Thursday in the Rain

 As you know, Julie and I had a detailed itinerary planned for our time together. Weather, of course, got in the way. We had planned to spend Thursday on the Seacoast, visiting the Portsmouth Fabric Company, going over to Maine to check out the Outlet stores in Kittery, and then drive along the beach ending with a dinner at the Beach Plum and ice cream on the seawall.

Alas, Thursday's forecast was 100% RAIN! So we moved things around. We'd go to the PFC as planned, but then come home to work in the studio.

DID IT RAIN! The sky opened up and dumped about an inch of rain as we drove to Portsmouth. When we got there the wind blew so hard it turned our umbrellas inside out. Our shoes got soaked as we made our way to PFC, where, slightly bedraggled, we chose fabrics, then got in the car to come home.

Before we got home, we made stops to Van Otis Chocolates,

 

and then to Jacques Florist, where Julie got flowers for her room and I got a dozen different colored roses.

 Then we went to my house where we made BLT's for lunch, threw our fabrics in the washing machine and Julie started sorting through the bins I had set aside for her.

The weather cleared up, the sun came out, and we had a lovely afternoon in the studio. Julie enjoyed working with windows open, listening to the birds chatter.

Julie is in DA HOUSE!

 

Woo Hoo!  Julie is in da house! Here we are eating a celebratory dinner of steak, roast potato wedges, grilled onions and green beans.

On the itinerary today, a visit to the Portsmouth Fabric Company, the local chocolatier, Van Otis (maker of the Evil Little Chocolates); Jacques, a local florist, possibly a visit to The Currier Museum of Art, and time in my studio, sewing.

And cooking and eating and talking and generally having fun.

Home

 

With the weather getting warmer, I decided to change the quilt on the back of the couch to the Golden Zebras, and put out the yellow pillows that inspired it.

I also replaced the winter tent with Millie's spring version. As soon as I set it up, she climbed in, and has been napping there since.

Over the weekend, I changed out the quilt on my table. This is Hidden Treasure by my pal Julie Sefton. She made it when I was planning to teach my first class on free pieced letters. "Send me your duds," she had written, "and I'll make a quilt out of them." I did, and for the month of April it will grace my dining room table.

There isn't anything different about any of the quilts I use on my table, they're just normal quilts. So how come I decided to use a quilt as a tablecloth? Whatever gave me the idea?  Let me tell you.

Way back in 2013 I traveled to St Louis Missouri to give a talk and teach a class at Quintessential Quilts 2013. Instead of traveling directly to St Louis, I flew to Memphis instead. Julie and I would drive up to St Louis together. What a great way to get to know each other! Spend the five hours in the car yakking!! So I flew to Memphis and stayed overnight at Julie's house. The next morning, when I went down for breakfast, look what I saw! It was a quilt covering the table.

You all know how I tell you to take pictures whenever you see anything that inspires you, well, that's exactly what I did.

Just another way Julie and I inspire each other.

When The Universe Laughs at You

Have you ever been working on something and you look over and see something so freaking perfect it was as if it was MEANT TO BE and your only job is to put it together and take the credit. It might have been sitting there all along nudging your brain, but you had decided X and this was most assuredly Y and you were NOT GOING THERE because you had ALREADY DECIDED.

Well. The universe decided to have some fun with me the other day.

I was cleaning up in the studio and part of that is finishing some things so I can get them out of the way. The easiest thing for me was to prepare the gray fabric for the back of the Partly Sunny quilt of HST's that Julie had made. I got the backing ready, and then spread it out on the floor to trim the excess. Then I got up and took a look.

oh.

"Wouldn't this have made a pretty border?" I texted Julie. "But it's too late now. This is the quilt lying on top of the prepared backing."

"Why is it too late?" Julie replied, "Looks fabulous."

This was not what I expected Julie to say. "So you like it as a border? Right now there is 6" all the way around. I actually like it that wide. Let me try adding a bit of yellow in between..."

While I rummaged in the studio Julie texted back, "I like it at 6", now it looks finished."

I slipped some yellow behind the quilt and on top of the backing. As soon as I saw it I knew it didn't belong there.

"Nope" was Julie's response when I sent her the picture.

Glad we were in agreement, I went into the studio and cut up my backing and added 6-1/2" wide strips to each side of the quilt, making sure to line up the pattern on the border fabric so it all went in the same direction, giving the illusion the triangles are floating on top of it.

It's the strangest thing, though, how that wide gray really sets the quilt off so beautifully. Julie and I agreed that the binding would have to be the same as the border so it would disappear.

NOW all I have to do (you know, that pesky little "all") is find a backing for this and then I'll be good to go. For the record I loved the quilt before, but I REALLY love it now.

