"Coming Home" quilt show

I recently hung a small exhibit of my quilts at the Box Factory for the Arts and it will be up until Jan. 6.

I've been wanting to see a collection of my work  hanging together for a while, ever since someone told me a quilt I was working on "looked like me."

Do I have a style? Hanging all these together makes me realize that I do.
In my artist statement, I tried to sum it up.

I like using pure colors - not ones "browned" or "greyed" down.  I like using folk art shapes - as opposed to precise, almost photographic, images. I like combining traditional blocks with applique. I like improvising and compromising to make things work. I also seldom make a bed-sized quilt (unless I'm giving it as a gift).

I never - and I mean NEVER - choose colors for a quilt because it matches my decor, although I may chose them for some other random reason. The colors for the large quilt on the left and the two smaller companion quilts next to it were chosen because they were my high school colors, maize and blue. The quilt next to it is a combination of purples, pinks and poison green - just because I liked those colors together.

Home for Thanksgiving

Sloan and me sitting in front of a couple of large bison at a museum in Jackson, Wyoming


Our daughter, Sloan, is coming home next week for Thanksgiving. My sons, who live nearby, and their wives are coming too ... and my grandson.

We don't all get together that often, and usually when we do, I'm the one who has to instigate it.
It takes much shuffling of schedules, both work and recreational, to manage it ... and that kind of makes me sad. I always hoped that we would have the kind of family I had when I was growing up. One that just naturally comes together and hangs out pretty regularly ... but that's not to be.

Sloan is spending the year student teaching about two hours away. She is winding up her last few months of college and each time she comes home I feel like I'm living on borrowed time. She has made no secret to the fact that she wants to move to a larger city than the small town we live in ... and she's made no secret that she hopes that city is some distance from here.

Of course, I have no wish to clip her wings, her life is her own to manage. But how can I get past the fact that she's on her way out?  It wasn't something I did. I intended to have a career where I would move from place to place ... but I ended up back in my home town and here I've stayed.  Our family just doesn't move away ... not my brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews, sons ... nobody (well I do have an odd cousin who moved to California, but I don't usually count her).

I'm just wondering ... of all the people who feel they have to leave, why does it have to be my only daugher?

Autumn in the Smokies

A couple of weeks ago Tom and I went on the only vacation we're taking this year and went to the Smoky Mountains.  We rented this little cabin, which was tucked up in the hills.

We invited our son, daughter-in-law and grandson along with us and had a great time hanging out in the cabin. Nolan, our grandson, called it the "tiny house" and every time we left to go do something, he wanted to go back to the "tiny house" and the set of 20 new Matchbox cars we bought him to play with.

The colors of the trees were very nice, although living in Michigan we are used to seeing spectacular colors every fall.  We also saw several black bears, which was exciting, and some deer, which wasn't so exciting - we have bigger ones wandering through our yard at home nearly every day.

All in all it was a nice vacation, but not necessarily one that will go down in the memory books. I miss not going out west. The Smoky Mountains just seemed like big hills covered with trees. There wasn't much exciting to see and everything there was to see, Tom has seen it several times already since he has gone there for photography workshops a couple times.

It's a lot more fun when we go to new places and discover things together. Then I don't feel like the tourist who knows nothing and he the tour guide who has done it all already.

October Update

So much has been going on since I wrote last.

I went to my usual quilting workshop in Northern Michigan the first week of October. It was good to get away and I finished one quilt top and got a good start on another.

Then my quilt guild had our quilt show, which takes place every even year. I entered five new pieces but, as usual, did not win any ribbons.  The ribbons are awarded by popular vote and I'm not sure the vast majority of people understand or appreciate my quilts. It's easy to buy a pattern and replicate someone else's quilt - it's harder to design and make your own.

Just got back yesterday from a week in the Smoky Mountains - and I'm still trying to recover from that.
It was fun - but now need to get back to my scedule.

That's all for now. More and pictures to come later.

Seasons of Change

 I pulled the quilt onto my lap, lined the small needle along a carefully penciled mark and, using a rocking motion with my fingers, loaded it up with the first five or six quilting stitches. I pulled the thread through the three layers of fibers and positioned the needle in place again. This was something I would do over and over again, for hours, before the quilt was finished.

But I had time.

I sat in my living room in an easy chair with my left leg propped up on a pillow while I quilted. I was sitting my way through my second knee replacement surgery of the year. The first was in January and the second was in June, which gave me different and greener views out my front window, although the neighborhood is quiet and offers few distractions during the day no matter what the season.

