Log Cabin

From the original "Friendster" version of SOTC.

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Log Cabin
DATE: 03/02/2006 09:35:22 PM
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We took new pictures tonight of the Log Cabin quilt -- the one I talked about way back in the first post. I needed a new picture to use with the entry form for the Northwest Quilters annual show. It's not a juried show, so it will definitely hang. So, y'all can come out and see it... amid a zillion other fabulous quilts, most far superior!

The Northwest Quilters 32nd Annual Quilt Show will be April 28, 29, and 30 at University Place, 310 SW Lincoln, in Portland. You should check it out. Really!

Photo by Sue. By the way, you can click on any of the photos in this blog for a larger version....

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A Quilt for Baby Ira

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A Quilt for Baby Ira
DATE: 02/25/2006 09:11:54 PM
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From the original "Friendster" version of SOTC.

Three cheers, and all that: our friends James and Mia have a new baby boy, Ira Anton Bak Hazuka, born on Monday the 13th!

I've been thinking about them a lot, and on Monday the 20th, while I was playing hooky from work to take my niece Cady to the zoo, I decided I wanted to make Baby Ira a crib quilt. But, since Cady was in town and because I am still working on the challenge quilt, it couldn't be a big, time-consuming project. I decided I would use a super-simple pattern (a "one-patch," for those of y'all in the know) and minimal quilting, which is best for a baby blanket anyway -- tight quilting makes a blanket stiffer, less snuggly, and less warm. Moreover, I decided to make it a challenge to myself: to see if I could make the whole thing in a single evening!

Answer: I couldn't. Now, if I had just stuck with the original pattern, I think I could have. But when I finished it, it wanted a border, so I added that, and then the border wanted something interesting in the corners (I decided on simple "nine-patches"). So, by the time the face was finished, it was bedtime. So, in the end, it took me an evening to piece it, and another evening to quilt it. Oh, and a few extra hours to bind it. But who's counting?

I think it looks pretty good. If nothing else, it's nice and soft, so hopefully it will be a good night-night for the boy. It felt great to make it. Obviously, it was great fun in a Celebrate-the-Joy sort of way. But, it also felt really good as an exercise in the craft. After all of the slow, tedious detail work I've been doing on the challenge quilt, it felt great to pound out something good, quickly. Making decisions (about the border, backing, and binding) on the fly, I felt confident and competent at every stage of the process. I even felt competent with the machine quilting, which is a big first for me.

A little detail I'm proud of is that I quilted Ira's name and birthday into the border. It's the first time I've used a technique called free-motion quilting. I took a class in it a few years ago, but there was a problem with my machine and until I got it repaired in October (thank you, Montavilla Sewing!) it couldn't handle free-motion. I think it came out pretty well, for a first-time effort.

I should include a quick shout-out to Cady for keeping me company during the quilting and for telling me, correctly, to get rid of the pink square! At ten, she has already made two quilts herself (with grandma's help), so maybe she'll be the next generation.

Anyway, I had a great time making Ira's baby quilt, and I hope he finds it cozy, warm, and comfortable. Many well-wishes and much love to Mia, James, and their new baby boy!

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: larissa
DATE: 02/26/2006 05:09:14 PM
michael! you are so talented. congrats to your friends and new life!
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: mia
DATE: 02/26/2006 06:18:52 PM
michael, i was boasting about your quilt to everyone i know. thanks. you are the great uncle to Ira. can't wait to see Ira talking and have a decent conversation with you. you are the best.
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Epiphany

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Epiphany
DATE: 02/20/2006 08:19:26 PM
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From the original "Friendster" version of State of the Craft.

So, it was mid-day Saturday, and I was plugging away at my big project, like I'd plugged away at it all Friday night -- sew sew sew sew sew -- and Sue walked by my sewing room in the hallway. And a thought comes into my head: what does this look like to her? I imagine observing my behavior from outside -- hour after hour after hour of cutting up these scraps of cloth that I've spent so much money on, and sewing them back together. This led to the next thought: What the hell am I doing?

"What the hell am I doing?!" I asked Sue. "This is crazy! I've spent two months of my leisure time, not to mention eighty or ninety dollars, on this damn thing. Any why? What for? Can you give me a single good reason I should be doing this? It's absolutely nuts!!"

