Flooded Lizard Kingdom

I do apologize. I've been a bit distractified.

You see, I'm writing elsewhere too. Yes, I know, you are the most important readers. However, unless you're going to start sending me checks, I feel I must see other people as well. After six months of all-baby-all-the-time, it's time for some Real Work around here.

(All of you who have children are now laughing, yes?)

In case you are behind on what I've been up to, I am blogging about environmental issues in crafting at Crafting A Green World, part of the Green Options network which is totally for great justice. They have a food blog and a fashion and style blog as well, and then a good number of other blogs that are much more serious and also quite good.

Hey look, a commercial on my blog!

Seriously, though, y'all know I'm all about shaming you for using plastic bags saving the world, and I feel good about working with these folks. So stop by and check us out. Or if you just want to see what I've been doing, visit my own personal corner of the GO empire.

I just caught the baby staring at the Bernina with a huge grin on his face.

Our good friend SBW has been working to ensure that baby's first word is "quilt," with "craft" as a backup. Perhaps it's working?

Those of you who know me are aware that I shy away from 3-d sewing, preferring the flat world of quilts. It's a bit odd, since I started my sewing habit by making clothes, both for myself and my Barbies. (Yes, I admit it.) However, Victoria Everman posted a list of Top 5 Must-Have DIY Sewing Tomes at new blog Crafting a Green World - and despite my aversion to 3-d, I found myself strangely tempted. 99 Ways to Cut, Sew & Deck Out Your Denim? Hmm, there's a whole rack of denim at Goodwill just waiting to be explored...

The book I would add to Victoria's list is Second Time Cool: The Art of Chopping Up a Sweater by by Anna-Stina Linden Ivarsson, Katarina Brieditis, and Katarina Evans. Though I live in warm and friendly Austin, there are a couple of weeks out of the year when it's on the chilly side. February, basically. And I hate being cold. So I wanted to check out what I could do with great wool sweaters that have fallen victim to holes. I have a few here, and I regularly see them at thrift stores. Second Time Cool delivered. Even for someone who doesn't want to do a lot of hand sewing and embellishment, mittens and scarves are easy. If you want to do something funkier, there are wrist cuffs, necklaces, and even skirts. So now I'm trying to decide whether I'd rather wear the blue sweater in my drawer or felt it and chop it up.

After all, I have several more weeks until it gets cold here. Surely I can take on a new craft during the baby's naps and bust out some winter accessories?

1. Gee's Bend - Ties and Christmas Ornaments, blogged by Kyra E. Hicks at her blog Black Threads. (Ms. Hicks is the author of several books on quilting. If you're into quilts and you're not reading her blog yet, why not?) Yummy ornaments, ties, and other Gee's Bend designs.
2. Crafting a Green World, a new blog at GreenOptions.com, covers eco-friendly crafting books, events, companies, and more. It's just started, so head over and give them some love.
3. This 404 page is overwhelming, but amusing.
4. Wallpapers and screensavers from National Geographic, via this post on etc.. Lovely.
5. Where cats go when they die.

Friday in the craft blog world is Work In Progress (WIP) Friday. So here are the three quilts I have in progress. In progress, in this case, means started but not finished. I'm not really making much progress lately... for some reason...

1. Purple, Green, and Cream colored quilt for our king-sized bed. We planned on 12 inch blocks, randomly arranged. We laid out the rows across the bed. Then we realized it would look cooler if the rows were different widths. So I sewed the rows together, then cut two of them apart into skinnier rows. One was cut in half, the other was cut into 1/3 and 2/3. If we could manage to lay it back out to choose the new order of the rows pretty soon, I think it could get done by the end of the year. I'm eyeing Thanksgiving weekend hopefully, since there will be people around to cuddle the baby.

2. Earlier attempt at a quilt for our bed, made entirely of scraps of previous projects. 2160 rectangles, each 2.5 by 3.5 inches. You can perhaps understand why this didn't get done, and we moved on to the 12 inch blocks idea. (Side note: when I suggested putting this one on hold and trying to get the other one done before the baby was born, C-Man expressed trepidations about starting another project before this one was completed. Ha ha ha ha ha! He is not a crafter.) But this is a nice one to do in 20 minute increments here and there, because it's just chain piecing and there's no risk I'll run out and have to stand up and iron any time soon.

3. T-shirt quilt for a certain someone who helped me paint my quilt studio. I am trying not to feel guilty about not getting this done before I had the baby, since I know the recipient doesn't hold it against me, but I wish I had finished it already. I don't know when I would have done it, but I wish I had.

