Sewing with Friends

Sewing days with friends are a great way to kill two birds with one stone (a rather harsh analogy for such a pleasant way to spend an afternoon). When life is so busy I find the only time I see my friends is if I've got something on the calendar with them. A case in point are my two book groups and Scrabble group, in which the main point of the gatherings is catching up with dear friends and knowing that I'll see them at regular intervals, even if we haven't made time to go to lunch or grab a cup of coffee. I love books and playing Scrabble, but the contact and conversation are the important bits.

Regular sewing dates can be equally as satisfying. For awhile my friend Kristin and I were planning monthly sessions and it was not only wonderful to chat with her about life in general and sewing in particular, but we both kept projects on track when we knew we had a day set aside to work on them. Sadly, I got busy with work and they fell by the wayside.

Nearly three months ago Codi and I had a sewing afternoon and it was a fantastic reminder of how fun and productive it can be to set aside sewing time with a buddy. I was working on my first quilt with my Featherweight (it's a gift, so I can't show it yet...just got it back from the quilter) and Codi brought several projects she'd started but not quite finished. I can't remember how many she whipped through, but I thought you'd enjoy seeing some shots of her mini-quilt, a project she started more than a year ago when we had a little quilting group meeting at Home Ec. (It's where I started my triangle corner scrap quilt.) I love the big stitching on the red background (and the way her polka-dot sweatshirt perfectly complements the fabric in the leaves).

Now that I've written this post, I think I need to call up a friend and get another sewing date on that calendar! Here's to sewing with friends!

Modern Quilting and Practical Housewifery

My sewing has been so sporadic of late that I was delighted to finally cut into a pack of Lotta Jansdotter's fat quarters and start working on a new quilt. The pattern I chose is from Sweet Jane (and how I chose that is another story, but I strongly encourage you to check out her designs—fantastic!).

So I'm excitedly cutting out the prints and suddenly I realize that what I have and am intending to use for the background is a solid—solid white. I have a big chunk of solid white that I'd bought for another quilt-in-the-making, so it's not as though I'd never considered using it. But this time I was struck by how it would feel to use a quilt with so much white...When I make a quilt I want it to be used, and all that white would stay clean for about two minutes at my house (or at anyone's house who has children, animals, or eats in bed).

I went out into cyber-quilt-land and checked out the work of a couple of my favorite quilters, Rita at Red Pepper Quilts and Jacquie at Tallgrass Prairie Studio, and sure enough, they're not afraid to use white.

So here's the question. Do you make quilts with a white background?  Are they ever clean? Am I just plain silly for worrying about this?

There's No Place Like Home

I've been away, again. Got home about midnight and finally had a decent night's sleep. Travel is enlightening and I always come back with a greater appreciation for the world I've visited, but also for the world in which I dwell—my friends, my garden, my home, and my dog all look a little sweeter to me. Each time I return I promise to be kinder and make more time to be with them and enjoy the moments I have here.

Sunrise this morning proved the world was abloom—redbuds, tulips, hosta poking its green tips through the earth, lilacs. France is lovely, but truly, there's no place like home. 

End of an Era

I've talked previously about my inability to focus solely one "craft" and the way that I get so excited about new classes where I might try something out. I don't think it's necessarily a negative thing, but the downside of it is that I wind up with materials and supplies that aren't getting used.

For two decades before I called myself a quilter, I was a weaver and spinner. A few years ago I finally sold my loom, but mounds of yarn remained. It took my neighbor Pam, who wanted to check my weaving yarn stash, to help me get brave enough and organized enough to finally sell it and a couple weekends ago we had a killer yarn sale. We sorted wool from cotton from silk and priced things at less than half the going retail rate. Pam told her weaving guild about the sale, I mentioned it at our quilt guild meeting, and Paul posted signs around the neighborhood. The weather was unseasonably lovely for a March morning, and we sat out in the driveway surrounded by tables of yarn sorted by color.

