Season Opener: SQ#13 is Off and Running

It's the opening Saturday of the college football season, and therefore of course opening day of the 2010-2011 Quilting Season! Unfortunately, my #1 team is under suspension, but my emergency backup team, Oregon State, put up a pretty good fight against #6 TCU.

As the pregame rigmarole was happening, I thought about some various season-opening tasks I could do, such as getting a mental inventory of projects in progress, coming up with a list of ideas for new projects, or even just organizing fabrics. But then I thought -- no, I just get some momentum going. I want to some good old fashioned cutting and sewing without thinking too hard.

So here's a one-game face for a new Storm Quilt -- It will be SQ#13.

Now this is obviously not a masterpiece, but I love it because it's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of when I came up with the QuiltStorm idea. It is, of course, made of scrap and salvage. The green is from a piece of salvage that's been around for years, the red is a poly/cotton gingham that I bought at 50 cents for 2 3/4 yards at an estate sale last weekend, and the beige was a sheet with a big hole in it that Mrs.5000 brought home out of a freebox earlier in the week. The thread was garage-sale C&C -- from your garage sale, Sarah, if you're reading this. The batting and back are still to come, but they'll be salvage too.

But more to the point, it was FAST. The StormQuilts were supposed to be made simply and quickly, but I immediately started getting fussy and reducing the scale of the pieces. That takes time. Whereas, a full-size quilt top that can be conceived, cut, sewn, and pressed during four quarters of football -- that's fast enough to deserve the "storm" appellation.

Game on, people!

The 09-10 PreSeason List

Well, it's August, and right on schedule I'm starting to get interested in quilting again. I even did a little piecing last night. That means it's time for the list that I always make this time of year, my priorities for the coming quilt season. It's a long list, but then you probably understand that. There are always so many more quilt ideas than there is time or energy to make actual quilts.

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First Priority

Top priorities to finish this year. It would be nice to get ALL of these done.

Devil's Claw -- This is one I've talked about a lot in the last few years. The face is complete, and it's been pinned, so it just needs quilting and binding. "Just."

Jennifer Challenge -- Me and my friend Jennifer both bought a set of fabrics, and she is currently putting the hanging sleeves on the quilt she made with hers. I started cutting and piecing mine last night. I need to catch up, or Jennifer will hurt me.

Mondrian I -- My awesome (if I do say so myself) reproduction of a Mondrian painting in scrap corduroy. The face is finished, so it needs a back, some batting, and some quilting.

Symbol -- Another one I've talked about a lot here. The face background is complete. I need to select a fabric for the symbol and finish the face.

StormQuilts -- I have four of these on the First Priority list, but I won't belabor the details.


Second Priority

Second Priority quilts would be awfully nice to finish this year, but hey, I'm realistic. Hopefully, I'll make some solid progress on these, at least.

Mondrian II -- Already have it picked out!

A Couple of Child Blankets -- For some children of my acquaintance. If I was a good person, these would be First Priority.

Labyrinth II -- Most of the cutting is done for this sequel. I started the assembly, but ran into problems. I need to do some thinking and figure out how to get it going forward again.

Four Seasons -- I thought this was the world's oldest UFO, but I recently learned about an even older one. But it's MY oldest UFO.

StormQuilts -- I have three more of these on the Second Priority List

Third Priority

If I blast through the above and have time left over -- an unlikely prospect at best -- I might take on one of these. Or, I might putter with one from time to time with the idea of having it ready for serious attention next year.

The Legacy Quilt -- One I've talked about, but haven't done much with.

Labyrinth III -- I haven't even designed this one yet. I just like the idea of doing more Labyrinths.

A Project I'm not ready to tell you about.

Another Project I'm not ready to tell you about.

However many additional StormQuilts would get me to the ultimate goal of twenty.

Fourth Priority

Fourth Priority is a holding pen for ideas I hope to work on sometimein the future. For now, I'll just give you the working titles:

The Sarah Horowitz inspired light on light-light design

Requilting my own baby quilt

Oregon Map II

Yet Another Project I'm not ready to tell you about.

And Another One.

A wall hanging using my mom's Silhouette technique.

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There you have it! More quilting than I could possibly accomplish! Let's see how far I get!

What are YOUR quilt goals for the coming fall and winter?

