Dyeing in the Cold

Monday I broke another rule. In my online class with Elizabeth Barton I had gotten to the point where I was gathering fabrics for a project and realized I needed some other colors. The rules of hand-dyeing say that the room temperature should be in the seventies or above and, since my dyeing is done in an unheated basement, the only dyeing that gets done during the winter months in my house is snow dyeing. But now I really needed that fabric.

So I took a chance. Sun was pouring in the basement windows but the temperature was still in the fifties when I began. I did all the mixing and pouring in the basement but brought the fabric upstairs to batch overnight. And it worked!

I am of two minds about the results: it is wonderful that I have the fabric I need and that I now know I can dye all year round. But that forced vacation from dyeing was rather nice--one thing that couldn't find its way on the to-do list for a few months of the year. Nor during that time could I use dyeing as yet another way to put off making final design decisions.

But perhaps I should not stop analyzing, enjoy the fruits of my rule-breaking, and get back to working on my project. And if you are still reading, thanks for the company!

Warning: Rant Ahead

About a month ago I found myself in Joann's with Christmas money in my pocket. I finally decided on a large cutting mat that, combined with the current one I have, would cover a good portion of my cutting table and eliminate all the adjusting I have to do when cutting a large piece of fabric.  With many more errands to run, I grabbed a large (36"x 24") Olfa mat and headed for the checkout.

As I was unloading the car, I thought I smelled something strange but didn't pay much attention. As I put the mat on the dining room table, I realized what was smelling: the cutting mat was giving off a strong and unpleasant plastic odor. I tried to ignore it but an hour later I just couldn't stand it. The news on the Internet was not good as I found many people complaining about how the new mats smelled.

I have three other Olfa mats as well as a couple of tiny portable ones and none of them smell.  And, granted my memory is not the most reliable part of my brain, but I do not remember any of them smelling so much that I couldn't be in the same room with them.  Does anyone else remember an older mat smelling?

Another ominous sign: the FAQs section on the Olfa website actually addresses this problem.  There they reassuringly state that if you wash the mat in vinegar and water, the smell will disappear, although you may have to do this more than once. I tried three times and even soaked the mat for a couple of hours in the tub with the vinegar solution.  It still smells.

So I sat on the phone for fifteen minutes waiting for customer service and finally gave up and e-mailed Olfa that they had a very dissatisfied customer. A week and a half later, the day before I was going to make the hour-long trek back up to Joann's, I received a reply, saying that they apologized and, if I would tell them the exact size of the mat, they would replace it. So I sent the size to them, asked what I was to do with the old mat,  and ended my e-mail, saying, "And I assume the new mat will not smell."

Five days later I received yet another reply:

Unfortunately, all of our Olfa rotary mats have a strong plastic smell.

Olfa recommends that you use a mixture of warm water and dishwashing detergent to wash your mat.  Please use a lemon or other citrus based dishwashing detergent as this will nelp neutralize the smell.  You may have to wash the mat several times. 

You can also try laying the mat flat in a tub with a mixture of white vinegar and cool water; more white vinegar than water.  Allow the mat to soak in the mixture for about 30 minutes.  You may need to do this one more time.

Try wiping the mat down with Murphy’s Oil Soap or pine scented Lysol. 

I particularly liked the recommendation to use pine-scented Lysol.  You certainly would not smell plastic after wiping it down with that. I have not tried any more of these. And their other suggestion to just let it air out has not worked since it has been smelling up our basement now for a month. 

I am disappointed that a company that sold what I thought was a reliable, quality product no longer does and angry about the way they have handled this since I am not sure Joann's will take the mat back at this point. My reply to their last e-mail contained this question:  Why, if any of these methods work, don't you use them before you send out the mats to retail stores?

So that's the end of my rant, and, if you made it to the end with me, thanks for the company!

Poetic Piece

"On a Sligo Hill" and the rest of the Deep Spaces exhibit has now traveled to Texas, but while it was hanging in the state of Washington, it played a role in the annual celebration of the arts known as ArtsCrush Weekend in Edmonds.  As part of the festivities, a group of poets (Floating Mountain Poets--isn't that a great name?) wrote poems about each of the quilts and staged a poetry reading with the exhibit as a backdrop. Now I have never had anyone write a poem about one of my quilts so I felt a bit special when I found out this was going to happen--and curious about what kind of poem my quilt would generate. About a week ago, my curiosity was satisfied.

On a Sligo Hill

by Tom Nivison

From the giant's apron

Boulders tumbled

And rolled

And opened a road

Into the essence of earth.

Gathered round

To tomb and womb

The rock told tales

Of weight and waiting.

Deep beneath the dead

The white way rises

'Til it crowns

With stones and shells

The hollow hills

Of Sligo.

I'll have to see what other surprises this quilting journey has in store. And if you are still with me, thanks for the company.

