I finished the quilt I started last month, but it took a 90 degree turn along the way.
This was the plan - a log cabin pattern with a tree silhouette appliqued on top, made from fabrics hand-dyed by Anne Alessi.
Once I had my strips cut, I decided I liked the look of them just like they were - lots of horizontal lines. I even liked the color gradation I laid out. However, just sewing them together like this seemed less than challenging.
It was around this time that I came across a TED Talk by Joe Kraus called Slow Tech.
It's about creating gaps in your life and not being constantly
bombarded by stimulation. At only 15 minutes long, I encourage you to
create a gap so you can watch it.
People think they can
multi-task and be efficient. Science has proven that multi-tasking is
impossible. All you do is divide your distraction among multiple
activities. You become 10 IQ points dumber, and you're 40% slower than
if you concentrated on just one task at a time.
Things have really gotten bad since smart phones got so popular. Joe Kraus likens them to the intermittent payout of a slot machine. Probably most of a person's messages aren't particularly important, but once in awhile there's one that's urgent or extremely rewarding, and that keeps people plugged in and checking a lot.
He's not suggesting you drop your smart phone, but he is suggesting that people try to find some balance. It's in the gaps, like waiting in line or stopping when the light turns yellow instead of racing through the red, that peace and creativity come to you.
So I decided that this quilt needed some gaps, both vertically and horizontally.
Some areas have a lot more gaps than others.
Here's the entire quilt. It was a nice size to make - 36" wide and 27" tall. I used both warm and cool colors to create a balance between excitement and serenity. Plus the hand-dyed fabric was the perfect medium to express the "slow tech" concept.
The binding fabric looks like bubbles, which abound in gaps - think bubbling springs.
For the quilting, I did a slightly wavy line to soften all the rigid horizontal lines.
The back - using up fat quarters. The yellow looks like a simple roofed structure, providing some sanctuary. Maybe it's because I'm tired, but those two borders at the top look like the sides of mattresses, just inviting a nice nap. Now that's a worthy gap in your life!
The label is a log cabin; guess I had to work one in somewhere.
I made this purse in December, 2009. The body is 8" x 8" x 3" and the handles add another 8" in height. It's from Terry Atkinson's Happy Hour book. It was fun to make, and I made two others in addition to this one.
This is one of three polymer buttons on the front. I got them several years ago at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago. They had an awesome button vendor there, but I never wrote down their name. Wish I had, though!
This one's on the right side.
The inside fabric has the same colors as the outside's upper band and binding, but it has a more crisp detailing to it. The leaf fabric on the outside has more of a brushed, watercolor look. (note photo below)
The most fun part of making the purse was making a little wallet out of the leftovers.
I made a different style wallet for each purse. This one is folded like it's cold with its arms wrapped across its middle to keep warm.
A leaf pin keeps the wallet closed. I'm pretty sure I got this pin back when the Audubon Art Fair used to be held at Olbrich Garden. That was a beautiful place for an art fair.
Here's the wallet open, with just a few essentials.
This is a big week for music. Three live episodes of The Voice. Country Music Awards on Wednesday. And last night was Cher Night on Dancing with the Stars. The pigs sure are in a musical mood.
After watching Cher, this one pulled out his Beatles lunch box. He wonders why The Beatles didn't keep the copyright to all their songs.
It's because back in the early 1960s, they were losing 90% of their income to taxes. Lawyers advised them to find a way to channel their revenue into capital gains instead of income, which would mean a much lower tax rate. So in 1963 they assigned their publishing rights to Northern Songs, a company created in part by their manager, Brian Epstein. This affected songs written after 1963, but not early ones like "She Loves You", "I Saw Her Standing There", "From Me to You", "There's a Place", "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Misery",
"Please Please Me", "Ask Me Why", "Love Me Do", and "P.S. I Love You."
John and Paul each owned 15% of the shares; George and Ringo each had .8%. Northern Songs was bought by Associated Television Corporation (ATV) in 1969. In 1984, ATV (who also owned the publishing rights of many other artists) put their music catalog up for sale. This is when Michael Jackson bought it, outbidding Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono. In 1995, Sony Corporation paid Michael Jackson $95 million to merge with ATV and form Sony/ATV, thus diluting Jackson's share.
Interesting fact: Publishing agreements call for royalties to be split 50/50 between the publisher and the songwriter. So even though Michael Jackson owned the publishing rights, that portion of the royalties hadn't ever gone to The Beatles. They continued to receive their songwriter royalties as always.
"That was too much information!", this pig says.
He wants to play, but can't quite reach.
"Need some help?"
New plan - sit here and look cute until a human comes along to play for them.
She's really good at playing the radio.
Ever wonder how royalties are handled for digital music? SoundExchange is a not-for-profit agency that collects and distributes royalties from some web, satellite, and cable radio broadcasters (such as Pandora, SiriusXM, and Music Choice).
They pay 50% of the royalties to owners of the sound recordings, 45% to the performing artist, and retain a 4.9% administrative fee. They started in 2003, paying out $3 million; this year the projected payout is $500 million. The top song in 2013 is "When I Was Your Man" by Bruno Mars.
During the finals of this past season of So You Think You Can Dance, Aaron and Melinda did a beautiful, emotional tap dance to that song.
Pigs love tap and accordian, too.
"You pick it up."
"No, YOU pick it up"
THIS is how you pick it up, and draw a crowd, too.
Enjoy some music in your life, whatever kind you like.
Pigipedia
This may look like a cow pig, but it's a Gloucester Old Spot. They're calm and good-natured. The females produce large litters and are good mothers; the males rarely threaten the piglets.
Both Prince Charles and Princess Anne keep this breed on their farms in Gloucester. Old Spots are endangered; there are fewer than 2000 in the world. That's primarily because they lack the pale, lean meat that is desired by factory farms, where most hogs live.
Last week I showed you an old Singer I bought, along with a peek at the table runner it was sitting on.
This is a Singer Red Eye, produced between 1900 and 1930. The earliest version was run with a hand crank; that evolved into a treadle, and I have the remnants of the latest version, which was electric. Mine doesn't work (somebody cut off the cords) but since I only cared about its looks, I don't mind.
The table runner it's sitting on has a sewing motif, my favorite part being the sewing machine. The fabric is Alexander Henry's "sew now! sew wow!". I made the runner last year, and almost gave it away to a resale shop this year, but I'm glad I didn't. It works good in my new warm color scheme and it ties together several other Singer artifacts I have.
I don't remember what pattern I used.
The back has a central green panel, with lemon fabric on either side.
On the large white blocks, I free motioned spools of thread that looped from one to the next. On the log cabin triangles, I did straight stitching.
I keep this ad in a plastic cover pinned to a corner of my design board. It's an original page from a 1903 Ladies Home Journal. It shows a variety of treadle machines, including a Singer, sold by Sears. Sears and Singer were the two most important suppliers of sewing machines in North America from the 1890s through 1950s.
The Singer cost $26.50, which in today's dollars is $713. The median income in 1903 was $703, so this machine cost more than a year's wages.
As expensive as that seems, Sears was able to keep the prices relatively low because they were a mail order business and had low overhead. Equivalent sewing machines in retail stores sold for three times as much.
A magnet I put on a white bucket.
I do have a family heirloom Singer treadle machine, but haven't managed to lug the heavy thing into a photo-worthy spot. So this mini one will have to do. It's sitting on the back of the table runner.
