Stripping naked...?

A few weeks ago SAQA issued a call for photos of studio space. My studio never looks cleaned up, and nevertheless I gave it a try and sent in a photo of the current state of my working table. You can see it amongst many others here. It's probably not something to be proud of, nor will it improve my reputation, I am afraid. But it's the way it is these days. I am trying to clear up, but it's hard.

Packing

Next week I will be going to France for the Quilt Expo in Beaujolais and so I have begun getting things ready. I will be there with the International Threads exhibition that we first showed in Prague last year. But this time I won't have Kathy Loomis to carry half the exhibition, but some quilts aren't here with me. I won't be traveling lightly!

Only in terms of my personal items! And I will also be there as the SAQA regional representative, SAQA is showing the "Two by Twenty" exhibition, which I am really looking forward to.

I've signed a contract and am now a contributor to the German Patchwork Guild's magazine. This is going to an interesting experience, but writing comes easily, so it will be more of a challenge to find topics to write about than actually writing it up. All a matter of getting organized, I guess.
Yesterday I learned that the studio space I was going to move to with the longarm and that I had really been looking forward to is not going to be available after all. The current resident has realized that she is paying pitifully little for this space, and that any move into town is going to cost her so much more, so she is not moving out. And I can't move in. Which is quite a disappointment. I will have to keep listening to my husband's remarks about how the longarm makes our books and board games rather inaccessible. And it is really tightly fitted into that room - it would have been such a relief to be able to get to the back side of it without having to crawl under it. But perhaps something else will come up. Just it's going to be that much more expensive...

End of Year Mood

I am not a particularly original person. And sometimes I wish I had taken a few more original decisions in life than I actually did. Perhaps there will be a few more chances, after the child is a bit more advanced in his life... Now being not particularly original, I fall into the same trap every year as the particular year draws to a close. Finishing mode – which is not too bad, as it helps clear up a bit of clutter, gives UFOs a different kind of life(expectation), and me a feeling of accomplishment.

And, of course, looking back on what happened during the past year with a more or less critical eye. I’ve been on the road in quilting and fabric selling quite a bit. I had one quilt accepted to a major exhibition and was rejected from several others. Overall, I guess, it has been a successful year.

Although I do have to admit that I did not get very far with my great intention of de-cluttering the studio which I announced in September. I even think I knew then that not much would come of it. But I did take one step of rearranging the immediate right hand corner next to my sewing machine, which tends to be the accumulation point of stuff. Stuff, which is not necessarily needed there, which attracts dust and more stuff, and which sometimes is a hindrance when I reach for the wheel of the machine on the right hand side:

Before de-cluttering

I cleared that off, as I did with the surface of a little trolley which holds many of my sewing threads and has the advantage of being on wheels, and which can be rolled into position on my right side when I need these things, and pushed back when it is in the way. Major achievement! Count that on the very positive side of the successes during the year.

After de-cluttering. Hopefully not only a temporary condition...

But because the past few months have been emotionally draining it somehow doesn’t really feel like it’s been a successful year. My husband has been struggling at work quite abit, which always has an influence on the family. And ever since the summer I have been asking myself ‘what is going on here?’

One part of it I attribute to the fact that Germany had the General Election in the fall. A lot of talk was going on about more children’s day care centers, getting more women to join the work force full-time (a large percentage of women working here only do so part-time, and a low-paid jobs), establishing more and more schools where kids go for the whole day – by far not the norm here yet. And it really made me feel insufficient. I don’t go out of the house to work for somebody else, my little one-woman fabric-dyeing business doesn’t have a wild surplus, I don’t give employment to other people, and I do care about being at home in the afternoon when my child comes home from school. I would not want to send him to afternoon care and only get to see him in the evenings when everybody is tired. I am working, and not only as the unpaid house-caretaker - but I am not working in a way that the politicians think economically successful. But with all that political talk suggesting that a good woman is only she who has made it to the top of some major company and is successfully juggling everything, driving herself and probably her family mad with overchallenging herself, I wondered how backward my opinions have become over the years. (My younger brother used to call me the feminist b.... when I was at university – now I am slowly approaching fifty and seem to be an anachronism regarding my opinions...) I haven’t felt good about it – although I do think I have taken the right decisions. They weren’t particularly original, but the ones that the politicians would have preferred, don’t seem particularly original to me, either.

I have also been bothered more and more with the EU’s way of dealing with so many situations. I don’t approve of their policies with refugees – I am ashamed that the former recipient of the Nobel Prize for Peace looks on as hundreds and hundreds of people drown right on their doorstep when trying to escape from their unbearable situations at home. And the only answer the politicians come up with is putting more money into fending them off. In the end of November I listened to a radio report on the Jewish Refugee Children Movement, and how those had helped tens of thousands of children escape Nazi Germany. Right after that the news reported on the fact that by now hundreds of thousands of Syrian children are displaced either within their country or in other countries, just across the Syrian borders. And that Germany had graciously granted visa to 5,000 Syrians. (By now that number has been doubled.) How much have we learned from past history lessons? Nothing much, it seems.