She laughed at me, and said something witty about the nature of hobbies, something about how if you are going to have a hobby, you shouldn't ask that kind of question.

I went back to happily sewing little pieces of fabric together.

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Karin
DATE: 02/25/2006 08:26:40 AM
What a good wife. She's right. You just keep sewing.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Charlie
DATE: 02/26/2006 06:23:52 PM
Oh come one Michael. We all the know the real reason. So you can kick those ladies' asses at the competition.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Michael
DATE: 03/02/2006 10:20:52 PM
Charlie: Indeed.
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The Whole Quilting/Mental Health Thing, Vol. II

The Whole Quilting/Mental Health Thing, Vol. II
DATE: 01/30/2006 10:25:09 PM
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From the original "Friendster" version of State of the Craft.

So. When we left off, it was 1994, I was recovering from a nervous breakdown in sunny Bandon-by-the-Sea, Oregon, I had become fascinated with my mom's quilting, and I had made my little placemat-sized first quilt.

What I haven't really articulated, neither here nor to myself, is WHY I became fascinated and then started into quilting. I've always loved color and pattern, which I supposed goes a long way towards explaining it. Never especially good with paint or pencil, I found fabric a very forgiving and manageable medium. Too, quilting is well suited for abstract patterns, so one doesn't have to fret over subject matter -- and when it comes to subject matter, I've always had a pretty wooden imagination.

Anyway, let's get this narrative show back on the road. I finished that little placemat, and Mom left town for a short trip, naturally assuming that I had made my one quilt, that it was kind of cool but not something likely to be repeated.

By the time she got back, after a long weekend, I was well into putting together my second quilt.

Now, "Number Two," as I think we can fairly call it, is a piece that makes a strong case that a beginning designer needs the guiding hand of a mentor. It is telling that, to put a picture of it here, I had to find it and photograph it tonight -- until now, it had gone 12 years without anyone ever thinking to take a picture of it. It is not handsome. It is not interesting. It is not at all clear what I was thinking.

In its defense, it did look slightly better before the black fabrics faded unevenly, as black fabrics tend to do. The craftsmanship is not terrible for an unsupervised second effort, and if I hadn't used the reds.... but then, I did use the reds.

Before I left Bandon, under my own power, I was to make two more quilts, including the Cow Quilt. The Cow Quilt is always the one people like best, which can be a bit of a drag -- I made it 40 quilts and 12 years ago, damn it! One likes to think one is making progress! Doesn't one? Not always trying to catch up with the third piece he ever made?

Well, hell, it's nice to have made something people like. It has hung in a quilt show in Bandon, in the Bandon Public Library, and in the "Foyer Gallery" at IRCO, which is all very flattering. It currently lives in the guest room.

So. It's one of those unanswerable questions, the extent to which taking on quilting helped me recover from my first big mental health crisis, or if it was just something that incidentally happened while I happened to be recovering. My therapist says that creative processing, and even the arm motions characteristic of, say, working on a quilt (or playing a musical instrument) makes your brain fire off good chemicals. And it's definitely true, I've learned over and over, that working on something that absorbs you can keep your mind from gnawing on itself, at least on a good day.

I took a class several years ago, although it seems strange to say so now, in which the final project was to do a self-revalatory performance art piece. No, really, I did. And I told the story about how I learned to quilt, exploiting the metaphoric possibilities to the hilt. I even used the phrase "stitching the pieces of my life back together." And there have been times when I actually believed it -- really believed that quilting saved my life, by giving me a focus, or a competance, or a meditation, or something that I could just immerse myself in until the world around me righted itself again.

Other times, it just seems like a hobby.

PROGRESS REPORT: The challenge quilt is coming along beautifully. The face is pretty much completely laid out, and I have been pouring my weekends into the details of the piecing. I think I will make the deadline. I can not wait to show it to you, Gentle Reader. Even more, I can not wait to work on something else, or even clean the house for crying out loud. Alternating between work and this project (and, it must be admitted, "Civ IV") begins to feel like life without weekends. And that's no good.

P.S. If you are wondering about the performance art piece, it was a hit. Predictably, I wowed 'em when I unfurled my quilts. What really floored them, though, was when I threaded the sewing machine. You could have heard a pin drop. I guess people aren't used to seeing guys do that.

