2014 In Review

I’ve been offline with the business of the holidays.  Every December 31 I find it hard to concentrate.  I spend most of the day reflecting on events from the past year.  I think about things that went well, things that didn’t, and outcomes that I’m simply grateful for, and hopes for the New Year.  It’s like 365 days of ADD wrapped into one 24 hour period.

I’m grateful I’m still here…..that most of my family is also.  The hardest thing we endured in 2014 is losing both a sister and brother-in-law tragically in a motorcycle accident June 1.  We feel this loss daily, with a huge hole in our hearts that will never refill.  Our hearts hurt most deeply for their two boys, and their families.  The days since have been especially hard for them.  But we love them and have done whatever possible to help them through, physically and spiritually keeping them close and helping carry their burdened hearts.  Others left us too……a dear friend to liver cancer in February and another in-law to lung cancer in July.  We survived employment loss again this year…..we’re getting too old for this.  And a car accident in November that left us car shopping after Gary’s car was totaled.  Thankfully he was not hurt badly.

On the up side…….we mostly have our health.  My eyes seem to be the next thing on the list failing.  They bother me daily.  I’ve carved out time this year to work on my art, teach quilting classes, to volunteer thru church.  As you read about on this blog I canned for the first time in years, made jams, breads and baklava, grew veggies in a modest contest garden, made homemade butter, basically all the things I’ve wanted to do for a long time…..but didn’t have time for.  My list of hand crafted things I want to learn is still growing, and hopefully I can share them with you in the coming months.  I learned to live on a whole lot less money, which has been most rewarding.  Aaron and Dan surprised me on

my 60^th birthday….what fun!  I've enjoyed getting to know him.  We celebrated Aaron's first solo show in October.....very exciting.  I also celebrated my birthday with my oldest and dearest friend Kris……..she’s older by two days.   What a blessing!  And my mother still with us turned 94 this year.....we call her the Everyready Battery Bunny.  Amazing!

A small and determined group of quilters gathered back in May exploring whether a guild could be formed in our area.  I’m very proud that we worked throughout the summer and launched the BIG RED QUILTERS GUILD September 22, with 85 members as of today.  Our goal is to share our love and pass on our knowledge of quilting with each other and future generations.  It’s been very exciting indeed.

The holidays had many moments of fun and laughter.  Thanksgiving brought a new guest to our table…much fun.  Christmas Eve church services with our family and neighbors, board games, lots of food (including caramel corn), face painting……just good old fashion simple fun.  I’ve included some pics. 

The point is…….amidst the tragedy and loss I have much to be thankful for.  Those that are gone would want us to celebrate and enjoy life each and every day, to the fullest.  I will try to do that better, and grumble less.

In closing, I wish you and those you love happiness, health and peace.  Be close in heart.  This is where our riches truly reside.

Signing off for 2014………….

Happy Holiday Baking!

I am still busy making Christmas gifts.  I decided to make oven pads for a few gifts.  Pinterest was a great resource for ideas, but nothing exactly ‘stuck’ as being the perfect idea, so I began experimenting.  I wish I was one of those that can use a pattern ‘as is’, but for some reason deep in my DNA, I can’t.  I have to ‘continuous improvement’ the thing, tweaking, adjusting little things until its product perfect, along with the process.

I didn’t want to make an oven mitt.  What I REALLY wanted was to replace the two heavy duty washable terry oven pads I bought from Pampered Chef decades ago.  Throw them in the wash with some bleach, and voila!  They are like new……sort of.  Today they are thin, torn and looking like me…..worn out!  

So I started with a couple concepts I saw elsewhere.  Go big or go home they say…finished this runs 9.5” square.  A tad too big they could slide off, but a good start….you slip fingers into both half triangles and the pad folds around the rack or cookie sheet.  I guarantee this is square, regardless how my camera angle depicts it.