The Value of "Meh", Redux

This is an updated version of a post I wrote back in 2013 about Julie wrestling with her quilt, See Rock City. It was my Mother's comment that spurred Julie to make major changes in the quilt, which she had thought was finished. The "Meh" story is hinted at in Julie's book. 

Honesty is crucial in a good relationship. But so is kindness. Julie and I get along so well because we tell each other what we see in each other's work, even if it isn't complimentary. At this stage of the game, we have so much trust in each other that know it will be beneficial, and we have each gained from the other's perspective. Julie had worked so hard on her barns and they were truly breathtaking. Julie had really cracked open something inside herself and made a terrific breakthrough, but then she stopped. I knew it right away, but hesitated. I didn't want to hurt her feelings. When my mother expressed the same disdain, I knew i had to tell Julie. I knew I wouldn't be a good friend if I kept silent. So this was a big moment in our friendship. And I didn't do it via email. I picked up the phone and called her. I have to say, however, that I had NO IDEA that the SECOND part of Julie's quilt would be as big a breakthrough as her first. She didn't just go for it, she WENT ALL THE WAY. I was, and still am, so proud of her for her courage and the fearlessness with which she tackled it. And she did it (pardon the pun) like a barn on fire. Julie generally makes her quilts very methodically and patiently. But when she took the blocks apart and rebuilt the thing, she worked like a proverbial tornado. I don't think I've ever seen her work that passionately or voraciously since. Then again, I could be wrong. After all, I do live 1127 miles away...

(This jumps a bit ahead in our friendship story timeline, but I'll get back to it next time.)


Back in November of 2013, when I was making letters for Too Much Chicken, my Mother and I had lunch together.

"That quilt of yours with the box... " she said, "the one where the words pop out of it... (The Black Box)  That's a piece of art, and deserves to hang in a museum."

Then she continued, "The one you're making now, with all the letters," she paused. "Meh."

 This is an in-progress shot of the Chicken quilt. Yes, it was kinda boring.

I laughed. "Ma, the one I'm making now with the chickens is just a silly quilt. It isn't anything close to the Box. I'm not done. I've got a lot to do still."

I really enjoyed telling the story of lunch with my Mom, both on this blog and to my colleagues at work. What was really interesting though, was the reactions. Most of them were of the "You are so lucky to have a relationship with your Mom where you can tell each other what you really think," variety.

 My Mom thought Julie's quilt, "See Rock City," was a knockout, and deserved "Best in Show."

It was true, but that wasn't what struck me.

What really struck me was the concept that many artists simply don't have anybody to give them a good critique. What's a good critique?  A good critique recognizes craftsmanship (or good drawing), design (or structure), execution (or technique.) The rules apply to these no matter what the medium. A good critique will tell you if what you've created is what you think you're looking at. 

Let me explain.

Sometimes you work so hard on something you can't see it. You can't see what's wrong, you're too close. You need to step back, or take a walk and look again with a fresh eye. A good crit comes from somebody else who brings a fresh eye.

Somebody who isn't tainted by being in love with the idea.

The most important thing is the crit is about the WORK, and not the PERSON. My Mom can paint, and draw. She's been making a living as a working artist for over 40 years. She knows what she's doing, and she can tell right away. She knows to consider only what she's looking AT, and not criticize or offer her opinion on what I am trying to DO, whether my concept is a good idea or not.

We know that juries or judges don't care how much work you put into it, or how hard you tried to come close to the idea you had in mind. If the artwork doesn't say it on its own, there's not much else that can help it. (Quite frankly there's nothing that bugs me more than a little story next to the piece that explains what you should be seeing. To me, that's a crutch, and it's like cheating. Like somebody explaining the joke. Unnecessary.)

A good critique can help you know if the artwork (or quilt) says what you WANT it to say, or if it doesn't.

A good crit tells you what is working, and what isn't. What isn't? Maybe something is taking attention away from the main idea. Maybe some elements are competing with each other. Remember, a good piece of art is one where all the elements convey the main idea TOGETHER.

  My Mom and I also know the difference between what we like (subjective) and what we're looking at (objective.)  I am not interested in making traditional quilts (subjective), but I can tell a really good one from a mediocre one (objective.)

This is what my Mother looked at and said, "Meh."

 
The subjective is what the "Meh" came from that day. My Mom simply loves color, and a mostly grey chicken quilt just doesn't float her boat. (Meh!)

But "Meh" can also mean, "It's not as good as it could be." or, "It's just so-so."  It could be a good idea and poor execution, or some variation of "good start, lost energy, direction..." whatever.
  

 My Mom thinks this could be an award-winning quilt and deserves to hang in a museum.

Regular readers know I'm always after the emotional response. I want you to look at my quilts and say "WOW."  The Black Box does that. If you followed along my journey of making that quilt, you know there were times when it just didn't have that punch, and I set it aside for a while to regroup.

