Posts filed under ‘Organization’
Hooray for Quilt Guild Retreat!
“Summer’s just around the corner!”
On a recent weekend I attended the spring retreat for my quilt guild. I’m determined to get my 2007 Shop Hop quilt finished for our guild show in June, so I didn’t bring any other quilts to work on. (More on that shortly.) However, I knew that it’s not good for me to sit in one position for too long at a stretch, and I wanted to have something productive to do while I pondered any quilting decisions. Therefore, I also brought my scrap bag:
Do you like my “Coach bag”?
As I’ve previously posted, I’ve been trying to implement Bonnie Hunter’s Scrap User’s System. I’ve been doing pretty well with cutting up scraps as I cut fabric for new quilting projects, but I still have a huge backlog from before I started. Every time I felt like I needed to stretch my back or walk around, I’d meander over to the cutting table and cut scraps for a while. I estimate that through the course of the weekend, I probably spent 3 hours sorting and cutting up scraps. I had a nice collection of strips, blocks, and squares to show for my efforts by Sunday afternoon:
Strips, bricks, and squares from above
It looks like a lot of fabric, doesn’t it?
And here’s an “after” shot of my scrap bag:
Really. No tricks, no photoshop.
Yeah. Really. No kidding. I did not stage this in any way; I didn’t fluff up the scraps, or pick up anyone else’s. Either the fabrics were extremely compacted in there and I just relieved some of the pressure on them, or I have some sort of bottomless, loaves and fishes scrap bag. And that’s a miracle I do NOT need in my life, thanks! So, my “Coach bag” will be a presence in my studio for a while yet.
Anyway, I did spend the majority of the weekend quilting the Shop Hop sampler quilt. At the December retreat, I had completed all the stitching in the ditch and had quilted freehand feathers in the plaid setting triangles of the center strip:
At this retreat, I finished the setting triangles and quilted all 18 sampler blocks. This presented an interesting challenge, as nearly every block required me to come up with an entirely different quilting design. There were a few piecing doubles that gave me an intellectual rest. (As an aside, do we have a term for that in quilting: two blocks that are identical in the piecing, but appear different due to different value placement? If not, I’m thinking of something along the lines of the homonym/homograph/homophone terminology, but I don’t know who gets to determine these things. It’s not cut and dried like paleontology where the person who discovers the new fossil species gets to name it.) But with very few exceptions, each new block I came to was a new puzzle to solve. This added to the difficulty level but also kept the process much more interesting; repeating the same design 18 times would have gotten monotonous.
I still have a significant amount of work to do in the remaining six weeks before the show, but I know I can meet the deadline without pulling a bunch of sleepless nights. And if I have to eat those words, I promise to do it publicly.
And as always, I had a wonderful time at the retreat. It’s such a renewing experience to be surrounded by other quilters. And when you’re eating, sleeping, and breathing quilting, you start to see quilts everywhere. This was the floor in our bathroom:
I see square-within-a-square and on-point four-patches.
So Quilty I Haven’t Quilted
I've been on the road!
quilty: quilt-y [kwil-tee] -adjective quilt-i-er, quilt-i-est.
1. Related to, but not specific to the act of, quilting.
2. Characterized by, connected to, or involving quilts.
That’s my made-up word of the day. I’ve been very wrapped up in quilty activities lately, to the point of being too busy to actually quilt! This has happened to me plenty of times before, and I know I’m not the only one: shop owners have frequently spoken to me about how they spend all day surrounded by quilts, thinking about quilts, but not finding time to make quilts. My free time has been consumed by some very quilty adventures, each of which is deserving of its own post, but I wanted to give you an overview:
Sept. 16: PA National Quilt Extravaganza and quilt guild meeting
Sept. 23-25: Quilting with Machines, Huron, OH
Oct. 2: The Airing of the Quilts, Tunkhannock, PA
In between, I’ve been working, traveling, and sometimes doing both simultaneously; I left the day after the PA show to work a weekend military dental event in Edinburgh, Indiana, then left again for Ohio two and a half days after getting home. I’ve also been trying to reorganize the studio, because machine quilting requires lots of space, and little things I hadn’t dealt with were piling up and getting pushed off the edge of the table as I quilted. (At least I didn’t do what I once did, and inadvertently quilted a piece of scrap fabric ONTO THE BACK OF the quilt I was quilting. That was damn unpretty.) I now have new thread racks on the wall, including one for cones, so I don’t have thread stacked precariously on the closet shelf any more.
I have also continued a project I started last spring, tracing my quilting stencil collection out onto paper so I have a hard copy of the designs I already own, without having to pull the big portfolio of stencils out of the closet and rifle through them for ideas.
I like the portfolio for storage (an idea I got from Karen McTavish when I took her wholecloth design class many years ago) but it’s a little unwieldy for casual browsing, and leads too often to my ignoring my stencils when choosing quilting designs.
