Feed Sacks for the Holidays

Christmas and Chanukah are less than a week away, and like everyone else, I'm in the throes of preparation for family and guests to arrive. Menu-planning is at the top of the list, along with holiday decorating, because to be honest, I haven't done much more than plop our Christmas tree in its holder in the living room—no lights, no ornaments, not yet.

But it'll all come together, it always does. And however it turns out is fine, because both my daughters will be back in the nest soon (along with Maggie's fiancé EJ and dog Lily) and that is what really matters. Such a treat!

Before the holidays take over, I wanted to share the video Janine made for the feed sack book—it provides a little peek into the book's contents for a quick browse.
Feed Sacks: The Colourful History of a Frugal Fabric from uppercasemag on Vimeo.

The book has also gotten two lovely reviews—one by Rita of Red Pepper Quilts (how does she do all the incredible sewing she does and find time to blog, too?) and another lovely one by Patricia of Okan Arts (Patricia has promised to unveil the wonders of yukata and share her expertise with me). Thank you!

A workshop with Crazy Mom Quilts' Amanda Jean

Amanda Jean's slabs and strings

Our guild lined up Amanda Jean Nyberg, co-author of Sunday Morning Quilts, for a workshop and I signed up immediately. I had the pleasure of interviewing her and Cheryl Arkison for an Etsy story and really enjoyed talking with them and their entire philosophy of saving scraps. I don't know about you, but I can't throw scraps away. Actually, I'll bet that you can't either. I go through phases, where I save even the little triangles I've cut from joining binding strips. I admit that eventually I've tossed them, but now that I've had a class with Amanda Jean, I wish I hadn't!

My scraps

Scraps can be overwhelming, and the goal behind Sunday Morning Quilts is to help them be less so, to make them actually useful. Our class started with a discussion of sorting scraps (Amanda Jean and her friend Pam even brought a set of scrappy sorting boxes) and sorting our own took some time. But it did make them more useable. I was trimming some blocks I'd made from my scraps and Amanda Jean came by and there was a tiny little square—maybe 1.5 by 1.5 inches—that I'd cut off the end and she confessed that she saves even those. Her frugality is matched by her creativity, and she puts these scraps to really great uses.

Amanda Jean's high-and-low volume quilt, Shady

One thing I enjoyed seeing was that even though her aesthetic is scrappy, she has a "look," a clear, colorful palette that shows up time and again in her quilts. I felt quite inspired and started with a log-cabinish block of multicolored scraps.

My slab

I decided, however, to limit my palette and went for blue, green, and yellow with a bit of grey and was quite enjoying that. I'm not sure yet what I'll do with the bit I made, but I do think I'll keep at it, as I have a ton of scraps in these colors.

Amanda Jean laying out gum drops

If you ever get the chance to take a workshop with Amanda Jean, don't hesitate. She's funny, friendly, and spends a lot of time walking around and talking through issues with quilters. A day well spent!

Scrap baskets, rug knitted from selvedges and strings, and 2.5 inch square quilt

My friend Kristin's slabs. We bought that dark blue fabric together six or seven years ago and both used scraps of it in our slabs.

Heather Ross, Threadbias, Stitch magazine, and Voting

Sometimes the world of quilting and sewing seems very big, and other times it seems like a small town, where everyone is somehow connected to everyone else.

Those close connections happened for me with some recent stories I did for Stitch magazine. In the Spring edition of Stitch I wrote a short piece about Threadbias, a website started by a brother, sister, and sister-in-law team seeking to create an interactive site for quilters. I've dipped into the site occasionally and am always impressed by what I see—talented quilters and designers and lots of good photos and encouraging comments.

For the summer issue of Stitch I had the great good fortune of profiling Heather Ross. I've long loved her fabrics and she was a delightful person to talk with. Our interview was right around the time of Hurricane Sandy when she and her family evacuated their Manhattan apartment, but she somehow maintained a calm and cheerful demeanor. I loved learning how she's combined her love of nature and the environment (she was an environmental educator in California) with her illustrations and love of stitching.

So suffice it to say I was delighted today to get an email from Threadbias noting that their quilt design contest using Heather Ross's new Briar Patch fabrics was open for voting. Contestants created quilt patterns using Threadbias's online Quilt Design Tool. If you haven't seen them, it's worth taking a look at the variety that emerged from a single line of fabric—some modern, some traditional, some dense and scrappy, some light and airy. I love seeing the way a single pattern changes depending on the fabrics used, and this is a riff on that theme...same fabrics, different patterns. Check it out!

