So how are you spending the last weekend of summer?  I’ll be deadheading  plants, doing laundry and generally catching up after yet another trip to Utah. Three family weddings (including Will’s) had me flying into the Beehive State once a month over the summer.

On a clear day, the descent into Salt Lake City is quite lovely.  The evaporation ponds on the northeast side of the Great Salt Lake are colored in vivid shades of red, green and purple caused by the minerals left over after evaporation (above).  This last trip, however, smoke from fires in surrounding states placed a gray filter over the view.  Here’s what the descent looked like last Friday.

Things didn’t clear up much over the weekend but by Tuesday when I flew home there was a hint of blue sky and more of that jewel-like aerial art. Much better.  (Any wedding metaphor here? Well, I’d advise all the newlyweds to let the smoke clear when assessing their fledgling marriages.)

Which reminds me that you might be interested in following THE.JEFFERSON.GRID on Instagram to see artful square mile aerial shots from Google Maps (thanks for the tip, Claire). Here are a few other things worth looking at this week:

The elegant graphics of the digital game Prune.

Stylish self-watering planters.

Graphic contemporary quilts at a relatively good price point (speaking as a quilter.)

This guy’s explanation for how his email ended up on the Ashley Madison website.

How the modern dating crisis plays out in Mormon and Jewish cultures (thanks, Syd.)

The bias against air conditioning (not new, but of interest since we’re thinking about adding air conditioning to our home.)

Theo Jansen’s eerily beautiful Strandbeests strolling on the beach.

Pep Talk Generator.

And finally, the song of my summer was on the playlist of every wedding we attended.  It’s been a hit with the next generation ever since they saw their uncle M.J. boogie down to “Brick House” at Sydney’s wedding three years ago.

 Happy Last Weekend of Summer All!

Amish quilts had a heyday in the ’80s and ’90s.  Their bold colors and graphic patterns worked well with contemporary interiors and evoked the rural Amish lifestyle that was portrayed so appealingly in Peter Weir’s thriller “Witness” and  Sue Bender’s bestseller “Plain and Simple: A Woman’s Journey to the Amish.”  In an age of increased technological complexity, simplicity sold.

Though Amish quilts are used less frequently in today’s home decor, any time they’re exhibited they tend to draw a crowd.  If you live in the Bay Area you’ll find some excellent examples at Antique Ohio Amish Quilts from the Darwin D. Bearley Collection, a new exhibit opening this weekend at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles.  A companion exhibit of  twenty modern quilts from three Bay Area modern quilt guilds (including the quilts shown here) shows the continuing appeal of hand-sewn simplicity.

You can read more about the exhibits here in my BANG article, but I wanted to share two other things that San Francisco-based quilt expert Joe Cunningham had to say when I interviewed him for the story. First, he pointed out that the modern quilter’s aesthetic is not only inspired by the past but also developed in reaction to it.  “Young quilters don’t want to shop at their moms’ favorite fabric shops or join their mothers’ quilt guilds,” said Cunningham. “And they really don’t want to make their mothers’ quilts.”

I can imagine their mothers’ quilts—elaborate constructions made possible through improved cutting tools and exposure to a wide range of techniques demonstrated in quilting publications, workshops, and fabric stores. Some of those women made spare Amish-like quilts, but most tackled complex patterns with an incredible variety of fabrics. Then they appliqued and embellished the layers of fabric and batting to within a 1/4 inch of their mitered borders. More was more.

So it’s no surprise that in order to create something that they can call their own, a new generation of quiltmakers has embraced a more spare, Amish-like, style of quiltmaking.

The young quilters I interviewed told me that they’re busier than their mothers—working full time while raising kids–and not able to devote as much time to their craft. I hear what they’re saying, but I also think that women have always been busy.  Certainly 19^th century quilters had plenty to do but still managed to produce intricately pieced quilts covered with exquisite hand-quilted stitches. So I’d propose that we all seem to move more quickly through our obsessions nowdays. None of us are spending hours, weeks and months working on a single craft or art project any more.  Simpler quilts mean quicker turn around times which is in keeping with the pace of our modern lives.

The other point Cunningham made is that women have always made quilts not because it’s the most efficient way to cover a bed, but because it’s one of the loveliest.  “You could make warm bed coverings by simply tying whole layers of fabric together without going to the trouble of piecing fabric scraps into artistic patterns and then covering them with hand stitching,” says Cunningham.  “Historically quilts were works of art that allowed women to get together and make gifts for the people they loved. That hasn’t changed.”

Modern quilters may purchase materials, learn techniques and share their art online, but my guess is that they’re still motivated to quilt because they want to make something beautiful–and warm–for real live people.

 “Antique Ohio Amish Quilts: The Darwin D. Bearley Collection” and “Amish: The Modern Muse” open Saturday, November 15 at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. 

Strait, an avid quilter and quilting teacher, was one of the jurors for a “quilt challenge” that generated 30 quilts inspired by things that happened here on the Home Front during World War II. The quilts will be on display at “Voices in Cloth 2014,” a large quilt show happening this weekend (March 22-23) at the Craneway Pavilion on the Richmond Marina.

“These quilts use the quiltmakers’ local perspective to focus on a piece of history that happened right here in our own back yard,” says Strait. “That’s what makes them so interesting.”

