Grace Under Fire: A Quilt for a Comrade Going Through It

 ....being a master class in handling bad news, and a love letter to another work colleague but not THAT kind of love letter, please don't call HR.

I've mentioned the crowd I've worked with at a past client when I wrote about Ronnie, my non-boss boss; and how there is a tendency to seek out the teams that we know work well together, and try to rebuild those high-functioning (or at least highly fun) teams, especially when times/clients are tough.  Avengers assemble, if you will.

image stolen from internet

So it comes as no great shock that when one of our cohort - in this case, data strategy wizard (and explainer extraordinaire for his, ahem, less technical colleagues), destroyer of legacy systems, west coast Cub fan, and stalwart dinner companion, KB - started going through his own individual hell last year, the collective still wanted to assemble somehow: tricky, though, because if it were a work shitstorm we could all just pitch in and take some of the weight, and help him shake it off in time for beer at his favorite restaurant (Kordyshack tonight, anyone?).  In this case, all we can do is sit around in our respective zip codes, sending crappy, morbid jokes by gchat, approximating normalcy, and hoping for the best......our way of showing KB that we love him like fried chicken and we are thinking of him all the time, basically constantly, I mean 24/7, in a way that would be uncomfortable and weird if he weren't a liberated progressive man (despite also being a salty and phlegmatic Canadian, +/- one tam-o-shanter).

American war poster, 1942, demonstrating howAmericans have long needed things
to be spelled out for them when it comes to geopolitics. 

Anyway, KB sent a group of his past-team Avenger A-listers an email awhile back outlining some pretty craptastical medical ish he had just discovered and was coming to grips with: and despite the fact that it was Very Bad News indeed, he impressed me deeply for just how gracefully he conveyed it - directly to the point, specific where it helped to understand, practical in envisioning the murky future but not dwelling morbidly on any of what was at that time some upcoming heavy weather he would have to endure.  I can only assume that the zen approach he'd developed over multiple decades of explaining data strategy to complete fucking morons came to his aid in this, his darkest hour, as he brought to it the same unbelievable patience, the same knack for breaking down and summarizing of the strategy into smaller digestible pieces, and the same spirit of polite inquiry that I have always benefitted from in my time in his august shadow.  Whether he was doing it for his benefit or ours, I managed to admire the approach through, I freely admit, some bitter tears on his behalf.

So it was to this same A-team email group, minus KB himself, that I sent out a plea in turn - would anyone like to write KB a note that I could include in a quilt for him? And the answer there was a resounding yes: in part, I think, because we were all feeling that same sense of "Well shit, how do we help on this one?"  So I gathered up these sentiments, scribbled on post its or envelopes or index cards and captured on phones and emailed from all over the globe, some from folks I haven't worked with but whose signature I can probably now forge (KIDDING) and transcribed them on to some squares embedded in this simple pattern, in the same way signature quilts  were collected for life-changing events in days of old.  Back then, it was usually a gift to a leaver: "we're packing up the Conestoga wagon and will probably never see you again, community I was born and raised in!"  In this case, of course, we hope very much it is a gift to a stayer - at least, a stayer for a good long time, which is I guess all any of us can really hope for anyway.

The signatures/notes are in the 3x4 grid, alpha by first name
which is probably really annoying to a data strategist. :)

Here we are! Though this red is almost as hard to read as the handwriting, sheesh.

Close up on a corner to show the faux flange binding, ie, that little purple
stripe, which still delights me even after, I don't know, 6 or 7 quilts
I've done this way now.

(I should mention, too, that some of these signatures are ones you'd find in, like, a book of the history of Agile software development, and most certainly in a book of the history of this company, which added a little archival shine to these proceedings - KB has some friends and supporters in high places, is what I'm trying to say.  And now he has proof.)

As any of the quilting community can tell you, our first impulse ALWAYS is to wrap someone in crisis up in physical fibers as a proxy for an extended, heartfelt and possibly unwanted bearhug. And as anyone who knows me can equally attest, I'm prone to attempting a grand gesture when maybe a better, more useful show of support for someone whose world is turned upside down might be a constant stream of terrible jokes and tasty casseroles delivered with heating instructions. Of course I would never cook for anyone I care about, that would just be disrespectful, bordering on lethal.  

