That’s my hand-quilted “Larkin” quilt on my lap while I write this blog! Photo: Ebony Love.
I just made my first-ever survey.
Because of this, I have decided that if all else fails, I would like to make surveys for a living. What will I survey? Anything, as long as I have control over what I can ask in the survey. It was so fun to make this I am reconsidering all my life choices.
Do you have a moment to take this survey? There are only 10 questions and I promise it’s fun.
Filed in WikiCommons under “Confusion.” Image: Wikipedia.
Today was a “Guess what happened to me on the train today” day. Citydwellers know what I’m talking about.
I got on the Red Line train around noon and took it north. I had an errand to run: Daniela, a preternaturally talented esthetician finally cleared up my skin last winter and I had to pick up a bottle of her witches’ brew. (If I found out that stuff is made from the tears of baby seals I’m not entirely sure I would stop using it, that’s how effective it is and how grateful I am to this woman.)*
After transferring to the Brown Line, I got off at Montrose. When I was at the stairs to go down to the street, a man stopped me. He was with his family: wife, toddler, and baby, this last in a ginormous stroller. No one in the group spoke English. Zero. I think “Okay” was the one word he got out and “Okay” is a word that exists in 90% of languages on Earth. They might also have been on the mute side because all of them were clearly spooked and sad. They were lost.
The father offered me, astonishment of astonishments: a printout from Google Maps. I smiled and nodded and took a look. They were nowhere near where they needed to be. They’d have to go back south on the Brown, transfer to the Red, then head back north. The mistake had taken them at least 30 minutes and would cost them another 40, depending on train times. As I looked at the sheet of directions, I shook my head in wonder. The numbers, the stops, the directions, the names of the El train lines — I know them backwards and forwards because I speak English and I’ve lived here, more or less, for fifteen years. But to these people? Gibberish. And they’re trying to get someplace. With kids!
I tried to imagine what I would do if I was lost on the train system in Beijing, for example. The mere thought made me shudder.
We figured it out. I did something just short of an interpretive dance for the father, communicating they had to go down the stairs (I literally did a “I’m going down stairs” pantomime) and over to the other platform (I flapped my arms to say, “OVER THERE, WAY OVER THERE”) and then I said, “Red train. Red.” I pointed to my fingernail polish and said, “Red?” The man understood, nodding vigorously.
The coolest thing ever is that picking up my unicorn serum took less than five minutes. By the time I was back at the Montrose station, the family was there on the platform, waiting to go the same way! I was able to go all the way to the transfer point with them and I made sure they got on the right side, on the right train. It felt great, and I think the woman just about cried she was so glad I was there.
World travelers often say, “Getting lost is half the fun!” I have never understood this. You get lost. I’ll help you. Deal?
Image: Illinois Humanities Council and me adding text.
You know how yesterday I talked about having a Big, Fat, Grand Plan for contributing to the world of quilting in a bigger way, if the world will let me? Remember how you all said wonderful, encouraging things and looked amazing while you said them? Whatever you were doing, keep doing it: Yesterday, I got an email from the Illinois Humanities Council congratulating me for being accepted as an Illinois Roads Scholar!
Here’s what the Humanities Council says of this program:
“Our Road Scholars Speakers Bureau invites Illinois authors, artists, and scholars to share their expertise and enthusiasm with people in communities throughout our state. It also enables local nonprofit organizations to present compelling, free-admission cultural programs to their communities at little cost to them.”
How cool is that?? This is a tremendous opportunity because it does exactly what I was talking about yesterday: It gives me an opportunity to answer the question, “What can a quilt do?” for an entirely new audience.
The lengthy application was due in June and I only heard yesterday evening that I got in. Apparently, the competition was extra fierce this year and stuff just takes a long time. I pitched a talk called “Quilts: America’s Greatest Creative Legacy” and now I get to do it! For money! At venues that will be packed (hopefully) with both quilters and non-quilters who will see quilts in a new light. Maybe those people will be inspired to make a quilt of their own; maybe those people will at least find new love for the quilts and quilters in their lives. There is no way under the sun this Roads Scholar Speakers Bureau is anything but a win-win-win-win for all.
Thought I’d share the good news. And for all my friends in Illinois, I think you can request me? I’ll be doing orientation and on-boarding stuff in the coming weeks. I’ll see you on the Road!
Flying geese I made with “Mary Fons Red” and the Small Wonders Germany stripe. Photo: Me.
For those who don’t know, this spring I was accepted into the graduate school of The School of the Art Institute (SAIC) of Chicago. As of today, I am officially pursuing my MFA in Writing. Today was the first day of school.
I am in love. All day, I was reminded why I have chosen to do this thing. My reasons were everywhere I looked.
