rostitchery

creativity: sacrifice

IN SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE OF IRAN

AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR PEACE AND DEMOCRACY.

"the important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."

Charles DuBos, french critic of french and english literature

 

 

easy art quilts for babies (who, incidentally, do not appreciate art, but their mothers do)

since the only things i'm making right now are patterns and ice cream :)  i thought i'd share some things i've made in the past and show you how to make them too.

when i was pregnant with ella i had three friends who were pregnant at the same time--we formed the pregnant girls club and spent most of our free time sitting around a coffee table with our legs propped up and talking about crazy stuff like how utterly delectable crushed ice had become.

that summer i made baby quilts for these three friends and about a dozen for project linus.  all the pictures in this post are very poor quality owing to the fact that the digital camera i had at that time was already about 5 years old and my photography skills were equivalent to my skills as an astronaut.  but i think you'll get the idea.  most of these pictures are quilt tops in progress (you'd probably figure that out without my help).

these quilts were all made using stash fabric and the exact same piecing technique:  instead of cutting the half square triangles (HSTs) the traditional way--which for those who have not made them, the traditional way is to cut little squares and sew them together diagonally and then cut them apart one by one--i cut long strips of fabric and stitched them together on both long sides, then i cut the triangles en masse from the strips (click to enlarge):

 

using this method the edges of the squares are on the bias and the center is on the straight grain, whereas in traditional piecing the diagonal is on the bias and the edges are on the straight grain.  i know what you quilters are thinking:  bias edges = bad, wavy quilt.  NOT TRUE!  bias edges are your friend, you can make them do all kinds of neat things like stretch out or shrink, and for all i know they can even be taught to juggle.  anybody who makes clothing sews bias edges on every single garment and things usually turn out just fine. :D  once the thing is quilted it will be nice and flat, i promise.

(ok, if you insist:  to avoid bias edges on your HSTs, simply cut your strips on the bias--when you cut your triangles they will have straight grain edges.  but beware--stitching long strips of bias is more iffy than sewing short edges of bias-edged squares to each other.  it will also take way more fabric to get the same number of triangles.  but do as you wish.  i'm just saying).

in making these quilt tops all i did was make piles and piles of HSTs then i laid them out to make a design after the fact. each quilt was different, i just played around with the HSTs until i had something i liked.  most of them were made as mazes (this was linda sue's quilt top):

some were made as echo designs (this was holly's quilt):

once i had a layout i liked, i pieced it together and then used any leftovers on the back as filler:

for brenda's quilt top i used strips that were a combination of two or more more narrow strips, which gave a more complicated final look but was as simple to make as the others.  since these strips were smaller, i added a border to make the quilt the size i wanted (the quilt inspector to the left is bea, who still inspects quilts long after they have been finished and are on the bed):

i first saw this method about 7 years ago on a website that i cannot find now, it is either long gone or long buried beneath the mountain of other websites that have been published since then.  and naturally someone has now invented a tool that is supposed to make this job easier--the wonder cut ruler--but you don't have to have that--i didn't.  the only thing the ruler does is guarantee your triangles will end up a specific size.  if you are willing to use whatever you end up with, you can just cut your strips and triangles without it, they will all still be the same size as each other so they will all fit together no matter how big or small they are.  and once your triangles are cut, you can use them for any other quilt design, for example you can mix them with nine-patch squares and create a completely different look, even traditional if you wish (this quilt was for a couple we worked with at vandy who had their first child that same summer):

now for the very complicated math:  i cut 6" wide strips simply because i had a 6" wide rotary cutting ruler.  when i had cut the triangles i measured them and made nine-patch squares to match.  no pre-planning for me, that would have required me to figure out something in advance and i'm not always in the mood for that.  besides, the beauty of these quilts, to me, is the serendipity, which seems the right approach when making a quilt in celebration of a new baby.

guess whose baby is the only one i didn't make a quilt for?  mine.  :D  but in an ironic twist, i have made her many pairs of shoes.  from a dancer that is probably not terribly surprising but it is just another example of how motherhood warps a mind. 

creativity: waiting

"you can't wait for inspiration. you have to go after it with a club."

jack london (1876 - 1916)

attention, internet: I. MADE. BUTTER.

you heard me.  butter.  from scratch.  in my own kitchen.

and it was ridiculously, insanely, embarrassingly simple.

start with whipping cream.  use the whisk on a stand mixer, the beaters on a hand mixer, or a regular old hand whisk if you are old school but really, i recommend just buying butter if you are not using a tool that is plugged in.

wrap the bowl in plastic, so you don't end up crying over spilt (or in this case, splashed) milk.

