A Quilt Turning

The Clausen Quilts

This has been a red letter week. It has also been a pink polka dot week, a yellow kitten week, and a blue tulip week. On Wednesday evening, Pauline (our “other mother”) arrived with six of her mother's quilts. For you new readers, her mother was Gertrude Clausen, and these are the Clausen Quilts! In my house! I almost had the fire marshal come inspect the place before I let them stay overnight here – the quilts, that is. The rest of us are probably more replaceable.

(Before I go on, let me share another cute thing my younger sister Lora said when she was little. She and my dad were driving home from buying milk at Williams Dairy one day, and they had to stop when they saw Mrs. Clausen, to let her cross the street. Mrs. Clausen didn't see them, and The Barn said to little Lora, “We have to be careful. We don't want to run over Mrs. Clausen.”

“Oh, no, we don't want to do that! I'd rather run over Pauline than run over Mrs. Clausen!”

I can't get enough of those little Lora-isms. But back to the quilts...)

Pauline's dear friend Ellen Kinsinger chauffeured her to my house. When Ellen married in the '70's, she moved onto the farm across the road from “Gertie” Clausen, and she has been close to the family ever since. Ellen's daughter Emily is Pauline's god-daughter, and Pauline gave Emily one of her mother's quilts. It is a Rob Peter To Pay Paul quilt, done in pink and white. Pauline says she remembers her mother working on that one when Pauline herself was just a grade school girl.

Though I knew it was practically impossible, I was sorry that Pauline's sister Thelma wasn't able to come for the quilt turning at my house. It occurred to me that she would miss out on all the fun, so we hastily put together a little memory book. Just about everyone who viewed the quilts signed the book. It was the only thing I could think of for Pauline to take back to Thelma to include her in the fun.

We tucked ourselves into bed Wednesday evening in preparation for The Big Day on Thursday, and awoke early enough to eat a leisurely breakfast and set out the cookies and lemonade. At 9:00 a.m., the appointed hour the quilt turning was to begin, the doorbell rang. By 9:30, there were five women in the house, and we had the quilts spread out in layers over the elongated dining room table. It only took once through the quilts for Pauline and me to get into a rhythm. We noticed we could fold them all, one by one, back towards the north side of the table for about three rounds, then we'd have to fold them similarly towards the south side of the table to equalize the shift in fabric. This technique prevented the quilts from scooting floorward on one side, instead centering them on the table as best we could.

Some of the viewers stayed for an hour or more, remaining through several turnings. We had a lull during the noon hour and the supper hour of about thirty minutes each, but other than that, Pauline and I showed those quilts from 9:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Neither Pauline nor I were bored. We were tired, but we weren't bored.

I didn't know until this viewing that Mrs. Clausen hand-stitched every bit of the quilts, including piecing the muslin on the backs, and the sashing between the blocks on one quilt (Dresden Plate). She even attached the bias binding by hand – yes, you heard me – attached the binding by hand – then by hand again, she laid it down on the back of the quilt. Unreal.

These quilts are rare for many reasons. In the first place, they are made entirely by hand by one quiltmaker. This is a current concern of mine – we aren't making very many quilts from start to finish by one quiltmaker. Quilts from our era of quilting made this way will be rare, too, even if they are machine pieced and/or machine quilted.

Secondly, the six quilts displayed at this turning were all made in the 1970's and 1980's, and for the most part contained fabrics from the 1960's through the early 1980's. There are a few feed sacks in there, but no reproduction fabrics -- they are all original runs. I swear, one of those prints was worn by Lulu in “To Sir With Love”. Her last quilt, the Dresden Plate, was made in 1986 at age 89. Mrs. Clausen lived to be 93-years-old.

At the point in history when these quilts were made, there began a falling away from traditional quilting, and a coming of age of modern quilting. More people were beginning to buy fabric just for the purpose of making a quilt. Calicoes were popular, and big, fluffy polyester batting psyched some into thinking nostalgically of feather beds. For a period, flatter, more traditional batting, was used less often.

