Consolation

So, it's kind of a funny name for a "tekkie" quilt - "Consolation." When I had it registered with the Quebec Quilt Registry Program, I had the opportunity to explain it to the ladies there, and by the nodding and the smiling I decided I should explain in depth why this new-age quilt was given such an old-fashioned name.

Like every story I tell, it's long and has a few turns. It begins with my friend Ray, who I met when I was 17 years old - forty years ago this year.

We met in film class at CEGEP. At that time, he looked like another friend of mine for whom I had been longing. When I saw Ray sitting in that class, I rushed up to him in astonishment ready to throw my arms around him. When I got close enough, I saw it was a stranger, but we sat together and pretty much became friends on the spot anyway.

Now we can skim over details and just look at the overall dimensions of this friendship. A few years after CEGEP was done, we were off and running in our marriages - for me it would be only the first, he had more staying power. 

We produced children. I went through a divorce. He started and ran a business, successfully, I might add. He sold the business and went back to university to get a Bachelor's degree. He had a partial separation during this time, but went home on weekends. Then he moved back home and got his Master's degree.

Our children brought us joy and pain, they had health issues. We went to movies, with or without our spouses and/or other pals. I had health issues, big ones.

Through forty years of friendship, not a week went by when we didn't talk, and during times of crisis it was often several times a week. It seems to me I had more crises, and he was more helpful to me than I was to him. All those years we kept up the same kind of relationship we'd had in film class - arguing over details, postulating "what-if"s, finding humor in the blackest of situations.

Ray is a catalyst - you want to get the party going, invite him! He can make the most mundane become hilarious.

To sum up, I have taken great Consolation from our friendship.

That's the first part of the story. Now to a small section of details.

We both worked at McGill in an audio-visual center, albeit at different times. (I was hired when he handed in his resignation and was starting his business.) So our paychecks said "Audio-visual Technician" on them. He was more technical than me, having an insatiable curiousity, but I was pretty much more technically-minded than most women my age, and working in Audio-visual was kind of a natural progression after film class. 

So when the internet got invented and I got my first Mac computer, it was only natural that I would eventually end up at Ray's house  and we'd be fooling around with what you could do on the internet. I'd always enjoyed writing, and he had always been after me to do some seriously, so he set me up with a blog.

Ta-da! You're reading it! I have since set up my own blog (debrant.blogspot.com), but of course it's a much simpler setup than this one. This one has ads and generates statistics that go over my head, but he still reads the stats, and the blogs. He "follows" both my blogs, so his computer goes "bing" whenever I post.

Now for part three.

A few years ago, Ray embarked on a different kind of journey. He became a spiritual advisor in Ignatian spirituality. (That's St. Ignatius of Loyola, for whom Loyola campus, high school, and formerly University are named.)

I'm not going to talk about religion here, because spirituality and religion are two very different things. But it's important to the story to mention one thing: In Ignatian spirituality, being in the presence of God is called "Consolation," and being apart from God is called "Desolation."

Now, right about the time Ray was taking all his courses to become an advisor, I was going through my second big depression, "Desolation," if you will. In the throes of my second depression, I gotta say, I was pretty desolate.

I reached a point one day where I said to Ray, "I have to believe in something bigger than me. I just can't do it all by myself. I need something to look up to."

And that's when Ray became my counsellor. He had to tread very carefully with me, because I'd had rather a traumatic religious upbringing and at first couldn't tolerate the word "god," and especially couldn't tolerate the concept most people have of "god." It took us some time to forge a working vocabulary that wouldn't drive me away, but Ray was as patient and understanding as he'd been for thirty-five years, and we managed to find a way for him to guide me to a better understanding of Consolation.

The final part of the tale involves me becoming a quilter, ten years ago. I was on some pretty serious psychiatric meds then, and my quilts reflected that. They didn't know how to classify my quilts when I first landed on the scene. I had working curtains in the stuffed windowframes of my "House that Jack Built" quilt, which had large thread paintings in every window depicting the story. My "Safe Passage" quilt had a thread painted Mariner's compass in the center, an abstract, randomly-pieced, machine raw-edge appliquéd ocean, and borders made from blocks called Ocean Waves, Wild Waves, Storm at Sea, Beacon Light, and North Star. It was chaos. I hadn't seen it for a few years and recently helped my husband hang it up in his bedroom (we no longer live together), and my first thought was "They must have thought I was on drugs!" Then I realized I had been!

