What to say.

In the news they are counting the days since the attack on Iran - "day x since ..." - and that number also indicates the days since I have completely lost hope that the world will find a way out of this misery. Of course, we need to add the number of days since Feb 24, 2022, the attack on Ukraine (or, more honestly: since 2015, the annexing of Krimea), and the days since Oct. 7, 2023 and what Israel has been doing to Gaza - note: I completely condemn the mass murder on Israeli citizens that day. But the degree of retaliation has been out of measure. And I don't know what to say. Don't forget Sudan, Myanmar... it is absolutely horrifying that humans can't seem to be able to live in peace. Sometimes I wish that somebody would just push the button, blow us all up and leave the planet devoid of the human race, certainly it would fare better like that. Then there might be hope.

Stitching and sewing and knitting seems irrelevant in the current situation. And yet I continue, to avoid despair.

20 Perspectives had their newest reveal last week, and although my piece isn't entirely finished, there is a blog post up and can be seen here.  The title hasn't been decided on finally, yet, but it's probably going to be "Who is Afraid of Ana Mendieta?", since her work was inspirational for this piece, as I describe on the 20 Perspectives blog.

As of yet Untitled...

 The edges haven't been finished yet, but I do hope to get around to that next week.

And I have an idea for the third piece in the series, it's brewing in my mind. 

I am still juggling with my two laptops and having a hard time getting myself acquainted with GIMP for photo editing, but hope to get around that soon as well.

Good and interesting news is that I was invited to have a solo show at Dansk Patchwork Forening's  annual AGM in August. At first that came as a complete surprise, I had  somehow given up on having another solo show again, was concentrating on making quilts for the individual challenges of 20 Perspectives, and for Voyage (we had a show in Glasgow weekend before last, and will have an exhibition at Nadelwelt Karlsruhe in May). 

 

And I have been invited to pick a virtual gallery for SAQA for June, which is going to be fun and interesting. Will that cheer me up? A bit, certainly. But what I really and truly want is for all the wars on this planet to end. It's absolutely not right to continue like this.  

Looking forward to going to teach at Petersberg next week. Three days of retreat in a house where you can sew all day and don't have to bother about the rest of the world is just what I need now!

Lost in transition

 

This photo was shown me by my phone a couple of days ago asa memory from the cloud. Nice. That happened during a week straight from hell at work, even nicer. (The hell aspect of work has resided a bit, but I do feel rather unappreciated by the employers, and that is not a fun-enhancing factor when going to work and you are supposed to be nice to patients.)

For a while now I have been trying to transition from one laptop to another (the while is going on to a year now, bear with me), procrastinating, because that transition includes the loss of my photo editing software. I have been trying to find something new that's satisfying, but somehow have not been very successful in that. I really only need a bit of color adjustment, size adjustment and prettying up the pictures so I can post them here on the blog, but my most recent attempt at getting acquainted with Gimp is not proving satisfactory. It keeps getting hung up, I don't find it intuitively easy and I am getting a bit grouchy about all this. 

Add to this last night's experience that my online e-book library is transitioning and the new version is getting hung up on me, too. Is this a kind of digital Bermuda triangle I am caught up in?

Last week we had winter. 

This is actually one of the photos Gimp let me do before 
clogging up on me - it is the balcony at my husband's
 place, whereas now I am up north again.

 

Germany hasn't had much of any kind of winter in recent years, so this took getting used to. Virtually impossible to buy stuff to put on the sidewalk to prevent people from slipping, everything was sold out - but you are not supposed to throw road salt for environmental reasons, but you are obliged to put something as the owner of a house. I reverted to throwing ash from the oven to dull the ice. Now it seems to be melting but they are announcing more cold... I do like winter, although it makes going places by bike harder. I actually resolved that I would be going to work by car (after slipping on an icy road with my bike, fortunately no broken bones or anything.) The down side of winter last week was that it was so cold that the lake was frozen and I could not go for my daily cold-water-dip. That has improved, two days ago it was possible again and I feel much better.

While I was at my husband's place, I learned that "Legendary Blue NuDenim" was indeed selected for Patchwork Gilde's Tradition bis Moderne exhibition, which I was very happy about. I started working on my next piece for 20 Perspective's "Femina" challenge, reverting to my technique of custom-made paper templates.

 

It's been so long that I made anything with this technique that I was a bit out of practice and may have been not thorough enough about adding marks for joining and adjustment. But it is only a small piece, I hope to get it finished nevertheless. I did go for a couple of rather small curves that make sewing tricky, but one grows with the challenge. Unfortunately I can't show you more pictures right now because see above...