None of the fabrics that were used to make the designs in these quilts were bought for the purpose of making a quilt. These fabrics were used in garments, aprons, curtains, pajamas, whatever. Pauline was always sewing and giving her mother fabric. The Peg gave her scraps left over from the Home Ec classes she taught at Charles D. Evans Junior High, and from the garments we made at home. Mrs. Clausen would swap fabric with her neighbors in rural Hedrick, Iowa. By whatever means she collected them, she collected them, then used them artistically in her quilts. Mrs. Clausen did purchase white muslin for the background and alternating blocks, as well as the backing.

Thirdly, these quilts are technically impeccable. Every point is sharp (I kid you not), and the quilts have no waving borders, no bunched-up blocks, no detectable error to the human eye. The potential for error is multiplied by the number of pieces in each block, and the number of blocks and set-in pieces needed to make each queen-sized quilt.

Fourth is the notable design sense of the quiltmaker. Mrs. Clausen would fussy-cut, so that, for instance, the whole pink elephant would be in the Grandmother's Fan “petal”, repeated twice according to her exacting pattern. A butterfly block would have a whole daisy centered into two little one-inch patches, where it fit the pattern of the Butterfly Quilt. 1 1/4" patches in the Postage Stamp quilt contained the words and phrases of their fabric: Hug Me, Kiss, Cool It, Life. The unifying centers of the Dahlia Quilt repeat meticulously throughout the quilt top, though each single dahlia was completed in the same fabric, and the fabric of each isn't repeated again anywhere in the quilt. She integrated dimensional quilting into the Dahlia Quilt, and she didn't appliqué her Grandmother's Fans – they were pieced in background fabric to the end of the block. She added black embroidered antennae onto the butterfly blocks, equi-distance apart so that she could handquilt a flower motif in the background three times; once on either side of the antennae and once between the antennae.

I can watch a fire for hours, flames dancing seductively across my unwaivering gaze, popping noises heard yet going unnoticed. Oceans and lake waters soothe me. I watch them journey in and out, back and forth, sensing both a free motion and a mission. These quilts do the same thing – I looked at them non-stop, all day, repeatedly, and they changed, they danced, they popped, they journeyed. I became an honorary Clausen. It was pure joy.

Plans are in the works to make these quilts available for more viewings. I will post here when they will be shown again, and when Pauline and Thelma will be at the showing. We won't put them through the exhausting day Pauline had here on June 23, 2005, but if you come to the viewing, you will get to meet them, see their mother's quilts, and feel like an honorary Clausen, too.

Thank you, Pauline, the Onerheim Other Mother whom we all love dearly, for sharing your mother's quilts. And next time, we'll be sure Thelma is there, too.

Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns June 2005

Ties That Bind

Sorry for the cliché title. It's the best I could do under the circumstances, and it's my hope that it will fake you into thinking there might be some quilty content, like tying a quilt or attaching a binding. The real situation is that I'll be on the road this weekend, so I have to sacrifice my usual Saturday post. I'm trying to fit in a word or two between quilting classes at church (two sections of “Dancing on the Head of a Pin...” started today/Wednesday) and baking a cake for my flute choir. I'll slap this up sometime before I leave on Friday morning at 6:00 a.m.

We silver flute tooters are playing our last gig of the season Thursday evening, and plan to pig out on some uber-chocolate cake as a reward. I may or may not have told you, but cake is my favorite food, though I don't even think it is officially a food. Regardless, while I'm at church anyway with the dang quilters, I may as well discuss eating the cake with one of the pastors. I may need some sort of pre-absolution. I have an “in” with one of them, because I baked this cake for his last birthday, and he didn't bat an eye as he glommed it down. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Hubba visibly relaxed and enjoyed his piece after assessing Pastor Bryan's reaction. Up until then, I think Hubba assumed I was walking on the edge. Making and eating this particular cake rates quite high on the sin-o-meter.

