Quilts

Patchwork Blocks and Ennui

March 8, 2015 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

In a recent email exchange with my father, he mentioned the idea of ennui. It’s not quite boredom, nor fatigue. It is more of a lack of interest in what lays before you, a dis-interest, if you will. The dictionary goes one step further: “a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest.” We quilters often describe it as “lack of sewjo,” playing off that phrase of “lost my mojo,” which after reading about in Wikipedia, all I can say is I had no idea.

Of course, having a stack of grading doesn’t help the ennui, but with the students dropping like flies (long story) I had fewer to grade and they actually performed really well, so it went quickly. (Bad essays take longer to grade.)

And this lovely distraction also came for a couple of days while the family was moving between houses.

But as Susan of PatchworknPlay and I chatted on Instagram, I noted that sometimes just sewing a block or two can help beat the ennui. Here’s a new one from the ever-talented Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Company, from her latest magazine BLOCK.

I get these every couple of months as I signed up for the subscription and I always enjoy reading them. At QuiltCon they gave us all a copy of MODBLOCK in our swag bags.

Here’s how you cut it. She has the measurements in her magazine. But when I posted it on IG, Krista of Poppyprint mentioned that at their guild sew day, lots of quilters were making the same thing into a star block. I found that tutorial online *here.*

Bird blocks which can be maddening, but also fun, once you get the hang of it. I’m using a tutorial for “free-form” birds from my friend Rhonda, which she gave out to her class. There’s also a tutorial online, which is much more orderly, and if you are into the cookie-cutter precision of paper-piecing, there’s also one of those.

The last block I made last night, while listening to my latest Inspector Gamache mystery, was this basket block, also shown at the top of the post. It was late and I was tired, knowing that I’d lose an extra hour of sleep due to the dreaded Daylight Savings Time switch (I need to live in Arizona where they never switch). I found *this tutorial* and modified it the measurements I needed, plus used extra leaves from the Pineapple Blocks quilt border (yes, still working on that) to fill the basket. I needed the block to measure 9″ finished. One detail is those lower snowball corner on the basket: they were 2″ squares that I snowballed on. The rest was done by cutting as I went, loosely following the tutorial.

This is why I’m making blocks to beat ennui. My Mid-Century Modern beemates sent me a whole wall of blocks in January, and I’ve been adding to them, having no plan, but only relaxing fun. I added the Disappearing Hourglass, the Dresden Plate, the basket, the birds and a couple of fillers. I’m still playing, still arranging. Happily, the ennui is slipping away.

Quilts

Keeping the Brain Alive

May 13, 2014 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

Yes, my brain is pretty dead after grading a stack of 10-page research papers, but after seeing all the twenty-somethings at school today, I have to say that their brains are pretty dead, too. We had a hard time stringing words together, but we got through it by watching a video of a David Mamet play (Spanish Prisoner, if you’re interested) to go along with our Drama Unit.

Christine’s Philadelphia • see original post for more info

So today, while I held my last office hours at school and the internet went out (Panic in the Library!! Panic in the Library!!) I resorted to that old-fashioned entertainment device: a newspaper (having tucked a couple of sections of my New York Times in my bag). I read from their Education Life issue from April 13th (yeah, I’m a little behind in my reading), about “Ten Courses with a Twist,” where I found this diagram:

This is from a course from Carol S. Dweck of Stanford University whose “groundbreaking research has helped shape current wisdom about success and achievement — that failure and recovering from it are more valuable than sticking with what you already know how to do. Dr. Dweck tells students to tackle something “they have never had the guts to try.” Her research shows that mind-set is critical at times of transition, and those “with a ‘growth mind-set’ see that struggles can be overcome with effort, strategy and good instruction.” Hey, if it’s good enough for incoming Stanford freshmen, it’s good enough for me. By the way, anywhere from 140-200 people try to get in the 16 spots in the class.

Why I do bring this all up, especially at the end of the semester when all the teachers/parents/students want to do is find a good beach, a cold drink and go slightly comatose for several hours? Because after listing to NPR’s report that quilting is good for aging and combating memory loss, I thought could learn something. (LISTEN *here*)

Quilting keeps us on our toes because, as Denise Park, the Neuroscientist who was interviewed said, “people who learned a new skill – quilting, photography – had significant brain gains [in memory] – which held up after a year.” She continues to say: “Quilting might not seem like a mentally challenging task, but try it. If you’re a novice, you’re cutting out all these abstract shapes, you are trying to piece them together in reverse order and manipulate the images. It’s very demanding and complex.”