I've honed my craft over the past decade, learned that I prefer hand-quilting over machine quilting, and became Program Coordinator for my guild. This year I gave them a Challenge: Quilting in the 21st century.

And my QR quilt was born. 

A QR code is like a bar code, but your cell phone reads it, and it's a web address (url). You turn on the app, hold your phone up to the QR code as if you were going to take a picture of it, and your phone then takes you to the website. No more having to remember or write down long urls. And your phone remembers them for you.

So I got a QR code generated for this blog site - wrote about it in the post called "Welcome to the Blogathon," and then decided that "Quilting in the 21st Century" would be a good challenge theme for the guild.

And I am giving it to Ray (who didn't know that until this moment), in appreciation and thankfulness for the consolation he has brought me in forty years of unbroken friendship. In this small way, I hope my quilt can bring him some consolation too. At least it can keep his legs warm while he labours at his computer, or wrap him and his girlfriend up while watching tv, or his cats can get fur on it. I like to think that he'll wrap himself up in it and "set a-while." And I look forward to our next chat, and the one after that, for however many more years we both have on this earth.

Coordinating a Program

I (foolishly!) volunteered to be program coordinator for my quilt guild this year. Unbeknownst to me, I was volunteering for a 2-year stint! Woe is not only me, but my poor guild!

Here is a photo of the first project nearing its completion, called the Cottage Square quilt.

The whole point of this project was this particular event, the Quilting Bee. Nobody at the guild had ever been to one, so I thought it would be a great idea!

I'm like that - I try to pick out things that I notice people haven't done and try them. There is actually method to this kind of madness - it's called challenging people. Encouraging (dragging?) people out of their comfort zones. Getting people to try new stuff.

In this case, the quilting bee is a very old "stuff," just new to us! And it was a learning experience (not another one!).

For instance, if we were going to do this again, I'd have people working on two rows instead of working on just one. Even though we sat across from each other, our arms and elbows still got in the way.

I did learn that you don't need a fancy quilting frame, just a couple of 2x4s: however, you DO need to clamp the 2x4s down onto a surface so they don't slide around. In our case, we clamped them down to a table on either side of our makeshift "frame."

We got seven squares done in half a day. When we reached the natural stopping point, we quit for the day, and the quilt is now being handed around to members of the guild for individual quilting.

I would do it again, but I'm not so sure of my guild! It was actually quite comfortable quilting that way - we could get our left hands underneath the quilt easily, and though we often had to stand up and twist to get around a curve, it was never for long. And I found I could go back and forth switching sides whenever I had to go around a corner. I thought I might actually set something like this up at home for the next large quilt I'll be doing by hand.

Onwards we go, to the Curved Seam Project!

Here we are, basting it for machine quilting on home machines. Yes, the idea was to pass it around so individuals could practise machine quilting on it. At the end of the year we'll draw for it.

We just had the demo on how to do the machine quilting last night. Everyone was enthralled, right up to the point where I asked who was going to be first to take it home. Then I was met with a room full of blank stares. What? We have to quilt it? Ourselves? On our own machines?

I was reminded of one of Murphy's Laws: If you explain something so clearly that no one could possibly misunderstand, someone will. 

In this case, everyone. Not a single person in the room understood that this was something they were supposed to practise on, in our homes, on our machines.

Sigh.

I have another project on the go too, the Appliqué project. I've been giving demo after demo. Most were well-attended. But I have yet to see any evidence that anyone is trying to actually do the project, which involves a simple pattern done in eight different techniques of appliqué. I keep showing them my sample. I keep handing out patterns. But I'd lay bets at this point that no one is actually doing it.

So here we are. I only created this program because people had responded to a survey saying what they wanted to learn. God knows it's been hard on me - I'm not an organized person, and I've had to have everything practised and perfected ahead of time all year.

I'm wondering just how serious people were, when they were answering last year's survey, about actually learning stuff!

Well, at the least, I've learned a bundle. Nothing like having to teach stuff to make you learn it!

Next year's program won't be half so ambitious. I'll look over the survey and pick ONE thing. One. Single. Thing. Then they can hire a teacher for it. And then I can go to meetings and watch. 

For anyone out there thinking of being a program coordinator, I have some advice. Take your surveys, but be careful about taking them too seriously. Yes, people tick off "I want to learn this..." but they don't necessarily want to learn it that year. It's like we all say we'd like to lose weight - right up to the point where someone takes away the cookie jar and says "Let's go for a walk!" You often find yourself walking alone.

