Babel Fish: I am Babeling Today !

Spring has sprung...the flowers are out, the youngest is home from college for a week or so, my QUIPs,WIPs,UFOs,HSTs,QSTs,Flimsies, Whimsies,and thread dangling 'cottontails' have all given way to my LIPs and Rrrrippps. I have been running through the forest at midnight with Finn, fighting with Su B over an antique quilt, trying to help liberate Shelina from her spring cleaning, and learning so much from Nellie about releasing the spirit of fabric and thread. I have a blog reading list that rivals anyone's on the net. It has been an obsession, a delight and a blessing; but it has also slowed down the process of the three charity quilts in progress for the Heartstrings Quilting Project with Mary and the plantings of the pansies and primroses!

I have also learned to Babel !
It has been a hilarious experience and I dare any of you to take one passage randomly from any blog, babel it into the language of your choice and then babel it back to English. The translated version makes me absolutely cringe at what my international bloggers must be reading here!

One example... from my StringQuilting post, translated from English to French, then back to English ends.....up as:

"I am a danger with me and others. I am more than 50, on a sudden rise of high power, not sleeping and I have a rotatory cutter. I am cutting all in sight in the prickly bands of cord... and I want to say all! It obtains so much so that I have now 5 of the new bags of ziplock of 2.5 gallons, filled of falls accompanied very with an ordered manner cut into 1 1/2", 2", 2 1/2"dépouille and so on... not to mention corners and ends! I cleaned my racks, arm fought the rabbit of hiding-place out of his brought back cotton part, withdrew the socks my monkey of sock, and re-used all in sight. I am not only sleep private and fall-happy, I am limiting obsessing-compulsive."

Babel is now the official language for my Wonky Women Club, otherwise known as the ' Wild, Wacky,Wonderful and Wise Wonky Women Wench's Club! '

Babel on babes and wenches....I have some fish to fry and flowers to plant!

Wonky Women: Join The Club!

wonky: adjective
1) rickety, shaky, wobbly, wonky; inclined to shake as from weakness or defect;
"a rickety table"; "a wobbly chair with shaky legs"; "the ladder felt a little wobbly"; "the bridge still stands though one of the arches is wonky"
2) askew, awry(p), cockeyed, lopsided, wonky, skew-whiffturned or twisted toward one side; "a...youth with a gorgeous red necktie all awry"- G.K.Chesterton; "his wig was, as the British say, skew-whiff"

The emails are coming in..... with so many sisters that I didn't even know that I had! Busloads of quilters in stitches are meandering across my borders, all hooting and hollering, hot flashing and staying up all hours of the night and dragging their sewing machines by day, to join my on-going "Wonky Women Club." And those who wrote who were not yet "hot", long to be so, if only for the chance to be free, liberated, full of energy, and not having to follow all of the patterns and rules. Apparently, the common bond that joins us is a bit on the wobbly side, we tend to be a bit lop-sided and slightly askew, but we are all on a power surge high and entering into the magical circle of wild, whacky, wonderful and wise women!

I have attempted to send out official certificates to all of the members who have asked to be inducted so far, but some of you.... who have switched from the old to the new blogger.... are coming up with email addresses of 'no reply.' Change your preferences ladies, start your engines and wait...she comes to a screeching halt...before you grab your I. D. badges and run..you should know..wonky is derived from/related to 'wench.' And wench apparently would indicated a direct relationship with the loose woman of the last post, as opposed to my previous disclaimer that I was 'not a loose woman." Apparently, I am! ;)

Ms. Merriam Webster says that wench is a noun, from the Middle English 'wenche' akin to the Old High German 'wankon', to totter, to waver and 'winchan' to stagger...with more, I have to say, to be found at 'wink.' Ladies, I swear to you, I don't make this stuff up. It doesn't get any better than this... to be a hot, flashy, perpetually power surged middle-aged woman and to know that I am surrounded by kindred spirits and connected by our heartstrings from one group to another like a little web of interwoven blocks. And not only are we free-spirited wenches.... endlessy creating liberated log cabins, and colorful heartstrings.... but we get winked at too!

Grab your ginghers, turn on your power sergers, haul sewing machine, kick pedal and call out...."Skew-iff !"

