SAQA Benefit Auction time coming up.

As every year during the past 12 years I have donated a 12x12” (30 by 30 cm) quilt for the SAQA Benefit Auction. 

For a while I wasn’t sure, didn’t have much of an idea. But with the history of a dozen continuous contributions it is simply not possible to take a gap year. (Nobody said so, but expectations to oneself...)  Because of the lack of ideas thought I might just send in a piece I had made during the early days of the pandemic, working towards a topic as given by the monthly challenges for the SAQA Europe/Middle East group. I had started full of enthusiasm to participate in those challenges, then the work that needed to be done for the completion of the nursing course took over, my disorientation over Covid could not be overcome by participating in such challenges, and I petered out. I only made this one piece towards the challenges, and I didn’t even post it on the appropriate facebook page, I think. It’s called ‘Home’, and it is a graphical arrangement of the letters that make up the word in English, abstracted, from the outside to the inside. 

 

"text messages - Home"

But somehow I wasn’t satisfied with sending this one as a contribution to the auction and kept putting it off.

Only a couple of weeks before the deadline for signing up a piece to be auctioned, and, more importantly, for sending it, I finally had another idea. I had been collecting some of the plastic debris I was dealing with while I was working in the OR. I know I can’t save the world by not throwing away these plastic seals for the containers of operating instruments, because there is just too much. I figured I would eventually know how to put them to use, even though it isn’t exactly easy to find a sensible use for these. 

 

Add to these the plastic clips from Covid protective masks that have been accumulating…

 

And a piece of self-printed fabric that was lying around and waiting to be cut up.

 

The idea arose from the multi-faceted conglomerat of the political situation in Ukraine/Russia, weapon shipments, lack of a sensible solution and my growing frustration and hopelessness about it all. Although of course the effects on the people are everything but, the whole thing seems just like a game of tic-tac-toe, undecided, and who is going where? 

 

I put this feeling into a quilt. The game is completely open at this stage. We don’t know who is next… and we don’t know who will win. 

"Who wins in the end?"
I suppose this one would qualify as another of my text message series,
but I still haven't figured out the number I am at right now...

 

By now I have heard from Martha Sielman that my piece has arrived and will be up for auction in September. You can view all the pieces submitted here. 

A slightly easier way to see them is here.

The auction will be online from September 9 through October 2.

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.

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!

Success?

Last week I spent a few days in a small holiday apartment south of the city of Bamberg while my son was at basketball camp. Originally we had planned to go on a three-day-bike trip right afterwards, I had the bikes in the car and while the time away stitching, spinning, reading, sleeping. When preparing everything and packing, we realized that my pretty urgent desire to reduce our consumption of throw-away plastic items that I have been following has been rather successful. I keep being reminded of the necessity to further follow that intention with determination when I see pictures like this on Instagram, on the internet, or just see plastic trash lying around when people did not dispose of their waste properly.

Screenshot from Instagram -
frightening.

Not only have I noticed that the number of bags containing plastic waste that we put out for collection has gone down quite a bit (it used to be up to 5 or 6, now it is only 2, at the most, sometimes less), but we also could not find a single plastic bag in the house in which to wrap our belongings that we would have wanted to take on the trip, to protect them from possible rain.
Bike trip experience has taught me that it is useful to do that. We left without having pre-wrapped anything, and I thought I could perhaps get (i.e. BUY) some sturdy trash bags should weather be looking grim with the danger of rain interfering with our trip. As it turns out, it has been so hot here in Germany, that we canceled the bike trip. If I had been on my own, I probably still would have gone, but my son is 13, I had hoped to introduce him to a more-than-one-day bike trip to show him how much fun it is, but with temperatures in the range of mid-30Centigrades it would have not worked. He would have hated it and me forever, so we came back home. I never needed to think about plastic bags again.

It is still very hot, with feeble attempts to stay 'cool' inside (we, this being Germany, of course don't have air conditioning). The water in the swimming pool is too warm for my taste by now, exercising outside is almost unbearable, and working on a longarm commission makes me break out in sweat.

But I finished it in record time as this is meant to be a wedding present for a wedding in ten days, and I am going to Birmingham on Wednesday.
So we are using less plastic. But we are suffering from climate change dramatically here - at least this summer. Of course, the American President has decreed that there is no such thing...