Vacation Round-Up

I mentioned in my previous post that I recently returned from vacation. It was an incredibly relaxing couple of weeks (yes, I said COUPLE). I'm not sure when we last took two actual weeks for R&R, but we did this time.

Friends helped print the signs

The bride's dress, elegantly simple, suited her perfectly

The first part of the vacation was spent at a wedding in Wisconsin. It was a lovely event during which the bride and groom's siblings played piano and bass and read poems. Every audience member got a kazoo when walking in, and we all joined in on All You Need is Love as the couple and their families left the auditorium.

Cupcakes rested on hand-dyed, hand-cut papers

 The reception was special in many ways, but I thought you'd especially appreciate that the bride made gazillions of lovely decorations...hand-dyed paper garlands on the walls, "doilies" under the cupcakes, letter press printed programs, place cards, table numbers, etc. She also created some enormous honeycomb structures that held lights for the ceremony, as well smaller ones that adorned the reception tables. It was a joyful event with lots of fun dancing.

Table decor, made by the bride

Loved the stitching on this guest's jacket

I'll share a few photos of the next part of the vacation soon. It included sewing and knitting, along with floating in inner tubes and drinking beer. Now there's no need to wonder why I was so relaxed and suffering from my return to real life. It doesn't get any more restful than that.

You May Already Be A Weiner!

We have a winner (weiner), chosen by my random number generator, my husband. The winner is Vicky F. Send your snail mail to me, Vicky, and get ready to enjoy a fantastic volume!

Thanks to all who entered. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to write some really wonderful tales about your friends in fabric—touching, funny, sweet, and sometimes bittersweet. If you haven't read them, I encourage people to take the time to do so. They're proof of the bond created by textiles.

Today's photo is one from my vacation at the lake. We got back a week ago today and I still haven't accepted that it's time to get back to reality. The picture gives you an idea of why re-entry is so tough...it's a lovely, soothing, and Internet-free place. Next time I'll post some photos of the witch blocks I stitched on a rainy afternoon in the cabin.

Thanks again for writing, and I hope you continue reading Pearl the Squirrel. And continue sewing with your friends in fabric.

Friends in Fabric, Redux...and a Give-Away!

I've written previously about the friends I've made through textiles, and it's time to mention two of them again. My buddies Mary Lou Weidman and Mel McFarland are not only two of the most down-to-earth, most fun, and most talented women I know, but they've come together to create a new book Out of the Box with Easy Blocks: Fun with Free-Form Quilting.

I've had the good fortune to hear about and see bits and pieces of the book as the quilts came together, and last fall in Lake Tahoe I even got to make a shoe block that wound up (on page 71, in case you're looking) in a quilt featured in the book's gallery of quilts.

Mary Lou's French fabric pineapple quilt

If you've read Pearl the Squirrel for awhile, you've heard the tale of how we all met—I interviewed Mary Lou for an American Patchwork and Quilting article and she wound up inviting me, a total stranger, to Quilt Market. And there I met Mel who turns out to live not too far from my parents in California. Since then I've had the opportunity to get together with them in Lake Tahoe (here and here) to sew. I also took a class from Mary Lou at John C. Campbell in January 2010. So despite our geographic differences, our paths have crossed, all thanks to fabric and sewing.

Mel & cow quilt at my parents' home in S.Cal

The new book really reflects Mary Lou and Mel's spirits—lots of cheerful imagery that celebrates special occasions and the everyday. The patterns give you an opportunity to create quilts for birthdays or babies and there are fantastic instructions to create the cow quilt, letters, cats, fruit, and more. After you've tried a few of them, you'll be ready to make just about anything you want.

So, in honor of my fabulous friends and their colorful, inspiration-filled volume, I'm giving a copy away. For a chance to win, leave a comment about one of your friends in fabric—at the very least, tell me her or his first name, and if you're feeling chatty, tell us a story about that friendship. One lucky commenter will be selected at random to receive a copy of Out of the Box with Easy Blocks!

Last day to comment will be Friday, August 26, so get cracking! I look forward to hearing from you.

Digging into Your Past and Finding Your Future

I mentioned that I've joined the local rowing club, and the experience got me thinking about the way things resurface in life—those things you used to do, but don't anymore. 

There are entire periods of life when it's possible to be obsessed with some activity—car repair, canning, going to movies, playing cribbage—and then for one reason or another you quit. Sometimes it's circumstances—you move and no longer have a garage to store your old Corvair, or you have a baby and the hours you spent in darkened theaters with a box of buttered popcorn are now filled with weighing the pros and cons of bibs and bottle warmers. Or maybe you fixate on something new and different and it overtakes your former preoccupation.

