Great quilts on display

My dear friend and quilting pal Vickie Wheatley has a great show of her bright, intricate quilts at PYRO Gallery.  I have been working closely with Vickie for more than a year and it is a particular thrill to see pieces that we spent all day rearranging on the design wall finally on the gallery wall.  But I was most interested in the variety of small details in the many pieces on display, which so clearly show her trying out new things and progressing in her body of work.

For some time now Vickie has been exploring a design that starts with strips of random black and white piecing that make a "road" diagonally through the middle of her block.  Once that's in place, she fills out the corners of the block with colored strips.  When she sets the blocks in fours, you see a big diagonal grid of black-and-white roads, or maybe a bunch of colored squares or diamonds floating above a sea of black-and-white, depending on how you look at it.

Then she adds a twist: she sticks little miscellaneous bits and cuttings under the quilting thread.  And I do mean little -- some of the bits are only a quarter-inch wide.  The contrast between these wildly irregular bits and the meticulously pieced quilt top adds excitement and texture.

As the series progresses, you can see her experimenting.  In #1, the black-and-white strips are cut to a strict 45 degree angle, but in #5 they're wonky.  In #4 she has put so many bits and cuttings on top that you can barely see the underlying pattern of the blocks. 

Anxieties #1: Imperfections

Anxieties #4: The River Lethe

In #3 and #4 she adds sashing between the blocks, and cuts some of the square blocks into rectangles before sashing.

Anxieties #3: Breakdown

As you can imagine, when you sew strips together and then cut triangles from them to make the corners of your blocks, you end up with a lot of leftovers.  Vickie sewed more than a dozen small quilts from the leftovers, and it was fun to see how she varied their colors and personalities, even though she was working from the same huge scrap pile.

In the next post I'll show you the many different ways Vickie finished her small pieces for display at the gallery. 

Meanwhile, the show is up at PYRO Gallery through March 21.  Well worth a detour if you're anywhere near Louisville!

"Symphonic Water Lilies"

The World can move to whatever directions, but we just simply paint. Among all the bad news we got lately, I received one piece of good news: I have been juried in this year's Oil Painters of America National Exhibition, and I will show my recent work "Symphonic Water Lilies". It is a big painting 24" x 30". Since the show will be in Fredericksburg Texas, I can deliver the painting myself. It saves me a whole lot of shipping money.

Sewing -- an obsolete skill?

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my daughter-in-law's attempt to make a dress for the two-year-old and how we were both frustrated by the slipshod construction methods specified in the Simplicity pattern.  Well, mainly it was me who was frustrated, and wondering whether good sewing technique is a thing of the past, and whether I should just relax and enjoy it.

Several readers who, like me, learned to sew in the previous century, shared my angst.  Stitchinscience wrote: "I too am surprised at modern patterns and their "quick" construction techniques.  Particularly anything to do with curves -- new stitchers really need to understand curves and bias edges."  QuiltGranma wrote: "I agree with you on the sloppy pattern directions and their way of finishing!  I've seen readymade just as sloppy.  Wear out and need repair in no time!"

Sue wrote:  "In the late 60s, I spent a couple of years in a fashion design program, learning pattern drafting, garment design and tailoring.  Recently I thought I'd take a break from art quilts and make myself some garments, but found commercial patterns so disappointing that I have decided to make my own.  If I had a daughter who was interested, I would be so happy to pass on these skills, and I can't tell you how many times my advanced garment making skills have come to my aid in making complex art out of cloth!"

A couple of readers suggested I just move on.  Helen wrote:  "Step away.  You'll only get hot and cross..."   Dixie wrote:  "I'm with Helen on this.  So much has gone the cheap and easy way.  Sewing, cooking, spelling..."

But Idaho wrote:  "Do not succumb to letting this go!  If Kristin is willing, I say teach the next generation proper garment construction with patterns having decent instructions.  Otherwise, if she continues to dabble in sewing clothes for the little one, she's just going to become frustrated, and just like in quilting, think it's her fault (as has already happened).  And you will continue to stew about this, I'm sure. "

Carol homed in on the patterns themselves:  "When I look in my stash of patterns I have saved there are VERY FEW Simplicity and most are McCalls, Vogue or from independent companies."

I told Kristin, my daughter-in-law, to read the blog post and the comments, and she in turn shared
it all on a Facebook group of people who sew, and asked "Did I choose a pattern from their half-assed line, or is it all patterns?"  Here are some of their comments:

"They're mainly half-assed.  They've always been half-assed when it's Butterick or McCalls.  I went to fashion design school and just shake my head at their instructions."

