A vote for quilting happiness before quilting perfection

I was listening to "Quilting... for the Rest of Us" today, episode 36, and was struck by Sandy's comments about not being so hard on ourselves with respect to our quilting projects.

Last month when I got a chance to go to the American Folk Art Museum and see some of the quilts from their collection, I was struck by the lack of "perfection" in some of the quilts. Many of these are clearly masterwork quilts, and yet -- if you look at them, and you don't even have to look at them that closely, you'll see some points cut off, or places where a fabric was cut crookedly so that a vertical stripe actually goes off at an angle, and many many instances of blocks not all being exactly the same size. It doesn't distract from the beauty/brilliance of these quilts because perfection in construction isn't what makes these quilts fabulous. What makes them fabulous is the particular design vision that each of the quilt-maker had for her quilt...

It seems to me that a lot of the post-bicentennial quilting revival in American quilting was grounded in a kind of county-fair/quilt show competition approach that put a premium on technique, and that's certainly a focus that permeates the world of instruction-focused magazines and classes. It's much easier to instruct on technique than on style or design vision - but it doesn't necessarily lead to beautiful quilts -- or quilters who are happy with their work. I'd rather be happy with my work without worrying about whether all my blocks are identical or my points match up exactly. So, if someone is starting a let's-not-be-so-hard-on-ourselves-about-our-projects club, I'm in!

BFF/BQF

To use a phrase I've heard on Sandy's Quilting for the Rest of Us podcast...

Your BFF/BQF is the person who hates gift wrap and wraps most of her presents this way:


but knows you like wrapping paper and so wraps some of your gifts this way:


and makes sure the presents, whether wrapped in paper or fabric are fabulous:

(I mean, come on - a stitch in dye fabric, summersville fabric, and polka dot ecopencils? How fabulous is that?)

and who not only sends you a birthday card for every day of the month leading up to your birthday:
but also gives you a head start on your next quilt with a 4 patch inside each card:

Don't you wish she were YOUR BFF/BQF?

Thank you, Jaye!

Happy New Year

Not that Seattle is all that cold in the winter, but I grew up in warmer, sunnier places than this, and by nature I am a sunshine and blue skies kind of girl. When I visit back East in the winter, I come back to Seattle and am reminded of how fortunate we are to have so much green to look at in the winter, but the skies are often still gray and grim and the clouds hang really low, and the days are just way too short. The light does come back quickly, but there's not all that much difference between December 21st and January 1st -- nothing to make me feel as though we've turned a corner and are headed into more congenial territory. So it's hard for me to think of January 1 as the beginning of anything.

But now it is mid-January, and already there really is appreciably more light than there was on the solstice - at 5 pm it is merely dim outside, not pitch dark. I went for a long walk yesterday, all through my neighborhood and down to a botanical garden near the water, and I saw winter-blooming cherries shedding their petals in soft drifts,


rhododendron buds getting fatter and fatter, and the tips of what I think are irises pushing up out of the ground.All signs that day by day we move farther away from those days when it hardly seems worth it to get out of bed because all too shortly it will be time to go back to bed again.

It's mid-January, and today is my birthday, and today finally feels like I have turned that corner and left the old year behind. And oh, it feels good to face forward with energy and interest and the desire to get out of bed every day and do stuff. Happy New Year, Happy New Year, Happy New Year!

Screen-free weekend - literally

So, my computer monitor is on the fritz - as of yesterday, it comes on for about 1/4 of a second and then the screen goes blank. I suppose the problem could be the video card for the computer, but... I tried hooking the monitor up to my work laptop yesterday and had the same problem, so I think it's really the monitor. Which is better, in a way, as I am more confident of my ability to replace the monitor than I am of my ability to replace the video card. But, still annoying, as I have photos to upload -- the Year of Scraps top no. 1 is pieced! -- and fabric to look at ;-), and this is NOT how I want to spend my January play money.

