My word processing program does not recognize the word “quiltmaker”. I think this belittles quiltmakers everywhere, so as I did with Hubba, I trained it to be a little more respectful of our talents. “Quiltmaker” is now added to my word processing program's dictionary, and hopefully we won't have that problem anymore.
My Number One lint peeve is people calling quilts blankets – the sound of it makes my hair curl. Since I already have curly hair, I wind up with a real case of the frizzies. Interesting... when I typed in “frizzies”, I discovered my word processing program doesn't recognize that word, either. Great -- quiltmakers are relegated to the same category as having the dang frizzies. Does that blow, or what?
My word processor has no problem at all with blanket. I mean no disrespect to blankets. We own a major Amana wool blanket, a treasured gift from The Barn and The Peg. In the early years of our marriage, they made a special trip to the Amana Colonies (www.amanacolonies.com) to purchase it for us. My parents shop for quality first, but getting a good price runs a very close second. They always kept a running list of needs, and when they found something on the needs list at a fabulous price, their feelings of good luck and cleverness only enhanced the joy of their reward.
You can't get much more Midwestern than having an Amana wool blanket. Made at the Amana Woolen Mill (www.amanawoolenmill.com), they are of superior quality in material, design, and construction. Ours is huge and warm, and if I didn't already sleep with a furnace (one of Hubba's countless talents), I would most likely use it on all of our Northeast Iowa winter nights. We have used it often, though. Our whole family could cuddle under it during impromptu film festivals in the family room.
The Amana Colonies are a good source of both blankets and quilts. Heritage Designs Needlework and Quilting Supplies is a great place to start. It's in Amana, which is also called Main Amana. The Amana Colonies include Amana, South Amana, East Amana, West Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana, and Homestead. Homestead didn't stand a chance when it came to naming the Amana Colonies – they were probably just glad to be included at all.
At Heritage Designs, quiltmakers may stop in to buy fabric, but once inside they get a bonus jolt of inspiration. The fabric choices there say, “See for yourself what you can do with me.” Even if you stopped in for something specific, you may wind up buying several yards of unique fabric or fat quarters. The other needlework supplies available there will take you out of blind fabric mode, and challenge you to do more with your abilities and possibilities. Places like Heritage Designs are the reason so many quilters have over-developed purchase justification skills.
Other places in the Amanas interest the fabric junkie, too. A trip to the Woolen Mill throws in an appreciation of wool and their weaving process. I own a knitting machine, and once attended a knitting machine conference in the Amana Colonies. Quilts are a focus of decorating at Fern Hill Gifts and Quilts in South Amana, where non-quilters have an opportunity to buy handmade quilts by Iowa quiltmakers. The Amanas is one of the few sources where the consumer can buy highly crafted quilts, made from start to finish by one quiltmaker, at bargain basement prices. Some of the quilts there, and at other handmade quilt retail locations, might have been made by a group of people, so I recommend you ask about the history and making of the handmade quilts you purchase if you're interested in a quilt made by one quiltmaker.
Amish Quilts, with both the “A” and the “Q” capitalized, denotes a quilting style dating back to the the Amish in the 1870's, the earliest we can be sure the Amish were quilting. They used very rudimentary styles, usually whole cloth quilts in brown, blue, or black, and they stitched designs on them. Eventually, they added more solid colored fabric to their pieces, in simple designs that create a simultaneous effect of regimented simplicity and free-flowing form.
Amish quilts, with only the “A” in Amish capitalized, applies to quilts made by Amish people. They aren't necessarily Amish Quilts, made of solid colored fabrics, but sometimes they are. Because of the assumption that the Amish do things the old-fashioned way, their handwork is greatly sought by non-threadies. A little more information may help the unmercerized to better understand what they are getting.
It has been said that just because you are Amish doesn't mean you can quilt worth a hoot. Many of the Amish-made quilts for sale are practice sessions for youngsters learning how to stitch (which is wonderful), or they are stitched together by groups of quilters, not by just one quiltmaker. Again, this is wonderful, and buyers should ask for this kind of information when purchasing a quilt. The buyer should also be aware that many Amish quiltmakers use fabric that is a cotton-polyester blend, rather than 100% cotton, and they frequently use polyester batting. These quilts are warm, and fabric with polyester in it doesn't fade as fast as 100% cotton, but polyester is plastic, and that affects the ability of the quilt to breathe when one sleeps under it. It can get a little uncomfortable sleeping under a piece of plastic.
Cotton-polyester blend fabric and polyester batting are less expensive to purchase than their 100% cotton counterparts. A quilter's eye can tell if there is polyester in the fabric or the batting, but there is also a test to determine the same. If you light a match and burn a raw edge of fabric, the cotton-polyester blends will melt, and the 100% fabric will leave an ash. Obviously, you can't do the burn test on quilts in a quilt shop, so it is best to ask for verification and/or a guarantee of the fabric contents if you want to avoid polyester.
As for stitching, I don't believe that tiny stitches alone are the mark of a fabulous quilter. I take tiny stitches because I like that look for its rarity and uniqueness in some of my quilts. Taking tiny stitches also requires very dense quilting, and quilts that employ tiny stitches also have lots of stitches in them. Not everyone chooses to take that amount of time on every quilt, and I will occasionally opt for using perle cotton and larger stitches. It is equally impressive when quilts have less stitching, the stitches are a bit larger, and the stitching is noticeably even. Even stitches are the mark of an experienced and skillful quilter, not merely tiny ones. Avid hand stitchers frequently make Amish Quilts, because the solid colored fabrics are an excellent canvas to demonstrate stitching skills, whether the stitches are small and even, or a little larger and even.
Let's journey back to the Amana Colonies. I know a woman here in Northeast Iowa who makes quilts to sell there. Believe me, buyers of her quilts are getting a deal. The hours and expertise involved in making them are barely reimbursed, which must limit how many quiltmakers of her caliber will sell their creations at the relatively low return on their investment of time, proficiency and materials. Most likely buyers look at the price of their Amana Woolen Mill blanket and consider the quilts' sticker prices are exorbitant in comparison. These quiltmakers have the same number of hours in a day as the rest of us, and if it takes 200 hours to make a quilt that brings $600, the quiltmaker earns $3 an hour. 200 hours is five forty-hour weeks of work. Divide $600 by five, and the quiltmaker earns $120 a week. That income drops considerably when you remove material costs, which can easily be $100-150 per queen-sized quilt. I've even heard quilt piecers say they paid a “pretty penny” to have their quilt tops hand stitched. If it takes 150 hours to hand stitch a quilt, and they pay the “pretty penny” of $200, the hourly rate is $1.33, or $53.20 for a forty-hour week. A hidden sacrifice for the quiltmaker is the time that could have been spent on his or her own designs.
The woman I know who sells her quilts in the Amanas has at least twenty-five years of quilting experience. She is a stylish blond with a trim figure, great posture, and a real eye for fabric combinations. She only uses the best of fabric, most often bought in our area quilt shops in order to support the local quilting economy. She employs all kinds of quilting techniques, including machine- and hand-appliqué, and she pieces slowly and accurately by machine. She hand stitches her quilts, and her work is precise and even. Self-critical, she will re-do things until she gets them right. To say it takes her 200 hours to make a queen-sized quilt is an understatement, not an exaggeration.
Amana wool blankets also use the best materials and the best construction methods. Let's estimate on the long side that it takes about forty-five minutes to make an entire blanket on the machine-looms they use to weave them, but we'll stretch the whole process out to four full hours per blanket in order to amortize the cost of the big loom. A queen-sized blanket of merino wool is $159.95. You do the math. Once the amortization schedule on the loom passes, the profits are even greater. We quiltmakers don't bother to amortize our quilting betweens.
Just when I think I have my distaste for hearing quilts called blankets under control, someone will look at a quilt and say something like, “That's pretty, but I have a real nice Hudson Bay blanket. Do you want to see it?” It starts all over again. My back stiffens, my peripheral vision darkens, and my hair begins to frizz. I don't mean to invite class warfare, but you'd hope what a quiltmaker does was appreciated by living, breathing people more than it is by a word processing program. In the same vein, insurance companies will only insure or reimburse against the cost of the materials, making a beautiful handmade quilt, made from start to finish by one quiltmaker, equal to a good blanket, like an Amana wool. I suppose if you bought a handmade quilt for $600 and kept the receipt, a homeowner's policy would reimburse for the purchase price, less depreciation. I'm afraid the one I made as a gift for The Barn and The Peg is probably only worth $100, or less, today. I'd get more for my Amana wool, without a doubt.
