PaperGirl Blog by Mary Fons

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7 Mar 2017

PaperGirl Essay Contest: Tips and Ideas

by Mary | posted in: Quilting | 6

Star of Bethlehem quilt, New Jersey, c. 1845. (It's just for inspiration. I can't do this kind of thing yet, either.) Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art. — Star of Bethlehem quilt, New Jersey, c. 1845. (It’s just for inspiration. I can’t do this kind of thing yet, either.) Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As promised, here are some pointers for writing a nifty essay in general and specifically for this contest.

“Wait, wait. What contest?!” you cry.

Why, the PaperGirl “Leaders and Enders” Essay Contest announced the day before yesterday, of course! I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Click that link I just gave you if you missed something; don’t worry, you’ve got till the end of the month!

General Tips

This is a first-person essay. Example: “I live in Iowa and I make mostly all-pink scrap quilts. But the last quilt I made was unusual because…” and so on.
A good personal essay has a nice blend of facts and narrative. For example, tell me about the pattern you chose for your latest quilt but also why you like it. Or tell me why your favorite colors are blue and green, not just that they’re your favorite colors. Dig deeper; that’s the whole point.
Be specific. Details are what make a piece of writing come alive. Tell me about how the mean quilt policewoman who made you feel bad about your points has a big ol’ hairy mole on her chin, for example. Note that I’ve tried to help you keep things specific by asking about the last quilt you made or the one you’re making now, rather than suggesting a broader “Why I Make Quilts” essay. That would be harder, I think, and less specific.
Observe the word count. Too skimpy an essay and you’re shortchanging yourself! But if you write too much past the 500-600 word count and I will have to set your beauteous words aside for a time in my life when I have more time in my life to read them. That could take a long time. #time
Have a pal check your work for typos. I won’t be a huge stickler on this (I know there are typos in this blog every once in awhile because these things happen) but good grammar and clean copy will endear you to me at once. Just check your work, is all.

Keep in mind that this short essay is simply asking you about the last quilt you made or the one you’re making now. You don’t have to be Virginia Woolf, you don’t have to make it lyric and incredible — though of course if you are Virginia Woolf and you are alive and making quilts, please enter this contest.

But seriously: You don’t have to be a “good writer” to do this. Just talk to me — and talk to yourself. As I said the other day, there is nothing more awesome than going through a quilt history text and finding quotes from a quiltmaker’s journal or transcribed oral history where she talks about the process of quilting or (even better) her favorite quilt or a quilt she was totally sick of making by the end. It’s like meeting a sister across time. We share little tidbits about our quilts at guild meetings and maybe we write something up if we enter a quilt in a show, but most of the time, we don’t record anything about the quilts. This is a chance to do that.

So here are a few prompts to help you get started or get you unstuck. You can follow one or more of these threads (!) or none of them, but they might help:

What is the most important thing to say about this quilt? Why is that thing so important?
What did you think about while you were sewing the patchwork?
Did you quilt it yourself? Why or why not?
Are you proud of this quilt?
Any regrets?
Let’s say you love your quilt: Who else do you know who would love it? Why?
Let’s say your quilt isn’t one of your best efforts. Who would love it? Why?
What did you learn in making this one?

Happy writing, comrades. And remember, mailed entries only. Send them here by the end of the month. Much prize-ing shall commence. Oh, and I won’t post your essay unless I talk to you about it first, so don’t worry about that.

5 Mar 2017

Bolt From the Blue, Part II: PaperGirl Leaders and Endert Essay Contest!

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, PaperGirl Mailbag, Quilting | 21

This is just the beginning. The HSTs will finish about 1 1/4'', I think. Patchwork and photo: Me! — This is just the beginning. The HSTs will finish about 1 1/4”, I think. Patchwork and photo: Me.

Yesterday, as I was piecing my Bolt From the Blue quilt, I was dealing with serious regret. The regrets were small but continual: They were waste regrets.