The road trip is a new tradition my younger sister Lora and I cooked up with The Barn. Last summer we accompanied him to Madison, Minnesota, for the 125th anniversary of Minnesota Valley Lutheran Church. In 1997, he and I traveled alone back to Madison for the same celebration at Borgund Lutheran Church. Both churches are situated among the prairie farms outside of Madison proper, in southwest Minnesota. Grandpa and Grandma Onerheim moved to Madison from Big Timber, Montana, when The Barn (known in those days as "Bun") was three-years-old, and they lived there until he was well out of the family nest. Grandpa had both of these congregations, and they are served by one pastor yet today. These were Norwegian Synod churches (Norwegian Lutheran Church of America), and Grandpa presided there when the decision was made to discontinue singing the hymns in Norwegian. Those were dicey times.

A picture on the wall of our library was taken at “The 2nd Extraordinary Convention. Norwegian Lutheran Church of American (sic), Minneapolis, June 1922.” My dad would have been five-years-old at the time. This is one of those yard-long panoramic photos, and there must be as least 500 people who posed for it. When I finally located him in the photograph, Grandpa Onerheim is in the dead center. Figures.

Madison provides the setting for a great deal of Onerheim lore. Like the time my Aunt Ruth asked to perform for the congregation a new poem she had learned. “Yah, shoor, let's hear what Ruthie has memorized.” She bounded to the steps that lead up to the altar, in the front of the white-frame church, before every attentive and eager Nordic eye, Reverend Onerheim's precocious blond daughter.

“I am a little Dutchman and I like to drink beer
'til my belly sticks clear out to here!”

Uh, okay, you can sit down now, Ruthie... I don't think you were even supposed to say “belly” in the Norwegian Synod.

This is also where my dad remembers playing under the quilt frame in the parlor, as I mentioned before. I've seen the house, with the room upstairs where the widowed Grandma Snorteland would come to spend winters with my dad's family. Grandpa Onerheim fixed up a bedroom for her, and even put a little mock kitchen in it so she felt as though she had a place of her own. The six kids made do with the other bedrooms somehow, and whenever The Barn has related the story, he never indicates that anyone felt put out with the arrangement. To the contrary.

Aunt Margarette's misfortune happened in Madison. She became “an invalid”. A bicycle ran over her toe, and she contracted osteomyelitis. The Barn told us that if it happened today (today being when we were young), a shot of penicillin would probably have taken care of the whole problem. Instead, Aunt Margarette spent most of her life battling the effects of this minor incident. One leg stopped growing altogether, and she always wore a built-up shoe that my dad had the prisoners in Fort Madison, Iowa, make. Her hip joints and the elbow on her right arm froze, and she was never able to bend them again. She walked slightly bent over, and when she sat, her legs jutted out from the long skirts she wore to mask her condition. She taught piano lessons for years, but as she played, she needed to bend into the piano on her right side to accommodate her resistant arm.

One day I was looking through some old family photographs. I found one with about ten or a dozen young people. They were all dressed fashionably for the day, the girls with the requisite monster bow on whichever side of their heads was opposite the parts in their hair. Some of the kids were reclining, and I noticed some were sitting in what, at second look, were wheelchairs. As I studied this curious picture, I noticed a young Aunt Margarette on a bed. When I asked my dad what this picture was, he said, “Oh, that's Margarette's confirmation class. She was confirmed at the Home for Hopelessly Crippled Children.” The moment that comment was made is indelible in my memory, and my respect remains for the courage of my maiden aunt, as she negotiated through the years of society's shame. Aunt Margarette died when she was in her mid-eighties, and I joined The Barn for her funeral in Brookings, South Dakota. It was the first time in my life I saw him cry, another permanent imprint for my mind's eye.

Lora and I are the two offspring to remain in Iowa. We just like it here. You'd think we would hang out together all the time, considering we are two hours apart, and the other three siblings are in Boston, North Carolina, and Seattle. Alas, our schedules and the schedules of our own offspring have almost always prevented it. Last summer, when the three of us had so much fun on the Madison trip, we made a pact to take a summer jaunt together as long as we could.