Now I’m well on my way to having a full-size catalog of my stencils that will be much easier to deal with. I’m also flirting with the idea of photographing all the pages into a notebook on my phone so I have a portable reference for shopping; I have to investigate whether that would be a poor use of phone memory or not.
I’m also trying to get caught up with my magazine filing. [Warning: if descriptions of borderline OCD behavior disturb you, you may not want to read about how I organize my quilting magazines.] For the last approximately six years, I have made an effort to stay on top of my ever-increasing collection of quilting magazines by periodically going through them, tearing out the pertinent articles, photos, and patterns, and placing them in plastic page protectors. I then organize them in binders, with subject tabs separating them first into articles, patterns, and inspirations, then further subdividing the articles into topics such as how-tos, history, and interviews; the patterns into paper piecing, curved piecing, applique, big prints, holiday, etc.; and the inspiration photos just into roughly similar groupings. [Look, I warned you. I also sort my M&Ms by color before eating them, you got a problem with that?]
Every year or so I also purge the existing binders of things that no longer appeal to me or that I have better examples of, but the acquisitions far outweigh the deletions. Suffice to say I currently have four 3″ binders absolutely bursting at the seams. They are extremely useful references, though, and I consult them often. It’s much easier than having to sort through piles or magazine boxes full of intact but unindexed issues; and I’ve resigned myself to the idea that if I missed anything, it surely is counterbalanced by the usefulness of the system. (Not to mention, these days, no information is ever truly lost, even if I recycled the magazine it was in.) But as with so many other ongoing quilty projects, I’d gotten behind with it, and now I’m almost caught up.
And finally, before all this new learning had a chance to get old in my brain, I’ve organized all my handouts and class notes from Quilting with Machines into yet another binder. Once again, I had started this project last year, adding to a kind of half-assed “quilt class notes” binder that I’d started years ago but hadn’t given a good effort to. Now both years’ worth of QwM notes are in one binder, properly organized, to which I’m even adding photos I took of class samples.
So while I still don’t have any completely finished projects to brag about, I’ve been making the most of my last month of permitted travel before “my confinement.” All I mean is that the OB doesn’t want me to be more than an hour from the hospital as of 36 weeks, which falls October 23; I just like phrasing it that way because I sound like a character from Jane Austen or “Gone with the Wind.” And I now have a much better organized sewing space, which will allow me to spend more time quilting and less time trying to move or find things as I deal with significantly curtailed hobby time once the baby comes.
More on the actual shows and events soon! With pictures of quilts instead of binders! I promise!
Wonderful Things for Retreats
Writing my home retreat post had me thinking about a few of the items I own that make it a whole lot easier to quilt in places other than my studio. So if you’ll indulge me in some delusions of Oprah, here are two of my favorite things. And no, nobody’s getting a car.
Although I only participate in a few events per year that require me to have portable quilting supplies, the following products certainly were in use in my dining room for the home retreat weekend and are among my favorite and most highly valued sewing-related purchases of all time:
Although I have a design wall in my studio, made of felt covering a piece of foam housing insulation and mounted to the wall, it’s only 4′ x 8′ because that’s how much wall space I have available in that tiny 9′ x 9′ room. It’s great for smaller projects or for individual blocks, but when it comes to a larger project it’s great to be able to break out the big gun. I actually bought the set of three Cheryl Ann’s Design Walls at Quilt Blossom Festival a few years ago: 6′ x 6′, 3′ x 3′, and 18″ x 18″. They came as a set for a show special price, which I recall being around $220. I probably should have just bought the 6′ x 6′, as it’s the only one I’ve used repeatedly, but I’m a sucker for a deal.
My initial thought was that I would use these for classes and retreats, plus the occasional setup in the upstairs hallway for a big quilt layout, but the sad reality is that my 6′ x 6′ design wall pretty much lives in my narrow little upstairs hallway full-time. I take it down only when someone is coming over for whom I like to maintain the pleasant fiction that I’ve grown up enough not to leave my toys out. The cats also enjoy it; we refer to it as the Fabulous Kitty Fun Tunnel. (I’ve written a jingle. And no, I’m not going to sing it.)
This design wall is one of those amazingly well-designed and -executed things with which I like to surround myself. It goes together and comes apart very easily; the corner pieces have a tendency to slip off but that’s easily fixed with a little wrap of electrical tape around the tips of the frame poles. The flannel came preshrunk and is washable, which is very nice considering one of my most frequent uses of the wall is for spray basting. And for the (rare) occasions when it isn’t standing in my hallway, it comes with its own carrying case and breaks down nicely into a portable package. The manufacturer has recently come out with a new accessory that they have made available as an add-on to previous purchasers, a move that always endears a manufacturer to me: stabilization rods that will help keep the easel-style support poles from slipping on wood or tile floors. I haven’t bought them, as I’ve only used the support poles once, for a workshop; I just assemble the frame and then lean it against the wall. But it’s nice that I could get them if I needed to.