But  also just know, KB, that if you were feeling the quiet was a little too quiet - feeling any strange absence of gallows humor or noxious puns - that I was THINKING of them, and you as I poked every stitch of this quilt over these last few months, and making a mental note to send them along to you before I forgot them, and then forgetting them anyway because my brain is still damaged from that one time you tried to explain applied data mesh to me. But I certainly have not forgotten YOU, or this shit hand you've been dealt, one which you are nevertheless playing with such utter grace and equanimity; and neither have your other Avengers who are assembled here to provide you with that heartfelt bearhug/casserole in fabric form, captured  in allegedly fabric-safe marker that will nevertheless probably bleed and fade over time, as will we all.  Rest assured, though, that our regard for you will not. It could never.  

The picture that is supposed to be "artfully tossed over a chair" but ends
up usually more like "someone forgot to put the laundry away again."

So, to sum: in the immortal words of Winston Churchill, "When you're going through hell - keep going!" With much love, KB, and extended, heartfelt, and possibly unwanted bearhugs from the whole gang (whether they got their squares in on time or not).  Miss you bunches, and looking forward to assembling with you again soon, at a Kordyshack-to-be-named-later. 

Besos,

Astrid

PS...one for the road....

hahahahaha

(Technical quilty notes for anyone wondering)

• I copied everyone's handwriting through the simple expedient of pulling up the JPGs onto my laptop, heightening the contrast where necessary, and then painters-taping pre-washed quilt squares to my actual goddamn screen, which acted like a lightboard and made tracing everyone's notes quite easy. This also made it simple to resize the signatures until they each fit their designated square.  There are some tracing goofs where the contrast wasn't great so each signature looks a lot like my own handwriting if I were practicing to become a check forger, WHICH I'M NOT, so I sent along a paper copy of each note to KB as a guide and/or for posterity, and so that if my tracings aren't legible you'll know who said what, and that "Carlos" is not "Carbs", for instance, even though I kind of fat-fingered that one (sorry, Carbs.) Unfortunately, I lost the pictures of all of the above in a terrible I'm a Fucking Idiot phone accident - if they ever surface I'll add them.
• The pattern is Squareburst by Running Stitch Quilts, and I think it ended up being like 72x86 or so? This pattern is pretty easy to increase size on, depending on whether you can stand to have the top/bottom and left/right rows NOT be identical
• The fabrics are - well, started out being, anyway - an off-white Grunge, Kona Limestone, and an old French General forest green that has a pleasant striation to it while still being wholly solid.  I say "started out being" because then I used a rather violent purple as backing (it's Kimberbell wideback "Connected Stars" in Purple) which bled like a motherfucker DESPITE both prewashing it AND throwing the finished product in there with a whole phalanx of Color Catchers....it pretty dramatically turned that Kona Limestone into a pinky beige which, while still okay visually, was not at all how this started out.  Good thing I didn't at all stress out for weeks about which colors went best together, hahahah! haha! ahem.  The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft quilty, etc.

The bleedin' purple culprit....

...turned that Kona Limestone (the lighter green swatch on top) into the
lighter pinky-beige color in the quilt itself.  Look at that Color Catcher! (The fuschia thing
at top, which started out white). The darker green didn't change too much.

Another view of that astounding color change, woopsie.

• Quilting was a pretty basic "holy shit it's been 6 months and I haven't sent this fucker out yet" stitch in the ditch around the basic star design
• Batting was a thin, pleasantly drapey bamboo, because let's face it, we might want to give KB a bearhug, but he doesn't need to be smothered by it. He lives in a tropical rainforest, for chrissakes!

And just because progress shots are always fun:

A Little Interstitial Music: A Miscellany

...being not one thing or another, and certainly not the things they probably could have been.

Continuing my inability to focus on Things I Said I Would Do, being distracted by Things That Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, here are a couple of quilty things that happened lately instead of things I've told some folks I would do for them.  I mean, I will.  Soon. Meanwhile....