The youngest two, Lora and I grew up under the diminutive dual moniker of “the little girls”. Honestly. There are all of eight years between my oldest brother Paul and my younger sister Lora. "The little girls”, indeed. Big whoop. When Paul introduced us to his girlfriend-now-wife Carol, she was dumbfounded. We were teenagers to Paul's twenty-oneness. “I thought you said they were little!”

Lora was awful cute. Still is, but when she was little, she was precious-cute. There were the blond braids held in place with the aid of “Suave”. I didn't know what “Suave” was, but it came in a bottle, and when The Peg or Mrs. Lester would put it in Lora's hair, her braids didn't fall apart so fast. Braids, with little short bangs fringing high on her forehead. I felt very protective of her, and my heart broke 180 times when I was in the first grade. I had to leave her every day outside the kindergartner's door at Wildwood Elementary, to fend without me. That pang of duty remains.

The Peg always did things to make each of us feel special. She and Lora would play “The Crazies”. Lora was devoted to our mother from the earliest age until Mom's unexpected death in 2002. As a youngster, she wanted to be physically close to her mama, as well, and she needed The Peg to engage with her on every level. She and our mother would embrace, and they would roll over and over onto the bouncy bed, singing and laughing together, “We are The Crazies, we are The Crazies!” Joyful memories, happy sounds heard from another room.

Lora was learning cause and effect relationships, probably around age five or six. Being the youngest, she didn't have the opportunity to think for herself very often. As I hearken back on this, she must have found it quite annoying to have two brothers and two sisters make so many decisions for her. It was such a profound aggravation, I think she steels herself against it even now. She wanted to figure things out for herself, but that was pretty tough when somebody not even a head taller than she provided solutions without solicitation. Sometimes she just kept things to herself; that way, she could go from start to finish and figure out how and why something happened. For me, it could be knee-slapping hilarious, if not some of the cutest stuff I'd ever heard!

“Mama, my stomach hurts. Do you think it's because I licked all the frost off the windows?”

Tummy aches were often the cause of her pondering. My personal favorite was:

“Mama, my stomach hurts. Do you think it's because I sucked on those tea bags in the sink?”

These days, Lora purposely cracks me up. She has a delightful sense of humor, and a take on life that is distinctly her own.

Early this Friday morning I'll meet my sister and The Barn in Hampton, and we'll head north on I35, picking up I90 once we're inside Minnesota. We're skipping Madison this year. Instead, we're going to our great-grandparent's farm, spending the first night of our second-year traditional escape in Watertown, South Dakota. We Onerheims don't mess around when it comes to getting from Point A to Point B. Seven straight hours on the road is child's play.

We'll scope out the entire area, where ever the farm is, and get more memories from The Barn about his generation. Our lodgings Saturday night are in Brookings. The First Lutheran Church there was Grandpa Onerheim's last call, and Aunt Margarette lived in Brookings her remaining years. We will go to church there on Sunday morning, and later visit the final resting places of The Reverend and Mrs. L.O. Onerheim and their daughter Margarette, the piano teacher. Aunt Margarette, whose simple life bore the pain and courage of the cross she had to bear, and on whose back we eventually learned compassion and appreciation for our own simple lives.

So, off we go. I'll do my best to remember some of The Barn's stories. They are always so rich. I'll keep my eyes open for anything fabric, and perhaps next week I'll provide a real Threadquarters report, one that actually mentions something quilt-related.

I got you with the stupid title, though, didn't I?

