A Gaggle of Ladies' Aid Quilters: A Wonky Quilt Time

 An original prose poem written by Michele Bilyeu of this blog With Heart and Hands using the names of traditional quilt patterns to describe what actually occurred during her quilting group's visit to the Zion Mennonite Quilting Workshop/Quilt Show in 2007.

All rights reserved and common copyright applies. Please link to it quoting only the first paragraph  with ...a hyperlink to the post itself at: A Gaggle of Ladies' Aid Quilters: A Wonky Quilt Time

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"A gaggle of Ladies Aid quilters put on their Party Hats grabbed a Mariner's Compass, loaded up in a 12 passenger van and headed off on a Snail's Trail, to Hubbard, Oregon to attend the 35th annual Zion Mennonite Quilt Show. There isn't anything that could be more fun then a group of Wonky women off on a Flying Geese Chase following their Yellow Brick Road and teetotaling down a Drunkard's Path to find their way through the Backwoods and Crossroads, past the Clover Leaf of the Washington Puzzle , avoiding the Way to California and finally going....as Providence would have it, up the Altar Steps to A Dandy quilt show.

We made a Churn Dash through their Endless Chain of Rail Fences up their Pleasant Path from the parking lot to the Mennonite Church. We braved the wind and the rain of the incoming Storm at Sea and fought our way to the front door. It was a regular Dollar Day at the Races...in a Whirlwind of Frenzy we made one Wild Goose Chase after another trying to find our ways down hallways and corridors to see everything. We Criss Crossed our way through the Walking Squares and Log Cabins and did a Fiddler's Jig as we discovered the antique hand pieced Stashbusters, everywhere.

We were Strolling the Block down one corridor, when we saw the ladies serving up a nice lunch of soup with Corn and Beans and biscuits with butter. Each of us donated a Five Spot, except one of us, who carried her little baggie of Chinese Coins :) We sat at a Table for Four with our heads Tete a Tete and with Eight Hands Round, we watched a Farmer's Daughter as she served up two choices of homemade soup. It was Marion's Choice to have the Tortellini and Mary's Own for the Turkey Noodle. The rest of us followed like a Fool's Square.

The joyous colors and intricate patterns of the Crazy Quilts which surrounded us, lifted our Depression, buried our Indian Hatchets of disagreements from the drive, and Best of All, our lunch on its Broken Dishes , (except for one Dresden Plate) made us Rally Round once more. Our Cups and Saucers of tea and coffee and old fashioned carrot cake from the Cake Stand, brought back a Memory of Days Gone By, and the Card Tricks we all played as we looked through our grandma's Attic Windows at Grandmother's Flower Garden, the Birds in the Air, the Fox and the Geese, the Hovering Hawks, and the Girl's Favorite...climbing down the Vines at the Window to Jacob's Ladder to the Lucky Clover, we used to find in the lawns.

Our conversations created an Album of Memories to tuck into our Flower Baskets as we watched one strange woman who touched a quilt right by the "Please, don't touch the quilts!" sign. We headed back out in the rain to the parking lot. After other drivers threw in a few Monkey Wrenches,with one Handy Andy in a Double Necktie after another dropping off his wife and creating a Crazy House of conflicting Pathways. It was a Leap Frog of cars parking and leaving at once with one Toad in a Puddle almost causing a parking lot casualty.

But it was all Fair Play as we played Darting Minnows and Focus Pocus and managed to escape the Fishbowl. We played Follow the Leader and felt like Best Friends as we continued our Pleasant Path and shopped at several fabric stores on the way home. We had A Dandy time as we watched the Evening Star, in the Night Sky behind the Delectable Mountains and headed on our Wild Goose Tracks....Back Home Again to Salem.

It was a Whirligig of a Windmill day, but we had lovely Souvenirs from shopping like Crazy Loons with Blurred Vision. As we formed one last Friendship Circle of goodbyes, we headed back to Hearth and Home and many Sweet Dreams.

There isn't anything that could be more fun then a group of Wonky women off on a Flying Geese chase.... especially when embarking on a Trip Around the World in one day at a Hubbard, Oregon Zion Mennonite Quilt Show!