The 2 1/2” x 4 1/2” Flying Geese units I was making (and will continue to make for this quilt) involve some not insubstantial fabric waste. I use the the flippy-corner method for my geese, which means when I trim the back of this particular unit, I cut off what could become about a 1 1/4” finished half-square triangle (HST), if I chose to sew the two trimmed parts together, press them open, and square up the now-existing unit. I apologize to my non-quilting readers for all this quilt jargon, but trust me: Turning the waste from a Flying Goose (ew!) into a mini-half-square triangle is possible. Doing this, using patchwork waste to make other patchwork is sometimes called working with “leaders and enders;” I just call it more patchwork. Either way, it’s a thing.

But I wasn’t doing the HST thing. I was just trimming that unit waste straight into the garbage. Because I just can’t deal, okay? I knew if I sewed them up and pressed them out I’d stare at those dang things for the next two years and wonder what to do with them. But the guilt was really getting to me. I mean, it felt terrible to just throw away all that ready-to-sew potential. All those wonderful little HSTs in such lovely, bright colors, destined for the incinerator, well, it just broke my lil’ patchworkin’ heart.

Then I had an idea.

As I’ve been doing my research (for both my lecture and also for my Fiber department research project) I’ve been sifting through lots of big, thick books about quilts and let me tell you what’s wonderful: It’s wonderful when historians find people writing about making their quilts — but this doesn’t happen often. When there’s a journal entry or a newspaper article with a quiltmaker talking about the process of making her quilt or how she did this or that, where she got the idea, who helped her with it, well, it’s just gold. We’ve got pictures of quilts. We’ve got (some) records of things. But there’s really not that much in the history books from the quilters, talking about making their quilts.

Then — I’m getting to the contest, hang on — I thought about the PaperGirl Retreat, how much I want to figure out what that is and then do it because I want to get people writing and quilting more. Have you ever noticed that the root word of “textile” is text? How we speak of “weaving” a tale? Yes, just like we weave cloth. Sewing and writing is really, really close in terms of like, culture and life.

I thought, “Well, how about an essay contest? It could get people writing about quilts! The winner could win my little patches and they could do something neat with them. Or not. But they’d be writing about making.” Reader, I literally took all those little triangles out of the trash and fired them through the machine. They’re ready for the next guy.

(I hope it’s obvious that I do not think my little “leaders and enders” are so amazing that people will be just clamoring to win them; this is about creativity and fun and getting you writing.)

So here’s the official deal:

Write 500-600 words about the last quilt you made (or the one you’re making now.) Mail your essay to the PaperGirl post office box. The deadline is March 31st, the end of the month, and that means you need to put it in the mail by that date. I figure I’ll have all the HSTs by then and it gives you plenty of time to really work on your essay. You can count on me throwing in some extra goodies in the prize bag, by the way, but don’t think there’s going to be an actual quilt or anything. I’m thinking some good Aurifil thread or maybe some candy.

I’m sure you have questions. Fire away, BUT: Don’t send me anything first thing in the morning. Think about this. Mull. Because tomorrow I plan to a) answer questions that may arise until then; and b) offer some advice on essay writing and give more details as to what I’m looking for. For now, just think about what you’d have to say about your quilt-making process.

This sounds fun to me. Does it sound fun to you? Even if one person enters, that will still be fun. And it’ll be one quilter writing about her (or his) quiltmaking process. Win. Win.

4 Mar 2017

Bolt From The Blue, Part I: Patchwork Therapy.

by Mary | posted in: Quilting | 16

There was a moment today when I thought, “Fons, you’re toast. As in crispy. As in burnt. Out.”

There’s just so very, very much to do. There’s the newspaper and the writing tutoring the university pays me to do. There’s the heavy coursework I manage as a student and the lectures and classes I lead as a teacher (the latter implies travel 90% of the time, of course.) There is home maintenance to attend to and there are bills to pay. It’s tax time. Most importantly, there are relationships to care for: friends, family. Other friends. And that’s all stuff going on right now, which is to say nothing of projects and dreams in the pipeline, all of which contributes to the constant hustle, which leads you to the overwhelming question: “What comes after this?” As a freelancer, you have to constantly ask.