I encourage you to take a trip to the Amana Colonies and check out the Amana Woolen Mill. You'll love their blankets – they're the best money can buy. If you get to one of the shops that sells real handmade quilts by Iowa quiltmakers, ask about the people who made them. There is something more Midwestern than having an Amana wool blanket. A handmade Midwestern quilt is hard to top.
Copyright © October 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
Richard Nixon Lived Here, Too
Can you name Radar O’Reilly’s hometown? That’s a little Iowa trivia that doesn’t escape the natives, and for those who hail from Ottumwa, it is our most common identifier.
“Where are you from?”
“Ottumwa.”
“Ottumwa? Oh, yeah! Radar O’Reilly’s hometown!”
Once people find out there really is an Ottumwa, they naturally assume there really is a Radar O’Reilly. I haven’t found a graceful way to answer the questions, “Did you know him?”, and “Does any of his family still live there?” without sounding condescending.
“Well, see, Radar O’Reilly isn’t a real person. He was a character from M*A*S*H, and they randomly chose Ottumwa as his hometown. Maybe it’s because we have a former naval airbase here, which is home to the world’s largest swimming pool. Hey now, there’s a piece of history for you. Do you know why we have the world's larg…”
“Radar really was from Ottumwa, though. It's right at the beginning of the book. Didn’t he become a congressman, or something?”
“That was Fred Grandy. He played Gopher on The Love Boat.”
“Oh. What happened to Radar, then?” And they call us yokels. The swimming pool story is a lot more interesting.
I grew up in Ottumwa, in the southeast quadrant of the state. We aren’t that far from the Missouri border, close enough for the locals to have adopted the southern twang that colors Missourian vowels, especially the “ou”, the “ow”, and the “aw” sounds, along with the short “u”. When we go downtown, we go daaown-taaown. We worsh our clothes, and as a part of our lawn care routines, we occasionally trim the boooshes when they get shaggy.
While limestone gravel awaits its harvest below the surface in my northeast Iowa home of Decorah, the coal has already been mined around my southeast Iowa roots of Ottumwa. In our history classes at Wildwood Elementary, we studied the great Coal Palace that once graced our community, a shrine to and of the black rock that, for a time, was our economic mainstay.
The Mondanaro’s house burned down in the mid-60’s, and the fire was blamed on their coal furnace. Marian, my best friend in high school, said it was her brother Jim’s job to shovel the coal into the furnace before bedtime in the winter, and when she would touch the wall that abutted her bed, it felt hot.
Marian’s Italian father, Joe Mondanaro, was originally from Jersey City, New Jersey, which he pronounced “Joisey City, New Joisey”. It was our naval airbase that brought him to Ottumwa -- he trained scuba divers in the gi-gundo swimming pool there. Once he was here, Joe became an active and colorful member of the community, with a houseful of kids by his Irish wife Phyllis; Jane, Peggy, Jim, Marian, Steve, Gina, Chris, and John. He must have loved living in the Midwest, and remained here until his untimely death from cancer in 2003.
Joe never did switch from his Joisey accent to the Missouri twang, though. In the fall of the year they moved to our neighborhood, he was observing the migrating birds that rested in our treetops as they made their ways from the north to their winter homes. The trees would be thick with them, and it was fun to clap two boards together and watch them scatter en masse from the maple trees.
“Hey, goils!" he hollered to Marian and me from the front porch. “Come out here and look at these boids!”
No, you wouldn’t have heard him saying, “Our new haaouse is on the Saaouth Side.”
The Ottumwa Courier featured the story of the blaze that destroyed their home, and the unusual living arrangements for the surviving family of ten. Right after the fire, the Mondanaros found refuge at The Heights, a Roman Catholic junior college for women. They closed off an entire floor of the residence hall, and moved all ten of them in there. Before long, they found a house to rent on the South Side, on Quincy Avenue, just two doors down from us, and Marian and I became solid buddies. We have one of those talk-every-decade-or-so-but-still-have-fun kind of soul-sisterhoods. I know there were times in high school when we laughed so hard we just about wet ourselves. It set the tone for a lifetime.
Ralph and Pauline Kirkland lived just a few blocks east of Quincy Avenue, on Appanoose. Across the street from them were Harold and Stephie Johnson. Harold and the three kids went to First Lutheran, the same as the Kirklands and we Onerheims. Stephie went to mass at St. Pat’s, but we all thought she was still pretty nice. Harold had a tenor voice that turned heads when he sang hymns during the 8:30 service at First Lutheran. "Ricky" is the only one if their kids I see anymore – I don’t even know for sure where the other two are, but Rick’s in Ottumwa.
We were having the Ottumwa showing of The Clausen Quilts this weekend at Pennsylvania Place on the North Side. It’s a retirement community, and The Barn and The Peg moved into their independent living unit ten years ago, when it was brand new. Pauline moved there about a year ago, just after Ralph died. Rick Johnson gave his eulogy, I played my flute, and my sister Jeanie did the readings. Our two families considered ourselves the “Kirkland Kids” -- they had quite a passel of us! Thelma Johnson, Pauline’s sister, has lived there several years, too, so I usually get to see both Thelma and Pauline when I visit Ottumwa. Thelma entrusted me with a large collection of Mrs. Clausen’s hand embroidered pillowcases and dresser scarves several years ago. It’s an awesome responsibility – they are like gold to all of us.
I heard a voice, booming from the foyer of Pennsylvania Place. “You went to Pickwick? I went to Wildwood, so that means we both went to Evans Junior High.”
Huh? Who went to Wildwood? I went to Wildwood… and I scurried to peer over the quilt-draped railing to the foyer below.
“Oh, it’s Ricky! Hi, Rick!”
“Hi, Kari. I was just telling Lea Ann [Mercer nee' Joseph, who went to Pickwick] here about how well Polly could sew.”
The Johnsons always called Pauline, “Polly”. It’s their special thing.
“I tell you, she could sew suits that looked like they came right out of Vogue. She sewed everything she wore, and she looked like a million bucks every day. I don’t know if Thelma could sew, but Polly could. I don’t know if Polly could quilt, but she could sew just about anything to wear.”
I love to listen to Rick talk. He threads ideas and observations together into a verbal quilt.
“But Polly’s mom, well, everyone knew Polly’s mom could sew quilts and clothes, and she sewed those quilts by hand, every little tiny stitch.” Rick advanced from the foyer to elevator, where he pooshed the button for the first floor and headed for the boardroom, where the rest of the quilts were set up for showing. We had a fine talk, sharing memories about the quilts, and catching up on bits and pieces of the last thirty years since we lived on Quincy Avenue and Appanoose.
Behind our house, across the alley in a house facing Hackworth Avenue, was where Debbie Stubbs lived. One day The Peg was cleaning up after lunch when she told me a new little girl had moved into the neighborhood, and she was just my age. “After I finish with these dishes, we’ll go over and meet her.” I was a pre-schooler, and it took a long time for her to finish those dishes.
Debbie was inside the house with her mother Doris, who was unpacking. There were boxes and furniture strewn about, so she and Debbie came outside for our introduction. The Peg and Doris talked right along, and I remember Doris saying Debbie was shy. I didn’t know what a shy was, but if Debbie was one, I wanted to be one, too. Obviously, the shy thing never took hold with me.
I loved my new friend instantly, and we spent most of our time together for the next five years. We were best friends, a relationship that defined the term for me. To this day, you are my best friend if I love you as much as I love Debbie Stubbs.
We started kindergarten together, and have the first-day-of-school pictures to prove it, both of us in plaid school dresses with hoop slips underneath, holding those manila envelopes that held construction paper and a new box of eight fat crayons.
One spring The Peg made us fancy matching red and white organza dresses, with big red organza “butterfly bows” that tied in the back. In appreciation, Doris bought us matching red and white shorts outfits. Since The Peg made all of our clothes, this was the first store bought outfit I remember owning. I went with Debbie and her mom when we bought them. It was all very foreign to me, shopping for clothes in a store in daaown-taaown Ottumwa.