Sweat Shop Sewing

Tiny paper hats? Nope, HST trimmings

A few months ago I agreed to participate in a a half-square triangle (HST) swap. I'm always envious of the online swaps and Instagram challenges I see (I'm still contemplating a scrappy Trip Around the World quilt, although the speedy quilters of Instagram seem to have that one wrapped up already). So I naively thought this might be a good way to get into a little collaborative quilting.

Little did I know when I said yes that the required number of HSTs was 1400! We're using Laundry Basket Quilt's 2" HST paper, which helps because you can make 28 at a time. And I'm enjoying mixing up a lot of fabrics from my stash--a dark and a light for each. But it's amazing how many I still have to do. I'm past the halfway mark, but still face more nights in my sweat shop...er, sewing room...before I finish.

Next I'll be stressing over what I'll do with all those HSTs. That part has been fun to think about, though. The variety of possibilities is endless. When I can't face making any more HSTs, I fool around with layouts to keep myself motivated. With 1400 HSTs, I might just make two smaller quilts.

Any suggestions for great HST layouts?

Featherweight Follow-up

Colleen & Roger Hicks Featherweight table

My recent Etsy post on Featherweights was such a treat for me. First, it enabled me to learn more about these tiny, but mighty machines. Then—always one of my favorite parts of my work—it gave me the opportunity to get to talk to others about them. Roger and Colleen Hicks welcomed me into their home and showed me Colleen's collection of nine Featherweights. I especially loved hearing about their search for new ones and about the time they found one of the rare Featherweight tables in a junk shop and bought it for a fantastic price.

I also really loved talking with The Bobbin Doctor, Steve Pauling. I found his name through a comment on a Featherweight post on someone else's blog (ah, I love the sleuthing aspects of journalism!) and as I was on deadline, decided to try calling him. He had just come in from shoveling 14 inches of snow and was incredibly gracious and kind and we had a great conversation in which I learned he's also a tailor extraordinaire. I'm hoping to follow up with him, so look for more about Steve in the future. (His partner has a fantastic, sewing-related Etsy shop, too.) Steve's comments about the durability of well-made, older sewing machines were so interesting—stitchers' love of these machines is so great that Steve's turned fixing vintage machines into a full time second career.

Colleen's Featherweights on display

Finally, I absolutely adored all the comments from Etsy readers. As someone who often feels that her job is mainly sending stuff out into the void, never really knowing if people read what she writes or if it means anything to them, getting close to 200 comments is like the nectar of the gods. Seriously. And the comments were so thoughtful and there were so many great stories...I still can't get over the skill level of people who wrote that they made wedding dresses on their Featherweights, for example. And I loved all the memories people shared of watching their mothers and grandmothers stitch away on these machines. My favorite was from a woman who said that the first letters she learned as a young child were S-I-N-G-E-R because she'd spent so much time siting at her mother's side while she sewed. There's brand loyalty you just can't buy!

So inspired was I by the post and Roger Hicks' comments about how little there was that could go wrong with a Featherweight, that I decided to try and fix mine, which sadly went on the fritz during my October Lake Tahoe retreat. There was some tension issue I couldn't resolve. So Paul and I spent a couple hours on Saturday checking the manual and Featherweight 221: The Perfect Portable and Its Stitches Across History by Nancy Johnson-Srbebro. We oiled every nook and cranny and tried all kinds of fixes, but alas, despite feeling so empowered by my own article, I ended up taking it in to a professional on Sunday. Sigh. But I really do know so much more about how a Featherweight works than I did. So there's that.

Monica Lee's Smart Creative Women

Just a quick post to let you know about a web TV show worth watching. It's Monica Lee's Smart Creative Women. I met Monica at Quilt Market a year ago, after I'd attended her Schoolhouse session on social media marketing. It was one of the most useful sessions I'd been to and when I saw her on the Market floor I stopped to let her know.

