SAQA Benefit Auction - still on...

This year, once again, I entered a piece to the SAQA Benefit Auction.

Last year’s donation took a while before it finally sold just before Christmas, and that had a bit of a dampening effect on my eagerness to produce a donation quilt. But I had managed to send it off sort of on time, at least, paid a lot of postage for it. I did not get around to choosing or posting my personal dream collection, nor did I request a ‘bid on me’ promotion picture of my quilt. I had intended to post about the auction, before it started, but the recent developments in my professional situation plus the fact that Heather from 20 Perspectives was coming to visit and we then took off to Ste. Marie-aux-Mines together prevented that. On the day when Diamond Bidding started I thought about it once more, but we had insufficient internet at the accomodation at that point and as an aftermath of last year’s experience I briefly thought ‘aaghhh – mine won’t sell right away anyway’ and thought I could still do the promotion stuff on my side on the train after leaving Ste. Marie, which would still have been sufficiently early before the regular beginning of the auction. Imagine my surprise when I received Jennifer Solon’s mail on the morning of the Sunday when I left France that my piece had actually sold in the Diamond Bidding period of the auction. It’s gone… no promotion of my quilt necessary anymore. That’s what I thought.

This morning I received a mail from SAQA that there had been a ‘bidding error’ and my quilt hadn’t sold after all and was being ‘repositioned to section 3’ of the auction. So right now it is still for sale – currently at the price for diamond bidding, because as I am writing it is still section 1 in the running for US$100. 

 

Please take a look at the quilts still for sale – whether you like mine, or another, perhaps you feel like supporting SAQA in their annual fund raiser.

The auction will be on for a couple more weeks, until October 8.

Now I just hope mine won’t linger in the store until Christmas…

Serious Destashing.

A friend of mine had mentioned recently in a message that she needed to find some ways to raise funds to buy fabric for her group which gets together regularly and makes what commonly are called ‘heart pillows’ here in Germany: heart shaped pillows that are distributed to breast cancer patients on the respective wards. I admire and respect those kinds of activities, even though I don’t participate in anything like that. So I offered her that I would go through my boxes and pick out some fabrics that they could use. After all, there is an abundance of fabric stashed away here that will never get used, at least not by me in my lifetime. And as my husband has been talking more frequently about ‘downsizing in preparation for a next move’, even challenging me by boasting how much he has done... (yes, he did reduce his huge collection of CDs the other day, and I admit I have much more stuff than he does) I figured it wouldn’t matter at all to give away some of it. This activity developed into a serious crisis for the accessibility of my studio, but it turned into a flow eventually. 

Chaos that will hopefully lead to some sort of order...

 

In the end I posted a package with more than 17 Kilograms of fabric to this group (the carton in the upper picture, more on the right). I could have posted at least another package of the same size, but I withheld from sending ‘all my brown fabrics’ as I thought that color is not really appropriate for that purpose. Did get rid of almost all my pinks and purples, though. Not my colors, no need to hang on to them. And – do I really need three boxes of green? I hardly ever work in green, I wonder where all that came from. Lots of green scraps, too. Anybody want any? Just let me know!

A couple of days later,  this destashing extended itself into a thorough clearing of book shelves. My son wants to use the room where my longarm is not longer blocking everything, but there are book shelves in there. Our library. He wants those shelves to take up less space, i.e. dismantle at least one or two sections.

I have always been a book lover, and I love buying and having books. For a while I was regularly going to a Women’s Bookstore whose owner was a friend, to support the business, or I was collecting literature from female authors from the early 20^th century. But my husband – correctly - keeps saying we need to size down as he thinks our next living quarters will be much smaller. So I went through the shelves, pretty rigorously, taking out books in three different categories: the stack to read now and then decide whether they will stay, the stack that can go to second hand books or the newly introduced book box in town, the stack which is not likely to find any appreciants around here (mostly English language books, alas, I don’t know anybody here who reads English). 