Debbie moved a couple of miles away when we were in the second grade. She didn’t go to Wildwood anymore; now she lived across the street from Pickwick. I got a flute for my birthday right after Debbie left, and I started learning to play. The regular kids, whose dads weren’t the band director, had to wait until the summer after fourth grade to get their instruments. Not me. I took lessons from Cindy Cline, who didn’t live all that far from Debbie’s new house. Later, in the fourth grade, Debbie chose to play the flute, too, and we were in band together until we graduated from high school in nineteen-none-of-your-dang-business.
Debbie helped out at my wedding reception, and then I never saw her again. She got married, I didn’t know her last name, her dad died, her mom got sick, and we lost track of each other. She was probably too shy to look for me. It was a slipped-through-the cracks problem, where the stars were never in the right alignment to connect with her. I could never forget her, because she was my first best friend.
Dorothy Benson lives across the hall from The Barn at Pennsylvania Place. Dorothy taught kindergarten at Anne G. Wilson Elementary, on the North Side. Pickwick and Wildwood are both on the South Side. Marian Mondanaro had Mrs. Benson for kindergarten, and their house that burned down was a short walk from Anne G. Wilson. When I was writing this blog entry, there were some details I wanted to check out about the fire, and the living arrangements afterwards. Did the Mondanaros live at Walsh, the Catholic high school, or was it the Heights, the Catholic college? I thought Dorothy might remember, so I walked across the hall to ask. She didn’t remember the story, but she had a treasure to share with me – an address book of dear old OHS alumni. Marian had moved since the book was printed, and I didn’t have her new phone number, but I found some siblings I could try calling. I figured I’d find some Mondanaro and get the answers to my questions. I copied down a few numbers, went back to The Barn’s apartment, and hit the hay.
In the morning, I was planning when I could call a Mondanaro when it hit me -- the book! Debbie Stubbs could be in the book! I decided it was worth it to bother Dorothy again, and she was as gracious as ever. Sure enough, Debbie Stubbs was now Debbie Richmond, and there was her phone number. I called and left a message, hoping she hadn’t gone away for the weekend.
In a few hours, my cell phone rang. “This is Debbie.” I told her as politely as I could to get herself over to my dad's, and within a half hour we were sitting down together for the first time since July of 1976. She really hadn't changed a bit. It was fun being in the same room with her, and after she left The Barn remarked that nothing had changed: I still jabbered and gestured away, and Debbie sat quietly, shy and patient, waiting to get a word in edgewise. As we parted, she said she'd come visit me in Decorah. We still have a lot of years to catch up on.
I talked to Marian today, too. She was the second best friend of my life, and I love her with my whole heart, too, just like I love Debbie Stubbs. I did manage to get the details of the fire and their stay at the Heights right, and then we spent another ninety minutes catching up since our last gabfest in 2002. Sadly, Marian's parents are both gone in that short time. Debbie's dad died suddenly of a heart attack when he was barely sixty-five, and her mom has been quite ill since the late nineties. Debbie's own husband, whom I never met, passed away from cancer suddenly in December of 2004. The Peg has been gone for three years now, and that seems like a lot to have piled up when it is shared in the span of a few days. We are learning to adjust to the reality of these changes.
All anybody asks about when they hear I'm from Ottumwa is Radar O'Reilly. The people I know from Ottumwa aren't fiction. They are real and warm and wonderful, and they helped create who I am. Yes, Tom Arnold is from Ottumwa, and yes, I sort of remember the family. I don't remember knowing Tom: who could have forgotten that voice? Richard Nixon lived there during WWII, they tell me, in the Tisdale Apartments, but he was no Debbie Stubbs or Marian Mondanaro. There aren't The Barns, or Thelma Johnsons, or Pauline Kirklands, or Ricky Johnsons, or Dorothy Bensons anywhere else on the planet.
They are the great people from Ottumwa, the ones I come home to.
Copyright © October 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
“Where are you from?”
“Ottumwa.”
“Ottumwa? Oh, yeah! Radar O’Reilly’s hometown!”
Once people find out there really is an Ottumwa, they naturally assume there really is a Radar O’Reilly. I haven’t found a graceful way to answer the questions, “Did you know him?”, and “Does any of his family still live there?” without sounding condescending.
“Well, see, Radar O’Reilly isn’t a real person. He was a character from M*A*S*H, and they randomly chose Ottumwa as his hometown. Maybe it’s because we have a former naval airbase here, which is home to the world’s largest swimming pool. Hey now, there’s a piece of history for you. Do you know why we have the world's larg…”
“Radar really was from Ottumwa, though. It's right at the beginning of the book. Didn’t he become a congressman, or something?”
“That was Fred Grandy. He played Gopher on The Love Boat.”
“Oh. What happened to Radar, then?” And they call us yokels. The swimming pool story is a lot more interesting.
I grew up in Ottumwa, in the southeast quadrant of the state. We aren’t that far from the Missouri border, close enough for the locals to have adopted the southern twang that colors Missourian vowels, especially the “ou”, the “ow”, and the “aw” sounds, along with the short “u”. When we go downtown, we go daaown-taaown. We worsh our clothes, and as a part of our lawn care routines, we occasionally trim the boooshes when they get shaggy.
While limestone gravel awaits its harvest below the surface in my northeast Iowa home of Decorah, the coal has already been mined around my southeast Iowa roots of Ottumwa. In our history classes at Wildwood Elementary, we studied the great Coal Palace that once graced our community, a shrine to and of the black rock that, for a time, was our economic mainstay.
The Mondanaro’s house burned down in the mid-60’s, and the fire was blamed on their coal furnace. Marian, my best friend in high school, said it was her brother Jim’s job to shovel the coal into the furnace before bedtime in the winter, and when she would touch the wall that abutted her bed, it felt hot.
Marian’s Italian father, Joe Mondanaro, was originally from Jersey City, New Jersey, which he pronounced “Joisey City, New Joisey”. It was our naval airbase that brought him to Ottumwa -- he trained scuba divers in the gi-gundo swimming pool there. Once he was here, Joe became an active and colorful member of the community, with a houseful of kids by his Irish wife Phyllis; Jane, Peggy, Jim, Marian, Steve, Gina, Chris, and John. He must have loved living in the Midwest, and remained here until his untimely death from cancer in 2003.
Joe never did switch from his Joisey accent to the Missouri twang, though. In the fall of the year they moved to our neighborhood, he was observing the migrating birds that rested in our treetops as they made their ways from the north to their winter homes. The trees would be thick with them, and it was fun to clap two boards together and watch them scatter en masse from the maple trees.
“Hey, goils!" he hollered to Marian and me from the front porch. “Come out here and look at these boids!”
No, you wouldn’t have heard him saying, “Our new haaouse is on the Saaouth Side.”
The Ottumwa Courier featured the story of the blaze that destroyed their home, and the unusual living arrangements for the surviving family of ten. Right after the fire, the Mondanaros found refuge at The Heights, a Roman Catholic junior college for women. They closed off an entire floor of the residence hall, and moved all ten of them in there. Before long, they found a house to rent on the South Side, on Quincy Avenue, just two doors down from us, and Marian and I became solid buddies. We have one of those talk-every-decade-or-so-but-still-have-fun kind of soul-sisterhoods. I know there were times in high school when we laughed so hard we just about wet ourselves. It set the tone for a lifetime.
Ralph and Pauline Kirkland lived just a few blocks east of Quincy Avenue, on Appanoose. Across the street from them were Harold and Stephie Johnson. Harold and the three kids went to First Lutheran, the same as the Kirklands and we Onerheims. Stephie went to mass at St. Pat’s, but we all thought she was still pretty nice. Harold had a tenor voice that turned heads when he sang hymns during the 8:30 service at First Lutheran. "Ricky" is the only one if their kids I see anymore – I don’t even know for sure where the other two are, but Rick’s in Ottumwa.
