Category — Friendship Circle

I’m so proud of myself for being ahead on something!  Saturday (rainy, cool outside) was a great day to work on some sewing.  (Maybe on Sunday I will have some time to work on one of my own projects… Hmmmmm)

Blocks for C

Here is the pair of blocks I made for C’s Friendship Circle quilt this year.  The blocks are 9 1/2 inches square.  This was from a pattern in a magazine from 2002.  I’m not sure what it was, but C’s pictures showed that this block has some real potential.  I actually cut out enough for a third, but didn’t sew it together.  I think I will just add the blocks to an envelope when I give this to C, in case she wants to incorporate the colors in another block she’s working on.  (How’s THAT for re-marketing one’s laziness?  I’m just offering C more OPTIONS!)

This year’s Friendship Circle project is making blocks for each host.  Here’s the one we made for J.  The rules were to have a circle in the 12 inch (finished) block of a certain size, and she gave us one piece of batik fabric with lots of colors in it.  She said to make something sunflower-esque.  I had fun doing this, but it did take a lot more time than I thought it would.

Sunflower Block for J

It was important to me to not just have hand dyes and batiks in the block- I’m not really sure why.  And I like that it looks like a face.  Here’s hoping J likes it, too!

We’ve started a new round of Friendship Circle projects, and this time, we’ve simplified the process.  Each hostess gets to choose a block that she’d like members of the group to make, for at least a portion of a quilt.  As an example, I might decide to make a Baltimore Album quilt, and farm out a block to each member of the Friendship Circle, and give them pieces of two fabrics which must be used, so that all blocks have some common themes.  The following month, when we meet, we turn in the blocks to the previous hostess, and get a new project to work on.

(Fear not, if any of the Friendship Circle is a reader, I am unlikely to choose a Baltimore Album. Though that might not be too difficult for the applique whizzes in the group.)

This month’s block is called Mississippi Wheel of Fortune, and we got two fabrics- one red, one yellow.  I still have a sashing piece that is paper pieced sawteeth, but I’ve finished a pinwheel setting square and the big Wheel of Fortune block.

Mississippi Wheel of Fortune Block

This involved curved piecing, and paper piecing.  I hadn’t done any paper piecing in years, so I needed to re-learn.  I found some videos on YouTube about it, some which didn’t show much of the actual technique.  This one is a good tutorial.  And this one is a scream.  Of course, I didn’t find the first one until now, when I’m writing about it.  The second one was fun, and enough to jog my memory.  I don’t remember the folding bit when I first learned, but in my experience this time, the folding helps a lot.

I like the sharp points you get with paper piecing.  But it does take a while, and you can’t be stingy with your fabric pieces.  The curved piecing was easy, since I used Ruth B. McDowell’s technique with freezer paper templates.  That’s my wheelhouse, as they say.  I can’t wait to see what the others look like.

Photo credit to DH, copyright 2009

I am the type of person who would like to move to Emilia Romagna for a month to have some elderly woman teach me the proper way to make homemade fresh pasta by hand, and to spend a month or so making it at least once a day to be sure I can actually do it correctly.  While I have a passport, and can speak Italian, the likelihood of this happening soon in my life is remote.

I do, however, have good cookbooks, access to eBay, and some lovely KitchenAid appliances at my disposal.

First, the cookbook:  Marcella Says…, by Marcella Hazan.  Marcella has made a career teaching Italian cooking to Americans and others, in the USA and in Italy.  This book is one of the first cookbooks I bought when I moved to the midwest.  I read through Marcella’s description of making homemade pasta, and I read that she herself, in her advanced age, no longer uses the hand crank pasta machines one often sees.  She uses the pasta roller and cutter attachments made in Italy for Kitchen Aid.  So, the pasta attachments became a wish-list item for me.

Five Years Later….

I was  perusing eBay looking for a used ice cream maker (thanks to a wonderful visit with Adelia and Burt in Stillwater, OK), and ended up bidding on the KitchenAid pasta rollers.  I’m pleased to say I won the auction, and got them for less than retail.

Pasta Roller on Mixer

This weekend, I took the lovely rollers out of their box, and checked it all out.  It was time to refer back to Marcella for the basic recipe.  She doesn’t tell you how easy it is, as Jamie Oliver does, and show you how much fun it is to energetically mix it with your hands.  She’s much more direct.  I will paraphrase/embellish the directions here.  For enough pasta for 2-4 people (2 as a generous main dish or 4  primi piatti (first course), IMHO):

1. Put your metal blade in your food processor.  Add a heaping cup of all-purpose flour and two eggs.  Process until it clumps together.  If it’s sticky, add flour by the tablespoon, pulsing between until it isn’t sticky.  If it’s too dry, add water by the tablespoon until it comes together in big clumps.
2. Gather the dough into a ball and knead it for one minute, pushing it away with the heel of your hand against the worksurface.  Turn, fold, and repeat.  The heat of your hands and the pressure will make the dough smooth.  Cover the dough with plastic wrap or foil and let rest (15 min. to 1 hr.)
3. Roll and cut with the pasta roller and cutter, according to the manufacturer’s directions.  Either cook the pasta immediately in boiling water (2-4 minutes), or let the pasta air dry on tea towels, and store for later.