The 2008-2009 Pre-Season Report

And, after a busy few months during which I didn't think about quilting at all, here we are with only a few days between us and the first college football games of the year (Oregon State at Stanford, Thursday the 28th; Oregon v. Washington at Autzen, Saturday the 30th). And you know what that means, football fans! That means it's time to QUILT!!!

[Crowd Roar]

Yesterday, I worked out a "game plan" (last football metaphor. I promise.) for the 2008-2009 Quilt Season. Unlike last year, when I tried to focus on getting out some show quilts, this year will be more about utility quilts and skillbuilding.

First Priority

I've got a quartet of pieces that I'm putting in my first priority category this year. Only one is underway, and two of them haven't even been designed yet, but I'm expecting them to be relatively simple and fast-moving projects.

• Sara's Wedding Quilt -- With no plan or ideas, and an 11-week timeline, this one will be at the top of the to-do list immediately.


• Labyrinth II -- Second place on the to-do list, this one has already been mocked up on graph paper. Beyond that, I'm telling you nothing -- except to say, it's a much simpler design than the original Labyrinth.


• Devil's Claw -- This is the one I used to call "Indigo Stars." It's well underway, and a probable candidate for the spring shows.


• Six-Fabric Challenge -- My friend Jennifer and I each bought quarters of the same six fabrics. The challenge is to make something a yard square, without comparing notes. I haven't even thought about the design yet.

Second Priority

• Batik Boxes -- 'Boxes was on the Second Priority list last year, too, but it didn't get touched. This year, I'm putting it on the to-do list from the get-go, and I'm hoping to finish it. (If it seems strange that the to-do list isn't just the First Priority quilts, the reason is that I don't want to focus all my energy on just quilts that are most important to me. That would stress me out. I want to be working on some low-pressure pieces, too)
  
• Four Seasons -- Seven or eight years old now, this project is getting pretty long in the tooth. I made progress with it last year, and would like to put it to bed this year.
  
• Symbol -- A couple of Christmases ago, my oldest sister gave me a great set of neutral batiks. I am going to use them as background for a vivid non-symbol. Hard to explain. It should go quickly after a little design work, and it is the fourth item on the starting to-do list.

Third Priority

If I blast through those seven projects and am feeling good, I might take on one of these. Or, I might putter with one from time to time with the idea of having it ready for serious attention next year.

• The Legacy Quilt
  
• Labyrinth III -- Not designed yet, but I suspect I will end up playing with the labyrinth concept for years to come.
  
• Scrap Fabric Quilt -- An experiment with my collection of found, non quilt-weight fabrics.

Fourth Priority

There are six quilts in this category, It's unlikely that I will touch more than one or two of them this year, if any -- Fourth Priority is more of a holding pen for ideas I hope to work on sometimein the future. For now, I'll just give you the working titles:

• Sarah Horowitz inspired light on light-light design
  
• Requilting my own baby quilt
  
• Oregon Map II
  
• Denim Quilt
  
• Silhouette
  
• Flags of the Forgotten Lands

StormQuilts

Finally, I will be making some progress in the QuiltStorm project. There are two StormQuilts basted and ready for quilting, and I will be selecting designs for three others as we get this season underway.

So:

That makes thirty-three quilts (16 normal + 17 StormQuilts) are on my plate! Nine of which (4 normal, 5 Stormquilts), I am supposedly going to be actively working on. This should keep me out of trouble for a while.

Anyone else ramping up for the season?

Signing Off for the Summer

I havent' shown the first finished QuiltStorm quilt, which is (strangely enough) QuiltStorm #4. It's the first time I've ever sealed the binding by machine, rather than tacking it down. The technique looks, um, not quite perfect when you look at it up close:

...but looks just fine once you get your face out of it. And I figure these are quilts to be seen from a distance.


QS#2 is right behind it, with only a half-hour or so of work remaining.

The 2007-2008 Quilt Year is Officially Over!

And that's all for now! SoTC is now officially on its yearly summer sabatical. I'll be back in August to gear up for the new quilt season.

In the meantime, by the way, I'm going to scrap the "Quilt Blogs by Men" webring. The platform that hosts it is very cumbersome, and not worth the trickle of traffic that the ring has seen. Apologies to those who went through the work of setting it up.

Meanwhile, if you are in the City of Roses, maybe I'll see you this weekend at the Northwest Quilters annual show (I'll have two pieces in it). Or, maybe I'll see you in Sisters in July. Or in Seattle in early August. Obviously, we're going to have a lot to talk about when I get back from break.

Have a great summer!