The Recycled Yarn Tutorial

I'm always interested to see people's thoughts about who makes quilts and what quilts are like.

Christine Liu, a guest poster on Decor8, saluted hip quilter Denyse Schmidt but contrasted her work with Christine's image of quilting: "At least for me, quilting seems still relatively entrenched in the German Dutch tradition and midwestern generational home-making." Then Brent Myers, a Decor8 reader, commented that "I've been looking for books that teach you how to take traditional ways and put a new spin on them." Decor8 posted his his cool men's suiting quilt the next day. (Definitely check it out.)

Then on Whip-up I saw the post International Quilt Festival: What's a Modernist To Do?:

The show always makes us feel a bit lonely, wondering whether or not there will ever be a critical mass of really interesting quilters at one of these shows. There are some contemporary quilts on display but few vendors carrying fabrics or books we would buy. Mostly there were a whole lot of versions of 19th century patterns and predictable novelty fabrics one might expect to find used in pediatric nurses’ uniforms. Need any tea-stained lace? How about a CD you can stick in your sewing machine so it can automatically embroider a Disney character onto your quilt? Lonely, very, very lonely.

I blinked a little bit after reading these. I forget that not everyone has gone through the process I did. When I started quilting I saw all the boring junk, but since then I've developed a bit of selective blindness. The quilting industry flourishes because of the huge market for pastels, florals, novelty prints, patterns for traditional blocks, etc. However, I've tuned it out. Unless I'm making a kid quilt, in which case novelty prints can come in handy. When I'm at IQF, I don't notice how many booths are full of boring stuff, because I'm caught by all the booths that offer hand-dyes, batiks, and Japanese fabrics. (Though the 2005 show did seem a little drab.)

My dominant impressions of quilters are people like Ruth McDowell, Judy Dales, and Hollis Chatelain, who are seriously boundary-exploding artists. They are the stars of the quilt world, the sought-after speakers and teachers, and the award-winners. I guess I look to them and others like them as what "defines" quilting for me, rather than the mass-marketed products that support the industry.

In fact, I've stopped subscribing to one of the quilt magazines I've taken for over 5 years because it's full of pictures of modern, artistic quilts and I'm getting tired of it. I'd rather focus more right now on things I might actually make.

I'm not saying these folks are wrong to feel that way. When I first tried to get involved in the Austin Area Quilt Guild I thought I was doomed to hearing about Sunbonnet Sue for the rest of my life. But there's a heck of a lot out there on how to break out of the block-block-block-all-identical-all-pastel routine, even before this recent crop of hip young quilters.

The hip young quilters are cool, though, and you should check them out. Kim from Dioramarama is a Whip-Up quilt correspondent who knows her stuff when it comes to the intersection of art and quilt. Check out her profiles of quilters Wendy Huhn, Lisa Call, and Angela Moll. Way to smash those preconceptions, ladies! And I'm loving Denyse Schmidt's new book.

But don't ignore it.

Attitude.

Science fiction.

There, aren't you happy you didn't ignore it? Especially you, I-ROCK. I know how you love robots and the undead.

Yesterday I did get off the computer as promised and work on a quilt. Though it did not have the mood-lifting properties I was hoping for, I got a lot done.

This will become one of the two quilts for Jped's twin girls:

I'm still deciding whether this blue is a good border (it's brighter in reality than in the picture). It sort of jangles me to add a blue border to a red, yellow, and cream quilt, but adding a red or yellow border looked like overkill. We shall see.

This is the quilt that I was trying to complement, which I got up on the wall in March:

I didn't want to make these two quilts matchy-matchy just because the girls are twins, but I didn't want one to look amazingly more elaborate and complicated than the other. Because of the fighting, y'know.

But here's the question. When you're making quilts for twins, which one is for which?

52 Projects: A Not-To-Do List

Having re-read that list, I'm going to get off the computer and work on a quilt.

Use What You Have Month originated with a post at Simple Sparrow. Every quilter I know has what's called a "stash," and apparently it's common to other kinds of crafters as well. The idea is that for the month of April, you only make projects from what you already have in your stash. I cheated by going to the fabric store on Thursday to buy a yard of neutral for the background of one of my works in progress. But other than that, I think I'm going to finish up quilts for JPed's twin girls this month just out of what I already have.

It's kind of a nice antidote to the American shop-shop-shop mentality.

I do worry (imagine that!) about how much pesticide is used to produce all the cotton I buy for quilting. So it's nice to see organic fabrics starting to come out. Check out HarmonyArt and Mod Green Pod. They aren't really for quilting, but I'm confident we'll get there.

