Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Quilting notes continued

I'm still working on the wedding quilt top. Breaking up sections of mixed fall colors with a band of pale fabric worked nicely, then great big blocks with simple triangle dags. They wouldn't make a great border because they are so much bigger than the patterns and blocks in the center section, but they should make a reasonable edge around the top of the bed, and then the last layer, with another light border before and after, will be smaller pieces in bars on the sides and top and bottom. Those small pieces and mixed colors will be more like the center section again and pull the whole together inside and out. At least that's the theory. The smaller pieces also allow me to mix in more fabrics in small quantities without the uniqueness of them being obvious and making them out of place. Because it's a wedding quilt, that outer border will have some satin and some baby flannels with little footprints and rubber duckies besides more fall colors.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The story in the quilt

Whether as a way to pass the time as I do the most tedious bits of quilting, or as a way to help me decide on all the elements as I go (I'm not one for doing an overall, repeating pattern and often do scrappy, which is to say mix-and-match colors and patterns rather than the same fabrics throughout for each part of a pattern), I often have a meaning, a message, or just my own idea of a "story" in almost every quilt I've done, even if most of the time the message is not one I expect anyone to even know or guess.

For Quilts of Valor, the basic message is usually obvious and well known - I appreciate the soldiers wounded for their country enough to make a quilt for them and show that they are a hero by using the colors of the flag or some variation thereon (it might be pastels or country colors (indigo, rose, and cream) rather than the heraldic bright red, white, and blue). Still, there might be other less obvious elements as well, less than symetric stars to represented the wounded hero, pieces large and small as representative of family members, symbols of the military forces or a particular military force. And sometimes I'll use fabric with words expressive of the soldier's assumed qualities, like courage and patriotism, or messages of my wishes for them, such a hope, joy, peace, and comfort. If I can't find a fabric that does the trick, I might use the words or associated symbols as part of the quilting pattern, never expecting them to be noticed but wanting them to be there none-the-less.

Currently I'm working on a wedding quilt and it will be filled with messages and story's, too, though I expect virtually none but the most obvious symbols of hearts and rings for love and commitment to be noticed. The colors are generally darker than I might otherwise have chosen but they have picked a fall wedding and fall colors tend toward the darker and I went with that. It includes new and older fabrics (from the store and the stash, respectively). I don't know the couple well (she is family but not often seen in her youth) so the story isn't about them but about marriage life: bright colors and patterns for pleasant times and parties, and a few dark squares, even black because marriage and life is never without its sorrows. There will be a few patches from baby quilts as representative of the wish for fertility and a next generation. The inner section includes a wide rings of simple (but colorful squares), then a border of cream, then a new pattern of bigger blocks of triangles, at least according to the current plan, the whole representing the changes through which relationships pass, the challenges and pleasures, and so on, with many messages and elements of the story yet to be decided. I may add a pocket in the center or on each side for love notes, a house, figures in quilting or embroidery though probably not pieced unless I find myself with an unexpected lot of extra time--I've gotten early start but know my time disappears fast!

Many quilts convey other messages through block names (isolated stars, yellow flower blocks, and mixes of beach blue, sand yellow, and streams of black might together be representative of Texas--lone star state, yellow roses, beaches and desserts and crude oil--for example). the closest I've come to that sort was in the quilting, when I drew pictures on the back of a blue crazy quilt that were representative of my life to that point - place I'd been, holidays, family members, hobbies, each topic gathered in a section of the quilt. These days, ti might be expected to be in color and more visible, perhaps embroidered, but at the time white was the favored color of quilting thread so they are all white on light blue and take a little study. With the colorful side up they are invisible, but the story is still there for the finding on some chilly evening fit for remmenising.

Most. though are more subtle, with colors that might mean something to the maker but no one else, a scrap from a past project that recalls memories of that project and why it was made, or left undone, a complex pattern that reminded the maker of something from their shared past with the recipient, a pinwheel to represent a company logo, a dancer to remind of shared adventures or classes or dates, a flower to represent spring or summer, joy or romance, gardening or art. Only the maker might ever know.

Nest time you plan a craft project, or receive one, take a closer look at the design and the making. What message has the maker offered with each stitch?

