A Fundamental Tool

I never in a million years thought I'd ever say these words: "I'm so glad I have a working iron and ironing board."

I have a tenuous relationship with irons. Without exception, after only a short time with me, I snag myself on the wires and they crash to the floor. A few falls like that, the steam stops coming out, or the temperature becomes uncontrollable, or it just won't work at all.

On average, I go through two to three irons a year. The rate of falling slowed briefly a couple of years ago when I bought an oversized and more sturdy ironing board. For a brief time thereafter my irons experienced fewer falls, since it was more difficult to topple the board.

But alas, not impossible.

I did enjoy a longer relationship with a Sunbeam cordless iron. By this time, I'd had Hubby remove the legs from the ironing board, so that it could only be used when placed on a table-top. Much less likely to fall. When I got the iron, I also insisted that a shelf be erected at the exact height of the ironing board/tabletop. This shelf was firmly attached in a shelving unit, and on that shelf I placed the charger for the iron. The power supply is screwed into the shelving unit, and the charger was plugged into the power supply. I even wrapped the power cord around the legs of the shelving unit so there was absolutely NO GIVE - not a single chance - that I'd somehow be able to drag the charger off the shelf. If and when I wanted to use the iron, I'd move the tabletop/ironing board over beside the charger and carefully rest the iron on it and turn it on.

For nearly a year I enjoyed a happy relationship with my Sunbeam cordless iron. Sure, it was heavy, since the charger heated up the soleplate, which held its heat by mass alone - no batteries inside the iron itself. It sprayed steam enthusiastically out the soleplate and kept me happily ironing away.

Well, almost. I do enjoy all the ironing I do, when I'm ironing clothing, which I do faithfully about twice a year, and I enjoy every minute of it.

Ironing for quilting though, can get a little tedious. The brain tends to balk at six meters of fabric to be ironed at one shot. And the day came when I didn't watch what I was doing just that little bit, and the iron did not land securely on the charger, but made a small dent in the hardwood floor. It was, alas, the beginning of the end for the little Sunbeam iron. It was never the same again. First, the steam didn't come out properly. Then it didn't get hot enough. Hubby took it apart and twiddled some bits, and then it scorched everything, including the ironing board cover, and gave one of my fingers a nasty burn, leading directly to me dropping it again, and the little Sunbeam was no more.

By this point, I was furious with myself for all the money I'd spent on irons. Hubby went out grocery shopping and came home with a little gift for me - an $8 iron.

Yes, you saw that right. Eight dollars, Canadian currency, for an electric steam iron.

It was the lightest iron I'd ever held. It heated up quicker than any iron I'd ever plugged in. It positively threw steam along its path, the most powerful jet of steam I'd even encountered.

Eight bucks. Hubby said we should just go back and buy a dozen!

Well, we didn't, of course. And, of course, something happened to my new, wonderful friend. But this time, it came in the form of a chemical attack.

I had occasion to be using a temporary spray adhesive to hold some pieces of a quilt together, some appliqué it was, I believe. And unnoticed by me, a teensy bit of overspray landed on my ironing board. The next time I attempted to iron a piece, it seemed to shrink as I was holding it, and when I lifted the iron, it was covered - COVERED - in some kind of sticky, fibrous mess.

Well, off I went to Fabricville the same day for a can of Hot Iron Cleaner. They didn't have any. This necessitated me ordering the stuff from my supplier. I had to wait.

In the meantime, I washed the ironing board cover and replaced it on the board.

Hubby in the meantime, tried alcohol, turpentine, acetone, non-acetone nail polish remover, and I think a small amount of muriatic acid, to no avail. Oh, and soap and water didn't work, either - at least, not after all that! He gave it a go with a razor. He tried it cold, heated at lot, heated a bit, and did succeed in getting the fibers to condense to a rather hard mass. But they remained firmly welded to the soleplate of the iron.

The grand day came at last when my can of goo remover arrived, and slowly but surely the hardened mass yielded up the ghost. Once more, my eight dollar iron was functional. Good thing too, because I had pieces to iron!

In the frantic rush to make Christmas gifts I was grabbing bits of fabric hither and thither, the iron steaming happily away. I reached at last for a bright bit of yellow, put the iron down on it securely, and watched in horror as it shrank before my startled eyes. "Noooooooooooooo......" I cried. Not again! I would have been thrilled to use the goo remover and proceed calmly, but in my pre-holiday rush, I'd managed to misplace it. I still can't find it. That's also why I can't give you the name, by the way...