Though we were quite amused by a few of the people who read the "yarn sale" signs as "yard sale," and stopped dead in their tracks when the saw the tables full of wool, mohair, cotton, and silk, the best part was how happy people were with their purchases. Any textile aficionado can relate to the thrill of getting a steal-of-a-deal on new materials, and I loved when people told me what they planned to make, or the way something would combine perfectly with their stash at home.

Despite having sold pounds and pounds of yarn, I was left with quite a bit at the end of the morning. I put an ad on Craigslist that night—$100 takes all. By the time I got home from dinner at 10 pm I had a taker, and she arrived the next day to pick it all up and take it home to her daughters, who were just learning to weave and knit. She sent me an email that evening, letting me know that one daughter was knitting, the other finger-knitting, and they were all dreaming of what they'd do with the rest. It was so hard to admit that it was time to let the yarn go and so it was especially lovely to know that what sat on my studio shelves for years was inspiring others to create.

How about you? Have you ever admitted it was the "end of an era" and divested yourself of supplies? Did you miss them? Or was it a good thing?

To some, sewing is "just" housework (but not to Natalie Chanin)

In a Dec. 14 essay in the New York Times food section, writer Jennifer Steinhauer bemoaned people who buy store-bought goods and pass them off as homemade at bake sales and potlucks. She acknowledged that there are many reasons why someone might do this, including the fact that some people think cooking is boring. And it was that paragraph that struck a chord with me. She says:

"I do not have anything against people who do not bake. The culinary arts, for those with no interest in them, are nothing more than housework. While some of us hammer out life's frustrations with a whisk to batter or sharp knife to shallots, others prefer to take a toothbrush to the sink. Or they ride a bike or something."

That second sentence is the one the got to me, on many levels. First, of course, is that it's easy to replace "the culinary arts" with "the textile arts" and the fact that people who have no interest in sewing think it "is nothing more than housework." The idea that a person can take pleasure and exert creativity while stitching isn't on the radar for these folks, and that gets back to my observation that when you tell someone at a party that you're a quilter, they assume you're a boring old woman and quickly find someone else to talk with.

Of course the other problem I have with all of this is that sewing and cooking and housework are all traditionally "women's work," not valued or worthy of consideration in the greater world of commerce and industry. So silly.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Natalie Chanin. This film about her and her work appeared earlier this week on Etsy's blog and is such a fine example of women who understand the pleasure and power of sewing. And the way Chanin provides people with a satisfying and creative way to make a living is an example of industry and commerce at its best. 

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!

Alebrijes from Oaxaca

Martin Melchor & Melinda Ortega wrap toucan carving

I learned so much on my trip to Oaxaca, and was given so much to think about. Specifically, I was faced with the realities of trying to make a real living when your sole occupation is crafts, and what happens when those crafts become difficult to sell.

Epafanio Fuentes carving with machete

My (new) friend Mike, an anthropologist who has done extensive research (indeed, written a book) about alebrijes took me to meet Saúl Arágon and his family and translated my interviews for me. It's a complex issue and you can read a bit about it in today's Etsy post. Suffice it to say, I came home with many, many alebrijes.

Saúl Aragón talking about some of his family's carvings

More photos of Oaxaca can be found a couple of posts back.

Anna & Alma painting at the Aragón home

Going head-to-head over buttons

Shell buttons

If you've arrived here from my Etsy post on button competitions, you might enjoy seeing a few more photos that I took when I visited button collectors Kareen and Barb. I love people who are obsessive and these two women are definitely all about buttons. The walls of every room in Kareen's home were decorated with framed trays of buttons she'd entered in competitions, as well as trays still "under construction."

Moonglow buttons

Sorting buttons: note pill bottles for storage

Carefully categorized buttons

A tray of sewing-related buttons

Buttons are mounted with plastic-covered copper wire

Framed tray of jet buttons

The great thing about collections is that by tweaking what one collects just a bit, there is always something new to search for. These women had tremendous knowledge about the buttons they loved. Thanks for sharing your buttons and know-how, Barb and Kareen.

