Back to the Beginning

When I first started this column, I wanted to write about creativity, art, and aesthetic in everyday life. I have stayed loosely on that central theme, but have been moving too far away from it in recent months. Now it is time to re-focus, to make this a rifle with a fine-tuned scope instead of a shotgun with no choke.

One of the classes I took at the Houston Quilt Festival was on creativity. It makes perfect sense that anyone interested in fiber crafts would find it appealing to enhance or improve their creativity. What I have found, however, is that to improve your creativity is to improve everything about your life. Lately, I have come to know some folks who are members of twelve-step programs. Being an “inquiring mind,” I have asked lots of questions and even read part of AA’s “big book.” What I have found is that twelve-step programs have a couple of major components: One is getting to a place where you can live in the truth about yourself, your thoughts, the way the world works, and about other people; another is learning that you have to rely on a “higher power” in life as no one person has the wherewithal to manage everything alone. The programs tell you to define the higher power in whatever way is comfortable. I recognize that my higher power is God. The ultimate goal of a twelve-step program is to achieve serenity, which my computer defines as “the state of being calm, peaceful, and untroubled.” That sounds pretty good, does it not?

In the interest of carrying on the creativity enhancement I started in Houston, I pulled out a book I bought several years ago, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. As I started reading and working through it, I began to realize that it is very similar to a twelve-step program. She even refers to the process of becoming an unblocked creative as “recovery”. Now, do not allow the word “artist” in the title of the book to throw you. I think most of us think of painters and sculptors and such when we hear the word “artist,” but there are many, many other types of artists in the world. Basically, we all have the opportunity and the capability to be artists…to do things in our lives creatively and artfully. Julia Cameron says that we were created by the Creator to create—creativity is God’s gift to us and using that gift to create is our gift back to God.

One of the keys of the creative life is attention. For example, one the of the greatest hurdles on the way to learning to draw is to learn to turn off what your conscious mind tells you and, instead, learn to draw exactly what your eyes perceive. Most of us go through the motions of life every day all caught up in our own minds and fail to pay attention to the reality around us. One creativity exercise I find helpful is to do some ordinary task, but to make a point of doing it with attention. I sometimes hang my laundry out instead of putting it the dryer. Believe me, this task is much more enjoyable when I am attentive to the sights of the trees and the grass, the sounds of the birds singing and the chickens clucking around me, the smell of the clean laundry and the country air, and the bending and stretching and the feel of the clothespins in my hands just like they felt in my grandmother’s hands a hundred years ago.

The more I am attentive to the details of my life, the better it all looks to me. I find myself saying prayers of gratitude throughout the day for when I am attentive, I see the abundance of good in my life and that puts me further down the road to serenity.  Attentiveness and focus on living life fully in the moment instead of constantly living in my head worrying about the future or rehashing the past helps me realize just how generous God has been to me. I hope you will give it a try, and I hope it leads you to a bit of serenity in your life, as well. 

Where Deer and Quilts Collide

This past week is where deer and quilts collide in my life. For almost all of the past ten years, I have been attending the International Quilt Festival in Houston. For all but one of those years, Quilt Festival is during the week preceding and the weekend of Opening Weekend of Deer Season. I capitalize that because it is a holiday at my house that is on par with Thanksgiving. So imagine being gone for a week leading up to Thanksgiving and returning late Wednesday night to find all of your visitors already present at your house. Men, you will not understand, but the mothers will.

Fortunately, the meal preparation for Opening Weekend is not as elaborate as it is for Thanksgiving. For many years we had a fish fry, but the past couple of years we have had a hamburger cookout. Every family or group brings some of the ingredients along with other goodies like dips and chips and desserts. Another advantage over Thanksgiving is that we have this dinner outside around the campfire. One of our hunters is a veteran firefighter with lots of experience working in the firehouse kitchen. Unfortunately, he is off elk hunting in Colorado this year, so I did not have his able assistance. But my friend Earleen Brister was here to help, thank goodness!!

