Their artists’ statement notes that “We are both long-term HIV-survivors, and our end of the world has always been just around the corner. We chose Kaieteur Falls in Guyana [where Jim’s father grew up] as the background. . . Our arm is reaching out with the cascading red ribbon symbolizing the flow or our blood. The clusters of pills are our life-force.”
Esodo, by Angela Minaudo of Italy says that “The work represents the journey of those who run from the land in search of a better life, towards other lands, other worlds, towards the end of their world and often toward the end of their lives.” Esodo means “exodus.”
A Japanese quilter, Chiaki Yagishita, made Japon. Her statement read “I think ‘creation’ and ‘infinity’ equals ‘silence.’ There is ‘silence’ in Japan and it is beautiful. This work expresses ‘Japanese blue’ [or] ‘the silent world.’ “
Anneliese Jaros, from Austria made 101 Views of Vesuvius (my translation of her title). She wrote that she loves the Gulf of Naples, and Mt. Vesuvius. “The eruptions of the volcano in the course of history have been the end of the world to many…Parts of the letters [by Pliny the Younger] describing the eruptions are printed in Latin on cotton, which are then overlaid by my own photos of contemporary views of the mountain.” I tried to capture the detail of the overlay, below.
Au pays des atomes translates to “In the Country of Atoms,” and is a quilt by French quilter Françoise Buzzi-Morel. She write that atoms “are able to reach the end of the world…beyond any human limits. And in one precise order, they geometrically follow parallels, cubes, circles and lines.”
Another French quilter, Eriko Krzyzaniak, made Emmenez-moi au pays des merveilles, or “Take me to Wonderland.” The colors of blue and gold were inspired by the icon of the Virgen Rynecka in the Church of Our Lady in Prague. “The drawing,” she writes, “was inspired but the poetry “The Little Flute Player,” by G. Brassens. It was the starting point of my ‘Wonderland.’ “ I snapped two more photos showing the detail of her work (below).
Rita Dijkstra, from The Netherlands, did a rendition of Mount Fitz Roy (her title). She describes it for us: “The road on the quilt leads to Mount Fitz Roy on the border of Argentina and Chile (Patagonia)….For me Patagonia stands for the end of the world. The only way you can travel more south from this point, is by taking a boat to the South Pole.”
No return was made by Anne Lillhom, from The Netherlands. She writes “From birth to death, we go through different stages. We have good and less good things happening in life, days with more colors and days with less colors. We have periods in life where life goes up and days where it goes down…Nobody knows what the life journey will bring us, the only that is for sure is….there is NO RETURN. We simply have to follow the path.”
Details, below.
Michèle Samter of Switzerland made Excitement of a big city, her tribute to Singapore. She writes that “The vibrating performance of all the lights in different colors from high-rise buildings and traffic all night long evokes [a] feeling [of having been to the end of the world]….The contrast between my home in Switzerland and this other city, which never seems to sleep, had a great impact on me.”
Incredible Voyage to the End of the World is by Dalia Eliraz, who is from Israel. She writes: “The Arctic tern’s [long] trip from Arctic to Antarctic and back is the furthest animal migration. Over 30 years, it will travel the equivalent of 3 roundtrips from Earth to Moon. My quilt is inspired by this super-migration bird, as a metaphor of human behavior [when] motivated by determination to achieve a life goal or purpose….whether it is love, academic ambition, artistic aspirations or nesting…”
Dreamland, by Elly Van Steebeek (from the Netherlands) She writes: “There is a place, [far] from home with a beautiful blue sky, singing birds, flowing rivers and dark rocks. And after a spectacular sunset there is total darkness, only a whispering wind and the sound of the busy. This is the land of my dreams!”
This is Edith Leidi, from Italy, and I was so excited to meet her, I forgot to take a photo of the complete quilt. The title is Stargate. What’s next? and I loved what she wrote: “My idea was born in the swimming pool. I was watching my husband’s hand diving in the water, so I created my stargate. The hand passes through it while the body remains on the other side. There is another hand in the universe, that is going to meet the first one. But…from where does it come?” Detail, below.
Gabrielle Paquin from France (who also had her own exhibit at the Patchwork Meeting) created Voyage en orbite. She says “The Earth [has] become too little for its population. It is necessary to find some exits in Space….we must in a future time go away for a journey…tempory of definitively.”
This quilt was on the front of their brochure for the Meeting, so we saw it everywhere. Chang Misun, of South Korea, created Pieces of memories. She says: “I think my way of life is like an endless trip. Pieces of past life and future life come together…[some] especially clear and some others are dim. Pieces of all memories were expressed in the works.”
Maryte Collard, of Lithuania, made Song of the Linen. Writing about returning to Lithuania, she notes that it “always feels like the trip backwards in time” due to the ancient language and that is was the “last European country to accept Christianity.” Because of this “traces of ancient customs still remain in daily life….Flax has been a traditional Lithuanian fiber for several thousand years. It has a special place in my heart and it sings to me the song about the trip to the end of the world.” Detail, below.
Watch me breeze through the complete catalogue, which I couldn’t figure out how to upload, which shows a few more quilts. Below is a photo of the giant poster, showing all our venues. The one above was above the L’Espace Commercial.
It was raining that day, but none of our wet umbrellas were allowed in the exhibits. Since I’d lost one already to an umbrella stand, I wasn’t anxious to repeat the experience, so I whipped out my souvenir Patchwork Bag, and we stuffed the umbrellas in there as we walked around. Everyone was happy.
More posts coming. The original post, with links, is found *here.*
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 