Sometimes these old passions disappear forever, but as I've gotten older I find that often they reappear, albeit in a slightly different form. I realize that part of what I love about rowing is that I’ve always enjoyed being on the water in a small boat—I've taken numerous canoe trips, taught sailing, and in high school I was on a flat water kayaking team. Sewing is the same—I quit for many years, and then a friend taught me to quilt and my love of stitching returned. My old obsessions may have morphed, but the fact that they’ve resurfaced makes me think they're an essential part of me. I may not see the connection right away, but eventually I look back and see the pattern—of fascination, absorption, and exhilaration.

How about you? Is there something you do today that is linked to a passion from your past? What did it used to be and what does it look like now?

One River and 46,000 Glass Tiles

During the summer of 2008, when the Iowa River reached far beyond its banks and wreaked havoc across the state, the University of Iowa was in the process of building a boat house for its women's crew team. They stopped what they were doing, watched the partially-built structure submerge, and once the river subsided made flood-proofing alterations, knowing that the river would inevitably rise again. The result is  a LEED-certified structure that sits at a bend in the river, affording views both up- and downstream.

 

One of my favorite features in the boathouse is a mosaic of a rower, gliding across the river's turbulence. It was designed and constructed by Des Moines artists Rebecca Eckstrand and Tom Rosbourough and is constructed of 3/4-inch glass mosaic tiles—46,000 of them—laid by hand and designed to withstand flood waters. Take three minutes to check out this video that shows the mural, the process used to create it, and the boathouse.

In June, my husband and I stopped to see the mosaic at an open house and were surprised when the tour guide ask us if we'd like to try rowing. I've long admired the sport, but have a few injuries and wasn't sure I could row. Here was an opportunity to find out.

Suffice it to say that not long after I signed up for a two-day learn-to-row workshop and survived. And after that, I joined the Hawkeye Community Rowing Club and have been on the water two and sometimes three days a week. Each time I'm both thrilled and terrified. I'm also surprised how much focus it takes. I never noticed Paul on the river bank, taking this photo (that's me in the front, my first time in a two-person scull). Suffice it to say that I am in love—with learning to row; with being on the river at 7 a.m., when only a few hardy walkers stride the banks and our boat scares up an occasional egret; and with the knowledge that my body can still take on, and meet, a challenge.

A Real Headache

The daughter of some friends recently underwent surgery for a brain tumor. She's a college student, 20 years old, and it was a frightening event for all concerned—hell, it was every parent's worst nightmare.

Despite this, her parents were paragons of calm—the mom told me that she felt that she needed to hold it together so that her daughter wouldn't be even more frightened before the surgery, but that she sobbed after leaving her daughter en route to the surgical suite.

Fortunately, things seem to be going well. The tumor was benign, and though she had to be re-hospitalized for a few days, she's home and the stitches are out.

While friends brought the family meals, and while I knew that was highly useful, I decided on a (totally impractical, particularly for a 20-year-old young woman) sock monkey. This time, I followed the directions while making the monkey. E's school colors are red and black, so I made a hat from a crimson baseball sock and embroidered a black "E" across the front. Then I made a pair of crossed band-aids from wool and french knots and stitched them on the head, where they can be hidden under the hat. (Indeed, I got the sweetest thank you note from E, who said that now that she'd gotten her stitches out she had one less thing in common with the monkey.) I used scraps of my Woolylady wool for both the band-aids and eyes and was reminded what a pleasure stitching through wool can be...like butteh!

I was a little worried about giving her this rather odd gift, as I don't know E all that well, but was gratified that the entire time I visited she kept the monkey in her lap. And I am so, so happy that she seems to be doing so well. I think their experience is part of what informed the last paragraph I wrote for my recent Etsy post on The Oxford Project: "Sorrow and fear, passion and joy will find you, and the completely unexpected can happen whether you strike out for parts unknown or move just down the block."

Clothespin Pleasures

People who hang out clothes get lots of environmental brownie points. But long before clotheslines represented doing without for the greater good, I loved to clip sheets, sleepers, and socks to the line. I actually felt guilty about taking the time to do something so pleasurable rather than using the much quicker and more efficient dryer. Hanging clothes on the line was and still is my very own brand of hedonism.

The appeal is not just the smell of freshly hung clothes, or the fact that once hung, many need no ironing. And it’s not just feeling the sun on my back or hearing the wind swish through the walnut trees, or of catching sight of kingbirds chasing white moths or the oranges and pinks of blooming daylilies. 

It’s the way clotheslines display textiles, threads splayed to catch the sun. And I get to handle each piece of fabric twice…once in it’s limp, mangled, wet stage and again when it’s crisp and flapping. And when I do I am reminded of where each textile fits into my life. The red-and-blue dishtowels I wove more than 15 years ago that still get used weekly, the hand towels monogrammed by my mom, even the rags that used to be my favorite nightgown or a diaper that belonged to my now-grown children—these fabric bits and pieces conjure everyday kinds of happiness. 