Making Art out of Needles and Thread

The forecasts of snow on January 10 proved once again illusory, and so I made the hour's drive to the gallery at the Pennsylvania College of Technology to meet an artist and her work. Anila Quayyam Agha was billed as a mixed media artist, but I knew one of those media involved thread--and, I assumed but wrongly as it turns out, textiles. She does her stitching on paper and uses the traditional associations of making stitches with women and also with mending and nurturing to imbue her works with meaning.  One of her pieces took up a whole wall in the gallery:

Anila is originally from Pakistan and, while there recently, visited a necropolis, a huge cemetery where the grave markers for men indicated the careers they pursued while alive; those for women were beautifully decorated but identified them only as wives, mothers, or daughters, even though some may have been doctors or teachers. Anila created this wall of traditional designs in homage to these women, who even in death were viewed more as ornaments than as persons with identities of their own. To make each square she first drew a background design (you can see the faint flowers in the background), then stitched the intricate pattern into the paper, added black ink, and finally applied wax to seal the surface.

Another of her works is a series of nine larger black and white squares that deal with the devastating floods in Pakistan and the stitching symbolizes mending and rebuilding, the putting of things in order after the chaos.

Her most striking piece was difficult to photograph--it was about a ten-foot square created out of 870 pieces of thread hung on a grid from the ceiling, each threaded into a needle that hung just above the floor. About a foot from the ceiling a tiny silver piece was tied into the thread, giving the effect of drops of water--or tears. As you moved around it, your angle of vision caused the whole huge cube to shift impressively. Much symbolism here again with the needles suggesting the pain of injustice and oppression as well as the need for and hope of finding a way to mend the situation.

We talked about dyes--since she dyes the paper she uses--and about thread. She uses an undyed raw silk thread for her work and sometimes dyes it black, as she did for the stitching around the circle in the above piece. I am going to have to see if I can find that thread somewhere since it makes a very fine stitch with a bit of a sheen to it.

And if you are still with me on this journey to art nearby, thanks for the company.

Photo Doodle

Snowy creek

Inspired to Work

I haven't posted anything recently because I have been immersed in an online course taught by Elizabeth Barton. It's called "Inspired to Design," and it's--well--inspiring. Elizabeth Barton is way up there on my list of quilters I respect and admire, and I had wanted to take her course ever since she first offered it online through Quilt University a couple of years ago, but it would fill immediately whenever registration opened so I kept missing the opportunity.  Finally I made it in and am now well into the second week.

Some parts of her design process are things I already do, but her basic approach is different from the one I use and that has proven challenging. Yet it is very stimulating to try a new perspective and her methods force me to look more closely at the focus of my design and at the world in general. I am seeing patterns and design possibilities even more than I did before, and I like that. It is a real gift to be able to open someone's eyes and Elizabeth has that gift.

I am not sure where this will take me and what, if anything, I will have at the end to show for all the hours I am putting in, but I feel it will have changed me and my approach to quilting.

And, if you are still reading, thanks for the company, before I immerse myself once again in design possibilities.

Of Wisdom and the Lack Thereof

So it's January--that time of evaluation and re-evaluation: everything's new and everything's still depressingly and reassuringly the same. I was going to look back on what I had actually accomplished last year, where I had traveled in my quilting journey but got smacked by one of those why-am-I-doing-this and just-who-does-she-think-she-is moments. The project I was working on was not going well--not going well at all, yet there was a deadline looming, along with a couple of others that required me to get started on other projects.  I had tried a new technique on this project, as I am so often doing, and had begun to believe that I had finally skated onto such thin ice that it was cracking under me.

Much of what I am doing is not in my comfort zone. I was never the popular extrovert when I was young and I became expert at following the rules in school.  I did teach classes of eighteen-and-up-year-olds and hosted large gatherings in other jobs I held but neither involved the self-revelation that writing a journal blog or making art does. And I don't have an art degree that says that at least somebody thinks I am qualified at all this.

And why do I feel the need to break the rules? I even break the blogging rules by writing posts that are much too long. Perhaps, as I have gotten older, I have come to mistrust certainty and well worn paths that always come with lots of rules. Yet certainty sings a siren song.

My husband, who is a wise person (and also a wise ass, but that's another story), reminded me that, if I am looking for myself, I need to accept what I find, and part of me is the unsure part, the part that questions what I am doing and why I am doing it, and that also becomes part of the work I create.

All of this has brought to mind the two words I chose at the beginning of last year--dare and dance--which have worked magic several times and still have some usefulness left in them because I obviously haven't learned all their lessons.

There is always going to be a bit of daring in the next steps I take, if they are really my own--and I, being who I am, will question every step. That's the way it's gonna be. Just gotta learn to dance to those rhythms.

In the middle of writing this post, I took a break to take Terra on a walk and there in the middle of our path was this dandelion, blooming its little heart out. Now it has been a bit warm around here but it is still January.

--Poor deluded thing-- I said to myself . Here obviously was a sign from the gods about the foolishness of those who break the rules, who try to create beauty or meaning in the off season. But then I noticed this about two feet away:

Now that little dandelion may be laughing all the way to the gene pool at all those other dandelions who are following the rules and waiting for spring.

And if you are still reading, thanks for the company!