stitched stories

this is the text i wrote to go with the exhibition of my great grandmother's quilts.

these quilts and quilt tops were made by annie barnhart (1863-1946) of salem, south dakota. she was my maternal great-grandmother. i think she would be amazed to know that her rather prolific handiwork found its way to denmark with her great-granddaughter. 

 

my mother told a story from her childhood, of her grandmother, ill and bound to her bed at her daughter’s home in sergeant bluff, iowa, sewing away on these quilts. she had stacks of squares of different colors and she just spent her days, sewing them together. mom even said her eyesight wasn’t so great anymore, so the color combinations and the designs are even more amazing considering that fact. and i can’t even begin to count the number of hours that went into them. 

mom was born in 1939 and if her grandmother died in 1946, she must have been a small girl. she told me that she got to help do some of the stitching, so she had very fond memories of her grandmother working on them. i’m so glad that i know that and that she shared it before she lost those memories to alzheimer’s in her later years. 

i look at these quilts and i think of all the memories that are stitched into them that i don’t have access to. the stories behind all the old dresses and flour sacks that were cut into squares and sewn together by hand. some of the fabrics are surely 100 years old. i wish they could talk and tell of the occasions they were worn to – dances, parties, church, everyday life. i wish i could access those stories. 

sometimes, i feel like if i sit very still and i’m quiet enough, i will be able to hear them whisper their stories to me. i think one of the magical things about quilts is that they are very representative of their times – the fabrics used, the way they are stitched. they are quite literally the very fabric of their time. and they tell us a story even if we can’t necessarily hear the stories they tell. 

i feel privileged to share them all with you in this very magical place, across an ocean and a world away from where they were made. i hope that great grandmother annie is looking down and smiling. 

and i hope she likes the small mini-quilts that i made, using fabrics gifted to me by two friends, each with their own stories – mini quilts that i feel are a dialogue between me and those amazing women, continuing the tradition of telling stories through quilting in our family.

what would great grandma think?

i have a stack of quilt tops that my great grandmother made. mom said she could remember, as a little girl, seeing her bed-bound grandmother, who didn't see all that well, sitting in bed, sewing squares together by hand. it's absolutely amazing to me that she could do it and keep the pattern of the squares perfectly if she wasn't able to lay it all out on a table or a wall or the floor. when i lay out a quilt, i have to see it, photograph it, walk away, move things around, do it all over again. but she could sit in bed, sewing away and make the most beautiful quilts. i'm so pleased to display them at my favorite little museum in connection the what we call "handicrafts days" at the end of the month. i wonder what my great grandmother from salem, south dakota would think of her quilts being in denmark, displayed in a rather alternative way - one that invites people to touch them and look closely. though i never knew her, i think she'd love it. and oh the stories her stitches would tell us if only we could hear them.

color pop :: a dialogue with two talented women

i mentioned some months ago, a treasure trove of hand-dyed fabrics that i got from a artistic friend who has terminal cancer. when our local creative group chose color pop as our theme, i knew i needed to make something with the fabric scraps that she gave me. i also realized that the color palette also went with the other treasure trove of samples that another friend gave me last year. it was time to start a creative dialogue with these women. as you can see, olga (the cat formerly known as paws mcgraw) was eager to help.

i got out the scraps and ironed them and just began sewing them together - doing it in a very intuitive way without thinking too much about how it would end up. just selecting colors and sizes that fit together and just sewing and holding them up and sewing some more. as you can see, the color palette is indeed bright and fits perfectly with the theme of color pop. 

once i had enough bits and pieces, i sewed them into mini quilt rectangles, wanting them to be around the same size, so they could hang in a group of three. since we are three women, three dialogues seemed right.

dialogue 1

dialogue 2

dialogue 3

then it was time to quilt. in my stash, i found a spool of rainbow-colored thread and i knew it was perfect for this color pop project. on the back side of the quilts, i used some shibori indigo cotton that i had dyed last fall. 

i had a small fight with my sewing machine, but we worked it out in the end. 

