The title of this quilt pattern is Posh Penelope, and as one commenter said, “That is a name that needs to be changed.” So I did.
Summer Flowers is quilt #307 and measures 80″ tall by 69 1/2″ wide.
At first we tried this building for the photographs (click to enlarge). Love the building, but it’s not really working. And I had my QHH (Quilt Holding Husband) grab it by the side. Whoops! (This is how I knew the label was sewn on sideways.)
It only took me seven pieces of fabric to audition for the binding, and I sewed it on by machine. There are times when you just have to get it done.
We got the direction correct on this photo. Even though I sewed the label on the wrong way, I’m not changing it. So, this is finished!
You are all aware, no doubt, of the corrupted digital files saga in my life (see the highlighted pink, above.) After multiple calls to Tech Support, I have resigned myself to the fact that all the files with little down-arrows are pretty much gone, and these date from last month to way back into my history of making little digital files.
So when I’m on Low Energy (lately, that’s been a lot), I sit and go through them, dumping them one-by-one, then when the trash on my computer gets filled up, I dump them. Gone. Never to be seen again.
It looks like I’m fully in the Age of Subtraction, my Dad would say. For years I created and compiled and wrote. Now I’m dumping all that unceremoniously. I lost about half of my journal files. The ones I could recover, like when I had four teenagers in the house, were hard to read, frankly. They were filled with sturm und drang (aka “storm and stress”), and nobody wants to remember that time of life. Reading backwards into my life has triggered some realizations.
One: I chose well in deciding to be someone who makes things, if that can be a choice. I have donated dresses I made long ago, but they served their purpose and maybe someone, somewhere is walking around in them. My family now runs when they see me coming, but I have managed to give away quilts, too. That work lives on until it doesn’t, but at least I won’t have to be the one dumping them in the trash.
Two: I also chose well when I decided to chronicle my life in writing, which is a choice. You are perhaps used to my public-facing writing from reading this blog, but I have come to learn that personal writing is something done just for yourself. That in this kind of writing, we struggle on the page to capture an event, and to write it for our future selves, or for our families, if they don’t throw it all in the trash (just trying to be realistic here). And now that I’m way beyond the baby-toddler-children-teenager stage, I’m glad I have some writings to remind me of how busy a mother of one (or few) can be. I’m glad I have some written evidence of that to which I gave several decades of my life.
Three: Taking photos has surpassed the writing. Is it because we always have our phones on us? When I first started shooting photos of my life as a young mother, it would take three months to use up one roll of 24 shots of film. That was by design, as film was a cost, and developing was a cost, and I was always broke. Now we can capture 24 images on a walk around the park in the morning and compile thousands of photos in our digital drives. Interestingly, I didn’t lose any photographs in this Great Subtraction, as they were not part of the save-to-drive-that-may-have-been-corrupted-which-was-then-uploaded-to-the-cloud-which-was-probably-a-faulty-process-in-itself.
Two grandchildren with a quilt
Four, and last: Quilts last. Scrubbing the house doesn’t. Laundry doesn’t. Our digital lives won’t. Our real lives will someday end and fade away, but a grandchild or someone who is the recipient of our charitable work can wrap themself in a quilt and know that someone’s hands made this, a transfer of self via cloth and stitches.
In a series of interviews with new poets, they each expressed their confusion, discussed their work ethic, and acknowledged the daily drudgery — and joy — of being able to create and work. (See some quotes, below.) Do I wish I’d saved the source information for my series of quotes from these young poets at the beginning of their career? Yes, but knowing the internet, it is probably gone. I copied and pasted them into my digital calendar, and they pop up like clockwork every January. Fitting. We all begin creating at the beginning.
We seem to go full-steam in January, the new year giving us a fresh start. But lately, on Bluesky and Instagram, I am hearing often how the well some quilters usually dip into has run dry, that their “sewjo” or “mojo” is just not there. Is it because we are tired of winter? Or that we have early spring fever? Or just that creativity runs in spurts, and we have to step away every once in a while and get back to “real life” with its rainbows, as well as its tornadoes and sudden squalls?
In a slightly related idea, my husband’s father hung crystals in his window so they could flash rainbows around in random ways when the sun came shining through. Today, as my hands fly over the keyboard, typing this post, rainbows are dancing on my fingers, courtesy of two crystals hanging in our window right now from my husband.