Wild and Crazy?? I am a Wonky Wonked Woman!

Wild and Crazy?? I am a Wonky Wonked Woman!

Finn has let the cat out of the proverbial scrap bag. I have done my very best to come across as a wise sage, purveyor of endless wisdom and someone who endlessly seeks to do good in this world for others. Now, she tells everyone that I am 'wild and crazy and ...pretty much completely liberated.' So now, I have to confess. I am, indeed, a wonky woman.

Now, mind you...that is not to say I am a wonky tonk woman or that being almost totally liberated means that I am a loose woman. Being a woman of wisdom and on perpetual power surge highs has its benefits as does seldom sleeping. It also has serious drawbacks. I am beyond directionally challenged. I have always claimed it was because I was born upside down and backwards to a cigar smoking Cajun doctor who rushed me into the world on Christmas Eve so he could get to his Christmas party by midnight. My French mother was delirious, my Finnish Alaskan father was telling moose hunting stories to all who could listen ..and me, well all I could do was scream and turn blue. I have been doing it ever since.

It isn't easy being a light hearted 20 year old in a 57 year old woman's body. There are days, when I pass a mirror and wonder who that little old lady is, and then screech when I notice it's me. It's hard getting older because you have to run so much faster when you laugh than you used to have to when you were younger. But there are also wonderful benefits. You can be serious and deep one minute and a crazy woman the next and everyone accepts it because you are a woman of a certain age, in a life changing phase of her life, and frankly, my dear, when your're hot you're hot.

And yes, I have been known to rip off all of my clothes and go running out of the house when a heat wave hits and to spritz with herbal remedies in the middle of the grocery store. I like to mediate on the roof in my nightgown and garden in the middle of storms. I grew up in the 'land of the midnight sun' and my sense of day and night has been perpetually off kilter. I grew up in a town with 25 miles of roads...total...and iron ore and gold in all of the mountains, so now my internal compass is off and my sense of direction non-existent.

I used to say that I loved to sew but had no desire to quilt. I have been quilting ever since. My therapy group is my little band of community quilters. Unfortunately, like attracts like and they are just as bad as me. (Remember, 'bad' is the new good...) We may be in therapy together, forever, the way things are going in this world. There is always someone in need and someone who needs loving and comforting with a quilt. So we just keep sewing, and doing our therapy and there are days we laugh until we cry! If laughter is good, crying just might be better. I like to think of it as nature's moisturizer. Some of us do faces, and some of us do total body makeovers.

I have met a lot of liberated and wonky women through this blog. I think there is something that just draws us together here. There is a need for connection, and creativity in all of us and a need to reach out with those gifts to find other women, just like us. I am lucky to have that with my community quilting group and I am doubly lucky to have it with the women I have met here. Wise, wonderful, wonky wonked women. Thanks, Finn ! Now, it's your turn :)

String Quilting ( Warning: Woman Over 50 With a Rotary Cutter)

I am a danger to myself and to others. I am over 50, on a power surge high, not sleeping and I have a rotary cutter. I am cutting everything in sight into string quilting strips...and I do mean everything!

It's getting to the point that I now have 5 of the new 2.5 gallon ziplock bags, filled with assorted scraps all neatly cut into 1 1/2", 2", 2 1/2" and so forth strips...not to mention corners and ends! I have cleaned out my shelves, arm wrestled the stash bunny out of her cotton patch, pulled the socks off my sock monkey, and recycled everything in sight. I am not only sleep deprived and scrap-happy, I am borderline obsessive-compulsive.

Once you start string quilting, it is not only incredibly easy, fast and fun, it is also addictive. The string quilting high is a thrill that is hard to describe. You start out with one block, then two, then ten. In no time you have flimsies covering the furniture and whimsies being arranged on the floor.

I rotary stripped for three hours without stopping. It was so bad, I forgot to take time to take photos...now that is bad. And in street lingo...bad is the new good!

Solving Blogger Photo Upload Problems: This is a Work in Progress. "I am WIP'ed.".... she QUIP'ed.