i had a lot of trimming to do, but it felt like part of the process. i quilted in a very intuitive way as well, following the lines as i saw fit in the moment. then switching. it felt like it was indeed a dialogue with the fabrics, as they whispered to me what they wanted.

dialogue 1 - finished with binding and quilting. this was the first one i made and is my favorite. probably because i'm also a firstborn. :-) this one features only fabrics from the friend who has cancer. that wasn't actually intentional, it just happened that way. the intuitive way i sewed the bits and pieces together just happened to come together like that. 

dialogue 2 - i love the block-printed pieces at the bottom and top left - they are from the friend who gave me all the samples and works from her education at what eventually became kolding design school. 

dialogue 3 - this one is another dialogue between the three of us. i hung them on these hangers with the cute colorful clothes pins just to photograph them, but decided that it was also how i wanted to display them at the exhibition. 

the night we hung the exhibition, we got these cute little coronita beers. it took hours to find the right placement for everything. i loved how my works looked together. i had also recovered the chair i've been sitting on throughout corona with some hand-woven fabric that we acquired together with one of the looms we got for the little museum where i weave. 

i bought the beautiful hot pink fleece at a wonderful leather shop in aarhus, thinking i'd make a festive color pop pillow of it. in the end, i couldn't bring myself to cut it up, so i just draped it over the recovered chair. it looked perfect with my mini quilts and the colorful knitted hugging pillows one of the other members made. now my chair is back at my desk and the hot pink fleece and the new recovered look give me a new perspective when working at home. 

dialogues 1-2-3 and my recovered chair, which i called "working from home.”

and the beautiful skirt that my friend lent to me - it's what she made with the dyed fabrics back in the 80s. and it was FABULOUS. what a privilege to wear it. i felt absolutely amazing. i positively embodied color pop. what a beautiful day that was. i'll always be grateful for the opportunity and the dialogue.

while i am waiting...

waiting is seriously underestimated as a device of torture. they should use it on those guys at guantanamo, i swear they would crack and tell them whatever they wanted to hear within a month. while i'm eternally waiting, i thought i'd dig out some bright colors from my fabric stash and make a quilt. i always instinctively turn to anna maria horner's bright, cheerful patterns. they just brighten up these grey, february days. and there's something to sitting down with fabric and the sewing machine and making something tangible that you can have in your hands, or your lap, as it were, when you're finished. i chose a simple triangle square pattern. i hadn't tried it before and it seemed like it would sew up quickly and not tax my brain too much. because that's the other thing that waiting does to you. it rather heavily taxes your brain and renders you not very clear in your thinking. and moody. moody as all hell.  just ask my family. at least they'll soon have the comfort of a quilt to console them. or to hide under when the waiting storm cloud that is me blows through. stringing people along like this is just not right. but at least something bright and cheerful might come out of it.

i certainly hope this wait is worth it.

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did you see that president obama made a buzzfeed video?
how awesome is that?

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nice piece in the new yorker on jony ive and what's ahead for apple.

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also in this week's new yorker, a new murakami short story.

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and one more from the new yorker.
an interview with flemming rose, the editor who originally printed the muhammed drawings
that may have sparked the chain of events culminating in copenhagen last saturday.

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dang, it is a good week for the new yorker.

creative process or wherein she justifies an afternoon nap

i'm working on a quilt using heather moore's wonderful cut out & keep, the design she did for cloud 9. there really is a difference in the organic cottons - they're softer and just nicer to work with. if you follow my boards on pinterest, you know i have pinned a whole lot of beautiful quilts of late. i was looking for just the right thing to do with these wonderful fabrics and so i got loads of inspiration. and then i did something completely different.

it's the first time i've come up with my own design and i'm pleased with how it's turning out. it's a little bit planned and a little bit intuitive.  despite the drawing i did with the plus quilt i made of the other cloud 9 line - nature walk - i didn't draw this one out. i also stuck to making blocks, as it was an easier way to ensure i used each of the 8 fabric designs in equal measure. after doing some experimentation in free form piecing with some echino fabrics the other day, i also have concluded that there is a reason why quilters for centuries have made blocks.

