PaperGirl Blog by Mary Fons

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4 Aug 2017

‘Crowdstashing’: Marianne’s Fabric S.O.S.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Quilting | 25

People, we have a quilt crisis situation.

It’s time to crowdstash.

Crowdstashing is like crowdsourcing, except for fabric. I mean, this seems like it should be a word. Because if you want to fund a lemonade stand operation, you can go on sites like Kickstarter or GoFundMe and raise money from the proverbial “crowd.” Well, if you desperately need a specific fabric for a quilt — fabric that is definitely not available in quilt shops or online and yes, you checked everywhere — it’s time to call upon the quilting crowd and ask if they might dig into their respective (bottomless) stashes to see if they might have some of what you need. That’s crowdstashing, baby — and it could one day save your very life!

Here now follows an interview I did with La Marianne about an hour ago. I’m up here at the lake house in Door County and we’re back from the Friday night fish fry, but don’t let that fool you for a second. This is serious business.

PAPERGIRL: What’s the situation, Mommy.

MOM: I’m working on a major quilt. It’s likely be slated for a TV episode and for publication in Love of Quilting magazine. It’s a really big quilt: 110″ square. And it’s working, design-wise. The fabric, the patchwork. It looks good.

PG: Okay.

MOM: One of the two most important fabrics in the quilt — one I’ve had in my stash for more than five years — is a wonderful toile print, thin black on a creamy ground. I was thrilled I had so much of it when I started because the setting pieces are really huge: 26” squares, cut in half. But, honey, I made mistakes. In the cutting. One of the squares I cut too small. If you need a 27” square and you cut it 25”, it’s just —

PG: Yeah. That’s…not good.

MOM: Right. And then I wasted more of this fabric in a design error! When you’re making a prototype, you know, these things are going to happen sometimes. But now I’m really over a barrel. I mean, I don’t have enough fabric to do this quilt. And it really has to be that particular toile print in those setting pieces. It’s a real crisis.

PG: Now, I’m generally an advocate for finding a fabric that will work instead or changing the whole direction of the quilt, but a) you and I work differently, and b) you literally can’t do that in this case. This is not a place for winging it. This quilt is a serious deal.

MOM: The painful thing is that if I had not made those cutting mistakes, I would’ve had enough. But… There’s no turning back.

PG: I don’t want to undermine your pain, Mom, but people are going to love reading that you screw stuff up, too. You’re human. You measure incorrectly. You run out of a fabric you cannot get anymore, anywhere online or via the quilt mafia. What was the feeling you had when you realized what you’d done?

MOM: Sinking.

PG: Okay, so let’s take action. Let’s crowdstash. There are millions and millions of quilters out there. Most with incredible fabric stashes filled with fabric new and old. I’ll bet someone has this fabric, Mom, and if we make the deal sweet, you might just be able to get your hands on some. What do you need, exactly?

MOM: The fabric I need is by Anna Griffin for Windham Fabrics. The selvedge says “Anna Griffin for Windham Presents the Dorothy Collection Pattern #27189I”. And in quilt shop terms, I need a one-and-a-half yards.

[EDITOR’S UPDATE, 8/5: Mom needs the black on cream, not the brown on cream. We’ve found a good deal of the brown, but black’s the thing! xoxo, Pendennis]

PG: Oh, come on! Someone will have that. They just have to! What are you/we gonna do to sweeten the pot? You have to give back when you crowdstash. That’s the model.

MOM: Well —

PG: Ooh! We could talk about it on the TV episode! We could share the story about crowdstashing!

MOM: Yep. Great idea. And if I get enough of it, I’ll put it on the back, too. That would be terrific.

PG: And I can write it up for my Quilt Scout column. I’ll do that. That’s a promise.

MOM: Of course, I’ll pay for the material and the shipping. Gee, what if we get a ton of it?

PG: We could make dresses and wear those on the show, too.

MOM: Dresses and headbands and rings. That would be really funny.

***If you indeed have this fabric — and other pictures of it are coming on Facebook tomorrow to help identify — please email me a picture at mary @ maryfons dot com. I’ll be checking back to see if this crowdstashing thing could actually work. Thank you!!!