"Meh" isn't necessarily a BAD thing. "Meh" can simply mean, "I've seen it a million times before, it's pretty, but it's boring." If you like making pretty and same-old-same-old, that's OK. It's not for me. Which is not to say making lovely quilts is a bad thing. There are a lot of truly beautiful quilts out there. Hell, I make pretty quilts too, in between the "Arty" ones. They are different, and they have different audiences.

When my Mom looks at one of my "pretty" quilts (Sunshine, Exquisite, Rainbow Baby) and says "It's nice," in a rather bored tone, I know what she means, and I'm not offended. (For the record, my Mom loves the Red Sticks quilt, and the Sunburst Rainbow.)


The "Meh" can also be a swift kick in the ass. It's a "Look, it's okay, but you can do better than that." It's a call to action. It's a "What happened, did you lose your nerve?" or a "Is that it? You're stopping there?"

Want proof? When my Mom saw the Barns quilt when Julie first put the blocks together, do you know what she said?

"Meh."




Yup. I had had my own reservations, so I called Julie and told her. Julie had been having second thoughts on her own, so she took the quilt apart, removing the dark blue border around each barn, and then went into her studio and made it better. The result is the second photo in this post.

We learn best not by the things we do RIGHT, but from the things we do WRONG and if we're paying attention... by the things that elicit the "Meh."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the way, a few days later I told Julie what my Mother said about the Chicken quilt in progress ("Meh"). I told her my job was to change my Mother's opinion from "Meh" to "Magnificent."

"You're not worried about doing that are you?" Julie asked.

"Too Much Chicken" finished.

"Hell no," I replied.

When I showed my Mother the finished quilt, "Too Much Chicken," she loved it. "I love the way you used the colors."

 

I laughed, "Ma, four months ago you hated the colors."

 

"Yeah I know."

 

Don't let a "Meh" stop you in your tracks. Use it to push from "Meh" to "Magnificent."

Julie & Lynne: Inspiration Goes Back & Forth

At the end of 2011 I was making a sample quilt for a houses class I was planning. I was making my houses quilt into a quilt of the Four Seasons. Julie was following my work. "I like your houses," she wrote, "but I want to make some barns." I told her to go for it, that they were the same basic thing.

 I suggested she draw them out first so she'd know where she was going and how she could figure out how to build them.


Well, Julie took the idea and ran with it. She made a spectacular quilt, and you can read all about it here, among many other places. Julie not only shares her story about that fabulous quilt, she shared the occasionally painful process it took her to make the quilt as special as it is.

is is my Mom and the sock kitty Millie at the AQS show in Syracuse NY in 2015.

 The quilt won awards and traveled around the country on exhibit in many AQS shows. It's Julie's story, and you can read it on her blogs, here and here. I was thrilled to have been an inspiration to her.

Julie and many other quilters had made "Low Volume Quilts". I thought they were lovely and subtle, but for me they were boring as hell. I'm pretty sure I moaned about them to Julie with alarming regularity. I didn't want to make a typical low-volume quilt. I wanted to make a quilt that would thumb my nose at the concept. I wanted to make a word quilt, and when I found the right quote, I did it.

While this was happening, I had been asked to speak and teach at Quintessential Quilts in St Louis MO in the fall of 2013. It was a busy year for me.

I went to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC that spring.

I spent a few days in California in September with my son and his then girlfriend. This was the trip where I met SewGirl, and brought the four-letter word.

Julie put a countdown clock on her blog.

I was working on my speech, my class, and the logistics of getting to Missouri with a boxful of quilts. At one point, Julie said she would attend, and drive the five hours from her house to St Louis. Since I didn't want to send my quilts halfway across the country to just anybody, it was agreed I would send them to her. She and her husband Larry would photograph them, and then she'd drive to St Louis and I'd see her at the class.

I chewed on that for a bit, and then I wrote to Julie... "What if I flew to Memphis instead of St Louis? I could stay at a hotel that night, and then you and I could drive to St Louis together? I'd get to meet you in person, and we could get to know each other on the drive up there?" Julie agreed, and said I could stay her spare bedroom.

 So on Thursday October 3, 2013, after I got off a plane at the Memphis airport, I walked outside and toward a car that had this sign on it, waiting...

Look! I'm in Memphis!

It had been over five years, and I finally met my best friend in person.

Lynne & Julie: Swapping Duds and Making Magic

In late 2010 I was planning a class on free pieced letters, and I wanted a sampler that showed different kinds of letters.

The quilt Nine x Nine was the result.

As usual, making the quilt generated a lot of dud letters.

 "Send them to me!" Julie wrote, "I'll make a quilt out of them. They are duds to YOU, but your students need to know it's still possible to make a great quilt!" I sent her all my dud letters, and then I prepared another box full of ALL the leftover bits I had squirreled away - mini trees, asterisks, butterflies, some free pieced houses and anything else I could find.

