'Meeting' somebody via Zoom

I don’t know how it happened that at some point Sarah C. Swett appeared in my instagram feed a few years ago . But I do know that I was delighted by her posts, enchanted by her comic drawings and always had a smile on my face when I had seen a new post of hers, or read a blog post. Making yarn out of coffee filters. A Sweater, somewhat slanted. Making yarn out of milkweed plants by meticulously securing the fibers, spinning these - and then weaving tapestries from them… Stuff like that. Things I find absolutely fascinating to read about, being able to go part of the way with them (I mean, I do spin, I quilt, sometimes I hand-sew large quilts, I have hand-quilted large quilts, I knit…), but not all the way entirely. (I don’t do hand-spindling, for one thing.) Sarah has meanwhile changed her mode of publication from her blog of many years (a field guide to needlework) to The Gusset on Substack (find it here) and is continuing to delight readers with her adventures in fibers, weaving, comics and the new-in-her-life dog.

When the topic to be covered for the German Guild’s magazine called for ‘Strafarbeit’ (work/chore as a punishment) I knew I wanted to get in touch with Sarah and write about her. The things she does are nothing like a Strafarbeit for her, I knew that before I talked to her, but I know there are many people out there who would consider these activities exactly that. (I mean – when you knit in public, how frequently do you get comments about the amount of work, the time it takes, that the person commenting would never know how to do that nor care to do that either?) Perhaps not too many people like these appear amongst the members of the Patchworkgilde, but even there you can find some who would be appalled if you tried to talk them into doing a bit of English Paper Piecing, for them EPP is very close to a Strafarbeit indeed.

I got in touch with Sarah, she was gracious enough to grant me two extended zoom interviews, supplied several pictures of her works, explained a lot of details about finding, harvesting, stripping, preparing, weaving milkweed, doing the coffee filter thing and other aspects of life that I considered myself to be a very fortunate person indeed, having to write on the topic of Strafarbeit for the guild. It was like meeting a soul mate, and it felt as if I had found a friend out there in the depths of Idaho. Talking to her came easily, and it wasn’t even necessary to prepare a series of questions to exert any information from her because it all was one easy-flowing conversation about common interest matters. I could have gone on talking to her for hours, hadn’t it been via computer screens.

Of course, I am only one of her zillions of admiring followers, and living far away that is what I will remain, an admiring follower from the distance. But it was an interesting experience to feel such a degree of connectedness merely on the zoom platform.

The issue I am talking about will be published by the middle of September, and I am not going to show any of the photos here, merely a wip-photo of my Sweater Somewhat Slanted. It hasn’t made a whole lot of progress in the past few weeks as I was busy spinning for the Tour de Fleece and with all the other things going on lately, but I am planning to get back to it soon-ish.

 

The pattern can be bought via Sarah’s shop on her website, or on Ravelry, the free website for knitters, crocheters and fiber artists .

Sarah had a wonderful article in the spinning magazine Ply a couple of years ago and she was recently featured on this podcast.

Instances like this make me happy, being a ‘writer’ for the guild magazine is certainly enriching in many aspects.

That very last minute – part 2

The South Korean and the German Patchwork Guilds are preparing for a joint exhibition with 30 quilts from 15 quilters each from these two countries on the theme/topic of the “divided country”. It was initiated from the Korean Guild and a bit over-intellectual about the sizes that the quilts were allowed to have – Germany’s quilts either 89 cm square or 90 cm square, depending on the reading of when the division of Germany ended, and no real size restrictions for Korea because right now nobody knows when Korea’s division will end. The German quilts will be displayed at the German Guild’s Patchworktage in June, then travel to Korea for a joint exhibition of both countries, and we are hoping that more venues will be found where both collections can be shown together. 

I had been invited to be one of the 15 people to contribute a quilt, and I had been thrilled to do so. In the beginning. 