We were having the Ottumwa showing of The Clausen Quilts this weekend at Pennsylvania Place on the North Side. It’s a retirement community, and The Barn and The Peg moved into their independent living unit ten years ago, when it was brand new. Pauline moved there about a year ago, just after Ralph died. Rick Johnson gave his eulogy, I played my flute, and my sister Jeanie did the readings. Our two families considered ourselves the “Kirkland Kids” -- they had quite a passel of us! Thelma Johnson, Pauline’s sister, has lived there several years, too, so I usually get to see both Thelma and Pauline when I visit Ottumwa. Thelma entrusted me with a large collection of Mrs. Clausen’s hand embroidered pillowcases and dresser scarves several years ago. It’s an awesome responsibility – they are like gold to all of us.
I heard a voice, booming from the foyer of Pennsylvania Place. “You went to Pickwick? I went to Wildwood, so that means we both went to Evans Junior High.”
Huh? Who went to Wildwood? I went to Wildwood… and I scurried to peer over the quilt-draped railing to the foyer below.
“Oh, it’s Ricky! Hi, Rick!”
“Hi, Kari. I was just telling Lea Ann [Mercer nee' Joseph, who went to Pickwick] here about how well Polly could sew.”
The Johnsons always called Pauline, “Polly”. It’s their special thing.
“I tell you, she could sew suits that looked like they came right out of Vogue. She sewed everything she wore, and she looked like a million bucks every day. I don’t know if Thelma could sew, but Polly could. I don’t know if Polly could quilt, but she could sew just about anything to wear.”
I love to listen to Rick talk. He threads ideas and observations together into a verbal quilt.
“But Polly’s mom, well, everyone knew Polly’s mom could sew quilts and clothes, and she sewed those quilts by hand, every little tiny stitch.” Rick advanced from the foyer to elevator, where he pooshed the button for the first floor and headed for the boardroom, where the rest of the quilts were set up for showing. We had a fine talk, sharing memories about the quilts, and catching up on bits and pieces of the last thirty years since we lived on Quincy Avenue and Appanoose.
Behind our house, across the alley in a house facing Hackworth Avenue, was where Debbie Stubbs lived. One day The Peg was cleaning up after lunch when she told me a new little girl had moved into the neighborhood, and she was just my age. “After I finish with these dishes, we’ll go over and meet her.” I was a pre-schooler, and it took a long time for her to finish those dishes.
Debbie was inside the house with her mother Doris, who was unpacking. There were boxes and furniture strewn about, so she and Debbie came outside for our introduction. The Peg and Doris talked right along, and I remember Doris saying Debbie was shy. I didn’t know what a shy was, but if Debbie was one, I wanted to be one, too. Obviously, the shy thing never took hold with me.
I loved my new friend instantly, and we spent most of our time together for the next five years. We were best friends, a relationship that defined the term for me. To this day, you are my best friend if I love you as much as I love Debbie Stubbs.
We started kindergarten together, and have the first-day-of-school pictures to prove it, both of us in plaid school dresses with hoop slips underneath, holding those manila envelopes that held construction paper and a new box of eight fat crayons.
One spring The Peg made us fancy matching red and white organza dresses, with big red organza “butterfly bows” that tied in the back. In appreciation, Doris bought us matching red and white shorts outfits. Since The Peg made all of our clothes, this was the first store bought outfit I remember owning. I went with Debbie and her mom when we bought them. It was all very foreign to me, shopping for clothes in a store in daaown-taaown Ottumwa.
Debbie moved a couple of miles away when we were in the second grade. She didn’t go to Wildwood anymore; now she lived across the street from Pickwick. I got a flute for my birthday right after Debbie left, and I started learning to play. The regular kids, whose dads weren’t the band director, had to wait until the summer after fourth grade to get their instruments. Not me. I took lessons from Cindy Cline, who didn’t live all that far from Debbie’s new house. Later, in the fourth grade, Debbie chose to play the flute, too, and we were in band together until we graduated from high school in nineteen-none-of-your-dang-business.
Debbie helped out at my wedding reception, and then I never saw her again. She got married, I didn’t know her last name, her dad died, her mom got sick, and we lost track of each other. She was probably too shy to look for me. It was a slipped-through-the cracks problem, where the stars were never in the right alignment to connect with her. I could never forget her, because she was my first best friend.
Dorothy Benson lives across the hall from The Barn at Pennsylvania Place. Dorothy taught kindergarten at Anne G. Wilson Elementary, on the North Side. Pickwick and Wildwood are both on the South Side. Marian Mondanaro had Mrs. Benson for kindergarten, and their house that burned down was a short walk from Anne G. Wilson. When I was writing this blog entry, there were some details I wanted to check out about the fire, and the living arrangements afterwards. Did the Mondanaros live at Walsh, the Catholic high school, or was it the Heights, the Catholic college? I thought Dorothy might remember, so I walked across the hall to ask. She didn’t remember the story, but she had a treasure to share with me – an address book of dear old OHS alumni. Marian had moved since the book was printed, and I didn’t have her new phone number, but I found some siblings I could try calling. I figured I’d find some Mondanaro and get the answers to my questions. I copied down a few numbers, went back to The Barn’s apartment, and hit the hay.
In the morning, I was planning when I could call a Mondanaro when it hit me -- the book! Debbie Stubbs could be in the book! I decided it was worth it to bother Dorothy again, and she was as gracious as ever. Sure enough, Debbie Stubbs was now Debbie Richmond, and there was her phone number. I called and left a message, hoping she hadn’t gone away for the weekend.
In a few hours, my cell phone rang. “This is Debbie.” I told her as politely as I could to get herself over to my dad's, and within a half hour we were sitting down together for the first time since July of 1976. She really hadn't changed a bit. It was fun being in the same room with her, and after she left The Barn remarked that nothing had changed: I still jabbered and gestured away, and Debbie sat quietly, shy and patient, waiting to get a word in edgewise. As we parted, she said she'd come visit me in Decorah. We still have a lot of years to catch up on.
I talked to Marian today, too. She was the second best friend of my life, and I love her with my whole heart, too, just like I love Debbie Stubbs. I did manage to get the details of the fire and their stay at the Heights right, and then we spent another ninety minutes catching up since our last gabfest in 2002. Sadly, Marian's parents are both gone in that short time. Debbie's dad died suddenly of a heart attack when he was barely sixty-five, and her mom has been quite ill since the late nineties. Debbie's own husband, whom I never met, passed away from cancer suddenly in December of 2004. The Peg has been gone for three years now, and that seems like a lot to have piled up when it is shared in the span of a few days. We are learning to adjust to the reality of these changes.
All anybody asks about when they hear I'm from Ottumwa is Radar O'Reilly. The people I know from Ottumwa aren't fiction. They are real and warm and wonderful, and they helped create who I am. Yes, Tom Arnold is from Ottumwa, and yes, I sort of remember the family. I don't remember knowing Tom: who could have forgotten that voice? Richard Nixon lived there during WWII, they tell me, in the Tisdale Apartments, but he was no Debbie Stubbs or Marian Mondanaro. There aren't The Barns, or Thelma Johnsons, or Pauline Kirklands, or Ricky Johnsons, or Dorothy Bensons anywhere else on the planet.
They are the great people from Ottumwa, the ones I come home to.
Copyright © October 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
You CAN Nap Under a Matisse, You Know
Is it form over function, or function over form? That's the chicken/egg dilemma over which I never struggle. I am a functional art quilter -- I prefer to make quilts that are unique, interesting, and used for napping. I'm not real nuts about seeing them hanging on a wall, but I don't mind tempting the urge.
Art quilting often competes with quilting as way to keep warm and feel the love. The functional art of choosing interesting fabric, cutting and sewing it accurately, and finishing it expertly is a thing of beauty in itself. Not everyone can do it well, even with today's rotary cutters, self-healing mats, mix 'n match fabric lines, and the rabble of books and classes. Today's methods increase the success rate of quilting, which encourages newbies to repeat the process, and with each successive piece, the quiltmaker improves in skill and confidence.
You rarely see a quiltmaker repeat an entire quilt verbatim, no matter how much pleasure that one quilt brought. The inner designer prompts us to move on to the next engagement. Some of us visualize and expand the possibilities of the lint before us. As we manipulate the fabric into our basic quilts, the fabric in turn manipulates our imaginations. “What if I...”, “I wonder how it would work if...”, “What this piece needs is...”
