Update: Maggie did it!

I just got a call from Austin and Maggie and her running buddy Claire completed their half-marathon! They were happy with their times—averaged ten minute miles, which was their goal. She said the last two miles were really hilly and really hard. Here's the happy runner (happy to have done it and happy to be done).

Congratulations Maggie and Claire!

Okay, more than a day off...

My quilt guild holds an annual retreat and I've made it for the last two years. It's held at a lovely little spot about 30 miles from home. This year's retreat is going on right now, and for a number of reasons I wasn't able to attend. So I decided to have my own retreat, which accounts for me sewing two days in a row. It's worked well because Paul is in Austin visiting Maggie and Jeff (and Maggie is currently running a half-marathon—woo-hoo! Go, Maggie!).

The two problems with my personal retreat are that Pearl still needs to be taken outside every now and then and I have to make my own meals (our quilt guild retreat was held at a center run by Franciscan nuns, who made lovely, healthful meals that appeared three times a day at the sound of a bell).

Yesterday, when I took Pearl outside, I was struck by the Dr. Seussiness of this snow-covered sedum. (I hope you note my discretion in not whining about winter or the 2 inches of snow that appeared on the ground overnight. Just rest assured that this isn't an "isn't winter lovely?" blog photo. It's me laughing at the sheer silliness of snow...easier to do when it's in the 30s.)

It's likely the sedum struck me as zany, rather than tragic, because I've been in a silly place, working all day on "Liberated Houses." I took a terrific class at Common Threads in North Liberty last fall and started making the houses—pictured are the smallest two of seven. Nancy G. taught the class, which I later learned was based on the work of Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran (I wasn't able to find her web page, but here's a fun interview with her on Quilter's Buzz). In Houston, I learned from Mel and Mary Lou that Gwen and Freddy have a book, Collaborative Quilting, that talks about putting together Liberated Houses and other elements. They have a great concept called The Parts Department, which involves making lots of strips and blocks to use when constructing the actual top. So I'm working on these half-square triangle borders and a variety of trees. I'm still a bit unclear about how it will all go together. It's the first time I really wish I had a design wall, and not just a design floor (which is what I call the technique of laying out the pieces on my bedroom floor and then standing on the bed to get some visual distance).

Does anyone have any advice for putting these pieces into some sort of coherent whole? I'm happy for any and all suggestions.

A day off

After some rather stressful work-related meetings and conversations, I decided to give myself an entire day off. It's a stunning concept and one that needs to be revisited more often in this household. When we moved to Berkeley in the late 1980s, our realtor observed after a day of house hunting that she'd never seen anyone with the "drive to completion" that I have. (This was because I insisted on looking at every last house on the market.)

The drive to completion often serves me well. I generally hit deadlines and really crank on things when the end is in sight. That feeling of accomplishment that comes from getting things done is highly satisfying. But lately it's morphed into working seven days a week, and that's not healthy for anyone. Paul and I are both trying to remember that there will always be more work to do tomorrow, and that it's important to step back and just do something else every now and then.

So,my something else today was making split pea soup, taking a walk with a friend and Pearl, watching Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (meh), and sewing. My mom gave me a couple of fat quarters when I visited her in January and I'd seen raves about the Lazy Girl Wonder Wallet, so when I saw the pattern at Home Ec I grabbed it. I made one a weekend or two ago and finished another today.

It's a great pattern: they're very quick to make and now that I've made the basic pattern I see all sorts of possibilities for modifying them—different sizes or pocket configurations, for example. The one change I will definitely make is to use a heavier interfacing in the main body of the wallet. I'm not sure why, but the flap flips up a bit on either side of the button when the flap is closed (the button is just decorative and hides the stitches that secure the velcro). I thought heavier interfacing might help. You may note that I have two sizes of velcro dots—the small one seemed a little too small, so I opted for the larger on the second wallet.


I also initially thought I'd use a metal silver-and-blue button that was on a shank, but realized that I'm likely to use this wallet when I walk downtown and don't want to haul a purse; the button with the shank would have been uncomfortable in the pocket of my jeans. So I used a couple of gorgeous pearl buttons I'd been saving for something. Guess this was it!

Best in Show

Pearl, Paul, and I watched the terrier group during last night's Westminster dog show. When the wire fox terrier didn't make the final cut, Pearl just lay down on the floor and closed her eyes. (My sister sent a link to a New York Times article about past winners, which said that wire fox terriers were the all-time champs, with 13 wins.)

I had to watch the Scottish terrier take Best in Breed...quite a cute little guy, very self-confident. Rebecca wanted a Scotty when she was little, but I had heard they were feisty with kids, so we went for a Westie. Tillie was a great dog and lived to be 15.

Pearl actually started life as a show dog: her name was Cheviot's Dorretti Swallow (which was a British sports car). There's a photo of her in a 2006 dog show here. She apparently earned her champion ranking (or whatever it's called) and was retired when she was 20 months old, which is when I got her. For some reason, they didn't want to breed her...probably because she is a squirrel. I should have known...I do think much of her squirrely behavior stems from her show-dog lifestyle.