My career in the quilt world — a career I have been tirelessly building for seven years — is robust and was robust when I submitted my grad school application. Though I’m not doing TV right now, I have gigs with guilds, shops, and groups booked through 2018. My fabric line is selling well (the first line was extended and this fall there will be a new group, “Decades,” which is reproduction prints from 1890-2000.) My column for Quilts, Inc., “The Quilt Scout,” had its one-year anniversary and read widely; I’m curating a scrap quilt exhibition for Spring Market 2017 for QI, too. I’m hand-quilting quilts, designing new ones, I’m on the board of the International Quilt Study Center, and both my classes and lecture are sold out at QuiltCon.
Why am I giving you my dumb resume? Because as good as all that is, it’s not enough. Let me rephrase: It’s not everything. Quilts are more than the industry. They’re more than the latest trend. I love quilts too much to let them be just a career. My schooling is part of my Big Fat Grand Plan to do something bigger.
You see, there are a lot of quilters who teach on the road and do video. There are quilters who have blogs and write books and patterns. These people are my friends. They make crucial, vital work and I love every single one of them. Heck, I am one of them.
But I want to know what else a quilt can do. Who is writing about the American quilt in a way that engages a wider audience? If you can name one, great: There should be more than one. What does a quilt look like when it goes to art school? What non-quilting audiences can it reach? When it’s time to do my thesis, perhaps I’ll write a memoir of my life in quilts (a tell-all memoir, of course.) Maybe I’ll facilitate a citywide quilt-making initiative, teach Chicagoans how to quilt, and write about that. Why not try? Even if I get 6% return rate of participants, that’s 6% more quilts in my city. I’d read a book about that.
The reason I chose SAIC for my graduate work is because they encourage this kind of exploration. I can blend it all at SAIC. (Proof: They have a longarm machine in the textile department and they have a textile department.) Not once in this graduate school plan has my intention been to “leave” anything. It’s the opposite. For the next two years, I’m not stopping anything: I’m going deeper. You can’t keep me from my sewing machine — but instead of continuing in the typical grind of pattern-book-video, I’m thinking big. Real big. For longer.
My first class was this morning: Design For Writers.
Now, I didn’t make a scene, you don’t have to worry about me not making friends, but…I cried. I was so happy to be in that classroom with that award-winning professor talking to other creative weirdos about shape and line and color and words, and my eyes stung. I squinched my sleeve up and put it to my forehead because I knew, I knew.
Illustration of medieval dressing. Source: Wikipedia.
I’m a robe person. I have to be, because my fantasy of The Perfect Morning has a robe in it.
My Perfect Morning begins with my eyelids fluttering open at the early-bird-but-let’s-not-be-ridiculous hour of seven o’clock. I stretch long in my foofy, all-white bed and I pause mid-yawn because — is someone making bacon? It must be [INSERT BACON GENIUS HERE] come to visit me and make me bacon! I decide I’d better get up and comb my hair except it’s already fabulous. Did someone do my hair in the night?? I guess these things happen.
Now with all this extra time, I scratch my ribs and delight in remembering the witty, witty thing I said at the cocktail party the night before and how I was home and asleep by eleven because I always get eight hours — don’t you? Then I swing my long, long legs over the bed and sink my feet into the plush carpet — I bought the kind that vacuums itself — and I whisk! my robe off the hook nearby, except that I call it “my dressing gown” in the fantasy.
Really it’s just a robe — which brings me back to reality. I have a robe problem.
I presently have two. The white, terry monstrosity is fine, if a little scruffy; it went to New York to D.C. and back again, poor thing.) The other robe is the problem: a berry red, heavy twill L.L. Bean number that used to be my mom’s. I saw that woman drink pots of coffee in that robe every day for years and when I appropriated a couple years ago, aside from a little wear on the cuffs, it was in perfect condition. I found it in the guest bedroom at the house in Iowa. I asked my mother, who was wearing a pajamas and a robe at the time, if I could have it, and she said “That’s weird, sure.”
You know how moms are better at laundry? I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but the red robe has fallen apart in my care. It’s faded. I ripped the sleeve when I was reaching for my tea canister because I didn’t realize I was stepping on the hem. A button on the sash popped off. In general, this once mighty item of loungewear has become droopy and sad. After probably 10 or more years of cumulative use, it’s time to let it go.
But I can’t trash it, yet. It’s such a great red. What should I do with it? Maybe there’s a church nearby who needs a Wise Man costume this year — it is literally the color of a poinsettia. The fabric is far too thick to use in a quilt. I could make a pillow, but I have so many.
I’ll ask Pendennis, but if you think of anything, please let me know. And who was making that bacon, by the way?
