Since 2006, And Tango Makes Three has been our most challenged book according to the American Library Association, who tracks these things, except in 2009 when it was the second most challenged book, making it overall the most challenged. Think about all the other books that have been published since then & the biggest threat to our society is...penguins?
The gist of the challenges is that the story (which is based on two male penguins who, after attempting to hatch a rock together were given an extra egg which they did hatch) 1-promoted a homosexual agenda & 2-does not tell the rest of the story when one of the father penguins leaves & forms a nesting pair with a female penguin.
It is hard to know where to begin. So lets start with the whole gay agenda thing (after all it is the real reason for all the objections that follow). There are slews of books about gay families, & a good chunk of those are picture books; there are picture books about living with gay parents, gay adoption, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, & so on. What makes And Tango Makes Three so much more objectionable than others which are patently about gay families? To put it in a nutshell (eggshell?), these were actual, observable penguins & penguins don't make "choices"; they operate solely on their godgiven wiring.
Next, the complaint a picture book does not tell the whole story...specifically events that happened after the book was published. Was the publisher really supposed to recall all the books & add that paragraph to the end? Would the adverse be true? Is anyone recalling the King James Bible to add the note by the by King James himself had sex with men to the biography bit with the frontispiece? This particular complaint has kind of faded away after Tango (the baby girl penguin with two daddies) has herself hooked up with a female penguin; I guess they don't want that particular footnote added, although since it reinforces some prejudices I really don't understand why not.
Also published in 2005 (& protested & banned & all that) was Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince. All the Harry Potter books have been listed as unacceptable by one person or another, although it amuses me to learn now that the whole series is in the world (& there will be no putting that genie back in the bottle) some groups are suggesting the whole thing is a christian allegory à la The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe (also challenged by a christian group for mysticism et al although if you cruise a few forums more than one person who says Harry Potter should be banned because those books ARE evil floats the idea that the reason Lewis was banned was because he was so very christian). I guess if you can't beat him, pretend he joined you.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Joy in December 2011
The last block swap of the year can be tricky. People want winter holiday things but by the time you get them back, Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa et al. will more or less be over. Also, it can be challenging coming up with something that works for all of those. So here's hoping JOY works; this year we will be making our first ever word blocks.
I picked JOY because it only has three letters...& because it seems like it ought to be universal, regardless of what holiday you do or do not observe. Finally, it could work for any time of year.
You may need as few as one fabric (but probably more, depending on how you want to make your letters), & that first fabric should read-as-solid or at least any pattern on it should not make it hard to read the letters J, O, & Y as this will be the background fabric. As for your letters, you can use different fabric for each letter OR all the same OR no fabric at all if you embroider them. You can piece the letters (my example is below, also numerous examples in the book Word Play Quilts which is my new addiction) or you can applique them or embroider them (probably the only way you would use just the one background fabric) by hand or with an embroidery machine.
Instead of finished dimensions I am going to give you more-like guidelines: the block should be no smaller than 6.5" x 6.5" unfinished (being sure to keep ALL the text WELL inside of 6.25") or it might be longer, & maybe even a bit taller, but try to keep it close to 6.5" if you can. That being the case, the height of the letters probably should not be more than 5.5" (to keep it at at least 1/2" from the top & bottom edges), but the lengths will be variable. In other words most-if-not-all of the blocks will not be square or even uniform, leaving you with a block that is 6.5" x 6.5" OR ~6.5" x >6.5". I know, it sounds odd, but I have seen irregular word blocks work.
This means you will probably want to add blocks of the holiday or not-holiday of your own choosing, size-up the smaller blocks with snazzy borders or whatever in your own quilt top. When you make your own quilt, you might decide you want to add some words of your own (for myself, I am thinking of making PEACE in different languages & a few might find their way over to my JOY quilt). You could also expand your own JOY blocks with prefixes & suffixes to ENJOY or JOYFUL or JOY in other languages or JOY in phrases such as JOY TO THE WORLD or maybe even JOY phrases in other languages such as JOYEUX NOEL.
So, to be clear, the block you send will be 6.5" unfinished/6" finished by not less than 6.5" unfinished/6" finished & will say JOY... or Joy ...or joy.
Because there are slews of different ways to do this, I am offering my own work as an example only. I lifted it more-or-less straight from Word Play Quilts (which I own & I highly recommend as one of the few quilting books you will always wish you did own; I even requested my library by it which they did & it has been checked out ever since). If you cannot bring yourself to buy yet another quilt book for yourself, you can find free examples on-line here & here & here & here & many, many, many more.