This was the final straw. The iron was put away, the ironing board stripped of both cloth cover and pad. The yellow fabric was scrunched into a ball and pinned securely to a board so I would never again be tempted to iron it, just in case it was in fact the culprit all along.

Next payday, Hubby was forthwith dispatched to find me another eight dollar iron. And he did - almost. The price was now $9.99, but I was overjoyed. Taking no chances with overspray, underspray, or polyester masquerading as cotton. I used four thicknesses of cotton batting and poplin cotton for the cover. I traced the outline of the board, sewed the layers of batting together, made a tube around the poplin, threaded twill tape through it.... Five hours it took, but at the end of it, I had a VIRGIN ironing board and a BRAND-NEW iron.

Which tonight I very carefully used to flatten the fat quarters for a baby quilt due the end of February, holding my breath till I was finished, and sighing with relief. And said the words I never thought I'd hear from my lips, "Thank goodness I have a working iron and ironing board!"

Now if I can just keep the cat off it...

The Physics of Quilting

I used to be a math whiz in school. Not top of the class, just second. Ninety-eights, regularly. Used to yak with the teacher after class, discussing the 3-D images of these tangents and sin waves, etc. Used to have a blast with math. Used to love twisting all those strangely-shaped objects with even stranger names around in my head. If it could be calculated, I could do it, and have a ball at the same time.

Boy, has that ship sailed...

I love quilting. Both my hand and machine stitching are getting real good, something I'm quite proud of. But no matter how a project begins or progresses, there is an end.

The binding.

When I used to do flat, straight-on bindings with lapped corners, it wasn't a problem. But everybody knows you're not a REAL quilter till you do mitered corners on bias binding.

So, a few quilts ago, I cheerfully washed my binding fabric, dried and ironed it, looked at the instructions on my "Fons 'n Porter's Binding Basics" card, and cut my square of fabric. Then I cut it along the bias, flipped one piece a quarter-turn and over and sewed the seam that makes the two triangles hang like those little flags they string along car lots. I speedily drew my very straight lines along the long edge of the parallelogram that forms after you open up the shape. Then I read what you do to match these lines into a tube...

And came "bump" up against my new deficiencies in geometry and physics.

Which sides do I sew together?

I read and re-read the instructions. I tried several combinations of edges, each one more unlikely than the next. I sewed two of the edges together, looked at it. It didn't look anything like the picture. I ripped out the seam, ironed again, re-positioned and sewed, found that I had sewed the same two sides as last time...

In desperation I went to Hubby. Mr. Math. Mr. Computer. Mr Know-It-All. Mr. How Things Work.

Swallowing my pride, I asked him to read the instructions, look at the fabric, and see if it made any sense to him.

It made perfect sense to him. He was a bit uppity about his superior intellect in this matter, but he did get the thing sewn into a tube for me, and the lines were going round that tube in a lovely, even spiral. We cut something like 500 inches out of what looked to me like a fat quarter... I guess the square we started with was a little bigger than that, but the sheer length of the bias strip was daunting.

I suspected at the time that cutting a continuous bias strip in this manner actually CREATES matter. That you end up with more fabric than you started with. It feels like witchcraft. Magic. (And black magic, at that.)

Tonight I tried again, for a new project. Ironed, trimmed very carefully. Measured and measured. This time, though, Hubby was present in the room with me from the beginning. I wasn't taking any chances that boggarts or fairies were going to bugger me up this time! Oh no, with Mr. How Things Work in the room with me, I was sure no magical forces could come anywhere near me. It would be straight geometry, pardon the pun. It would be grindingly logical.

With only five or six arguments over how to cut off the selvages, how to get the fabric straight, how to mark straight lines, etc., we proceeded to the step where you have to offset the drawn lines by one, get the lines to line up with each other, and sew two edges together. Half way through pinning, we were deeply embroiled in another argument ("This looks NOTHING like the picture!", and "You must have drawn the lines along the wrong axis", followed by "You were HERE, in the room with me when I drew the lines! YOU must have put the wrong sides together!") etc. It appeared, after all, that the fairies had crept in unnoticed.