My family is a family who was divided by the ‘iron curtain’, my aunt lived in the eastern part of Germany. My entire childhood is full of memories of my mother sending packages to the East, either her sister, or other friends. Coffee, textiles, no printed media, no western style music.  In appreciation we would get gifts of stationary with flower motifs which we hated, sometimes sheet music, classical records, sometimes books. Visiting my aunt was difficult because you had to get a permit, she was only allowed to come and visit once, when my grandparents were celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary, but she had to come alone, her husband did not get permission. And many other stories like that.

So I thought I had a lot to say on this topic, but – as it turns out, when one is too emotionally involved, it is mighty hard to come up with a good quilt on that topic. The deadline was drawing nearer and nearer and still I had no real clue as to what to do. My aunt passed away a couple of years ago, otherwise we might have been able to make something together, she, too, was an avid textiler.

Something on the Green Belt (German explanation, English explanation), that area which was the zone around the border fortifications? After 40 years of little traffic or activity in that area it has since turned into a natural protected zone. 

Picture taken from here

But nothing came to my mind that I could turn into a quilt. (And today I saw on social media that Heidi Drahota, another of the 15 invited artists, used the Green Belt, so I am glad I did not stick with that.)

 

Finally I had the idea that I would put together a few handprinted fabrics of mine in a kind of earth-tone-mixture, 

and underlay that with a spiral in the colors of the German flags (both, East- and West-Germany had the some colors black-red-goldenyellow for their flags) to symbolize the way that the countries were intertwined, but also the confusion that the division created.

And I knew that I wanted to do something with the outline of the state/s, in reflector fabric, of which I still had a decent sized piece.

When I finished the ‘German flag colors’-fabric from which I would have taken the spiral, I realized that it looked a bit like a flag itself, though ‘turned around’. 

Despite the fact that flags have a front and a back and both of them are seen equally, printed representations of state flags always show an orientation where the pattern part is in the left upper corner. After sleeping one night about this I decided to dump the spiral idea and simply take the ‘flag’ as top layer.

I cut the outline of re-unified Germany from the reflector fabric, which was easy enough. Getting it onto the foundation was hellishly difficult and took a long time, almost as long as the separation itself, that’s what it felt like when I was trying to pin it down. And even then it wasn’t quite exact, when sewing, I had to make a few adjustments. But I got it done.

Adding at the top because despite repeated measurements taken, suddenly
the size was not correct anymore, not even when you make allowance for
89  or 90 cms.

My good friend Kathy Loomis criticized the idea of quilting words with a connection to spearation and reunification over it all, suggesting that would take too much attention away from th visual design. I am glad I heeded her advice because I would never have been able to finish in time if I had then started quilting text onto it all.

Quilting in relatively straight and parallel lines, not in the vertical, but horizontally. And then the problems started – and I am not going to go into them in any kind of detail. I had meant to finish the piece last week Monday, but despite the fact that I kept working on it every day after coming home from school it was Friday before I finally snipped the last thread. 

The former border is marked by red herringbone stitch. No political intention
related to the red - it just seemed slightly less obvious in this color context than
either black or yellow would have been.

Never before have I sent off a quilt so quickly after it was finished – a mere 40 minutes between that last thread and my trip to the post office. It is called "Wächst jetzt zusammen, was zusammen gehört?" ("are they now growing together as they belong together?"), which is a citation of a statement by Willy Brandt about the two Germanys, but put into a question format (here is a reconstruction of how that 'citation' came about - obviously he never really said that, and definitely not at the foot of the wall, as it is being narrated. Today we call that fake news). Frequently, even more than 25 years after reunification, we can still find instances where East and West have not yet adapted to each other. Division was severe, and it won't be that much longer now until reunification has lasted as long as the separation itself did. And only a few months before the Wall came down I still thought I would never live to see that in my lifetime!

I don’t credit myself for this wise saying, but “if it weren’t for the very last minute, a lot of things would never get done” surely is a very important statement.

And then despite the fact that I am worried about climate change etc. I boarded a plane on Saturday to go on vacation for a few days after finishing (and passing) my probation period in the training. I could write more about how far we might have entered into the very last minute before everything is too late in that respect, and yes, flying is not a climate-friendly way to travel… but I wanted to go somewhere warm and sunny and near a beach, and there are not that many options for doing that when starting from Germany in the end of March.