When in the north I do knitting and am currently working on a Spot-Sweater after a pattern by Anne Ventzel which I have been waiting to do for several years. Unfortunately her instructions completely DON'T fit my body and it has taken my three starts to get it somehow to fit - not completely happy with the neck region either, but hoping that it will work out after blocking. That taught me once again something I have known all along: knitting after somebody else's instructions is not for me. I hate the way these instructions are written up these days, and I would rather work after my measurements and change stuff as I go. So further knitting projects will at best take an idea from somewhere and adapt them without sticking to any kind of written instruction. Again, you will have to wait for a picture here, sorry.

Hope to be back with a more cheery approach to posting than this one - but I have been procrastinating this post due to all the difficulties with the photos although I have been thinking about what I could write about.. 

 

I did it...

Imagine you get photos made of three quilts by a professional photographer to be able to enter these quilts in a pestigious show in Germany. Patchwork Gilde Deutschland has a tri-annual juried show called "Tradition bis Moderne" (From Tradition to Modern), I have been in it a couple of times, and I even have juried it once. I wanted to finish two quilts for this show which are both still pretty far from being finished, by at some point I realized I didn't need to fret about this. I could enter others. But I needed the professional photos. Fortunately, the photographer who used to take the photos of my quilts when I was still living in that small town to the north-east of Munich had agreed that I could send the quilts in a package, he would shoot the photos, ship the quilts back and send me the files digitally.

He did send. I did download. I remember that I did. But when I finally got around to "you need to get this entry in" and it was already getting relatively close to the deadline, I could for the life of me not find the files. No memory left of what names I had attached, hard disc searches were unsuccessful, even the digital native could not help. Fortunately I still had a tiny bit of leeway and I called the photographer the next mornign and asked him to send the files again, which he kindly did.

This time I managed to keep track of where I downloaded and saved the files, was organized enought to find out whether I had to downsize the pictures, had typed up artist statements that I could just copy-paste, and got my entry in more than 2 hours ahead of time.

The show takes only one quilt per entrant, but I figured it would increase my chances to try with the three pieces of entry allowed. Now we will have to see whether one of them makes the cut.

Here are the detail shots I included in the entry.

 

Detail from "Alchemy of Textiles"

 

Detail from "The Legendary Blue NuDenim"

Detail from "The Quilt that Sewed Itself"

 

 This Blog Entry, again, has been a long time in the making. I started to write it right after New Years', mildly proud that I had managed to get the application in. But as I am still juggling between two different computers and haven't figured out my saving system yet and am unable to let go of the photo editing software that is on the old one but can't tranfer to the new one... once I have written the text, somehow it registers as 'done', but of course the pictures need to be included, and as mentioned, something was amiss with these photos.

So by now it might even be time to receive news whether either of the three was accepted. I know only one will be shown if at all. I just hope at least one makes it, disappointment would be severe if all three fell through. But then, I have juried quilts out for this show. Fittingly, the next magazine's topic is 'Rejected!' and I wrote an article on #quiltconreject. We'll see whether I learned something from it. 

 

 

 

Imagine…

 … you come home from a couple of days of a workshop aka retreat, after which you went to see and support your aging mother after heart surgery for a few days, and when unpacking the car, you realize that the foot pedal for your sewing machine has gone missing. You call the location where the workshop took place, they haven’t found anything. You make an inquest in the group of attendees, nobody has seen anything. You go through all the boxes you had with you, nothing in there. You check the case for the sewing machine into which the pedal would naturally and instinctively be packed at the end of the days for the sixth or seventh time and it still hasn’t materialized there. You go back to the car and check under the seats, in the luggage compartment (and that’s only a small car, it couldn’t really hide anywhere). Nothing.

You have a wonderfully uninterrupted full week of empty days ahead of you and wanted to get started on at least two projects that are looming with a deadline, one more urgent than the other. The spare machine is located in your other abode 600 km away.

The machine is waiting, yes, in this setup the enclosure is not there yet,
because it will be easier to attach the cords once the pedal will have arrived... 

You call a sewing machine dealer and order a new pedal, click on ‘immediate money transfer’ (which costs an additional fee with the bank) when making your payment, you had the affirmation that the dealer would ‘send as soon as payment comes in’ (and payment should have been visible on their account within minutes), but it takes three days for them to acknowledge payment was received, now they would ‘send quickly’. That was three days ago, today’s post is in and did not include that parcel. There isn’t a whole lot left of that full week to get started on those two projects by now.

Meanwhile, you kept yourself busy hand-stitching more French Knots on a piece you’ve been working on, but to determine how many knots exactly still need to be added you do need to start on the binding at the top because only then will you know how far down from the top edge you will need to stitch. Which can only happen with a sewing machine…

French Knots on "The Essence Behind the Words" for the
"Femina" challenge of 20 Perspectives

Other things you can occupy yourself with is starting to put together a huge piece of hexagons made from 1-inch-diamonds that you started more than 3 years ago and which had progressed to a point where you only need to make about 10 more of those hexagons to have enough, 

and of course you keep re-arranging some, exchanging a couple with each other, and actually joined some already. 