Friends in fabric

Okay, brace yourselves. This post will be corny. And long. But an interview I did today for a future Quilts and More profile reminded me that I've been meaning to write about some of the friends I've made through quilting. (And check out the pattern the pattern for this totally wonderful knitted corn!)

I know not everyone in quilting world is as wonderful as they seem—not much in life is, I'm afraid. It's quite possible that when people talk with me I'm seeing their most charming selves; after all, the profiles I write help to publicize their fabric, patterns, or other business. But I can't tell you the number of times I've hung up the phone and come into the family room and said to my husband, "I just talked to the coolest person!" I can tell that some folks are pretty used to being interviewed and have stock responses to the oft-asked questions: Where do you get inspiration? (This only means that it's my job as a journalist to come up with some more thought-provoking questions.) But with other folks, we just hit it off and an actual conversation ensues. And with quilters that happens about 8 out of 10 times.

In November 2007 I got assigned to interview Mary Lou Weidman, a quilter and teacher from Washington State. What should have been one of those 15 to 20 minute interviews stretched into an hour or more. If you know Mary Lou's quilts at all, you know something about Mary Lou (those are her quilts on the right). She's funny, warm, and loves lots of color (three of my favorite qualities). But we also connected over the fact that nearly 30 years before her son had had leukemia (he's now in his 30s and a parent himself) and nearly 30 years before I had been a child life specialist, working with pediatric cancer patients. Mary Lou started quilting when her son was sick and her positive outlook is much of what got her through. I hung up the phone, totally energized and so happy to have gotten to chat with her.

About a week later I sent her the copy to check over and she wrote back and invited me to room with her at Quilt Market in Houston. I was flabbergasted! I'm basically a shy person and my first reaction was "I could never do that!" Mary Lou offered to show me around Market, to introduce me to her friends, and to go shopping and eat out at great restaurants. The more I thought about it, the more I thought, "I couldn't NOT do that!" We corresponded intermittently throughout the year and as October drew closer she mentioned a friend would also be joining us. Now I was really nervous—who was this friend, Mel? What if she snored more loudly than my husband? What if we didn't like each other at all? We'd be staying together for days...heck, we'd be sharing a bathroom!



To make a long story slightly shorter, I went, Mary Lou is wonderful and so is Mel (and she confessed she also wondered why Mary Lou had invited me and worried we wouldn't get along). And they introduced me to many fabulous people.
One of my favorites is their good buddy Brenda, who works for Marti Michell (you should see that Brenda demo a ruler-she's a whiz). It was about business, of course, (along with teaching and creating patterns, Mary Lou designs fabric for Benartex--check out Mary Lou's web site and blog). But there was this great, built-in bond. Mel (she's in brown, Brenda in green and the quilts are all Mary Lou's) worked for years in the garment industry, has written a textbook about fit, and had been to numerous trade shows, so walking the aisles with her gave me lots of insights into the textile business I would otherwise have missed. Mary Lou was generous with her time and contacts and just a lot of fun. Brenda was talented, funny, and friendly. I met lots of other wonderful folks, too, but these three really touched me. When they got together to sew in December in Texas, they even sent me a holiday box of goodies...but more on that when I write about tools.

At any rate, there are so many people I've connected with over fabric. My friend, Anne, whose offer to teach me to quilt one weekend literally changed my life (here we after a day of putting together quilt tops), my friends from work with whom I sewed Birdie Slings last weekend, my Scrabble friend Kristin with whom I've established a new bond through quilting...it's corny, I know, but it goes on and on. And the woman I interviewed today talked about the wonderful women she's become friends with through sewing and it reminded me to thank the wonderful women I know for the things they've taught me, the fabric they've shared, and the pleasure we've had together over stitching.

(And I know, if I say wonderful one more time, we may all puke. But I've turned in three stories today and have used up my quota of adjectives.)

Scrap happy

It's been a rough week, and last night, rather than recline on the couch watching my Tivo'd episode of The Closer, I decided I needed to be upright and doing something. I saw this tutorial for wonky log cabin blocks, as well as Jacquie from Tallgrass Prairie Studio's Project Improv post. I'm definitely someone who uses patterns designed by others: they allow me the pleasures of combining fabric, sewing, appreciating construction techniques, etc. I tell myself when I retire I may design my own patterns. But there was something about this that just looked so do-able. Stitch magazine also had instructions for a log cabin pillow, so I took a look at those and started cutting.

I knew I wanted to do something with the Birdie sling scraps, and this was it. As someone who's typically drawn to blues and greens, I'm a little startled by the way pink and green seems to be sucking me in...Pearl checked it out, too (as well as she could given that she can barely see through all her fur).

Feisty-sweet Kyra Sedgewick is great, but there's nothing quite as soothing as foolin' around in my sewing room.

A sewing bee (for birdie)

Home Ec Workshop turns out to be a really wonderful place. I knew I liked the yarn and fabric, and Codi, who I've met through Rebecca, always seemed very warm and friendly. But when I hauled my sewing machine in at 10:45 a.m., there must have been 15 to 20 women sitting in a big circle, knitting. Two guys were behind the counter, cranking out the lattés and cappuccinos and the conversation was flowing. I was a little stunned at the numbers and the energy in the room, but stunned in a good way.


