Garden Maze block: LAST CALL

Wow, what a month this has been!  Yea, I know it's only the middle of the month, but it took all my energy just to surface here.  It is only a matter of time before the next wave takes me under & then it will be September.

So, to be quick & yet informative:  the August Facebook Quilt Block Swap group block (Garden Mazes, directions here) is still happening.  Blocks are due in-house the last Saturday of this month, which means a week from this Saturday or Saturday August 27th, 2011. 

If you are not part of the Facebook group, you need only ask to join (because people's home addresses are printed for swapping purposes it is a semi-closed group).   Search on "quilt Block Swap" &   If you are not interested in joining on Facebook but do want to swap, just leave a message here with an e-mail address so I can send you the instructions. 

I can see from the Blogger STATS page, the October block is getting  A LOT of traffic, which is great, but the August bock has not closed yet.  Yes, it is on the large side but the center square is any 6" (finished) 4-patch or 9-patch of your choosing so long as one of the fabrics used has a floral pattern visible somewhere in the block itself.  As for the maze border, one of the two fabrics used should have some green, it doesn't have to read-as-solid or even be all green.  If this block cannot be cut from the average scrap-bag, I really don't know what block could be.

As for what to do with the blocks you get back:  six of them (five swapped & one kept) would make a simple table runner; a few more could be a wide border to a larger quilt with a garden-y-themed center panel. & as always, a sixth block sent with your five-to-swap will go to one person in the group making a quilt for her community (I will start saying "his or her" when we get the first male 6th block quilt maker.

Curds & whey

  

Don't come around here no more OR Step One

I fell in like-a-lot with the July Block Lotto block as soon as I saw it.   I am a fan of off-kilter graphic designs & I knew right away it had real potential in combo with large scale novelties (I am on an eternal quest for not-so-obvious places to insert smaller pieces of a large scale print).  Yes, I know, not everyone looks at 10" 16-patches & says "needs something big & confusing, pattern-wise", but there you are.

First let me show you one of the sets I made.  Alice in Wonderland just as she meets the Cheshire Cat, right?  Hence the title of this post (you are actually most welcome to come around as often as you like, cyberly anyway).

& then on July 31st I learned I won! 48 of these puppies will be working their way to me (I kept none of the blocks I posted because I had made a few back-ups for a not-yet-determined project; I really enjoyed MAKING this block).  That same week another quilt-blogger of my digital acquaintance asked how it was that I never took the process pledge.  The answer is mostly I never thought of it.  Also my process is not exactly linear; very few things come to me even in a roundabout way.  Mostly I stare at blank walls until it just seems like it has always been that way. You read that right - I do not have a design wall.  & brace yourselves, quilters...I could have a design wall; I choose not to.  I have a hard enough time staying interested in a project that is draped across my sewing table & even then, once I am finished I am very likely to send it elsewhere, so sick am I of thinking about it.  If I actually had to look at the d*mn thing, on the wall I just might stop quilting all together.  Have I ever mentioned deadlines make me tense?  Well they do & a design wall is a giant looming deadline as far as I am concerned. 

So here it is:

Step One- try not to think too hard about the quilt design.  This is best accomplished by never looking at the potential components directly or as a whole.  I'm really not kidding.  Instead heap everything together, ideally on a surface not quite large enough so that it periodically falls over & everything gets reshuffled & jumbled.

What would Wallace do?

Living in a college town (OKay, in a town that is college-town-adjacent), we hear a lot (A LOT) about how impractical artistic intellectual types have no business sense.  Did I mention I live in a farming town?  Have you ever heard of an industry more rife with hard working, below par businessmen than small farming?  Seriously, the hours they put in & what they barely get for that?  I'm not saying I'm not grateful, just that I had a hard time keeping a straight face while I bought my feed before they knew I was laughing at them.

Anyway, farming is neither here nor there because today is Wallace Stevens birthday.  Wallace Steven is almost the first poet I ever heard of, mostly because his stomping ground was my stomping ground, although I was not born until decade after his death.  He won a Pulitzer for his poetry.  He was also at the helm of a major Hartford insurance group for many many years (I have actually seen I-don't-know-how-many live performances in a theater named for him in the gynormous office building that is the home of the same insurance company).  Wallace Stevens was born into a prominent conservative family & was himself a member of the Republican Party & had strong anti-labor union beliefs.  When he married his wife, a woman from a working class background, his parents refused to attend the ceremony; he never spoke to them again.

So I think we can all agree it would be hard to predict what Wallace would do, so enough about him now lets talk about my cow.  Wait, one more thing about Wallace Stevens:  his poetry really is marvelous.  None of that black-is-the-color-of-my-true-love's-heart-hair-whatever that has become a cliche.  One of my favorites is Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.  I also like the Peggy Lee's version of Bye Bye Blackbird, which is not relevant except you can hear it here.

Let me present my version titled This Many Ways of Looking at Milking My Cow:

I. Misty or steamy there is
nothing like the smell
of potent lady cow

II.  Her bag pushes her legs further
apart, arched up to her back
her back is bony table

III.  Myself folded & reaching
underneath for the wrinkled
gorilla fingers swelling smooth

IV.  One two one
one two two
one two three
one two four

IV.  Sometimes I dream that someone is
twisting my hands, pulling my fingers straight
folding  them, turning them
slowly like mozzarella

V.  I saw the cord in the mirror
in my arm, when I reached to put away the towels.
These are new muscles.

& finally   VI.  You know those men - it's always men - who like to squeeze your hand until your finger tips turn blue & pretend it is just a friendly handshake?  I can make those men cry.

I think it is safe to say Wallace would be spinning in his grave.  Also, I really need to get some sleep.  Good night.

Goodbye old kitchen

The kitchen in my house is mostly original; the house was built in 1977.  The cabinets, the soffits (& the wallpaper!) are certainly original.  The dishwasher was new in '99, all the other appliances are older than that, but probably not pushing 50 (maybe 35).

This means that around the same time someone first walked into my kitchen, the Sex Pistols had just released their first album with one of my favorite songs, actually, while Fleetwood Mac released their most important album & another song I really do like; Jimmy Carter took office & pardoned draft dodgers; Anwar Sadat went to Israel & started talking peace with Menachem Begin; at the movies Tony Monero danced his way into the night, while in a galaxy far, far away... well you all know what happened there; & finally back here on earth Fonzie jumped the shark.  In short, this kitchen has been overdue for a while.  Half the people who eat (& cook) here on a regular basis were not born when this kitchen was installed & they can all vote & purchase alcohol, legally even; some of them have children of their own & some of those kids are in school.  OKay, pre-school.

So it is goodbye old kitchen.  Goodbye fan/peacock/whatever that pattern is supposed to be wall paper.  Goodbye wagon wheel detailing, you were handy for sorting the dry cleaning.  Goodbye refrigerator whose door never did open all the way because of that weird pantry shelf.  & goodbye weird pantry shelf; I'm still not sure what you were supposed to be anyway.  Goodbye breakfast bar, you were maybe a good idea but never really worked for us.  & goodbye to your buddy, the over-head cabinets with doors on both sides of the bar, it was fun pushing things all the way thru & out the other side; that's when we stopped stocking up on canned goods...

Goodbye, kitchen.  We'll always have that Thanksgiving I broke my leg walking out the front door.

*sigh*

Seriously, what is the deal on those wagon wheels?  Was this ever fashionable, even in 1977?