Farewell, Jan Berenstain

Jan and Stan Berenstain in 1999. (Gian Luiso - AP)

On Valentine's Day I interviewed Mike Berenstain, son of authors and illustrators Stan and Jan Berenstain, for one of my clients, Moda Fabrics. I'll admit that I was not a huge fan of the Berenstain Bears, but my kids loved them and I had several of their books memorized because the demand to read them again and again was so high.

I was delightfully surprised by my interview with Mike, a soft-spoken man who is passionate about his work. Since his father Stan died in 2005, Mike has co-written and illustrated Berenstain Bears books with his mom and just two weeks ago they were working away. So I was so very sad to learn that Jan passed away Friday, but glad to know she was drawing right up to the end. Mike told me that when people asked her when she'd slow down she'd say "Maybe I should retire and take up painting."

Mike Berenstain, with his mom Jan

My favorite part of the interview was when Mike described Stan and Jan thusly: "My parents weren't conventional thinkers, they were artists who came from poor, working-class backgrounds. Like many people of that time, they were self-invented, people who were interested in art, culture, music, and history." When I asked him about the morals they imparted to readers through the Bears' tales Mike told me "They didn't go to a lot of authorities, but came up with their own way of giving advice in the form of a story. They had their own distinctive Stan-and-Jan way of approaching things."

I love knowing that Stan and Jan Berenstain were rebels of a sort, not following a traditional path but trusting their own instincts and making a living with their art and humor (they did illustrations and cartoons long before the first Berenstain Bears book came along in 1962). What a legacy they've left—to their two sons who grew up in a house where the norm was that everyone drew and wrote stories—and to children who, whether their parents like it or not, often ask to hear those gentle tales read again and again.

(You can read the Moda profile here.)

To Kit or Not to Kit: That is the Question

Quilt kit from Blue Bamboo

Over the last few years I've talked to a lot of quilt shop owners. It started in 2006, when I had the good fortune to write copy for 20 shops in Best of Quilt Sampler. Since then, I've talked with shop owners from Phoenix, North Carolina, Colorado, and Virginia for Quilt Sampler profiles. They're a passionate bunch, these shop owners, and without fail they tell me how lucky they are to do what they do for a living, and how much they enjoy their customers.

During our conversations we talk about what's popular in their shops and the subject of quilt kits always comes up. Most shop owners spend hours preparing kits for grateful customers and say that kits are big sellers. Shop owners attribute their popularity to quilters' fears of choosing fabrics and colors. Others say quilters are busy people and that ready-made kits speed the process along.

From Blue Bamboo

I'll admit I've felt a little "above" quilt kits. A lot of the fun of quilting for me is combining fabrics to create something uniquely mine. I've felt the same dismissiveness when it comes to pre-cuts and making quilts from a single line of fabric. I love to mix the unexpected and I'm a big fan of scrappy looks, too. But there are days when time is short, or when my mind is too frazzled to design but I still want to sew, and that's when I've appreciated precuts. This baby quilt and this lap quilt were both made with pre-cuts and single lines of fabric and their simplicity provided a soothing break—the hours of almost meditative stitching and ironing, the pleasure of watching something grow. While there's nothing like the energy that comes from stitching something of my own design, there are times when life is already providing me with plenty of intensity and I just need to chill. That's when I'm grateful for kits and pre-cuts.

I believe there's a time and place for all kinds of quilting—the "I'm on fire with creativity" days when ideas and color combinations can't be contained, the days and weeks when I'm hot to try new techniques and willing to spend hours on a difficult pattern. But there are plenty of days when I'm just as happy to have an hour to strip piece and simply appreciate the feel of fabric slipping beneath my fingers. There's room in quilting for all kinds of effort, for the masterpieces and the quick-and-dirties. I'm learning that when it comes to quilting, there are no absolutes. I should never say never.

How about you...do you use kits and pre-cuts? Why or why not?