I love to learn new techniques, but seldom want to use one technique to make an entire quilt. I will use one to make a whole quilt, as I did with T-man's Civil War quilt and the Square in a Square Ruler® (“Measure Twice, Cut Once”). It's the best way to familiarize myself with what I can extract from one technique to infuse into another location. Once I acquaint myself with the newfound skill, I maneuver it into my subconscious and it shows up in my design process.
For example, I haven't taught myself Stack 'N Whack yet, but there are times I'd like to finagle that concept into something a little less predictable than the who-knows-what-you'll-get process of using large prints. I know, I know, that sounds confusing, because the whole Stack 'N Whack schtick is it's unpredictability. But if you think about it, we actually do expect something similar each time, we just don't know precisely how it will turn out. I won't know the possibilities myself until I bite the bullet and make a dang quilt that way. It will probably take a whole quilt to get it figured out, too.
The challenge of learning new techniques can be baffling and frustrating. That alone is what excites many quiltmakers, and I have to admire the drive to be technically exact. As with many art forms, there are as many different motivations to improve as there are people who are motivated. We have some true masters right here in Northeast Iowa, quiltmakers who win award after award, and are consistently recognized in quilting circles as being at the top of their craft. Learning and mastering these techniques can be tedious, but the tenacity of these crackerjacks is rewarded in their amazing results. It is nothing short of a phenomenon.
My good quilting friend Susan always comes to mind when I think of a quilting master and artist. She isn't motivated by winning ribbons or getting her picture in the paper, though I believe that would be inevitable if she chose that route. Instead, she uses what she knows to rouse others. She's a natural inspirer, and her comments throw open new windows of possibilities. Susan is the one who prompted me to enter the Thimbleberries® challenge while I was still in my novitiate. I don't spend enough time with her, even though she and Cindy and Linda meet fairly regularly on Monday nights to work together on their projects, sharing their time and observations. When I can go, I am always most pleased by Susan's insights, and with how long I carry them inside of me. She's that good.
Among her many talents, Susan can paper piece. In fact, she is a virtuoso, and passionate about what she can do with it, where it leads her. She once paper pieced a tulip that is only visible under a microscope – a wonderment! For some reason, I can look at and admire her paper pieced blocks for longer than it took her to make them. She will find square frames with little square cutouts to showcase her tiny blocks. Sometimes the frames themselves are bulky, and you'd think they would overpower whatever one put in the display opening, even when the opening appears to be an afterthought to the frame itself. Yet, she will place a delicate, tiny paper pieced creation there, and the effect is like finding a crocus in the snow in early spring.
I love this about Decorah, the pockets of creativity and the artists everywhere. We have come to expect them in the bluff country and pastures that surround us, aware of those who have abandoned themselves to their art, living by it and from it. But there is the unexpected layer of artmakers among the office personnel at Luther College, behind the stylist's chair at the beauty shop, or in the milking parlor at the dairy farm. There are stay-at-home-moms and dads who write, sew, sculpt, saw, and paint between loads of laundry and during nap time. They are members of every congregation, from the Lutherans to the Quakers, the Catholics and the Unitarians, and there are also those bearing fruit in their studios on Sunday mornings. They may be waiting to retire, so they can do art all the time, but what is remarkable is that they aren't not doing it now while they wait it out. They do work for money, and do art for play.
It makes no difference whether it's form over function or function over form. In the Midwest, we value both, and we find a way to make the most functional of our needs artistic, and still make art to answer the need for enjoyment. I will make the most artsy of my thoughts into something that will keep someone warm. I'm not there full-time yet, so I'm taking my spot among other hidden artists in Northeast Iowa, letting my creativity sustain me. I know where I'm going, and I battle my own impatience as I allot each precious hour of the day to the reality of what must be done now. I am wise to practice the techniques that will broaden the scope of my imagination, to make function a part of my form. Or, is it the other way around?
I just inspired myself to go work on a quilt. Several years ago, one of the emeritus art professors in town got me going by asking about working on a Matisse-inspired splash of a quilt that... gotta go...
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns October 2005
Art quilting often competes with quilting as way to keep warm and feel the love. The functional art of choosing interesting fabric, cutting and sewing it accurately, and finishing it expertly is a thing of beauty in itself. Not everyone can do it well, even with today's rotary cutters, self-healing mats, mix 'n match fabric lines, and the rabble of books and classes. Today's methods increase the success rate of quilting, which encourages newbies to repeat the process, and with each successive piece, the quiltmaker improves in skill and confidence.
You rarely see a quiltmaker repeat an entire quilt verbatim, no matter how much pleasure that one quilt brought. The inner designer prompts us to move on to the next engagement. Some of us visualize and expand the possibilities of the lint before us. As we manipulate the fabric into our basic quilts, the fabric in turn manipulates our imaginations. “What if I...”, “I wonder how it would work if...”, “What this piece needs is...”
I love to learn new techniques, but seldom want to use one technique to make an entire quilt. I will use one to make a whole quilt, as I did with T-man's Civil War quilt and the Square in a Square Ruler® (“Measure Twice, Cut Once”). It's the best way to familiarize myself with what I can extract from one technique to infuse into another location. Once I acquaint myself with the newfound skill, I maneuver it into my subconscious and it shows up in my design process.
For example, I haven't taught myself Stack 'N Whack yet, but there are times I'd like to finagle that concept into something a little less predictable than the who-knows-what-you'll-get process of using large prints. I know, I know, that sounds confusing, because the whole Stack 'N Whack schtick is it's unpredictability. But if you think about it, we actually do expect something similar each time, we just don't know precisely how it will turn out. I won't know the possibilities myself until I bite the bullet and make a dang quilt that way. It will probably take a whole quilt to get it figured out, too.
The challenge of learning new techniques can be baffling and frustrating. That alone is what excites many quiltmakers, and I have to admire the drive to be technically exact. As with many art forms, there are as many different motivations to improve as there are people who are motivated. We have some true masters right here in Northeast Iowa, quiltmakers who win award after award, and are consistently recognized in quilting circles as being at the top of their craft. Learning and mastering these techniques can be tedious, but the tenacity of these crackerjacks is rewarded in their amazing results. It is nothing short of a phenomenon.
My good quilting friend Susan always comes to mind when I think of a quilting master and artist. She isn't motivated by winning ribbons or getting her picture in the paper, though I believe that would be inevitable if she chose that route. Instead, she uses what she knows to rouse others. She's a natural inspirer, and her comments throw open new windows of possibilities. Susan is the one who prompted me to enter the Thimbleberries® challenge while I was still in my novitiate. I don't spend enough time with her, even though she and Cindy and Linda meet fairly regularly on Monday nights to work together on their projects, sharing their time and observations. When I can go, I am always most pleased by Susan's insights, and with how long I carry them inside of me. She's that good.
Among her many talents, Susan can paper piece. In fact, she is a virtuoso, and passionate about what she can do with it, where it leads her. She once paper pieced a tulip that is only visible under a microscope – a wonderment! For some reason, I can look at and admire her paper pieced blocks for longer than it took her to make them. She will find square frames with little square cutouts to showcase her tiny blocks. Sometimes the frames themselves are bulky, and you'd think they would overpower whatever one put in the display opening, even when the opening appears to be an afterthought to the frame itself. Yet, she will place a delicate, tiny paper pieced creation there, and the effect is like finding a crocus in the snow in early spring.
I love this about Decorah, the pockets of creativity and the artists everywhere. We have come to expect them in the bluff country and pastures that surround us, aware of those who have abandoned themselves to their art, living by it and from it. But there is the unexpected layer of artmakers among the office personnel at Luther College, behind the stylist's chair at the beauty shop, or in the milking parlor at the dairy farm. There are stay-at-home-moms and dads who write, sew, sculpt, saw, and paint between loads of laundry and during nap time. They are members of every congregation, from the Lutherans to the Quakers, the Catholics and the Unitarians, and there are also those bearing fruit in their studios on Sunday mornings. They may be waiting to retire, so they can do art all the time, but what is remarkable is that they aren't not doing it now while they wait it out. They do work for money, and do art for play.