Nice surprise that the appearance of the hexagons changes considerable when they are joined, the background of the fabric they have been pinned onto disappears and they blend together somewhat. So that’s a good result of the week.

Hoping the foot pedal will arrive tomorrow? Keep your fingers crossed for me, please! 

At least the Choir of Angels has been out for a few weeks already, to be honest, since I had to go up to the attic to find a quilt which was supposed to go to an exhibition in the US and would have found a clandestine carrier to evade customs, but which is still missing in action. Who know when that will resurface - before or only after the next move?

I may have to purchase a couple more musicians before Christmas to give myself a shopping expierence gratification!

 

Update on the 70,273 project

For several years I was involved in collecting, sorting, assembling, quilting for the 70,273 project (a post on my German blog can be found here), 

The aim of the project is to commemorate every singe victim of the T4 Nazi-extinction programm of handicapped people which lasted from  1940 to 1942 and officially counted 70,273 victims. (The program was officially stopped after a degree of resistance of citizens but continued undercover, the final count of victims is not known.) Jeanne Hewell-Chambers initiated The 70,273 project after watching a documentary on World War II on TV in 2016, when she realized that her beloved sister-in-law who had suffered a terrible accident at age 3 which left her handicapped most likely would have been a victim, and brought to death, too.

Our activities went publich with an exhibition of the German contributions at the Patchworktage of the Patchwork Gilde Deutschland in Celle in 2018, and in Munich. And an event in Dachau about the seven quilts made by arttextil Dachau as well, as written about on my German blog. 

Jeanne Hewell-Chambers, her husband "The Engineer", 
and I one evening in Celle.

 

A view into the exhibition in Celle

Then Covid hit, everything stalled, I sent my materials and data sheets and quilts to the US, asking once in a while how far the project had progressed toward the ultimate goal of a joint exhibition of all the finished quilts. Things were taking time, a LOT of work needed to be done!

Earlier this year I was approached by the board of arttextil Dachau whether I would like to give a presentation about the project for their anniversary celebrations. I contacted Peggy and Jeanne about newest developments, and it turned out that Peggy was taking over being the chair of the board from Jeanne due to a number of reasons. As an introduction to her new role it happened that Peggy and her husband decided to come for the event in Dachau, bring the quilts, Peggy would deliver the presentation and I would be translating. All of this took place this past Friday. 

Peggy and her husband had done a few days of traveling prior to coming to Dachau, and they were met and hosted by members of Arttextil e.V. . I joined them for a (very cold!) tour of the inner city of Dachau on Friday morning, followed by a Bavarian-style lunch in a typical restaurant, and then we proceede to the lecture hall where we had to hang the quilts.

 Peggy had brought ten quilts with her, all seven that had been made by members of Arttextil to commemorate the 207 inmates of Franziskuswerk Schönbrunn who fell victim to T4, and three others. 

 

One of the three additional quilts was Quilt #521, assembled from blocks that had been contributed by quilters from Israel. (This quilt is one who always moves me to the bone, even though the T4 program is not equivalent to the extinction of Jews. I am very grateful to the members of the Israeli guild that they participated in the project, and that they did this through connections to the German guild.)

Quilt #521

 We were also joined by Renate Pognée, a member of the German Patchwork Gilde and a longarm quilter. She had quilted several of the quilts for the Dachau group and was very moved to re-encounter them on this occasion.

The ultimate aim of presenting all the by now more than 620 quilts in a huge exhibition is still on the agenda - that will be the TGGG, The Great Global Gathering. The website is being revamped, a new facebook and instagram appearance is in the making and things are moving forward again after Covid had been a bit of a grand slow-down.
 

It would be wonderful to be able to travel for that occasion - I hope political circumstances will make it possible when the time comes.

A few hours at the machine, catching up.

 

One major disadvantage of my current living arrangement (there aren’t many!) is that I don’t have good sewing equipment/arrangement at the place where I work and spend more time. I was assuming I would be doing a lot of sewing at my husband’s accommodation and not have too much time for it anyway where I live for work. This summer, however, I spent a lot less time down south than had been the original. It felt like I hadn’t done any serious sewing in ages.

 Two weeks ago I picked up my son in Amsterdam, first spending a day in that beautiful tourist-ridden city (yes, I was one of them, I know).

Amsterdam at night.

City of bikes... this one looks like it hasn't been used in a while!

Not the typical tourist photo subject!

  I went to see the Banksy museum and the photography museum.