©With Heart and Hands 2007
Michele M. Bilyeu , Salem OR

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Collaborative Quilting: Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston

I just finished reading, cover to cover in one sitting, Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran's Collaborative Quilting book. What a fun read! I wanted to put on a pair of sunglasses, dig into my ultra brights and go for a wild quilting ride! Have been waiting for this book for a month and it was worth the wait. No wonder their books are included with titles like 'liberated' this and that. You feel liberated just by the sheer energy and power of their colors and design! After a while, you believe Freddy when she tells you that red is a neutral color. Compared to her other choices,it truly is! And Gwen's sense of design is just inspiring. I was struck by the synchronicity of her references to Hubbard, Oregon. The talented Mennonite quilters there, were her very first quilting teachers and she studied and worked with them for year and years. My community quilting group is bussing up there tomorrow to see their annual quilt show! There is nothing like putting a gaggle of quilters in one van and going anywhere together...it's hard to beat that kind of fun!

Now, into the sewing room and back into the scrap pile. I have been defying all of the rules, today...even ripping fabric with carefree abandon. The thread strings stretch from basket to basket, around my legs, the trash bin and all of the cords. At one point I was so entangled, I almost tripped trying to get out of my chair. If this is the effect just reading about liberated quilting has on me, what would happen if I actually put some of their ideas into use? There are days, as it is, when even the three quilting cats can't find their way to me under all of the piles of sewing :)

Quilting is already turning into an dangerous sport for our little quilting group. One of my fellow quilters cut her hand on a rotary blade one Monday...needing six stitches... and Sunday, another one broke her leg (at home)getting up from quilting in a hurry....to answer the phone. Who would have guessed you need liberated health insurance to cover quilting? Back to being drowned in my fabric scraps, on fire with good ideas, and in a storm of creative activity. Warning: Read this colorful book at your own risk!!!

Scrap Happy: Quilting and Piecing for Fun

 I am scrap happy.

I have lots and lots of bits and smidgins of fabric scraps. I like to save all of my leftovers, others' leftovers, and I have been known to 'dumpster dive' for pieces of minky that someone else threw away. I love having them, I love collecting them, but most of all I love being able to use them!

When I want to sew for fun, one of my favorite things to do is strip piece fabric and just allow the pieces to turn into something useful and fun. I am directionally challenged, so following other peoples directions is harder than inventing my own. I love to sit down and just start sewing and seeing what happens. If nothing else, it turns into a potholder. When I need a gift for a special occasion, the first thing I do is head not to a store, but to my sewing room. I love to go through my baskets, bags and stacks to see what I have and what I might be able to create from my scrappy stash.

One of my projects was this 'make as you go' book bag for a one year old great niece's birthday. I had bits and pieces of colorful scraps leftover from quilting projects and I knew she loved bugs...so it was a natural fit. I just started piecing strips and bits until I was making pockets and suddenly was making a little bag. At age one, she was a bit young to carry a purse, and hadn't started sewing yet or discovering fabric stores, so I decided to make a book bag.

Knowing that little ones are curious and inquisitive, I wanted lots of little hiding places for treasures. There are two inset pockets barely visible in the seams behind the obvious exterior pocket and two more pockets inside. Lots of hiding places for small collectibles, plus room for several books inside.

Quilting right onto batting makes for a sturdy structure and even without having any kind of a plan or a pattern can still lead to all kinds of interesting creations. And best of all, I ended up with a gift from my heart, through my hands and one of a kind. She loved it, her parents loved it and interestingly enough...bugs ended up being the theme of her birthday party, her cake, her napkins and her plates!

Quilting: My Flimsy Whimsy

As many of you have commented, unfinished quilt tops are now being referred to as 'flimsies.' I think this is a rather whimsical word and I have been practicing the roll of it off of my tongue today.

However, by definition, something that is 'flimsy', while being thin and unfinished, is also insubstantial and lacking in worth. And, apparently in Bingo, a flimsy is a thin, plastic game card for marking 'hits'..and if you win on a 'flimsy'..you win more money than when you play with a regular bingo card.

Now, I did an internet search and several quilters given Norma credit for first using the word 'flimsy' instead of UFO or similar. So, does Norma also play Bingo? Does anyone know if the Quilt Police have ruled on this? Has Norma been arrested yet? Am I next? Should I hurry and hide my stash? Someone should let me know. I love words and how they grow and change with acceptance and use. But I want to stay home and quilt, not be carted off!