A Quilt for Attawapiskat

Well, the First Nations community of Attawapiskat has suffered yet another blow. On the CBC, they reminded us of how, two years ago, the sewage system suffered a fatal breakdown, and the response was to install temporary housing for the families there.

Two years in temporary housing. Well, to some people that doesn't seem like such a bad thing. But have you looked at a map? We're talking just about Arctic here.

Families. That means old women and children. Babies.

One working toilet for 80 people. One working kitchen for 80 people.

I would hate to share my bathroom with 80 people. And I can barely tolerate my Boyfriend helping me in the kitchen, much less having 80 people trying to get meals going.

I'd be discouraged. Wouldn't you?

Then two months ago the power went off. Did Ontario Hydro rush to the scene? I mean, this is sub-Arctic climate here. Was it an emergency that all these people had no power?

Apparently not.

When we had the Ice Storm here, people started using fireplaces, Coleman stoves, candles, anything they could to stay warm.

And of course, that's what the people of Attawapiskat had to do.

Here, we had people burn their homes down in trying to keep warm. And two weeks ago, that's what happened in Attawapiskat.

Of course it happened. 

Now, I'm not a historian or a specialist in Aboriginal affairs. I can't begin to guess at how this situation got the way it has. I'm sure of one thing - there has been bad faith, mismanagement, lack of understanding and lack of trust, maybe on both "sides," more likely on "ours."

But I am a mother, a daughter, and a quilter. And I'm 56 years old. I've had experiences that have taught me that a little compassion goes a long way. That nobody gets up, yawns and stretches in the morning, looks in the mirror and says "Today, I think I'll become a statistic."

I've learned that life throws us curves. That some of us are luckier than others. We got born into a relatively affluent society, on the right side of the color-and-creed barriers.

And others weren't so lucky. The cynics would say "So what, that's life, it sucks to be you."

I'm pretty sure that if any of us had to live in these kind of conditions, we'd squawk. I'm also pretty sure that if the power went out here, they'd be working hard to get it back on.

Because. We. "Count."

Well, I could go on about this forever, but in the interests of getting to the point, I'm going to send a quilt to one of the persons who has been displaced by the fire.

It's nothing. It's a drop in a sea. It will actually be a large investment of my time and will take determination to see that it ends up keeping somebody warm, because I don't actually know anybody from Attawapiskat.

I'm well-placed in my job to have some contacts, and earlier this week I met with two Aboriginal women to discuss the way I could somehow get a quilt to one of these displaced persons. I'd like the label I will put on it to eventually read "You are not alone." Or "you are not forgotten." Or something like that. But that's even harder to figure out, because then not only does someone have to point the way to a displaced person, it means finding someone who speaks their language and can write the syllabics for me to embroider or appliqué onto the quilt.

One step at a time. If all I can do is send one person a quilt that will keep them warm, that's one thing I can do.

So, has anybody had experience with wool batting? I have a feeling it's warmer than cotton, but I wonder about shrinkage.

All kind comments are appreciated.

Welcome to the Blogathon - Quilting in the 21st century

How do you like it?

What is it? It's a QR code - hmm, though most people who are actively following a blogathon probably already know that. (It's like a bar code, but a cell phone can read it. You get the app for the phone, point it at the qr code, and the app then takes you straight to the web page. It also remembers it for you. No need to write down interminable URLs any more.)

I had hoped, when the idea first came to me, to actually get this made into a quilt before the blogathon, but life, as usual, got in the way.

You can make them in different colors, by the way, and they can still be read. (No pun intended!)

You can even, if you're very advanced technologically, put images into them. I will - one day - but for now it will be probably blue and white, and I'll make one for my guild, as a sample of 21st-century quilting.

A lot of us have been dragged into the online world (kicking and screaming!). My guild (Mosaique) recently held our bi-annual quilt show, and for the first time none of us were allowed to register by filling in a piece of paper - it had to be done online. The reason? It was me doing the registration, and I'm notoriously disorganized. Had it been done by papers, the papers would have been lost. Not an "if," but a "how many!"

Now, some of the ladies needed a bit of help. I took dictation from one lady to make sure she sent in her quilts to be exhibited. She's a repeat prize-winner, so it was necessary to help her along if we were to get her entries into the show. And yes, she won a prize, again!

And I made two mistakes anyway, in the transferring of data from one program to another, but it wasn't lost and I managed with help to get everything fixed in time for the show. (whew!)

But it made me think...