Interspersed with all of this is the excitement of hunters going out and coming back in to report what they saw and/or what they shot. This year, no one on our ranch has shot anything so far, but the neighbors a couple of ranches over came by today with a really nice mature eleven-pointer and an ancient eight-pointer. My daughter and I went out Saturday afternoon and saw lots of deer, but nothing that we needed to shoot just now. I always enjoy just watching the animals and listening to the birds. My daughter and I also enjoyed the requisite nap just after settling in the blind—you know the one where you lean your head back and hang your mouth open?

Now for the Quilt Festival report—Earleen and I both took a week of classes and are back full of ideas for how to put our new information to use. After nearly forty years of wanting to learn shisha embroidery, I finally know how. I will post a picture of my first attempt on my blog, where you will be able to see how I got the hang of it as I went around the circle. Shisha embroidery is from India

My first attempt at shisha embroidery. 

and involves attaching tiny mirrors or reflective metals to cloth. For this class, we used large paillettes, which are similar to sequins. I also took classes in machine applique, a couple of machine quilting classes, one on painting shoes, and one creativity workshop.

As for the quilts on display, there is an obvious trend toward quilts that recreate photographs. The top winner was derived from a photograph of a display at the Dallas Arboretum of a boatful of Chihuly glass balls.  The artist managed to capture the illusion of translucent glass in fabric yielding a beautiful work of art. My favorite among the top winners was by Jane Sassaman, who is known for her stylized natural motifs. This year’s quilt represented plants, lizards, and insects in her back yard and was very colorful. The Houston Chronicle website has a slideshow of the highlights that I will link to on my blog, if you want to see these works of art for yourself.

So off I go, back to clean my rifle then get back to the sewing machine—my favorite time of year!! 

Kay's First Assignment Deconstructed

Because I could sense the rising panic in the Graceful Quilters' meeting yesterday, and because I have been trying to learn how to dissect shapes for quilt patterns, I decided to post the deconstruction of the first star block assigned to the group yesterday. I hope it helps y'all!

First, I drew the block on the computer and colored it in my selected color scheme:

In the process of doing this, I realized that this block is actually made up of nine smaller blocks:(all FINISHED sizes)

One 4-inch block for the center

Four 4-inch Four-Patch blocks in the corners

Four 4-inch Triangle-In-A-Square blocks for the star's rays

The center block and the four patch blocks are simple enough, but the triangle-in-a-square blocks are a little more challenging. I found and tried two ways to make them--using Tri-Rec rulers (which I already had on hand), and paper piecing. I figure not everyone has a set of Tri-Recs, so I'm going to show how I did the paper piecing.

First download and print the following two files MAKING SURE THAT ON YOUR PRINTING SCREEN YOU CHOOSE EITHER "NONE" OR 100% FOR THE SCALING:

Templates

4-inch block (print two of these as there are 2 blocks on each page)

Your pages will look like these:

Paper Foundations

Cutting Templates

The cutting templates are vital. They allow you to cut on-grain pieces of fabric that will be exactly the size and shape you will need for this block. I tried to work without them, to "freestyle," and it did not work.

Cut out your template shapes along the lines. Roughly cut out the paper foundations leaving some margin beyond the outer lines of the block.

At this point, you can cut some 5-6" strips of your fabrics to make cutting your template pieces a bit simpler. I, in my wisdom, cut 4.5" strips and that turned out to be a mistake. It was hard to line up my pieces of fabric since I had no margin for error, so cut your strips larger, if you want to cut strips. Note in the pictures below, my fabric isn't as large as the paper template. Yours should be about the same size as the template.

Now attach your center triangle fabric to the WRONG side of the paper foundation, holding it up the light to make sure the edges of your fabric extend at least 1/4" beyond all of the stitching lines.

Next, pin one of your side pieces on top of your center piece, matching up edges and making sure the straight grain of the fabric is going to end up on the outside edge (the more bias edge should be the one that is on the seam line). Either pin the corner fabric in place or hold it in place while you flip the whole assemble over and put it under your presser foot. Starting on the paper and using a smaller-than-normal stitch length (1.5 on my machine), sew along the stitching line right through the paper and both layers of fabric.