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Price of healthy eating

Play with the math. It's easy to say that some of the healthiest foods re expensive - I am always shocked at how expensive a tiny bit of berries can be, even in season, and the best green vegetables cost more than meat, sometimes, so it becomes easy to say that they are out of the budget. However, sweets and chips typically cost even more per serving unless they are made at home. And a dinner out - way more! So if you are trying to persuade yourself that you should do something, and keep coming against the cost, look for something that can be given up, or that you should be giving up and do the math there. If that's not enough, look up the price of paying for medicine and surgery. With even basic off-the-shelf pain relievers going up, the price of healthy eating starts to look easier to digest.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Some observations on quilting

I haven't so much studied the history of quilting as been exposed to it by my efforts to find ideas for quilts to make. Also, some of my quilt group are quite active in shows and all (I'm just a diletante), so I've become aware of the continuing changes in the art and craft of quilting. Mostly I've noticed that through it's history, it's had two very distinct pieces which have developed independently as well as together and have come into conflict as their paths have become more intertwined.

Quilting came long before piecing (patch-working multiple fabrics together), a way of creating padding for under armor in the middle ages, elaborate and decorative stitching on white or other solid-colored fabric.

Patchwork blankets and such seem to have come along later and from a much different direction, literally patching on existing blankets, or simple blocks tied to other layers with stitching only around the edges. Somewhere in the 19th century, the two came together into stitched, colorful quilts in any number of patterns and colors, or crazy unpatterned mixes blended together with underlying color themes or embroidery.

The quilting part of the mixed quilts, though, still remained a thing of it's own, sometimes playing a dominant role in simple pieced quilts, sometimes a minor role, doing barely more than hold top and bottom and batting together. In most cases it seems, the top was pieces and the whole quilted by the same person, sometimes with the very same stitches (certain kinds of applique), but often separate, with no one ever perfectly satisfied on how much the piecing and quilting should be related, whether the quilting can be an overall pattern independent of the colors and shapes of the top, whether the stitching should follow the piecing exactly or in echo, or to what degree a bit of both might apply as space filler, to decorate the back, or as a different art sharing the space.

It's not always a craft for one, however, and some quilters prefer one part and some the other and some think the two should be inter-related in a way hardly possible without a single vision by a single artist. Early and late and places in between, the roles have been separated. Quilting bees, for example, were almost always about one person's top being put together by a group of quilters. These days, with machine quilting available with large and very expensive machines, many top-makers have someone else do the quilting. With it again comes the potential for conflict, as the top maker and the quilter have different visions of the end product. And these days, quilting threads come in a lot more colors, and multiple colors. There is no set tradition of blending with the colors of the fabric, back or front, and a often as not a contrasting color might be chosen to make the quilting stitches and their patterns more visible. With machine quilting, there's also more ease involved in using lots more quilting than is needed to put the top, batting, and backing together than when quilts are hand quilted.

And at the same time, sewing techniques possible only with a machine allow much more complex piecing, too. Can both the piecing and the quilting be strong and complex without causing chaos? Should the quilting enhance the piecing, or can the piecing, however difficult and complex and artfully created be little more than a colorful canvas for the complex and artfully contrasting colors of an elaborate quilting design? If the quilter wants to do elaborate patterns, couldn't they jut go back to the beginning and use a single-color fabric? What about the two crafts draws them ever back to each other like the proverbial opposites?

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Writing to the future

I wonder sometimes if the stuff that is the most painful to write is also the stuff that's best to write. So little on the shelves (what will replace that phrase when it's e-books? We don't yet have much of an electronic vocabulary with which to work) seems to have the depth and substance of the past great novels or deep consideration in nonfiction, though true stories of drama and struggle do well enough on the surface.

Or not so much painful as merely difficult. It surprises me less by the day that science fiction struggles as a genre and needs more scientists to help it along the way. How else can we write of the future, when today is so rapidly changing? We can hardly approach a distant future ideal (save through philosophy, which has a large untapped potential) when we have 100,000 new apps in less than year? Who can even know what they all provide much less understand the trends of what people are choosing to use and why; but it is in the answer to such questions that we must find the new themes for future-based science fiction worth the writing. How can the current generations appreciate the vision of writers when their own parents still wrote school papers long hand? (We thought medieval paleography a challenge and quills a curiosity; what about a generation from now where writing with pen is an antique art form and yesterday's technology already out of date? In the beginning, science fiction was writing about a century two forward based on the technology and trends of past decades of developments. The science fiction writer today is essentially writing about tomorrow based on what they know of yesterday. Time travel stories had to go back a generation or centuries to show massive changes. Now a few years will suffice. The internet may not be into its second decade, but that long ago we still had phone booths.