as i had all of the blocks finished yesterday afternoon, i kind of hit a bit of a creative wall. i felt they blended together a bit too much once they were all laid out. the fabrics didn't get a chance to shine like i wanted them to. you can judge for yourself in the top photo. what's odd is what this creative block does to me. it makes me suddenly feel overwhelmingly tired. and i find that i need to lie down and close my eyes for a little bit. the creative block triggers some kind of whole system shut down and i simply have to have a little nap. what i want to know is whether anyone else recognizes this phenomenon. if i have a 15-20 minute nap, i'm refreshed and ready to work again. i'm wondering a little bit if this is normal or something i shouldn't be admitting out loud.

i'm still not completely sure how it's going to end up, but there will undoubtedly be some cream sashing in some form or other. another thing that really helps me as i'm laying out a quilt is photographing it and walking away. looking at the photos on the computer really helps. i can definitely see things onscreen that i somehow can't see when i'm looking at the actual quilt. one of the things i notice in looking at these, as that i was subtly influenced by our moroccan rug in my design (you can see it best in the top photo).

i love these fabrics and this definitely won't be the only quilt i make with this beautiful line.

my thoughts on the royal wedding (because everyone has some)

i hate for my 1500th post to be about the royal wedding, but what else was there of late (tho' technically this is 1493, because i have 7 drafts lurking)? just that ridiculousness with donald trump and the whole birth certificate fiasco (seriously, why does obama bow to these people (ok, stuff of another post)?) who the fuck (yes, i wrote the f-word) CARES what a man with hair like a hat gone wrong at the royal wedding thinks about anything?

and as for other things that people may not care about, here are my thoughts on the royal wedding...

~ it was about the hats. and the hats were both spectacular and questionable. and some were arguably not hats. and why wasn't david cameron's wife wearing one? she kinda looked like she had come straight from work (tho' i have no idea where she works). i don't know which was princess beatrice and which is eugenie, but their hats were among the most memorable - along with that woman in electric blue (a lot of people were talking about her nose, but i didn't get the reference - was she some reality show person?).

~ the trees in westminster abbey were fabulous.

~ there was a decidedly relaxed atmosphere - prince william wandered in, talked to a few people and then ducked "backstage." he seemed quite at ease. and a little bit bald for his young age.

~ i was a little surprised that the dress wasn't a bit more "wow." it was beautiful, but it wasn't wow. in fact, it was so lacking in wow that i was a little surprised it didn't promote comments on kate's name (middleton is after all suggestive of...well...the middle or average). at least not in the coverage i watched (BBC Entertainment, who probably wouldn't dare).

~ the queen looked great in lemon-cream yellow. for a dinosaur.

~ the couple scarcely looked at each other during the ceremony. i found that a little weird.

~ those kisses may as well have been pecks on the cheek. is this british reserve or is it just me?

~ love the little girl covering her ears and frowning at their side during the kiss. tho' that photo will haunt her forever.

~ what was up with that tiny bouquet?

~ why did the BBC cameramen keep cutting to elton john and posh & becks during the ceremony? who cares what their reaction was?

~ there were a whole lot of allusions to having children during the ceremony. these commoner princesses are really just well-dressed broodmares (oops, that was out loud, wasn't it? - but seriously marie-chantal of greece has 5 and our own australian princess here in denmark just popped out 3 & 4 in one go). it was clear that the same is expected of kate (who we are apparently supposed to call catherine now, tho' she oddly didn't get a princess title - the danes are apparently less stingy with those).

