What kind of film is this?

 A lot of life is going on these days, and it leaves little time to ponder what would be worth writing about. Only little time for stitching as such, anyway.

And then so many things happening that bother me. I received my second dose of vaccine on Friday, which in itself is a very good thing and I am immensely grateful for, despite all the vagaries about the vaccines as such, the mode of distribution in Germany / Europe / less developed countries, how the pharmaceutic corporations are using it to manifest and milk their power, and instances of corruption in politicians connected with face masks blablabla. 

 

I had received the shot around 2 p.m., my arm started hurting later that afternoon, getting bad and worse, and then I went to sleep at 8 p.m. And slept. and slept. and slept. Except for two minor trips to the lavatory, a drink of water and a few words with my husband I was not able to do anything on Saturday, I slept and slept and slept. Until way into Sunday morning. By Sunday noon I was pretty much my old self again, if a bit slowed down still. But I did feel somewhat like a Rippa van Winkle, especially when looking through the paper, which, at that point was only yesterday’s paper, but sported news that seemed to tell me that the world was really crumbling in its mindset, as if my sleep interval had made my perception to it all even more acute.

Or has the virus dug deeper into all our brains and is by now really getting to our core? Life seems to be getting stranger and stranger, and some things I see hurt me more and more. One example: the current head of the grouping calling itself the Christian Democratic Values Union, a rather right-oriented section within the Christian Democratic Party (definitely not a party on the liberal spectrum of the political scene – they are conservative! they promote conservative values!) announced he would not be available for another term when a new head would be elected within a couple of months, because of the “dangerously left-oriented turn that Christian Democratic Policies have taken”. Excuse me? I have a very hard time understanding where left-orientation can be found or even suspected in Merkel’s or anybody from the CDU’s ranks politics. It felt like being in the wrong film. That’s when I first thought about how Rip van Winkle must have felt. And I had only been gone for a day. Made me wonder, too, how people who are recovering from a coma, or whatever kind of longish sedation, feel like, when they are returning back to real life. And then I began thinking about Sleeping Beauty and the depiction of her waking up after her hundred years of sleep. Being ‘kissed awake’, and simply as that she is whisked off by the prince, I mean, did he ask her whether that was what she wanted? But to be honest – I did not follow this thought through. I had applied for a job at the University of the Arts in Berlin earlier this year, as the HR person for Equal Opportunities, and while simply the process off applying, imagining myself back in an academic environment, how it would be and what it would mean to me living in a city like Berlin did me very good, the fact that I wasn’t even invited for an interview really pissed me off. However, I don’t approve of the way political movements are now trying to interfere with spelling ‘regulations’ that are supposed to show a more inclusive attitude towards underprivileged sections of society. I don’t think it will work through political pressure, these regulations will only split society even further – so in the end I am a bit relieved that I did not get that job and would have had to be at the forefront of this issue. Where my stand probably wouldn’t have been received well.

I am rambling on, mostly because I don’t have a lot to show. I did start a sunflower field and a tomato farm, though!

 

But there is something interesting going on. For almost two weeks now I have been posting design options for the Burgoyne Surrounded block on the Patchwork Gilde Deutschland’s website, members area. Which is turning into an adventure in designing for me. I am slowly learning tricks and options of EQ8 that way and have come up with some really fun layouts.

Here are a few recent highlights from the last two posts.

 

 

As I am not exactly sure whether this activity is actually finding any response within the Guild’s community (nobody except the web editor has left a comment in the comment area yet). It has received some nice comments on Instagram when I post on my personal account, whereas the members forum is open only to members, so I have decided to take at least some of the most exciting designs (in my opinion) that I come up with to a wider public. Be prepared to see a few more of these here during the month of April. One thing I will try to do is to improve the quality of the pictures, perhaps saving them in a different size will also make them a bit more catchy.

An eerie little respite...

