To Reply, or Not to Reply? Blogging Buzz

I guess the first thing to get out of the way is to ask one of the big questions:

No, that’s not it.

The big question is: why do you blog?

And if you are like most of the blogs I see in Blogland, the answer falls into these categories:

• making a living at quilting
• want to make a living at quilting
• will never make a living, but still have hope
• pleasure of sharing my quilts
• love to write and would write about making tires, if necessary

And then the next question:

Wrong.

Here it is: What do you expect of the people who visit your blog?

Should they leave a comment? Visit only? Not steal your content (it happens)? Not copy your ideas without attribution (it happens)?  Which leads us to the really big question:

(from *here*)

When I first started my blogging adventure, in September 2006, I didn’t even enable comments, coming as I was from the “pure” experience of a Creative Writing degree where it was always expected that you would write from within yourself.  Soon after that, the digital world exploded and during grad school a few years later, even though we were still yearning for that isolated writing experience, the reality of the market now loomed large, and we had classes on marketing, selling your novel, pitching stories, being aware of What’s Out There.

And that now is the world in which we quilt bloggers find ourselves, I think, which means that the pure excitement of sharing our quilts, our ideas and just chatting up the room seems to be slowly sinking into the swamp of Making Connections, Pitching My Stuff, Pick Me! Pick Me!, and so on.  I think I participate in all of everything, as do most of us.  But I was quite struck by the thoughts on Carrie Nelson’s blog, LaVieEnRosie, about how so much of blogging has become about advertising.  Carrie is one of my heroes in the way she blogs truthfully about her life, so I really perked up when she next said:

With blogs, I’m also betwixt and between about responding to comments.  I feel horribly – terribly! – guilty when I don’t answer each and every comment with an e-mail but since I can’t bring myself to send just a quick “thank you for commenting” – I think we all know I’m a bit chattier than that – do I answer just some?  And if I don’t get to it right away, is it awful to respond a week or ten days later?  That might be worse than not answering it at all.  So I stick my head in the sand and hope the e-mails answer themselves.

Sometimes I think that comments are just comments–not requiring a reply.  When I leave a comment like “Great quilt!” I don’t really expect a reply at all.  But other times I’ve been pleasantly surprised when a reply has come, and over time it has deepened to a correspondence of some sort.  However (and she peers over the top of glasses), I know several bloggers who feel so swamped by their own success, of the imperative to thank everyone who comes by, that they withdraw from blogland, retreating back to their studios to Make Stuff, which is — if you think about it — the main reason to have a blog.  And I also cringe a little when I happen on a blog where they cheerfully say “I want to grow my blog!” as we are expected to carry away a task from that honest goal, and as I slink away I feel guilty, because certainly one of the true pleasures of blogging is building a community of like-minded folks.

So, does this strange cultural custom of expected replies to comments enhance your appreciation for a blog?  Do you leave comments regardless of whether the blogger will answer you back? And if you blog yourself, do you feel compelled (and I chose that word purposefully) to answer back all your commenters?

Do Tell.

Christmas Treat Wallhanging

So, out here on the old sewing ranch-a-roo, I finished up Christmas Treat (name is courtesy of my husband–thanks hon!) and took it outside to pose for pictures.  The front.

The back is an old Alexander Henry fabric with quirky angels flying everywhere.  I’ve hoarded this and now only have about a yard of the black colorway.

The label.  I like to print mine out and border them before I stitch them on.  If you do a search for “labels” in the search box on the blog, you’ll find posts about how I do my labels.

The final full shot.  It’s #111 on my 200 Quilts list.  It’s a big day because of the following four reasons:

1–this is my first Finish a Long completed.  Today Leanne posted the winners from the first quarter over on her blog, and if you want a fun quilt show, spending a few minutes looking at all the entries will give you enough ideas to make up all that fabric you’ve been collecting (Did I win?  No.  I never win, but that’s just my life).  I probably won’t finish the blue flowers at this time as the shop owner likes that it shows the back;
2–I actually did some free motion quilting on this that I’m not mostly ashamed of.  Don’t look too closely, as I don’t do enough of it to show it off, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out;
3–I took this sample (above, of Christmas Treat and below, of Lollypop Tree block) to Bluebird Quilts & Gallery, my local quilt shop, and she booked me in to teach two classes!  I’m so jazzed!  Now, to see if they carry. . .and. . .