After I went through, the gaps are getting bigger.
Now it's my husband's turn, and then things will get pushed
closer together.

 

The rearranging of the room as such will happen according to the Junior’s plans.

As it turns out, I started on one of the books from the stack 'read, and then decide', and it happened to be a book I bought in 1994, then still an English academic person, so it has moved at least 5 times, if not 6 or 7, it might actually have come from the States with me. As it turns out, although the author is famous, and I do admire her for her position in literary history and some other aspects, this particular book proved to be rather dated with respect to certain opinions, and racism. I could perhaps tolerated it had I still been an academic, but since I am now only a reader for pleasure, I do take the liberty to not finish books that are too backward, or that don't catch my attention. I read only one of the three stories, started each of the other two, decided against them, and then it went into the bin. So Junior's desire has been helpful indeed.

SAQA Benefit Auction 2021

For the 12th year in a row I have donated a piece for the SAQA Benefit Auction, a fund-raising event for SAQA which is extremely important for the organization's financing. This auction starts this coming Friday, and that is "Diamond Day", you can purchase any piece you want for $ 1000, the bidding from top down then begins later. Please refer to the website here for the exact procedure.

As always, I wanted to select a 'Dream Collection', but, again as always, I am a bit late with this, so I am not putting it through the SAQA-website, but publishing it here. This year the rules for a dream collection allowed for 8 pieces. As I was looking through dream collections already assembled I realized: Blue had been done (although with different titles, but at least two!), cats had been done, faces had been done, places had been done... it was getting a bit difficult to decide on a theme! In the end I decided to do one that could theoretically include my piece: text on the quilt, with a meaning contributing to the quilt as such.

So here is my Dream Collection 2021:

 

Jette Clover, Celebration

Debo Hysak, She said

 

Denise Konicek, Flight of Idea(l)s

 

Karena Nelson, Communication Skills

The Pixeladies, What's the Point of White Pencils Only?

Susan Rienzo, Untold Story

Susan Shie, Stacey Abrams Rock Haiku

Anne Solomon, The Second Amendment didn't mean this

There are only few more pieces that could have gone into this selection, out of the more than 400 pieces only a dozen or so are using text as a message, although there are a couple of pieces that use fabric with printed text on them. Originally I thought I would be bold and include my own piece in my dream collection - after all, I must be convinced about it to donate it for a cause like this - however, I found 8 pieces that can make up an entire collection as such, so mine is not an official competitor. But I can show it here once more, after all, it would be nice if it got sold for the benefit of SAQA.

Uta Lenk, text messages 28

And, of course, any of the others above, too.

I did it. Again.

And I hate it when I do that. But it happens to me all the time. When I finish a quilt, and it is not immediately destined to be shipped somewhere, I neglect finishing the tunnel. At least most of the time I have finished the binding/facing to take it to be photographed. And the tunnel is at least prepared. But the finishing stitches, they can wait… and then I forget about it, and when it comes to shipping I get into a situation when it is time to send it off and I realize that I still need to finally finish the quilt.

Just these past days I worked myself through this again. I entered two quilts for the WQC, and then the tunnel situation happened. Shapes 29 still had to have the tunnel and the lower facing attached. 

(And I just realized that that one isn't even on the website yet, I really need to get that updated...)

And the Jacob’s Ladder quilt I only finished a little while ago hadn’t even been meant to be put on a wall, so a tunnel wasn’t even prepared for. 

But both of them are done, I hope they will be accepted and it was worth the while - …

But tunnel making certainly is not my favorite part of quilt making. I take detours to distract myself easily.

Such as this one: I have finished my piece that I am donating for the SAQA Benefit Auction this year and will sign it up later today and ship it tomorrow.

Ready to be shipped for the SAQA-Benefit Auction: Shapes 41

And this morning I cut a few pieces of organza that I refound on my cutting table from which I want to make vegetable and produce bags to take along when going shopping in order to avoid using plastic bags.