 

For months on end everything has been closed, no workshops or gatherings or even visits with more than one other person possible. Then it seemed as if numbers were going down, a new regulation for adult education centers was announced (my son was alternately going back to school, too) – and the workshop at my usual retreat place Petersberg, north-east of Munich, scheduled for this past weekend, was happening. Only a third of the people who had originally signed up actually committed to coming under the strict hygienic regulations posed by the administration, but the director nevertheless decided that it would be ‘on’.

At first I had been sceptical whether I wanted this to happen, or did I want to go – it meant a severe cut in revenue, after all, and as I had been expecting it to be canceled I had thought about other things to do for the weekend (i.e. finally get serious about studying for my upcoming exams). But after a number of unpleasant experiences last week I was happy enough to get out when time came around, packed my car, and took off.

 

A bit of dramatic sky on the way there – we have been having rather cold temperatures with April-kind-of-weather. And then we were the only group, eight people, in a house where normally there can be up to eighty people. It felt a bit eerie indeed. Eight small peas in a large pod...

But we were determined to make the best of it. I had posited that we talk about anything expect the Big C thing, and although in a few instances little references happened, everybody in the group was eager to check everybody else. We had a lovely weekend sewing, chatting, trying out stuff. It wasn’t a workshop, because we felt that the others who didn’t come but still somehow belong to the group (it’s a rather consistent pool of participants who regularly come to the gatherings) shouldn’t be left out completely. They actually 'joined' us twice for brief zoom interactions.

I enlisted everybody present to make one example of the block ‘burgoyne surrounded’, which is the topic of the current sew along I am hosting for the German Guild, and we came up with a nice selection of examples. 

 

Iris tried an inversion with two colours.

Gina tried her hand on the smaller version
where the small squares measure 1/2 inch only.

A display of (most of) the examples made by the group
(a portion of the light blue ones in the right upper hand corner
I had already made at home and brought with me, I
would not have been able to make that many, they do take time...)

Some of them I may use for further explorations of the pattern in the next few weeks. For posting on social media we even dared take a photo for which we dropped our masks briefly after having set it all up in an almost socially distanced array.

 

Numbers of infection are on the rise again, and the house may have to close down again perhaps day after tomorrow. So this was a strange little heavenly retreat. But it gave a feeling of almost normal, at least until the moment when we had to leave again Sunday afternoon.

A kind of sew-along: #gildemodernburgoyne

 A lot of life has been going on here lately, too much to write about, only a reason why I once again did not post a lot. Although I have been creating, and I may report on that later.

In any case, today is the day of the 'reveal' of the finished (modern inspired) version of the Burgoyne Surrounded I have posted about before, and for which Kathy requested a picture. Here it is: (quilt holder is my by now really tall 15-yr-old, thank you!)

 

The Patchwork Gilde Deutschland e.V. is hosting a forum-based sew-along for members, and we will be presenting a little bit on facebook and instagram as well. The buttons/teasers for social media were designed by our experts on the web-editor-team, and I thank them for their patience and support.

 

I will be posting design ideas that I will create with my new and extensive (hmmm...) knowledge of eq8 and that will be a steep learning curve for me. And I hope people will have fun following along, joining in.

QuiltCon Together, at home by myself...

 Last weekend I spent a lot of hours on the computer. In a rather blues-ish period in the fall I had generously signed up for online classes with QuiltCon when the sign-up opened up for members of MQG, and now it was time to reap the harvest. Of course, my request for the entire QuiltCon days/weekend off had not been met quite to my desire, I still had to work on Friday. But I had Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday and Monday, and so I could spread out the classes that were on demand. Three lectures I had signed up for were 'live' (but pre-recorded nevertheless) and I did manage to catch those on time, and I had messed up a bit with remembering my schedule, so I attended the Q+A session for one class before I had actually done the class. I consider these mishaps a beginner's experiences because, after all, this was the first time I attended an online event like this. I have taught a couple of online classes myself, and I attended the online class by Phyllis Cullen and Cindy Richard on doing faces, but that is entirely different from a whole weekend packed with several classes. 

My laptop, my tea supply,
and my mess on my studio table in online mode..