Copyright © June 2005 Kari E.O. Burns

Paving the Road to H-E-Double Hockey Sticks: Dancing and The Bad Words

I recently mentioned that I did a “jubilant lint dance” (Look Ma, No Hoop). At about the same time I wrote that, my pastor and I had been in cahoots to get a quilting group going at our church, Decorah Lutheran. We are a fairly large congregation for a small community, and there are actually members who don't know each other. Before I lived in a small town, I found that an impossibility, but Decorah is just above the break even point for that particular preconceived notion. I used to teach school at Turkey Valley, Jackson Junction, Iowa, population around twenty-five, give or take. I'm pretty sure they all know each other. (As an aside, one of my favorite things about teaching at Turkey Valley was being asked, “Where do you teach?” and I'd say, “Turkey Valley.” I loved that.)

The current trend in larger churches is to organize small groups, so that members feel more connected within the congregation. Hubba and I have been involved in the small group process at our church, and we absolutely love the experience. Neither of us are shrinking violets – far from it – but up until the whole small group thing started, our church involvement included things like teaching Sunday school and confirmation, or serving on the church council. We kept busy, but we weren't really connected to our fellow, as in fellowship, Decorah Lutherans. Drinking coffee between services works for some, but that usually happened while we were busy with other things.

We have had a great group of women quilters for years, or at least ever since Sarah Anderson and her husband retired to Decorah, and she organized them. They make quilts for Lutheran World Relief. These women meet religiously (get it?) every Tuesday from September through May for “Do Day”, working the whole day and stopping only for a brief potluck luncheon. They gather fabric that hasn't been used for other things, and sew it together in various utile configurations, making a top and a back. Batting is donated, the fabric sandwiches are pinned and tied, and each year they make around 205 quilts to send to whomever needs them, worldwide, via Lutheran World Relief. In addition to that, they send lots of quilts to many other worthy causes locally. It is a wonderment to see them put their loving, caring hearts into action.

The new quilting group is designed for those who desire learning traditional quilting techniques and skills. Our first “class” will commence this summer, and we're calling it “Organic Cotton”. We aren't using organic cotton, but the group is going to design and make a quilt that will be sold for the benefit of our organ fund. Nyuk, nyuk. Fabric humor. Pastor Glesne asked me to come up with a logo and a name for the group, and the first thing that popped into my head was “Dancing on the Head of a Pin”. Quilting makes me feel like dancing, a revelation that only compounds my dork status with The Dot. Who wouldn't want to be one of the angels “Dancing on the Head of a Pin”?

Once I got the name out of the way, it was time to work on the logo. Hmmmm. That would require some ability to draw, and stick people are a specialty of mine. They're perfect when you want to be genderless, so I decided to make a dancing stick person. I couldn't bring myself to do that little ballerina twirl-thingie kind of look. That is so predictable, which is what many of us quilters struggle with in the first place. Predictable, boring, colorless, stodgy -- you know the story. This stick person would be dancing on the head of a pin, but it didn't have to reach for the heavens. How redundant. It goes without saying that we all thank heaven from the very cores of our quilty beings.

Then I got to thinking, Richard Gere played King David in the movie, King David (clever title). When King David came into the city, he d-a-n-c-e-d. Richard's King David boogied down so seriously that I still remember how much fun he appeared to be having. In the movie Footloose, Kevin Bacon's character included the passage from the Bible of David's dancing in his plea for the senior class to hold a (horrors) prom. Richard came in looking for all the world like one of the Jets from West Side Story.

“When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way...”

Crouched down, knees bent just so, feet moving to the music, arms down and fingers snapping. Coo-ool. I had our logo. Add a wing on the back of my bent-over, finger-snapping stick person, and the Lint Dance was born. You may note that it comes with a whole raft of justifications from the movie industry. Perhaps that's where my preconceived-notion-sickness originates.

We quilters can only hope to battle the stereotype of being a little too randy. The dancing bit helps. So what if we have to earn that one in the church basement? It makes it all the more in-your-face liberating! There was a point in history when the Lutheran church didn't allow (horrors) dancing. Members were discouraged from that wickedness altogether, and doing it in a church basement was completely off the table. I'm sure there are still some who find us on the edge of a very slippery slope.

“When you can quilt, you can quilt all the way...”