First, a baby blanket for the cousin of a friend - kind of an odd color palate, but she gave me free rein on pattern and color, and I had been noodling with some orange-yellow-green-purple bits and bobs I had sitting around.  At her wise suggestion I swapped purple for blue and in the final analysis, it's a cheery, bright, non-gender specific lil Broken Windows strip on a mottled Grunge white, with a cozy gray windowpane flannel on back + a strip of yellow 40s juvenile print flannel I inherited from the Estate of the Unknown Benefactress.

Then there's this: a scrappy low-volume Rail Fence quilt with bonus Scrappy Rainbow Pinwheels - a super easy quilt for beginners, if you have a ton of semi-neutrals lying around and some bright squares.












This has still not quite used up all those shirt scraps that made Chris and JJ's Trip Around the World quilt and also appeared in the Cap'n's Low volume Postage Stamps, lo these many years past.  In fact, it was probably some of the first fabric in my stash, when I started a sewing class 7 years ago this fall.  (Seven years! That's kind of nutty. I was thinking 2015 but, no, per this very blog, it was 2012. Yowza.) Below, you can see I used the blue-er shirts more centrally and as I got out to the edges it was more whites and grey-er ones. This has very little to do with a grand strategy and everything to do with that being how it got laid down on the Design Floor the first time around.

Continuing a proud tradition of not having enough backing width by mere inches.

Anyhoo, these are 2.5" x 6.5" strips with the 2.5" color squares sewn in diagonally - though, trickily, since the blades of the pinwheel need to be free to spin, you can't strip piece these because the colors are on the inside, not the outside, of the block, so you cut out all of the 6.5" lengths, add the colors, and then sew the Rail Fences together.  It's great mindless sewing for summer baseball game "watching."  (Go Cubs!)

This quilting was a BIG DAMN DEAL for me - my first entirely free-motion machine quilted quilt, instead of just select easy-to-reach areas.  I did wavy lines in the direction of the rails which, as it turns out, may have been kind of wasted effort and I could have just done it as an all-over pattern, because you can't really see how the wiggles change from Fence to Fence unless you're looking for it.  But it was exciting to finish and I'm MUCH more comfortable with freehand wavy lines. I started with closer lines, almost a wood grain texture but soon discovered that was going to take me an ice age to finish, so loosened up a bit. That results in a nicer drape to the quilt anyway, IMO. 

Also, the binding: rainbow ombre! I dig how it looks, especially on the gray/black back.  Cheery!  Except maybe for the gray binding strip (centered on at one side - I just hadn't prepped enough of the rainbow stuff for binding and didn't care to go back and cut one more strip of it, when I had the gray binding already made for some previous project.  Because I'm lazy. Or thrifty. Or whatever, it didn't happen.

 Then there's this odd raspberry cotton-candy colored confection which is just a basic Coin quilt (also called "Chinese Coin", "Roman Coin", and "Bar Quilt" - mine's more of a Bar, since I think coins are supposed to be narrower columns, and sometimes also different heights).  (Why do people pronounce that "heighths"? I never understood that.) (Of course mine WOULD be a "Bar Quilt.")

But the color scheme has been in my brain a lot lately - this pink-yellow-orange-purple series.  Not sure why. Missing sunsets? Strong yen for sherbet?  Trying to rekindle a childhood love of FruitStripe Gum? Maybe being in Houston this long has made me a secret Astros fan, but in 1983?

Colors a little more true in the sunlight (if wrinkly)

The only thing I could think to use for sashing (since I am quite bored with white and gray, for a change) was this very light blue, which is a linen texture from Henley Studio, which *kind of* sets it off perfectly and *kind of* makes it look like the colors ran in the wash, which they haven't (yet. But I guess now it doesn't matter if they do.)

Finally, there's this unfortunate top, which probably needs several borders to make it a usable size.... except that it is wildly out of true, with these rows of wee 2" squares finishing up pretty dramatically different lengths, despite having the same count... uh, woops.

At upper left, we find.... wait, WTF?

So because this is not critical, it has been summarily wadded up and thrown in a corner until I have energy to fix it or take it apart for reconstituting some other way.  Bleh.

Looks better when you can't see the corner in question.