 I have been using some for a while, and at first people looked at me strangely. Cashiers even unpacked the produce to put it on their scales so they would not weigh the bag. Made from organza, however, they are very light. Then I gave some away as presents and my stack dwindled. By now bags are being sold in various places. So the idea is catching. At least with produce and fruit. But as I am following various organizations on Instagram that are concerned with collecting plastic waste from the ocean I also notice more and more plastic wrappings in the stores. I wonder… 

There are still three more tunnels for me to finish, because I signed up "A Scrap a Day" for the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham. So these need to be finished very soon, too.

In any case, I will finish these Tunnels and then these little bags soon, and once again I have sworn to myself that next time I will complete the tunnel for a quilt right away. Let's see whether that happens indeed. If only I had somebody who would check on me for that!

Getting them out there...

Over the past two or three years my approach to quilting has slightly changed.
For one thing, due to the fact that I was teaching there wasn't quite as much time to make quilts as I'd had before.
On the other hand, getting in touch with the refugees and finding out about their lives and problems gave me a totally different perspective. I still dearly love making quilts. I just like sitting at the sewing machine (or hand-stitching), feeling the fabric, handling different colors and patterns and touching tiny bits and sorting them by shade and size and potential partners... it is a perfect way to stay out of the world. And I still want to enter calls for entry, perhaps sell a quilt every once in a while, if possible. It was a really nice feeling to be working during the textile art symposium in May and know that the result of that week's work would be paid for, and displayed at a prominet place in town. So making quilts is still a  favorite activity of mine. But I may not be making as many art quilts any more as I have been. Yes, they are fun to make. Yet I have very much enjoyed making the 'traditional' blanket (traditional as in functional, something to snuggle up and stay warm with) as well, and when I gave them as presents the appreciation sometimes seemed much higher than when I put something on the wall. So somehow it has become more important to me to get my quilts out there, to have them seen AND used rather than trying to sell them because they are art. A different kind of self-evaluation, I guess.
For several years I have been donating small quilts for the SAQA Benefit auction - this year's is currently still on in its third section - and I also had donated one this year. However, I was so early in sending it off, and then so many other things happened, that I did not get around to participating in the "Dream Collections", and I completely missed out on advertising for the auction. When a few days after the auction opened I finally started looking for my quilt to find out in which section it was up for auction I couldn't even remember what it looked like and didn't find it at first. I had to search by my name, I am embarassed to say. And then it sold pretty quickly, the highest price my donated quilt has so far sold for.

All my donated quilts have sold - but of course that is money that I never get to see myself because it is meant as support for SAQA. It means getting my pieces out there, and perhaps it means that I am getting more 'known'. But I am not receiving any immediate 'revenue'. And I have found that my feelings about knowing that quilts are out there, and they are being seen, is more important to me now than that I actually got paid for them.
Which has led to the fact that I already know how the small quilt for next year's donation is going to look like.
And I have decided to donate other quilts. When I read about Rachel Biel's efforts in Paducah I decided, because I could not donate money for the cause, that I would donate quilts for her to try and sell in that shop. I have picked one bigger and two small ones and will ship them as soon as I have attached sleeves to the tow small ones.
And I have offered one of my text message quilts to my brother-in-law and his wife as a 'loan', because all the time I was making it I had always imagined that it would be on display over their red sofa in their living room. I know they can't afford to pay for it, as they are planning to buy a house, and after all it was I who offered it to them, can't expect to be paid when you say, hey, would you like to put up this quilt over your sofa?

text mesages 10

But I would rather have it out there than it being rolled up on the shelf for years and years to come.
I don't know where this is going to lead me. But it has been an interesting development. Especially in a time when I am working on the quilt that I want to enter in SAQA's 'Forced to Flee' call for entry, and I think this is one of the best quilts that I have made so far...