Back to reality...

If Pearl the Squirrel has any readers left, I'll be amazed. And I just have time for a very quick post. After my trip to Lake Tahoe I returned to home and work for three days, then left again, this time for the opposite coast for my niece's high school graduation. I had a great time with my sister and her family and my niece Anna seemed to genuinely like the Birdie Sling I'd made for her. The day after graduation she transferred the items from the bag she usually carries into the Birdie Sling and took it with her to Busch Gardens. High praise, I thought!

Here's a picture of Anna and me at her graduation dinner. We ate crab cakes and she's holding her bag (and a very bright future). Here's to you, Anna!

The Sunday night blahs...

Sunday nights are a challenge for a lot of people. One of my sister's used to call it "the Sunday dreads," as in dreading the return to work on Monday morning. I like my job and the people I work with, but sometimes I still have that moment when I wish the weekend could go on a little longer. A couple of years ago I decided to make Sunday nights a sewing night and that helped—I actually started to look forward to the end of the weekend, because I'd set aside time to stitch.

Although I really have no reason to complain tonight, I'm feeling all the more challenged about returning to work because I've been on vacation. I had the amazing good fortune to spend five days in Lake Tahoe with some quilting friends, new and newer.
Six of us gathered at the most gorgeous home on the shore of Lake Tahoe and learned to paint on fabric from Mary Lou Weideman, who recently took a class from Susan Shie. Mary Lou drew on her art background and gave Susan's painting and writing techniques a "Weideman twist." (That's Mary Lou wielding a paintbrush on the right and Molly on the left, learning from the master.)

I've said before that I'm not an artist and several of us felt intimidated about drawing and painting. But everyone was encouraging and had a great time. I didn't actually get the words on mine yet, but I did enjoy the painting a lot...once it was drawn on the cotton I had that wonderful feeling I used to get when I colored in a coloring book: the pleasure of choosing and combining colors and just zoning out as I filled in the blanks. Lots of good thinking time, along with great conversation and an opportunity to admire everyone's creative spirits (and eat M&M's).

Our hostess, Lynn, was an absolute delight and made us really feel at home. I sometimes felt wrong looking at my work and not at the views, but there was always time to take a break, walk down the beach, or just step outside and check out the mountains and the water.

We also enjoyed some time in town, including at the Red Hut Cafe, where we purchased what became our uniform (left to right: Molly, Cherise, me, Mel, Robyn, and Mary Lou on the dock of Lynn's home).

It was an inspiring week and on top of it I learned how to applique from Mary Lou and Mel got me all excited about making yo yos (that's her at the sewing machine, with a stack of her Liberty of London yo-yos in front of her). Here's what I came up with:

Third time's the charm...

I've made my third Birdie Sling and I'm very happy with this one. I used all Amy Butler's fabrics and I think the scale of the fabrics suits the size of the bag quite nicely. I hope the person for whom it's intended will enjoy it—it's destined to be a gift later this month. (A shout out to Anne K. of Pearvana for the bags-on-trees photo idea!)

I also made this little bag from Terry Atkinson's Tag Along Tote pattern. I've sewn a few quilts using Terry's patterns and always been pleased by how well-thought out they are and the clever ways she puts blocks together. In particular I made a star quilt that she designed so that it was impossible to sew over the star tips—perfect for someone who's not a perfectionist...like me!

I bought the fabric and pattern at River City Quilts, a great shop in Mankato, Minnesota. It's a little hard to find, tucked away in a strip mall, but the shop is a delight, as are the women who work there. I've stopped in when I visit a relative who lives in town and always been pleased by the number of patterns, the range of fabrics, and the different takes they have on kits. I was very tempted by a quilt that featured purple, orange, and yellow batiks. Sounds fairly wild, and it was, in the best possible way.

Also, congratulations to Anne R. She'll be receiving a copy of Diana Rupp's book. I admit to being a little disappointed in the number of comments I received, considering that the give-away prize was really quite exceptional. But thanks to those who entered. Wish I could send you each a copy!

Line dancing

Okay, so call me sick, but I love hanging out my clothes to dry. When I found out we were leaving California and moving to the Midwest, I told my husband there were three requirements: a screened porch, air conditioning, and a clothesline. I hung clothes out on Memorial Day and there must be something wrong with me, I took so much pleasure from it. Nothing like textiles waving in the wind. This photo is actually of the quilts I sewed in 2004, my first year of quilting. I thought it was more pleasant to share than a shot of underwear fluttering in the breeze.