These will likely be donated at some point - but first, I have to get them back to Illinois, because I will shortly be ending my stint at this gig in TX and heading off for ... somewhere else, tbd.  And every time I move hotels/airbnbs/ accounts, I gotta pack up whatever giant mounds of fabric have accumulated in my pro tempore Sewing Studio, and shove it all into my teeny Mazda for schlepping to the next port of call. 





You'd think this constant upheaval would make me more conservative when I buy fabric in a temporary location, and force me to Kon Marie the crap outta my traveling selections, but.... then you'd remember who you were talking about, and you'd laugh and laugh.

In my defense, there are some GREAT fabtic stores around here.

In conclusion:  I might not be doing what I've told myself sternly to do, but at least I'm sewing, and mental-health-wise, that's better than not sewing and waiting for The Right Inspiration to hit.  I mean, these piles of fabric are not going to cut themselves into smaller pieces and sew themselves back together.  Right? Right!  Back to work!  Except maybe I'll just take a bath for a bit, and check out Pinterest, in case there's anything VERY CRITICAL that I must make RIGHT AWAY.

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop it Up Friday ... er, Saturday.

Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler While You Still Can: A Late Celebration

....because they found love in a hopeless place.

I'll get political here in a sec, fair warning.  It's been that kind of week.

Back in the carefree, liberated days of March, 2016, these two fine gentlemen got married, because they are in love, and they wanted to celebrate that love with their loved ones....and because it was finally legal for them to do so.

This is grainy because my phone camera is crap, but also
possibly because I was trembling with joy when I took it.
Remember the bow ties. Those show up later.

I know JJ through his ex, an old college chum, and even though that is over now I am pleased to keep custody of both of them.  JJ is one of those organizers of people...because it was his job, for one thing, but it's also his nature to gather up the loose elements of disparate groups and throw them all together onto the porch and fuse them together with some wine and a string of christmas lights for an excellent dinner party.  It was JJ who up and moved from his wintery, urban-midwestern perch to New Orleans, convincing 4 of his besties to go as well, all owing to a dream he had that they had found happiness there.  He is a sterling host, an unfailingly generous friend, a devout lover of this cashew brittle I make every Christmas, and a mysterious jack of all trades that I'm pretty sure makes things happen with just the force of his mind.

And when I refer to him as a "jack of all trades," I mean the trades part quite literally, since he is a carpenter of some note but also a mason (the stone kind, not the Dan Brown kind, though...maybe! who the hell knows?), a gardener, an electrician, a restorer of all things vintage, and a tinkerer down to his very bones.  It was JJ who stepped up when I was fumbling my way through the last stages of a kitchen renovation, having to sell my condo - sweeping in, in a flurry of drills and circular saws and concrete mixing and levels to get me something presentable to sell in a matter of hours - the only reason my place sold when I needed it to, for which timely magnanimity I am forever grateful.  (Shout out also to the Bean's husband Senor "Sleepy" Fitzgerald, who hung my wall cabinets on brick with some fancy French cleats.)  So JJ was already due a Quilt of Gratitude anyway, but then, a wedding on top of it?  Get cracking, Astrid!

A hole in my kitchen brick wall, patched and still wet, by Mason JJ.
(It blended much more than this flash makes it appear).

The front of my island, fashioned out of leftover cabinet doors, by Carpenter JJ.

To my dismay, I haven't gotten to know Chris, JJ's betrothed, very well yet, apart from a brief pizza-n-beer outing and some good chats on FB. (And he has joined the select group of People With Whose Families I Routinely Argue on FB, because I have impulse control issues.) But I can tell he is wonderful: because he makes JJ happy, sure, but more vitally because of his measured equanimity in the face of puzzling callousness from people he loves and who love him; and his refusal to be anything other than who he is - a good man, in love, with a steady job and convictions he will defend to the end -  which should clearly be enough for anyone, and is definitely just the right cocktail for JJ.