Turns out Monica is delightful to chat with and you can see that when you watch her show—she's funny, loves to laugh, and is truly herself. I first watched the show when UPPERCASE's Janine VanGool was a guest and have since found myself regularly tuning back in. Most recently I turned on my computer, got out my knitting, and watched her two-part interview with Amy Butler. There was a lot of honesty and interesting stuff going on between Monica and Amy in those sessions. Monica's enthusiasm seems to bring out the humanity of her interviewees, even those I think of as industry icons (she gets amazing guests—I especially loved the Jenny Doh session). So check out Smart Creative Women! (I'm not getting anything for saying this—Monica doesn't know I've posted it. I just think it's a worthwhile, inspiring, and refreshing show and you might think so too.)

Do You Mock Quilters? Then You're Quiltist

A traditional Amish quilt from Kalona, Iowa

I loved what readers had to say about my recent Etsy post on innovation and craft. Is it enough to work within a time-honored tradition, or is it important, even critical, to innovate? People argued both pro and con, and there were a number of insightful comments. There was one, however, that gave me pause.

The post referenced the anger among the art quilting community over comments by juror David McFadden who described the pieces in a current exhibition as looking like they'd been created in a time warp—that they could have been created 30 years ago. In an off-handed manner, obviously meant to be a joke, one commenter said "How irate could quilters get?!?" There it was, that attitude I've talked about in this post and the lede in this one. The idea that quilters are little old ladies who rock in their chairs and wouldn't hurt a fly and that the worst they could do would be to shake their canes at some young whippersnapper.

A person with those ideas is QUILTIST. This term is akin to racist, sexist, ageist, etc. I define it as someone who makes assumptions about a person based on the media with which they choose to express themselves. Of course it's rooted in sexism and ageism (denigrating quilting as "women's work," seeing older women as ineffectual and incapable of righteous indignation). And of course there are many, many divisive issues like this in the arts world: art vs. craft; traditional vs. contemporary; drama vs. comedy; community theater vs. Broadway;  novelists vs. journalists, etc., etc., etc. But I'm really tired of quilting being the broom and dustpan of the craft world.

So if you encounter folks like these, call them out! "When you make comments like that, when you gaze off into the distance looking bored when I tell you I'm a quilter, you're QUILTIST! And that's a decidedly unappealing characteristic."

Quilts, Burritos, and Naked Men

Just a quick note to share with you something that has left me chuckling. No, I would say it's more like guffawing. And I figured there was no better way for you to start the day than with a similar emotion.

So I share with you Megan Dougherty's Quilter's Shirtless Man and Spicy Burrito calendar. The concept came to her when she decided to combine all the things she loved and her blog readers pitched in to help, with photos of...shirtless men (sometimes pants-less, too) posing with quilts and spicy burritos. It could be the perfect gift for someone you know. Especially if that person loves quilts, spicy burritos, and men. The photos are priceless. There are so many wonderfully goofy people in the world and this proves it. I love it.

Proceeds from the calendar go to Megan's brother, who is very ill, and his family. Megan is a wonderfully hilarious writer, but she also articulately expresses the poignancy of life. I'd highly recommend a reading of her blog The Bitchy Stitcher. (She puts a warning about foul language in the blog header—if that offends you, you may want to pass. But if not, click through to that blog immediately.)

In Praise of Iowa and Iowans, Old and New

I am not a native Iowan. I lived briefly in Minnesota, spent some time in Florida, and then moved to California when I was two. Although I left the Golden State when I married, my husband and I spent a few years in Northern California, where we bought a house and sent our kids to school, and my folks still live in Southern California.

Vanessa, Jenny, and Greta at Home Ec (Codi helping a customer, at left)

Though I've now lived in Iowa for more than two decades, the environment of my growing-up years is firmly embedded under my skin and in my soul. In my last post I mentioned the influence of Minnesota summers, but ocean colors, the scent of rosemary and eucalyptus, and the golden light of California all show up in my quilts and the colors and artwork in my home and wardrobe. I've never learned to like winter, and I still think of myself as essentially a Californian.

Vanessa's fabrics, in stores in October—these colors are a hint that she's also a Californian 

That said, I find myself fiercely defending Iowa in general and Iowa City in particular. There is an ease to living here that makes everyday life less draining—little traffic, the ability to do errands on foot or bike, the friendliness of everyday interactions that make daily life simple. There's also much that's stimulating—my neighbors and friends are writers, artists, yoga instructors, professors, musicians, doctors, editors, engineers—and walking Pearl sometimes takes three times as long as it should because of the engaging conversations that take place in a simple stroll around the block. The landscape takes a little more work to appreciate—no dramatic seascapes or mountain ranges that demand immediate and obvious awe—and that's created in me an attention to detail and calm that enriches my life.