I adore my antique quilt and the silk-embroidered table runner from Iraq, textiles so precious that I protect them from fading and friction. But my clothesline let’s me feel the density of knit sweatshirts, the airiness of linen skirts, the raised stitching on days-of-the-week dishtowels. It feeds my obsession for the tactile and visual elements of textiles, past and present, and lets the daydreams and memories unfold with the napkins and fly with the sheets.

Old Friends

I think that every quilter was attracted to a traditional quilt at one time or another. Whether you were fortunate enough to have one passed down through your family that you snuggled under at night, or a quilt caught your eye as you perused the merchandise at an antique store, old quilts often are what got us quilting in the first place.

But just because we loved or were intrigued by an old quilt, doesn't mean that's the kind of quilt we want to make. My initial interest in piecing came not from a family quilt, but from patchwork-y things I made in the 1970s, like the purple and brown floor-length patchwork skirt I stitched in high school. In recent years, it's contemporary fabrics that make me want to sew and I'm an unabashed color whore color hound (but I am pretty promiscuous in my love of color).

So I was surprised to find myself bringing home an antique quilt. Every year there's a show in Kalona and the displayed quilts are a combination of antique and contemporary. I'd gone to see a quilt made by quilter extraordinaire Erick Wolfmeyer  and was sucked in by the antique quilts. There were three that I was drawn to and when Marilyn Woodin (original owner of Woodin Wheel antiques and founder of the Kalona Quilt show and the textile museum there) told me I'd made good choices, I couldn't help but buy one. (When I got home with it, Paul said, "You've been with an enabler." Indeed I was. Marilyn complimented my choices and told me this quilt was the perfect start to my collection. Which doesn't exist. Yet.)

According to Marilyn, this quilt is from the 1880s and the cheddar fabric is likely from the 1860s (it's not just my friend Mary Lou who believes every quilt needs some cheddar). And Marilyn said this is a T-square block, popular with the followers of the temperance movement.

I think it's got a lot in common with contemporary quilts—it's graphic and there are certainly some unexpected colors and fabrics in there. Everything old is new again. I've got it atop the spare bed in my study, where I can see it every day, and see something new in it every day, as well.

Destiny

Okay, so perhaps destiny is a bit grandiose...but when I was in Virginia my mom was packing up her suitcase and pulled out the shoe bags she's used for my entire life and what were they made from? Feed sacks!

It turns out that decades ago my mother went to my aunt's farm in Minnesota and picked the sacks out especially to make these. I took a close look and sure enough, there were the former stitching holes Mike Zahs told me were a sure sign that the fabric had once been a feed sack.

Apparently feed sacks have been tucked away in my brain all these years. And now I'm a little obsessed. In my family, when someone has something you really like, you tell them "I get it when you die!" I told my mom I definitely get these when she's gone.

There's a great outdoor antique sale every 4th of July in nearby Solon. This year I'll have my eye out for feed sacks, for sure!

Have a wonderful 4th of July weekend, everyone!

From My Baby to Yours

Back from some additional travels—we went East to watch my nephew Karl receive his diploma in Virginia. It was a great family gathering that included my parents, sisters, bro-in-law, and even my daughter Rebecca, who flew from NY.

Rebecca's been working in NY for nearly a year now and she's had a fantastic boss who's been a real mentor. She has made it possible for Rebecca to stretch herself, taking on substantive work beyond her role as administrative assistant. She's also a caring person with a good sense of humor (I've actually never met her, but know these things from Rebecca). So when I heard that she was having a baby, I decided that the perfect thing would be to offer Rebecca a quilt to give her. As my sister so aptly said I should write in a card "I hope someday someone is a kind and caring to your baby as you've been to mine."

Rebecca picked this scrappy triangles quilt from my stash of tops and it provided a great excuse to finish it. I quilted it myself and while I did a reasonable job, I can't say that I really enjoyed it. Even when I start out intending to make big loops, my quilting gets smaller and smaller and takes forever. When I got to the borders I decided a series of parallel lines would be fine, and I think in the end, they are.

The piece is a true stash-buster: the only fabric I purchased for it was the graphic red and yellow dots (Beetle Boy by Ellen Crimini-Trent for Clothworks) for the inner border and binding and I am really happy with the way it picks up the colors and extends the wonky center's playfulness. Place a baby on his tummy on this quilt and he'll have lots to look at.

I was madly sewing on binding on the plane and at my sister's house, so that I could send it back to NY with Rebecca. Finally got it finished, and yes, that is a Great Dane (my sister's dog Danish) snoozing under the quilt. But no need to worry—the quilt was thoroughly washed and de-dogified before it was given.