There remains one more bawdy fruit of the sect to address -- quilter language. I always wondered why I knew certain words, and then I started quilting. Setting in pieces, like an Attic Window, or a Carolina Lily, or La Moyne Star, was when I made this discovery -- I actually need those words! They come in quite handy, and it's a test of character not to use them. Seriously, when you have less than a fat quarter left of your inspiration fabric, and you discovered you measured wrong after you cut, what do you say? “Gee good golly” doesn't exactly leap off your tongue, and what escapes often results in a quick scan of your ear-shot space to see who heard it, followed by a repentant, “Sorry, God.”

Now that we will be “dancing” in the church basement, perhaps I can get some help for this frailty of the flesh. Confession is good for the soul, and I will be within spitting distance of the sanctuary. I find I do meditate while quilting, and the chance to commiserate with other experienced quilters, along with being an example to the newbies, may encourage me, and lead me back to the light. I will be fortified in my effort to replace the words I shouldn't know in the first place, and the road to you-know-where may take a detour. I'm already well practiced in “dang” and “dag-nabbit”, two of my favorite, if not overused, replacements.

Quilting is good for the spirit and good for the soul. Dancing is no longer a sin, and there is room in the church basement for the redemption of quilter language. I'll bring along the book Bad Girls of the Bible so we can all compare notes with what chicks did back in the day. I hope we'll learn that grace means God will not abandon those who dance on the head of a pin.

Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns June 2005

Look, Ma, No Hoop!

Life is a journey, so bring your quilting. When you think you have mastered a technique, someone out there can improve on it, or supply a hint to expand what you're doing. Learning from one another is invaluable, so don't be put off by those who tsk, tsk any method out of hand. Sometimes I get it because I quilt on my lap without a hoop or a frame. “Tsk, tsk. You really should learn to use a frame.” I did. I have tried a quilt frame and various sized hoops, but prefer other methods.

A Q-snapTM floor frame was an early quilt-career purchase, made before I pieced a single quilt. You may remember I told you before that “I have always suffered from attaching myself to preconceived notions” (Little Tiny Pieces, April 2005). I figured quilting meant using a frame, and I envisioned little kids playing under it as I stitched away. The Barn told me he remembered playing under the frame whilst Grandma and the ladies from Grandpa's church would stitch in the parlor. Before I started quilting, I read enough to have had this image introduced me to from other sources, as well. My own children were too big to fit under there, so I mentally listed qualifying youngsters, noting who demonstrated the ability to play quietly for extended periods.

Years before, I stitched a panel of cheater cloth in an embroidery hoop, which wasn't tough for me because of my embroidery training as an infant. No lie, I do not remember when I started doing this stuff. The Peg was a signature mom for someone like me. My only recollection of the foray with cheater cloth was discovering that it can be boring to stitch something I didn't create.

Along came “First Try”, my first real quilt. She's a piece of crap, but making her served its purpose, and I love the awkward little thing. I still use her as my nap quilt, my fabric pride and joy. I hand-basted her, taking half a day, then I rigged her up onto the Q-SnapTM. I had arrived. I officially considered myself a quilter, and subbed in our Yorkies as the kids playing under the frame. They sat there, quiet and contentedly close me, as I stitched away.

Here's the part that is so bonkers it must be true, so Kari-with-her-preconceived-notions. I was taking tiny stitches, straight and even. But, wait! Legend dictates that it takes years of stitching to get small, even stitches. Everyone knows that! So, I took them out and made bigger stitches. Really. I did that. Morgan, The Dot, as we call her – she was never very big, so it seemed like appropriate shorthand for “daughter” -- had started calling me “dork” by the time she was nine. It dawns on me now why she was forced into that position. I am a dork. The next quilt I made I went ahead and used little stitches. I just got too tired of taking them out and replacing them with the bigger ones. Dork.