4) my husband took a new picture of me that I think is a pretty good rendition of who I am at this point in my life.  As the Mid-Century Moderns know, we scrupulously monitor our images, preferring instead to be behind the lens instead of in front of it.

About photographs: we swim in a sea of digital images, and most are out of our control, as was demonstrated by the plethora of images that came forward about the Boston Marathon tragedy.  Our grandparents had a handful.  Our great-grandparents had, like, maybe three.  So does having so many pictures make it any easier to find one you like of yourself, especially if you don’t look like Gyweneth Paltrow or George Clooney or some other cinema god/dess?  If you’re like me, my husband took about ten shots before I got one that I liked–one that represented on the outside how I generally felt on the inside.  So, here it is.  Banish all other images to the dustbin.  This is the me as I am this week, all sunny yellow in sunny Southern California.

Okay, class info:
Class will be taught at Bluebird Quilts & Gallery, at 22320 Barton Road, Suite A, in  Grand Terrace, California (just north of Riverside).

I’ll teach Wednesday, May 22nd from 10 to 3:30 p.m. and July 29th, from 10 to 3:30 p.m.

I need at least four, preferably, five people to carry the class.  I’m including the pattern (my own, drawn from the original Lollypop Tree quilt from the 1880s), and freezer paper (have you priced this stuff lately?  Whew!).  Cost is $50/full day class, including pattern.  Call the shop (909) 514-0333 to sign up, if you think you’d like to take the class.  They’ll have class supply lists for you when you sign up.  Their hours are Sunday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  Closed Saturdays.

On A Day Like This

What do you serve for dinner on a day like this?  It’s a day where the food needs to be hearty and warm and go down easily in between the tears.  Soup?  Spaghetti made with that good sauce from Trader Joe’s?  Chocolate needs to be in the picture, better schedule some brownies for dessert.  A whole pan, so more can be cut up and carried in the car on the way to the funeral.

What do you do on a day like this?  The news came early this morning, my husband weeping as he tells me of his brother-in-law passing away in the morning.  I am strong.  I don’t cry.  I get more information later, that my husband’s sister was sitting at Bruce’s bedside, having been awoken at 4 a.m. by her daughter, each taking two-hour shifts through the last few nights.  They sat there, his breathing diminishing, faltering, until at 6:30 it ceased.  A quiet, in-sleep, in-home death.  One we all would choose if we could.

On a day like this, I finish up the quilt and the angelic quilter lady agrees to a rush job and later, much later, after I sit numbly at the computer, and I become not strong, do I realize how Bruce’s death diminishes our family.  This is not a new idea.  I felt it when my other brother-in-law died, when my husband’s parents died, when my grandmothers died and it has been expressed by writers since time began.  It just feels new, each death bringing with it memories and associations and words that can not ever now be spoken.

On a day like this, I clean out a cupboard and jar breaks.  I look at it, get the dustpan and broom, wander to the mailbox, ask the neighbors to throw the papers on the porch while we’re gone and then the quilter drives up, bringing me my quilt, making me cry again.  Because.  Because on a day like this we need hands to hold us, hearts to share our sorrow.  And something easy to eat for dinner.

Fat Quarter Shop Dreaming

My fabulous sisters sent me a Fat Quarter Shop gift certificate for my recent birthday and I’ve had the most fun dreaming about what to buy.  I think I’ve clicked on every category in their online shop at one time or another, but after picking out my purchases (one was that Noteworthy charm pack in the lower right), I went onto their “What’s Coming” section to see what I can look forward to.  Here’s my list:

Ashbury Heights, by Dookikey Designs–I read her on Instagram and am happy to see that I like her upcoming line, with a modern twist, but different colors.  Like all of us, I trend towards medium brights in my purchasing, and I like that she has some lights and darks in her line.

Madhuri, by The Quilter Fish–These are many of my favorite colors.  Love the Far East references.

