Posts tagged ‘Libby Lehman’
The Final Word on QFNJ: The Judges’ Comments
I got home from work Tuesday to find two big boxes had arrived from UPS: my quilts are safely home. I can finally exhale that little breath I’ve been holding since I shipped them off nearly a month ago. Even though I saw them, safe and sound and hanging in the quilt show Sunday, it’s still a relief to have them home. Of course, the suspense of whether or not my quilts would return to me unscathed was immediately replaced with the suspense as to what the judges had said about them.
Now, I don’t have a very long history with judges’ comments; this is only the fourth judged show I’ve had quilts in. However, I believe in getting quilts judged, because I really want to get feedback from people who are trained to look at quilts differently and more dispassionately than I do. Having said that, I also know why quilters don’t get their quilts judged. Not quite two years ago, I got a judge’s comment that makes my blood boil to this day. I’m actually impressed that I ever entered a quilt for judging again after that experience. Here’s the quilt:
"Quilting Bee," 2008 (with feline embellishment)
It’s nothing special, just something fun I did with a stack of nine-patches from a guild block exchange. I’ve always liked the honeybee block, and it was an entertaining challenge to pick fabrics out of my stash for the machine applique that coordinated with the nine-patches made by other guild members. There was a preponderance of blue and yellow in the blocks, so I chose a dilute blue batik with traces of yellow in it as the background.
Detail, "Quilting Bee"
That, apparently, was my mistake. Because the judge said:
"Appears that marking pen has bled into some of the fabrics."
I recognize that part of this is my problem. This was never going to be a ribbon-winning quilt; I mainly wanted some feedback on my machine applique and machine quilting. As someone who recognizes and appreciates life’s little absurdities, I should have laughed at this. Instead, nearly two years later, it still infuriates me. Because how could someone who is trained and paid to know about quilts mistake a commercial fabric for blue washout marker? Besides, I never even touched a blue washout marker to this quilt! Anywhere!! Part of why I was proud of the machine quilting on this quilt was that it was completely no-mark!!!
Breathe… breathe…
OK, I’m back. But that’s the history I have when I read judges’ comments, so I thought you should know before I react to the current batch.
Detail, "Blue Butterfly Day"
What I thought they’d say: I expected to hear about the fact that I didn’t quilt inside the applique, which was a deliberate choice; I wanted the quilting to help create motion but not to blur the graphic strength of the butterflies. I also thought they might criticize my decision to use a narrow zigzag rather than a blind hem stitch in my turned-edge machine applique. There was also some slight show-through of seam allowances in some of the pieced blocks.
What they actually said:
"Great movement across the surface of the quilt. Blue is a good contrast with the black & white fabric. Amazing collection of black & white fabric. Try for a more consistent stitch length when quilting. Hand stitched binding adds refinement to the quilt."
I can’t really argue with any of that, other than the comment about the binding. Libby Lehman says that having judges pick on your binding is good, because it means there weren’t more egregious errors to call you out on. But I also like Ricky Tims‘ perspective on it (he teaches machine binding on his Grand Finale DVD) that they should judge you on how well you executed the technique you chose, rather than criticizing you for choosing that technique. For the record, I used the machine binding technique taught by Suzanne Michelle Hyland, on her DVD “Sew Precise, Sew Fast Machine Binding.” And I think I did a nice job.
Detail, "Kyoto Ink"
What I thought they’d say: I didn’t quilt the two purple sashing borders sufficiently. I quilted a spine in each of them, planning on doing a feather variation or something out of Megan Best’s “Spinal Twist,” and I ran out of time before delivering it to Quilter’s Palette. Then, since it was done in my mind, I never went back to it. I also expected a comment about thread tension in the quilting, and possibly some criticism of my accuracy in quilting in the ditch.
What they actually said:
"Graphically pleasing quilt. Interesting choice of colors reflecting the oriental theme. A difficult binding technique well handled. Take care to get stitch length consistent when quilting."