I can't help but notice, when I am piecing a quilt top, that is not unusual for mine to be more than flimsy. They are occasionally gaping, often sagging and sometimes even stretching. I pride myself on the old adage..'if a job is worth doing, do it right.' So, if I am meant to learn to do something, and repetition increases retention and therefore success...well, I pride myself on doing that job..over and over and over again.

So, I do not mind the word flimsy, at all...it suits me, actually. It is a whimsical word, it is filled with the possibilities and promise of further growth and structure and while, insubstantial, perhaps, it is also carries strength in it bravery and determination to still matter in this world. I for one, have noticed that flimsies tend to band together. They group in stacks, hold steadfast to corners of our sewing rooms, and with great determination call themselves to our attention, repeatedly in fact!

This week I am working on what I lovingly refer to as 'ugly quilt' flimsies. Not meaning to demean in any way, by the word 'ugly', the love that I have for these little wonders. I still admit that they are not usually every one's 'cup of tea' and in fact, are often the rejected stash that others donate to our community quilting group for the simple reason that someone else decided they didn't like the fabric, after all!

So, every once in a while, I deliberately pick out some unusual colors or unusual combination of colors and see if I can give them back some of the dignity, self-respect and worth that they deserve. I try to substantiate my flimsy or my 'whimsy' (my own word for those blocks already created, but not yet sewn together to the flimsy stage.) by making them my very first, and not my very last, choice.

Take this color combination...apple green and purples, or this one ...brown, purple, and gold in these geometric prints, or this one...in coral and aqua...they just screamed out to me..."please, pick me!" So, I did. Someone will love them when they are finished. They will love them because it will be just right for them. They might be someone who is never picked, someone who is of a different color, someone who never feels beautiful...some one who knows instantly, that this little flimsy whimsy, soon-to-be a quilt will be just right for them! Really and truly, no quilt is ever 'ugly', they are simply the 'new beautiful.'

Life in Progress

I am not a hand quilter. Never have been, never will. But I still try, and try and try. When I get tired of trying, I take a leave of absence. Instead of a QUIP, I have a LIP...my 'life in progress' takes over, instead. I put the quilting aside, and I work on other things or other projects or other new and different things that I want and need to learn. I am someone who quilts for fun and for giving communally to charity groups. I am happy being and doing that.

After all, I am one of those people, sewing since age 12, who then went on to making all of my own clothes, then to making almost all of my children's clothes, and of course, clothing for gifts etc. etc. etc.....who said (famous last words) "I will never, ever quilt."

Well, sooner or later, everyone who sews, and sews a lot, ends up making a table runner, or a hot pad or a quilted jacket...something...where she 'quilts.' For me, it all escalated with Hurricane Katrina and a call for community quilters to band together and create quilts for the survivors. From that point on, I have yet to not quilt or at least do something associated with quilting....each and every day.

Somedays, all I do is organize or sew labels on my quilting. Somedays, all I do is flatten out and repin my quilting, somedays all I do is search the internet for hours and hours reading quilting blogs and checking out quilting sites...driven like Shelina says she is...to learn and to grow and to just plain 'know'..all about quilting.

Today, I am staring at these hearts in a basket. A quilt top begun by someone else, taken apart and redone by me and waiting to be finished. I have tried to practice my hand quilting on it. My stitches compared to the original quilter's stitches are like a kindergartener's printing to a Palmer's School of Handwriting's graduate. But...I still try. I put in in a basket, so at least the hearts can show for February, or the red and green can show at Christmas, or the yellows and pinks can show in the Spring. So, today I offer you.... a photo of a QUIP from my LIPs ;)

Happy Valentine's Day

I have said that I live in many worlds at once, that I am a daydreamer, and that I often am not present in this world. I forgot to add that I can be in two places at once or two times...past and present at once.

How very ironic to have just pushed the 'publish'button on a post dated Sunday, February 11, and then push a button and publish one minutes later that is dated Wednesday, February 14.

As we all know, if you start a post one day and it refuses to publish, you 'save it as a draft' until the time comes when blogger is playing nicely again and you can finally get photos to upload and blogger to publish.

So, today...two posts. One titled "Thinking of days gone by' and now this one. Each claiming a different posting date, yet both published at the same time. And of course, I am thinking of days gone by....three to be exact....three days to get one post to publish and then suddenly...two at once!