It makes no difference whether it's form over function or function over form. In the Midwest, we value both, and we find a way to make the most functional of our needs artistic, and still make art to answer the need for enjoyment. I will make the most artsy of my thoughts into something that will keep someone warm. I'm not there full-time yet, so I'm taking my spot among other hidden artists in Northeast Iowa, letting my creativity sustain me. I know where I'm going, and I battle my own impatience as I allot each precious hour of the day to the reality of what must be done now. I am wise to practice the techniques that will broaden the scope of my imagination, to make function a part of my form. Or, is it the other way around?
I just inspired myself to go work on a quilt. Several years ago, one of the emeritus art professors in town got me going by asking about working on a Matisse-inspired splash of a quilt that... gotta go...
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns October 2005
Lydia, Anna, Boy Aidan and Girl Aidan
“Tell me something you really like to do.” I was getting acquainted with some new friends. They range in age from five to ten, and they came to my house to learn how to quilt.
“Well, what I really like is learning something new every day.”
“Me, too, Anna! High five!” Anna may be the youngest of the group, and she has already figured out what makes a good day.
This is a new experience for me. I am from a family of public school educators, and I married into a family of public school educators. Home schooling was not an option in my day, and when our children were young, there was no network connecting home schoolers. Our own two were socially quite happy in elementary school, and they had ready access to me as a stay-at-home parent -- we did lots of home learning.
Thirty years ago, home schooling was illegal in Iowa, and our mandatory education laws prohibited public school personnel from ignoring “truancy”, as it was viewed at the time. Hubba's father was the superintendent of schools here, at a time when this law was being challenged in Decorah. Now the school works closely with the home schooling community, offering options to families who prefer this route, for whatever reasons the family sees proper.
A friend of mine home schools, and I asked her if any of the home school kids would like to learn to quilt. She broadcast my offer through her home school network, and I had four takers. They are Lydia, Anna and her older sister Aidan, and another Aidan, who is a boy.
“We have the same name, and we spell it the same way,” said Aidan.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Aidan.
“So how will you know which Aidan I'm talking to?”
“You can just say 'Boy Aidan' or 'Girl Aidan'. Or you can use 'Aidan B' and 'Aidan G'.
You know, I probably could have figured that one out myself. It brings to mind one of The Barn's stories, the one about the man who had two horses. He didn't know how to tell them apart, so he measured them carefully. It was then he discovered that the white horse was six inches taller than the black horse. I'm glad Boy Aidan and Girl Aidan could help me unravel this quandry.
This is the way I recapped my first meeting with these students to their parents:
(I sneak-previewed Anna's remarks in the opening of today's post.) When asked what she liked to do, Anna said, "I like to learn something new every day!" Let me tell you, she said it with passion. We high-fived. Cool. Upbeat = Anna.
Boy Aidan is one of the most sharing children I have known. At age 7, he shared all of his snacks with the class, and when he took fabric home, he said he wanted to make a quilt for his Beanie Baby. He also wanted to share his fabric with Anna, and she and he traded swatches eagerly.
Girl Aidan, I found out, is a Renaissance woman. She either does, or appreciates, art, music, and literature. I think she's into geometry, too, because she liked finding quilt shapes. She followed the "Quilt Soup" story intently, and when I played a Native American lullaby on my flute, she fell asleep. Well, she fake-fell asleep, but you get the idea about the appreciation angle.
Lydia is gentle and deep. I have the impression that she chooses her words carefully, and helping others and her family is among her strong values. It seems the care she takes in the way she treats others isn't motivated by how she will be perceived, but by how her actions will impact them.
As we sat at my dining room table, I pondered the wonderful task ahead of us. Imagine what their preconceived notions are about the quilts they will make! These are remarkable children, positive and forward-thinking. I told them about different projects they could make – table runners, wall hangings, and other smaller projects. They had already set their goals.
“I want to make a quilt to cover me up.”
“Yeah, I want to make a blanket.” I'm going to have to work on the vocabulary a bit.
We read a story I wrote called “Quilt Soup”. In the story, a little girl named Pearl and her grandmother work on a quilt together. Pearl is only eight years old, but in the end, she and Grandma make a nice little quilt for Pearl to snuggle under. I made the quilt I wrote about in “Quilt Soup”, and I have it in my house. After reading the story, we took a field trip upstairs to look at it.
“Yeah, like this one. I want a quilt this size.”
“Me, too. I want this size.”
Midwesterners have a strong tradition of helping neighbors, and we know the importance of instilling our youngsters with this spirit. Neighbors are defined as residents of the world, not exclusively within our own sphere of acquaintances. Within a month of Saigon falling, southeast Asian families were finding homes in northeast Iowa. At one time we had well over six hundred refugees from five or six regions, including Viet Nam, Laos (both Hmong and Lao), and Cambodia, living here in Decorah. Eastern bloc refugees and other ethnic groups populate quite a chunk of Postville, Iowa, just down the road, and a new radio station with the call letters KPVL, offers programming throughout the day for at least seven ethnicities and languages that make up that community.
Boy Aidan's grandmother is a Mississippi victim of Katrina, specifically Bay St. Louis. Within hours of the news of this devastation, “Decorah Cares” sprang into action. Supplies for clean-up and after-care were contributed and collected, and a semi was donated to make the run. Boy Aidan's mom and dad have been back and forth to his grandma's house, updating Decorahans on the reconstruction. There are other lives intertwined with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but none more personal to these children.
“Can we make another one to sell, and then give the money away?” Local lemonade sellers had already earned some money to use for hurricane relief. Perhaps they were thinking of a way to add to that amount. Assuming this was on their minds, I asked them how they would use the money.
“Our family sponsors a little girl in India, but there are lots of people who need it.”
See? We do the value-thing right in the Midwest. A nine-year-old girl has layers of experience with making a difference on the planet. This is normal for all the children in this class, for the children we reared, for the children at our church and others, and happily for the children of the families who were helped by Northeast Iowans in the past. Normal, not a big thing to be done with lots of fanfare. It's a regular, normal part of our lives.
We are using recycled and reclaimed fabric for our quilts. This week the children will gather fabric. There may be a stained shirt or dress that still has plenty wear in the fabric, or a favorite baby item. They may have relatives who will contribute some of their things, and I know there will be lots of sharing back and forth. I have a special piece of fabric to share with them, so that each quilt will have a matched memory of their quiting time together.
Thursday afternoon was about hope and the future, and pieces of the past. We ate cake and drank juice. I dragged out my flute and played it for them. Girl Aidan sang a little for us as she carried dirty dishes to the kitchen. Lydia read aloud for us in a strong, clear voice. Boy Aidan and Anna, good and fast buddies, romped happily with streamers of fabric, the pieces they eventually split and shared with each other. Lydia and Girl Aidan sat on the couch with me, and we talked about our lives. I wish you could hear Girl Aidan's expressive voice and observe Lydia's esoteric, watchful eyes.
Too soon for me, the dads came to pick up the quilt students. The next several Thursdays will be a joy. You won't want to miss them, either, because we will all be learning something new.
Copyright © 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
“Well, what I really like is learning something new every day.”
“Me, too, Anna! High five!” Anna may be the youngest of the group, and she has already figured out what makes a good day.
This is a new experience for me. I am from a family of public school educators, and I married into a family of public school educators. Home schooling was not an option in my day, and when our children were young, there was no network connecting home schoolers. Our own two were socially quite happy in elementary school, and they had ready access to me as a stay-at-home parent -- we did lots of home learning.
Thirty years ago, home schooling was illegal in Iowa, and our mandatory education laws prohibited public school personnel from ignoring “truancy”, as it was viewed at the time. Hubba's father was the superintendent of schools here, at a time when this law was being challenged in Decorah. Now the school works closely with the home schooling community, offering options to families who prefer this route, for whatever reasons the family sees proper.
A friend of mine home schools, and I asked her if any of the home school kids would like to learn to quilt. She broadcast my offer through her home school network, and I had four takers. They are Lydia, Anna and her older sister Aidan, and another Aidan, who is a boy.
“We have the same name, and we spell it the same way,” said Aidan.
“Uh-huh,” agreed Aidan.
“So how will you know which Aidan I'm talking to?”
“You can just say 'Boy Aidan' or 'Girl Aidan'. Or you can use 'Aidan B' and 'Aidan G'.