I began with the J. Keeping in mind the entire block should be no taller than 6.5" unfinished & all the text no taller than 5.5" finished, I started with two 4.5" x 1.5" pieces of fabric, one background & one letter fabric. To that, I added a 1.5" piece of the letter fabric across the bottom & a 1.5" strip of the back ground fabric to the right. To keep all the letters more or less the same size, I then began my O.
The O is almost too easy: two sets of two strips of letter fabric, one of them 1"5 x 5.5" & the other 1.5" square, & a piece of back ground fabric for the center 1.5" x
Finally the Y. The base was also easy-peasy 1.5" wide of letter with a strip of the background fabric on either side. The top of the Y was harder, but I just sort of whacked around until I had this one.Yes, yes the Y in the first photo is not the Y in the following photos; it looked shtumpik so I put that one aside & made another in the exact same way, I just cut it down to size later.
Because it will all be bordered by straight cuts of the background fabric, I did not worry for a moment about the bias edges, but as it happens I did not have any. All of my strips were 1.5" (including the kerns or the spaces between the letters) & all of my letters 5.5" tall. I added a strip to top & bottom once the letters were all together. Again, this is how I made my JOY; you can make yours as you please, so long as it is 6.5" tall & not less than 6.5" wide, keeping all text more or less within the 6" of the center (so that even with a generous 1/4" seam allowance no one needs to worry their letters will get cut off.).
As always, blocks are due (not postmarked by but due) the last Saturday of the swap month: Saturday, December 31st. Blocks will be swapped on the following Sunday (yes, New Years Day) & mailed back on or before the next Wednesday. The easiest way to join is to log into Facebook & search for the Quilt Block Swap Group. If you do not want to join Facebook, leave a message here with your e-mail information & I will send you the address for swapping.
I picked JOY because it only has three letters...& because it seems like it ought to be universal, regardless of what holiday you do or do not observe. Finally, it could work for any time of year.
You may need as few as one fabric (but probably more, depending on how you want to make your letters), & that first fabric should read-as-solid or at least any pattern on it should not make it hard to read the letters J, O, & Y as this will be the background fabric. As for your letters, you can use different fabric for each letter OR all the same OR no fabric at all if you embroider them. You can piece the letters (my example is below, also numerous examples in the book Word Play Quilts which is my new addiction) or you can applique them or embroider them (probably the only way you would use just the one background fabric) by hand or with an embroidery machine.
Instead of finished dimensions I am going to give you more-like guidelines: the block should be no smaller than 6.5" x 6.5" unfinished (being sure to keep ALL the text WELL inside of 6.25") or it might be longer, & maybe even a bit taller, but try to keep it close to 6.5" if you can. That being the case, the height of the letters probably should not be more than 5.5" (to keep it at at least 1/2" from the top & bottom edges), but the lengths will be variable. In other words most-if-not-all of the blocks will not be square or even uniform, leaving you with a block that is 6.5" x 6.5" OR ~6.5" x >6.5". I know, it sounds odd, but I have seen irregular word blocks work.
This means you will probably want to add blocks of the holiday or not-holiday of your own choosing, size-up the smaller blocks with snazzy borders or whatever in your own quilt top. When you make your own quilt, you might decide you want to add some words of your own (for myself, I am thinking of making PEACE in different languages & a few might find their way over to my JOY quilt). You could also expand your own JOY blocks with prefixes & suffixes to ENJOY or JOYFUL or JOY in other languages or JOY in phrases such as JOY TO THE WORLD or maybe even JOY phrases in other languages such as JOYEUX NOEL.
So, to be clear, the block you send will be 6.5" unfinished/6" finished by not less than 6.5" unfinished/6" finished & will say JOY... or Joy ...or joy.
Because there are slews of different ways to do this, I am offering my own work as an example only. I lifted it more-or-less straight from Word Play Quilts (which I own & I highly recommend as one of the few quilting books you will always wish you did own; I even requested my library by it which they did & it has been checked out ever since). If you cannot bring yourself to buy yet another quilt book for yourself, you can find free examples on-line here & here & here & here & many, many, many more.
Finally the Y. The base was also easy-peasy 1.5" wide of letter with a strip of the background fabric on either side. The top of the Y was harder, but I just sort of whacked around until I had this one.Yes, yes the Y in the first photo is not the Y in the following photos; it looked shtumpik so I put that one aside & made another in the exact same way, I just cut it down to size later.