Show Season

The half of the year that I call "Quilt Season" is the opposite half from when almost all of the quilt shows are. I made the arbitrary goal a while back of putting quilts into ten (10!) shows this year -- they are listed in the sidebar -- and the first one is coming up in two weeks. It's the 14th Annual "Airing of the Quilts" in Milwaukie (Oregon), and I've entered Two Complex Shapes and Quilt Map of Oregon (might as well put pictures of 'em up yet again, I suppose!). When I dropped them off and registered them yesterday, one of the women referred to me as "the new good-looking young man from the Guild." Well, I'll take it.

I mentioned all this to a non-quilting friend last night, who was puzzled by the whole concept. Was I entering the shows in order to sell the quilts? Hell, no. Well, then, why was I bothering with it? Probably it's a sign of how immersed I am in the whole process that it had never occurred to me to think of the question. But for all that, I think I came up with some pretty good answers.

I suppose the starting point is that you show a quilt because you consider quilting a medium of artistic expression, as opposed to, say, an esoteric method of blanket manufacture. You make things "to express yourself," or at least to bring into being an idea that you thought was interesting, and to have people see that and, with any luck, think that it's cool validates your process. Put another way, you want attention. Recognition for your work. Ideally, praise. Well, who doesn't?

Connected to this is that participating in shows is a way of participating in the community. Shows are quite literally put together communally by quilters. They are generally fairly festive affairs, places where people can get together and share ideas, feedback, praise, and of course sotto voce nasty remarks about each others work. The more quilts submitted, the bigger and better the shows are, so to a small extent submitting your work is a way of pitching in.

Finally, putting work in shows is for me a way of lighting the proverbial fire underneath my buttocks. Planning to have Quilt X in Show Y gives me, first and foremost, a deadline. It has to be done in time. Moreover, there are going to be a lot of knowledgeable people looking at it, so that encourages me to do better work. If I want to get something into a juried show, I know I need to bring my absolute A-game. And, participating in shows in general has forced me to gradually learn more about the generally accepted standards of excellence in quilt shows as a whole.

There are shows and there are shows, of course. For this Milwaukie show, anybody can show anything, and I expect it will be a fairly low profile event. So, I'm not showing my best, brand-new stuff; I'm saving that for my Guild's show, in a few months. Even at the intermediate level that I operate at, it's fun to save the "major debuts" for the "high profile venues."

Here's the details on the Milwaukie show. Live in the City of Roses? Then maybe I'll see you there!

14th Annual "Airing of the Quilts"

March 21-22, 2008

Milwaukie Center

5440 SE Kellogg Creek Drive

Milwaukie, OR 97222

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Meme Duty

I was tagged by The Quilted Philosopher a while back, and it's about time I did something about it. The concept is pretty broad -- I'm just supposed to "post 7 weird or random facts about myself." Here goes:

1. I followed objects with my eyes at birth. The doctor put me down, walked away, noticed, came back, and said "You aren't supposed to be able to do that." I don't remember this, of course. But my mom says so.

2. In high school, I won my division of Oregon's state mathematics tournament. Twice. Yes. Thank you.

3. I have a large map of the United States on which I keep track of every county I've been in. Sometimes I will fly to a city, rent a car, and drive around for a while, checking out the area and collecting new counties.

4. I like kids, but never wanted to have kids of my own. So, I didn't.

5. I'm not above painting my face green and yellow if it might help the fortunes of the University of Oregon football team. This confuses some of my more intellectual friends.

6. Although not at all a religious person, I have a blog about the Bible. This, also, confuses some of my more intellectual friends.

7. I have never eaten at a MacDonalds.

Those seem weird and random enough.

The 2007-2008 Quilting Year Halftime Report

[If you happen to be related to me, you probably shouldn't read this post until after May, 2008.]


This Saturday and Sunday just past was probably the last big quilting weekend of the 2007-08 Season. Longtime readers will recall that the Quilt Year, in my world, begins with the first Oregon Ducks football game in September. Since I generally listen to at least two college football games every weekend throughout the season, the autumn months are when I make the most dramatic progress. Things typically slow down in December due to Christmas preparations, pick up again for January and February, then start to lose steam about, well, now.

There are lots of reasons for the slowdown, but the biggest is that spring in Oregon starts around Valentines Day. Outdoor recreation, work on the house, travel, and the garden all start to make their demands on the weekends, and within a month or two they'll want my time after work as well.

