The Mad Knitter

This story made the AP and it cheered me up immediately as I read it at breakfast.  More here.

today's journey

 

  

 

 

Sunday traffic

We waltzed into Brooklyn in 58 minutes and it took us an hour and 45 to get back to NJ.  While we were sitting in traffic, I did a drive-by shooting with my iPhone.  No idea what I had till this minute. Took the Manhattan Bridge across to Brooklyn going in and I loved the way the light caught this building on Flatbush Avenue.

My brilliant idea to take the Brooklyn Bridge to avoid Canal St.on the way home was not so brilliant. But I got some good pix as we approached the bridge. It's hard to see the hordes of people walking across the bridge on the left, but if you click, you might see them better.  It was a beautiful day for walking.

 

 

  

Now we're on the bridge and you can see the other side.

 

 

Now we are approaching the approach to the approach to the Lincoln Tunnel. I love these buildings.

Tour's over. Remind me not to take this route again. 

another quilt day - oh, my!

Yesterday was the first meeting of the NY MetroModQuilters.  About 1/3 of us turned up to get acquainted, do show-tell, eat(of course!!), bind charity quilts, and talk about what the group wants to be when it grows up. Victoria Findlay hosted the event at her fabulous, art-filled loft.

Victoria has never taken a class with anybody, came to this way of working all by herself.  She is an artist who is now working with cloth instead of paints.

I would guess there is about a 35 year age span in this group of "modern" quilters -- and it is so exciting to those of us who are near the top of the age range to see women the same age as our daughters making quilts.  I made my first quilt at age 33 but didn't know  anybody else who did the same thing.

These newbies are reinventing quilts to fit their modern sensibilities: bright and funky fabrics, often in trad patterns...but just as often, not. These are certainly more organized and less truly scrappy than string quilts were originally (or mine on the other day's post) but that's what makes horse racing.  And I think these are beautiful.

Amy, who spearheaded the formation of this group, told us  she had had no idea there was such a pattern as Drunkard's Path and had drafted her own because she knew she wanted circles. "Modern" quilts seem to use big blocks for a highly graphic, bold look; exciting color combinations, and wonky versions of trad blocks. A lot of it, they are figuring out on their own, which is very encouraging because they are not limited by some teacher telling what they can or can't do.

After the meeting, Aleeda and I walked over to International Foods on 9th Ave., where I bought spices, olives, taramasalata, tatziki,hummus bi tahini (which I had to doctor up because it's not as good as mine - LOL) and eggplant salad. Last night's dinner.  Lured by the display of crawfish in the window, we stopped in the fish store next door, where she bought some for dinner.

I was tempted and the fish was gorgeous; prices low - but I wasn't cooking last night.

I had taken the bus and on the way home we sat in the Lincoln Tunnel for 20 minutes during a traffic jam. Unusual - there must have been an accident or stalled car on the NJ side.

Finally, skyline as we got out of the tunnel on the NJ side.

And that's enough for now.  It's already Sunday and we're off to Brooklyn to see Emma.  After that, back to NJ and Josh's birthday dinner (he was 11 earlier this week).

NJ Quilt Fest

Made my annual trek down to the NJ Mancuso show today to hang out at the Handloom Batik booth, breeze through the quilts on display, and check out the vendors.  Because I got there in the afternoon, I found a parking spot near the entrance.
Here is the requisite picture of Usha and me - not such a great one of either of us; it was the end of the day and we were tired. But the delicious South Indian dinner we had together after the show revived both of us. Yum. Something we both look forward to every year!

I had fun chatting with one particular customer, who had just told Usha she had bought a bunch of fabrics from her a couple of years ago that she LOVED but didn't know what to do with.  Then she noticed the log cabin quilt I had made with Usha's batik fabrics and and said "I can do that!". She asked me to help her pick additional fabrics and she couldn't wait to get started on her own Log Cabin.

Trends I noticed as I ran through the aisles:
1) tons of people selling longarm machines. Goodness! Everybody is going into the longarm quilting business.

2) Lots of kits and patterns.  I mean, KITS for things you don't need kits for - like this four patch with a one patch.  Apparently a lot of people can't figure out on their own that a four-patch and a one-patch cut the same finished size can be put together.  I call this the 1960 Kitchen Curtain Quilt.  Oh, dear, oh dear. 

As I ran by one booth and saw paints, paintsticks, and Misty Fuse I stopped short and sprinted backwards, thinking "oh!!
somebody is finally catering to art quilters!!" It was Jane Davila with her sidekick Carlos and it was her first time exhibiting there.  Great to see her, too.

I was wandering up the aisle when lo and behold, I ran into Diane Wright!! She and David had driven down from CT, gone to the Morris Museum to see Jack Walsh's exhibt, and come to the quilt show.  Such a treat to see her, and we had a chance to chat.  Why didn't it occur to me to grab my camera? Duh.  