One cut of the cut glass dish for October 2011
I often (often!) get requests for blocks that are quite large &/or complex & as much as I would like to swap these, it just is not realistic to ask people to make six of something so very involved (either because of size or skill or materials consumed or whatever) & send five off. I have been chewing this over for a while & I think I might have a solution. Instead of making an entire complex block, I am going to try & break one down into less complicated pieces that we can realistically swap & see how that goes.
For October, I thought we would try one piece of the block that makes up the Cut Glass Dish block. I freely admit this is one of my favorite blocks. You can see a completed Cut Glass Dish quilt here (please note the much more soothing colors than the single block example at the right). The quilt in the link is actually nine blocks, in a 3x3 arrangement (not coincidentally the block itself is 9-patch variation). The cut glass dish block is also a 9-patch, three 6.5" squares & six 4-patches made of 1/2-square triangles arranged so that the three squares create a diagonal line from one corner of the block to the other & the mid-lines of the 1/2-square triangles are parallel with that diagonal line.
Whenever I have a certain amount of something leftover, I cull thru the scraps bag for what could be the 1/2-square triangles to work with it. It occurred to me we could swap the 1/2-square triangle squares & people could make up them up with their own 6.5" squares. Because it helps to have some kind of unifying idea, I landed on I-SPY. Soooo, we will be exchanging the 4-patch 1/2-square triangles & our theme is I-SPY.
You will need two fabrics for each 4-patch 1/2-square triangle block. One fabric should be a busy juvenile print OR a bright print OR a bright reads-as-solid. The second fabric should read-as-solid or be solid; it can be bright or pastel or black or white or anything in between. Each 4-square should have only two fabrics. When you are done, you will have a 6.5" unfinished/6" finished square. Six of these (five to swap & one to keep) will make one cut glass dish block (when combined with the three 6.5" single-fabric squares).
There are gazillions of ways to make the half square triangles & as long as you end up with 3.5" half square triangles it does not much matter which technique you use. I am providing the steps how I make them I make them this way because I think it is the easiest & most accurate way to use up irregular & smaller pieces of fabric but again, so long as you end up with four 1/2-square triangles each measuring 3.5"x3.5", you can make them any way you like:
1. Cut four 4" squares from one fabric & four 4" squares from your second fabric. On the back of one of the fabrics, with a pencil or fabric marker that will not run make a straight line from one corner to the other. Ultimately this will be your cutting line, so you do not need to worry about it not washing out when you are finished. Pin the other two corners. I know it does not look it but I did not fussy cut one bit for the blocks below. Because there are four 1/2-square triangles in each 4-square we are making, one of them is bound to have most of the image you are looking for (all of it if the motif is small enough) & as this is an I-SPY project, bits & pieces are just fine.
2. Stitch 1/4" from this line on either side. I find the easiest way to do this without getting the points jammed into the machine is to chain piece (just keep stitching without stopping to cut in between) while alternating which side of the line you are stitching.
3. Once you have sewn 1/4" on both sides of the line, unpin & cut on the center line. Press open. It is possible your triangle will need to be squared up, remember the size you want it to be is 3.5". Also, cut away any threads (if you did not chain piece) & trim the pointy-bits from the ends of the seam.
4. Take your four 1/2-square triangles & create a 4-patch in which all the triangles have the same orientation, that is the same fabric is on the same side for all four squares (as in the example above).
You're done. Make one set of six, keep one, swap five. If you add three 6.5" squares of another fabric to your set of six, you can make the cut glass dish block & I will have the directions for that in a later post (I am worried if we put it here people will get confused about what the swap block actually is). It could stand alone as a doll quilt (18.5" unfinished/18" finished) OR you could swap four sets & make a nap-sized quilt (36.5" unfinished/36" finished) OR you could swap nine sets & make an almost-twin quilt (52.5" unfinished/52" finished). Keep in mind these measurements are before quilting but also before any border you put on so, depending on what you do border-wise, they could be spot on; if it helps the finished quilt in the link above it 51" by 50.5", no border. So as not to confuse anyone, I will not put the direction for the complete cut glass dish block up until this swap is winding down, but trust me, if you can make these six 4-patch 1/2-square triangles, you can make the whole block.