And don't forget! There's still time to enter the give-away and win a copy of Diana Rupp's truly wonderful book, Sew Everything Workshop. It's got tips, how-tos, and ten patterns included. Just go to the last post and tell me why you love fabric. (And if you have a chance, hang a textile on the line and think of me.)

Yellow in the garden and a yellow give-away!

I'm afraid of late it's been the garden vs. Pearl the Squirrel, and the garden's winning. If you live, as I do, where winter is relentless, the opportunity to be outside is too tantalizing. (These are very tiny, late-blooming jonquils—each flower is literally the size of a dime.) The garden wins because it's finally possible to put things in the ground and anticipate lush hosta foliage, deep pink and purple petunias, and fresh sprigs of basil and mint. And being outside just feels so good.

That is, until the last couple of days, when gnats started their dive-bombing mission. I've swallowed more than one, and when I let Pearl (the dog, not the blog) outside I've taken to carrying a hat. I spend the entire time swatting gnats off my ears, neck, and face.


Work projects have also made time for blogging scarce. But you can help me with one of them. I've been thinking a lot about my relationship to fabric and why I've chosen to express myself through textiles. What is it that draws you to fabric or yarn, that makes you long to caress it, use it, and yes, buy more of it? Is there some memory of learning to sew or knit as a child, perhaps, or the colors or textures of fabric, or the way it allows you to produce something unique? Leave me a comment that tells me about your passion for fabric, what it means to you, and why. (It needn't be long, or even a complete sentence!)

On May 31 I'll choose a winner. And that lucky winner will get something written by someone else who is totally smitten with fabric: the talented Diana Rupp (the subject of my profile for Stitch). She's the proprietor of Make Workshop in NY and the author of Sew Everything Workshop, a fabulous, sprial-bound volume with how-to tips on everything from choosing the right fabric to what to look for in a sewing machine. Although the book bills itself as a beginner's guide, there are wonderful projects included for those with a range of skills. Leave me a comment and this fabulous book just might be yours!

Quilt Capades

Our longtime friend, Dianne, shared with me a quilt she had made for her daughter Leah's high school graduation. Leah was an ice skater all through her school years and each year her ice skating group had an elaborate performance. Hundreds (well, more than 100) kids were involved in each annual production and there were lots of numbers, from the adorable little, little tykes group "dances" to the high school seniors, who often performed a dramatic, romantic duet. These productions always involved amazing costumes, created from all sorts of glittery, stretchy, super-bling fabrics and trim. Dianne somehow wound up in charge of costumes and worked with a talented seamstress to get the costumes designed and made.

Leah graduated from high school two years ago and Dianne had a quilt made for her using pieces of fabric and embellishments from her many costumes. The background fabric and backing is silk, so the quilt feels amazing (well, at least the parts that aren't covered with glitter or sequins). Sadly, I don't know the name of the woman who made it, but I though you might enjoy seeing this creation.

Dianne can touch any fabric on the quilt and remember the costume Leah wore. Suffice it to say, Leah is NOT keeping this in her college dorm room: Dianne's got it home for a few more years.

Not to scale

One of my favorite parts of quilting and sewing is combining fabrics. I like to think that I have a pretty decent color sense and enjoy the challenge and fun of pulling together a variety of prints and colors to create something that is unique (a word one of my journalism professors once told me never to use because he claimed NOTHING was truly unique. I beg to differ).

So when I decided on the fabulous Tula Pink Neptune fabrics for my second Birdie Sling, I was quite happy with my decision. While grouping fabrics from a single line of fabrics isn't perhaps as challenging as pulling from an entire quilt shop or a stash, there are still some choices that affect the overall success of a finished piece. And I think I learned something with this project that hadn't really been on my design radar: it's important to consider the scale of a particular print, along with the pattern and color.

While I absolutely love these fabrics, I think a larger scale print on the body of the bag might feel more contemporary than the print I chose. The big morning glories on my first bag read a bit more modern. Because it's a big bag, a print with a scale to match might have better enhanced it.

This is not to say it was a failure. My friend, Siouxsie (as she spelled her name when we were 16 and CITs at Camp Northland for Girls) immediately transferred the contents of her purse to the Birdie Sling and carried it around Chicago during our two days together. And she's a little gal, so a small print doesn't overwhelm her like a larger one might (here she is modeling it at Buckingham Fountain). But the next one I make (and I've got one planned) will feature a big 'ol floral print.

As an aside, camp friends are as dear as quilt friends. Siouxise, our friend Annie, and I have known one another since we were 13 and we've reconnected in the past five years. (The two of them even gave a shower in NYC for my daughter before her wedding two years ago.) We were pleased to compare notes and realize that part of the reason we can't remember things anymore is because entire sections of our brains are taken up with things like remembering every single word to every single camp song. Who could forget classics like Camp Northland Horse, Bruce the Spruce, and Canoey-ooey? Apparently not us, no matter how hard we try.