 

Next I reduced the finished size to 8.5” square.  Better, but not exactly where I want to be.  There were two problems……they still could fall off, and working with 2 layers of Insul-brite on the main pad plus 1 for the corner, plus 4 layers of face fabric, plus bias binding made it tough to sew so many layers and keep it looking nice.  You can see that in the examples.  So I kept tweaking……

Here’s the finished model……8.5” square with a 6.5” rectangle to slip hands into.  You can have a blast picking fun coordinates; I used what I had on hand. This holds the pad much more securely while covering your hand so you won’t get burned.  I reduced the Insul-brite to one layer on the main pad, one for the rectangle.  The patterns I found suggest one layer plus a layer of regular batting which doesn’t give you any heat resistance, only more unwanted bulk so I left that out.  30 minutes and you have a really cute hot pad.  

 

Sew……here are the materials needed per pad:

1 – 8.5” square Insul-brite

1 – 6.5”x8.5” rectangle Insul-brite

2 – 8.5” square fabrics

2 – 6.5”x8.5” rectangle fabrics

1 – 2.5”x48” long strip for binding, ironed in half to 1.25” wide

Cutting mat

Rotary cutting ruler

Rotary cutter

Thread

Scissors

Pins

Begin with the 6.5” square first – layer fabric face down, then Insul-brite, then fabric face up. Pin 9” strip of binding along 8.5” side.  Sew ¼” from edge.  Press open, folding binding over raw edge.  Pin in place and topstitch in the ditch to secure.  Trim excess off ends.

Next assemble the main pad.  Layer 8.5” fabric face down, then Insul-brite, then fabric face up.  Temporarily pin 6.5”x8.5” finished rectangle on top, carefully catching all layers and corners of raw edges.  Next pin the rest of your binding strip around the edge of the square making sure to capture all the layers.  The more pins the less shifting you’ll have.  This step is like finishing a quilt, so use your favorite method.  I didn’t get fussy….remember it’s a hot pad.  I left a half inch loose at the top, then sewed around the edge, trimming and tucking the last bit into the loose end and securing.  Trim excess if needed.  Press binding open, then fold and pin binding in place.  Topstitch around entire edge, making sure to capture all the layers inside.  Slip your hand inside and enjoy!

Zentangle Frenzy......

So like you I have been busy, but my sewing machine has sat idle, quietly taking a much deserved rest after a ton of use this fall then a routine maintenance and cleaning trip. Although the sewing side of the studio has been silent, the south side has been a whirlwind…..Sakura pigma micro pens, vellum paper stock, pencils and erasers and blending nibs strewn everywhere.  I’ve been drawing, zentangling to be specific.  Like a wild cat, zeroing in on my target, spending every spare moment of time putting pen to paper.  Zentangling is thought to put you in a ‘Zen’ state of sorts. For me, it’s like I followed the Pied Piper in an addictive trance.  Everything I see I dissect the pattern thinking how can I repeat in zentangle like fashion. My feet hit the floor in the morning, I immediately have a pen in hand.  I had to watch the weather three times the other morning because I was so focused on my drawing.

Some are for Christmas gifts, but most are just because.  The gifts will be matted and framed in black.  Sizes range from 4"x4" to 8"x11".  Here’s a snippet of what the 60 plus drawings I’ve produced since the 16th……

 

 

"Dedicated Quilters"

Recently I added a trip to the INTERNATIONAL QUILT FESTIVAL in Houston to my bucket list. No, it’s not skydiving out of a plane, or climbing Mt. Everest, or hiking to the South Pole, but for the "Dedicated Quilter" it’s like trekking to the Holy Land for Christians or Mecca for Muslims.  You really want to make the trip at least once in your life...before you die.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m drawn to IQF.  It’s huge, the largest show of its kind anywhere.  I can barely manage the AQS show Grand Rapids.  But we all know…..size matters.  I’d like to see all the quilters gathered under one roof, those of us that make up the annual $3.76 billion dollar industry.  I also love stats, and understanding what this means to the quilting and related industry fascinates me from a sales, marketing, and design perspective. What makes quilters tick, and what makes them buy the things they do?  Delving into the statistics and understanding the crowd taps into my left brain tendencies, methodical, detailed oriented and very analytical.  This left brain stuff messes with my right brain creative, spontaneous and subjective nature. Too much some time…..but that’s another post perhaps.