The quilts were - uh - mixed. Some beautiful art quilts and the usual head-scratchers. I will say there are more special exhibits with art quilts, every year. This is good -- although NJ tends to have mostly traditional quilters.  Across the aisle from Usha's booth were several articles of embellished clothing item on display.  I don't normally post pictures of people's work but this is worth a thousand words.

And speaking of words, I saved the best for last.  Mid-afternoon, I went to get a cup of coffee at the food setup and had to take a picture of this sign.
I will leave you to ponder the meaning.

Good night.

sidetracked again

I came across two phrases this week that I wanted to talk about.  One that I hate: "eye candy."  I especially hate when somebody's artwork is referred to with that phrase.  I think it is demeaning. Somebody referred to the book 500 Quilts as eye candy; I haven't seen the book but don't have any interest in seeing something described that way. Lots of definitions out there:

eye candy (visual images that are pleasing to see but are intellectually undemanding) "he wanted to put some eye candy on their web site"
Slang: a person or thing that is visually pleasing or superficially attractive and lacking depth of intellect or meaning.

'Nuff said.

The other phrase I heard this week was "the architecture of sleep."  It struck me as poetic, although the subject is hardly that. It refers to the sleep cycles we all go through, but I love it.

The week was a blur till yesterday, when I escaped again to my real studio. Sigh of relief!  I carried a huge bag of leftover blocks; many several decades old.  I intended  to spread them out, sort them,and see if there was fodder for reinventing them into something funky, along the lines of the Cinderella quilts I wrote about in the current issue of Art Quilting Studio.

Alas, so much for good intentions. My roommate Francesca was in and since we hadn't seen each other in weeks, we spent the first hour yakking and catching up.  Then it was lunchtime. By the time she got down to printmaking and I sorted the blocks, half the day was gone. I found, after all, that even though I don't do that stuff any more, I was too attached to the older blocks to touch them. Orphans I had made as experiments, just to see if I could make a block from the Kansas City Star.

Fabric choices a bit bizzare but I love these blocks. The left one incorporates vintage 30's fabric I used to buy at house sales, the plaid from blanket covers my Nanny made, and  some orange I think was a repro.

Some were pieced by hand, but most were machine pieced. I love these block patterns, too.  Would I ever make them again? Not likely. obviously, the one on the upper left was from my Nanny's blanket covers. The fabrics were scraps she brought home from the dress factory where she worked during and after the war.  So how can I do anything with them?  The other non-vintage ones, maybe.

I happen to love this pattern, too - and the block contains fabric from an apron my Nanny made.  But WHAT was I thinking? The colors are horrible and that green border has got to go.

Blocks with truck fabric left from Josh's first quilt; a bevy of assorted log cabin blocks, and a bunch of string pieced squares left from several quilts; scraps of the newspaper to which I had sewn them still caught in the stitching.

I threw the string blocks at the wall and then decided to trim them and sew them together.  One of my studio mates walked in, saw these blocks on the wall and said in a shocked tone, "these are so traditional!"

Maybe the center of a quilt for Miss Emma to play on?  We'll see. Two weeks old today.

the big meltdown

 If all this snow we have were to melt at one time, we would drown.  Fortunately, it is going slowly.  We're inching toward Spring; the sun was warm today despite the cool air and we're getting there drop by drop.

I wish I could remember what I was going to write about tonight. Something I read today triggered a train of thought that went off the rails somewhere along the line. Uh oh.

In the meantime, remember this from yesterday? I knew it needed something, so this morning, out came the screen and the paints again.  I left the fabric to dry while I went out for the afternoon's activities.

 and here is a detail -- approximately the bottom 3/5ths of the picture.  I cannot bear to put a thread into it.  I don't

think it needs to be stitched; it has enough dimension.  I will have to figure out how to present it and how much of it to present!

I improved on some other pieces this morning, too. But they don't show up well in photos.  Tomorrow, the studio!

full moon

Is this why I'm stil up at 2:15 a.m. and just getting tired now?

Spent most of the day in my sewing room not sewing but printing.  I don't like printing on demand but two venues asked me for samples they can tack up with all my other info for class sign-ups. It just happens that I didn't have anything that would entice anybody to take a class with me, so I carved a few stamps and got busy.  IMO, this would benefit with another layer of something, but the class is about carving stamps so I don't want to muddy the waters.

 While I was at it, I printed a few more things.  Here is one of the perils of buying fabric on the Internet: it often looks different on the website from the reality.  I ordered a bolt of fabric for backs that really looked great on the manufacturer's website. Not my cuppa, so I printed on it.
First layer, screenprint with tape; 2nd layer, glue.  I like it much better but am deciding what to add, if anything.

Then I was going through a pile of fabrics I had washed and was enouraged to see that one of my demo cloths had good possibilities.

I was thinking about cropping it but I might, instead, add something on the lower right. This is the cropped version.

I love my demo pieces because they are so un-self conscious.
And when you work without intent, amazing things happen: the unconscious leads you where you need to go.

Now my conscious leads me up to bed to battle what is left of the full moon.