ANYWAY: To the shock of no one who has read past posts, this gift was late.....7 months late. I had been plotting a quilt for them for some time before that, but I could never get it quite right - some hyper-rainbow-y attempts were set aside midway through the process as being too dissimilar to the proud, out, but nevertheless only moderately flamboyant couple it was for.  It's not every gay activist who wants a rainbow-brite bedspread in his spare-room, surely.  (And why SHOULD it have to be a statement of identity - why can't they just be married in peace and have an ugly damn quilt made by an old friend for the fricking spare-room, already?)  What could I make for them that was a little closer to their taste in, say, clothes, furniture, paint color, and general aesthetic, but still acknowledge the momentous (and, sadly, still brave) decision to unite as a matter of public record?

And so this is where I ended up.

Not quite large enough for the king-size bed.  Sorry, that picture is kind of dark.

The front is a old traditional pattern (I do favor the traditionals for wedding quilts) sometimes called Trip Around the World.  It's done in scrappy grays, some from men's shirt material, many of which were included in the first quilt I ever made - which quilt, coincidentally, I hand-bound at JJ's first N'awlins house, sitting in the sunshine on his back porch, listening to him putter around cleaning up old bikes to sell, after a night of raucous, farty, whiskey-fueled games of Trains some number of Thanksgivings ago.  (Thanksgivings were kind of JJ's thing, collecting many "orphans" who didn't want to, or couldn't, go home for the holidays.  Though I had a perfectly delightful family to go home to and no one second guessing my sexual orientation, I did enjoy their Orphan Thanksgivings, because they were fun as hell, and also because the food was second in fabulousness only to the company.)

If you haven't played Trains before, I recommend it.

Anyway, somehow that particular fabric reappearing in JJ's wedding quilt feels fitting, a circle completed - but also, these gradations shade from light to dark and back again, an apt summation of marriage if ever there was one (from what I can tell, being a single girl and all.)  And, perhaps as importantly, they will hide either the black or the white hairs of their Dalmatian, Lucky....though hairs have a way of finding their most opposite-colored fabrics to land on, which a regularity that suggests an actual Law of Physics, I dunno.

Not actually Lucky, but still a menace to white AND black AND gray fabrics.  And purple, forget about it.

The back is a stretch of startling, shiny purple cotton sateen from the Stash of the Unknown Benefactress, which shade I have mentally dubbed "Prince Goes To Mardi Gras."  The binding is mostly a nice N'awlins green, with a tiny 3-leaf botanical print, that will stand as my fleur-de-lis analog, and a little bit of gold binding thrown in on one side to complete the trifecta of carnival colors (but not much gold because light colors don't wear very well on the edge of quilts, as I discovered to my great regret.)

Purple Rain Down on Bourbon Street

Purple for Justice, Green for Faith, and Gold for Power.

But Astrid, you may be saying, what part of this quilt *does* shout "#lovewins!" so that all can hear it?  Especially now, the week we have found out our new president elect is not someone who will bear the rainbow standard going forward, but fosters a divisiveness that puts my gay friends and family at risk from people wearing homophobia openly and proudly, emboldened by an environment of xenophobia and mistrust?

It's not a grand statement, per se, but it's here, in the quilting, where I used a multi-colored variegated thread called "Over the Rainbow."

You can't see it much here, but Judy Garland would be proud.

You can see a bit more of the colors here, from the back.

My sewing machine and my skills were really not cooperating so some of the sewing is just...well, it's what I would term "bad," if I were to be judging this quilt for show.  Many of the quilting intersections ended up getting tucked, which fortuitously created a sort of intentional-looking ruching in spots; and the stitch length varies wildly from "teeny weeny" to "yeah, that's not going to stay in."  But though some of these stitches may not hold, I figure of the thousands of loops that comprise all the stitching, *most* of it will keep the rest of it together.  And I fell back, of course, on my very favorite wine-glass/orange-peel pattern, because wine-glass pattern!  I love it so.

A bit o festive green to hint at the party in the back.

And here, in the label, the bowties that my gents wore on their wedding day (bow ties are *also* kind of JJ's thing, a legacy from his own preppified youth and, let's be honest, the 80s):

From before I attached it to the quilt....attempted font based on
the wedding invitation...bow ties based on my boys' finery!