I need Christmas fabrics like I need a hole in the head, but that hasn’t ever stopped me before. I’m not really in the market for anything holiday, but I’m a total fan of Martha Negley, so just had to look at her Poinsettia and Holly line.

The Boo Crew–what can I say, but that’s it’s very cute.  And the fact that it has text (one of my “traps” in buying–but not just any text–I have to personally like it) and is by Sweetwater, also recommends it.  I know lots of lines have a fabric with words and writing on it, but like anything in life, there’a “bell curve” as to how useable it is.  And if I want to give up shelf space in my stash to house it.

2wenty Thr3e, byt Eric and Julie Comstock–Okay, all text fanatics, here’s a good set. Their traditional picture is below, but I can’t quite tell what the base color is: grey-ish beige (photo below)?, or a true cream (middle stack in above image)?

Thesaurus, by Thomas Knauer–I saved part of my gift certificate to buy this when it lands this spring.  I loved Thomas Knauer’s first line of fabric, then was so-so about the next two.  This one looks like it will be another winner, if you ask me.  (And yes, the fact that it’s named Thesaurus doesn’t hurt.)

Last one is Return to Atlantis, by Jason Yenter.  I used his wintery line for a Christmas quilt I did a couple of years ago, and liked the quality of fabric.  While I said Madhuri has all my favorite colors, this does too–only it’s as if you added black to the Madhuri line, or lightened up the Atlantis line.

So strolling through all of this made me wonder: do we let the materials of the artist determine the picture?  Do paint artists see a certain blue in the paint store and run home to throw it all over their canvas?  I think not.  So do you think that quilters should let a certain line determine the quilt they are going to make?  I’ve done this–my Harvesting the Wind quilt came about because of a stack of their fabric and a desire to make a quilt after a tile from Portugal I’d seen on Flickr.

Many days the trend pulls quilters one way, as I saw with January’s Scrappy Trip-A-Long quilts. We love groups, quilt-a-longs, tutorials, Moda’s bake shop, and so on.  And I remember the brou-ha-ha over Emily Cier’s quilt out of Kate Spain fabrics (have we forgiven Ms. Spain yet?)–this came about because the quilt was exclusively made from Spain’s fabrics, and yet — -if you noticed the above post — I’m falling into the rut?  trap? groove? of shopping complete lines of one designer’s fabric, rather than considering the artistic impulse, figuring out what I want to do and pulling fabrics from my collection to suit the artistic vision I have. I’ve learned that while a designer’s fabric line may prompt me to plunge into a quilt, if I don’t begin with the block and my layout first, the fabric tends to sit on my shelf because I’m buying THEIR vision, not my own.

But it’s still fun to dream.

*******************************

I went to Road to California — the quilt show — last weekend.  Photos coming soon.

Happy New Year 2013

Finally!  I can show a these little wristlets — mini-zip purses with straps — that I made for Christmas, because I gave the last one away yesterday.  Just a simple zip, to which I added a loop out of the side seam, and attached a strap.  They all have clocks on them, with a crazy mix of patterns around the central clock.  For who ever has enough time?  So I gave some away.

The top photo is another clock in the series, and the bottom shows the stap flipped back over, or as I like to call it “Bashful Portrait of Zip Bags.”

I also made up some giant canvas bags for my grandsons (hope the last grandson isn’t reading this post–we haven’t given that family their gifts yet!), and attached a tag that read: “Some toys you put together, and some toys you take apart.” Along with the item in the bag (see following photos), we also gave them a tool box with some basic tools.

Yep.  I went to a TV repair shop and picked up some old electronics (VCR, CD players) and slipped them into their bags.  They went right to work, taking them apart.  They told me later that they’d finished them the next day.  All of this was inspired by my mother, who when visiting our family when my boys were little, got one of them a television to take apart.