 

To be honest, I was very disappointed with the lectures and classes I witnessed 'live'. Especially with the two lectures that were calles 'tours' of the International Quilt Museum. I just did not like her way of presenting (mostly herself instead of the quilts, I thought) and suffered through because I did want to see the quilts she had chosen. So I am not going to say more about those. One other lecture in my opinion by far did not supply what had been announced in the title, and with her I was also wondering, why on earth if you are prerecording this, do you have to have the situation that you are dealing with a scratchy throat, and have to keep commenting on this? Not going to mention that one in any more detail either.

The workshops I took, on the other hand, were very well presented, clearly structured, informative and fun.

Tara Faughnan on hand-sewing could not tell me anything new, but it was interesting to see how she explained how she arranges things, and this was only a short session. Matching the points in a six-pointed star is something I have done before, and I was not really careful enough when doing it alongside her explanation, so I had to take it out again afterwards.

The second attempt turned out better, and the few follow-ups I have done since then have been perfect (enough for mre) from the start.

The class on needle-turn appliqué I had signed up for because at that time I was writing an article on @nadiamamelouk and her self-developed style of needle-appliqué. I was considering trying it out and had wanted to compare, but when I tried Nadia's technique I soon found out that I absolutely love her results, but this is not for me. After 10 minutes into the workshop by Jen Kingswell I knew she wasn't going to change my mind about this, and although I would have enjoyed listening to her Australian English for a while I decided not to finish the entire workshop. 

The class by Sylvia Schaefer on "Designing with Negative Space" was the one where I attended the Q+A session first, before the class. Which is not really a smart way to do it, I completely agree with you on this one. Because it kicks you out of being a valuable participant in the questioning part. I wasn't happy with the Q+A session, and in a way I had the impression that I would have wanted more 'meat' in her answers, I would have liked her to make a better prepared impression. but then I wasn't well prepared myself, and I guess I can't really critcize her then. The workshop in itself was very good, though. Well structured, interesting examples for her list of various means of arriving at a 'negative space' for a modern quilt design, and I learned a lot from her.

But the highlight in classes, for me, were the two classes on EQ8 that I took with Cheryl Brickney, an introduction, and 'alternative grids'. An engineer by training, and abviously very versatile with this program, she had a completely structured way of presenting the program, walking us through the various worktables, repeating steps she had just taken...

 

I ended up with not very impressive in itself beginner's designs, but nevertheless I was impressed with how quickly I had understood what can be done (well, at least a little bit understood) where I had been pretty much at a loss when trying to find it out by myself.

Will I use this software to design quilts? I don't know, because it is absolutely not my way of working with a pre-drafted design, simply 'reproducing' a pattern like that in fabric when I have already seen it on the screen is not tempting for me. But I will certainly play around with the program a bit, see where it takes me, what options pop up, for example with the 'randomizing' function in terms of color choices.

Did I enjoy this experience of participating in an online event? Yes, and no. It was good to have at least a bit of quilting-related instruction, and it certainly is a big asset to be able to take several classes on a weekend without the additional cost of traveling, hotel, meals, etc. And if one is more careful about choosing the topic of the classes than I was in my blues-y mood when I did sign up, it might turn into a truly exciting learning experience. I appreciated the 'on demand' format, because I could stop the video, rewind, check back whether I had understood correctly, take a break for tea with my husband, and do the exercises without feeling rushed. But it is simply not the same as being in a crowd, together with other participants in a classroom, talking directly to the teacher and the others. But I do love the traveling part of quilt festivals, I am a traveler at heart and in soul and simply sitting in my studio with a computer is ... a different experience.

Yes, I am glad we have been able to develop the online mode of teaching during the pandemic, just imagine how terrible it would have been if we had not had this! No, I don't think everybody does a wonderful job with their online performances, and it should be taken into consideration that some ways of presenting might be ok live, but not in a recorded video. Yes, it was good to take the structured and well-prepared classes at own speed. But with the classes I taught myself it was the same feeling on the other side of the spectrum as I had on this occasion: it's simply much more fun to have the real experience.