That doesn't mean that I'll stop dead in my tracks, though. I used to not touch quilting at all from Mayish to August, but I those days are pretty much gone. Still, progress is likely to be a lot slower, more putter-ish, and with no whole weekends given over to a particular quilt project.

So, as we enter the slack half of the year, it seems like a good time to look back at the goals I set at the beginning of the season and see how I did. Here goes.

FIRST PRIORITY

The three quilts I was most bound and determined to finish this year were Ice & Fire, Labyrinth, and the high school graduation quilt for Niece #1. The first two are safely and completely finished; I've submitted them both for my guild's annual show, where I'm confident they'll be accepted, and submitted Labyrinth to the Pacific Northwest Quilter's Association biennial show in Seattle, which I'm much less confident about. We'll see!

The graduation quilt was the focus of this last weekend. I finished its quilting, which was only about 1/3 done at the start of the weekend, and made and attached the binding. It still has quite a bit of handwork to be done, as I bury the threads, seal the binding, and attach a sleave, so there will be a few movies in my near future. It should be done in time for me to enter it in the show of a neighboring quilt guild, up in Vancouver, Washington, before I send it up to Alaska. Since I warned the fam off up at the top of the post, and since I doubt my neices spend too much time hanging out on their uncle's quilt blog, I'll give you a quick shot here of the graduation quilt, still with all of its shaggy threads hanging out all over.


SECOND & THIRD PRIORITY

There were three quilts that I listed as being my second priority back in August. It turns out I haven't touch any of them since. I guess I had a change of priorities.

There were four quilts I called my third priority, and I made good progress on three of them. What I'm now calling "Devil's Claw," although that name is in flux, went from being a vague wish to do something with the old blocks I'd found to being a complete quilt face. I also completed faces for the last two of a set of Four Seasons that I've been puttering with for ages. These two projects continue to capture my imagination, and will likely be ones that I make some progress with over the summer. It would be nice to put "Devil's Claw," in particular, in some fall shows.

The other third priority quilt was Two Complex Shapes, which I completely requilted to good effect. I trotted it out for show and tell and the guild earlier this month, where it had an interesting love-it-or-hate-it effect. I got a few compliments, but as I was showing it a few people were only a few notches short of heckling (I followed it with Labyrinth, though, which shut them up pretty effectively). I'll put it in a few smaller shows later in the year, I think.


WHAT NEXT?

Well, finishing work on the graduation quilt is the main thing. Tinkering with Devil's Claw and Four Seasons will probably occupy a few summer hours. A couple items from my Second Priority list -- a scrap utility quilt and something called Batik Squares -- will probably finally get some attention. And then there is the plan I keep refering to with the code named "QuiltStorm 2008," a project to make a large number of simple lap quilts from scrap and recycled materials. That should be fun.

The summer months are also a good time to do non-quilt sewing, the little garment work I do and the baby's blocks I like to make. There's some mending piled up. And... I am almost afraid to mention it... there has been some design work for a Labyrinth #2. Maybe I'll explore that in the coming months, or maybe not. We'll see.

Lastly, some time in August, I'll do the very last thing I need to do every quilt year. That, of course, is to draw up a list of goals for the coming quilt year.


JUST CURIOUS

Do you do more quilting in the colder and darker half of the year? Are you happy with your progress over the winter?

The December Lack-of-Progress Report

Hmm, I've left the post that talked about being sick up for three weeks. My quilt-blog discipline went to hell when the Q4P blogring bit the dust. But just in case anybody has been wondering: I'm fine. Healthy as a horse. A healthy horse.

December has been a tough quilting month. One reason has been the end of the college football season, which takes away my guaranteed weekly intensive quilting times. The other reason has been, of course, Christmas. I do love me some Christmas, but it certainly does take vast swathes of times with all of the planning and cooking and buying and making and wrapping and this and that and the other thing. Hard to keep the momentum going on the craft projects.

The upside is, I have several projects needing only some final handwork to get finished, and several days of holiday downtime with the family coming up in which to do handwork. You do the math! I'm hoping I can start bragging about some finished projects soon.

Here's the bin full of my Christmas homework.

It has Ice and Fire, Two Complex Shapes, and all four of the Four Seasons in it, along with everything I'll need to work on them. Which is a lot of homework -- I'm betting on winter weather forcing everyone to stay indoors and spend a lot of time gabbing -- but I'm also going to be bringing along Labyrinth. The quilting on Lab' is about 80% finished, and I must say I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along....

