Making stuff makes me happy

 2022 has been sweeter to me than 2021 was. Though I still don't like Covid Effects, I am used to it. I've discovered that I rather like hunkering down, doing less running around, & having more time available.

I made quite a lot of stuff in 2022.

Two baby quilts, for example..... for baby Willow...

                                                                ...& for baby Oak...

I repaired a quilt for Joslyn, one that was over 20 years old & had quite a number of patches that were plumb worn out. I just discovered I didn't/don't have a photo of it at the beginning!

Visiting in Whistler at Lesley's house, I was able to get a shot of a collage that I made in the 1990s. The underimage came from a marvelous collection of illustrations for children's books in an appointment calendar book I had. The over paper I made inspired by a student I had named Geeta. I made quite a few sheets of "Geeta paper" that I used & treasured. I often wonder what she would think if she knew how she has inspired me. She was very shy & rather sad.

Then I happened upon a book written by Ferren Gipson called Women's Work. She was born in the USA but now lives in London. She's quite well known as a designer, writer, thinker.

The cover image & the title captivated me & so I googled her & found she had made two "checkerboard" quilts that I loved. 

"What a great new playground for me," I thought.

Of course square-patch quilts are about the oldest kind, but I had never played with squares in quite this way before.

My first effort was a bit chaotic... Summer Checkerboard...

Then I did a second one based on zinnia flower colors... Zinnia Checkerboard

 I got to wondering if I were going to run through the seasons...

Definitely b/w/grey, so maybe B/W/Grey Checkerboard.

 I realized that I had quite a few leftovers from all three endeavors. 

Checkerboard Salad Delight was generated. 

At this point it's patched & I'm just starting to quilt it up.

Do I want to do more in this zone? I'm not sure, but I know I do want to try some work based on Ferren Gipson's book cover.

That's it for now.

I Have Measured Out My Life

 

 “I measure out my life with coffee spoons.”  T.S Eliot

And me?

I have measured out my life with blue jeans worn out,

with Chapstick tubes,

with chickens I cooked,

& countries visited.

I have measured out my life with the cars I’ve bought,

with music I’ve learned to sing,

with the lessons I planned & taught,

& houses I’ve lived in.

I’ve measured out my life with yards cloth I bought,

with needles threaded, pins lost, & spools finished,

with quilts I’ve made,

& shows I’ve been in.

I’ve measured out my life with books read,

with movies seen, radio interviews heard,

with historical turning points I lived firsthand,

& wars won or lost in all zones that I cared about.

I’ve measured out my life with generations I can see,

with births, marriages, & deaths that I know,

with people moving & coming back,

& with accidents, scandals, disappointment, & fortitude.

I’ve measured out my life with friends & lovers,

with ones I kept & ones that fell by the wayside,

with dinners I’ve given & gone to,

& with the address & contact lists, letters, & emails.

I’ve measured out my life with photographs taken,

with albums from the past, mine & others’,

with cartoons & jokes I remember,

& trips & outings to see art.

I’ve measured out my life with my favorite garments,

with sheets used & torn,

with tablecloths loved,

& hats that came to me & were lost.

I have measured out my life with china I have eaten off,

with coffee mugs & wine glasses, especially ones I broke,

with vases, oh! the vases with the flowers,

&  nearly daily loads of stuff in the dishwasher.

I have measured out my life with letters: email & postal,

with presents & packages sent & received,

with stamps bought,

& with newspapers & magazines.

I have measured out my life with sweaters I made,

with art bought, decks of cards worn out, 

music on LPs, tapes, CDs, & beyond,

& with furniture & carpets I have loved.

I have measured out my life with loads of laundry,

with filling my car with gas,

with bagfuls of carpet dust & floor sweepings,

& with all the Pentel pens I have used up or lost.

I have measured out my life with journals kept,

with dances & exercise classes,

with yawns & sneezes,

 & with heartbeats & respiration.

I have measured out my life with favorite numbers,

with clotheslines delighted in,

with apples, pears, & tangerines eaten,

& classrooms I have been in.

I have measure out my life with lost earrings,

with watches, 

with pairs of glasses & sun glasses left behind somewhere

& treasured gifts & hand-me-down possessions. 

I have measured out my life with 3 siblings,

with 3 children &  3 step-children,

with 2 husbands, 16 aunts & uncles

& 4 grandchildren.

I have measured out my life with cartons of ice cream,

with television programs & series,

with phone calls, especially the long-distance ones,

& games of Russian Bank, cribbage, Set, & solitaire.

I have measured out my life with measuring tools,

with many special collections,

with egg-beaters, thimbles, letter-stamp sets, scissors,

& 4 important cameras

I have measured out my life with the places I have lived,

with the bike, plane, bus, train, & car trips I have made,

with my traveling companions & trail buddies,

& with currencies I have used.

I have measured out my life with spools of thread,

Seam lines, quilting stitches,

Scissors, bought, given, & found,

& special quilt-making projects.

I have measured out my life with favorite grey garments,

With dance skirts I made, dance shoes & blouses,

With nightgowns, wrappers & slippers,

& 

New Mistakes!!