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: mia
DATE: 02/01/2006 08:12:39 PM
whatever makes you happy and sane, you are blessed to have at lease one thing that people say wow at. many people don't have the skills to show off like you do with your quilts. i truly admire your passion, talents, and patience for one thing. can't wait to see your finished project.....
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The Whole Quilting/Mental Health Thing, Vol. I

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The Whole Quilting/Mental Health Thing, Vol. I
DATE: 01/24/2006 09:41:46 PM
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From the original "Friendster" version of State of the Craft.

Alright, it's time to talk about the quilting/mental health connection, so listen up. Or, if you're uncomfortable with this kind of thing, skip the entry. No worries.

OK, still with me? Alright, if you are reading this, you probably already know that I have encounters with Clinical Depression every few years. Well, that's how I came to quilt.

My first definite episode of Depression began in the summer of 1994. I was stuck in Kansas, had no schedule to keep me focused, and didn't have a clue what was happening, and things quickly spriraled out of control. Within less than two months, I developed symptoms of anorexia (losing 35 pounds off of what was already, at the time, a fairly slim frame) and a full-blown case of agoraphobia that was to stick with me for the next five years. At that point, as a happier alternative to offing myself, I flew back to Oregon to, basically, put myself back in the care of my parents for a while.

To make a long story short, it all worked out. I started eating again, we got my meds sorted out, and if I still had trouble going more than 25 miles or so, at least I was OK leaving the house. In the meantime, I was spending a lot of time around my parents, helping Dad with yardwork and whatnot and -- here's the tie-in -- watching my Mom work on a quilt. The yardwork was nice, but I found the quilting completely fascinating.

The quilt Mom was working on was like the ones I talked about last week in the sense that it was a single image composed of hundreds of small "two-inch squares." A two-inch square is, duh, a little piece of fabric that is two inches by two inches. This can get confusing, though, because a quarter inch on each side of the piece disappears when it gets sewn to its neighboring pieces. That quarter inch is called the "seam allowance," and because of the seam allowance, a two-inch square only measures 1 1/2 inches by 1 1/2 inches in the actual quilt.

Like Robert Silvers (or better, David Hockney) creating a photomosaic... Like Seurat painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte (well, kinda).... Mom would place these little squares together so that they were each interesting in their own right, blended with their immediate neighbors in interesting ways, and added up to an overall composite image. I probably wouldn't have chosen a big heart as the overall image, but then I wasn't doing the work. The completed quilt is pretty stunning even if you aren't much into big hearts, and it won several judges' and audience choice awards in local shows.

But I digress. The point is, Mom had hundreds of these two-inch squares sorted in little stacks, like -- pick your metaphor -- paint on a palette, or like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. And it was just really, really interesting to watch her -- stick with your chosen metaphor, please -- use them to paint the image on the felt canvas she was using to lay out the quilt, or try to assemble the puzzle with jigsaw pieces that hadn't been made to go together. Like any jerk watching a solitare game, I began to make "helpful suggestions." Most were not helpful, of course, but it was always interesting to hear back why they weren't. The number of variables that determined whether a given square belonged where it did was pretty amazing.

In a thinly-veiled attempt to get me out of her face, Mom cut me a piece of felt, gave me a stack of reject squares, and suggested that I try a little layout. Who could resist? ...well, I suppose lots of people could resist, but I was hooked, and had nothing but time on my hands, and nothing to lose. So, I made this little placemat-sized design, with greens, blues, and purples arranged in a checkerboard pattern of color value. When I announced that I wanted to put it together, Mom looked pained -- later, I realized that she expected that she would have to put it together for me. But no: I wanted to learn the whole process.

For the life of me, I can't remember WHY I wanted to learn the whole process. It may be that, having recently spent two years completing a master's thesis, I was desparate to create something of actual value. Or, if that's too cynical, maybe I wanted to see something good (or, at least, purty) come out of what was otherwise turning out to be a real washout of a summer. Whatever. I learned the basics of running a sewing machine, and pieced that puppy together. I learned how to "tie" -- a cruder, faster method than actual quilting of putting the three layers of your piece together. And voila! I had made a quilt!

to be continued
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How I Spent the Martin Luther King Holiday

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How I Spent the Martin Luther King Holiday
DATE: 01/16/2006 10:57:08 PM
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From the original "Friendster" version of State of the Craft.