Diana Rupp makes it

We interrupt this blog for some shameless self-promotion...The new Stitch magazine is out and in it is my profile of Diana Rupp of Make Workshop. Talking with her was a great reminder of the ways many of us have come to sewing: I mentioned in an earlier post my interview with her in which she talked about learning how to sew by following the rules and the epiphany that comes when you figure out you can do something in a different way. I've thought about that conversation repeatedly as I've sewn since then and done my best to embrace (or at least ignore) mistakes.

I feel so terrific about having my work in Stitch. The cover alone is enough to make me happy. The creator of the pillow on that fabulous teal chair is Malka Dubrawsky, who has a colorful and fun-to-read blog, A Stitch in Dye. I love her work—talk about not worrying about following the rules. The woman knows how to put colors together in the most unexpected ways and the results are pure eye-candy. And she's got a great green wall somewhere in her house that's the perfect backdrop for photographing her luscious quilts.

There's a lot more than the cover to make me happy with this issue of Stitch: in particular, there's a bag and an apron pattern I love and articles on Liberty of London and hand-printed fabrics. Check it out (but if your local store is anything like Home Ec, you may have to wait for the next shipment: they've already sold out once)!

Lessons on scrappy quilting from Marc Chagall

Okay, so Chagall may not have been a quilter. But on a recent trip to Chicago I realized that the way he combined colored tiles to create images is completely applicable to the way a quilter might use scraps of fabric to do the same. While waiting to serve as the studio audience for NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we stopped to admire Chagall's rectangular mural, The Four Seasons.

If you're a trained artist, you might just want to skip this post, because it's probably pretty obvious to you. But I (NOT a trained artist, thank you very much) sometimes forget what subtlety can be obtained by sneaking up on a color. By that I mean, rather than painting something RED, combining multiple colors in the red family (pinks, oranges, tomato reds, rust reds, etc.) creates a much richer and more believable color and shape.
The principle holds true even when you're not creating an image, but say, a scrappy star or maple leaf: using multiple shades of the red family makes that block more interesting than using a single fabric. And it works for the background, as well as for the images (or colored portions of the block)—check out the depth and motion created by the myriad background tiles. Personally, I think Chagall would have been an exceptional quiltmaker .

Buns in the oven

Time to unveil a few of my "top secret" sewing projects. First is a baby quilt that my co-worker Sondra and I made for another colleague, Madelaine. A couple of years ago Sondra and I made a wedding quilt together for another work friend. That time we worked separately: she cut, I pieced, she quilted, I bound. This time around we thought it would be fun to work together. Sondra engaged in espionage and ascertained that Madelaine, who doesn't know the sex of the baby, was opting for gender-neutral green and brown in her nursery. (I admit to being terribly old fashioned, but I think not knowing is the way to go—the moment when the doctor or midwife announces whether you have a boy or girl is one of the truly magical surprises in life—and it leaves room for you to ask brilliant questions like the one I asked of the doctor—"Are you sure?"—when the baby is not the sex you imagined. The doctor said he was sure.)
Sondra not only found out the nursery colors, but knew that Madelaine really likes Amy Butler fabrics.We opted for a combination of Amy Butler and Joel Dewberry fabrics and that collaboration was an interesting one.
As we selected our fabrics we each had one we loved that the other person was uncomfortable with. So we each had to compromise and stretch our visual horizons a bit. She chose the dark green, which I see now was entirely necessary for contrast. I chose an Amy Butler fabric (middle row, outer two blocks) that incorporates the green and taupe and a bit of orangey-caramel color that I think helps tie the fabrics together. We both felt pretty happy in the end with the interplay of color and pattern. The quilt pattern is Cubic Rhythm from the Spring 2009 Quilts and More. We liked its graphic quality and thought it would go together quickly.
While we admit to doing a bit of seam ripping, by and large it was a pretty quick quilt. I cut it out in the a.m. and we finished putting it together by late afternoon. Pearl helped, of course. I did the machine quilting the following weekend and Sondra bound it and used her graphic design skills to create a perfect label.


We presented it to Madelaine last week, just in time for her scheduled c-section next Wednesday (that darned baby is breach and just won't turn). About a week after we'd had our sewing session, Sondra told me she's also got a bun in the oven and is due in October! So sneaky, that girl. While we were sewing we'd talked all about pregnancy and she never let on. She and Madelaine are going to be fabulous mothers and I'm so excited there will be babies in the office on occasion!