Again, not much I can dispute here. I know that quilting stitch length consistency remains a challenge for me (after all, they mentioned that twice!) But I also know that I’ve gotten significantly more consistent in recent years, so hopefully I will either continue to improve, or break down and buy a BSR (probably not.) I definitely appreciated their mentioning, for both quilts, my fabric selections; I think that is one of my greatest strengths as a quilter. I also really appreciated their highlighting the binding on this one, because that was a chore, and I obsessed over it.
Additionally, I like when quilt show judges balance their critiques. I’m glad that the QFNJ judges, Gloria Loughman and Lois Smith, both amazing quilters in their own right, made the effort to give positive comments as well as emphasizing the areas that need improvement, and that they gave the criticism constructively. I’m not a delicate flower who can’t be leveled with, but it’s unhelpful for a judge to say, “bad machine quilting,” without clarifying what about it was bad or how the quilter should go about improving it.
So apparently, the judges agree that I’m a promising quilter with room to improve. That’s an assessment I can live with.
But I’m still going to put some of my bindings on by machine. And I can live with that, too.
Meet the UFOs! Part I: Lemoyne Star
I can’t put all my UFOs up at once, or this would be the longest post in blog history, but I have to start somewhere, and I may as well start with one that I never dreamed would end up unfinished. As with so many dysfunctional relationships, it all started so well…
Complementary Color Lemoyne Star
My friend Diane and I took a class from Barbara Lenox in 2003 (or so) on Lemoyne stars. I definitely needed a class, because my first attempt at sewing together 45-degree diamonds resulted in bra cups rather than blocks. Now, Barbara has a reputation for being a tough teacher because she insists that you do things her way. But her way works, and what did you come to class for if you just wanted to do things the same old nonworking way?
As part of this, she had us make our class blocks using red and green diamonds. She didn’t want to have to talk about light and dark, or fabric A and fabric B, she wanted to be able to say, “Put the red diamond on top of the green diamond” and have everyone on the same page. It was very effective, but at the end of class I had red and green stars on a pink background, as I hadn’t wanted to make Christmas blocks. They were beautiful and flat — not even a training bra.
At this point in my quilt life, I believed myself to be a finisher. I was not comfortable with the idea of putting these blocks in a drawer for some mythical future project; I wanted to make a quilt. A big, bed-size quilt. And I had just bought my mom a book about two-block secondary designs. So I made a total of 12 Lemoyne star blocks, using complementary colors from the color wheel as the star points with pastels of the three primary colors as the backgrounds. (No one was going to accuse me of not thinking this through.) Then I used one of the block layouts from my mom’s book to make the alternate blocks and join them together.
Then I was possessed by demons. At least, that’s the only logical conclusion to be reached if you look closely at the border fabric I used on this quilt top. I wanted a black background, and I wanted all the bright colors from the top to appear in it to tie it all together. However, I apparently didn’t want to spend any time or effort finding the RIGHT fabric to meet these criteria, so I bought the first one I found:
"We wish to welcome you to Munchkin Land!"
I won’t sport with your intelligence discussing WHY this is a bad border fabric (for anyone who doesn’t happen to be a 6-year-old playing Pretty Pretty Princess, that is) but I will say that I have no intention of ripping it all out. Since it is actually pieced into the alternate blocks, ripping it out and replacing it would be an exercise in futility and a way to make sure that this UFO stayed unfinished forever. But I do plan to cut the Bad Border down to a less objectionable width and add a pieced border, which I actually made the blocks for within the last 4 years, the last time I tried to finish this quilt.
I don't exactly remember what I was trying to accomplish here.
So what’s the holdup? First off, there’s fear of failure. I have to calculate the right size to cut the Bad Border down to so the pieced border fits properly, and then I have to actually cut it down correctly and accurately. Both these obstacles seem much harder than doing it right the first time would have been, and undoubtedly seem harder than they will be once I muster up to do it.