And now you know what neuroscientists think about what we do all day.

So when I’m stuck on a project and it’s giving me fits, I should remember Dweck’s advice and try to cultivate a “growth mind-set” all the while knowing that the manipulation, cutting and sewing my patches is keeping my brain active and healthy. Or take it from my friend Lisa, who hosts our Summer Quilt Retreats in her home. . .

Quilting! It’s a Win-Win!

Now go cut some abstract shapes and piece them together in reverse order.

Quilts

Friendship Cross-X Block Swap, March

March 28, 2014March 22, 2014 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Krista and I decided we were impatient about getting these done, so we sped into hyper-quilt-drive and did a double batch for this month’s swap. Above is one set, all stacked together. . .

. . . and the double set all together. As one commenter on Instagram said, it’s interesting how the switch in fabrics can make the block look so different.

This is the other set, with a few Mirror Ball Dots worked into the mix (I still have LOTS of those scraps left).

And the foursome, all in a row. Looks like I was on a blue kick here, doesn’t it? I didn’t get everyone out of their bags for an overall progress shot, so that will have to wait until the next round. Come and see us on our Flickr Group where Krista has put up a picture up all of our blocks together.

Quilts

Sol Lewitt’s Patchwork Primer

March 18, 2014March 18, 2014 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

In class this semester, one of the types of poems that we studied were “form” poems, or poems that have a prescribed meter, rhyme scheme, and even construction, such as a ballad, a sonnet, or a villanelle. Many poets like to write poems in this constrained forms, especially if they are difficult subjects, as the nice, tight boundaries help keep the poet from going off the rails, sloppy and wandering. Likewise, every once in a while, it’s good to put one’s brain to a task with similar constraints, just to see if it can be done.

This quilt started with this drawing from Sol Lewitt: “Fifteen Etchings: Straight lines in four directions and all their possible combinations.” Lewitt is famous for his wall drawings, where he would draw up a certificate with a set of instructions or descriptions, and others would execute them. This drawing would serve as my shape boundaries.

And my fabric boundaries? I had purchased a stack of Mirror Ball Dot fabrics two years ago to go with the few I already had, I decided to use these as my parameters for this quilt. Those shapes, these fabrics, and I started cutting last Saturday, after grading seventeen essays in a 24-hour period (yes, the brain was fried). I started laying them out, beginning from the upper right.

I cut, added. Rearranged. Went to bed. Cut, added, rearranged, asked my husband what he thought. Cut, added, rearranged, took a photo, then pondered. It was harder than writing a villanelle.

Until I got to here. Then it was like this:

All. . . Day. . .Long. I was purposely leaving that last square on the lower right white, for that’s where Lewitt had the writing, the description.

When I got to this place, I rested and began to doubt myself, completing ignoring the advice he wrote to Eva Hesse, a fellow artist, which included some of the following (with some edits):

Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rumbling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, hair-splitting, nit-picking, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!

He continues:

Do more. More nonsensical, more crazy, more machines, more breasts, penises, cunts, whatever – make them abound with nonsense. Try and tickle something inside you, your “weird humor.” You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool.

Then finishes with:

Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you – draw & paint your fear and anxiety. And stop worrying about big, deep things such as “to decide on a purpose and way of life, a consistent approach to even some impossible end or even an imagined end” You must practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty. Then you will be able to DO!

So I called my sister in Philadelphia and sent her some images, and we talked about changing the design, adding another block and what kind of block would it be? She suggested some time with Photoshop, a tool to help me move beyond my stuck place. In an obituary in the New York Times (Lewitt died some years ago), the writer noted that “He [Lewitt] took an idea as far as he thought it could go, then tried to find a way to proceed, so that he was never satisfied with a particular result but saw each work as a proposition opening onto a fresh question.”

So the fresh question brought me here, where I think it will stay.

And yes, that block lurking on the right is an alternative block, which I am leaning away from. Borders (plain white) will be added last.

A primer (prim-mer), according to the dictionary, can be as a child’s first book of reading, helping that child to decode and unlock the words on the page. I doubt Sol Lewitt had any inkling of patchwork, steeped as he was in the fine art world, but when I saw his etchings, I recognized them as sort of a primer for what we quilters do: divide and subdivide and go at it again and again, always looking for that fresh question.