Preparing for after? (Is it still a diary of recovery?)

 

For more than 15 years I have been teaching patchwork workshops at a Rural Catholic Community College which provides us with perfect conditions. Recently a few things changed, however. The employee who was ‘in charge’ of us went into retirement and the successor has not been appointed yet, partly due to Corona, partly due to inner workings I am not familiar with. We were given an intermediate person who is in charge and yesterday I went to Petersberg. First incentive was to get a massage with the wonderful massage therapist who is located there, and second incentive was to talk to that person, who also happens to be the director of it all.

Before we talked I went for a little walk in the woods around the house. Fall is my absolute favorite time of year there, as the beech trees turn yellow and the woods suddenly seem so much lighter and gayer than on a normal summer day. Which in itself is nice, too, but if you look at these pictures I am sure you will understand. 

 

 

The conversation was positive enough – for the coming year two dates have already been set, and he promised to give us two suggestions within the next few days for 2022. No promises made as to how things will continue when a new employee will actually be installed, but he acknowledged that the patchwork workshops are a bench to build on: they are the workshops that fill up the quickest, they are easy to organize for the people in the house and no additional personnel is needed from their side to run the show. So it all sounded positive. And with those trees shining with light it felt like things were improving. Silver Lining!

But of course I knew that the storm was brewing, I have been following the news, the rising numbers of infections, the ‘hot spots of infection’, the scary information that nobody is able to follow anymore where people are actually getting their infections. My brother-in-law and his wife have had it, and they have no idea where they might have caught it. And I do consider them pretty conscientious people who will abide by the rules. They did not go to illegal parties for sure – some of those have been decisive in the rise of numbers in our area.

Today the prime ministers of the federal states convened with the chancellor, and they have pronounced another four week lockdown. They are not calling it that. But in fact that is what it is. Lots of places closed down, they are insisting that people stay home as much as possible, no mingling, ‘reduce your contacts’. I am just starting three weeks of vacation. Not much to look forward to, really. Can’t go visit friends or take trips, not even day trips... I guess just taking it day by day is the only thing to do. Keep stitching to stay sane, keep moving for as much exercise as we are allowed – we have not been told to stay at home, just to minimize contact with other people – and not make the mistake to start cooking elaborate meals and trying out recipes that then need to be eaten. And start on the next round of listening to my Pale Rider.

The Quilt that sewed itself (Diary of recovery)

One of the first real-life impressions I had of Kathleen Loomis was when we were both attending a Master Class at Nancy Crow’s barn in Ohio and Kathy was showing one of her mind-boggling postage stamp quilts to some people in the room. I don’t remember whether it was “Spaghetti Sauce” or  “The Great Lawn” but I certainly remember what I thought when I saw her unrolling the meticulously packaged quilt of a zillion (or so it seemed) small pieces held together by thread lines: it was a mixture of sincere awe and asking myself whether she was out of her mind. (I like people who are slightly off the beaten track!) 

Meanwhile Kathy and I have become good friends, and even before I met her I did what she had done that eventually started her off on the postage stamp quilts: I used small pieces of fabric as sewing-on-sewing-off pieces to stabilize thread tension in between seams on a current project. But for a while I was getting to the point where they were accumulating and I did not know what to do with them, really. I used some on small quilts:

 

I used some on a T-shirt I had to mend at the side seam. I had cut out the washing instructions label and cut into the jersey fabric and did not want to throw away the new shirt, so I simply sewed two of the pieces on the side seam, a little later I also added some more on the edge of the neckline. And I have put some on certain spots of jeans that needed mending.

 

But overall I was at a loss – no way could I start making larger pieces similar to Kathy’s, it is so much her style that I would never have made a piece out of any number of these. On the other hand, having them at the sewing machine throat was just so handy, because it was so much easier to start and finish off a seam when using them. So when I saw a post on Instagram by Maryline Collioud-Robert / @mary_and_patch where she showed a ‘quilt that had sewed itself’ and checked up on the respective blog entry and realized that she was basically doing that same thing with scraps that she then put together into a scrap quilt, I knew that this phrase filled a need of mine.