Carol and I made a pact to apply our rotary cutters to fabric and our noses to the grindstone and Make This Quilt: Posh Penelope by Sew Kind of Wonderful. While I usually like to be sewing my own designs, this year, this level of drama, this level of chaos has sent me to “let go of the pressure to be innovative,” as Jane Freilicher puts it (qtd. in Emily Skillings, below). We committed to making four blocks per month.
But even in creating between someone else’s lines, there is room for fabric choice, pawing through the stash or scraps — for as Carol noted this week, all our fabrics are soon going to cost a bazillion dollars — and this month, I went for blues. I thought the blues might calm down the riot of colors I had going on, with their steady approach. After all blue is the color overhead in our sky and of the water that surrounds us and we’ve been crazy for blue way before Yves Klein first mixed up a batch of his trademark Klein Blue. Klein noted that:
“Blue has no dimensions. It is beyond the dimensions of which other colors partake.” Fascinated by … it, [he made] …roughly 300 monochrome paintings in his signature International Klein Blue” (qtd. in article linked above).
(These blues read a bit more red-blue, or purple.)
All of these notes are to say, take a look at these young poets’ advice on if you get “quilter’s block,” or “writer’s block” and just give it time. Take a break to breathe in some of the blue overhead, or swim in the watery blue. Or catch a rainbow on your keyboard, courtesy of a defracting hung crystal.
Block by block, I’m making a quilt. I’m up to 23, and the goal is 42.
Advice if you are going to make this pattern: Do more than one block at a time. Do…like four. It’s easy, but complicated, and better if you don’t have to remember all the bits every time. And I say, make the “petal blocks” but before you sew it all up with the sashing, choose your itty-bitty center then, when you can see if it needs a pop, or if it’s okay to just have a fabric from one of the petals. Or do as Carol is, using a single fabric in all the centers. Hers is a black and white linear pattern, and it looks great.
Now I’ll put these all away in their box until next month, along with a a few scraps and bits and bobs, and it will wait for me until next time. After all, as Fatimah Asgha notes, “you’re on no one else’s timeline.”
One Last Thing
A friend had a new baby boy and I made them a quilt.
Pattern is Azulejos, from my pattern shop on PayHip. I just used fewer blocks to make it baby-sized. (And she gave permission for the photo.)
Happy Waiting-Until-You-Feel-Like-Stitching!
Quotes from Young Poets
Emily Skillings– One question I am still grappling with is how to negotiate a balance between “innovation,” constraint, and intuition. The painter Jane Freilicher put it best, I think, when she said, “To strain after innovation, to worry about being on ‘the cutting edge’ (a phrase I hate), reflects a concern for a place in history or one’s career rather than the authenticity of one’s painting.” There’s also, I think, a quieter quote somewhere about her letting go of the pressure to be innovative, and that she felt she could really paint after that, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. This sounds a little strange, but I like to think of my life so far as a writer as a kind of oscillation between states of openness and movement and states of stillness and solitude. There are islands of production, productivity, and then pockets of…nothing. I think I am grateful to my depression in this way, in that it often forces me to be still.
Phillip B. Williams– Writer’s Block Remedy: I go for months without writing and then write nonstop for about a month or so. An impasse for me is a sign that I simply have nothing to say, and that is fine. I had to learn that it was fine not to write. As far as what keeps me going, I’m still not sure. Something just clicks on and stays on until it runs its course.
Mario Chard– Writer’s block remedy: The impasse is never with the writing itself; it is with the reasons to keep going.
Fatimah Asghar– Writer’s block remedy: I take a break. I think that if you bang your head against the wall trying to create, you’re going to resent the process of creation. Usually when you reach an impasse it’s a signal to move on to another thing. Maybe you haven’t slept in a while. Maybe you need some time to ponder, to just stare at the wall. Maybe you need to live, truly be alive for a little and not near a computer [or sewing machine]. Maybe you need to read, see, watch—to refill your well.
Advice: I’d say you’re on no one else’s timeline.