Coinciding with IQF the QUILTING IN AMERICA SURVEY 2014 was released. This is the 7^th since 1994, completed every 4 years.  Making up this dollar amount is 16 million active quilters in this country, or 1 in every 20 Americans quilt.  I confirmed this stat last Sunday in church, looking around the sanctuary and knowing who quilts.  For the record, the service hadn’t started so I was paying attention.

So who are these DQ's?  The survey reveals “Dedicated Quilters”:

·        Represent 12.2% of all quilting households

·        Account for 60.4% of the total industry expenditures

·        Spend more than $500 a year on related purchases (sewing machines, fabric, notions, tools, patterns, books, computer programs, threads, battings, classes etc…according to the survey the number is more like $3,296 average a year.....holy cow!) 

·        Are female

·        Are about 64

·        See our fiber art obsession as an essential part of our life, not a hobby.

·        Express our creativity thru textiles arts.

·        Reflect what is going on our lives and how we deal with it. 

·        Have quilted for 20.3 years

·        Are 81.3% are traditionalist, 38% embrace art quilting and 35% enjoy the modern styles

·        Are well educated (79% attended college)

·        Have a household income in excess of $100,000

·        Have (on average) $13,000 of tools and supplies and $6000 in a fabric stash

·        Have a dedicated studio or sewing room

Wow.  Where do you fit?  This information helps our local shops determine what they will offer us, along with their understanding of their local demographic and customer buying habits.  Fascinating, isn’t it?!?!

BIG WHITE.....come out of the closet!

For someone that loves color, lots of it…..it will be quite a surprise to see no color in the photos.  That’s because it’s about hand quilting, more specifically about hand quilting what friends heard me to refer to as “BIG WHITE” for years, roughly 7 if I’m truly honest about it.  Seven being the years it took me to complete, mentally running away from it each stitch I added.

BIG WHITE became my quilting nemesis.  I don’t recall a more painful quilting project.  Nothing gave me more angst than this did.  So how did it start, and why?

Quite early in my quilting career I became fascinated by the beautiful whole cloth quilt movement.  You know, white/off white solid background, printed design that washes out after hand quilting the entire motif in white.  Completed these beauties were exceptional.  The tiny stitches gave the entire surface it’s personality.  I was drawn to these miracles of needle and thread like a bee to a hive, or in my case like a mosquito to a high voltage bug zapper.

I started hand quilting with an enormous amount of enthusiasm.  About a quarter finished I couldn’t stand to look at it.  Oh, my stitching was just fine.  It took me quite a long time to figure out why I felt such disdain for this quilt.  I actually got to the point where I hoped I’d ‘accidentally’ spill water on it so the design went away.  I couldn’t finish it without the printed design now could I?  Any of you that remember this agonizing period in my life are sitting there laughing!

Weeks turned into months, then into years.  I’d ignore it in storage.  Maybe someone would find it after I’m in the big quilt studio in the sky.  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks…..I hated this quilt because it was, well……vanilla.  Don’t get me wrong, I love vanilla.  But as I started to say, for someone that loves colors, lots of it, I couldn’t stand working in the whiteness of this quilt.

But one thing kept nagging at me.  I really didn’t care if I ever finished it.  And that bothered me more than it being all white.  One day fed up with my attitude I pulled it from the bottom of the closet, and little by little I finished the hand quilting and added the binding.  It went through the wash cycle to remove the remaining faint blue lines.  It was folded and put in my quilt cupboard, never to see the light of day.  Years later it was finished, never shown or talked about, or given its proper due.  I was still running from it.