But I took a slightly different approach. Last year I had started yet another piece with which I was going to commemorate more refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean – but with my increasing frustration about the whole situation I was growing more desperate, and at some point that quilt stalled. What use counting dead refugees by creating blue four-patch blocks…? The precuts and pieces that had been sewn already were left sitting there in a basket, another one amongst my too many unfinished pieces. And I had seen another post on Instagram, by DianaVandeyar /@dianavandeyar, whom I had met in South Africa last year. She was revisiting her many years of digital pattern designs and it included a design with four-patch blocks that set me on a track of thinking about what I could do with those blue four-patches. 

Here is where it all comes together, just in case you are wondering: I needed something to sew on and sew off, I wanted to do something with the four-patches and I liked the phrase ‘a quilt that sewed itself’. So while I was working on my lockdown-pieces, I also worked on the blue four-patches, finishing them, putting them into double-four-patches, and the whole thing grew into a large blanket. 

 

The process took off at a point where a number of four-patches had been finished, but it also included sewing a few last strips together, cut-offs into four-patches, and then four-patches into double four-patches with the oranges, and then double-doubles. So there were a few phases where a bit of planning ahead and preparing was needed, but I kept the planning to a minimum in order to be able to concentrate on the main quilt(s) for which this one was only the sew-on-sew-off .

Here are photos of the back in the making. I had so many double-four-patches left over once I decided I was going to eliminate the ones with yellow and stick to only basically orange for the front. Yet I did not want any leftover blocks, and I did not want to have to come up with another idea for them. So the yellow ones ended up on the back.

 

It has been quilted, and I do like how it turned out. Not sure yet whether it will also be entered somewhere but we will see. Now I need to get the binding on. And I have already started on my next quilt that sews itself as I sew on and off. This one is going to be a lot more scrappy, meaning there will at least for a while be even less planning needed. 

Thank you, Kathy, Marie and Diana – so much fun when inspiration is fed from different sources and it all comes together somehow!

Teaching Socially Distanced - Diary of Recovery!

 

A little more than a week ago I got to teach a workshop at the Community College where I have been teaching regularly. Until the last day I was expecting to receive a cancellation due to rising infection numbers, but that didn’t happen. 

 

We got together, no hugging as usual, the tables stood a bit further apart than usually. But we always have pretty big tables, one of the many many assets this venue provides, and so the situation in the sewing room wasn’t that much different than any other time. Except for wearing masks when going around in the room, I did not go as close up to participants as I might have in other times. And we were supposed to wear masks when leaving the room, of course. Nothing we were not prepared for, because by now everybody knows how to behave. And we were all so very happy that the workshop could take place that everybody obliged willingly. In Germany by now many people are debating more and more whether wearing masks does actually make a difference in terms of infection rates. I wonder why – is it because we were so successful in the spring to cut it all down that now, because it all was so successful people are not taking the danger for real anymore? By now, numbers are rising again, and it is getting to the point where the increase is dramatic.

 

However, I did feel a difference, both in the teaching, and in the dining room situation. Meal times were split up, to reduce the number of people in the room together at one time. And we were supposed to sit with social distance, although not quite 6 ft. apart. Normally, there would have been a gorgeous salad buffet, one of the highlights of that place – not possible. Meals weren’t served to the table, one had to stand in line, then got to pick out what one wanted and could take the plate back to the table. Food was as good as always, but I clearly felt how important those meals together, the conversations that take place at the table during eating, are for the overall well-being of the course. We were still fine, the group knows each other, and we all had a very good time. 

 

Under the circumstances it was probably much better than we could have hoped for. And I am very grateful that we could do that weekend. It is just a tiny bit of feeling of completeness that was missing.