Solmaz Sharif– Writer’s Block Remedy: If the causes are perfectionistic, I pull out the collected poems of a poet I greatly admire and flip through to remind myself how many mediocre poems their oeuvre contains. It is my duty, I remind myself, to write even those mediocre, messy poems. These failures are the ones that create openings in the conversation for subsequent writers and poets to enter—I’m not trying to kill the conversation, after all. I pull out journals—André Gide’s, Franz Kafka’s, Susan Sontag’s—to remind myself how long the process is and how often the sense of failure or impasse hits. I watch a movie. Advice: Write a book you want to fight for. Fight for it. I don’t have answers about “how to be an artist”; I’m not trying to make it sound like I do. But I do want to have that conversation. What do you want to do as a writer in the world? What do you see the arc of your writing life to be?
My corollary: Make the quilt you want to fight for. Fight for it. Acknowledge the arc of your quilting life.
A post where I go wild with cultural references, quilts and art, but don’t worry–everything fits right into a This-and-That.
My friend Jamie sent me this photo of one of my quilt designs in the wild. I did a Quilt Guild visit there; it was the last one before Covid-19 hit, and this was their project. That’s five years ago this month, and wow — so glad to see their Guild is still having fun.
As many of you know, I’ve been cleaning out my Quilt Orphan Blocks where I found this. It’s really only 1/4 of the quilt, and yes, it was a class taken online. I think I realized pretty quickly that I was not cut out to do wobbly cutting. I tried it her way at the beginning, but by the end, I had my rulers out and the quilt changed dramatically. But I love it.
We’ve been planning a trip overseas (hope we Americans are still welcome), and laughed at the photo of this room for rent. My BIL told me it was reminiscent of the scene from Willy Wonka, with all the grandparents in bed. Only with this model, they could have a table to eat at. (No, we didn’t book that one.)
I have a new thing: when I see a fabric bundle I like, I save the photo and keep it on my desktop for a while. Hey, I’ll even print it out every once in a while, and pin it to the design wall. I don’t do very well sewing from a bundle, which is unfortunate because there are a lot of beautiful bundles out there. But often I fall in love with a bundle because of the colors, and in this case, it was those blue-purple fabrics in the upper left that caught my eye.
Judging by the colors shown on the catwalks for Fall Fashion 2025 in Paris, this color must be in the zeitgeist, and *slouch* must be the posture.
More from the runways, from left to right: (1) A designer coat that looks very much like our quilty coats. (2) A giant bra shirt? (3) A shopping bag shirt?
I got a degree in Clothing and Textiles in another life, so the fashion shows have always held a fascination for me. I did once see a woman at the Houston quilt show who had made a vest out of the souvenir bags…complete with all the handles hanging down in loops around her hips.
I had to mention this Tilda pattern. I see quilts like this and think I’d like to try it, as I have acquired a stash of Tilda fabrics. But after doing the cacti quilt, it will be a long while before I try all those itty-bitty pieces again. It’s a free download on her website.
And here are the first three. I’m using a collection of her fabric lines, and on the right side, the strip that’s north-south is (I think) from her first line of fabrics. It was very Southwest in flavor — and her subsequent fabrics have shifted from that motif and palette. My most favorite Sherri fabric is the yellow north-south strip on the outside of the second block. I once purchased 3 yards of it, and I’m getting down to the end of it.
POSH PENELOPE BLOCKS PROGRESS
Here’s the danger: doing this (more-complicated) block only once a month causes an occasional oops. I was trying to do this in a hurry and whacked off the seam allowance. And then I ran out of the yellow strawberry fabric. But I had enough of the original background fabric that I think it turned out okay:
This round, after I got going, seemed to be about switching out the backgrounds, and keeping the petals all the same. I still like the violas in the top photo the best. (Or you might call them Johnny-jump-ups.)
In this view, all those fancy petals are slightly distracting. I guess “read-as-a-solid” or in that general direction might be the best choice for the petals. Still not a fan of that purple one in row three, though. Fifteen blocks are finished out of the 42 that Carol and I have planned.