then do what everybody tells you not to do:  whip the daylights out of the cream.  while all that whipping is happening, put a strainer in a bowl and lay a clean dishtowel in the strainer. 

the cream will go thru the whipped cream stage (some of you will be tempted to stop here and taste it--resist), then the clotted cream stage, and just when you think you are wasting your time, it will turn pebbly, and it will separate, and it will start splashing (aren't you glad you wrapped the bowl in plastic?)--then magically, before your very eyes and in less than 10 minutes, the butter will stick to your whisk and the buttermilk will settle in the bottom of the bowl.

behold:  butter!

scrape the butter into the dishcloth/strainer/bowl set up, then close the towel and squeeze the butter hard, mush it up to get out all the buttermilk, then open your towel and admire your buttery accomplishment.

 

pour the milk into a container, you can cook with it or drink it, although for this occassion i recommend you drink something bubbly to celebrate.

at this point in the story my family and friends are thinking:  ro, you've lost your mind--you don't even like butter.  true dat.  but i do use it in some recipes, and rudi and ella like it, and besides, the lovely ladies at little house in the suburbs told me it was possible, and frankly from now on i'm just going to do whatever they tell me to do.  they haven't let me down yet.

creativity at the ground level

there is a whole different kind of creativity that has called me for a long time now--an impulse to live the life i have now more fully, to embrace with enthusiasm the being at home-ness that is my life today.  it is very different from the chase i have been in all the previous years of my life--and yet being in it, right in it, i have learned how much there is in this kind of life to appeal to the one thing in me that is consistent across all times and places:  my urge to bring something new to life and by doing so, to bring something special to the lives of others.

this year, it lead me to do something i've wanted to do for almost 20 years--i've started a square foot garden.  my wildly-ambitious intention is to provide my family with daily fresh veggies during the summer and hopefully preserving the excess to help provide for us over the winter--all the while spending time in touch with the child and the land we have been so generously blessed with.

what finally convinced me that this was the year i could make it happen was a post on the wonderful blog little house in the suburbs--it was a plan for a beginner's garden that could be planted in a day.  that sounded manageable, and i set out to find what i needed to make this miracle garden happen.  within a few days i had been given or had traded for nearly everything i needed for the garden--boards to make the raised beds, ready-to-plant seedlings, and even some compost.  i had seeds saved from past failed attempts to garden in the backyard that time forgot, and i bought some "fencing" to hopefully keep out the dog that will not be taught.  in just four hours and with some help from rudi and ella, i had not one but two square foot gardens all done.  we put the gardens in the front yard, which is the only place in our yard that gets enough sun.

 

this is the beginner garden, but i'm calling it my italian garden because if all goes as planned, we'll have pasta sauce and pesto sauce and pizza sauce and who knows what other saucy things as well:

this is the squash garden, which i briefly called the squashed garden (you'll understand why in a moment):

we finished them last wednesday, around 4pm. 

at around 4:30pm our dog sprinkles, who i love in theory but who i have a "difficult" relationship with in practice, completely trampled the squash garden and scattered the seeds of most of it.  i was so angry that i threatened every kind of awful thing and scared ella to tears for love of her pet and learned the first lesson in gardening humility which i will write about on my other blog because it doesn't carry this story along.  :)  ella and i did our best to get things back to the way they were, we propped up the broken plants with mounds of dirt and tried to find every little radish seed and every little chard seed and put them back in their rightful place, and then we folded our hands and prayed, right there in the garden, that our little babies would be ok.

the next day, i read a recent post by a friend of mine who lives more or less completely off the land, in which she said she believes you can plant early or you can plant late, but everything still seems to come up at about the same time, so i felt ok that i hadn't gotten the early start that most gardening experts suggest.  ella and i have gone out every day to water each plant and seed by hand, carefully, so as not to disturb them. 

this is what the gardens looked like yesterday, around 4pm, 7 full days since we planted them:

 

italian garden:

 

squash garden--it's alive!