I LOVE the new Picasa2! I am running amok with photo updating of missing links or photos...most of them my own fault, as I moved things around in Picasa2 with fervor and glee! Many of my old posts, such as the one where Salem Community Quilters donated 15 patriotic quilts a local Veteran's Outreach Center, can now be found in Patriotic Quilts Of Valor.

Previously,my AOL was absolutely refusing to interface with blogger uploads, no matter what settings I used, or how I dismantled firewalls and allowed pop-ups and cleared caches, whcih are all of the things you should try, first! Forget sharing with the photo sharing programs...nothing would work! But now, I have possibilities and new skills to put to use. But like all new skills, learning to use the 'web upload' button versus the 'blog this!' button has created a smorgasbord of possibilities and I am having difficulties 'pushing myself away from the table!' It almost as bad as the day I created my little ditty on my gaggle-of-ladies-aid-quilters attending the Zion Mennonite Quilt Show !

I have also, however, ( my redemptive excuse goes here) been sewing for my current causes. Getting quilts ready for AIDs babies in Mozambique and two patriotic string quilts for wounded soldiers arriving at Madigan Hospital in Fort Lewis. So, ...a photo of my 2 'flimsys' (Norma's word for unfinished quilt tops) and my 2 'whimsys' (my own word for those blocks already created, but not yet sewn together to the flimsy stage.) For those of you with a dictionary, either may be substituted by the alternate spellings of flimsies,whimsies,whimseys, or...because of the season...cottontails.

So, my redemptive excuse for creating blogger havoc: I have been a productive woman and not just a maniacal one! ;)

Doing the Work of My Heart

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts,
the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our
souls fly open, and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.
~ Michael Bridge ~

When we sew with love, we bind the work of our hands with the healing love of our hearts to create joy for others. Instead of drudgery, and the simple finishing of projects, it becomes the creative expression of who we see ourselves as being and what we see ourselves as giving and doing in this world and this lifetime.

I am sewing with love and with purpose and with intent this morning. I am working with the softest pastel colors of the heart and creating quilts for babies in Mozambique, Africa with AIDS. I am awash with not only my pinks and blues and aquas, but a sea of emotions as I imagine tiny babies and big eyed toddlers ..so, I must take that flow of emotion and work with it and transmute it into something positive and tangible.

I worked all weekend piecing small pieces from my scrap bags and put together piles and piles of strips and strings, squares and rectangles, little leftover corners and triangles and am rearranging them into tiny comfort cloths to wrap up some little one in love. This one, just finished yesterday, is a mix of pastel cottons and bits of flannel. It is soft in all ways. It is soft in spirit, in color, in intent and in purpose. It is meant for the tiniest, the most fragile and the most needy of the little ones.

Monetarily, these little bits cost me nothing. Like their recipients, they are the scrappy little leftovers that others threw or gave away. Bits and pieces that others did not have room for, or did not feel a need to keep or to care for, but ones that still have value and meaning for me. They will be united in some kind of harmony and they will be pulled together to create something that will then have visible rather than invisible value to the world.

As I do the work of my heart, I feel pain. There is a palpable heartache from the suffering I know that exists in this world. But I also know that I must use that pain, that sorrow, that empathetic connection, to connect with the cloth, into the threads that bind us and then through the little quilt to fly across the miles and bridge my love and my caring with their own little lives.
Today, I am doing the work of my heart. I am sewing with love.

Not Your Usual Greige Goods: On Some Days,Color is All

"Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration."--Marc Chagall

Ever since reading Collaborative Quilting by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston, I have been thinking about and noticing colors. As quilters, I think we all have different awarenesses of color in our lives...the ones we like, the ones we dislike, or the ways that the energy frequencies of the color rays themselves connect within and allow us to more fully connect with our world. Finn posted this week about all of the colors she saw and felt and experienced in the world around her and it inspired me to look around and see what effect that color was having on me this week.

Today, was a greige goods kind of day. Most days, like most fabrics, begin as greige goods...unbleached, undyed... and lacking color. Fabrics, in this state, must be cleaned and prepared before any color can be applied or design printed. Greige goods can range in weave from loose to tight and their surfaces may have many imperfections.