Happy Holidays to all you fabulous readers, and to everyone you know, and to everyone else too!

New Quilt Year: the Second Weekend

Quilt Year 2007 - 2008 is off to an aggressive start! I'm continuing to pour effort into my four chosen projects -- so far, resisting the temptation to dig any deeper into the project pile -- and have been very happy with the progress. And if Mrs. 5000 has made a few pointed remarks about housework equity, well, I can catch up with that.... in a while. She won't get too angry. I think.


Progess Report:

• Stained Glass Batik. As the OSU football team got their big, mud-slapping Beaver tails handed to them on Thursday, and during the first half of Oregon's exhilerating win over Michigan on Saturday, I finished the first round of quilting in the "cool" areas of this quilt, which is about half of the total surface. I'm very happy with the progress. I'll need to spend a few hours of hand-work time with it before doing the other half, hiding the many loose threads by burying them within the quilt. I'll also need to pick out which specific thread I want to use for the top thread in the "warm" areas.

• Labyrinth. I selected and prepared a backing fabric, and laid out a sheet of batting to relax and lose its folds and wrinkles. After work on Monday, I'll take apart our bed so that I can use the whole bedroom floor to do the pinning. For you non-quilters, "pinning" is the process where you stick together the three layers of the quilt -- top, batting, and back -- in preparation for the quilting. You have to spread the back out fairly taut for it to work well, and I do this by pinning it into a carpet. For a big piece like Labyrinth, the only carpeted space in the house big enough is the bedroom, sans bed. Mrs. 5000 has agreed that we can sleep in the guest room on Monday night. She is a trooper.

• Niece #1's Graduation Quilt. This one is still in what you might call "pre-production," but I did some thinking and some pencil-and-paper work with the design. I also entered it into the "official" list I keep of my quilts. Auspiciously, it is Quilt #50, which means it is more or less the 50th project I've started. It doesn't necessarily mean that it will be the 50th project I'll finish. Stained Glass Batik is Quilt #40 on the list, and Labyrinth is Quilt #37, and they are both conspicuously unfinished!

• The Four Seasons. Numbers #35a - 35d on the list, this aging fiasco is the oldest unfinished project I have going. Last weekend, I was working on picking out a series of fabrics for "Spring" that would match the color values in "Fall" and "Winter."

After a little editing this weekend, and quite a bit of laborious cutting, I
have this "rough draft" laid out:

And, feeling good about the progress, I went ahead and picked out a possible
color sequence for "Summer."

Blogging About Blogging

Joining the Q4P blog ring has been great! Hello to everyone who has stopped in from the blog; I really appreciate all of the kind comments to last week's post! It has been fun to start to explore other blogs on the ring as well!

I've also been spiffing up State of the Craft a little during my lunch hours. The posts from the first year, back when SotC was on (shudder...) Friendster, were until recently lumped together in one big ugly unreadable post called "The First Season." I've gone back and separated those out; not all of them have their images yet, but they will in a day or two. I've been going back and indexing everything, too. Why? you ask. Well, why not?

Cheers!

It's New Quilting Year Eve!!

The time has come. The days are noticeably shorter, and there's a crisp, wistful hint of autumn in the air. I've spent much of the evening converting my studio space back to quilting formation. The sound gear is back under its covers, stacks of notebook have been filed away, the sewing table is unfolded to its full size. We're ready to roll. For tomorrow is the first day of quilting season.

Long-time readers know that traditionally, the quilting year begins with the first University of Oregon football game. And indeed, I am first and foremost a Duck. But I'm actually ready to fly the flag of any college team from my fair state (you can read here if you have an inexplicable desire to know about my college football loyalties, or if you just have oodles of time on your hands), and while the Ducks aren't playing until Saturday, the Oregon State Beavers take the field at 7 PDT tomorrow. And I'll be right there with them. Quilting.


A Couple Shows

As if to celebrate the new year, although actually just by coincidence, I'm sending my warhorse Log Cabin back on tour. It will be in my home town, Bandon, Oregon, at the quilt show of the annual, heh, "Cranberry Festival," September 6 to 9, or something like that. After that, it should be at the "2007 Festival of Quilts" in Gold Beach, Oregon, September 16 and 17. And after that, I think I'll retire it from shows -- I've shown it pretty much to death.