There are some flat screen monitors sitting forlornly in the IT work room at the office -- abandoned after people upgraded to larger monitors recently. I'm going to see if I can buy one for cheap -- because no matter how inexpensive a new one is, it's still a lot of yards to fabric to buy one. Cross your fingers and hope for me...

In other news -- I changed my normal gift certificate behavior and used a Christmas gift as soon as I got it -- ordered several pieces of the new Daisies and Dots collection as soon as Fabricworm got it in (I got the first cut off the bolts!) It arrived today, and it's all as bright and cheerful as it appeared on line. The scale of the prints is rather larger than I anticipated, though. It seems that more and more of the fabric lines coming out are medium to large scale -- the better to be used for garments and tote bags, etc., I suppose, but a little difficult for me to work with, since I tend to find a 4" square of fabric to be really really big. This stuff is really cheerful, though, which is what I want right now, so I will make it work!

Resurfacing

I probably should not have tried starting a blog in the fall, which is typically the busiest time of the year for me at my day job and especially as the Northwest days get shorter, the time when I have the least amount of energy and stick-to-it capacity. Since my last post it feels as though all I've done is work, and more work, and yet more work.

But I did get a chance to do some traveling that involved quilts and fiber. In October, I made my annual trip to California to visit Jaye and go to PIQF. I think it was a pretty good show this year, although I have to admit that there is no quilt in particular that has really stuck in my mind as some have in previous years. The fiber viewing highlight of that trip was the visit I made to the deYoung museum to see the exhibit titled To Dye For: A World Saturated in Color. The exhibit is about paste-resist dye techniques around the world -- everything from Japanese shibori to Indonesian batik to Ghanaian adinkra to Peruvian and Mongolian textiles. I was enthralled with the sense of richness achieved with the various techniques, all so very different from what I am seeing in the quilt world at the moment. The only thing I didn't like about the exhibit was the lack of a catalog! Unlike other museums I've visited recently, the deYoung does not allow photography in the textiles gallery, so I have pages and pages in my journal full of sketches from the exhibit, but black pen on white paper doesn't really evoke the depth of color I was seeing. The exhibit is only on through next weekend; if you have a chance, you should most definitely go and see it.

Last month I traveled to the East Coast to conduct a training, and then spent a few days in New York City. I had a chance to see friends that I hadn't seen in awhile, but also had time to myself, during which I made visits to Purl Soho and ABC Carpet and Home -- more for inspiration than to purchase anything -- and also visited the Whitney, the Metropolitan Museum, and both branches of the American Folk Art Museum. The AFAM is celebrating the Year of the Quilt, during which they will be displaying numerous quilts from their collection. Some of the masterpiece quilts are currently on display at the 53rd Street branch, and there is an exhibit of star quilts at the Lincoln Center branch. I assumed they would not allow photography, so I didn't even try to take pictures, but Rita over at Red Pepper Quilts was there shortly after I was and was able to build a nice set of photos which you can see on her Flickr site. I came back from the museums itching to get back into the studio. All around my office people have tacked up that "Keep calm and carry on" poster, but I'm more in the mood for the Matt Jones' "Get excited and make things" version.

So, I'm actually looking forward to the next couple of months when it is still too cold and wet to be in the garden - time to get back to playing with fabric. Wheeeee!!!!!

Year of scraps

As mentioned back in October, I've been feeling the desire to work my way through some of my accumulated scraps. While the blog has been silent the past months, I have still been sewing... a little. The blue solids in this first quilt top are from a fat quarter pack of Kona cotton solids, but all the other fabrics are from my scrap bins.

Quilt top for Margaret's Hope Chest - 45 x 60.

The blocks below are made entirely from scraps...

Center square log cabin blocks - warm color scraps. These will finish to 3.75".

Center square log cabin blocks - cool colors. Same size as warm colors. This piece is what I've been working on this weekend. There is one more row of very dark blocks to add to the top and two down the right side. It should finish to just over 55" square, unless I decide to add more rows to the top and bottom and turn it into a rectangle. I'm pretty sick of working with 1.125" cut strips, so making it into a rectangle seems pretty unlikely!