So today, as I think of days gone by, I also think of this day. In honor of St. Valentine, supposedly a Roman priest who was willing to hold marriage ceremonies for young soldiers and their sweethearts...defying the imperial decree forbidding marriages during times of war. The Roman emperor wanted to keep his young soldiers from being distracted from battle, by their thoughts and longings for their new wives back home.

So in honor, of this day, I offer a photo of some of my antique Valentines. My dear mother-in-law passed most of these down to me, ones that she received as a young girl. Because of them, I have gone on to collecting antique ones from even older times. As I look at the postcards with their one and two cent stamps, and read the inscriptions on the back, I not only jump back through time and space, but I am able to see glimpses of other lives and other times. It is, indeed, like looking through a window into the past.

Thinking of Days Gone By

Finn has challenged us to write about things that we remember, that no longer are, from a different time and place...'things of days gone by.' I love challenges such as these, and of course, I love Finn, so 'I rise to to the challenge, takes off my 'kid gloves', kicks off my 'penny loafers' and throw my 'cape' to the ground (the kind with two slits for the arms to poke through, of course!)

Just thinking about days gone by, brings back sooo many memories. Growing up on the small island of Douglas, Alaska, we truly lived in a different time and different place. When we visited by Grandmother Catherine, in Louisiana, who spoke only Cajun French, I was in one very flat world with sugar cane to suck on and bayous to visit. But, when I was at 'home' with my Grandmother Elli, who was Finnish, I lived in a very 'hilly' one. One with different challenges as wide as the ocean which surrounded us, or the mountain which loomed over us. This grandmother spoke only Finnish. Two totally distinct and very different worlds, both with languages I did not speak, nor ones that I could even understand. Grandmother Catherine, was a little bird of a woman, subsisting on one piece of dry toast and one small bowl of oatmeal a day. Eating a fresh fig or sucking on a piece of sugar cane, her only indulgences. Grandmother Elli, sucked on sugar cubes and drank her hot coffee with milk by pouring it from a teacup into the saucer. With the sugar cube in her mouth, she then sipped her rich, dark brew. I remember cup after cup of this frangrant smell wafting through her house, all day long.

In Alaska, we had flour bin drawers that pulled out at a slant and a pulley clothesline that we stood on a stairstepped platform to pull the long cordings back and forth as we hung our laundry up with the old fashioned two pronged clothespins. In Louisiana, we had lots of stray cats, Spanish moss dripping from the trees, and lots of really old books to poke around in and daydream around.

In Louisiana, we had pure sugar cane syrup, fresh from the fields, but it is the syrup in Alaska, shipped up on the barges and eagerly awaited that I remember best of all. My beloved 'Log Cabin' syrup.....back in the day when it actually came in a log cabin tin. We used it on pancakes, dipped plain bread into it, and poured it on our oatmeal or toast. I used to be mesmerized by the little container and was always trying to figure out how to get it to open up so I could use it for a doll house. Instead, I had to use my imagination of what might truly be inside! I would eagerly await the emptying of one, rinsing it out and lining it up along with my other Log Cabin tins in a row. Then I would surround them and myself with all of my books to make doll houses and all of my wonderful dolls of course.

I remember five cent candy bars when chocolate really tasted like chocolate and the unbelievable anticipation of earning or perhaps even being given a nickel to buy that candy bar. I would through the streets of Douglas, clutching my little nickel, mouth watering in anticipation. A little town , with little streets that has barely changed from then to now.

How I wished I still had my childhood treasures, but our house burned down 35 years ago, and little was left of my childhood. Perhaps that is why I treasure memories, so. I collect my own tins of all kinds, now, and my own little treasures from the past. Like my memories, all things still live inside of me, but many stay for a moment and others stay and last for a lifetime.

Patriotic Quilting: Celebrating Life, Sharing Loss

This past week, I had the opportunity to attend the funeral of one of our quilting group member's husband. While it was a celebration of a life well spent and a man greatly loved by a family of deep faith, it was also a reminder of our mortality, and of the losses that each of us face. When I first read the notice in the newspaper and saw the line where it asked that donations be made to the local Veterans' Association, I knew immediately where our stock of patriotic quilts needed to go. Our little chairful of patriotic quilts found its way to a table of remembrance for this dear man, and for the challenges he faced and the battles that he, himself, had fought in this lifetime. It was a tribute to him, out of respect for his family and a way for us, as members of the community's larger family to honor his passing.