1 Aug 2017

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Approacheth: ‘Vietnam’ Airs Next Month on PBS.

by Mary | posted in: Art | 4

Vietnam Women's Memorial, Washington, D.C., Veteran's Day, 2013. Photo: Wikipedia. — Vietnam Women’s Memorial, Washington, D.C., Veteran’s Day, 2013. Photo: Wikipedia.

If you have never plopped down on the chaise lounge or settee of your choice and watched a Ken Burns-Lynn Novick documentary, I hereby give you the rest of the summer to watch as many/as much of them as you can.

Long before I got sucked into House of Cards (blame Claus) and way before I broke into a three-week-long Breaking Bad flop sweat, the only other time in my life I ever binge-watch television is when I have a Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary burning a hole in my tote bag. You see, I use a tote bag when I go up to my local library to get books and DVDs. Nerd. Alert.

The first film that made me do it? Ken Burns’s The Civil War.

If you don’t believe a 10-hour historical documentary from 1990 could possibly be as gripping as the lastest Netflix click-bait series, you haven’t seen The Civil War. It’s one of the most exceptional documentaries ever put to film and, I think, one of the most exceptional films ever made, period. The scope of the project, the genius editing, the way the director brought the material out of myth and into reality to show how that the truth, the facts, are far more agonizing and beautiful and surprising than the myths could ever be — oh, The Civil War just a masterpiece!

And all the Burns-Novick films are like that, they really are. (The whole team has won Oscars, Emmys, Nobel Prizes — I think? — and on and on, so you don’t have to take my word for it.) From Baseball to The Roosevelts to Jazz to The Central Park Five and all the dozens of others coming out of Florentine Films, these documentaries tell the story of this nation. I, for one, am interested in all of it.

This is all coming up because I was doing some research and realized that the next Burns-Novick doc — which I have literally heard about for years — is finally dropping on September 17, 2017 on PBS stations nationwide. That’s just over a month from now! The topic and the title of the film?

Vietnam.

This picture has been 10 years in the making. Ten years. Guess how long it is? Eighteen hours. Eighteen! I can’t wait, though saying “I can’t wait to watch the events surrounding one of the most painful times in my country’s history” sounds wrong. But I know I’ll learn so much, that I’ll cry, that my faith in humanity will be reaffirmed. Burns said in an interview that war brings out the worst in people, but that it strangely reveals the best, too.

Check your local listings. All the early reviews say it might be his best film yet. Oh, and become a member of your local PBS station! I’m a member of Iowa Public Television and the WTTW affiliate here in Chicago. When I donate to PBS, I really do help cool quilting shows (heh) and docs like Vietnam get made.

Not unimportant.

31 Jul 2017

I’m Lecturing In Wilmette on Thursday Night, So Come Over!

by Mary | posted in: Work | 2

My view from the stage, Irvine, California, last month. Image: Me oh boy — My view from the stage, Irvine, California, last month…before they started adding chairs in the back! Yeah!! Photo: Me oh boy

Dear (specifically Illinois and maybe upper Indiana as well as lower Wisconsin) Friends:

We need to hang out. Good thing for us, this can happen on Thursday night if you come over to Wilmette.

“Wilmette?” you say, scratching your elbow. “I’m not far from Wilmette.”

Well, back by popular demand — hurray! — I’m giving a lecture for the devastatingly talented and almost painfully beguiling Illinois Quilters (IQI) in Wilmette, which, as you rightfully point out, is not far from you. The guild meeting begins 6:30 p.m.; my lecture starts at 7:00 p.m. It all goes down at Temple Beth Hillel, 3220 Big Tree Lane, Wilmette. It’s a lovely venue.

There will be quilts. There will be a lecture called “10 Things I Know About Quilting & Life (I Think.)” It’s one of my favorite lectures to give and I’ve refreshed and updated it specifically for this gig. I love those IQI ladies and I fully intend to give them — which is to say you — a terrific evening full of tips, stories, laffs, and maybe even some tears. Me, I like to run the gamut: If you haven’t gotten misty and then laughed through the mist at one of my lectures, I have failed. And I’m simply not in the mood to fail. So there you go. I shall give Thursday evening my dead-level best. Guaranteed.