I suppose I wasn't really minding my own business, since I was reading the newspaper. But I was reading a nice Statesman article by Jean Scheidnes on the Austin Craft Mafia and their TV show on DIY, when all of a sudden:

The dialogue assumes a fair amount of viewer knowledge about sewing, of which I have none, but the hosts' cuteness is enough to make me want to learn. I can't even do simple mending; I usually take it home to my mommy. A lot of my friends are the same way. I guess the reason for this is the same reason a lot of us can barely cook. Anything falling under the rubric of home economics was stamped out of our education by feminism.

I'm sorry, what?

I'm grateful for the feminist movement, obviously, because it made all kinds of skills, careers and achievements available to women. But it's time we stopped denying ourselves these other valuable skills.

Where do I even start?

As regular readers will recall, I declared on October 22nd that I would finish 10 unfinished projects in 100 days. That deadline was January 31st. How did I do?

Well, on November 16th I reported that I had finished three projects, but I neglected to specify which they were. Basically, three baby blankets that had been started a year previously. Quite boring, not worth pictures.

Now I will report the rest of the projects in the order they were dealt with. Summary: 9 completed, 1 with a plan for completion.

A while back I posted a commitment to finish all my languishing quilting projects within 100 days, which means January 31. I identified 10 eligible projects. I'm pleased to report that three of these projects are completed, though not without incident.

No, I didn't injure myself with overly sharp scissors. Nor did I puncture my finger with a needle and have to put on a bandaid lest I bleed on the fabric (this time).

This incident began with a simple project, as described in my previous post: "Lightweight flannel that needs to be made into a super-large baby blanket. I made one already for my sister last fall when my nephew couldn't sleep without being swaddled. I had so much trouble with it that I wanted to use starch on the second one, but then it took me forever to buy starch and now I'm afraid of it. Note to self: deal."

The starch in question was a bottle of liquid starch, rather than an aerosol can. I haven't bought anything in an aerosol can since...1998? So why start now?

You can't see it in this picture, but the bottle says it's equivalent to 8 aerosol cans. At no time did I consciously believe that I would have gone through 8 aerosol cans to starch a baby blanket's worth of flannel. But the instructions gave ratios for mixing the starch with water, so I started to measure water into the sink until I got to the amount I needed to cover the fabric. At that point, I had measured enough water that for MEDIUM starch, I was supposed to add the entire bottle.

Medium sounds nice and middle of the road, right? Not too little, not too much?

I've been reading small hands for a long time. It's written by an African-American (I think - this may be my term and not hers) single mom lawyer who does things with crafts and food that make me envious. She signs herself "a."

Recently she highlighted an idea offered by acechick. It's called the finish along. Acechick's concept was to have knitters swap and finish each other's languishing projects, the ones that are practically done but just need finishing. Finishing is apparently some technical knitting term that surely involves witchcraft.

a. of small hands proposed a variant where you commit to finishing your own unfinished projects and post the pictures on your blog as you go. She set herself a deadline: 3 quilts, 100 days. She's already finished her first one. I never thought I was that big on white sashing, but with the quilting she's done it's quite lovely. All y'all quilters out there should check it out.

I have 9 projects sitting on my quilt rack waiting to be finished, after having spent $3200 on a new sewing machine in March that I have barely used yet. Some of these projects just need quilting and binding, one needs borders. I hereby commit to finishing them all in the next 100 days:

From left to right, oldest to newest:

• Alien baby quilt, started in 1998 for myself. I made a replica for a friend's daughter, but never finished my own. it needs quilting.
• Round fish quilt, for me. Started in...1999? Needs quilting and binding.
• Tiny paper-pieced wall hanging, I think the block is called Oddfellows. Started in Boston c. 1999, needs quilting and binding.
• Lightweight flannel that needs to be made into a super-large baby blanket. I made one already for my sister last fall when my nephew couldn't sleep without being swaddled. I had so much trouble with it that I wanted to use starch on the second one, but then it took me forever to buy starch and now I'm afraid of it. Note to self: deal.
• Bugs quilt, which I bought the fabric for two years ago. It's for my nephew Nicholas, who is now one and a half. Needs quilting and binding.
• Lizard baby blanket with ribbon "tags", needs quilting. I made this prototype for myself this spring to figure out how to make the green one for my nephew, which is next.
• Green "tinkertoys" blanket with ribbon "tags." I dreamed up the idea while visiting my sister in Colorado a year ago, because my nephew was in the stage where he was obsessed with grabbing tags on clothing and trying to eat them. This needs quilting. It will be for the new baby in my sister's household, since by now my nephew is past the tag stage.
• Ocean quilt, for my friend E's baby daughter. I got it pieced before she was born this spring, then it fell by the wayside. Needs quilting and binding.