So I removed the pins, opened it out, and we compared what I'd done with the drawing and yes, I had drawn the lines along the correct axis. I watched as Hubby carefully pointed at the edges which needed to be put together. The same ones I'd been doing all along.

I pin-matched the lines one-quarter of an inch away from the edges of the fabric and proceeded to complete this part of the process. "And you're SURE," I demanded of him, "that I'm to sew THIS seam?"

Absolutely. I did it, carefully, with the quarter-inch foot on, just to make sure I didn't waver.

It did indeed form a tube, with lines spiraling from bottom to top, or top to bottom, depending on what you viewed as the starting point. And I carefully began to trim along these lines. Hubby stayed till I crossed the all-important seam, breathed a "Whew!" as it became apparent the process was working, that I was indeed cutting a spiral along a tube and we had in fact sewn the correct edges together. Hubby left, satisfied. But not before I noticed he'd been holding his breath along with me...

I continued to cut, and cut, and cut... I've got a couple of miles of bias strip now, whereas I started out with only a 42-inch square of fabric, and am once again convinced that magic has happened and fabric has been created out of thin air.

I, who used to float mental images of tetrahedrons in my mind for fun and entertainment, I cannot "see" how this works. I've been party to it several times, and it floors me every time. If Hubby had not been in the room with me, I would not have succeeded. I'd have ended up cutting straight strips along the length of the fabric and putting on a straight binding edge that overlapped at the corners.

I am mystified by this "tube". I cannot wrap my mind or my imagination around this system of getting an endless strip of fabric out of a square. I tell you this - it was an engineer who figured out how to do this. He, or She, might not hold the TITLE of engineer at any prestigious firm or university, but it is nevertheless a feat of engineering as surely as any bridge or tower.

Either that, or incredibly good magic.

Straight Stitching

A couple of years ago, while at my guild meeting, I chanced to hear a tale of a quilter who is well-known in our area and her new machine. The machine was one of those high-end models, lots of bells & whistles, as they say, a top-of-the-line machine. The story involved our Famous Quilter sending it back to the store several times, and finally cancelling the order altogether...

Because the machine didn't sew straight.

The machine....

I laughed, at the time. I thought, boy has she ever got an ego! Everybody knows you have to make adjustments while the machine is sewing!

But this past week, I began to wonder - is that true?

See, I'm a bit of a screwball...so I naturally assume when a line has become a tangent, that it's my fault. That it's me that's "off", not the machine!

My recent foray into making thread scarves has caused me to be sewing a LOT of "straight" lines. The scarves are made entirely of thread, so there's a lot of straight lines to be sewn onto water-soluble stabilizer. That stitching forms a grid, and then you embellish the grid and end up with an astonishing work of wearable art.

But my point is, my lines aren't REALLY straight.

At first I was rushing - going at the machine's top speed. Going that fast, I had to quickly adjust the fabric as it was being pulled under the needle, left-right-more right- left left left... And after a while I could see clearly that the machine had a preference. I have to hold my fabric at a ten degree angle to the right in order to sew a straight line.

Maybe I'm pulling too hard, I thought. I dropped the speed right down, and quickly learned that no, speed wasn't doing it - the machine sews straight at a ten degree angle.

I began to re-think my opinion of Famous Quilter.

I had always assumed that if I put my 1/4-inch foot on and crawled carefully along at a snail's pace, that my seams would all end up straight and 1/4-inch wide. I'd often wondered, when looking at my seams later, how in the world they could be so inaccurate, swerving off to one side all the time.

Now, I believe firmly the adage that "It's a poor workman who blames the tools!" And I also remembered reading something out of my grandmother's antique Singer sewing book about "practicing" getting the seams straight. So I'd taken it for granted that some skill was in fact involved in getting a straight line produced. I've been making adjustments all my sewing life.

I wonder if this is why many people give up on trying to sew!

Web-Sighting

I have a quilting business. But one would hardly know.

I used to have a website, and an email connected to it. I'm currently having a disagreement with my web service provider, so they disabled the site. Fair enough. Once we get settled, I'll go to a new service provider and I'll be, as they say, "back in business."

Well... maybe.

The problem with web sites is, one has to develop it and maintain it. This means content.

Sigh. Content.

That means, for example, I have to list, and possibly show pictures of, what I sell. Everything I sell.