Then last night I watched PBS FINDING YOUR ROOTS featuring Sting’s quest for ancestry.  I love this show!  Anyway, Sting grew up in the massive shipyards in Liverpool, England.  He told how everyone hated the noisy and dangerous environment of red lead and asbestos.  He ran from it but most stayed.  But why?  “We could point to them (the ships) and say ‘we built them’.  It was a very unpleasant place to work yet there was an immense pride in it.  Today society sits all day at a computer, so where is the artifact that says we worked…. the ships were a massive example of that.” Sting said.

I ran from BIG WHITE like he did the ship yards.  Today I'm at least sharing my sense of pride in  finishing it.  Besides, this blog is about craft.  And that’s what this quilt is…….a hand crafted, tangible result of many years labor.  BIG WHITE…..take a bow!

Ghoulish Goodies for your favorite Goblins!

Full disclosure….I love Halloween.  I mean the fun, innocent part of Halloween…..costumes, trick or treating, carving pumpkins, running from house to house flashlights tightly in hand, the things we did as children. 

Each October I decorate the house with all sorts of Halloween items…..pumpkins, crows, cats, clever looking costumed figurines, all with a folk art twist, many studded with glitter.  Our table is covered with a hand appliqued quilt I designed a few years back.  Quilted runners line the china hutch done in charming autumn theme prints of orange, gold and black.  I love the golden glow in our home this time of year when the sun begins to dip southerly and the leaves change color.  Both provide a warm and happy glow. 

This year I decided to make little pumpkin treat bags for 9 special goblins.  Very quick and simple to make……..

1.      Sandwich 2 pieces of 8.5”x17” orange Kona fabric and 1 piece of same size batting.  Randomly machine quilt vertical lines resembling a pumpkin, filling the entire sandwich.  Trim to 8”x16”.  Press in half.

2.    Iron fusible web to scraps for the eyes, nose and mouth according to manufacturer’s direction.  I used Steam-a-seam.  Cut shapes and fuse to the bag face. Top stitch to secure if desired.

3.    Fold bag in half with the face inside.  Align edges and zigzag and straight stitch along both edges to secure.  Zigzag top raw edge.  Turn inside out.  Fold top edge inside 1”, pin and sew in place approximately ¾” from the top edge.

4.    Cut 2 strips 2.5”x26” long handles.  Press in half, then turn in thirds and topstitch to secure.  Cut each finished strip in half, yielding 2-13” handles.  Or you can use ribbon.  Pin handles 1.5” from outside edges of bag top on the front and back.  Sew handles roughly ½” from the top edge to secure.

5.     Fill with yummy teeth rotting deliciousness and ghoulish goodies for your favorite goblins!

 

Chicago........the Windy City

This past weekend we went to Chicago for Micah’s (Aaron) first solo gallery exhibition.  More on that later.  We knew there would be last minute emergencies getting everything set in the gallery, but we carved out a little time to visit a dear friend of mine that lives downtown near the lakeshore, having moved from Grand Rapids a few years ago.  We worked together for 12 years, traveled to NYC on a ton of same day flights and were work partners in crime on many occasions……all fun.  He made work tolerable on many occasions and talked me off the edge many more.

Actually, Scott lives between Lakeshore Drive and Michigan Ave, just north of Randolph in the heart of the loop.  Navy Pier is a short walk, Millennium Park is directly across the street, Grant Park just south of that, the Art Institute of Chicago and the NICTD is a block away.  Fantastic views! If you are going to live in Chicago, this is the spot.  As a young single guy, this is really the spot to live.  Even though it’s in the heart of the busiest section of Chicago, we were taken aback by how quiet it was, like a typical neighborhood.  There are plenty of green spaces (his courtyard) for lots of walking and recreation area, Mariano’s grocery, dry cleaners, restaurants, FedEx, pharmacies, party stores, all within a spacious courtyard.  People were everywhere, walking dogs, jogging, just taking in a beautiful fall afternoon.

It was great to see him, even though the visit was short.  Scott joined us Micah’s opening in the evening.  Here are some photos I took.  I’m not sure what Gary is doing, but he scared of heights so maybe the 26th floor rooftop got the best of him, or the wind....it was VERY windy up there!