This quilt also represents another barrier to finishing, the learning curve. In a (wonderful, game-changing) machine quilting class I took in 2004 from Karen Kay Buckley, she told us that people frequently ask her how long it took to make her latest (gorgeous, award-winning) quilt. She said she always wants to answer, “My entire life up until now.” This makes perfect sense to me. Every quilt I make is a learning experience, and I’d like to think that each one gets a little better in some way or another. When I have to “go back in time” to finish a UFO, all the things that I would now do differently jump out at me, and they get demoralizing. In some ways, it seems easier to just move on to a new project that doesn’t have these problems than to try to fix this one.
Some good advice to remind myself of at this point:
“Nothing in life is a failure if you learn anything from it — even if all you learn is, I’m never going to do that again!” – Ricky Tims, speaking at the Ricky Tims Super Seminar, Richmond, VA, July 2007
“There are many tragedies in life — a mistake made in fabric is not one of them.” — Libby Lehman, speaking at the Ricky Tims Super Seminar, Frederick, MD, May 2009
“Just play. If it goes wrong, fix it. The best things happen from that. If you haven’t done anything wrong, you haven’t done anything right, either.” — Sieglinde Schoen Smith, speaking at York Quilters’ Guild, July 2009
Amen to all that.
Alphabet Soup and the WOMBAT
A Heap of Dread: Any WOMBATs Lurking?
We live in an acronym-happy age, thanks largely to digital communications. I read a lot of blogs, and have thus become comfortable with most of the common and many of the uncommon acronyms, from the basic LOL and ROFLMAO to the more esoteric YMMV (your mileage may vary) and IANAL (I am not a lawyer – that one makes me LOL.) The discussion of unfinished quilting projects and out-of-control fabric stash — don’t the two tend to go hand in hand? — requires its own lexicon.
I’ve already discussed the UFO: the UnFinished Object. I differentiate this from the WIP: the Work In Progress. WIPs are active; they get picked up and played with from time to time. UFOs are static; they haven’t changed in ages, and strangely, the shoemaker’s elves haven’t stopped by and worked on them for me. Obviously, a UFO can become a WIP by the simple act of putting some stitches in it and reactivating it, moving it along the continuum.
Unfortunately, a happily progressing WIP can just as easily become a UFO if it falls by the wayside. I don’t have a set timeframe for distinguishing the two; perhaps if I started date-stamping a project every time I worked on it, and if it hasn’t been worked on in over six months then — who am I kidding, that’s never going to happen. For me, it’s more of a state of mind. If thinking about a project makes me excited, even if I haven’t worked on it in a long time, it’s a WIP. If it fills me with guilt, dread, despair — that’s a UFO.
Part of my goal in this project is to further differentiate the pile of UFOs into two categories: future WIPs and WOMBATs. The WOMBAT is a concept first introduced to me by Popser, in his reliably hilarious column for Australian Patchwork & Quilting. It stands for
Waste
Of
Money,
Brains,
And
Time.
The WOMBAT is a permanent UFO that acts as a psychic vampire (not you, Edward, shut up and go cry glitter somewhere.) It sucks up space, energy, motivation… it just sucks.
Maybe it didn’t originally. Maybe it was started with the best of intentions and the best of materials. But somewhere along the way, it went bad. Really bad. Bad beyond saving. These are the projects that I really dither about: “Maybe I can fix it…” “Maybe someone else would like it…” “Maybe I can finish it and give it to charity…” Well, as Libby Lehman said at the Ricky Tims Super Seminar last year, charities don’t want ugly quilts either! If it upsets me to work on it, that is a waste of my time and my passion. I need to take a hard line with these WOMBATs, once I’ve identified them as such. If I really feel guilty, I can take them to a guild meeting and see if anyone wants them. According to Bonnie Hunter, I can use them on the backs of quilts, too.
But I need to stop letting them suck.