And in a week where they have discovered that their very marriage could be under fire from the new regime - don't believe me? "Cultural Warrior" and Governor-cum-VP-Pence wanted to defund AIDS clinics for promoting a dangerous lifestyle, ferchrissakes - I have finally finished their quilt: bits of light and dark, like clouds passing over a midwestern field of snow, underlaid by the shiny escapist promise of a midwinter Mardi Gras parade (and a good pattern for a time when many of my friends are contemplating their own four-year Trip Around the World, or creating their own wine glass patterns with greater frequency....); and all stitched together by the power of a single, fragile rainbow thread that nevertheless, woven over and under a hundred, a thousand times, ten thousand times, ties together the shifting layers into a cohesive warmth, as welcoming as dinner party christmas lights; or a new home town where you have found a dream of happiness; or a husband's embrace at the end of a day of anxiety and frustration.

Beautiful photo by Michele Encar, used with kind permission. 

And though New Orleans is only a tiny anomaly in reddest Louisiana, and not free of homophobic assaults, I trust that their adoptive city may provide some safe harbor.....or, failing that, one hell of a party in our darkest days to come, akin to Paris during the occupation by Germany, where the wine and the resistance flowed freely (unless you were Jewish, of course).  Sign me up for *that* float, boys!

So a belated toast to you, JJ and Chris - I wish I could cocoon you in the safety you felt among the celebrants of your beautiful wedding, that lovely March night in NOLA when we all really believed It Would Get Better.  But in lieu of that, a humble gift of love and ally-ship: good for a spare room, or for farting under while eating cashew brittle (or Toffi-Fay) or for wrapping yourself in to play Trains on the back porch; and hopefully you know that in wanting to reflect your identities I do not mean to tie you to a stereotype, but honor who you are.  And in honor of what you've both gone through, and what others who are denied a family or a place at the Thanksgiving table might experience, I also made a wee donation in your name....love you guys, and keep the faith.  Numbers, history, and the inexorable tide of demographics and time is on our side.

Oh....and about those hyper-rainbow quilts that were started but rejected as wedding gifts for being too TOO colorful?....those will find a home in a Community Center like this one, too, if they will have it; or a hospice care, or wherever those colors can proclaim to someone, even if they don't see it happening every day, that #lovewins.  Because it must, and because I believe that it will; and because I can, in a small way, contribute something to make sure it does.

Dusting off some old rainbows.

Besos, always and always,

Astrid.

Mint, Mustard, and Diamonds: The Sophisticated Baby

....being a quick post for a quick binkie for a co-worker, who would probably rather I didn't.

So my co-worker Molls is preggo, and despite working with her 4 days a week since like February, for the longest time *I did not notice.*  This is because I am a poor observer of things, yes, but also because she is just about the least pregnant person you're liable to run across - not from a physical perspective, but from her general attitude.  She'd literally never said a single thing about it in my hearing at work, which I respect deeply: because, in general, it's nobody's life-changing undertaking but her own (and her hubby's) and she should not feel the NEED to offer it up for public consumption or have a fuss made if she'd rather avoid the whole being-the-cynosure-of-all-eyes bit.  And also because some folks get so so weird about it: I have witnessed things said to, and invasions of personal space of, pregnant women more times than I can count.  We speculated about the cultural origins of this, perhaps dating from when your offspring was becoming part of a smaller community that might end up supporting him/her, or the fear-tinged anticipation of a time when surviving birth was a pretty spectacular feat in itself. Or perhaps it is just the holdover notion that women are common property and their job is incubation.  I confess my own curiosity about what Molls thinks of the whole motherhood thing had me biting my tongue on several questions that were just, frankly, none of my damn business (though a few leaked out.)

Whatever the source, it results in encounters like

Minky Rules, Orange Peels, Omniscient Lady Pirates and Low-Volume Postage Stamps

...being a foray into all-over quilting pattern, with some success, and also Minky backing for which, it develops, there are Rules.

In my Big Excel Doc of Ideas and Scribbles, I had come up with a pattern I was calling Switchback, with repetitive squared off loops...and for a few of those loops, I continued the color onto the back, as you can see here in the far right two versions:

I was showing some of my plans to a couple of folks and my friend the Cap'n looked over my shoulder and declared, 'That one.  I like that one."  And to my surprised question, "The Switchback?"  she replied, "No, the back of it." And voila! (or perhaps that is "Argh!") A quilt is born.