You know, I probably could have figured that one out myself. It brings to mind one of The Barn's stories, the one about the man who had two horses. He didn't know how to tell them apart, so he measured them carefully. It was then he discovered that the white horse was six inches taller than the black horse. I'm glad Boy Aidan and Girl Aidan could help me unravel this quandry.
This is the way I recapped my first meeting with these students to their parents:
(I sneak-previewed Anna's remarks in the opening of today's post.) When asked what she liked to do, Anna said, "I like to learn something new every day!" Let me tell you, she said it with passion. We high-fived. Cool. Upbeat = Anna.
Boy Aidan is one of the most sharing children I have known. At age 7, he shared all of his snacks with the class, and when he took fabric home, he said he wanted to make a quilt for his Beanie Baby. He also wanted to share his fabric with Anna, and she and he traded swatches eagerly.
Girl Aidan, I found out, is a Renaissance woman. She either does, or appreciates, art, music, and literature. I think she's into geometry, too, because she liked finding quilt shapes. She followed the "Quilt Soup" story intently, and when I played a Native American lullaby on my flute, she fell asleep. Well, she fake-fell asleep, but you get the idea about the appreciation angle.
Lydia is gentle and deep. I have the impression that she chooses her words carefully, and helping others and her family is among her strong values. It seems the care she takes in the way she treats others isn't motivated by how she will be perceived, but by how her actions will impact them.
As we sat at my dining room table, I pondered the wonderful task ahead of us. Imagine what their preconceived notions are about the quilts they will make! These are remarkable children, positive and forward-thinking. I told them about different projects they could make – table runners, wall hangings, and other smaller projects. They had already set their goals.
“I want to make a quilt to cover me up.”
“Yeah, I want to make a blanket.” I'm going to have to work on the vocabulary a bit.
We read a story I wrote called “Quilt Soup”. In the story, a little girl named Pearl and her grandmother work on a quilt together. Pearl is only eight years old, but in the end, she and Grandma make a nice little quilt for Pearl to snuggle under. I made the quilt I wrote about in “Quilt Soup”, and I have it in my house. After reading the story, we took a field trip upstairs to look at it.
“Yeah, like this one. I want a quilt this size.”
“Me, too. I want this size.”
Midwesterners have a strong tradition of helping neighbors, and we know the importance of instilling our youngsters with this spirit. Neighbors are defined as residents of the world, not exclusively within our own sphere of acquaintances. Within a month of Saigon falling, southeast Asian families were finding homes in northeast Iowa. At one time we had well over six hundred refugees from five or six regions, including Viet Nam, Laos (both Hmong and Lao), and Cambodia, living here in Decorah. Eastern bloc refugees and other ethnic groups populate quite a chunk of Postville, Iowa, just down the road, and a new radio station with the call letters KPVL, offers programming throughout the day for at least seven ethnicities and languages that make up that community.
Boy Aidan's grandmother is a Mississippi victim of Katrina, specifically Bay St. Louis. Within hours of the news of this devastation, “Decorah Cares” sprang into action. Supplies for clean-up and after-care were contributed and collected, and a semi was donated to make the run. Boy Aidan's mom and dad have been back and forth to his grandma's house, updating Decorahans on the reconstruction. There are other lives intertwined with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but none more personal to these children.
“Can we make another one to sell, and then give the money away?” Local lemonade sellers had already earned some money to use for hurricane relief. Perhaps they were thinking of a way to add to that amount. Assuming this was on their minds, I asked them how they would use the money.
“Our family sponsors a little girl in India, but there are lots of people who need it.”
See? We do the value-thing right in the Midwest. A nine-year-old girl has layers of experience with making a difference on the planet. This is normal for all the children in this class, for the children we reared, for the children at our church and others, and happily for the children of the families who were helped by Northeast Iowans in the past. Normal, not a big thing to be done with lots of fanfare. It's a regular, normal part of our lives.
We are using recycled and reclaimed fabric for our quilts. This week the children will gather fabric. There may be a stained shirt or dress that still has plenty wear in the fabric, or a favorite baby item. They may have relatives who will contribute some of their things, and I know there will be lots of sharing back and forth. I have a special piece of fabric to share with them, so that each quilt will have a matched memory of their quiting time together.
Thursday afternoon was about hope and the future, and pieces of the past. We ate cake and drank juice. I dragged out my flute and played it for them. Girl Aidan sang a little for us as she carried dirty dishes to the kitchen. Lydia read aloud for us in a strong, clear voice. Boy Aidan and Anna, good and fast buddies, romped happily with streamers of fabric, the pieces they eventually split and shared with each other. Lydia and Girl Aidan sat on the couch with me, and we talked about our lives. I wish you could hear Girl Aidan's expressive voice and observe Lydia's esoteric, watchful eyes.
Too soon for me, the dads came to pick up the quilt students. The next several Thursdays will be a joy. You won't want to miss them, either, because we will all be learning something new.
Copyright © 2005 Kari E.O. Burns
A Quilting "B"
Quilts have stories and traditions, and it's the duty of the quilt maker to pass them on along with the quilt. In last week's entry, I told you about the corn patch that goes into the quilts I make for folks who reside outside of Iowa. If you recall, I mentioned using corn fabric in the label of my quilt that went to Ireland.
I didn't start doing the corn-patch thing right off the bat. It developed quite by accident -- I found some fabric with ears of corn on it on a sale table. The idea just shot through me -- chaa-ah, let's remember that we are from the Tall Corn State, for crying in the night, so a new tradition was born. I have since found several fabrics that have ears of corn printed on them, and I will add a yard to my collection when I see a new print.
Quilt people are precious earthlings. The word must have gotten around about my corn fabric fetish, and one day a very sweet fellow guild member called to say she had a surprise for me. Discovering I was at home, she dropped by with a yard of fabric she had found while shop-hopping – a black and cream tablecloth check with little yellow ears of corn scattered throughout in the appropriate places. “For me? Thank you, Joyce!”
How cool is that?
A quilt is not just a blanket (Did you say blank-et!?), it is a story. I can sit down with every single quilt I've ever made and tell the saga I have stitched into every square inch of the dang thing. The corn-patch example makes my point, and illustrates why the things get so crowded with not only facts, but with artifacts, as well. The details will most likely disappear when I am no longer on earth to authenticate them, but until then, they qualify what makes one quilt special from another.
I mentioned “Dorotha's Bounty” in an earlier story. I made that quilt for a Thimbleberries® challenge very early in my quilting career, as a tribute to my grandmother, Dorotha Beal Ott. It is one of the few quilts that I still have, and it's very special to me because my mom and two of her brothers used it in their homes for awhile -- Dorotha's children are a part of the history of our quilt. In that story I mentioned I began another tradition while stitching our quilt, and I said I'd save that story for another time. Now is that time. (You can read more about my escapades with making “Dorotha's Bounty” in “The Eldorado Store”, found in the index on this page.)
I do itty-bitty tiny stitching, but I am not bragging. That's the result of being behind a needle for many years doing a raft of other needle arts – stitching quilts, therefore, came “naturally” for me. It is a true story when I told you that, as a novice quilt maker, I took out the little stitches I was making, and replaced them with bigger ones. I thought I must not be doing it right if I was getting little stitches right off the bat. For some preconceived-notion reason, I didn't think you were supposed to do little bitty stitches until at least your third, or perhaps tenth, quilt. Hey, before you say anything, you try being me for awhile. It's like those people who have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, only I have a blond on one shoulder and a brunette on the other. So don't judge me -- it's not an easy burden to bear.
Where was I? Itty-bitty... okay, now I remember...
I had part of “Dorotha's Bounty” stitched by my friend Mary Anne on her long arm, and she left parts of it for me to hand stitch. There were bleached and unbleached muslin spaces, one on each end of the quilt, so I got all elaborate with those “canvases”. On one end I stitched in some packets of seeds with the word “Seeds” above them. On the other end, I stitched some bum-ugly weeds, and likewise stitched in “Weeds” above them. The weeds were sort of a nod to The Peg, who wore her purple thumb with a bashful, resigned pride.
Somewhere in the quilt, in more than one place, I stitched some bees buzzing around, as if to gather nectar from the fabric blooms. They were subtle, but the natural quilting thread stood out on the dark patterned fabric blocks. They could be seen with a little looking, an activity that makes lingering visually with a quilt entertaining.
