Quilt for comfort

The photography session was much more pleasant than it might have been. The two employees of the photo-place were a married couple (he photographed, she collected the information and went over the pictures with us so we could pick the one we liked best for the directory.) When the photographer found out I was a bio prof, he talked about how his degrees were originally in science education (earth history concentration, it sounded like). He talked about some of the field trips he had gone on as a student, and I think that led to me smiling more comfortably and more naturally than if he had come at me with "honey" and "darlin'" and "sugar."

(There are very few men I permit to call me things like that...my father, though he has only ever called me "hon" as a term of endearment. And I guess it would be okay, if a little weird, from my brother (though my brother would be much more prone to call me "duuuuuude!" than he would be to call me "sugar."). And a hypothetical boyfriend/husband. Or a very close male friend if he were the sort of male friend who would, if you get my drift, never be romantically linked to me. But other than that, no. I'm more comfortable with some of my female friends calling me "honey" and stuff, because they are mostly the older sort of friend and they call pretty much any woman who is 20 or more years their junior "honey.")

I will say one of the really nice things about digital photography is that you can LOOK at the photographs right away and go "Yeah, that's one's ok...no, ugh, not that one..." and so on...you don't have to come back to look at proofs or anything.

After that, I decided to take a few minutes and run to the quilt shop. I decided to put together one of my quilt plus backings that I had hanging around and take it down to get it quilted. (It's the Piecrust pile-up pattern I made quite a while back. (January 2010, to be exact). I had a nice backing for it - bought at the very quilt shop where I took the quilt to be quilted - that is printed to look like pseudo-Scandinavian colorwork knitting. Which I think is pretty perfect for a quilt for me.

The little quilt shop in town seems to still be thriving - the fairly short time I was in there, several people came in and bought stuff. And they now are offering classes, I see. And they have the quilting service. (I was lucky...the young woman who is one of the co-owners said that "Oh, the lady who does the quilting has a bit of a lull right now, so she ought to be able to get to yours almost right away."). I chose to have the quilt done with an allover snowflake design. There was a quilt up on the wall quilted in the design and it looked good. (And the quilter can do it a bit smaller and tighter for me - apparently her longarm machine allows for resizing and rescaling of designs).

I also realized I had one of their "loyalty cards" all filled out. Many quilt shops do this - you buy a certain amount of stuff (either all at one time, or over many trips) and they will fill in a card, or punch a card, or something - and when you spend a certain amount, you get either a percentage off your next purchase, or money off your next purchase. (Many places do 10% off...at this quilt shop, once you've spent, I think it's $200? you get a card good for $20 off your next purchase of $20 or more - which is a fantastically good deal because they will also count the cost of having quilting done to the card, so it can add up fast.)

So I decided to spend the card. At first I thought of buying yet another jelly roll, but then I remembered that I had seen more of the fabrics from a line called "Hideaway" (very, very cute novelty fabrics with kind of a pseudo-Alpine theme - there is one with wee tiny deer on it, and another with cuckoo clocks, and another with chalets. I had some of the deer fabric and some of the chalets, and some other fabric I'd picked out that went with those...but I decided I wanted more, to do a larger quilt. So I went around picking out fabrics and came up with a nice pile of things - some from that same line, but several from other lines (other fabric companies, even) that coordinated and also had the same sort of style to them.)

While I was "accumulating" (and "auditioning fabric" - which means holding a bolt of stuff you think will work up to the growing pile and kind of squinting at it to see if the colors go), another person came in with a quilt to drop off. This person is a Local Quilting Personality - I don't know her personally but do know her by name and reputation. She had some fairly detailed instructions as to how she wanted her quilt done (in contrast to my, "Oh, yeah, the polycotton blend batting will be nice. And I like that snowflake design over there but if she could make it a tad smaller it would be even better.") I don't say this as a criticism but as a setting-up of something I'm going to say later.

While I was waiting for my stuff to be cut (I wound up with, um, nine fabrics. But hey, some of that fabric was FREE) she asked me what I was going to make with it. I said I hadn't fully decided, maybe a simple geometric pattern like the Rail Fence or something...something that would show off the fabrics.

And she started talking about quilts she had made, pointed out one hanging up in the store, showed off some applique she had done. And while I don't think it was at all her intention, I got a bit of the feeling I used to get from a few more hardcore-than-me quilters I've dealt with. As I said, I think this lady was just sharing information about what she liked to do but in the past, I've dealt with a few "quilt snobs" who took the attitude of "If you're not doing applique, you're not really making a quilt top." or "If you're not doing stuff like Mariner's Compass [which has really tiny fiddly points and pieces cut at challenging angles], you're just kind of playing with fabric." In other words: if you're not constantly stretching yourself to push harder, do more complex things, to stretch yourself, you're wasting your time.

And I don't know. But by the time at the end of the week when I can finally sit down at my sewing machine, I'm pretty much all stretched out already. Especially this semester when I'm having to go deep into my memory for things I've not thought about in 10-15 years, like the Chemiosmotic Coupling Hypothesis and also learning stuff I didn't even know existed (well, maybe NONE of us knew existed 15 years ago) like chaperonins.

So, when I make quilts I want to make things that are just pretty and functional and that GET DONE. (I could probably do a Mariner's Compass if I set my mind to it, but I'd still be working on it when I was 80. I'd rather make the simple geometric pieced quilts - which I like the look of, anyway - and actually get them done and be able to use them.)

So I admit I felt briefly a little forlorn after my ditzy little comment about "I might do a rail fence" when the other quilter was showing me all this complex stuff she had done.

But driving home, I realized: She quilts for her reasons, and I quilt for my reasons. And those reasons are (apparently) very different. She quilts to impress people and win contests and stuff. I quilt to feel like I've got something to show for my free time, to put together pretty fabric in ways that delight me, to make quilts that are cheerful and funny and make me a little happier when I wrap up in them after a difficult week. I don't care if none of my quilts ever win a prize...that's not why I make them. I make them for me. They're one of the relatively few things in my life I don't feel judged on (my teaching, my grantwriting, my manuscripts, even some of my volunteer work...I get "judged" on all of that) and I need that in my life.

And this line popped into my head: it's inexact for the situation but it made me laugh all the same: I quilt for comfort, not for speed. (reference, in case anyone's unfamiliar).

Heh. Maybe I need that on a t-shirt. (The world of t-shirts being what it is, there probably already exists one that says that.)