And on the wall:

• Crop circles quilt, started as a holiday present for my ex-husband in 1999. Though I wish with all my heart that I could do over the machine applique (it's a mess), I'm not going to. It needs squaring and probably an additional border to stabilize it, then quilting and binding.

100 days from now is, I think, January 31st. Time to get moving. After all, my sister's having another baby and Jped and his wife are having twins, so I have three more commitments behind these old projects!

The term Quilt Bee is used in the Austin Area Quilt Guild for a small group within the 600+ member Guild that meets regularly to sew together. I coordinate the Bee that I'm in, so I'm officially a Beekeeper.* Our Bee is called the Material Girls because we range in age from about 25 to 40, rather than the 55-65 that is prevalent in the Guild as a whole. Yes, I'm not the only one!

So I arrived at the Bee meeting Wednesday night with a jumbled pile of folded fabric and quilt blocks in various stages of being disassembled - which meant that my first step for the evening was to sort everything back out.

At my quilt group meeting on Sunday, we discovered a new threshold for judging whether we're too obsessed with our textile-related hobbies.

L's friend is into weaving, so she bought a sheep.

She lives in a suburb, so she boards the sheep outside of town. She shears it herself, twice a year.

LIVESTOCK are involved in this woman's sewing hobby.

Compared to this, moving the framed poster in my living room to another location so I have a place for the 6' X 6' design wall (it sticks to the wall, blocks stick to it, you can see what the quilt will look like) seems like no big deal.

It's not like I bought a SHEEP!

But if I start planting cotton on the patio, please intervene.

I just put on my Tank Girl shirt, jeans, and Doc Martens to go to my quilting group meeting.

*contented sigh.*

Yesterday, after much foot-dragging, I sent a message to the listserv of the Austin Area Quilt Guild asking if anyone would be interested in forming a small meeting group (called a Bee) of quilters in their 20's and 30's. Within five hours I had nine responses from women were excited about finding a niche within/in addition to the general Guild activities. Several of them mentioned their desire to have a place where they felt they had more in common than they feel with the Guild membership as a whole.

This was no surprise, for at least two reasons. First, the Guild's membership, as one would expect, is skewed more toward the AARP end of things. Second, the Guild has gotten quite large. To its credit, the leadership realizes that it has become challenging for everyone to feel as though they belong, and they are beginning to focus on offering more opportunities to get involved and connected.

What did surprise me was receiving an email from a long-time member of the Guild that inquired why I would want to "limit" the Bee by age group.

The folks at Laboratory Computers are now responsible for bringing my machine back to life. Replacing the power supply resulted in nothing but a burning smell and a deep fear for the CPU. *sigh*.

The only upside is that I got a lot of quilting done this weekend because all my other hobbies are apparently dependent on the computer. It was just the sewing machine and me...and the DVD player going through about 15 episodes of Farscape in a row. ;) What *would* I do with my time if there were no electricity?

A. taunted me for not blogging, and that's fair. If I'm going to have this thing, I should use it.

Today and yesterday, F. was here quilting for the last time before she moves to Montana. We got a lot done and it was extremely entertaining to boot. The previous evening, I had a conversation with my friend B. in which she blamed her lack of quilting on not having anyone to quilt with. I scolded her for a lack of devotion, but I have to admit that my productivity and creativity are definitely lower than when I was in Boston and had scads of people to keep me company and make me use pink.

My ex-husband used to ask what we did in the quilting meetings - like, drink tea? I told him we cursed and talked about sex, which is true. But we also helped each other on design or technical issues, even when our tastes were very different. It was ok to do your own thing.

I did not get such a vibe from the "ladies" at the quilt show here in town when I volunteered. They didn't seem to know what to do with someone who didn't already know everyone, and when I couldn't identify some easy to grok traditional style of quilting as my particular flavor, they didn't have much to say to me. I know the intergenerational gap is hard to bridge, but my grandfather called me last week to talk about finding a suitable relational database for his genealogy research, so I know it can be done. I felt game to try with the quilt guild people. It didn't work.

But I'm going to try again. Tomorrow evening is the quilt guild meeting, and I shall attend and see if I can get in the swing of things. They have "bees", which are groups that meet to sew together, and maybe I could do that. The Art Quilt bee I signed up for last time ended up being a discussion bee held at a non-public transportation-friendly coffeeshop. Ah well. We'll see if life has improved.