Fabric Depot, a grim Portland big-box superstore devoted strictly to fabric -- well, fabric and "notions" -- was advertising a "Martin Luther King Day 30% Off Sale" for today. Who would have thought, 40 years ago, that Dr. King's legacy would include discount fabric for Portland hobbyists? I can't decide whether it represents societal progress, or decline, or what.

This three-day weekend, in any event, has been one of my biggest quilting binges ever. The weather has been absolutely perfect for quilting, and I haven't done much else. Having been out of commission for most of the last month and a half, I have a lot of lost time to make up if I'm going to finish my challenge piece by the late-March deadline. My goal for this weekend was to lay out a "rough draft" of the piece, and happily I completed that last night and got in another seven or eight hours of revision and even a little sewing today.

Now, as I said before, I'm not supposed to reveal what I'm working on for the challenge. Let's just say it is neither a block quilt, where the face is composed of a grid of blocks which can initially be worked on individually, nor a symetrical pattern where bits can be worked on without reference to the whole. Instead, it's an assymetrical pattern in which each single piece -- there are more than 600 -- needs to be individually planned and placed before any sewing can happen.

So, when I say I was "laying out" the quilt, I was literally arranging the pieces on a table cleared for the occasion in my "studio," here. Now that they are laid out, but very little is sewn together, the whole project is extremely vulnerable. Since there's no door on the room, I'm keeping a piece of plywood over the opening at all times, as a cat leaping up onto the table could immediately undo ten hours of work. That would be bad. It's worrying enough that I was trying to think yesterday if there was any way to protect the layout against the possibility of earthquake. But I suppose if the earthquake hits I'll have other things to worry about anyway.

I mentioned in the first entry that this is a "guild challenge." Here's how it works: the American Quilter's Society picked the fabric. Guilds across the U.S. each select a theme; my guild, Northwest Quilters, picked "Show Off Oregon" (which must be a little annoying to members from the 'Couv, but that's not my problem). Individual guild members prepare a quilt on that theme, and submit them by the end of March. At the April meeting, the guild will vote to select the eight best pieces. (The whole thing with the secrecy is to keep the vote honest, rather than having it turn into a popularity contest). Then, at the national convention, the competition is guild vs. guild.

Returning readers will remember that I am a bit insecure about my standing in the quilting world. Now, it so happens that this challenge has been an opportunity for me to try out an idea I've had knocking around for more than ten years. But at the same time, it's also another opportunity to try to establish some cred within the guild. I'm not really expecting my entry will be in the top eight that go to the national conference, but if I can submit an ambitious, original, well-made, and (most importantly) finished piece that gives the winners a run for their money, I'll be happy. It's definitely original and ambitious -- you will have to take my word on that, for now -- but I will have to put in a lot of hours to get it finished, let alone well-made. I might take a extra few days off to work on it.

This challenge project reminds me a little bit of my largest-scale project, one that I've been working on for two years already and estimate I'll finish in 2009. It's called "Labyrinth." It is, well, a labyrinth. It's a big one, executed in 1 1/2 " squares. The photo shows a completed corner of it, about 200 individual squares. The completed quilt will consist of more than 3000 individual squares. Like the challenge quilt, this is another piece that requires laying out, but there are no tables in the house anywhere close to large enough. When I work on layout for this sucker, I take apart our futon and use the entire floor area of our bedroom, and we sleep in the guestroom for a few nights. I think that it will ultimately be a pretty cool thing and prove well worth the years of work and hassle. But, I'll feel stupid if it's a bomb.

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Episode II: Projects I'm Halfway Through With

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Episode II: Projects I'm Halfway Through With
DATE: 12/19/2005 10:05:23 PM
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From the original "Friendster" version of State of the Craft.

I actually do intend to keep this blog up. It's just been a tough month, which brings up the whole quilting/mental health connection, and the Story of Why I Started Quilting in the First Place. But let's leave that for a later date.

