Hello?

 Well, this is awkward. I shut this down a couple of years ago and I'm thinking about pulling it up again so I can spill my thoughts to the deep void of the internet.  I guess it's my therapy, and for the past year I HAVE NEEDED THERAPY.  So I'm going to take a deep breath and start again. 

Since it's St. Patrick's Day, I choose to start with honoring my grandmother, who spent her 18th birthday on Ellis Island.  She was brave and smart and wonderful. 

WTH?

You know that thing where you thought you deleted your blog and a comment on a 2015 post shows up in your email?  That.  That just happened.  Going to figure out who has ghosted into my dashboard, BRB.

Bring out Your Dead!

I'm not dead yet.
(Love me some Monty Python).

So....it's been a while.  That is what happens when you are working multiple jobs, finishing multiple gift quilts that can't be posted until they have  been delivered, and oh - I don't know - LIVING IN A HELLISH SNOW VORTEX.  Officially we had 108" of snow, 103" arriving after January 5, 2015, but that's Boston's total and as we are just north on Cape Ann, we picked up substantial more ocean effect snow on top of that.

This is my 6'4" husband knocking down the treacherous lip of  snow hanging off the garage.  This was our only access out of our house for over a month and a half, and we had to fight to keep it open.  One day we went downstairs to leave and found so much snow had drifted on to the storm door that we had to take the glass panel out (from the inside) so we could push enough snow away in order to get the door open. This was not as lighthearted and whimsical as it sounds, nosirreee. The good news is we've been able to use our front door (just like normals) for about a week and a half. It still feels brand new and sparkly and wonderful. The bad news is the winter kill and melting snow has revealed all kinds of awful stuff. Lots of work ahead.

So what did I get accomplished?  Finished an epic battle with a Christmas "woobie" quilt for my friend John. John LOVES Charlie Brown Christmas and requested his own quilt for seasonal decorating and snuggling.  It's a hard thing to make a quilt for.... let's just say a guy with multiple cars and a lot of Rolex, etc. around his oceanfront home. It took ages, I made it all up myself, and I'll never do it again.

Some of these are "work in progress" pictures but the overall effect is there. I didn't get good pictures taken because I finished it JUST before Christmas and didn't have time. I'll do so next year, just to get the proof of it in my files. BTW - the blue lights around the border represent the blue lights he does on his house every Christmas. It's another good story that goes back about 27 years, I'll write about it sometime.

This is a shirtings quilt top I did for our friends, Matt and John. Matt brought over 2 huge bags of their 'old' shirts and asked me to start a quilt for them. (Note to self - never again agree to make a quilt for an engineer.) It took longer to cut up the shirts and iron out flat pieces to cut than it did to sew it all back together. It took me almost as long to sell him on the idea of sashing it with the light gray instead of harsh white. (They have 2 huge dogs....).  John didn't know about this until he opened it on Christmas, and I think there was some unrest about "I thought we had those in the attic for storage, I needed one of them....".  Glad I wasn't there for that. When I saw John next, he gave me one of his wonderful, rib-crushing hugs and thanked me. That's a happy ending. It will be king sized when finished, but who knows when that will happen.

ME. MOI.  After 150 years of making quilts for other people, I took time out to make one for ME. I'm sharing it with my husband because he sleeps with me, but it is MINE. It was made from 100% stash - front and back - and boy did it knock down the piles. I'm not racing to buy new fabric because I'd need to make another 3 or 4 of these this size to be able to rationalize that.  I love it. There are fabrics in there from my mom and one of my sisters' stashes. There are fabrics from other quilts I've made.  It is warm and wrinkly and it makes me very happy.  It is also HUGE.  I sleep on my side and (TMI WARNING) I don't like it when the quilt doesn't cover my extremities. This one does. 

That's enough for now. I survived QuiltCon in Austin, Texas and had a ball working a booth for Why Quilts Matter - History, Art and Politics. I wasn't able to stock up on Aurifil thread the way I had hoped - they had a company booth but they weren't vending. I did get a good color chart and they sent me to a couple of booths that had limited colors, so I did manage to get my hands on some thread and their new (to me) floss. I've burned through enough thread in the last 7 months to realize I need to get the BIG CONES of some of the neutrals I use so much of - it's worth the investment. Besides, I'm not buying fabric, right? Okay, so I did buy ONE piece of fabric, an incredibly beautiful wax print from Ananse Village,  but that is for a jacket and not a quilt so it doesn't count against the stash. (You can reach me at 1-800-RATIONALIZE)

I must stop NOW. I have 3 quilts in the on-deck circle, two are pieced and ready to quilt. One is a wedding quilt due this fall and....not started. But I have the fabric in my stash, so there's that. That counts as "started," right?