Fabric is Still Drawn to Me

After I wrote the last post, about how I keep bumping into free fabric, I went out for a run and had to cut it short when I ran into a big box of fabric that somebody had put out for free on the sidewalk. I include photoevidence for an unneccessarily sceptical quilt blogger who I won't mention specifically, but whose name sounds like "Guilty the Hipster."


The green and the stripey flannel were actually bedsheets when I found them, but a few minutes with a good pair of scissors made them into several yards each of extra-width fabric. The purple is two yards of good quality quilting fabric. The tan was a very good matched set of sheets which, for better or worse, will continue to serve in a sheet capacity for the time being.


Q4P

I'm in a ring of quilt blogs! Cool! The little navigation panel for it is up there on the left somewhere, if you want to poke around.


Happy New Quilt Year, Everyone!

The 2007-2008 Pre-Season Report

I said a few months ago that I would just take my disappointingly pristine quilting "to do" list from last year (which, you may recall, sucked for quilting purposes) and make that my list of goals for 2007-2008. But as the official September 1 kickoff date looms closer, I've found myself worrying over a new "to do" list like a dog gnawing on an old bone. Want to know what I've come up with? Well, too bad, because I'm going to tell you anyway.

First Priority

• Stained Glass Batik*, pictured, is one I've talked about on the blog before. It is pieced and layered, and I did a little bit of the quilting last year. It wants to be ready to show in the spring, which shouldn't be too much of a stretch.



• Labyrinth is another piece that I hope to have ready for shows in the spring. It is very nearly pieced after four years of work, and should be relatively easy to quilt. I will speak of it no further at this time, as I think it is pretty cool and don't want to jinx it.



• The first of my four nieces is graduating from high school next year, and I've decided that I'm going to do the graduation quilt gift thing. Fortunately, my oldest niece is partial to squares, and not a real maven for intricate floral applique or something.

Also Things I'm Pretty Geared Up For

• Batik Squares (pictured) is really just an exercise piece. It's not very attractive, but I'd like to finish it and get it off the table.



• Getting started on making a piece from the stack of blocks hand-pieced by my grandmother's stepmother in the early 1930s.



• Making a highly scrappy "recycle" piece from the gobs of, uh, non-traditional fabrics (including blue fake fur?) that find their way to my storage closet.

Things I'd Like to Do If There is Time

• Create a simple setting for a stack of star blocks from the 1930s, origin unknown, that landed in my lap earlier this year. In indigo and white, using cheap fabric, and made with frankly atrocious craftsmanship, they are a very motley set that I nevertheless find pretty charming.



• Complete a Four Seasons set, of which there is (after like six years) one complete and one half-complete. I don't even know if I like the concept anymore, but damnit...



• Combine some groovy medium-light neutral tone batiks my big sister gave me for Christmas into a background; and then applique a big, aggressive, cherry-red shape over the top of it. Something that looks like a Chinese word, or a letter from an imaginary language. Still thinking about this one.



• Requilt, or overquilt, Two Complex Shapes (pictured). It's all saggy now, but might be showable if I could give it interesting surface textures.

Things I Would Like to Do, but Realize I Will Probably Not Have a Chance of Getting To Really

• Repairing the little quilt my great-grandmother threw together when I was born. Never anything approaching a work of art, it is now arguably 20 years overdue for the trash. But hell, I'm kind of sentimental. Don't tell the guys.



• An asymetrical, simple geometric piece of light fabrics on light-light fabrics, loosely based on some work of book artist Sarah Horowitz. Squint at the image to the right, and maybe you can imagine what I have in mind.



• Another map of Oregon, this time based on population density instead of landforms. I know, I know. What can I tell you? I used to teach cartography.

* (The names I use here are kind of working titles. I might give 'em better names, once they're finished.)

Your Job, gentle State of the Craft reader, is to keep me on task. Remind me of this list if I seem to have forgotten it. Ask probing questions. Taunt if need be.

Thanks for reading!

What I Didn't Like In Seattle

OK! It is now but six (6) days until the Ducks host Stanford University for their home game opener, so we stand trembling on the very cusp of the 2006-2007 quilting season! Yes, it's a powerful moment for me as well. I'll pause a moment, to let you regain your composure.

... ...

Now, as it happens I will be in Section 36, Row 87, Seat 33 of Autzen Stadium next Saturday, so I will not be able to, uh, "kick off" the quilt season at the same time as the game itself. But, I will definitely make a point of doing a little token quilting before I leave, or after I get home, just to get some momentum going.