For the first time in many weeks, I slept in today. I awoke, to my astonishment, at 10:30 a.m. and had two emotions at once: joy, because I knew my body was thrilled; and mild panic, because the morning was already gone and I had done nothing.

I made tea like I normally do because that is Always The Very First Thing No Matter What. As the kettle heated, I stared at the wall — specifically, my design wall.

Last night, once my work was done for the day, I made a few star blocks just for fun. I have needed for a while to look at something different up on that wall and I have yards and yards of this wonderful electric blue Moda solid in my stash that has been pleading with me to use it. The block I made, a Sawtooth Star, is something I can make in my sleep at this point; I didn’t even have to look up the measurements. After I had four blocks or so, I stuck them up on the felt wall and went to bed.

After my pot of tea this morning, I tried to read. I tried to write. I couldn’t focus. It was nearly half past 11 by the time I had been tea’ed and I felt sullen and agitated — a highly unpleasant mix that I attribute to being overextended. This was my first “day off” in weeks but it didn’t mean I didn’t have a thousand things to do. All it meant was that I was home and could stay put. I didn’t have press to go to for the newspaper; I wasn’t at a conference as an attendee or a presenter; I didn’t have a date with a friend or gentleman caller. I was free, and theoretically, that should have been good but I didn’t like how shiftless I felt, how unscheduled I was. Sitting still is not easy for me and though I need some downtime, I’m so not used to having any, I was spiraling into a real funk. Before I got too jumpy about it, I went to the sewing table and picked up my stars.

There was still a good amount of staring into space that happened once I got there. But what began to happen in time was rather remarkable: A quilt that I absolutely love began to form with astonishing speed, right before my eyes. And everything felt better.

The star block, when set on point, goes a long way in making a quilt top come together quickly. When I cut setting pieces for my 8″ finished blocks I remembered how awesome it is work that way. I was making serious tracks on this sucker! The row-style I was interested in playing with zoomed into fabulousness when I did a reverse contrast thing with the navy blue next to the electric blue. When I did that, I literally clapped my hands. What can I say? I love this quilt.

I looked up the word “surprise” in the thesaurus because I really was surprised by this day and by this quilt and I wanted to find a name for it that reflected that. (Naming quilts is one of my favorite things in the world because: words + quilts.) The phrase “bolt from the blue” is listed in the entry for “surprise” and I think that’s pretty accurate, don’t you? This quilt came out of the blue — and it’s, you know, blue. And fabric comes on bolts. I probably don’t need to keep explaining.

Tomorrow, part two of this post. And a contest. Because the other thing that came out of this quilt was a dream of you. Yes, you!

3 Mar 2017

The Young Man, The Young Woman.

by Mary | posted in: Day In The Life, Luv | 14

Portrait of a sixteen-year-old Franz Schubert by Leopold Kupelwieser, 1812. Image: Wikipedia.

I’ve got something different for you today. I’m still unsure whether to post it or not, but as it involves no stories of wild behavior (me? never), or gossip or politics, it’s probably all right. So far, I have not regretted this kind of vulnerability on the ol’ PG.

The post you’ll see below was written in May of last year but never finished (and therefore never posted.) Thus, it stayed in the Drafts folder in WordPress, the blogging platform used to make PaperGirl.

In May of 2016, Claus was staying with me. It was the time before he left Chicago to go back to Berlin indefinitely. We knew the end was near. Our days were tender, sweet. I’m not sure why I didn’t finish this post about the pictures he showed me. I think I felt bashful and, looking over the draft of the post, I didn’t know quite how to explain my emotions. I was feeling the same vulnerability I feel now, I suppose.

And if you’re wondering why I’m writing about Claus again, well, I’m wondering that, too. These things are confusing. Let’s just say that I’m doing some spring cleaning. Or maybe that I’m finishing up a UFO.*

Here’s the post. Remember, it wasn’t quite finished when I let it be and I don’t know that I should go back and finish it. I think the fragment is the point, today. Leaving things loose like this is not something I like, but we get used to things.