Multi-Tasking, Thanks for Asking

This is not a pattern. These are shapes.

I am all over the place.  Depending on the outside temperature I find that during the shoulder season I need something to work on in different rooms of the house.  On cool days the upstairs sewing room is best. I'm cutting in to an old, hurt quilt and making a teddy bear.  I had to find a new pattern because while I saved the directions and the pattern envelope from my old (and I do mean old) pattern, the pattern itself went missing. I love a crisp, new pattern. I cut it apart with pinking shears, too dull to use on fabric but perfect for that light tissue that real patterns are printed on.Then I indulged in the ritual 'ironing of the pattern' where you lightly press the fold and crease marks out so when you place it on the fabric it lies perfectly flat. I started sewing the pattern pieces together without consulting the directions. I was using a REAL pattern, and the markings and information on the pattern pieces made that possible.

THIS IS A PATTERN

 Well that, and because I learned how to sew from using real patterns back in the day when Home Ec was mandatory for 7th grade girls.  I still think it should be mandatory - for boys and girls.  Why not learn to sew? Cook a meal? Banking, growing plants, living with a budget. Do a load of laundry without ruining the works. How to paint a wall. How to wield a cutting brush. Life skills, baby, I'm talking about basic. life. skills. Back to the bear -  I started watching an old movie on the VHS in my sewing room (man, I am a dinosaur) and clipped and darted and notched my way thought more than half of the bear before I called it quits for the night. (Okay there is a DVD player in there too, just sayin'.) I love old movies. I love REAL patterns. They are a marvel of engineering. How else would you get such elegant curves and shapes and forms?

NOT BLUE

If it's too hot for the sewing room I work on the main floor in the family room, paper piecing. I'm working on making a new purse and I loved my Japanese big bag so much I'm doing a smaller version, but NOT IN BLUE, MOM (if you're reading this in heaven and you probably are because I hear you yell at me every time I sew over pins.) I went WAY out of my color comfort zone and am doing this in shades of purple, mainly because it's already in my stash and I'm not getting any younger. I am photographing the hexie layout on my ironing board so I can work from the picture when I go downstairs to sew it together. (Easy to consult the iPad and double check the layout.) I'm also using straw needles and YLI silk thread to join them - double thread, because it's a purse. Even with interfacing and future layers, I want it sturdy. I must say, silk thread is the most unbelievably EASY thing to sew with, once you face the fact that properly knotting it is never going to happen. Even a quilters knot slid down the length of it tends to just melt apart. Oh silk, you are so...silky. It's very therapeutic to hand sew in the evening, I find I sleep better when I'm thus tranquilized.  As long as I manage to leave my iPad alone and not read email, Twitter and other assorted addictions (okay ANGRY BIRDS) I have a productive evening with beautiful results.

Sewing used to be my reward.  I work multiple jobs and it involves a LOT of juggling. I say "used to be a reward" because I've realized lately that it is something I MUST do. I'm happier, more aware of color and texture in my personal and professional lives (I work with art groups) and it opens up my head.  When I was commuting to Lowell every day I used to sing in the car.  I'm sure people wondered what the hell I was singing that took so much air and effort (usually something from Handel's Messiah or another choral work...) but it had the same effect. While it did cut down my road rage, I will confess to changing the words to an expletive when someone cut me off or changed lanes in front of me too abruptly.  It also made me laugh hysterically - you need to sing "motherf)($&#(er" in full soprano head voice to get the full effect.  Regardless of the word usage, when you get it really going and flowing it spirals up and creates a kind of harmonic buzz in your head. You get a little bit....high. At least I do. Music and art are the gifts that let us glimpse at the Paradise Lost - the world we were supposed to be living in, and not the one mankind has created.

I love autumn, it's my favorite season. It's good for inner reflection, taking inventory of life and time left. Hand sewing provides the opportunity to think back, remember, and relive wonderful memories. I am more awake - is that possible? I'm conscious of counting my days, wanting them to be full and filled with the glories of creation, the people I love and excellent football. Not every day will be so burnished and successful, but I'm working on it with the hope that it helps me through the days that are.......well, not so much.