For example, Susan Zimmerman focused on the famous Rosies—women who joined the workforce at the Richmond Shipyards when the men went off to war, (above). Marian Sousa, 88 and a real-life Rosie, created her first quilt (below) to replicate some of the ship blueprints she drafted during the war.

Jeannie Low stitched up a Liberty Ship and named it Leon Chooey after her father who was a welder in the shipyards.

Nancy Brown incorporated letters her father sent from the field, including one where he said he was dreaming of the sweet peas in their garden at home.

Cindy Cossen used the Richmond Ford Plant, now the Craneway Pavilion where the show will be held, as a backdrop for a jeep filled with magazines gathered to be shipped to the troops.

Giny Dixon celebrated the Women’s Baseball League.

Barbara Davis created a haunting image of a Japanese American farmer forced to leave his fields when sent to an internment camp.

Read more about these Home Front quilts in my BANG story here.  And if you live in the Bay Area and would like to attend the show, the organizers have sent me a pair of tickets to offer to a reader.  Just leave a comment about why you are interesting in quilting or share a family story from the Home Front period and I’ll draw a lucky winner (on St. Patrick’s Day, no less!)

Ever since I finished a ten-years-in-the-making quilt top on Tuesday, I’ve been happily plucking clipped loose threads off my furniture, clothing—even my hair brush. Now the top (and back) are off to be professionally quilted and I’m savoring the delicious pause between completed and new projects.

I’m also taking a little break from fiction writing because I finished the first draft of my first novel (!) on Monday.  Kind of a milestone week, I’d say.

“Now what?”  friends ask when they hear I actually typed the words THE END.  I tell them I’ll write it all over again–starting in a few weeks.  But right now I’m going to take a deep breath and marvel at how all those loose threads of characters and plot points and historical details that have been scattered around my brain for years got gathered into a big, messy ball of a story.

Ta da! And TA DA!

***

After I stopped making up stories and sewing small squares of fabric together this week, I discovered:

Marble madness is everywhere.

Fun facts about color.

Aidlin Darling Design–one of my favorite Bay Area design firms–received a National Design Award from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Some lovely ballads as well as sea shanties in Sting’s The Last Ship.

How novelist Claire Messud celebrated Thanksgiving abroad.

Performance artist Marina Abramovic–perhaps best known for her silent encounters at MOMA in 2010–actually has a lot to say.

Looking ahead—if you’re in the San Francisco area, check out the treasures and top-notch presenters starting Thursday at the San Francisco Fall Antiques Show.  You can read more about it in my BANG story here. Should be a fun, fabulous event!

Happy Weekend All!

Happy Birthday to my husband, M.J.  Well before Google was invented, he became the search engine in my world. Brilliant, clever, kind and decent–he’s provided the answers to so many questions in my life. Big and little.

Our children mock our geeky courtship–we met in our university’s honors program, competed on the same College Bowl team and got engaged amidst the stacks when he said “what will our children think when we tell them I asked you to marry me in the library?”

Thirty-three years later we know what they think.  They think we were nerdy nerd nerds. (Though I can’t imagine a more fitting and romantic place for two wannabe know-it-alls to commit to spend their lives together.)

When I tell the longer version of our story, I always say that M.J. was the most interesting guy I’d ever dated.  I knew I’d never be bored with him.  And I was right.

Happy Birthday, honey!

Here are a few other things that engaged me this week:

This elegant cast iron kitchenware.

Hand-dyed yarn inspired by duck hunting season.

Learning about the origins of one of my favorite colors—Vosey blue.

Some musings on Sunbonnet Sue and other sentimentalized quilt imagery.

Developing empathy through reading literary fiction.

And finally, painter Llius Lleo talks about becoming an artist.   Lleo on inspiration –”There’s not unlimited space in your brain. . .if you need to see more to do your work, maybe you should do something else.”

Off to make a birthday cake — Happy Weekend!

Some non-quilter friends were touring with me and they were suitably wowed by the colors and patterns, but for this quilter, seeing all the precise points in Mathieson’s quilts made me want to weep.  (Mostly) for joy.

I’ve been quilting for over 20 years now.  Long enough to recognize that I really don’t have the skills or the attention span to create complex patterns like this. Which means I can relax and admire Mathieson’s beautiful patchwork without worrying about whether this should be my next project. Instead of trying to figure out how to finally master Y-seams, I kept gravitating to simpler patterns like this “Spider Web” by Mickey Beebe. If I put my mind to it, I could probably execute this. Maybe rendered in a rich mix of plaids like Mathieson’s “Plaid” quilt above.

I loved the clean graphic of this “Color Shotz” quilt by Jennifer Rounds (see more of Jennifer’s work over at See How We Sew .)

And this simple Log Cabin variation “Courtyard Steps” by Virginia Alexander.

As well as these basic squares cut from floral prints, framed and turned on end in Jill Orr’s “Prismatic Blooms.”

No matter the pattern, there was something magical about all these quilts swinging from the trees overhead.

And look at this charming dress made from sewing supplies. Project Runway runaway?

Check out the bustle in back!

Looking up at all these gorgeous quilts fluttering in the sky made me want to go home and stitch up my own heavenly patchwork.  Something simple, though.  I’ll let the pros like Judy Mathieson shoot for the “Cosmoti Stars.”