Joe the Blogging Quilter

New Magazine Column

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 22:15:54 -0800

I just found out that I am going to have a column in The Quilt Life, Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims’s new magazine. I haven’t picked out a title for it yet. So I have to come up with something catchy yet spontaneous, something sincere yet amusing, something light that will not preclude heavy topics now and then. Hmmm.
 We’ll get there. In the meantime I have to prepare for my residency at the de Young Museum, and get ready for a road trip to Seattle. Of course all I want to do is this. My son asked me tonight if I wanted to take some sort of class with him and make our own guitars. I had to tell him that I would support him in his guitar making endeavors, but that what I really wanted to do was to just spend more time in my studio, making what I already know how to make. Right? It’s tricky. I want to teach him how to play guitar, and he is doing very well indeed. I want to spend a lot of time together with him and his brother, and we do. But when your work is also the thing you love to do the most, it is hard to think about starting a new activity that will take you away from it.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Saluda County Quilters

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:45:22 -0800

Last week I spent visiting quilters in South Carolina, some large groups, some small. It was great fun from top to bottom. This picture is from my brief visit to the Saluda County Quilters out in the western part of the state. To reach the building where they meet you drive through a beautiful archway of trees on a two-track dirt road, emerging finally into a field with goats, cattle, a llama and a pot-bellied pig. Inside the building I found not only this beautiful string quilt in the frame, but also a pot-luck spread approximately the size of Manhattan. We visited, ate, looked at old quilts and got to know each other a bit before I had to go to my next event.

This group stared only about 15 years ago, and they mostly make things for charity. But like all quilt groups it seems to function as much as a social entity as a quiltmaking one. That is, the women obviously love and support one another, and I heard several stories about how significant the group was for members going through hard times.

It was a great day. If you are not a member of a small group like this already, maybe now is the time to start one!

Step Two: Inside the Green Line

Sat, 9 Jan 2010 21:34:32 -0800

That is going to be it until I get started on the quilting this week. It will be called “Inside the Green Line.” The quilting has to go in a new direction. I keep feeling compelled to take my ideas further out. I mean, to let them go further out. Whenever I force them to go somewhere, I feel as hollow as whenever I force anyone to do anything. But I have to remember that this is supposed to be an adventure, not a product and not a descent.

Step One

Sun, 3 Jan 2010 21:42:21 -0800

I did get into the studio for a few hours over the vacation, and will be back at it this first work week of the new year. I had been saving this big square of African fabric for just the right idea to strike me over the head, and it was only when I had a couple of hours and wanted to get something done quickly that I managed to sew some bias tape on it. Now I have an idea of what I want to do next, but it will probably metamorphose into something else yet. My problem with fabric like this is that I love it too much, so I am afraid I will make a mistake with it. It helps to simply plunge in and assume that mistakes are going to happen, so not to worry. Use them. Use it. What’s it for anyway?

How the Snowman Feels

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 17:55:12 -0800

Here it is a couple days after Christmas, 48 hours after we returned from Michigan, my home state. Of course I got to see lots of relatives and friends, and of course I spent most of our 4 1/2 day trip with my mom, Jan Cunningham, now 83 years old and still living in the house where I was born. She is doing fine, but she told me that her quiltmaking days are behind her. All of us in the family have plenty of Mom’s quilts, so that is good. But still, I could not help being sad to hear it. She said she just feels like the snowman sitting down in the picture above. If you would like to see one of her quilts, it will soon be at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY, on display as part of a family show. I sent one by my great grandmother, one by mom and one of mine. December 18-March 16.