 1. Misspell sewdaphne......swedaphne got me in big trouble!!

2. When I saw it & tried to correct it I put .com instead of .ca   

GOOD grief!!

Lesson: Don't make those mistakes again.

Sorry!

A Few Very Last Quilt Items

 After my last entry there were still some untold/unseen items on my screen saver. 

So here goes.

One of the most "extreme" quilts I ever attempted I called The Spirit of Africa. It was made in a big patch of time where I was doing dyeing & printing. I look at it now, shake my head at my bravery for "pushing it", & think, "it didn't work", but some elements I still like.

In almost an opposite vein is this simple quilt based on a lovely old linen table cloth that had pansies woven into its damask pattern. I added two frames of white shell buttons & a frames of silk screened flowers on the border. Sweet Memories of Simpler Times I called it.

During my first workshop with Nancy Crow in Portland, Erica was rehearsing in an outdoor space for a ballet during her time as a dancer with Oregon Ballet Theater. Some how this piece came together. I called it Dancing on the Avenue.

 

And from 1972, with Joslyn, age one-&-a-half, & with me way before I discovered I was pregnant with twins, is a photo I took of my newly made bedquilt made with thoughts of the op artist Vaserelly. I had seen his work in Province, France a few years before.

Joslyn's wet bottom + my thin belly says it all!

To close, some of the very recent quilts. These are quickies & small ones.

First, Summer Confetti 2 or Three.

More Els (I've played with Els before)

Sunflowers & Echinecia

                                             Handundfussecstase (hand & food ecstasy) & its reverse.

                                           

 

And finally, the quilt that replaced my Covid Quilt in my front hall: Marimekko & Other Echos.

That's it for now. My screen saver is now empty of quilts-in-waiting!! Hooray!

The Quilts Left on my Screen-Saver

 I undertook a huge project of going back & editing all my blog entries! Good lord. It took a long time. Sometimes my edits didn't "stick" so I had to find work-arounds & re-editing for that. Originally I thought I might print out a copy of some of the entries for posterity & then I realized that this idea was too crazy-making for me. Still I'm very glad I went through this process. The type is smaller, the images more compact & some of my remarks seemed too silly to keep!

But I have quilts left over from the last two posts on my screensaver. I want to deal with them just because they are all there, ready for use, & I can do it fairly easily.

There are some series that I want to share. One was born from a very unsatisfying quilt attempt which got cut in 4 equal pieces & infused with a color: white, yellow, black & green. Those were the main colors in the unsatisfying quilt, so it made sense not to introduce new colors. The four quilts wound up in different places which was fine with me.

The other series I called "Dots & Stripes". The three quilts are: Stripes & Dots, Dots, No Stripes, & No Dots, No Stripes. I kept the same basic structure for each of these 3.

There was also a Middle East Series, inspired by carpet patterns. I have complete images of only two of them. I dyed the cloth for these.

There were two accidental/coincidental very similar quilts both made while in a workshop with Nancy Crow. She was/is very fond of giving students two color exercises. The first one  I don't have the whole image for. Damn! I love the juicy 'lines' in this one. Nancy thought it was "too easy", so that's what I called it.

 

The other one...

Sometimes my quilts come out quite bland. Interesting, but not dramatic. Here are two.

 

The shape on which I based this quilt gave some viewers the willies. I "saw" the problem but pressed on.

Some people saw it as being uncomfortably close to the swastika.
That's it for now.

Crosses Galore

Crosses are so common in quilt-making. And I have made my fair share of them. At first as conventional bed quilts & then as departures onto walls.

The first departures were a seasonal set: first Fall Cross.             

  Then Summer Cross.

Spring Cross

Winter Cross

You can probably see now I am keeping some design elements constant. I think this was my first self-conscious series of quilts. Very fun to do.

       Summer Scraps grew out of much sewing one summer & scraps galore floating around.                                                                    

Here are old-time utility quilt fashioned a bit after the Amish style. I did these ones back in the 1970s. I see them now as sweet & naive.

In the same vein I made Byzantine Summer Fantasy which I gave to my sister Annie. It had some plaid silk in the patchwork & was embellished with sequins & beads.

 

Later I was inspired by something Joanna Steniskis made. I gathered her idea & some wonderful quotes from pre-school children & made this: The Tapestry of Children. This photo was taken when the piece was partially quilted up.

A quilt I gave my friend Judy MacIntosh. These have 4-patches making up 9-patches-- 9 blocks of them.

Dancing Under the African Sky. This was given to my cousin's daughter who was marrying a man from [then] Zaire. Not quite a cross, but the sense of 4 directions is strong.

These four are very much from the same period.

 

When my mother died in 1981 I made this 4-directions quilt about her & her 4 children going in their 4 directions. In this image it is hung in a window!

This quilt I made to raffle off as a fundraiser for a play-gound-building project. Quite dramatic on a bed.

These last two crosses were made at the beginning of my breaking-out period where I was trying out various new modalities.

 

That's it for now.