Fold the paper out of the way and trim the seam allowance to 1/4."

Then fold that piece out and either finger-press or press in press with a dry iron. Then repeat with the other corner piece. You will end up with this:

All that's left to do is to trim the excess fabric and paper along the outer lines (use a ruler and rotary cutter) and tear off the paper!

If you have done as I said and not as I did, your block will be perfectly square. I paper pieced one of these and used Tri-Recs for the rest:

For the rest of the block:

Make four Four-Patch blocks using 2.5" patches or strips for a block that is 4.5" unfinished. Here is a tutorial on strip-piecing Four-Patches.

For the center you need one more 4.5" (unfinished size) block. I chose to fussy cut a print that I had. The original pattern Kay gave us has this center block pieced out of four triangles. You decide!!

Here is my finished block:

A final bit of advice: make sure you line the four-patch blocks up the way you see them here, with one of the colored blocks in the corner next to the center. Kay and I both did this wrong and it doesn't look right. I re-did mine and still ended up with one turned the wrong way!! So I re-re-did it. Lay out your little blocks, check, double-check, then sew. Unless you want to spend a lot of time with your seam ripper. 

WIP Wednesday

For those who are not quilters, WIP stands for Works In Progress. I much prefer this over the other, not so nice, quilting acronym, UFO (UnFinished Objects). The Austin Modern Quilt Guild puts out a call for WIP reports every Wednesday, so here is mine for this week:

Of the many, many WIPs I have around the house right now, here are a few I have out and active currently--

The quilt top for my next Craftsy class, a Leah Day FMQ Fillers class.

Using up another of those little Moda Candies from QuiltCon! I want to make a sleeve for the two books next the patchwork. I'm trying to decide just how fancy I want this to be. I'm thinking I'll do a little quilting on the two patchwork panels, then make the gusset and closure out of natural canvas. Still working this one out in my head, obviously. 

See that leaf in the middle? That's all that stands between me and finishing this needle turn Hawaiian appliqué. I bought this kit at the Houston Festival last year. I think it may become a pillow. 

I Heart Coffee

I remember exactly when I first started drinking coffee. I was fourteen and staying with my aunt in Alabama for a couple of weeks one summer.  She and her girlfriends would often visit during the day and these visits were always over coffee. I was at that age where it did not interest me to go outside and play like a child, but I was not old enough to really visit with the grown women, either.  I decided the least I could do was partake in the coffee. My aunt helped me fix up the little cup of coffee with a lot of milk and a lot of sugar. I remember thinking it was not so bad that way.  To the best of my recollection, I left the coffee drinking in Alabama when it was time to go back home.

About a year later, during the summer, I developed a very strange habit for a teenager—I started getting up around five every morning and watching the sun rise over our back yard. Coffee reappeared. I found it was very enjoyable to have a cup of coffee on these early summer mornings. When school started I found myself in first period with a very sweet, but very troubled teacher. She apparently had a drinking problem and would be barely coherent many mornings. She would assign us bookwork and would doze at her desk. I found it necessary to have coffee every morning to keep from dozing at my own desk. Somewhere in that same year, I discovered coffee ice cream.

The only time since then that I have parted ways with coffee was during both of my pregnancies. Caffeine caused contractions that made my belly like a basketball-sized rock and also could have potentially caused my babies to be premature, so I regretfully said “see you later” to my beloved beverage.