Mojo?

It had been a while since I had been visited by the quilting mojo. That is certainly partly due to the fact that working and studying full time requires a different kind of time management, and there is a family, too, that asks for and needs to be given attention, and household chores and and and... Amongst all that it is difficult to find time to even start giving though to quilting ideas, and then those need to brew, but when too many things are going on that kind of silent simmering can't go on because the burner gets pushced too far into the back corner. No oxygen will get to it there.
Another factor that influences this situation, however, I attribute to the fact that my recent quilts had got to be rather political in their statements about refugees, human rights, etc. Although I feel very strongly about these issues, and these messages - and I would never want to miss the quilts that emerged from that - the political situation here has become so frustrating and disappointing that I might wonder what use there is in stitching messages like that on textiles. Twice within a year hopes for improvements in politics after an election were thwarted. Pre-election promises were null and void after the election, or, worse, the coalition that would have been necessary to initiate changes did not happen. So my personal frustration has grown tremendously, my political messages would now get too complicated or too outspoken. No use putting that on textiles, as it contradicts my own definition of how a viewer should be able to see a piece of art, or perceive a message. Namely: not too blatantly. The viewer must be able to fill a piece of art with a meaning that might be very different from my own, I must not run around with a flagpole and drive my intention into their heads with force and without alternative.
So similarly as at the point when I made number XXXIX in the Play of Lines series and when the line designs had become too difficult and complicated, my series text messages might be either at its end, or it must find a reorientation of which I don't know at the moment where it will go. If it ever comes.
But I was happily scrapping away. On all levels. A bit of scrappy sewing on the side while my workshop students did not need me.

Small scale Underground Railroad blocks from leftovers from my
hand-dyed fabrics.

Knitting socks with partly leftover yarns...

... and knitting a blanket with the smallest left-overs from sock knitting that won't last far
in socks even.

On a more serious side, I was trying to make something for a wonderful inspirational challenge by Claire Passmore with the 12 by the Dozen group, when she set Shamia Hassani as the inspiration for the February reveal. But as I stated on their blog - I had an idea, I came up with a bit of a design, and then time failed me and it has not been executed yet. (It might, in a larger scale than the 40 x 40 cm, but that will have to wait.) And I was struggling with a piece I had been invited to for a joint German - South Korean exhibition on the condition of partitioned countries. When I first received the inviation I was thrilled - it is a life story of mine, with a family that was split up East and West, a grandfather who fled from the Russian occupied zone in the early fifties, to be reunited with his wife and two of the three daughters after the East German uprising in 1953. But the topic turned out very personal, I could not get going. So I labored, thought I would do something with 'Germany' as a layover and an inset spiral from Germany's flag colors or so and put the two different layers together, and then the outlines of the country over it in reflecting fabric. (Now that I write it here, it is sooo obvious that there would have been too many layers of meaning, but at that point I did not see that.)

This would have been the ground area of Germany, representing
the partition of forty years.

Left over from an exercise in a Nancy Crow workshop long
ago, a piece in red and black could easily be turned into a
German colors piece by adding some 'golden' yellow.

All of it hard going, and not very convincing to myself even. How was this going to turn into a good quilt? Then I had put the spiral-to-be part together and was going to send a photo to Kathy Loomis and realized that the fabric that was supposed to be the inset spiral really looked like a flag by itself, at least a bit.

I chucked the spiral idea and for the first time in a long while had a bit of exhilaration about my quilting. Even would have preferred to stay home and work on it rather than going to my studies, but that was not possible.
I cut the outlines. That was relatively easy.

But this thing, cut from a flat piece of reflecting fabric, is everything but flat when you are trying to put it onto another flat piece of fabric.

It rather misbehaves and I am making a fool of myself as I am working on attaching these two to each other. Process is slow, and time is running fast. But it feels good to have something going on in that mojo part of working with textiles. We will see where it goes.