Julie had no negative associations with my box of duds, and she made this quilt. There were so many pieces Julie would make a second quilt. She said it would be the back. While she worked on that, I had an idea.

 I had been making a Rules quilt for myself, and made this black and white RULES word, which wouldn't work in the quilt. I looked at it and saw "jULiE" and "chRiS". OH HELL! Chris would quilt the quilt Julie was planning... so I went into the studio...

Using the letters from RULES, I made JULIE and CHRIS. I put them in the box, sealed it up to mail it to Julie the next day. Then I went to bed.

I'm lying it bed and it hits me.. SHIT!

The next day after work I went into the studio, and prepared something else for Julie and put THAT in the mail the next day.

Two days later, Julie wrote to me, "Lynne... I just got your box... I have an idea...."

"CHECK YOUR MAIL TOMORROW!" I wrote back.

We had BOTH had the same idea. Since the quilt would be made from my letters and bits and pieces, and JULIE would be putting the pieces together and CHRIS would be quilting it, it would be a three way collaboration. It only made sense to have all three of our names on the quilt.

 As soon as I saw this picture of the "back" of the quilt, I told Julie I wanted a second quilt, and that I'd pay for the quilting. This was too good to be only the back of something. Julie included three houses in the quilt, and her explanation was: "Our houses have brown on the ground because we don't have any snow here in the winter. Your house (with the red roof) has white on the ground because you have snow right now."

I didn't have the heart to tell Julie that I when I made that house I envisioned it as a house on the Mediterranean Sea in bright sunlight with a tiled roof and surrounded by flowers. Heck, I'd take that as my house! Funnily enough, years later I would buy a house surrounded by flowers with a red door.

This is the picture Julie sent me back in 2011 as she enjoyed the quilt before sending it to me.

I was thrilled when the quilt arrived.

I went home that night in 2011 and put the quilt on my bed, and it has stayed there ever since. If that isn't the highest compliment you can give a quilt, I don't know what is.

But don't feel bad for the "Hidden Potential" quilt Julie made. It comes with me to every quilt class and lecture I give. I want students to know that even things they think are "duds" (I no longer consider them "failures") have potential.

I was going to show this photo later in the story, but as Julie pointed out, it really belongs here. This is me, Julie & Chris (l to r) and the Magic Happens quilt. Julie reminded me that Chris quilted the quilt with black and white variegated thread, because my cat Millie is black and white and "her furs will be right at home."

When Lynne Meets Julie

I "met" Julie sometime between 2007 and 2008 while we both participated in Tonya Ricucci's online class of free pieced letters. I had never had a quilt quilted, and it was Julie who recommended Chris Ballard to quilt the quilt of mine that is featured in Tonya's book.

Julie and I both have words on the cover of Tonya's book. Mine is GROW...

Julie made the word LEAP.

We became buddies online commenting on each other's work making letters, and she ordered a kitty quilt in August of 2008. I remember that particularly, because I received her request the day after the death of my goddaughter Violette.

We began to communicate directly. Emails flew back and forth with regularity.
.

Selvage quilts became popular at that time, and I made a few tote bags with them. Julie asked if I would make one for her in the spring of 2010.

We must have been getting really friendly, because Julie sent me this quilt for my birthday that year. Around the same time, we decided to do a quilt swap. I had made two Rules quilts, one as a mini swap with a friend in Australia, the other with Tonya herself. Julie wanted a Rules quilt too, but she wanted extras - asterisks, butterflies, and the way I used multiple fabrics in each letter.

The result was the quilt, "No Rules For Julie." It has everything she asked for. I held nothing back. I went all out. Originally I had expected the quilt to take me a week, but I had earlier that summer discovered the magic of using the prints in the fabrics to do what Wanda Hansen describes as "the heavy lifting."

Each letter took much longer the new way. I worked on the letters when I was on vacation one week in July (Wimbledon was on TV that week, and it was the year of John Isner's historic three day match.) At the end of five full days of work, I had only made 33 letters. That's six letters A DAY! I worked ALL DAY, EVERY DAY!

It took me a full month to complete the top. I even put myself in the quilt - that orange bird, I told Julie (who had said she was not particularly fond of orange) was her "noisy friend from New Hampshire."

The quilt is one of my very best, and hangs proudly in the foyer of Julie's house. Originally planned to hang in her studio, that all changed when her husband Larry first saw the quilt. "He looked, and looked, and looked..." I remember Julie telling me. "He never does that." He was disappointed when she told him the quilt was going to hang in her studio, and changed the location.

When the quilt was finished, I brought it over to show my Mom. She was very quiet for a few minutes as she took it all in. Then, "F**k." [yes, mom said THAT four letter word.]

"F**k"  another pause. She shook her head.

"F**k". Then she sighed and looked up at me. "Is she worth it?"

"Yes, Ma, she is."


And today, even more so. Julie is my very best friend.