“But surely this is astronomically expensive, this Mary Fons event,” you think to yourself, and you consider going into the kitchen for more ice cream to assuage the pain of feeling left out and low on cash.

Well, get a load of this, Eeyore: Admission for non-members is just 10 bucks! This is because the IQI ladies are awesome, obviously. You can’t afford not to hop in the car and listen to a good book on tape and then hop out at the venue and be entertained by a fake blonde with a sewing machine.

I’m bringing books to sell and would love to autograph one for you. We can take pictures, shoot the breeze, talk quilt turkey — which would be Turkey red, amirite?? Hey-o! (Just a lil’ quilting joke for my hardcore quilters out there, no big deal.)

Anyway, come over. Quilt-geek out with me.

30 Jul 2017

Today, Sophie Is Published In The New Yorker.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Family, Luv, Work | 9

An excerpt from "Horrible Phone Calls I Assume I'd Have If It Wasn't For The Internet" by Sophie Johnson. Image COURTESY OF THE ARTIST BECAUSE I ACTUALLY KNOW HER, AGGGHHH! — An excerpt from “Horrible Phone Calls I Assume I’d Have If It Wasn’t For The Internet” by Sophie Johnson. Image COURTESY OF THE ARTIST BECAUSE I ACTUALLY KNOW HER, AGGGHHH!

Today’s post is pure joy to write.

Sophie Lucido Johnson, a bosom buddy friendship in my life on the level of Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, is published this very day in The New Yorker. She wrote and illustrated a wonderful comic entitled, “Horrible Phone Calls I Assume I’d Have If It Wasn’t For The Internet” and, as you will shortly discover, Sophie’s cartoon is brilliant.

Being published in The New Yorker is a mammoth achievement. I probably don’t need to say that.

Maybe you read the magazine, maybe you don’t. Maybe you have a stack of New Yorkers on a chair in your apartment because you buy them when you’re in the airport and you swear you’re going to get through them all by the end of the summer (cough, cough.) Regardless of your relationship to the magazine, it cannot be denied that the editorial standards over there are about as high as they come. You gotta be good to get in that door.

And how do you get good? You know the answer.

You work.

And that’s what Sophie does. The girl. Practices. Constantly. She’s always writing, drawing, looking, thinking. When we’re in meetings or in the audience for something, Sophie pulls out her drawing pad and a pencil and sketches. She’ll draw people or things. She’ll make a cartoon or do lettering. She does it because she wants to get better and she’s willing to do the work. Of course, Sophie draws and writes because she loves it, too, but I want to drive home how hard she works at all this.

Being published in The New Yorker is pretty glamorous. But I assure you, and Sophie as she reads this will be nodding her head vigorously: Making art and writing is not glamorous. This stuff is frustrating, it takes forever, you fail, you get sad, you ignore other things, you doubt. But then, if you’re like Sophie and a handful of other people I know, you go back into the salt mines. Because you have to. Because that’s what it takes.

This beautiful girl works so hard. She works so hard, she got a comic in The New Yorker.

Congratulations, Soph.

28 Jul 2017

‘My Bookshelves Runneth Over’ — The Quilt Scout is IN!

by Mary | posted in: Quilting, The Quilt Scout | 4

It's like this, except for quilt books. Photo: Wikipedia, natch. — It’s like this, except for quilt books. Photo: Wikipedia, natch.

I have a problem.

It’s a book problem. I’ve had it for awhile, but the beast has grown a new head without me cutting off any of the others.

The second Quilt Scout column for July examines this. I know not all of my readers are quilters and, in a friendly kind of way, of course, don’t immediately zip over to the Quilt Scout to see what I have to say specifically to the quilt world at large. It’s okay!

But for those who know the secret handshake, I think you’ll enjoy “My Bookshelves Runneth Over”, which is about how I now have essentially a whole separate library for my quilt history books.

Don’t judge me. Monkey.

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