We quilters are practitioners of an ancient and honorable art. Our heads are full of thread count and color, patterns, techniques that have come down to us, mostly through family members, over generations. We are not necessarily the most technologically-oriented individuals.

And yet...and yet...Didn't long-ago quilters, women who were denied any education beyond how to cook and clean, work out complex patterns that go way beyond my (educated) understanding of geometry? Didn't they invent clever systems of dividing fabric and multiplying patterns without our modern systems of measurement?

The patterns I'm willing to try pale by comparison to those of these pioneers.

I'm an AV Technician. I grew up playing with machinery. But even I'm being left behind in the dust of the information revolution. I am struggling in my day job to keep up with the young whippersnappers and "propeller-heads" who I work with, me trying not to look too stupid in their young eyes!

In the guild, I'm pretty near the forefront of technology. At least I'm not actually afraid of it. But while technology is a tool, and a very powerful one, it is not the driving force behind quilting. Social media doesn't actually replace social get-togethers.

The simple act of putting a needle into fabric I find to be a calming, almost meditative, practise. A way to calm my mind, to re-connect with the past, to slow down for a little while and do something that can be done faster, better, and cheaper by machine. But I take pleasure in it.

And there's the key - we people who are drawn to the needle arts take pleasure in this physical activity which calms our minds.

Technology is a wonderful tool. Here we are in a blogathon, women from across one of the largest land masses in the world, who don't know each other, sharing pictures, ideas, tips, techniques... But above all, sharing a fascination with fabric and thread.

We can use technology the way we use thread - to hold us all together.

A Learning Experience

Brace yourselves - I've been humbled.

When I first took up quilting, I couldn't for the life of me understand why people didn't do more adventurous machine quilting. Why longarm quilters seemed obssessed with continuous line patterns. And why quilters everywhere seemed to love doing baby quilts and wall hangings.

Well, I can now say I finally understand.

There have been a number or births recently among my family and friends. I was bemoaning how many years I was behind in quilting, how I wanted to give baby quilts but I had such a backlog...

Well, this week I made three baby quilts. The first one went together easily - all 4-inch squares from a precut set. Add borders, quilt on the diagonal, and bind.

Then I discovered in my stash two Laurel Burch panels, each with 9 images of cats with kittens, including baby carriages.

Now, in quiltspeak, a panel is a "cheater." But I've just mostly finished the first panel, and boy, did I learn some lessons doing it!

Firstly, I thought I'd never get through it. Because of course, I wasn't quilting this one on the diagonal, I was outlining all the animals and flowers.

And, since I'm no longer a beginner, I left the beginning and ending threads nice and long so I could later bury them in the quilt.

Lesson one: machine quilters use continuous line patterns because then they don't end up with five million threads to knot and bury!

I sat down with my panel and began to clip threads at eight o'clock this evening. It is now midnight, and I've just finished.

Actual hand quilting is soothing. Tying off the ends of hundreds of threads is not. It is tedious, uncomfortable, and boring.

About half way through I wanted so badly to just clip all those thread ends, like I used to, before I knew what I was doing! Who am I kidding - this thing ain't gonna be around for a hundred years! Why didn't I just backtrack over the seam ends and cut the damned things?

Because (unfortunately) I now know better. So I threaded, tied, buried, and clipped. For four hours. And the sad part is, there is more quilting to do on it again tomorrow. But at least the worst is over for now.

I also gained a flash of insight into why people quilting on home machines don't do more adventurous quilting - lots of twisting and turning and creative stuff. Becuase the stupid basting threads keep getting snagged, that's why! Had I been quilting on the diagonal, this thing would have been finished in an hour! But it took four hours to quilt it, plus the four hours to clip the threads!

I even tried out the free motion foot - wisely testing it out on spare fabric. And I couldn't get the tension right for the bottom thread. And yes, I put the presser foot down to adjust the tension. I have no problem doing free motion sewing on my home machine - except the bobbin thread lies flat as a pancake on the reverse side. 

A few years ago, I would have just used the free motion foot, damn the tension!

But I know better now. Now I want the reverse side to look nice.

So I went back to the regular foot, with a renewed understanding of why most quilters who use home machines don't go in for fancy stuff. Lesson two.

And as to lesson three - why quilters prefer to make wall hangings and baby quilts? Because you can finish them on your home machine and they don't take half a year to make.

I don't know which of the seven babies born recently will be getting my three baby quilts. But I'm glad I made them. I'm glad I took a break from the other projects that have been weighing me down. Back to them next week.