I coveted one of these for years, but the $249 price tag kept me away. Then I went to MAQ in 2007, spent all weekend sewing happy little taupe winding ways blocks with my sewing machine up on one of their tables, and came home with horribly sore shoulders, neck, and back. A few weeks later I attended Quilt Odyssey, bit the bullet, and made one of the wisest investments in my quilting ever. The Sew Ezi table is light, collapsible, portable, easily stored, and once again, very well engineered. It is customizable to any machine so that the acrylic insert surrounds the machine bed, creating a flat, smooth surface conducive to machine quilting and placing the machine bed at a very ergonomic height. On ordering, you tell the company what machine you have, and they custom-cut the acrylic insert based on information from the manufacturer; you don’t have to measure your machine. You can also get multiple inserts to use the table with multiple machines, as well as an insert to use the table as a lightbox.
It was very easy to initially assemble, and continues to be virtually effortless to set up and put away. The wheels make it very easy to transport to and from the car, but are tucked neatly out of the way during use. I use it at retreats, at classes, in order to sew in rooms of my own house other than my studio, to sew with my mom at their house, and I even set it up in front of my studio sewing table when I’m machine quilting a large quilt, for extra support. Love it!
It’s easy to fall into the trap of shopping for quilting supplies instead of actually quilting. There are plenty of quilters out there who manage to have the time and money to acquire all the state-of-the-art notions, tools, machines, and accessories, but never seem to get around to actually quilting. (I’m trying not to be one of them.) But at the same time, there is no denying that having the right tools makes quilting far more enjoyable. Perhaps our foremothers quilted by candlelight with just a needle, thread, and a pair of scissors, but I don’t think they’d have turned down an Ott-Light, a Bernina, and a rotary cutter!
And In the Darkness Bind Them
The tone-on-tone storage is bursting at the seams
Another acronym I like is SABLE: Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy. That’s a problem I believe I already have unless I cut back radically on my fabric buying. There’s a quote I’ve loved for years, attributed to bibliophile A. E. Newton (italics mine):
“Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity… we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance.”
Substitute “fabric” for “books” and you get the philosophy that has led me to my current stash situation. I — like the title of the blog says — love fabric. I love the feel of it. I love the potential it represents. I love the surprises inherent in it: how the same fabric can be a light or a dark depending on its neighbors and how small it’s cut. I love it even when it disappoints me, when something that looked good in theory looks dreadful in reality, because that result is a manifestation of that same ability to surprise. I love the different effects that directional designs can create depending on the decisions I make with them. I’ve said in the past that I have no interest in computer design programs like EQ because if I knew exactly what it would look like before I made it, I’d never actually sew it up. However, I think I was even a little premature in saying that, because fabric is ALWAYS surprising. Even with the programs that allow you to scan in your actual fabric and design with the digital sample, it can’t create the true effect of the fabric.
...while the collections threaten to creep out of the closet
So every time I go to a quilt shop or a quilt show, I am inundated with The Dream: that every piece of fabric represents a fabulous project, just waiting for me to see its potential and bring it to fruition. Every fabric that catches my eye is a What If? — and that’s the most exciting question in my world. Novelty prints constantly call out to me with the potential to make gifts for the people in my life they remind me of. The most recent piece of fabric I’ve purchased (and this is me on a fabric diet) is covered with dachshunds wearing little shirts, to make something (what? and when?) for my mother-in-law.
The problem is, though, that I already own an embarrassing quantity of beautiful fabric. I’m not ashamed of that; it’s great to be able to make a project entirely out of what I already have, and it’s a wonderful feeling to find the perfect use for a favorite fabric I’ve held on to for years. What I’m ashamed of is the fact that it’s coming in to the stash so much faster than it’s being used. It’s a perfect metaphor for weight gain: because the acquisition is so much more easily pleasurable than the disposition, it just keeps piling on. And the key is the easy pleasure — I find quiltmaking very pleasurable, or I wouldn’t do it; it’s just that fabric shopping is a lot easier than cutting, piecing, appliqueing, or machine quilting, and gives instant gratification. However, the thrill of finding a beautiful piece of fabric and fantasizing about what I could potentially make from it resembles a little too closely the emotions I saw cross the face of one of the subjects of the A&E show “Hoarders” when he pulled a picture frame out of a dumpster.
...and shameful overflow piles occupy the basement.
I’ve become obsessed with the show “Hoarders” because I recognize a lot of my own tendencies in it. I am not a hoarder, as those of you who have been to my house know — but I recognize the impulses. It’s like the scene from “The Two Towers” where Frodo is rapturously stroking the One Ring while Gollum mimes the same action, remembering when he used to do the same thing. (It’s not on YouTube, I looked.) I, too, have felt the power of the Ring — I mean, the emotional pull that objects can have on a person. I want to make certain that I’m collecting fabric for good, constructive reasons, not for its own sake, or next thing I know, I’ll be Dumpster Guy.
So SABLE I’m OK with — within reason. I just need to watch out for FANGAWHODS: Fabric Acquisition that Negates a Girl’s Ability to Work in Her Own Damn Studio.