Still, other areas have not kept up and leave the science fiction writer with room to work. Besides the boom in understanding of psychology that still has room to grow, and medicine, transportation is still well behind the curve. Cars are still rarely the electric or hybrid dreams of 100 miles to the gallon that we hoped for by now, and metro's are still clunky and slow to expand. Transportation has yet to make its leap into the new century, and sharing of technology and knowledge is ahead of the practical application of the same (the physical act of production work is different than the drawing board and requires a better educated workforce than many countries can yet provide, despite the claim to an information age). And emotional intelligence is still a beginner in the arc of development. Knowledge doesn't help if we aren't read to let it in and change management theories, like many advances in technology and information, are slow to make it into the work place to the degree needed to make the real difference.

Nor am I sure that the next generation, the one that has started working or those not yet there, are any more ready to take on the challenges facing managers and decision makers today. Some have been taught team work, but in my observation, too much is co-dependence, the reliance on finding team mates who are are better at the things we find hard, instead of the interdependence (shared independence) that gives the willingness to take on the hard stuff in case no one else can, to be one of the leaders in case the others are followers. Such things remain fuel for writing about the future but, unlike mere technology, is hard to tackle in a fun, exciting story form that reaches out to both heart and mind. If science fiction writers can go there, the genre will do well. Otherwise the new genre of popular consciousness will be whichever one can.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Scrapbook as info resource?

I have stacks of stuff I've decided to keep "as reference" - articles on healthy foods, articles for what to do in various kinds of emergencies, home health, lots of bits of information that I think could be useful in some story or another - not just the biomes but heraldry, horses, falconing, technology tid bits, culture and psychology. A bunch of clippings with mostly textual information, some sketches or pictures, not the pretty scrap book of today's craft and art, and yet it could be done in a decorative way. Pictures related to the topic at hand, pictures to help find the topic quickly... And like the pictures, they don't have to hand straight. The variety of text fonts, styles, and sizes would add visual interest, just like notes and sketches in the classic travel journal and research journal in days before computers and cheap cameras.

Of course, the sorting is more difficult than any trip or family scrapbook: information on a thousand topics is not easily sorted. The computer has made sorting so easy - alphabetize one minute, categorize and sort again in a few steps, date order or priority order or something else more mechanical but drop and drag and done. Sheets can be sorted in most scrapbook albums, but deciding is challenging, and getting it right manually, one page at a time leaves lots of room for error. Two sided pages adds another challenge unless every little grouping takes an even number of sides.

If it's more focused--a hobby, a more specific interest--maybe the order doesn't matter so much. A small press published a book on dragons that looked like the classic researchers journal with sketches, folded maps, notes about the clippings and sketches as well as observations. It was a cool looking book, fun to page through, very tactile, and the sequence didn't matter at all. Stop and read at any point, page through forward and back, add your own notes and clippings from magazines and newspapers... That's a real journal, and a wonderful sort of scrapbook that we sometimes forget with all the decorative borders and stickers. The stickers with the quotes are more the thing, but clippings from catalogs, newspapers and magazines and short commentary thereon (my historic heart says date it) or personally selected quotes, hand copied or transcribed is more the thing, and ideally with a dip pen and ink (okay, that's a personal preference, my favorite way to write though not all papers can handle the liquid ink). Paging through that to find information I personally found and selected, that's a feeling that no amount of computer queries can provide. And as historian, i can imagine the sense of personal history than even a primarily informational collection can provide, spiced as it were with opinions as much as choices, observations and experience as well as the information that was available to the person at the time. All the queries of resources, even date indexed, won't give that, and touching that collection, seeing the flourishes in the writing, or stiff printing with an awkward hand, even a finely detailed blog or on line journal can't quite capture that personal touch, that sense of presence that lingers in things that people have touched.

Scrapbook as history, too.