Jenny Instagramming, Greta in motion

So when someone moves to Iowa and struggles, as I most certainly did when I arrived, I feel compelled to serve as an ambassador. I know what it feels like to be a "foreigner"—where the architecture, flora, and even the bypassers smiling and saying "hi" feel unfamiliar and unsettling. I know what it's like to not see the beauty of Iowa.

One of Jenny's Wiksten patterns

So it was last week when I finally managed to get together a group of new Iowans. Vanessa, Jenny, Greta, and Codi are all from elsewhere—Greta and Codi have been around for awhile, but Vanessa and Jenny have just spend their first year here. We gathered for coffee, thrifting, lunch, and conversation, bonded by a love of sewing, design, fabric, and making things.

Greta's upcoming Marcus fabrics

We visited Codi, took photos, and fondled textiles at Home Ec, admired Greta's first line for Marcus, anticipated Vanessa's about-to-hit-the shelves Moda fabrics, and discussed Jenny's current patterns and those that are in the works. We went to some great thrift shops where Vanessa and I scored a few items, and had a lunch over which we discussed marriage, publishing, children, interns, and working alone. All the while, I found myself extolling the glories of Iowa. And I was reminded that one of them is the addition of talented women like these, who like me weren't very sure when they arrived if they'd like it, but find themselves warming to its charms.

Moda designers and a giveaway

On the right-hand side of this page you can see a number of the places I'm privileged to write for. But one that's missing (and I'd better do something about that) is Moda Fabrics. For the past year-and-a-half I've worked with Lissa Alexander, Moda's Director of Marketing and one of the most talented people around. She's the big-picture thinker for Moda's advertising campaigns, Market booths, etc., etc., and a quilter extraordinaire, to boot. I've worked with Lissa to write designer profiles and copy for their Market catalogs, and I continue to write for Moda's blog The Cutting Table.

I've had the opportunity to chat with some very visual, interesting, and fun designers while doing this work. One of them is Lucie Summers, whose new line for Moda is Summersville. Before I knew she'd be designing for Moda and met her at Market, I'd admired Etsy shop, where she sells screen-printed fabrics of her own design and lovely bone china mugs (which I'd been not-so-secretly coveting). A high point of October Market (that's her picture at the top of the blog post) then, was meeting Lucie and getting my hands on one of those lovelies. I drank my tea from that mug yesterday as I wrote this piece about her, hoping to channel some Lucie spirit into the profile. Such a funny, friendly gal!

The other person I wanted to mention is Jenn Ski. Jenn lives on the East Coast and and is a fanatic about mid-century design. She is also a fanatic thrift-shopper (as is Lucie...hmm...is there some connection between rummage and talent?) Jenn is featuring a giveaway on her blog of fabrics from her Moda line, Ten Little Things. She's accepting entries until Monday, March 19, so get on it!

And remember to check out The Cutting Table periodically. In addition to profiles, there's lots of good information about fabrics, notions, finding time to sew, and even software and app recommendations. Well worth a visit!

Mad Photo Skillz

My husband's 7th grade picture, on our workbench

Welcome to those of you who are visiting after reading my guest blogging post on the Quilt Gallery blog. Michelle was a real pleasure to work with and as a former teacher of writing, I really enjoyed the opportunity to share a few tips I've learned along the way. I'm planning to offer more suggestions about writing for blogs and for publication and possibly to be taking on a few online "students" in the future, so if you're interested check back, or even better drop me a line and let me know of your interest.

At any rate, along with writing I've greatly enjoyed the opportunities my work presents to improve my photography. I took photo classes in high school and spent many pleasant hours breathing in horrid chemicals under a red light—okay, so that wasn't a hightlight, but I so loved darkroom work—the magic of watching the image slowly appear in the trays of developer. I shot photos for my high school yearbook and continued through college to take and develop them. But as kids and life intervened, I switched to a point and shoot camera.