My work buddies, Anne and Sondra, arrived and we got to sit along the same side of the room. Here’s a shot of us at our sewing machines.

There were six women in the class—the other three were grad students/young moms. It was fun to chat as we shared the cutting tables and truly fabulous industrial iron. It’s always fascinating to see the way fabric choices change a project. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of everyone’s bag, but here’s a shot of Anne, me, and Sondra with our nearly completed Birdie slings.
We didn’t quite finish in class, but got close.

Codi's personality is perfect for her business—she loves what she's doing and seems to thrive on all the people around her: she helped when we needed it and stood back and let us go when we didn't. She's seemingly never ruffled by customers or chaos: when we didn't need assistance she'd go out to the front room and chat with people in the shop and answer their questions. Once she brought back an adorable three-week old babe named Archie for us all to admire. Here she is helping Anne (who needed very little help, of course).


Paul ended up having to go back over to the lab, so I sewed until he got home at 7 and finished it up. It’s a big bag—I imagine it more as a summer bag (you could put your swimming suit and sunscreen and a small towel in there). It might also be a nice overnight bag or extra bag for traveling.







The fabric is Amy Butler’s Nigella, American Jane’s mini dot in green and Heather Ross’s Mendocino (which is my favorite—it’s kind of a little secret that there are mermaids and sea turtles and squid languidly swimming inside of my bag).

Saturday sewing

On my way to take a class at Home Ec Workshop to make Amy Butler's Birdie Sling. A couple of women I work with are taking it too and asked if I'd like to join them. So sweet of them, and I'm excited to spend some time with them and at Home Ec—such a great little shop, with fun fabric and gorgeous yarn. And I hear the lattés are the best.

I'll report back tomorrow. Until then, I hope you get to do some Saturday sewing (or whatever makes your Saturday fun).

Oh, la, la!

I find the colors of this quilt quite amazing—so rich and so very Lily Pulitzer. But it actually dates from the 1850s and it's French. It's the quilt from the global quilting feature in the April American Patchwork and Quilting.

I've said it before, but antique quilts were never the thing that drew me to quilting. But the opportunity to learn about them through the writing I've done has made me a convert. I find it so interesting that not only have people been creating quilts all over the world, but that they've been making the forever. (Carolyn Ducey, the curator from the International Quilt Study Center told me that quilts go back as far as Roman times, when soldiers wore layers of cloth stitched together as a type of armor.)

This particular quilt is a vanne, which is basically a decorative throw that was used on beds. As you can tell by the minimal piecing on this, these types of quilts (made in the Marseille region) were all about the quilting and not the piecing.


Lucky French babies were sometimes brought into their bed-resting mothers and laid on a vanne. Imagine letting a baby spit up on that gorgeously worked fabric! I'm pretty sure that's what old cloth diapers were made for. But this does remind me about an off-topic, but fairly fascinating article by Jill Lepore about breastfeeding in the Jan. 19 New Yorker. It provides a great history of breast feeding (news to many, I'm sure, but not so much to me—in my checkered past I was not only a Lamaze instructor but rented electric breast pumps, the kind that were only available hospitals in the early 1980s, to mothers in need) and some provocative thoughts on breast feeding now. I don't agree with it all by any means, and I've always had strong feelings about the guilt mothers are made to feel for not nursing, but it's worth reading. I'd love to hear what anyone thinks about it (or about French vannes, for that matter).

Screwing up

I'm working on a profile for the next issue of Stitch and it's got me thinking about making mistakes. My interview subject's philosophy is an interesting combination of doing things by the book and winging it. It's a topic I've thought about long and hard. When I learned to sew, my mom was very much a follow-the-pattern-exactly kind of gal. She was like that about much of life, but I also think it was the way things were in the "early days" of sewing. So I was taught not to bend the rules when it came to sewing.

My interview subject had a great story about cutting a hole in a nearly completed dress. In order to repair it she had to cut it off and reattach it in an order different than recommended in the pattern. It worked fine and she said it was a valuable lesson about improvisational sewing. It's easy to imagine there's just one right way to do things—the way you've always done them or the way you may have been told to do them. But if there's one thing quilters have taught me, it's that there are myriad ways to accomplish any task: to bind a quilt, to applique, to cut fabric.

A few years ago I interviewed Avis Shirer of Joined at the Hip for the American Patchwork and Quilting web site and she told me about carefully saving some beloved red plaid fabric for years, waiting for just the right project on which to use it. She finally found the perfect quilt and put it together and was very happy with the result. But somehow, after the top was complete, she managed to cut into the red plaid. She had used every last inch of that fabric and because she'd had it for so long she couldn't find any more. At first, she said, she sat down and cried. But then she finagled a fix—some sort of little applique that turned out to be very charming, very personal, and made the quilt far more special than when she'd finished it the first time.

It takes a certain confidence to embrace the unexpected and tell yourself it's fine. But it's so much more fun when you do. And as my Stitch interview subject said "Sometimes when you make mistakes and fix them, the result is so cute. And you wouldn't have thought to do it way if you hadn't screwed up."