Though I felt Grandma Onerheim beside me at the frame, it isolated me from the rest of the world. I was stuck at home with the Yorkies, quilting alone and without chatter. I knew Darlene had a smaller Q-SnapTM frame at The Sewing Basket , so I graduated down to one that was about 11” by 14”. Perfecto-mundo! This was just what I was looking for to complete the quilt project I recently pieced in an actual quilt class. A pinwheel design, I was planning to give it The Touch that would make it specific to my in-laws, two of my best friends for over thirty years. The new, smaller Q-SnapTM frame was suited for the task.

My next dilemma became the time I spent moving the quilt in the hoop-type frame. Yowsa! That was a drag! I can cover a lot of territory when I sit down to quilt, and the time it took to move the quilt was a lot less fun than actually stitching it. What's a person to do? I wanted to avoid any tucking on the backing that broadcast me as a novice. Stitch, move, stitch, move.

Neil and Judith's quilt was obscenely big for a beginner. It took me over eleven hours just to hand baste it, a task I found frustrating because I knew those basting stitches were eventually coming out, anyway, but – ya gotta baste. It was the tuck quagmire. With their quilt, I removed the little Q-SnapTM frame altogether, and took my chances on the tucks. I think there are a few back there, but I reveled in the freedom of movement and design. I loved not having to deal with the hoop or the frame, and I decided I'd trade off a few tucks for the chance to be me with the needle and thread.

Free motion quilting on the machine was the next signpost on my journey. A friend and I drove the two hours to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the class. It was held at West Side Sewing (http://www.westsidesewing.com/) and taught by Doris Day! Okay, it wasn't Doris Day, it was Dianne Day, but she is a really pretty blond lady, so we called her Doris. I found out I didn't like free motion quilting, and that I'd rather spend my time quilting by hand. As it turns out, free motion isn't much of a shortcut or a time saver. It is difficult and requires a great deal of skill to do it right. As you know by now, my relationship with machines is somewhat tenuous. Spread the word that we should all respect those who “cheat” and quilt with their machines. It is a trial of dexterity and strength, and not many can do it well. Another preconceived notion out the window.

But Doris hepped me to something new in the quilting world: Sullivan's Quilt Basting Spray! It comes in a pink and white hairspray-sized can, an answer to my prayers. I bonded my next quilt together using my new friend, Sullivan's (here's where you can find the directions:
http://www.sullivans.net/usa/Pages/usa/sprays/quilt/dir.htm), and then did a jubilant lint dance. I love you, Doris Day.

I'm eager to share the wealth, too. When I'm in public and stitching a quilt in my lap, invariably a quilter will emerge from the mists and want to know what I'm doing.

“How does the quilt stay together like that? What did you do?”

“I use Sullivan's Quilt Basting Sp-raaaaay!” It's a sing-song type response. The “spray” part is like a “ta-daaaaaaa”! Try it with me: “Sullivan's Quilt Basting Sp-raaaaay!” I am June Cleaver, extolling the princely shine I get on my appliances using Acme cleaning solution. I am Madge the Manicurist, proclaiming the wonders of Palmolive. I have been handed the key to NoTucksVille. I am Quilter. I use Sullivan's Quilt Basting Sp-raaaaay!”

The newest member of the Piecemakers quilt guild in southeastern Minnesota is moi. I showed them a quilt I had worked on, a monster of king-sized dimensions, and mentioned how hard it is to quilt one that big, since I do it on my lap without a hoop or a frame.

“How do you do it, then, if you don't use a hoop or a frame?”

“I use Sullivan's Quilt Basting Sp-raaaaay!” I gave them the whole commercial. I wish I'd worn my pearls.

You don't always learn what you set out to learn. The journey takes you down unexpected paths, and as you follow, your mind expands. As a matter of fact, have I told you that a Q-SnapTM floor frame makes a dandy quilt rack? It's a safe, non-wood way to display the quilts you didn't stitch on it. Sturdy in construction and high-tech in appearance, I routinely recommend the handy Q-SnapTM frame to all my friends...

Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns June 2005