 

don't be fooled by all the "open space"--there's so much going on, i can barely believe it:

 

do you know what that is??? that's the beginning of a pumpkin patch!!!  and look, there's a forest of bush beans!!!  ella calls these praying beans, because when they emerge they look like they have their heads down and hands folded in prayer:

and there are pole beans too, with sunflowers in the middle for them to climb (i didn't have corn to plant which the garden plan called for, but i always have sunflower seeds), and already, in just seven days, there are little baby tomato flowers!

and get ready to "aw", there are even tiny little chardlings with tiny red stems:

i am SO SO SO EXCITED!!!  i am forever indebted to little house in the suburbs for generously giving the world these simple garden plans for those of us who don't have the know-how to do it on our own.  thanks to her, i have a chance of success.  please go visit her blog and give her your undivided attention, you will be glad you did.

today, as i look over my little gardens and see yet another version of the miracle of life unfolding right in my own yard, i am puffed up with a feeling that is very close to self-respect.  if i can shepherd that little pumpkin seed all the way to the jack-o-lantern stage, i will feel like superwoman!!!

looking for old friends in a round robin quilt

while sorting thru years and years (nearly two decades) of pictures i found some very low resolution images of rows for several quilts i helped make almost 15 years ago.  i'm hoping that by posting pictures of these rows, someone will recognize them and will be able to help me get back in touch with these friends.  these are rows i made for a quilting round robin consisting of members of the rec.crafts.textiles.quilting (RCTQ) usenet group (this was back before there was even a world wide web--back when screennames were assigned to you by your ISP and had all the randomness of car license tags).

the idea was for us to get to know each other more personally by each making one row for a quilt for each participant.  we each put together a box that contained some fabrics we'd like included in the quilt, and the coordinator created a shipping sequence so we'd know who to send our boxes to each month.  we would get the first box, make a row, then send it on to the next quilter so she could add her row, etc. when all the rows were done our own box would have made it thru the round and back home, where we would each assemble the rows into a quilt.

when the box arrived each month we had the whole month to create a row, using the fabrics in the box plus any other fabrics we wanted to include.  some participants had themes they hoped we'd follow, some didn't, but the idea was that the rows we made for each other would reflect both the makers' creativity and the recipients' taste.  some quilters wanted their rows signed, and some wanted the quilt label signed, but in the end there would be nine quilts that each had nine different makers involved and documented in their creation.

i felt completely out of my element in this round robin because i was a beginning quilter and i had seen the wonderful things the other quilters had made, but they very graciously let me join the group and over the course of almost a year i got to know each of them so much better and become so fond of each of them (none of us ever met in person--the whole project was all coordinated and conducted via snail mail and email).  and by getting to see each of the previous rows as the boxes came each month i learned so much about the art of quilting (or rather the art of patchwork--i never saw the completed quilts in person).

each quilter also put in her box a journal that the other quilters could read and add to along the way.  it was fascinating to read the makers' thoughts and inspirations and challenges in their own handwriting--so revealing of the depth of feeling and consideration each quilter put into the row she made for each recipient. 

month by month, the boxes grew heavier--because being quilters, we each added a little something to the box for the recipient, and often for the quilters who would follow.  i always added a fat quarter of my hand-dyed fabric, and a postcard from nashville, and usually some small token such as a packet of hand needles or a spool of good thread.  just something to connect with the quilters down the line who i knew would one day be kind enough not to mock my work out loud.  ;)

the following pictures are of rows i made for the other recipients. (edited to add:  i can't find pictures of all the rows i made--or at least i didn't find them today.  if i do find them, i'll let you know).  if you have one of these rows, or know the person who does, please contact me!  i'd so love to catch up with old friends.  i know the names of the quilters who got each row, but for privacy's sake i will not post them here, only the initials to help identify the owners.

this row was for M.G. who is french i believe and who had such beautiful fabrics that i had my local quilt shop order a yard of each for me.  i can't remember the name of the block i made for this row (please feel free to jog my memory).  that's my beloved pal fable sitting next to the row, she was one of three resident quilt inspectors at that time:

  

this row was for "robin" (forgot her last name--so sorry!), i made what looked to me like a heartbeat with a heart intertwined:

this was for S.D., who wanted something for her child that would reflect her christian beliefs.  she loved rainbows, so i used the snail's trail quilt block to make multi-colored ocean waves broken up by a rainbow and a dove:

 

this row was for another S.D., it is the churn dash block with fussy-cut centers that feature cows (the block at the beginning of this post is from this row--i guess you figured that out by yourself).  i can't remember why i chose this particular block, maybe i was just in a churn dash mood.  i do remember that mood, it was like a lot of my other moods, it just popped up one day out of the blue.  (don't you love the sewing area?--that was my entire shop!  would that i were still so self-contained and orderly):

 

this row was made for "mim", it is the TN waltz block, with fussy cut centers that feature things that represent nashville--guitars and cowboy boots.  again, i can't remember why i made this particular row or block for her--it might be that she asked for something representing where we lived, although it is just as likely that i wanted to learn how to make a TN waltz block and took that opportunity to do so:

i do hope some of you recognize these rows!  i'd like to think there are fewer than six degrees of separation between me and these other beloved quilters.

edited to conceal the names on the photo files--thank you to the reader who alerted me to that oversight!