Well, I sell anything that Quilt Source Canada sells, since they sell wholesale to me and I sell retail!

But they don't do something called "drop-shipping", which means you have to come to me to buy what I sell.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of having my own web site! I mean, whoever you are, reading this, you might live in Botswana for all I know! You're not going to fly here to pick up ten needles! And I'm not flying over to you anytime soon!

Sure, I can place your order. Then they ship it to me, and then I'd ship it to you. And of course, if I'm going to make any money at all doing this, I have to charge you shipping, on top of the suggested retail price. And tax.

Making your order twice as expensive. It's easier and cheaper for you to go to a quilt store. Which defeats the whole purpose of me having a web site! So there I've gone and done all that work for nothing!

You see the problem.

Now, companies that sell directly to customers, like Amazon, have some kind of deal with their suppliers. Their suppliers ship the stuff to you, but send their bill to Amazon. Amazon bills you, over the internet. Amazon charges you the shipping costs and the taxes and exchange, if stuff is coming from the States. You get to pay all this first. Amazon gets to sit on your money. They pay their supplier for the article and for the shipping. They don't pay the same price you pay. That's how they make money.

But QuiltSource doesn't drop-ship. So there we are.

I live in the Montreal area. I'll sell you anything you want, and I can even deliver it to you if you're not too far from me. But I don't have thousands of dollars, nay, tens-of-thousands - to buy a huge stock of stuff and pay shipping and tax and have sitting around waiting for people to buy from me!

It's really hard to bring the quilting hobby into the 21st century! I don't know enough about business to know how to fix this problem... but I suspect there is a solution!

Any suggestions?

A Challenge!

What a great term, eh? "Challenge." If we were in high school, it'd be called homework, or assignment, or something equally uninteresting.

I was yakking on the phone today with a quilting pal, and just before we had to hang up, she mentioned her guild had issued a challenge.

It was to be any size, in black and white, and had to incorporate the sample piece of material handed out at the meeting, which was white fabric with black on it.

The challenge could have one other color.

Immediately she said those words, my neurons went into overdrive. Hyperspace. Warp Nine.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" I said. "Make your top all in black and white, and quilt heavily in the third color, like, yellow!" I said excitedly.

"Oh," she said. "That's a good idea."

"Wait!" I cried. "Does it have to be only black and only white, or are shades of grey allowed?"

"I don't know," she began, "I could ask..."

But I was already in mid sentence.

"... because I have this variegated thread, black to white, and it has shades of grey in it. You could use your third color and quilt in this thread!"

"Huh," she said. "I didn't know they had..."

"Rail Fence," I said. "I've always wanted to do Rail Fence in three different tones of black."

"I though I might do stars" she slipped in edgewise. "With maybe a black star in the center."

"Oh, cool!" I replied. "I wonder, could you do it like stained glass?"

"Wow," she said, considering the idea. "Stained glass stars. Hmm..."

"Or how about Attic Windows, only this time, the windows are black, with white quilting, almost like redwork, in them, and the windowframes are in the white fabric!"

"Uh..."

"Of course, black and white is always suitable for crazy quilting. You can use the third color as well, and quilt in black on the white fabric, and in white on the colored fabric, and in the third color on the black fabric..."

"Uh..."

"Now, I've seen people doing a mosaic of real photos, been trying one out myself. That would work beautifully in black and white..."

"Uh ..."

"Candles would be a great theme! Black background, white candles, brilliant yellow flame - the flames could be done as thread paintings..."

"Uh..."

"Oh! What about taking something we always see in color, like a flower, and doing that in black and white? You know, there are a lot of ads on tv and in print where they use a black and white picture and just put one item in in color? Well, this would be unusual because the color simply isn't there. You'd need several shades of black and several shades of white...."

"Uh..."

"Ooh! A Landscape! Or Seascape - yeah, a seascape! Picture this: the land is black, with black quilting on it. The water is white, with white quilting! And the edge of the sun coming up, or the whole round disk, is brilliant yellow, with brilliant yellow quilting!"

"Uh..."

"Can you put sequins on it? Black sequins? White sequins? Oh! Did you know they have a black metallic thread?"

On and on, for as long as she'd let me.

No sir, no shortage of ideas here. Just not enough lifetime to get them all done!