What was any art but a mold in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

Willa Cather

It's About Time - Getting Satisfaction

I did a lot of thinking after I posted that last entry.  Mostly about how much I self-edited, removing things I felt deeply but was fearful of putting out there in the world because depression is - and seemingly always will be - a taboo subject.  There are some great tweets about that attitude -

I figured out why I am so vibrantly aware of things these days - I'm running out of time.  I have more of my life behind me than I do ahead of me and while I'm good with that (honest!) I've got this whole stupid list of things to do "later", when I get the money, when I will be able to enjoy it, when I have the time (as if!) or some other BS rationalization.  It's time to do it now.  Money will always be a prohibitive factor, but the lovely silks I've been collecting for years are going to get CUT UP and made into a wonderful wall piece.  The beautiful Moda French General hexagons I painstakingly pieced and hand sewn are no longer in the "when I think of what I want to do with them" pile because I cut and bound them and they now look wonderful on various coffee tables in my family room.  My treasured damask and vintage linens are being used on my dining room and kitchen tables and YES I SAID THAT are getting food spilled on them and thrown in the washer and used again and again and I love it. 

I recently made 2 table runners as gifts for the newlywed children of friends. I did the registry gift thing for their bridal showers, but this time I felt like I wanted them to have something more meaningful - well, meaningful to me anyway. Both brides are mature, free spirited women who know themselves well.
I heartily regret machine quilting these runners with variegated thread - while it seemed inspired and dashing at the time, every sin you make with variegated thread screams. I backstitch to anchor starting and stopping points and damn if every time I did it the color of the thread would change just enough to look like a schmeariblik. Once I was on a pale yellow stretch of fabric when the thread turned a dark violet and MAN was that way too much contrast - it looked like I took a Sharpie pen and drew lines, for Pete's sake. This is not to say that I haven't done just that - I have a large and colorful collection of narrow Sharpie pens just for a similar  purpose. I touch up those areas when a bit of white thread pops up out of nowhere, a rogue bobbin thread that doesn't exactly match needs come camouflage - that kind of thing.

I now spend evenings embroidering wool felt ornaments that I consign to a nearby quilt museum. I love those things - each one a little creation that will go live in house of someone I'll never meet.  I used to keep track of where my Mother's quilted runners and wall hangings went when we sold them in my husband's shop. She loved hearing about the ones that went to London or Italy or Germany or Pennsylvania. Now I understand why.  Putting pretty little bits of yourself out there in the universe is a very satisfying use of time. I want my time now to be filled with more of that, whether it is making something or reading something or any one of a myriad of other things that are satisfying.  Time is much more my friend now than ever before, and all because I've been learning to use more of it to satisfy myself.

Peaches and Perseids

Such melancholy days these are.

Two of our closest friends married off their sons within 24 hours of each other. I made 2 table runners as wedding gifts, and machine quilted  them as I hope they will be used well and tossed in the washing machine. (I'll probably never use variegated thread again in my life, though, but that is another post.) The weddings took place this past weekend and I officially became "the old lady who cries at weddings".  I've seen those boys go from diapers to tuxedos and shared the adolescent angst (and behavior) with their parents, so it's easy to see how I get weepy when I see them walk them down the aisle or have that "mother and son" dance.  The harder moment for me is when the father of the bride gives his daughter to her future husband.  I flash back to the moment my dear Dad let go of my hand and placed it into Joe's, and my heart just aches.  Life is precious and fleeting.

This from a blog post a few years ago:

I didn't know it at the time, but the last time my parents came to Gloucester for a visit was during the Perseid meteor shower of about 1998.  We had friends who were members of a local beach club so we were able to troop down to the beach with a hibachi, wine, dessert and sand chairs to make a perfect evening in a perfect setting even more....perfect.  We had a marvelous supper, topped off by Mom's peach pie made from peaches picked in our own backyard.  Dad was the official peach peeler (he's a hound dog for peach pie) and Mom could whip up a pie so effortlessly it was all done in a blink.  I can still remember the setting in vivid detail, but I can't conjure up the taste of Mom's peach pie.  It's been too long and while my own peach pies are pretty good (from good DNA) they aren't hers.  They aren't from peaches in our own backyard, they weren't peeled with love by my Dad, and ..... well, you get the idea. We watched the sun set and the stars come out, the moon rose perfectly between the twin lighthouses of Thatcher Island, and the meteor shower began.  It was an experience we all talked about for years to come. 

We had to prop up those peach trees with lumber because the branches were so heavily laden with fruit they would otherwise break. The trees have since died off, and while we planted two others only one took root.  A few days ago Joe walked in to the house with three little peaches from our 'new' tree.  First fruits. Upon realizing it wouldn't be enough to make a pie or a cobbler or a crisp, I flashed to my memory of Mom and Dad in the kitchen, Dad peeling peaches and Mom working magic with pastry. Perseids and peaches will forever be twined together in my heart. 