Such, is life and such is the start of many of my own days. Like greige goods, a day begins in its natural, unbleached state. It is up to me to prepare it and myself for what lies ahead. I may feel loose or I may feel tight, and I definitely feel my imperfections!

On greige goods kind of days, I want and I need more color in my life. On these days, I head off to my scrap bins and begin to plan small quilts full of life. Some days, that life may be soft and sweet and filled with pastels. Other days I just plain need brights. I need color and excitement and a little jazzing up.

This little 3-D pinwheels quilt was created on one of my greige days. Using fabrics leftover from other projects, I mixed and matched my bits and pieces of brights, my little 'orts' as the Brits (and Nellie !) would say...until I had enough fabrics to complete it.

Just like my day, my bits and pieces came together, color by color, piece by piece. I brightened and the day brightened. It went from flat and grey to bright and three dimensional. Such is the joy and the promise of change in nature, and so, too, is the joy of color choices in quilting!

Patriotic Heartstrings Quilting Project: Liberated Stars and Stripes

 
Patriotic quilts have always been near and dear to my heart...and I can't really even explain why. I don't have a family member in the military, I am 'pro-peace' and 'anti-war' but I support, wholeheartedly, our young men and women in the military.  I fully support their courage, their sense of honor, and their loyalty to our country, and to their fellow soldiers in all branches of the military.

I watched "To Iraq and Back: The Bob Woodruff Story" the other night on ABC and was so touched by the story of this network anchor/journalist being severely wounded while on assignment in Iraq. He has made an amazing, even miraculous recovery as a result of not only the dedication of his nurses and doctors, but the wonderful and loving support of his wife, Lee and their four young children.

Bob Woodruff is now dedicating his life to helping others with severe head trauma as a result of war injuries and profiling their stories and the problems they have faced during their recovery. What was also deeply touching was to see Lee clutching a small patriotic quilt of valor from the Wounded Warrior project...a quilt that was placed on Bob as he was loaded into the army transport helicopter that brought him from the hospital in Germany back to Bethesda, Maryland for further treatment. That quilt, she was told, was given to all those wounded in the war and would be with him, when she could not, on the plane ride home. She carries it and all that it meant to her, still. I have seen it on several newscasts and interviews.

I looked at that simple little quilt, and it just filled up my heart. It was the "heartstring" between Lee and her husband, Bob as the miles spanned between them until she could rejoin him at Army Reed Medical Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. It was a lovely and a beautiful thing to feel the depths of the love that one little quilt carried...from whatever quilter created it, to Bob, to Lee and to all whose lives they now touch with their story.

I realized, truly realized, how the patriotic quilts that I have pieced...ten just since this last September...have gone out in similar situations and knowing that they just might have touched other's hearts this way, renewed my own dedication and resolve to continue quilting my little patriotic "heartstrings of valor"here in Salem, Oregon.

There are many programs where you can donate patriotic "quilts of valor". If you want to contribute them locally, it is as simple as contacting your local Veteran's Association and asking if they have someone who visits a nearby Armed Services Hospital that could bring patriotic quilts up with them on their next visit. They almost all have programs in place to accept quilts. They prefer ones in reds, whites and blues, simply because it is more symbolic and meaningful to the wounded soldiers,and those with a patriotic theme or fabrics in them touch deeply, but they don't have to be complicated works of art.

Liberated string quilting is one of the easiest and quickest ways to create a lap quilt in the 36"x 36" to 45"x 45" range. The Heartstrings Quilting site, whose links is on my sidebar, shows examples of string quilts and gives some great links to start you out.

String quilting is easy, it's an enormous amount of fun and best of all...it takes very little time to make a quilt, especially a small patriotic lap quilt. Here in Salem, Oregon we have sent ours with a Brigadier General's daughter to Madigan Hospital in Fort Lewis,in the state of Washington. But the last 15 of our community quilting group's patriotic quilts, were donated to our local Veteran's Outreach Center. We wanted to honor of a quilter's husband who had just passed away.

Whatever, we do, however we do it, I know that hearts are being touched and love is being sent...in every stitch, every block, and every quilt. I have always felt heartstrings between myself and those that I care about...now, I can see them too!!!

Free Patriotic Quilting Patterns
String Quilting