So it was with trepidation that I started shooting "serious" photos again, first for my blog, but then for Etsy stories and my Quilt County column. And now I love it. I still have much to learn, though, and one of my challenges is taking crisp, clean shots of individual items. Etsy has fantastic resources for taking great photos and there are lots of tutorials on line about photography, too. I used this one and this one when I decided to make a light box, and below are a few shots of the process.

Start with a box. This one was pretty large, and thus harder to store the finished product.

One one side, measure 2 inches in from each of the four edges of the box, marking the distance at intervals along each side.

Using a straight edge (a quilter's ruler would work well for this), connect the dots to draw a line. Then use a box cutter to slice the cardboard away, leaving a "frame." Do this to three of the boxes sides, leaving the back and bottom of the box uncut.

Below is what it will look like, with "frames" cut into three sides:

Next, cover the three "frames" with something white that is transparent enough to let in light. Some tutorials suggest tissue paper, but I thought this would be too easy to accidentally punch through. Most quilters have some muslin in their stash and so that's what I used, along with duct tape to hold it tightly in place.

When you've covered all three "frames" it will look like this on the outside and inside:

Now, add a sheet of white paper to the back and bottom. I got some poster board. Mine wasn't quite wide enough, but still works well for shooting small items. Then, add lights. I placed mine directly under the lamp that lights our kitchen table. It's near a window and I hoped the natural light might be enough, but in retrospect I would add lights to either side. Again, if you're a quilter and have an Ott light or other portable light, these would be ideal to place on the sides.

And finally, try some sample photos. While I love the white background, I think they would be made much crisper by adding side lighting (portable shop lights would work well, too).

There you have it! I'm more than a little embarrassed that I didn't take the time to crop and enhance these photos. And I think that the scarf in the bottom photo would show off much more effectively on a live model (like this one). But you get the idea. Take the time to get creative with it—try lights on just one side, change the color of your background, etc. It will go a long way toward improving your photos!


Do you have any great tricks for shooting textile photos for your blog? What do you think of this light box? I'd love to hear from you!

Flippin' Knitting

Last spring, a woman at a meeting sat next to me with the loveliest scarf. It was short and flippy on the ends and had the most charming little bobbles. I complimented her on it and lo and behold, the very next week (okay, so the meeting was Weight Watchers), she brought a copy of the pattern for me. A total stranger did this. I love people who love textiles.

The pattern is by Kat Coyle (just found her blog and it is well worth a visit—a super-talented designer with a bold and bright color sense—her lace knits are lovely) and was originally in Interweave Knits Holiday Gifts 2007. You can find it on Ravelry here.

 I made the red one in the spring for myself and was delighted to learn how to wrap and knit stitches and make bobbles...two new skills to accompany my learning to knit cables earlier this year. I settled on Blue Sky Sport Weight 100% Baby Alpaca from Home Ec—very cozy against my neck and it knitted fairly quickly. I decided to knit one in green for my Minnesota sister for her early June birthday. I'm feeling a little sheepish that I just finished it and sent it off, but she probably wouldn't have gotten much use out of it in July and August, anyway. (The colors really don't look nearly as rich in the photo as they are in person.)

And did I keep going to Weight Watchers? Well, yes, for awhile. But I got derailed by Italy, visitors, vacation at the lake, etc. Will. return. soon.

And now for something completely different...

Iowa is the land of cicadas. There are some nights in mid-summer when their drone nearly drowns out conversation. Their carcasses litter sidewalks and lawns and remind me of the feather-weight husks of tomatillos. These signs signal the warm nights of July and August, but they don't exactly make cicadas endearing. Still, when I saw this short about a film being made about cicadas, I was intrigued.

Check out this short feature about Cicada Princess from Kickstarter. (If you're not familiar with Kickstarter, be prepared to spend some time wandering through the amazing projects. It's where the idea came from for the Etsy post about artist Julia Sherman's project with the nun doll museum.

Stitching Knits

Sewing clothing has always been a frustrating experience for me, largely because of fit. I'm your basic straight-up-and-down gal without much of a waist. It's that way whether I'm sleek or slightly plump. But sewing patterns never seemed to work for that body type...if the things fit my hips then they were too tight in my waist and if they fit my waist they'd balloon around my hips. (Except for shifts...anyone remember shifts? They were perfect for my body type.) My mom had some complicated methods for altering patterns that my math-phobic mind never let me grasp. So I quit sewing for many years, until my friend Anne taught me to quilt. It was perfect for me. I got to play with color and pattern and never had to worry about darts, set-in sleeves, or zippers.