Over the years we have seen the delightful development of a coffee culture, including things like coffee houses, exotic coffees, and all sorts of cool coffee gadgets like Keurigs and, the latest object of my desire, the Nespresso. My daughter and I went to the Pacific Northwest a couple of years ago and discovered that instead of little snow cone stands everywhere, they have little coffee stands! We were in heaven!! And now I hear that coffee c

As I have grown older, my coffee tastes have changed. I started thirty-something years ago adding lots of milk and sugar. I soon dropped the sugar but stuck with the milk until this past year. Now I have dropped the milk and am surprised to find the black coffee to be delicious! Two weeks ago I had my first straight, black espresso and that was just almost too good to be true, but I think I may have hair growing on my chest now. The only thing that has not changed is that I have never liked the screaming-hot coffee that my parents like. I prefer to wait for it to cool just a bit before I drink it. 

Lately, I have seen two different artists who paint with coffee. (I will try to link to their work on the blog version of this article.) A couple of months ago one of my art quilt magazines had a challenge to make art quilts that celebrated coffee and/or tea. I have made one coffee cup quilt and have collected many coffee-related cotton prints for future projects. Clearly I am not the only one who hearts coffee. Do you heart coffee or hot tea? Tell me about it! 

My much-loved Coffee Cup quilt.

Lately, I have seen two different artists who paint with coffee. (I will try to link to their work on the blog version of this article.) A couple of months ago one of my art quilt magazines had a challenge to make art quilts that celebrated coffee and/or tea. I have made one coffee cup quilt and have collected many coffee-related cotton prints for future projects. Clearly I am not the only one who hearts coffee. Do you heart coffee or hot tea? Tell me about it!

A small selection of coffee art:

Six Artists Who Paint with Coffee

Michael Williams Coffee Art

Dirceu Veiga

What Happens After Midnight

When I was younger, my mother always told me, “Nothing good happens after midnight.” My weekend curfew was midnight as long as I lived with my parents, even after I was twenty! Of course, I thought that it was a silly curfew and a paranoid way to look at the world to think nothing good happens after midnight.

As I got older and started paying attention to the news, I began to realize my mother was actually correct! Murders, rapes, car wrecks, etc., seem to mostly occur between midnight and six in the morning. Actually, my observations over the years lead me to believe that two in the morning is when things really begin to get ragged out in the world.

As can be expected, when I went off to college I was regularly out and about all hours of the night, sometimes dragging back to my dorm in the morning sun. We would stay out all night watching a lunar eclipse, or camping in line to get football tickets, or just sitting on a mountaintop solving all the world’s problems. I felt safe then, partially due to the ignorance of youth and partially due to being always surrounded by large groups of friends.

Now that I am a mother and I have curfews to set for my own kids, midnight is the chosen hour. As I said, maturity and experience taught me that being out and about  after midnight exponentially increases the chance of being involved in tragedy.

But I have to say that not EVERYTHING that happens after midnight is bad. This morning at 1:30, one of my dogs woke me up wanting to go outside. I let her out, then after a few minutes of waiting for her to return, decided to go outside and look for her. I grabbed a spotlight we keep charged up and handy—an important thing to have when you live in the country—slipped on some shoes, and went outside. First, my light found a pair of yellow eyes looking back at me just thirty feet away and not far from my chicken house. I kept looking at this pair of eyes until the creature decided to run for it. It was a fox! I shone further up the hill and found two pairs of yellow eyes. This time I was looking at two coyotes. Sweeping my light on around I found a small herd of deer at the crest of the hill. It is amazing what goes on all around me when I am (normally) sound asleep. Thankfully my chickens were locked up tight!

I thought about other times when we have gotten out of our warm beds, driven out to a hilltop, and lain in the bed of the truck watching meteor showers. And there was the time in South Texas when we loaded everyone up and drove out to a high spot near Choke Canyon Lake to watch the re-entering space shuttle fly over.

My husband told me a story about one time when he was in high school and he and some friends were camping out by the river. They saw what looked to be the most gigantic falling star of all time. They thought they were either hallucinating or had just witnessed an asteroid strike. The next day the news reported that a satellite had re-entered the atmosphere and had put on quite a light show in the process.

My conclusion is that as long as you are out in the country, after midnight can be fairly safe and quite interesting.  If you are in the city after midnight, it is best to make sure you are tucked in somewhere safe and can avoid the after-midnight meanness.