The quilt  is done in shades of yellow and blue, the colors of my high school alma mater, and a very traditional color combination for quilts. I made the top part of the quilt two years ago during a workshop I traditionally go to in Elk Rapids, Michigan  in the fall.  It is a quilt made to memorialize the year 2010.

That year was a touchstone for me; one that I’ll look back on the rest of my life and remember it as one of extreme highs and extreme lows.  My first grandchild was born in January, my mother died in May and my son was married in October.  Through it all I was trying to cope with these emotional extremes while suffering with the pain of bad knees that kept getting worse by the day. My sewing, which always meant so much to me and had a calming effect on my often hectic life, was put on the back burner while I “white-knuckled” my way through the days.

By the time autumn came along and I packed my car to head up North for a week of nothing but sewing, I was ready for a change.  As each mile rolled by the stress of duties and expectations fell away. When I got to the lodge where we meet for the workshop and set about the business of unpacking and getting ready to sew, I felt like I was connecting back with a good friend who had only been waiting in the shadows for me to call it forward again.

I lost myself in the sewing over the next several days and thought about my mother. Grief still had such a strong hold on me and never more so than when I sat at the little black Featherweight sewing machine that belonged to her. She was the one who taught me to sew so many years ago when she was a young mother of four boys and one daughter who wanted to be just like her. The Featherweight was a gift to her from my father back in the 1950’s and she gifted it to me when I went away to college 20 years later. Since that time she and I shared it, although we both owned multiple modern machines. It was simply the best machine to take to a quilting class.

The quilt I designed that week included a group of baskets alternating with a set of traditional blocks called “churn dash.”  On the top, as a header, I appliqued a basket full of fanciful flowers and weeds.  On the top left I loosely pieced five stars to represent the five original people in our little family, Tom, me, Caleb, Max and Sloan. Below my sons’ stars are stars for their wives, Candice and Sarah, and below Max and Sarah’s stars is a tiny one for the baby, Nolan.

Along the sides of the quilt I embroidered a few verses from an old folk song which is based on Bible verses:

To everything there is a season

And a time to every purpose under heaven

This song, with its gentle reminder of the ways of the world, brought me much comfort during these seasons of change.

 

Back to School

I've got new notebooks, new folders, new pens and pencils and now it's time to settle down with my thoughts and get back to the work of writing.

Here's the things I'm working on:

Novel: I've got a couple in the works and I may put aside the one I've been working on for the last couple years and take up another that has been haunting my thoughts.

Essays: I'm very close to finishing the book of essays and poetry I'm writing about the Western National Parks. Don't quite know what I'm going to do with it when it's done - probably self-publish, but I need to have a plan for that.

Autumn Stories: I have a notebook I haul out every fall full of work that is about autumn and Halloween.  I have a short story I have added to for the last two years and this fall I'm going to finish it up.

Writers' Studio: I organize the writing programs at the Box Factory for the Arts and in the fall we get started again. I need to work on that programming too.

So, lots to do. I've been thinking I need to find a way to make all this work pay a little something so I don't have to go looking for a job that doesn't involve creative writing. After a lifetime of trying to make ends meet - I would like to give this a go.

I'll try my best anyway!

Summer's End - Time for Work

I've been pretty lazy this summer.  Haven't written anything much except daily journal entries. Haven't really traveled anywhere except a short weekend up North to visit our daughter at the camp she was working at for the summer. Haven't tackled any of those big and not-so-big projects that need my time and attention.

I wish I could say I was spending my time lounging at the beach reading thick, trashy novels - but I've spent most of my time at home, sitting in a chair and letting my knee heal, though I have spent my time working my way through a series of mystery novels set at the University of Notre Dame.  It's has taken longer than I hoped to get my strength and stamina back. I feel almost like I've lost the summer.

So, here it is Labor Day weekend and after the next few days it's time to get back to work. Time to buckle down and accomplish stuff. Our daughter has returned to college to finish her year of student teaching. Life should return to normal for us, and that means getting down to a regular schedule and writing again.

I have a good month to accomplish something before October hits and I have a couple of fun weeks planned - my regular trip to Northern Michigan to attend a quilt workshop, then a week with Tom in the Smoky Mountains for our fall vacation. Much to look forward to.

And now, much to get going on!