Sometimes, as community quilters, we get so busy quilting that we don't move our quilts out as fast as we could. Or we forget the deeper meaning and intent of their creation. So, while we have a brigadeer general's daughter that will bring our quilts up to Fort Madigan Hospital in Fort Lewis, Washington with one phone call, we don't often think to call her or other contact's until our stack of quilts is overtaking our stacks of quilts in progress.

So, here sat 14 lovely patriotic 'quilts of valor' in all of their varying shades of reds, whites, and blues, just waiting for their special occasion to come out into their moment of celebration and of sharing in memory of another loss. Each quilt tied by a heartstring to each quilter, each heartstring spreading out into the broader community and deeper sense of family

When we quilt our patriotic quilts we are usually creating them around the vision of one of American's fallen soldiers...a man or a woman who has fought in either Iraq or Afganistan and been wounded and awarded a purple heart for courage. So we forget, sometimes, our other veterans...good men and women who fought other wars in other times, each with the same dedication, the same courage, the same patriotic love of country or need to do good for that country. We forget that others served as well, and still need to be remembered for that service.

As one was added later, we ended up sending 15 quilts off 15 quilts to the Veterans' Outreach Center, here in Salem, Oregon. We salute and we honor the courage of all of our soldiers. And we think of you today, and all days...not just Veteran's Day, or Memorial Day, or President's Day or any other American holiday. We think of what courage, and valor, and dedication truly mean. And we share in celebrating your achievements and sorrowing with you over your losses.

Community Quilting: All Parts Contribute to the Whole

Every Monday morning, I pack up my sewing machine, my sewing box of supplies and whatever quilt(s)I am currently working on and head down to my community quilting group. The feeling of anticipation is quite lovely. I know that I will be in the company of a group of dear women. There is an absolutely wonderful spirit that embraces us as we set up and share and start in on our projects.

In our quilting group, we sew independently of one another, and seldom work on one thing at a time as a group, yet there is this true sense of group energy that becomes palpably present as we work in one room, separately, yet somehow, together. We have the most amazing fun, we laugh and laugh..sometimes until we are rolling on the floor.

The quilt that I am currently working on, is one of two in which we all contributed using some donated fabric. There was a piece of fabric that inspired no one, let alone any of us. There was a piece of a fabric that was just not the right color to go with anything else any of us even had in our stash. And there were some plain white scraps of rather strange content that was so small and scrappy in bits, that normally we might have just discarded the bits totally. So, three little orphans of leftovers suddenly became a proposition: Each of us was to take some of the three colors of the hodge podge scraps home and come back with at least two 12" blocks to contribute to a group quilt.

As I made my blocks, trying to fit pieces in and around arms eye cutouts in the fabric, I remember thinking...'boy, am I glad that I'm not the person who has to take the final blocks home and fit them together. Without a plan or a pattern to match one another, it was going to be hard to fit in each of our discrepancies into one whole. But somehow, the blocks began to show up and bit by bit we had enough for not one, but two quilts.

Well, as fate would have it...I ended up with half of the blocks and I was the one elected to make some of the 11", 11 1/2" and 11 3/4" blocks suddenly turn into perfectly appearing little 12" blocks! We all tried, we were using fabric none of us really even liked, it was tricky cutting pieces out of the odd shaped bits and pieces....so we just did as our personalities were want to do. Some of us try harder than others to be perfect. Some of us didn't try at all, and some of us tried too hard.

This is the joy of the blending of personalities in community quilting. We are interesting mirrors of one another and our community as a whole as each of us tries to fit in her own level of skills and abilities with others whose levels may be quite different. It is a lesson in loving acceptance of personalities and of the flaws inherent in each and every one of us... as well as in the blocks and the quilts that we each create.

I love, truly love, this hodge podge little band of women. We are a powerful group of women in many ways...beyond what most of us realize. Monday after Monday, we sew for a few hours, or we sew all day long and on some days we don't even sew at all. We organize, we label, we wash out mildewed donations of fabric, we box up and bag up and we support and applaud and we commiserate.

We join together in spirit and in intent and somehow, almost magically, quilts are created. To me it is the deepest and truest meaning of the word 'community.' We are all parts of a whole in all of the best and deepest meanings of the word.