Finishing up this quilt.  I was arranging the scraps of the remaining fabrics, trying to come up with a pieced back that didn’t look all garbage-y like my usual pieced backs do.  My husband walked in and after inquiring what I was doing, I confessed I really didn’t do pieced backs very well.  Sometimes I like to show the backs of my quilts and I’ve just never gotten the hang of that artsy look that some quilters can do so well.  We went to the guest bedroom closet (AKA, fabric storage warehouse) to see if any of the Marimekko fabrics would work, when lo! and behond! there was a hunk of the red “joy” fabric, a coordinate to the Countdown to Christmas line.  I’d forgotten all about it, but this morning I pieced it together and now that quilt can be quilted. (What you see on top are the pillow shams.  Still working on those.)

I gave away this book for Christmas, and bought one for myself, too.

Not only does it have a lot of prompts for good deeds to to daily, there’s also room to record a deed that you did–an interesting way to keep a journal for a year, I think.

How about instead of a handmade card, we all make a handmade quilt?  I like that.

So Happy New Year, everyone.  Let that old year go, just like it says above, and enjoy this first day of the year!  Now head back over to Lee’s blog, Freshly Pieced, to see others with WIP Wednesday projects.  Maybe it will inspire you to pull out some of your own to get those Works-In-Progress quilts move to Work-Completed quilts?

Wonky Stars, Wonky World

I know you must think I fell off of a cliff.  I posted on Lee’s Freshly Pieced blog as a guest host, (click *here* to head back over to her site for some great looking quilts) then went dark and silent for lo, these many weeks.  Below is a composite of what went on, minus the rolling-of-the-eyes pictures while reading student papers and grading grading grading. 

Besides grading, we got a new sofa, I made vats of a potato dish for our church Christmas party, sewed giant canvas bags for my grandsons’ Christmas presents (we gave them small tool boxes and broken electronics from the local TV repair shop, so they could take them apart with their new tools), decorated the Christmas tree, celebrated Christmas with my son and his family, pulled out an old block swap project then put it away, started on Secret Project A, Secret Project B (it is Christmas, after all) and then would up my time making Butternut Crunch Toffee and Christmas Caramels.

I have been feeling much like the grandma in the snow.

And then last weekend’s horrible events happened, and like you, everything in my world pretty much came to a halt, and I watched the news, read about the lives of the slain children, and cried and cried.  And one really bad day, both my daughter’s and my tender emotions collided in a colossal disagreement over nothing, and I realized that the resultant tears on both our parts was more indication that our days would be forever changed by our concern for twenty-eight families in Connecticut.  I wanted to write about it, but mostly I just wanted to gather a quilt around the closest child, read them good books and ward off the outside world to protect them.  How to move from this wonky, capsized world back to Christmas?

Start slowly, by doing the things that right the world after a terrific up-ending.

I wrote Christmas cards.  Thinking about those closest to me enabled me to brave the mall and do some gift-buying.  I spent time with good people, friends, church friends, family.  Many many years ago, after I went through my Horribles one tear-filled Christmas (a divorce), the counselor said that trying to get back into a routine would help everyone.  So I made some toffee.  Then my annual Christmas Caramels, while listening to Christmas carols.

And realized that I’m no good at making Wonky Stars.  I can get the star “blades” on crookedly, a necessary ingredient for wonkiness.  But I keep messing up the placement of the star blades direction, like the one above.

So I would lay them out, and invariably have to unpick one.  I decided to plow through it, for if I left this project midway, I might never be able to get back in.

The stars turned out appropriately wonky, maybe more wonky than they should have.  But more importantly, the stars are done.  And I hope to find some time in the sewing studio to sew the companion blocks to this quilt.

Next week, we’ll be spending some time with my family, with my husband’s family, looking at lights, singing Christmas hymns at church.  We’ll also be listening to Uncle Earl play Lady of Spain on his accordion (a rare treat), celebrate the season with my Dad and Mom’s great cooking, and yes, like most families, we’ll tell jokes, admire the babies, trade stories of cancer, new furniture, failed toffee and failed marriages, changed jobs, successes in grad school, all of us sharing bits and pieces of our patchworked lives.

I wish you all the best of a patchworked Christmas!

Autumn Quilt

Autumn Quilt is just smoothed up on the wall (crookedly), but I’m happy to be at this place with this quilt.  I started collecting fabrics for it about 8 or 9 years ago, gathering up  reds and golds and earthy greens, browns and blacks with pattern.  I was mimicking a quilt design from a friend of mine who had made a similar quilt and I loved the way it glowed.