"I just want to wish you good luck.  I thought I might sew a pattern once and I opened up the envelope and my brain stopped working.  I watched YouTube videos to figure out what it all meant but decided maybe I was just too daft for it."

"I haven't had an issue but I like to search hashtags for patterns on Instagram to see other people's makes and if they have any feedback on the pattern.  I support a lot of smaller pattern makers and if you want some suggestions, I love Friday Pattern Company!"

"I hate the big 4 tissue paper patterns.  I've been sewing since the early 90s and the greatest invention ever was the independent PDF pattern companies."

"This is why I only use PDF patterns, they come with better instructions, pictures of each step and often links to videos for the really hard stuff."

"Patterns for Pirates and their sister site, Made for Mermaids have much better patterns."

"Look for patterns from indie companies instead of the big 4 (Vogue, McCall's, Simplicity, Butterick).  Indie pattern designers usually have sewalongs, hacking guides, etc. and their instructions are way more in depth.  My favorite indie pattern companies: Friday Pattern Co., True Bias, Megan Nielsen Patterns."

These comments from a younger generations of sewists opened my eyes and made me realize that since I gave up garment sewing in the early 90s, I've missed a lot.  Such as PDF patterns (I don't even understand how these work) and getting sewing advice and directions from the internet.  Almost makes me want to make a garment again!  As to the independent pattern companies: I think in my whole lifetime I only once bought an indie pattern.  I never had problems with the big companies, and I really enjoyed looking in the pattern books, then going to the big drawers to root around and try to find the pattern in the right size.  So last-century.

Kristin hasn't raised the issue of making another dress so I don't know how she/we will proceed.  She did amaze the two-year-old the other night when said child wanted a tutu and Kristin produced one.  (No, she didn't make it -- she had gotten it as a hand-me-down from a friend but not brought it out yet.)  If the kid is going to keep putting in fashion requests, home sewing may be the best answer.  I'll keep you posted!!

Coronavirus and me

Several years ago the newspapers were full of some sordid scandal and I announced to my husband that I was not going to read another word about it.  Instead (I made this part up on the fly in mid-rant...)  I was going to read every word written about ... Ebola.  And I followed through on both promises.  Since then I have become quite the aficionada of epidemics, Ebola or otherwise.

So I have been following the coronavirus story closely, and especially when it hit the two big cruise ships, because I also love cruise ships.  I knew I had a tie to the Westerdam, the ship that was finally allowed to offload its passengers in Cambodia, because it's the identical twin to Zuiderdam, the Holland-America ship that we have sailed on three times in the last couple of years.  But silly me, it took a long time before I realized my even stronger tie to the Diamond Princess.

In 2015 I took a tour to Japan that was mostly on board a Princess Line ship, and when Diamond Princess was first quarantined in Yokohama Harbor a couple of weeks ago, I wondered offhand whether that was our ship.  But I didn't get around to researching that question until this afternoon, at which point I found, in my folder of photos from that tour, this one of our ship at a pier:

And here, one of our lifeboats:

Yes!  that's the death ship!  (As of this afternoon two of the passengers have died of the virus, and more than 600 passengers and crew are infected.) 

In case you're wondering what it would be like to be quarantined on a cruise ship for two weeks, here's what our cabin looked like:

There was a spacious closet and bathroom:

And a balcony, with the same view of Yokohama Harbor that the luckier quarantined folks had.  A good argument for upgrading to a balcony cabin: if you ever get stuck on a death ship you can at least get some fresh air.

We're on the mailing list for the cruise lines we've sailed with in the past, and every day we get a new message begging us to sign up for another voyage.  They've lowered the deposit to $25, are offering free internet, free drinks, and practically free base fares.  Despite my ghoulish slurping up of every word written about coronavirus, I'm really tempted to sign up for another cruise -- nothing is so exciting as being on a ship as it leaves the dock and sails away to somewhere else....

"Chinese Eyes"

I have been working on this painting for past three days. I will call it done now. Life is so vulnerable in front of this horrible disease. We can not run away from our fate. I just got the info: One of my friends has died in Wuhan. I feel very sad, but what can I do? There is no choice other than staring at the reality. As an artist, I can not directly help. I painted this to show my feeling. I have posted this painting image on WeChat (a Chinese social medium). I hope this artwork can bring some positive energy to the doctors, nurses, and all the people who are on the front line fighting this devastating epidemic.