~ i sewed up my plus quilt during the coverage, so i guess it's now the will plus kate quilt. :-) (sorry, i couldn't resist.)

hope you all enjoyed the wedding - to the degree you wanted to. i have to admit (despite all i've said), that i quite enjoyed it as well, tho' i do wish rowan atkinson (as that priest he played in four weddings & a funeral) would have performed the ceremony. that would have made my day.

finishing friday - take 3

as per usual on finishing friday, i had to start something totally new. in this case, i invented a chai cake (to be blogged soon on domestic sensualist). i got the idea watching that stupid ultimate cake off show and then went searching for a recipe, but didn't find one that i thought sounded that great, so i made one up myself.

chai cake batter - yummy

after i got that out of my system, i sat down to finish this french press cover. i am happy to say that i did, in fact, finish it! :-) finally- i finished something on finishing friday!

this cover should keep the coffee toasty warm if you don't drink it all in the first go. and it's tall enough to fit even when the plunger is still up. i'm pretty pleased, even if i do say so myself. especially with the quilting - i love how it turned out.

and these pretty little squares are set to be tea cozies. i'm still working hard towards that market april 9.

i've set up a little reward system for myself....i get to start on a new project every time i finish one of the old ones. there are some lovely fabrics just waiting for me to cut into them!!

happy weekend, one and all!

finishing friday - take 2

if you recall, i declared last friday to be finishing friday and i cannot believe it's already here again! this time, i mean business on the finishing (last time may have dissolved into a new soft flannel scarf for me). but this time, i've got to bind this quilt, because it needs to head off to its new home on monday! i've got it all cut out, it's just a matter of sewing it on.

this zig-zag quilt, i backed with the most wonderful mossy green wool. it's soft and rich and lovely. and even better than the minky fleece i used on the other quilt. i will definitely be using these gorgeous wool fabrics as backing for these couch cuddlers again.

i'm hoping to have this old chair recovered soon - it's the first piece of furniture that husband and i bought together and as you can see, it's a bit tired and various cats have used it as a scratching post. i do still love the color tho'. but i think i'll have it covered using the beautiful patchwork i got from heather moore - and which i couldn't bear to leave in the old house. it's not a task i dare to tackle myself, so i guess i've got to find an upholstery shop.

this vibrant pink tulle will be turned into part of a "girly spy" costume that sabin wants to wear for fastelavn celebrations at school on monday. if you're having trouble seeing that, you're not alone.

there are lots of unfinished projects going on here...sorting of beads, making of a bag for the aforementioned spy costume, a tea cozy, some garlands...so much to do on finishing friday, so i'd better get to it.

finishing friday

if you hang around here at all, you know that i've been on a creative roll of late. this week alone, i sewed two dresses for myself, made my first batch of stitched up photos, mended a couple of sabin's shirts, made bread twice, and worked on adding finery to some clarity birds. our dining table is so covered with projects that we can't actually use it.  so i have declared today (and every friday henceforth) to be finishing friday.

i'm doing a handmade market april 9 together with jude and elizabeth, so it's important that i have some finished products to sell at the market. somehow i just don't think people will be keen on buying half-finished works in progress. so today, i will not start any new project, not even this, which is very tempting. especially because it's still really cold outside.

i have no less than 3 quilts to finish and one of them (the sherbet cupcake quilt) you didn't even know about because i hadn't shown it here yet. so, i've been busy. busy starting things and not so busy finishing them.

i leave you with one more shot of the basket of unfinished garlands, tea cozies and clarity birds, just to remind myself that i need to get to work...

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i'm enjoying the photos here. 

and also the photos here and here.

meditation on meditation

i tried to meditate today. i keep reading about that recent study that showed that your brain shows visible benefits (in the areas of memory, self-awareness, learning) when you meditate regularly.  so i read carefully how to go about it in the book i just finished - instructions to the cook by bernard glassman and rick fields. i arranged myself just as they suggested, took a deep breath and tried to clear my mind.

and i'll admit i gave up within about two minutes. i just couldn't do it. i couldn't calm my thoughts. i found it utterly impossible to think of nothing. all i could think about was what i wanted to do today. i tried to count as they suggested, but that reminded me too much of the obsessive counting i find myself doing when i'm stressed.  you know what i mean, suddenly finding yourself saying 78, 79, 80 in your head and wondering how you got all the way there without noticing? (i am not mental. i know you know what i mean.)