Last week was quilt guild, and I showed the "log cabin" quilt -- the one with the concentric copper and blue-green diamonds -- at the show and tell session that ends the meeting. It received some hushed exclamations and a round of applause.... but then all of the show and tell quilts get hushed exclamations and a round of applause. And there's this funny phenomenon where my piece looks outrageously fabulous in my house, or if I am showing it to friends who don't know a lot about quilts, but, when it's surrounded by other quilts made by competent quilters, it suddenly looks like a glorified beach towel. Some of the show and tell quilts were so absolutely stunning that I felt embarassed to be showing mine. (But, to be fair, some of the others were at about the same level of fabulousness as mine.)

When I sat back down, one of the woman at my table helpfully commented that it would be a more impressive quilt if I had made more of a value contrast between my two colors. More about value in a moment, but remember: this was a quilt I had lived with and worked on for five years. A critique of my color choices, the very first decision upon which the whole quilt was built, wasn't the first thing I wanted to hear from my fellow guild member. To my credit, I did not punch her in the face, and was on the whole quite gracious about the remark, I thought.

The idea of value refers to intensity of color. The difference between a brilliant royal blue, a sky blue, and a powdery white with a slight bluish tint is a difference of value -- same blue, different intensity. Most quilters will tell you that, although color is fun, you have to base your design on value if you want it to "jump out" and make a strong impression. And they are right! I know this, because I taught cartography back in the day. You have to use value in data presentation, because it is what registers on the eye the strongest -- this ultimately has to do with the "rods" and "cones" in the eyes, and all of that good stuff. But I digress.

Here is one of the quilts I am halfway done with. Its name is Winter Quilt. Notice how those stars leap out in the center? That's value at work. I used a dark ("saturated") fabric on a light background, so that they would be very clearly defined. Sure, it sounds obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people might go after the exact same design, but use fabrics all of the same value. If you do that, it gets muddy.

I know, because this happens to be the only quilt I've ever made from a published pattern. I made it for a class, so I got to see what a bunch of different people would do, color-wise, given the same layout to work with. Classes are a big fixture of quilt culture, and every quilt shop of any size whatsoever offers classes pretty much every day of the week. In this case, the class was at the very excellent shop the Pine Needle in Lake Oswego. It was called "Learn to Quilt," which required some humility on my part after eleven years of quilting, but I wanted to brush up on my fundamentals. It worked beyond my wildest expectations, and I learned as much on each of the six nights of the class as I would in a full year of going it alone.

The poofy white edges are the batting sticking out. I'm still working on the quilting on this one, and until that's done the batting will just hang out like that. Once it's all quilted, the very last step will be to cut the batting back and apply a binding, the outside edge all around the finished quilt. Bindings require a lot of hand sewing, the only hand sewing many quilters do, so they are kind of tedious. But, it's exciting to be working on a binding, since it means you are almost done with something.

Here's a small piece I am about halfway done with. It is a variation of a classic pattern called Around the World that I like; if you've ever been in my dining room, the one in there is a full Around the World. This one uses a progression of blue and gold batik prints that I picked out at In the Begining, another fine shop that's on Lake City Way in Seattle. For now, the face is finished, but I haven't attached a back and batting to it, let alone started the quilting. In fact, it's possible that I will even add a border -- some kind of fabric framing around the main piece shown here -- but I doubt it. I think it will be sharpest with a thin black binding. All three of the pieces I'm writing about today are unusual in that I plan to keep them instead of giving them away. This one will hang in our bedroom.

This third one is kind of a departure for me. Again, it's a selection of batik fabrics, these ones just from a chain store. They are kind of more vivid that I usually go, which feels good. I like the way that the triangles combine to give the illusion of circles, and the way the circles interlock. It's got kind of a hippie/stained glass/mosque floor thing going on.

On this one, the face isn't even finished yet. Mostly just the square blocks, the square pieces that go together to make the design, are put together so far, and I've just laid them next to each other on the floor. Can you see the blocks? The whole thing is a 5 x 5 grid of them. Each block is comprised of the same shapes, in this case, only the colors are different. Thirteen of them have one set of colors, and the other twelve have another. Cool, no?

OK, that's enough out of me. Thanks for reading.

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Charlie
DATE: 12/27/2005 08:35:02 AM
Very interesting analysis of what makes quilts good. I think my mom would really get into this, that is, if she wasn't completely computer illiterate, if their computer worked, and if she had a friendster account so she could comment on value and rods and cones...

My sister did put some of my mom's new quilts on a web page for her. If interested, go to

http://quiltsart.home.mindspring.com/
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