quilts…

Words. It’s all about the Words.

Words. Language. Semantics. I am not always the most eloquent (the post previous to this being a prime example…my husband’s blog regarding the new year was far more all-encompassing and descriptive…)

…but I LIKE words. I like to read them–far more than one book a week– I like to write them–(last year, my second 178,000 word (fan-)fictional story, someday, the great American novel…. :})

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.  ~Mark Twain

And I understand the power of words. One of the most important skills in my job is being able to choose words appropriately, to convey a variety of (mostly positive) feelings and descriptors.  Think of how many online “wars” could be avoided would that the words ‘spoken’ were chosen with more care? (Not to mention how many real wars, how many families ripped apart)….

“Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care, for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or evil.”
Siddhartha Gotoma or Buddha (563-483 B.C.)

I have chosen a WORD for the past few New Years Day. (Insight, Inclusive, Deliberate are past words.)

Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words. Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions. Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits. Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character. Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.(unknown…)

Announcing this year’s word: BALANCE.

Today, on my quilting list, everyone (well, almost) is choosing a word! And oh, what wonderful words, what personal words!

I hope to see that we all focus on the best our words can bring us!

(edited for clarity) AND, I just received another word! I am joining a quilt challenge, where we create an art quilt every two months, utilizing that word….January/February is PUZZLE…

hmmm….

Fabric 401K…

(Totally stole the title from my best quilting buddy, E.T.)

I was at my quilting group today. Surprisingly, after an hour or so of chatter, out of all the bizarre subjects we could have touched upon with a dozen women sitting in front of sewing machines…the conversation actually turned to FABRIC!

The color, feel, texture, ownership, collection, lusting, cutting and quilting of fabric. Believe it.

This is my theory on collecting fabric.

Fabric has to ‘age’ like a fine wine…

There are so many kinds of fabrics for quilting. Solids are like vegetables; good for you and all that, but hardly sexy or desirable when you start trolling around the quilt store.

What catches your eye are the sparkly things; the bright colors, the fascinating patterns, shapes, the hand-dyes, the novelties. All the candy shop portion of your diet. You know, the tasty bits. Those are the pieces that you can’t forget if you walk out of the store with your hands full of sensible solids.

The adorable snowmen, the Bali batiks, the swirly kaleidoscopes, those are the fabrics that you’ll dream about.

I can’t claim to remember all of what I own, (and I choose to put the blame squarely on a faulty memory rather than a surplus of fabric, thank you very much!) but if I find myself on multiple trips at multiple places buying (or lusting after :P) the same fabrics, chances are it will age well.

If it has been in the stash for a few years, pulled out and packed away repeatedly because it hasn’t found a quilt to call home, it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad piece of fabric. After countless auditions with so many other pieces of fabric, I will eventually bring home the right mate for it, I will find the pattern that will make it sing.

I have this secret aversion to using fabrics designed to go together together. I may like and even purchase multiple fabrics from the same line, but if they accidentally all end up in the same quilt it makes me crazy!

(If there is an easy and a hard way to do something, well, yeah…with me, the hard way wins out every time! I guess I figure ANYONE could come up with a nice quilt if the fabrics all matched!!! LOL)

I did ONE quilt, a Trip Around the World, for Arlie’s 16th birthday, and unwittingly collected a series of matching fabrics over a period of time…I did use them and it did look nice; but I had to purposefully go and find a few pieces that didn’t ‘belong’ and include them, for my own piece of mind.

tripWorld

So, the 401k. It’s like this. Our economy is uncertain. Times are tough, what will retirement be like in 20 years?  But, a yard is a yard is 36 inches, and THAT will never change.

I rarely buy fabric because I need it for a specific purpose, I tend to buy on ‘spec’, I buy what speaks to me loudest!

…. In twenty years, those vintage pieces of fabric will be full of unique, no-longer-trendy shades of brown and aqua. Their designs, by blending them with bits and pieces from here and there, will result in quilts which  will have a flavor all their own.

Oh….and having NOTHING to do with anything else except shameless self-promotion, don’t forget to go to my photo site, (to the right) and look, and BUY something pretty! 🙂

Emails from China…

This quilt is entitled Emails From China. It was designed for the 2009 Hoffman Challenge. (While it didn’t win anything, it DID get made!!!!)

emailchina-1

The story (there is ALWAYS a story, isn’t there??) goes like this.


My daughter Arlie was off on the other side of the world in China. As I would get up each morning, she was settling in for the night over there.  Part of her nightly routine was to email everyone about her adventure du jour. Often, we would be passing emails back and forth at that time, checking in.

I went to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival down in Hampton, VA on Saturday morning, as I do each year right around my birthday. I had been reading Arlie’s messages, and generally thinking about her and her trip, while wandering around alone being awed by the fabulous art!

I saw the challenge fabric being sold in a booth. I decided to buy a piece and see if I couldn’t finish the challenge in time this year. (The last time I
attempted the Hoffman Challenge, I finished the quilt about 3 YEARS
after the deadline!)

357238453_GJZ2q-L-1

(The Cherry Fabric was the challenge that year in this quilt, SUMMERTIME)

As I fondled my new fabric, walking around the show enjoying myself, I
glanced at it every once in a while. Suddenly, this brown and green and grey paisley started to take on the shape of fish. My mind started thinking about what I could do with fish. Then, Arlie came to mind.

And China. And Oriental fabric. Yes, the paisley were no longer inanimate, they became KOI fish. I started searching the booths for oriental fabrics that complemented this fabric, that reinforced the koi idea.

And so, I came home with a handful of complimentary fabrics, got it all washed and then. Nothing. Else. Happened. (Well, nothing with that fabric. I actually came home from the show with a pattern and had the resulting pocketbook finished before I went to bed that night!)

I put it to the side, in the dreary February light, and promptly forgot about it. In June, I finally decided to look at it again. Still had no idea about patterns, or what other fabrics would work.

While digging through my prodigious stash, I discovered this incredibly perfect fabric with handwriting, in the EXACT odd shade of taupe I needed. The fish…they moved. The koi pond, it radiated.
Having NEVER attempted the curved piecing of a Drunkards Path, the
ever-growing collection of fabrics quickly gelled into a Drunkards Path Variation, no matter how I tried to talk myself out it.

And the writing on the fabric, suddenly represented the communicating that Arlie and I did ‘virtually’ each day while she was away. The idea of the writing substituting for the typing, the circuitry of computers echoed the ripples in a fish pond, moving information and communication.

The quilt, EMAILS FROM CHINA  was born!  Arlie brought me a Chop back
from China. It says, LOVE. I used that on the label.  email from china, label-1
The quilt is 40×40, and quilted with outlines of koi over the surface extending beyond the shapes on the fabric. It is quilted with ENTHUSIASM but not necessarily skill, lol. But overall, I am very happy with it, am no longer afraid of curved piecing, and actually plan on making another in this same pattern, which is a first!

When it arrives home, I believe it will be hung in the bedroom….

((Please,  leave a comment!! I love to know what people think!))