and then i proceeded to spend my morning making bread and vegetarian chili (to which i added some gorgeous chorizo at the last minute, thereby un-vegetarian-ing it) and spending the afternoon quilting two of the quilt tops i made during january.

the hum of the sewing machine, the concentration on even straight lines mesmerized me. i found that i thought of nothing else but the task at hand as i smoothed the cloth and fed it carefully through my trusty sewing machine. a meditative act if there ever was one.  mindfulness. being utterly in the moment there as i sewed.

and this evening i read this article and i felt a little better. i can always try again tomorrow. whether it's sitting quietly for a few minutes or sewing some more or chopping a few vegetables.

i can feel my brain growing already.

quilting pictures in my head

for a number of weeks now, i've had a recurring picture in my head of a patchwork tea cosy.  it was, in my mind, a project that would use up all those little scraps that you end up with after larger quilt projects. but i hadn't really had any other quilt projects going on until recently. it was getting more urgent and the past few days, i actually woke up thinking about this tea cosy design, so on sunday, i sat down with the scrap basket and started to sew.

scraps of anna maria horner's innocent crush line

and it began to come together, remarkably like the picture i had in my head. even down to the colors.

after a week of building quilts following directions from the marvelous fresh quilting book, it was quite liberating to take the experience i'd gained and forge off on my own. to do a bit more experimenting and to feel a bit more playful. i used malka's advice in the actual free-form quilting i did with my machine, so i didn't abandon her lovely book altogether. a project this size was perfect to experiment and get comfortable with the free-form quilting, as it's quite manageable to maneuver under the quilting foot. i had intended to back this with an old felted sweater, but the size was a bit wrong for the felted sweaters i had on hand, so i've used a thick cotton batting and a simple purple cotton on the back, more like a normal quilt.

side 1

i'm quite surprised how this project went from a pile of scraps and an (albeit rather clear) picture in my head to a beautiful handmade tea cosy that i'm now using with a smile as i make my morning tea. and i'm even more surprised how much it did end up looking like i had pictured it. it was one of those moments of inspiration that kept coming back to me - a picture, fully formed in my mind, flashing into my head unbidden at odd moments. i will definitely be working on those more often.

side 2

the shape ended up a little wonky on the top, but i'm ok with that - it just lends to the handmade charm. even husband really likes it - and it brightens up the kitchen significantly.

what are you going to create today?

sew and sew

i'm on a roll. i started another quilt today - as we "speak" (11:05 p.m.), the blocks are all finished and just need to be laid out and sewn together tomorrow. i remember when i was a kid, my mom always said she had to be inspired to sew and i'm finding that i know exactly what she meant. i'm definitely inspired at the moment. and while i'm sewing, so many ideas come to me, i had to grab a notebook to scribble them down. i don't know if it's the new year or being free of the soul-crushing job or the winter light or what, but whatever it is, i'm running with it.

so funny, all that angst i had last year at this time over the whole slow cloth thing. it turns out that while i love other people's slow cloth work, i'm more of a fast cloth kind of girl myself. i get kind of a high from seeing quick results. and definitely a sense of accomplishment being able to make something beautiful come together very quickly. it appeals to my aries sensibility, i guess. and it feels GOOD to finish something and move directly on to the next something - i feel it feeding my inspiration. i'm still following a pattern from malka dubrawsky's wonderful new fresh quilting book on this second quilt, but i can also begin to see glimmers of my own ideas bubbling up...i'll soon be forging off on my own, without a pattern.

here's hoping you're feeling in flow, whatever you're doing this coming weekend.

finished in four days

my finished in 4 days (including binding) whirlygig quilt!

there's the much-discussed fleece back.

it's not heavily quilted because of the fleece back. fleece doesn't need it.

an inviting little corner - too bad it's really about 3°C out here.

husband wants me to sell the quilt, but i just want to curl up with it!
isn't that robot super adorable? i got him for sabin in berlin.

i even tried my hand at a little free-form embroidery with my sewing machine.

now i'm just wondering what to make next. i'm thinking another quilt, this time in some mod michael miller blues & greens that i've been hoarding.