As always the blocks are due here the last Saturday of the swap month, in this case that is Saturday October 29. & as always we are collecting 6th blocks. You have the option of sending a 6th block with your five swap blocks; you will get five back & the 6th will go to whichever member of the group asked for them to make a quilt to donate to in her community. Previous 6th blocks for kids have gone to Project Linus in Houston Texas & CareNet in Port Ste. Lucie, Florida.
Whenever I have a certain amount of something leftover, I cull thru the scraps bag for what could be the 1/2-square triangles to work with it. It occurred to me we could swap the 1/2-square triangle squares & people could make up them up with their own 6.5" squares. Because it helps to have some kind of unifying idea, I landed on I-SPY. Soooo, we will be exchanging the 4-patch 1/2-square triangles & our theme is I-SPY.
There are gazillions of ways to make the half square triangles & as long as you end up with 3.5" half square triangles it does not much matter which technique you use. I am providing the steps how I make them I make them this way because I think it is the easiest & most accurate way to use up irregular & smaller pieces of fabric but again, so long as you end up with four 1/2-square triangles each measuring 3.5"x3.5", you can make them any way you like:
1. Cut four 4" squares from one fabric & four 4" squares from your second fabric. On the back of one of the fabrics, with a pencil or fabric marker that will not run make a straight line from one corner to the other. Ultimately this will be your cutting line, so you do not need to worry about it not washing out when you are finished. Pin the other two corners. I know it does not look it but I did not fussy cut one bit for the blocks below. Because there are four 1/2-square triangles in each 4-square we are making, one of them is bound to have most of the image you are looking for (all of it if the motif is small enough) & as this is an I-SPY project, bits & pieces are just fine.
3. Once you have sewn 1/4" on both sides of the line, unpin & cut on the center line. Press open. It is possible your triangle will need to be squared up, remember the size you want it to be is 3.5". Also, cut away any threads (if you did not chain piece) & trim the pointy-bits from the ends of the seam.
4. Take your four 1/2-square triangles & create a 4-patch in which all the triangles have the same orientation, that is the same fabric is on the same side for all four squares (as in the example above).
You're done. Make one set of six, keep one, swap five. If you add three 6.5" squares of another fabric to your set of six, you can make the cut glass dish block & I will have the directions for that in a later post (I am worried if we put it here people will get confused about what the swap block actually is). It could stand alone as a doll quilt (18.5" unfinished/18" finished) OR you could swap four sets & make a nap-sized quilt (36.5" unfinished/36" finished) OR you could swap nine sets & make an almost-twin quilt (52.5" unfinished/52" finished). Keep in mind these measurements are before quilting but also before any border you put on so, depending on what you do border-wise, they could be spot on; if it helps the finished quilt in the link above it 51" by 50.5", no border. So as not to confuse anyone, I will not put the direction for the complete cut glass dish block up until this swap is winding down, but trust me, if you can make these six 4-patch 1/2-square triangles, you can make the whole block.
As always the blocks are due here the last Saturday of the swap month, in this case that is Saturday October 29. & as always we are collecting 6th blocks. You have the option of sending a 6th block with your five swap blocks; you will get five back & the 6th will go to whichever member of the group asked for them to make a quilt to donate to in her community. Previous 6th blocks for kids have gone to Project Linus in Houston Texas & CareNet in Port Ste. Lucie, Florida.
Garden mazes for August 2011
The first swap block for the second half of the year is a not-uncommon block; it has quite a bit of mileage frankly. You will see a variation of it in at least one quilting magazine or catalog every year, although I doubt you will see exactly the variation we are doing. If you are interested in more about this block, it is listed in Brackman as quilt block 3030.
We begin with a 6.5" unfinished/6" finished 4-patch, 9-patch or 16-patch. You can make the 4-patch using four 3.5" squares, or the 9-patch using nine 2.5" squares or the 16-patch using sixteen 2" squares or combination, variations so long as they are fundamentally 4-, 9-, or 16-patches. In short, you can make almost any block you can think of & the only fabric requirement is at least one of the fabrics used is a floral. You can use anything from two to however-many fabrics & again only one need be a floral.
That part was the "garden"; next is the "maze".
To make the maze, you will need two (& only two) fabrics: one of these should be more green than any other color (& both of them can be, if that suits your stash), although neither has to read-as-solid, nor does either need to be exclusively green. Neither of them need have anything at all to do with florals or leaves or anything, just one of them needs to have a noticeable amount of green. One (or both) of these fabrics could also have been used in the "garden" part of the block although it is perfectly OKay if your garden & your maze fabrics have nothing common.