Things on my table and my mind (Diary of recovery)

 

A couple of weeks ago Germany talked about the fifth anniversary of Chancellor Merkel’s famous words “Wir schaffen das!” (we can do that) which marked the beginning of one million refugees pouring into the country.  Although she  had only meant to take in the twenty-plus-something-thousands that were waiting at the Bukarest strain station at that time. The recent commemorations all tried to analyse what was right about that sentence or what Dr. Merkel had done wrong, give reasons for this and for that. But that's already over, by now we are in the midst of discussion rounds about the 30^th anniversary of German reunification – what went wrong, what was right, who was robbed of what, what was good in the GDR, are we really one nation, one people, … Germans seem to have a severe urge to discuss everything to shredded pieces these days, and in a negative way. Constantly journalists are pointing out what went wrong, what could have been done differently. It never seems to be worth to talk about the positive sides of things. How well many things went with one million refugees, many of which are working now. 

This attitude of talking things to death negatively is not a healthy way to deal with matters of importance, I think. But seems to be a very German approach, unfortunately. (I still think that Angela Merkel’s sentence was one of the best things she ever said, but the reaction from the then Bavarian Prime Minister and now Minister of Interior Affairs and Security spoiled it all, broke a barrier and made all the problems with right-wing extremists that we are experiencing now, possible to begin with. But I am back to trying to keep this a blog without real political issues. So no more on this.)

Definitely, these two anniversaries right on top of each other are a strong indicators, yet again, that time flies. (In a former life of mine, when I was still a linguist, this phrase would routinely draw up one of the insider jokes that live in specialist groups: “ Time flies  …. like an arrow. And fruit flies like a banana.”) I haven’t written a post in a while, but I have been continuously composing them in my mind indeed - and the longer I hadn’t written, the less feasible it seemed to come up with something coherent about stuff that is going on.

I have been to see my mother after several surgeries. I have had two wonderful weeks in a section in the hospital where I could indeed imagine myself working, if they have an opening starting next fall. I have had several rather unpleasant weeks in school, but I am counting down and there is not that much class time left to endure before the onset of exams coming July. Less than 80 days, in fact. And that is a positive things.

And I am working on this and on that. Quite a number of works in progress, each of which is biding their time, gets a bit of attention now and then and then has to recede to the background while others are being tended to. But the attention span is again on the shorter side, with worries growing again about increasing numbers of infections, demonstrations 'for liberty, against masks'... Who on earth can come up with such a stupid idea that a mask is meant to shut the population up?

The quilt I sent off on its round of entries (see post here) was already rejected once, Schweinfurth did not like it, and although I had thought it would not matter, I was a bit hurt and considered pulling it out of the circle. Originally, I had thought I would enter it for Quilt National, and Schweinfurth had just been an additional opportunity prior to that. “Forget entering”… just do my stuff as I like it and don’t bother to present it to the quilting world. But my good friend Barbara Lange just in time asked whether I had entered something for QN, and convinced me to give it a try by telling me that one quilt of hers had been rejected by the jury for St. Marie-aux-Mines but then been accepted for QN. And this conversation took place before the deadline had gone, I then really remembered to send off my entry, entry process worked easily without any problems and now the yellow scraps are waiting for their next verdict.

I have taught an online class twice in August, in the overall context of the Patchwork Gilde’s summer academy and have started preparing another on for November. It is not my favorite way of teaching, I must admit, and I am very glad that real teaching is coming up for me again in two weeks’ time. But the participants were so grateful and happy that things were happening, that they got to learn something new. Some of them even said that these new methods had given them more opportunities to participate in workshops or classed than they used to have before because they would have never been able to go to any of the ‘far away’ places where workshops are being held. They prefer having their fabrics close by, and even if a teacher out of a computer is different from a teacher on the premises, they were just glad to be sewing ‘in company’ and learning something as well. Which convinced me to pick another subject, aiming at a different group of expertise in quilting, and be a part of the ‘staff’ for another online-event the Gilde is planning for November.

I have also started ‘planning’ a quilt. 

 

Which definitely is not my usual mode of production. But as this post now is beginning to be a bit of a rambler, I think that will be a topic for another post in a few days when planning has progressed just a bit further.