Plans.

Have I mentioned before that one of the life lessons I have learned is that plans are there (mostly) to be changed? (I know I have, it’s a purely rhetorical question.)

Another incident has happened recently which has reinforced this lesson. Fortunately, it was only minor, none of the seriously upsetting things as have been happening in this current-hopefully-soon-past year.

The most recent change of plans is related to this year’s continuing challenge of the 20 Perspectives group. Different from our first challenges, we agreed that this year we would each be working three pieces to the same theme, “Conversing with the Earth”. This decision took us a long time, we were considering ‘Conversation with Earth’, but one member thought that this phrase might be copyrighted because a charity of that name exists. Then there were discussions about the article – what difference are we expressing when we insert the article ‘the’ or not?

Once we had decided on the topic, I knew exactly what piece of fabric I wanted to use, and I have written about the first piece in the mini-series before.

Then life took over, I didn’t finish on time for our June group reveal, and I had to start packing up my studio and life for the move. We have unpacked most of our boxes, my new studio has been put into some kind of working mode, even though it is far from well-organized or tidy yet. But I have managed to do a little bit of sewing, including finishing the first piece for Conversing with Earth. (Minus part of the binding at this particular point in time, and the sleeve.)

 

By now I have already missed out on the second reveal in the series, and here is where the change of plans comes in. Originally, I had thought I would make all three pieces with mudcloth. Apart from the piece I used in the first quilt in the series I have a few more pieces that I acquired from a friend and that are similar enough to the piece I had brought home from South Africa. I imagined it would give unity to my three quilts, clearly marking them as a mini series. But when I pinned the fabrics for planning the next piece onto the design wall, their arrangement and collaboration spoke to me so strongly that it became clear within a split second that I could not cut this piece of mudcloth down to the size requirements of the 20 Perspectives series. It is demanding to be something else.

 

There are a few small remnants of the mudcloth, yes, but they haven’t spoken strongly to me yet so that I could come up with a good design idea. There should also be yet another piece around somewhere, in opposite color orientation – a bit of black marks on off-white background, which I remember seeing when I packed up everything. It was going to have been a major feature in my third quilt of the series. However, it hasn’t reappeared from the boxes yet. I could spend hours searching for it by going through my fabric boxes again and again (I have looked into every single one already!) – or I could wait for it to reappear by itself, which, certainly, will only happen after the next and final reveal date.

Hence, a change of plans is called for. I started cutting up a piece of hand-printed fabric I received as a gift from Jan Soules, also a member of 20 Perspectives, last year when we met in California.

Dolores Miller, me, Deb Cashatt, Kris Sazaki, Jan Soules (from left)
at our outing in California last year November

Then I started combining it with another piece that had already been worked on a bit and was included in my mother’s complete fabric selection she handed over to me recently. 

 

Right now it is simmering on the design wall while I had another stint at my work place, I will return to it tomorrow. Curious, what it will develop into.

Life in April '22

I am in a process of decisionmaking that hasn’t been completed yet but takes a lot of time and energy. (Perhaps that's what behind my procrastination tactics I wrote about in my last post.) So it may be good to get back to being creative and sorting my plans and projects in that area to take my mind off the other stuff and let that sort itself a bit under the radar.

When you work in hospital you have to leave any kind of green-minded heart outside the front door. This holds true for working on a standard ward, but even more so when working in the operating room. The amount of packaging waste that is produced every day is unbelievable. I have seen a colleague save the blue wrapping from inside the containers for medical instruments for her house decoration projects, and sort of got into the habit of keeping them back for her. Now she has declared she doesn’t need them anymore really and every time I open one of those containers I find myself faced with one of those sheets. 

 

As you can see, I have kept a few of them for myself and want to try out how well they are suited for storing quilts in, but it won’t be long before all of the quilts I have that are currently unprotected will be covered in blue. Then I will most likely stop saving the blue wrappers. I suppose they could be used to make reusable bags, but I am not a person who loves making bags – or if I make a bag, it must be from fabric and last, this material will not last as long as fabric. So that’s not my kind of thing.

Then I start thinking about all the hospitals in the world, and the amount of waste they produce in the service of health, and I realize that my saving those sheets from landfill is really not going to make a difference in that global context. And if I don’t know what to do with them?

The same containers are sealed after sterilization with red clips, which need to be undamaged before we start preparations for an operation. If not, the container is not properly sterile, and will be sent back for sterilization. Sometimes I keep these opened red clips. 

 

Not all of the ones I handle, I would already be swamped if I did that. But the collection is growing, and I am considering how to include them in my intended piece for SAQA’s call for entry for RED.

Which I better get started on soon, or else I will be in dire straits about a deadline again.  And there are two more pressing-deadline-pieces on my worktable as well, these need to be done first.

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.

Fondling Fabric

For our vacation after New Year’s we had originally planned to go and visit my brother-in-law and go cross-country skiing from there. However, not enough snow in the surroundings there, and some special reasons why we figured it would be smarter to not be around him at this time. So we stayed at home. No snow in our surroundings, either, and we ended up doing nothing much at all except for recuperating - my husband from a bad cold and a very very stressful year at work, my son from the first few months of 9^th grade and being 14 yrs old, and I myself from back pains that I am trying to battle with an intensification of my yoga (which I started a year ago).

So there was time for knitting and fondling fabric and playing around. Fondling fabric is always good for times like that, even if it’s sorting scraps from ‘light yellow’ heap to ‘nearly medium yellow’ heap or vice versa. But I did not do any sorting, although there would be enough stuff that needs cleaning up and sorting, but I wanted to do something at least sort of creative.

Just after Christmas I had finally received a shipment of plastic templates from DenyseSchmidt which I had found out about, again as so often happens these days, on Instagram. Paid heavy duty on these templates, too, which somehow I had not counted on. The original price, the shipment, and now the duty - these were expensive templates to want to have!

So I have been trying them out. 

Even had a bit of sunshine through my window onto the table... that always helps
to get through these short dark winter days.

I am pretty happy with how easily the curves come together, even with minimal pinning. I had always been very sceptical about prefabricated templates like this and believed in conscientuous pinning when sewing curves that are not entirely improvisational. But these templates I really like in their usability. 

I did not like the way my original thought – lots of red – was turning out - too little contrast, not enough bling -

and have decided to really go for a different mode of color combination. So far there is one block finished in the newly added color, light grey, but there will be more. And I have made myself a set of small paper templates to piece the curve slightly more regular, although I do like the scrappy appearance and will definitely keep including those as well.

At first I wasn’t really planning on anything, only wanted to try these out as a set and figure out whether I would be comfortable about suggesting these to students in my next class, which is coming up on January 31. But now I think I will use this to try and get me back into a sewing mood. No serious intentions included, but just sitting at the machine and putting scraps together, using up some unfinished tops or orphaned pieces might be a good way to start the year in terms of textiles. After all, I only need to go back to work on Thursday.