I'll need momentum. It's going to be an even more challenging quilting year than I had expected. But more on that, gentle reader, at the end of this post.

Pacific Northwest Quiltfest

First, I want to tell you about my trip to the Pacific Northwest Quiltfest, a show held in Seattle every two years. It is probably the highest-level show held in our region -- the "Pacific Northwest," whatever that means. It attracts the highest level of work, which is juried by a professional team of quilt mucky-mucks.

Frequently Asked Question: "Did you have a piece in the show?"

Answer: No, of course not. Nothing I have ever made could survive a professional jurying. I am still at least two or three years from even thinking of submitting something to a show of this caliber. A good goal might be to sneak something into the PNWQF in 2010.

So, the show was basically a very large room full of extremely well-made quilts. Extremely well-made quilts, and lots and lots of people who get excited by extremely well-made quilts. The joint was packed. And yet, it could be a lonely place -- if, for instance, you were being confronted once again with the fact that you share your hobby overwhelmingly with people of the opposite sex who are at least 20 years older than you.

[The gender aspect of this situation, by the way, was made quite graphically clear by the restroom situation in the exhibition hall. I provide these two photos as documentary evidence, as one or two or you will accuse me of exagerating, otherwise. You will probably need to see the full size images (click on 'em to bring 'em up to full size) to read the signs.]

But mostly, I was in a big room with lots of really, really amazing quilts, which was great. For quite a while, I replicated my experiment from the Sisters Quilt show earlier this summer, and did a little study of my own aesthetic preferences. That was still an interesting process, since with the much greater range of quilts at this kind of high-level show, there was also a greater range of Stuff I Liked. It was a good way to gather lots of ideas for future projects. More ideas for future quilt projects than I'll ever possibly be able to use, in fact, but that's cool. Better to have too many ideas than not enough, right?

After a few hours of photographing my favorites, I went back and photographed a selection of my least favorites. I didn't do this for myself, mind you -- I actually have a pretty solid understanding of what I don't like. No, gentle reader, I did this for you -- so you can see some of the kinds of quilts that I'm never going to tell you about otherwise, and so as a reader of this blog you can have a stronger sense of the context in which my quilts are made.

You're welcome.

Quilts That Just Aren't My Thing

But first, it's really important to me to make really, really clear that these are all, by any reasonable standard, very excellent, rocking quilts. The craftsmanship ranges from awesome to otherworldly, and the design, fabric choices, and quilting patterns on each are all impeccible. If you really like these quilts, or God forbid if you made one of these quilts, my hat is totally off to you. I just don't share your taste.

In fact, I'm not even going to try to be entertainingly bitchy.

I furthermore encourage anyone reading this to use my own work as examples of crap quilts in their own blogs, or better yet to write scathing comments in this blog explaining why my stuff sucks, particularly in comparison to the pieces shown here.

Having said that, let's proceed to the first group. The problem here, I guess, could be summarized as too grandmotherly. Not that I have anything against grandmothers, but usually we don't decorate the same way. I am not sure that I need to elaborate on this, but in general anything that pours on the flowers, hearts, or domestic scenes, or uses the palettes of the first half of the 20th Century, has an uphill battle to win my affections. The one on the upper left is traditional and, within that tradition, exquisite (the palette is also pretty bright, which helps). I could look at it for a long time, admiring it as a quilter, before noticing that it doesn't do much for me as, well, a person. If you follow me. With the other two, the lack of gut appreciation jumps out a little faster, but even here... damn, look at the quilting on the one on the right! Man! I would give my left, um, let's say pinkie, to be able to quilt like that.


It's a little harder to put a finger on what I fail to respond to in this second set, especially since I promised not to be entertainingly bitchy. They fall into a genre that some women would call "funky," having never listened to or even heard of Rick James. Know what I'm sayin'? There's an exhuberance there that doesn't quite do it for me. The one on the left further has words on it, which for me almost always reduces a quilt's impact. Couldn't tell you why. The one on the right -- which was a very difficult piece to make, incidently, and one where the artist did amazing work and suceeded impeccably in bringing her vision to reality -- is also figural, which brings us to the next set.


This one is easy -- I don't like figural quilts. Which is to say, I don't like the literal representation of humans or animals in fabric. Now, if you're thinking "what about the cow quilt?" -- well, that's different. It uses pieces of fabric on which figures are represented, which doesn't bug me. It's using the fabrics to create figures that I don't like. It requires a lot of skill, and it's very popular -- figural pieces often win "viewer's choice" awards at quilt shows -- but it just ain't for me.