I saw a picture of the most handsome young man yesterday. It was a picture from the past. I recognized the face of the boy because the person who was showing me the picture was the person in the picture. I was looking at Claus. And the picture I was looking at was of Claus at age nineteen or so. The picture was taken of him in his hometown outside Hamburg sometime in the late 1980s.

Seeing someone who left his teenage years decades ago suddenly be nineteen is weird. And fun. And funny. (That hair!) And if like me you overthink everything and refuse to just let a picture be a picture, seeing such a picture is really uncomfortable. Because it confers a kind of sad, caged-animal feeling. I’ll explain.

The young man in the picture was really, really cute. He was an objectively, aesthetically cute teenage guy, the kind of guy seventeen-year-old (give or take a few years) girls freak out over. Athletic build. Strong jaw. Dirty blonde. Great smile — which, I learned, was close-lipped because Claus had braces at the time, and this makes it more perfect because the picture was then more real. Long story short: The boy I saw in the picture was essentially made in a lab for me to be in love with at age fifteen. Swoon. City.

Like most of us, the year that I was forced to be fifteen was not great. I was not cute. I was too talkative. I was having terrible trouble with math. I had a lot on my mind at home, too, including dealing with a mom who was gone a lot (out of necessity! I don’t blame her!) and a broken relationship with my dad. And on and on. Everyone is unhappy in their own ways throughout adolescence; I wasn’t special. Like anyone that age going through whatever they go through, I would’ve given anything for a cute, nice boy to look my way. I would’ve given anything to be asked to the dance. It might’ve made all the other stuff not seem so bad. But with a couple rare exceptions, I was not asked to dances.

If you had come to me back then and showed me the picture of young Claus and said, “Hey, Fons. What do you think of this guy?” I would have pushed my big glasses up my nose and straightened my cloth headband before I took a look, almost as if he could see me from inside the photo and I could do something to look my best. Upon seeing the picture of the cutie-patootie, I would’ve smiled like a dweeb and rolled my eyes like, “Duh, he’s hot??” If you would’ve told me then that the boy was German and that the picture was taken in Germany, you would’ve had to peel me off the ceiling because what could possibly be more hot and amazing and dreamy than a cute boy who was from Germany??

And then, if you would’ve told me that the guy in the picture would care for me deeply someday, that he would kiss me most passionately, invite me to go on a journey across America with him and tell me — he, a bona fide philosopher! — that I was one of the most brilliant people he had ever met… Well, this is where the sad, caged-animal thing comes in.

Why must we live life in the straight line we’re given? Why are we forced to plod along, day, night, day, night, day, night, in this linear way? Why couldn’t my fifteen-year-old-self just get a hint that what seemed absolutely impossible (being liked by someone like that) was in the cards? It would’ve helped so much. It would’ve been so great, just a little “Chin up, kiddo, you’ve got a great family and moxie to spare — and there’s gonna be a lot of love in your life. Just… Standby.”

I guess I just

*An “unfinished object.” A “UFO” is quilter parlance for any quilt project you’ve started but not yet finished.

1 Mar 2017

Whose History? The Quilt Scout Is IN!

by Mary | posted in: Art, Quilting, Tips | 11

The latest lecture in my menu debuted at QuiltCon on Saturday morning. It went well.

The talk, titled, “Standing On the Shoulders of Giants: A Brief History of the American Quilt,” is my best lecture yet, no question. I spent hours and hours and hours researching and making it just right — the slides themselves are artful and nice to look at because I have learned rudimentary Photoshop techniques at art school and that is exciting — and I’m stoked to take this puppy out on the road in the coming year. Am I coming to your area? Are you going to see this thing? It is very possible. If I’m not coming to an opera house, lecture hall, or quilt guild near you, why not? You should speak to Carmen.

The Quilt Scout this week examines something I had to keep in mind while giving a history lesson. I had to remember to push myself. I had to continually remind myself to ask: Whose history do I tell when I tell about history? It’s easy to see one version. There are lots of versions, though. If you’ve ever had an argument with someone who saw a situation differently than you did, you must concede this point.

Even if you’re not a quilter, I urge you to take a look at Quilt Scout today. It’ll get you mulling about responsibility, perspective, and like, the Industrial Revolution.

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