Speaking of petals, we went to Austin TX to visit family, and I fell in love with these towering shapes at the Blanton Museum. Head to this website to read more. This website also calls them “petal-like sculptures” and has more info on the museum. Regretfully the small chapel, Austin, by Ellsworth Kelly was closed, but we still enjoyed ourselves at the Blanton, enamored of the exhibit that included this:
The title of the car is classic: El Muertorider Katrina Car, 2006 (Muerto means death in Spanish)
From the title card: “[Artemio] Rodríguez collaborated with John Jota Leaños on El Muertorider Katrina Car, a refurbished 1968 Chevy Impala. They painted it a sleek black with white skeletal designs reminiscent of Posada’s elaborate figures. Rodríguez and Leaños center the Catrina figure on the car’s hood, altering the spelling of “Catrina” to “Katrina” to make a dedicatory reference to the victims of the devastating Hurricane Katrina that ravaged New Orleans in 2005. Recurring references to oil and money throughout the car’s imagery refer to the Iraq War (2003-11): the slogan “War Is Money!” echoes war protestors’ frequent chant: “No Blood for Oil!” Thus, El Muertorider embodies several cultural practices: lowrider culture, political protest, Day of the Dead commemorative practices, and La Catrina’s enduring symbolism among contemporary Mexican and Chicano communities.
Calavera de la Catrina [Skeleton of the Female Dandy], circa 1910
It was also a treat to see this photo-relief etching by José Guadalupe Posada [1852-1913]. [Source: The Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gilberto Cárdenas Collection, Gift of Gilberto Cárdenas and Dolores Garcia.]
I used her image in a guild challenge quilt when I made her the center of a quilty ofrenda. I threw everything on this one, including the little milagros attached with ribbons. I enjoyed seeing one of the original prints of Catrina.
From the title card: “Posada invented this famous skeletal character in 1910, just as the Mexican Revolution was catching fire. At first, he called her La Calavera Garbancera, using the derogatory term for Mexicans who claimed solely European ancestry and rejected their Indigenous roots. In her ostentatious hat, this bony fashionista was intended as a symbolic epitaph for the wealthy privileged classes, a satirical emblem of the sins of vanity and greed, and an allegorical representation of government corruption under dictator Porfirio Diaz (1830-1915). However, her naive, beguiling nature soon endeared her to the disgruntled masses. Posada renamed her La Calavera Catrina, after catrin or ‘well-dressed.’ Reproduced repeatedly in the penny press, La Catrina became a national icon among popular folk, who embraced her as a demure champion of the underdog.”
Now you know.
Austin food: two plates of tacos from Velvet Taco, and they were all standouts with an interesting combo of flavors. Unfortunately, the closest Velvet Taco is in Phoenix. My husband Dave said that the “fish and chips” taco (lower left) had bits of potato-like chips under the fish, which was topped with a yellow curry sauce. Who dreams up these things? I don’t know, but an award to them. And then this impulse purchase of pineapple-flavored popcorn at Buc-ee’s, which now I have to order from the Evil Overlord in a box of 25. It’s always good to expand your food horizons, but it can get more expensive.
And the penultimate image is of a cool Lego spray of flowers, courtesy of my son-in-Austin’s passion of building with Legos. It was amazing to stand in his “Lego room” and see all the things he’s built. Long ago, when all the children were at home, he and our other son built a Lego village that encompassed the top of all the dressers, desks, TV tables in his room. He would have probably put some Lego houses on the bed, too, but I said no.
I think his passion is just like our passion for quilts and color and shapes and making. And while we like our quilts, isn’t the messing-around-in-cloth the fun part? In the Life Kit podcast last week, Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, said that “when you’re doing something for the end result, you lose joy in the process.” I realized that pulling a quilt or too from the closet to put on the beds for our new guests (daughter and granddaughter below), was just this: I enjoyed the process of making my quilts, so that others can gain joy from them as well.
My granddaughter and I spent time one night at the dining room table, each of us working on our stitcheries. We visited, chatted, and she learned a new stitch: French knot, to put in the center of her flowers. It was a lovely time.
Oliver Burkman: “When you get to the end of your life, the sum total of all the things you paid attention to will have been your life. If there are some friendships there that you never actually paid any attention to, well, you didn’t really have those friendships, right? I mean, if there was an interest that you had, that you never actually spent any attention pursuing, well, you didn’t really have that interest. So it really matters what we’re paying attention to because it just adds up to a life.” (from Life Kit podcast)
Whether it be fashion or tacos or art or popcorn or embroidery, enjoy!
Visiting Ladybird Johnson’s Wildflower Center.
Lego and Hexie Mania
Headed to Home Sweet Home.
This hexie project was something I just grabbed at the last minute. However I am curious: what do you like to take along to keep your hands busy?
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 