I used the basic Square-in-a-Square pattern, adjusting it so that these are nine-inch blocks.  I put the inner striped border on it and hung it in the closet last fall.  And it stayed there while I ruminated on and pondered the border.  My family has the Ruminating Gene in spades.

I showed some of the process in my last post, so I know this is a repeated tale.  Sorry.  But what was different was that I cut down the one-inch striped border to a half-inch sort of piping-effect border. I’m happy with it.

But when I put it all together, it was like there were doorways or gates on each side, letting the border go flabby.  While I may have to deal with flabby everything else, I’m not at all about to settle for flabby borders.  I unpicked and re-stitched to what is shown above.  I like it a lot better, and many thanks to my husband for helping me talk through that little knot of a problem.

I had one backing all picked out–a vintage piece of fabric, bought at a yard sale next to my sister-in-law’s house in Utah.  It just didn’t sing.  But this eight-year-old piece from Alexander Henry did.

I added two other fabrics with a orangey-blue tonality, and we were good to go.  So today, it did–off to the quilter’s.

I did other errands today made me glad to have a holiday that causes me to think about what I’m thankful for.  I ran into Joan in the grocery store — an 80-year-old friend — and she was buying a disposable roaster and colorful napkins.  The whole family, with grandchildren, boyfriends and everyone is at her house again, as they are every year.  Everyone helps but she confided she has a hard time getting the gravy made because “They want me out in the backyard playing croquet with them!”  And then as we were leaving, she gestured with her arm to the immaculate grocery store, perfection this morning at 8 a.m. before the hordes of Thanksgiving shoppers arrived, and said “When I look at this abundance, I feel like I need to give thanks to God all over again.”  I’ll be taking a wee break from blogging while I cook and peel and crimp and serve and oh yeah, clean up (as well as do a bit of grading and maybe even shopping) so I’m posting this holiday wish a bit early.

Like my friend Joan, this Thursday, I’ll be giving thanks to God for friends I’ve found in writing this blog and in participating in the quilting world.  You really do enrich my life with fabric chats, a little fun gossip now and again, and a sense that I belong to a vibrant community full of talent and enough quirkiness to make it interesting.

I’ll be giving thanks to God for his goodness in my life, for the gift of our children and grandchildren and in-laws and out-laws (hey, we all have a few).  I’m grateful to my mother and father for giving me atta’boys when I need it, and correcting my grammar and spelling when called for.  I’m happy to have sisters and brothers, and to have grown up in a family so large that we had to learn to share, yet small enough that when one of us is down, the others all know and want to help.

I have many ways to count the blessings in my life and will be doing just that on Thursday, feeling the Lord’s kindness rain down. And I wish this all for you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Digital Images-NYPL

While I do think that the internet sucks up my time and not always in a good way, occasionally there are places that are interesting to visit, to gain inspiration.  The above image is from the New York Public Library’s Digital Gallery.

These two prints are by Maurice Pillard Verneuil from 1869.  More are found *here.*

I went into their Printing and Graphics section from the main page, then randomly clicked on the list as I didn’t want to wade through all the images.  Here’s another:

It’s harder to see this one, but the catalog indicates it has plant forms, peacocks, and a waterscape.

And this one could provide ideas for machine quilting when the quilt is done.

Applique, anyone?

So how does this relate to quilting?  By encouraging me to see new shapes and new relationships between shapes.  I sketched up a block, taken from some of the ideas in the first one, then played with it in my quilt program (flipping and twisting the block), gaining the slightly weird, but somewhat intriguing design below.  While I have to work mainly in solids on the computer, I could see this in rich florals, or another type of print where the edges blur from the colors overlapping from one square to another.

The idea, at least for me, is not necessarily to have a quilt to bang out in one week, but perhaps to tuck these doodlings away in a sketchbook, whether it be the digital or colored-paper-and-pencil kind.  The idea is to make new connections.  The idea is to have an idea.