From each of the "maze" fabrics you will need four (4) 2" by 6.5" strips (or one long 2" strip, as you will sew them together along the long edges). If you make a long strip, cut it down into 6.5" lengths (& if you measured correctly when you cut, they will be 3.5" across).
From one fabric (the fabric that must have green) you will also need four (4) 3.5" squares; from the other fabric (which could be green, but does not have to be) you will need eight (8) 2" squares. These will make the outer corners of you block & will be what connects your maze to the maze in adjacent blocks. The hardest part of this whole thing is making the corners of the "maze", the outer corners of the completed block. To make the corner blocks:
-take two of the smaller squares & draw a line on the back in faint pencil from one corner to the opposite corner.
-place one of these, right side down in the corner of one of the larger squares (which is right side up). The line you drew should connect one straight edge to another.
-stitch from one corner to the other along the line you drew.
-press so that the smaller square (now a triangle) covers the corner
-do the same for the opposite corner of this same square & for each of the other three corner pieces.
Once all four corners are made, attach them to the ends of two of the long strip pieces.
Attach the other two long strip pieces to opposite sides of your center "garden", keeping the green strip to the inside of the block.
Assemble what is a 12.5" unfinished/12" finished block.
If you would like to join this swap, the easiest thing is to go to Facebook & search for the group Quilt Block Swap & ask to join. Blocks are always due the last Saturday of an even numbered month (which means they should be in the mail no later than the Monday before, if not sooner). This particular swap is due Saturday, August 27, 2011.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Step-fathers's Day
It will surprise no one, not even not-Catholics, that the patron saint of fathers is Joseph. Which is funny really, because he is not actually on record as anybody's father. Which means that the patron saint of fathers was actually a step-father. As a person who has a much better relationship with my step-father than my biological father -in all fairness I have a much better relationship with Sarah Palin than I have with my biological father & Mrs. Palin & I have never ever met, nor are we likely to & if we did I cannot imagine either one of us would have three nice things to say about the other; I think you know where I am going with this... As a person who has a much better relationship with my step-father than my biological father, the message of this is not lost.
This Joseph, for those who have not figured it out, is not the guy with the coat of many colors. For the record that one is not a saint. This Joseph is the one who married Mary, went to Bethlehem, got the short end of a fiscal negotiation with an unscrupulous innkeeper, left town with a child that was not his, raised that child (including but not limited to hunting him down in the temple when the precocious little angel went a-wandering) & the rest is history...or not, depending on how you look at these things. Go ahead & read the gospels from Joseph's point of view; can't you see him secretly LONGING for joint custody? Just one day a week when his father-father had to deal with the holier-than-thou little monster he created?
Anyhow, today is Father's Day in the US; not last Sunday which is when I called my own step-father to wish him a happy Father's Day. This is not the first time I have observed Father's Day a week early, either. Clearly I have an issue. Maybe I should just move it all to March 19 (the actual feast day of Joseph) & be done with it. I could sing the only song I know about Joseph & be completely out of season in that way, too.
So, in conclusion today is Father's Day but it is not the feast day of the patron saint of fathers who was himself not a father. Got it? Good. Oh & a most happy father's day all the other 364-give-or-take to all the faux-fathers who do the heavy lifting. If it were not for a guy like you, christianity would never have happened.
This Joseph, for those who have not figured it out, is not the guy with the coat of many colors. For the record that one is not a saint. This Joseph is the one who married Mary, went to Bethlehem, got the short end of a fiscal negotiation with an unscrupulous innkeeper, left town with a child that was not his, raised that child (including but not limited to hunting him down in the temple when the precocious little angel went a-wandering) & the rest is history...or not, depending on how you look at these things. Go ahead & read the gospels from Joseph's point of view; can't you see him secretly LONGING for joint custody? Just one day a week when his father-father had to deal with the holier-than-thou little monster he created?
Anyhow, today is Father's Day in the US; not last Sunday which is when I called my own step-father to wish him a happy Father's Day. This is not the first time I have observed Father's Day a week early, either. Clearly I have an issue. Maybe I should just move it all to March 19 (the actual feast day of Joseph) & be done with it. I could sing the only song I know about Joseph & be completely out of season in that way, too.
So, in conclusion today is Father's Day but it is not the feast day of the patron saint of fathers who was himself not a father. Got it? Good. Oh & a most happy father's day all the other 364-give-or-take to all the faux-fathers who do the heavy lifting. If it were not for a guy like you, christianity would never have happened.
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