Who knew such a powerful and priceless memory was being made that night? I have always "felt" things so deeply - my mother even said I was her most moody child. Sometimes I'm barely convinced I have any skin at all. Like so many others who have struggled with depression I was shocked and anguished by the death of Robin Williams. He was such a brilliant and talented man, but even all his resources were not enough. Mindful that building resilience is important, I've been trying to live more vigilantly and find things to rejoice in, to celebrate and savor. I'm trying to block off the voice in my head that constantly admonishes, "You should be doing -----" when I just want to sit and sew or embroider or read for an hour. (I have found it to be wonderfully enriching to put a stopper in that damn voice once in awhile.) Added bonus - I had the presence of mind to save one of those peaches to eat when I sit on the back porch and look for Perseids tonight.  Life is good. 

Machine Quilting Do's and Don'ts - The Rookie Edition

Nothing like a deadline to get you out of your safe zone and into the great unknown.

My little baby godson is graduating from high school.  Since I don't get to see him very often, he tends to remain the little guy we teased about sitting in the cup holder on a crowded, cross Nebraska trip we took about 13 years ago. I've seen him since then, but that is how "Joey" is forever engraved in my heart.

I wanted to make him a graduation quilt because my mom always made graduation quilts for her grandchildren. It isn't Joey's fault that she got (#@*)(*&$ over by pancreatic cancer and isn't here to do the honors.   Since he likes blues and oranges I pulled those fabrics from my stash. I'm happy to report I have some of the blue fabrics from mom's stash in the quilt, but I had to go out and buy a couple of orange fabrics since I DON'T OWN A SINGLE PIECE OF ORANGE.  Oy.

I wanted to piece something kind of guy-ish, so I worked in guy-esque colors and came up with what is shown here. (Unfortunately I tend to take pictures  indoors and at night so the colors aren't quite accurate.) I've always hand quilted my quilts but as there won't be time for that, I decided to take a deep breath and machine quilt this bad boy.  I moved my Bernina to the downstairs dining room table and had what I thought was a MAGNIFICENT set-up - I had the table extended and opened up the far left end and dropped the Bernina into the open slot (on top of a little table that fit under the dining room table) so that it was flush with the level of the big table.  Kind of like the world's biggest sewing table,woo hoo! It took me the better part of an afternoon to figure it all out, but I did and it was KILLER! Then I sat down to sew and the WHOLE DINING ROOM TABLE WOBBLED with the vibration from my machine. 

"@)@#)#$(&*@#(*&%^#&^&!@%,"

Joe came home, took one look and said, "The table isn't stable when it's opened up like that, it's always going to wobble."  Great.  Put the table back together and worked with the machine on top, not the best arrangement but at least the table was there to hold the weight of the quilt. 

I used my first Auriful thread when piecing the top, I wanted to see what all the fuss was all about. (FYI it's worth every penny, I'm a convert.) I decided to leave it in the machine for quilting and was very glad I did. Lovely stuff and best of all, a full bobbin seems to last forever!  Since I know very little about machine quilting (other than watching about 100 YouTube videos) I jumped in and worked from the center out.  Bad part - the large orange square is smack in the center and that is NOT where you want to begin machine quilting if you've never done it before.  I've done some FMQ stippling, but I was all fired up to do something with a little more panache. "Panache" involved ripping it out about three times, and BTW when you free motion quilt push THE HALF SPEED button on the machine so you don't achieve that difficult 300 stitches to the inch.  (Total bitch to rip out.) I spent ages on that part and HATED it. Moving on to the next area, I threw in the towel and put on the walking foot, did some angular lines. Better. For the stashing strips I was ready to throw caution to the wind again and - this time with the half speed button switched on - I

Fuzzy picture, sorry.  Loopy!

went back to doing funky, wandering squares.  Hey.... I liked those.  Then funky, wandering tubes with stipple in the center.  Liked that, too! Loopy loops. This was FUN.  I was getting better.  Long story short, the quilt is finished and with the exception of the center (which looks like Helen Keller did that part) I'm pretty happy with the results.  The binding was on in a snap because I love hand sewing down the back of the binding, it's very zen.  Threw it in the washer, into the dryer and got the nice, crinkly look of a finished quilt. Mission accomplished, right?  Nope. 

Mom always busted my chops because I never labeled my quilts. I never liked that part and wasn't all in to having my name on things, or even the name of the quilt on the back. It just never seemed important.  This one was all ready to go and would have made the graduation deadline....but it didn't have a label and my mom is apparently STILL busting my chops because I knew I had to put a label on that thing. I'll skip the epic narrative of that (you don't want to know) and managed to finish up a semi-respectable label and stitched it on to the back. It will be late for graduation, but not by much.  I learned a LOT, most surprisingly that I really enjoyed machine quilting. I have a much deeper appreciation of the work free motion quilters do. Best of all, my quilting groove is back and I'm in my sewing room almost every day.  I'm already happier and better able to cope with the everyday realities that sometimes overwhelm.  Win win win.