Where do you get your ideas?  Other blogs? Flickr groups?  (You’ve already seen my take on Portuguese Tiles.) Nature? Quilt shows? Something a friend has done? All of the above?

Blind Ambition

So I’ve been thinking about old age and dying, especially after the dream I had last night where I was trying to get off of a bridge littered with bodies and it was imperative (like dreams can be) that I not stop and help anyone (maybe they were infected with a ghastly disease, or something) and I kept dodging people and not slowing down and only woke up when I got to the other side, leaving behind, in a rainstorm (! but it was a dream) that site of sadness and death and human suffering.  It took me a long time to come awake, and I watched the sun’s color paint our backyard trees, including the olive that has died slowly from an airborne illness, killing it from the leaves downward, and which needs to be removed.

So from there I  began wondering about how many productive years I have ahead of me.  It’s a fool’s quest, this kind of thing, because I could get wiped out on my way to school tomorrow (two major freeway interchanges, one bout of commute traffic).  Or full-blown arthritis could arrive tomorrow and sewing would be out of the question.  Or maybe those poor souls on the bridge in my dream are only a harbinger of some invasive cancer that I’ll have to navigate somehow. (Does the ending mean that I get to live?)

When you are thirty, these thoughts are considered morbid and completely unnecessary.  When you are post-forty, they are a part of your life, especially as a friend or a grandmother or a close relative dies.

But yesterday, I did something life-affirming.  I added the tag of “200 Quilts” to the post I wrote.  I don’t know if I’ll reach 200 before my quilting thimble gets left in the drawer for the last time.  But I took the ambitious step — a blindly ambitious step considering we can’t ever know the future but pin all our hopes on it — and declared my Portuguese Tile Quilt to be number 101 of 200, a lovely, big, ambitious, and history-laden bi-centennial sort of number.  We’ll just see how it goes.

PTQ/WIP

PTQ is how I’ve taken to calling the Portuguese Tile Quilt since writing out the long name is tedious.  But tonight when my husband came upstairs to check on me (his cave is downstairs, mine is upstairs) and I said, we really have to go to Portugal.  Really, really.

Here’s my work in progress, which I’ll be posting on Lee’s blog Freshly Pieced, on her regular Wednesday Feature of WIP Wednesday (found *here.*)

Here I’m working the windmill effect, striving always to keep the pinks in the same place.  I had to cut some more blues, because I’d cut the first ones upside down and backwards.  And I have lots of black points, so I’m wondering if I gave the right amount in the how-to post?  Pretty sure I did.

I noticed that the pattern seemed to be lost in the fabric I chose, so this version is my trying an entire block of blue and an entire block of pink/orange.

Nah.

I laid out what I had and decided I liked the not-square version of 5 rows by 6 rows.  It’s good to change your mind once in a while.

I decided to make up a batch of those “backward” blocks.  I placed one in here–spot the ringer?  I would be tempted to leave it in but it would drive my symmetry-loving husband nuts. I was just trying it.

I pressed the seams towards the black pinwheels on all pieces.  Then you have a lump in the middle, so clip a couple of stitching threads to release it, and pressing down with your thumb, “swirl” to flatten out that center.  This is the backwards block, so your seams will look reversed.

The back of the backwards block.

I was really tempted to sew this row by row, with no regard to the block.  But I need that block to be distinguishable in a subtle way, so decided to start piecing blocks together first, then sew them in rows.  That way the block will be its own entity before losing its identity to the overall tile pattern.

Just like my hair stylist who married a guy with four children.  I went in to get my hair cut today on her first day back at work since her honeymoon.  She said they spent a week on Maui, then got home late Saturday night. Monday morning, he went to work early and didn’t return until late.  She told me she went from “single woman” to “single Mom” in one week.  I admire her and think about her a lot because of my story: my husband Dave married me and my four kids.  He We survived, but even so, it doesn’t stop me from keeping her in my prayers, hopes and thoughts.

So as I work on this quilt, I think about how all of us are individuals with our own lives, quilts, loves, hates and troubles, and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to make sense until we put it all together and see the pattern.  I like that about quilts.  I like that about life, now that I’m old enough to discern some of those patterns now and again — one of the great advantages of hanging in there.