 

And picked up some batting at the quilt shop which is conveniently located a mere 5-minute walk from his nice (and outrageously expensive) apartment on one of the grachten. Students these days do live rather differently than I did when I was in that stage of my studies! Not that I needed a quilt shop back then.

The next day we drove south-east together and then spent almost a week at my husband’s place.

View from my sewing room - and when my son is home, 
I also sleep in this room on a small mattress on the floor.

 

There I finally got to sit down at my sewing machine again. I managed to proceed pretty far with my contribution to the next 20 Perspectives challenge which will be revealed in the group next week and then visible on the 20 Perspectives Blog a few days afterwards. Although mine won’t be entirely finished by reveal date because I decided to start adding hand-stitches (French Knots) in addition to the bit of machine quilting I used.

There used to be a time when I said 'I don't do appliqué'.
That seems to have changed.

 

I also managed to get ahead with the 3D-piece we were supposed to have finished a while ago – was it June? But I also decided that I will try to enter it in a call for entry so won’t publish a ‘finished photo’ until I receive notification of acceptance or rejection.

 

Made a decision about two quilts for Voyage, too, so right now I am only two quilts short for that group commitment, but those two are the ones that need to be finished earlier and I really need to get going about them. I do have an idea, but…

It definitely felt good to be back sewing, after all that time. Almost like going back after withdrawal symptoms. Certainly the urge to be 'making' with one's hands can be a kind of addiction. When I pack my bags for train travel I take enough knitting supplies to last me at least twice or three times the length of the journey. After all, the train could be delayed. Or we could be hijacked and I would be caught in there without having something to keep me occupied. Better be prepared.

Ste. Marie-aux-Mines at 30

 

In the middle of September I spent a few days at the Carrefour Européen Patchwork (former “EPM” from European Patchwork Meeting) in Val d’Argent, southeast of Strasbourg. I can’t recall exactly how many times I had been there before, nevertheless it was a ‘first’ for me this time: now that is the place where EQA-meetings take place and the EQA challenge premieres (which used to be in Birmingham at FoQ). The other EQA representatives had already made their first appearance there last year, but I had not been able to go.

It had been difficult for me to arrange for a few days off from work for the festival when talking to the superior in spring. When I had the confirmation that I would be able to go I booked train tickets right away, counting on those days as the maximum, because, well, I had been told I could not be spared at work and really I should be grateful that I was to go at all... That made for a rather tight schedule in terms of how much time I would have to see the exhibitions, which is always a part of my duty as a writer for the German Guild’s magazine – and when the ork wschedule for September was published, I was rather surprised that I had one additional day off before and after what I had asked for. But the tickets couldn’t be changed anymore, and it took me a while to get over being a bit pissed off about that. Had I known, I would of course have booked differently and given me a bit more time and leisure to look in detail, make time to meet and chat with more friends. As it was, I felt a bit rushed all the days I was there.

It also took me a bit of time to get used to the – for me – new situation with accomodation as well, not in the valley, as I had been used to when going there with friends from Patchwork Gilde, but in Sélestat, depending on the shuttle. In the end I adapted and although I may travel differently next year – car? Bring a bike? Stay on the campground? – I had a wonderful few days even though they were packed.

It won’t be possible to give justice to all the wonderful exhibitions on display at this anniversary edition, and I won’t even try. But I loved meeting the Australians.

Short chat with Lorena Uriarte, whose works I have been admiring for a long time.

And a chat with Tara Glastonbury, I love her bold colors and modern designs.

So much fun to re-meet with Helen Beaven from New Zealand, 
I had first met her in Wellington 10 years ago. 

 

Seeing SAQA’s “Color in Context: Blue”. 

A quilt about a child with autism and special needs. 

 

And being involved in EQA’s display of the annual challenge with this year’s topic of “Contrast”. Already hanging it was fun, but stewarding the show was even more satisfying because you could take time to look at the over 400 pieces in more detail. I kept discovering new elements of interest. 

 

We had the annual AGM for EQA and I am now the treasurer for EQA.

Secretary Mary Hunter from Ireland, chair Marleen Verhuisen from Belgium, and me

 

And we decided on the next topic for the 2026 EQA challenge, which gave me a host of ideas as to possibilities for contributing a quilt this time as well, besides doing all the organizational work that comes with my position of International Representative. I didn’t keep track, but I must have come up with at least ten different ideas while we were having our Saturday-evening dinner. However, each participant is allowed only one entry, I will have to make up my mind. And find the time for making it to begin with…

Spiders are not considered part of the group of insects,
but when a spider is wrapping up another insect, that would 
qualify as inspiration, don't you think?

 

 I loved Ulla Hoppe's exhibition of her embroideries, and especially her self-portrait:

 And I finally remembered to take some selfies with friends, but they are not my forte, alas.

 

 Looking forward to coming back next year, hopefully with a little bit more time at my hands.