Ste. Marie-aux-Mines, come and gone

For the tenth time, I think, I have just spent almost a week in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines at the European Patchwork Meeting, or Carrefour Européenne, as it is called now. At least seven or eight of these ten times I came in a row, and it feels like I reall know the place now. I see changes over the years, and I feel comfortable when things are like they used to be. For example the hospitality of Serge and Olga at the Taverne au Mineur, and the delicious food you can get there, right on the corner of the central square and close to the Vendors Hall. I keep finding new instances of Found Art, as I posted on my German Blog, and I know where to go to get to the exhibition places.
The SAQA-meeting was in a different spot this time, though, and that's how I got to see the swimming pool for the first time - we met in a room next to the pool, not in the pool proper...

The first heated pool in Alsace: pool in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines

I met new people, remet some whom I had met before, and I had the most interesting encounter with a couple from the States who started talking to me while I was stewarding the Wide Horizons VI exhibition. They started telling me about Karlsruhe, and I said I had grown up there, and they asked for a specific part of town which they pronounced absolutely correctly, thus showing that they must know this place pretty well, and it was exactly the part of town I grew up in. So I said that I had grown up there, oh where, in one of the highrises, yes, in one of the highrises, and in which one, what house number... It turned out they had lived in the same house as my family moved into, on the 2nd floor, while we lived on the 9th, and we had coincided for almost 2 years there. What a meeting! I will have to ask my parents whether they remember these Americans, or their cat, which they claimed would be the only remarkable thing about them that the neighbors would remember.

I went through the exhibitions pretty systematically, was impressed with some, really liked some pieces very much, and felt a bit over-quilted by Saturday. So Barbara and I skipped half a day of the show and went to the flea market in Sélestat, where I was thrilled to see this little kid enjoying a puddle. That reminded me a lot of my son when he was little.

I saw many many quilts, and I felt inspired by a number of them, in a way it would be great to be sitting down at a sewing machine right now, but I am still in Ste. Marie and will only go back tomorrow. But I do hope to take some of the urge to create back with me, although some things will change and it will be much more difficult to find time to sit down and sew in the next few months.
So before taking down the Wide Horizons VI together with Paolo and Paola Zanda, I took a selfie in front of my quilt that will be traveling for a year now. To remind me of the people I tried to commemorate with it, and the fact that their lives were cut short - and that it is necessary to make as much of one's own as is possible.

Mediterranean Blood Count, 2017.

Reunion 2017

I can't believe how fast time is flyeing these days. No time to sit down, think about quilts and art. I have to renew memberships, update credit card information, and somehow there is too much going on to do even that. I've been sleeping badly lately, which doesn't help in anything...
But last weekend was a wonderful weekend. Former Co-exchange students from my year as an exchange student in the US came, and we had a wonderful reunion.
Not only did we look at many pictures from way back then - Thomas has been really good about digitalizing them -

Kenneth, Caroline, Henrick, Peter, Thomas, Carmen, Michéle, Y
lva and me, way in the middle in the back Mr. Brauch, the coordinator

 

but we also went for an outing to Regensburg and had a guided city tour just for our little group.

The guide took this picture... not quite sure what he wanted to say with this,
but yes, Marianne went shopping...

During the city tour - very interesting, but a bit cold in the end.

Lots of stories, lots of fun and laughter and all of us were amazed - although some of us had been meeting relatively regularly, three people had not been to any of the earlier meetings, and a gap of 35 years is not always easy to bridge. But it worked, we co-operated in situ on finding the other four whom we had not been able to locate in preparation for this meeting - and we are planning the next one in May 2019. Smaller, individual meetings may even be in order before that, too.
On the trip, we passed a shop that has lots of tin figures, and as I have been asked to please participate in the German Guild's Bavarian Section's challenge on the theme 'at home' (written in a very Bavarian manner, and almost not-pronouncible), I took the opportunity to brush up my stack of ideas by taking two photos:

Not my style, to be thinking about making a quilt with this kind of inspiration. But one grows with one's challenges...