But as time has gone by I've been intrigued by lots of kinds of sewing. And this weekend, I was brave enough to try sewing clothing again. I took a Sewing with Knits class at Home Ec Workshop with Alissa. There were five of us and it was fantastic...in four hours we all cut out and finished a long-sleeved t-shirt (and many people finished in less time). It was so satisfying, and I wore my shirt all the next day. Sorry not to have pictures, but I used a knit from Moda—a very springy turquoise and white dot from the City Weekend line by Oliver and S. It is so soft and cozy the color makes me think winter may eventually come to an end, something I've been doubting of late. And best of all, Alissa altered the pattern (a Burda pattern, I believe) for each of us in the class, so our shirts actually fit.

All this was exciting enough, but the new Stitch magazine has a fantastic article about sewing with knits, as well as some truly adorable patterns. I'm itching to try the Spiral Skirt. Check it out here. (The instructions are in the magazine.) And if this pattern isn't for you, seriously check out the issue, anyway. It's a real keeper, with explanations of great sewing techniques and tons of fantastic projects and patterns. I'm also seriously thinking about using my stash of Woolylady fabrics to do the cover pillow. And there's a Malka Dubrovsky freebie pattern here. How I love her work!

In addition, there are a couple of short articles by yours truly in the issue. One about Collecion Luna, a wonderful endeavor that seeks to preserve Guatemalan  textile traditions while provide a living for families, and another about the New Dress a Day blog, where Marissa creates a new frock each day from an old one (and it can't cost more than one dollar).

Yes, my name is mispelled in the bylines for these pieces...they had a new proofreader and as a former editor I know that these things happen. But they did get it right on the back page, where staffers and contributors were asked about their 2011 sewing resolutions. I said that one of my goals was to take more classes in the new year, and I'm pleased to say I did just that at Home Ec on Saturday.

Share the love

Just found out about this project Etsy is undertaking (and not for the first year, either). They're asking folks to create Valentines that they'll then distribute with meals provided by Citymeals on Wheels.

For suggestions about getting together with friends to create Valentines, guidelines for the cards, mailing information and more, click here. The only catch is that the cards need to be to Etsy by February 9. So gather some friends and get a heart on (sorry, that was very, very bad).

For inspiration, visit Blah to Tada, who's already repurposed some bits and bobs to create a wonderfully diverse assortment of cheery cards.

And this would be a great project to take to your local Meals on Wheels program for Valentine's Day 2012! (Two years ago the Old Capitol Quilter's Guild stitched holiday placemats that were delivered with Meals on Wheels Christmas dinners—there are lots of potential variations on this theme.)

Quilting for Charity

My quilt guild has a devoted group of charity quilters. They make quilts for cancer patients, for young, single moms, for the domestic violence project, and for stillborn babies. At each meeting they share the quilts that people contribute and I kid you not, there are often gasps from the onlookers when they see the quilts that people make to give to people they'll likely never know. Their generosity is astounding.

So it is with the two women in my Etsy post that went up today: Victoria Findlay Wolfe and Anna Maria Horner. Both have committed themselves to making quilts for people in need, and both have taken on projects on a grand scale. With the help of their blogs they're collecting quilts (Victoria) and blocks (Anna Maria) and producing finished quilts that will warm the lives of people they've never met.

I learned of Victoria's project when I stumbled upon her blog and Anna Maria told me about her quilt project when we chatted at Spring Quilt Market. It was a treat to be able to combine the two projects and a treat that Etsy was interested in sharing their projects with their wide readership. I'm always so happy when I can do some good with my writing (which is not to say I knowingly do bad...really). But so much of the writing I do isn't directly quantifiable...that is, I can never be sure it's helping make the world a better place. Being able to share the work of Victoria (one of her quilts is above) and Anna Maria (who made the video up top, celebrating the blocks she's received thus far), who definitely ARE doing just that, makes me feel great!

Someone on Victoria's blog commented that her project reminded them of the Mother Teresa quote: "We can do no great things, only small things with great love." While I might not classify these block and quilt gatherings as small things, I know from talking to both women that they are certainly being done with great love, providing tangible evidence to people in need that  they are not alone or forgotten.