Still waters run deep, which is an apt way to describe Hubba's tolerance when it comes to my quilting. If it weren't for his frequent wise cracks about my obsession with lint and fiber, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun, not to mention permissible, for me to continue on my fabric rampage. He gives me just enough guff about what I do to knock out any sense of guilt I have about spending so much time quilting, or talking about quilting, or teaching quilting, or writing about quilting, or dreaming of quilts, or designing quilts, or huffing lint, or mainlining lint, or making lint brownies...
There I go again... still waters... okay, I'm back...
Hubba will examine my designs with an I'm-interested-and-paying-attention gaze. Sometimes he'll reach out his index finger, and tap or trace a few of the angles. He has graceful hands for a boy, and the combination of the hands of my true love smoothing my patchwork is breathtaking. He's thinking, he's looking, and he contributes reflective comments and artistic impressions. Hubba has an active inner-designer and artist that unleashes itself when stimulated. It is genuinely offered from his heart, and I tap into quite often.
When I made The Dot's college quilt, she wanted me to quilt in some lilies, which were her favorite flowers at the time. I asked Hubba if he'd draw a lily to use as my template, which he did. In one of the lily-squares, he wrote “Love, Dad” with Perma-pen, indelibly sending that sentiment off to college with her, too.
“Dorotha's Bounty” lay stretched out on the bed before us. Hubba had on his special quilt-gaze, and his hands and eyes were searching. When he saw the almost hidden bees, he chuckled sweetly.
“Look. It's a “bee”. For Burns. You should put a bee on all your quilts.”
And so I have. At first I quilted them into the motif, as I did with the Dorotha quilt. I even drew-slash-stenciled one as part of the label on the back of Clare's quilt. It has evolved, so that now it is my habit to embroider a bee somewhere on the front of each quilt. It's not always in an obvious place, but hidden, like on the Dorotha quilt. The owner, usually someone who knows the quilt-me and has been buttering me up for some time, knows about the bee and will hunt for it. After all, it's a tradition, and it's always found in one of my Morgan Thomas Quilts.
Everybody should have their own quilting “bees”, something that makes every new creation of your needle a kissing cousin to its ancestors. The unabridged stories of my quilts will be lost when I am no longer around to tell them, but the bees and the corn patches will link them together. Someday, a seventy-five year old great-grandchild of ours will pass on one of the heirlooms, telling the story...
“...and she put this bee here, because their last name was Burns. It was your great-great-grandfather's idea, the “bee” for Burns, and because they were very devoted to each other, she made it a tradition.”
“I love that story. Tell it again.”
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns October 2005
I didn't start doing the corn-patch thing right off the bat. It developed quite by accident -- I found some fabric with ears of corn on it on a sale table. The idea just shot through me -- chaa-ah, let's remember that we are from the Tall Corn State, for crying in the night, so a new tradition was born. I have since found several fabrics that have ears of corn printed on them, and I will add a yard to my collection when I see a new print.
Quilt people are precious earthlings. The word must have gotten around about my corn fabric fetish, and one day a very sweet fellow guild member called to say she had a surprise for me. Discovering I was at home, she dropped by with a yard of fabric she had found while shop-hopping – a black and cream tablecloth check with little yellow ears of corn scattered throughout in the appropriate places. “For me? Thank you, Joyce!”
How cool is that?
A quilt is not just a blanket (Did you say blank-et!?), it is a story. I can sit down with every single quilt I've ever made and tell the saga I have stitched into every square inch of the dang thing. The corn-patch example makes my point, and illustrates why the things get so crowded with not only facts, but with artifacts, as well. The details will most likely disappear when I am no longer on earth to authenticate them, but until then, they qualify what makes one quilt special from another.
I mentioned “Dorotha's Bounty” in an earlier story. I made that quilt for a Thimbleberries® challenge very early in my quilting career, as a tribute to my grandmother, Dorotha Beal Ott. It is one of the few quilts that I still have, and it's very special to me because my mom and two of her brothers used it in their homes for awhile -- Dorotha's children are a part of the history of our quilt. In that story I mentioned I began another tradition while stitching our quilt, and I said I'd save that story for another time. Now is that time. (You can read more about my escapades with making “Dorotha's Bounty” in “The Eldorado Store”, found in the index on this page.)
I do itty-bitty tiny stitching, but I am not bragging. That's the result of being behind a needle for many years doing a raft of other needle arts – stitching quilts, therefore, came “naturally” for me. It is a true story when I told you that, as a novice quilt maker, I took out the little stitches I was making, and replaced them with bigger ones. I thought I must not be doing it right if I was getting little stitches right off the bat. For some preconceived-notion reason, I didn't think you were supposed to do little bitty stitches until at least your third, or perhaps tenth, quilt. Hey, before you say anything, you try being me for awhile. It's like those people who have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, only I have a blond on one shoulder and a brunette on the other. So don't judge me -- it's not an easy burden to bear.
Where was I? Itty-bitty... okay, now I remember...
I had part of “Dorotha's Bounty” stitched by my friend Mary Anne on her long arm, and she left parts of it for me to hand stitch. There were bleached and unbleached muslin spaces, one on each end of the quilt, so I got all elaborate with those “canvases”. On one end I stitched in some packets of seeds with the word “Seeds” above them. On the other end, I stitched some bum-ugly weeds, and likewise stitched in “Weeds” above them. The weeds were sort of a nod to The Peg, who wore her purple thumb with a bashful, resigned pride.
Somewhere in the quilt, in more than one place, I stitched some bees buzzing around, as if to gather nectar from the fabric blooms. They were subtle, but the natural quilting thread stood out on the dark patterned fabric blocks. They could be seen with a little looking, an activity that makes lingering visually with a quilt entertaining.
Still waters run deep, which is an apt way to describe Hubba's tolerance when it comes to my quilting. If it weren't for his frequent wise cracks about my obsession with lint and fiber, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun, not to mention permissible, for me to continue on my fabric rampage. He gives me just enough guff about what I do to knock out any sense of guilt I have about spending so much time quilting, or talking about quilting, or teaching quilting, or writing about quilting, or dreaming of quilts, or designing quilts, or huffing lint, or mainlining lint, or making lint brownies...
There I go again... still waters... okay, I'm back...
Hubba will examine my designs with an I'm-interested-and-paying-attention gaze. Sometimes he'll reach out his index finger, and tap or trace a few of the angles. He has graceful hands for a boy, and the combination of the hands of my true love smoothing my patchwork is breathtaking. He's thinking, he's looking, and he contributes reflective comments and artistic impressions. Hubba has an active inner-designer and artist that unleashes itself when stimulated. It is genuinely offered from his heart, and I tap into quite often.
When I made The Dot's college quilt, she wanted me to quilt in some lilies, which were her favorite flowers at the time. I asked Hubba if he'd draw a lily to use as my template, which he did. In one of the lily-squares, he wrote “Love, Dad” with Perma-pen, indelibly sending that sentiment off to college with her, too.
“Dorotha's Bounty” lay stretched out on the bed before us. Hubba had on his special quilt-gaze, and his hands and eyes were searching. When he saw the almost hidden bees, he chuckled sweetly.
“Look. It's a “bee”. For Burns. You should put a bee on all your quilts.”
And so I have. At first I quilted them into the motif, as I did with the Dorotha quilt. I even drew-slash-stenciled one as part of the label on the back of Clare's quilt. It has evolved, so that now it is my habit to embroider a bee somewhere on the front of each quilt. It's not always in an obvious place, but hidden, like on the Dorotha quilt. The owner, usually someone who knows the quilt-me and has been buttering me up for some time, knows about the bee and will hunt for it. After all, it's a tradition, and it's always found in one of my Morgan Thomas Quilts.
Everybody should have their own quilting “bees”, something that makes every new creation of your needle a kissing cousin to its ancestors. The unabridged stories of my quilts will be lost when I am no longer around to tell them, but the bees and the corn patches will link them together. Someday, a seventy-five year old great-grandchild of ours will pass on one of the heirlooms, telling the story...
“...and she put this bee here, because their last name was Burns. It was your great-great-grandfather's idea, the “bee” for Burns, and because they were very devoted to each other, she made it a tradition.”
“I love that story. Tell it again.”
Copyright © Kari E.O. Burns October 2005
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)