Not to mention ongoings in other countries such as financial cliffs, civil war in far too many countries, natural disasters which still don’t teach us anything, backlashes in human rights issues... Easy to get depressed!

So it is easy to let a few months in the end of a year spoil the earlier successes. Again, not very original. We have had a few nice days of sunshine – although too warm for the season – but I won’t go on about it any more. In order to get out of the end-of-year-slump it certainly makes more sense to go out and enjoy the sunshine rather than lament that it’s there...

on the way to take a photo for my new tree-project

Thread spool storage

Over the last few weeks something has been happening in the back of the sewing room of the community college where I am currently teaching a patchwork class.

At first it looked as if a fakir was going to start using the classroom as well.

Last week, first items started appearing on the nails.

And this past Monday, the board looked almost like a piece of art.

Quite an ingenious way of storing your thread spools - all it is is a board hung on the back of the door.

You don't waste any wall space, you don't run danger of hurting your thread spools, because usually there is enough room between the door and the wall, even when the door is open. The only thing I don’t like about it is the open air storage approach, and thus the high possibility that they will accumulate dust quite quickly – because sewing rooms tend to be on the dusty side, no matter how often you push the vacuum cleaner through!

This doesn't even take a supporting quilter to make, though - anyone can make one herself. (Except that I have my little drawers, which keep out at least some of the dust.)

An outsider's view of the studio...

We had friends visiting us a couple of weeks ago who stopped by on the tail end of their bike trip along the Danube River. (We’re not really on that river, but our little local river runs into it.) They had exhausted their camera’s batteries, and as he is an avid photographer, he ‘borrowed’ my camera to take his pictures while they were staying at our house. He also took a few pictures while I was showing both of them my studio. It is interesting to see what he noticed in terms of nicknack and crammed situation...

So after looking at his pictures I took a before-New-Year’s-resolution: get rid of some of the stuff that is accumulating here! (I have almost four months left...)

New in May

The month of May has brought quite a few changes in my studio. Not only did I get my new machine early in the month. (Which as of yet I have used far too little these past weeks due to my 10-day-absence for teaching and as a vendor.)

The second big change that occurred was the new sewing table, which I had ordered along with the machine from the specialized company RMF (Rauschenberger – Möbel mit Funktion): they produce furniture for sewing utensils and I finally wanted a large expanse around the amchine’s free arm, putting an end to getting stuck on the edges of the quilting table with large or even smaller quilts.

Of course, this monster of a table got delivered on the day before my departure for Karlsruhe and Einbeck, without giving us even the slightest of chances to have it installed in my studio before I left. And when I say “monster”, it is not exactly an exaggeration. My husband had insisted that I get an oversized version to avoid frustration when working on larger quilts, so this one is 1,10m deep and 1,70m wide. Which makes it huge. And heavy. And it arrived fully mounted. Somehow I was able to convince the delivery guys to bring it into the house, but they disappeared so quickly that I was not able to give them a tip – and I really think they disappeared so quickly to prevent me from even attempting to persuade them to bring it in any further than they did.

Of course, there was absolutely no time to even think about how to get it upstairs before I left, and my husband was not exactly pleased to have this huge box sitting in the living room during my prolonged absence.

unpacked, and upside down

When I called from Karlsruhe he suggested I make plans where in the living room I was going to instal my sewing machine, he saw no way how we were ever going to get that thing upstairs or through the door of my studio. Fortunately RMF was present at the event in Karlsruhe and I managed to talk to the director who gave me a few hints about how to carry it, and he also promised he would be willing to give us support via the telephone in case we really had to take it apart. “Two strong men will definitely be able to carry it upstairs,” he assured me. My husband remained sceptical, but resigned himself to ten days in the company of a huge package.

After my return from Einbeck I immediately started clearing up and out of what was my former studio arrangement. My old sewing table was scheduled to be picked up by a used furniture store two days later.

The cutting table was to be relocated, and the new sewing table was supposed to take its place, facing the wall.

Then my husband started acquainting himself with the intricacies of screws, electrical wires and how it all connected. Thanks to the telephone-hotline, he managed to take out exactly those screws that were necessary to separate the table top from the lower part.

The two of us then slowly carried the very heavy parts upstairs, separately, one step at a time. 

There is absolutely no way even three strong men would have been able to carry it upstairs fully mounted! And I assume the movers are going to think us crazy when they have to bring it back down should we really have to move...

Upstairs, the separate parts had to be put back together again. 

And we now have only one little screw left over – which my husband claims he did not open.

I did have to endure a number of slightly cynical comments about how I would have done ony my own, and what a quilter’s husband had to go through these days. But he did not let me down, and finally everything was at its new place (here the old table’s glass top is still there, being stored until pickup time):

It was left to me to do the final adjustments of the lift with which the machine can be stored beneath the table top in case you want to. Now the plane is exactly even with the machine’s free arm and quilting should be unimpeded.

Now everything is in its place. Work can resume. And big thank you goes to my helpful and supportive husband who never lets me down in taxing situations!