My loss.

I guess this fourth set is also figural. There's also an added element here of sentimentality. They are twee -- not like, say, Tullycraft is twee, but like an after-school special is twee, like a cross-stitch of good advice in a perky rhyming couplet is twee. Which is fine! Really! I'm just saying, it's not my deal.


Why This Quilt Year is Going to be Even More Busy Than I Expected

So, at this juncture, I am going to shut up before I alienate more people that I already have. But first, I need to tell you why this quilt year is going to be even more busy than I expected.

When I was in Seattle, I ran into the new president of my guild, who told me that the featured artist for next year's guild show is going to be, instead of an accomplished master quilter, a group of quilters: "the men of the guild." Gulp. The men of the guild total about 5, out of 300+ members, and one is 11 years old. There's Tony, who does amazing work, and two others who I don't believe are particularly active, and then there's, well, me. So, it is a hugely unexpected and intimidating opportunity to have some of my stuff shown very prominently! I'll need to work my tail off this fall.

In the meantime, let's all enjoy the last week of the summer quilting hiatis. Thanks for reading.


p.s. The best thing about Seattle was actually that I got to pay visits to Shanthala, Jenn, and Jim. Hi guys!

Turn, Turn, Turn

From the original "Friendster" version of SOTC.

--------Turn, turn, turn.DATE: 05/31/2006 11:08:20 PM-----

Helloooooo, Quilt Fans!

Thought I'd pitched it in, didn't you? Thought this was just one more 3-month flash-in-the-pan blog, glorious in its brief prime but doomed to inevitable burnout and failure?

No way. Not "State of the Craft."

But to everything, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, etc., and for many of us quilting is pretty seasonal as well. Other things get pretty distracting in spring and summer, like travel, hiking, outdoor activities, and, unless you are Charlie or Eric, the garden. Also, not everyone wants to have five pounds of thick, insulating blanket on their lap during high summer. So the quilting slows down, and naturally the quilt blogging slows down as well.

For me, the quilting year generally begins at the kickoff of the first Oregon Ducks football game, which this year will be Saturday, September 2 (at home vs. Stanford -- a cakewalk). Then, or maybe a little before, the quiltin' will commence in great earnest. Until then, though, progress will be piecemeal at best.

One small thing I do want to do over the summer is find a new host for this blog. Two reasons. One is that the noise-making ads that Friendster has been using lately make me, and everyone else I know, want to put fist through screen. Secondly, only my registered Friendsters can make comments (and even they often have trouble with it). Not that you aren't special, Friendsters. You are. You TOTALLY are. But comments are half the fun with a blog, and the rest of the (suprisingly robust) readership needs in too.

I'll let you know.

Anyway, there are two things worth mentioning from the last month and a half. In quilting, that is. In life in general, there was a fabulous road trip, documented at http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/drhandley/my_photos.

The first thing was the Guild Show. Several of y'all came to it, which was TOTALLY GREAT and YOU ROCK. I was very happy with the whole thing. Both of my entries -- the Oregon Map and the Log Cabin, shown in earlier entries -- were hung very nicely, with neighbors that complemented them well. Response from viewers and other members of the guild was very nice. Rather than feeling like I was "OK but way behind the pack," this time I felt like I was "definitely in the pack." It was good.

I volunteered a half day at the show, and when I arrived was given an identifying pink ribbon to wear. "Hostess," it read. The volunteer coordinator seemed surprised by my hesitation to wear this ribbon, but offered no objections as I cut the "ess" off with my jackknife.

The second thing was completeing the wedding present that I obliquely referred to three posts ago. It is one of two mirror-image pieces that are, in terms of design, fragments of a traditional style called "Around the World" that I will talk about in a future post. (This is called "leaving them wanting more.") One of the two goes to our friends Helen and Keir in the UK, who were married last August -- please note that I met the one-year wedding present deadline. The other goes to Sue and I, as a much later wedding present and wall-hanging for our room.

Because of their pattern and because they will be widely-separated twins, I named them "Partway Around the World #1 and #2." I told Helen and Keir that they could decide whether they wanted theirs to be #1 or #2, but I haven't heard back yet.

Well, that's all for now. But we'll talk soon. In September, if not before.