Doesn't this dough look well rested?

Okay, so there’s none of the romance of making it completely by hand, of a special skill gained learning to roll the pasta with a dowel.  But it is fast, easy, and delicious in the way that dried pasta can never be.  It’s tender, tasty, and has a texture all it’s own.  You can understand why this has a special place in the hearts of Italians by taste alone.  The fact that it’s made with love by mamma, well, books have been written about that.

We made this pasta twice this weekend.  (First to try out the tools and a quick sauce recipe, and the second time to avoid the mistakes of our first effort, cutting too-sticky pasta by hand. And to use up the sauce.  And because we were hungry.)

Roller in Action

Honestly, it IS possible to go from eggs and flour to cooked pasta in about 35 minutes (15 min. of resting time) with the food processor and the KitchenAid pasta roller and cutter. If you add another 20 minutes on the front making a quick tomato sauce, in an hour it’s a really great dinner.  OK, we’re aided by some sophisticated machinery.  But it does pass Michael Pollan’s test for real food.  We can identify all ingredients, and we combined them together at home.  And Michael Pollan never said sophisticated cooking machinery was not allowed. (Imagine the backlash…)

I can see why this might be too much effort for some people.  But I am pretty sure this is not a flash in the pan gadget for us.  Tonight, while we were cooking the pasta pictured here, DH mentioned that this might be a great first course at a dinner we’re cooking for a silent auction.  Or that we might want to do this at another dinner party.  Marcella would be proud.  I’ve introduced another person to the joys of homemade pasta all’uova, and he can tell how good it is.

Here are some pictures of what Candy was working on during the retreat.   You can see more of her work here.  Candy absolutely hates to have her picture taken, preferring to be on the other side of the camera.  She does not, however, mind if we take pictures of what she makes.

Candy enjoys a lot of different techniques in sewing and quilting, and particularly likes hand applique and embroidery.  She’s pretty fearless when it comes to trying new techniques, and is always up for a challenge.  I’m not sure I could pinpoint a signature style in Candy’s work, as she likes to try lots of different things, and varies her color palette from piece to piece.

Candy's Geranium Quilt

Here is a quilt that Candy had started on a previous WAQG retreat.  Orange is an unusual color for Candy, but I think her use of the different orange batiks is an example of how fearless she can be to go outside her comfort zone.  This quilt is pieced, and then the geraniums are added by machine applique.  (Candy’s very good at traditional applique, so this was a conscious choice to do otherwise.  Below is a closeup view of the applique and quilting.  For those who are less knowledgeable about flora and fauna (real or stylized), Candy machine quilted the leaves with the distinctive veining of geraniums.

Closeup of Geraniums

In the upper right of this picture you can see that she repeated the “veins” of the leaves in the rest of her quilting in this area.  Pretty impressive to me, who really can only meander in my machine quilting.   I believe Candy intended to add some beading to the quilt as well, but I’m not sure whether that happened in the course of the weekend.

Candy worked on two other projects.  One is a Spring/Easter themed wall hanging, with bunnies and carrots, with machine piecing and fusible applique.  There will also be embellishments, and possibly embroidery, for the centers of the flowers, the eyes of the rabbits, etc.

Candy's Bunnies

And another detail shot:

Closeup of Piecing and Applique

In case you haven’t noticed,  Candy likes doing hand work, and mixing techniques in a single piece.  She was also working on a little wool placemat that you can use for a cupcake to celebrate a birthday.  This will also have beading and embroidery on it when it’s complete.   This mat is approximately 6 inches in diameter.

Candy's Wool Cake Mat, in Progress

Isn’t this cute?  It would be perfect for a surprise for a co-worker, or if you don’t want to have a whole cake around at home when you celebrate birthdays.

Candy's Fracture

Here’s one of the smaller fracture quilts we did as a group.  Candy came up with this image based on a photograph of some relatives.  From what I remember, each of our pieces was about 12-14 inches long, and between 5 and 8 inches tall.  We all had a good laugh when we realized that her cousin’s head was separated from her body when the picture was fractured.  I was the one who got her head, while Kathy got her body.  I made the head, but left it as a separate piece to fuse on, since I didn’t want to put it in the wrong spot.

Candy sent me this photo this morning, and I’m pleased to see the head lines up with the body.

As you can see,  there were lots of ways that we approached the leaves and branches.  In the detail shot below, I tried to capture some of the different ways we did this.  (It’s a cropped section of Candy’s original photo)

Closeup of detail in Candy's Fracture

You can see that Candy has couched on some thread for the gunwales of the canoe, and you can see that we used different approaches to representing leaves.  This shot shows how five different sections came together, and you can see piecing, applique, and lots of leaf treatments.  I used colored netting to hold my leaf snippets down, and then I used stitching in green thread to hold them in place. (not pictured)
Beautiful, Candy!

This week at our Friendship Circle meeting, we got to see Jo’s fracture quilt completed.  Thanks to Mary for taking this photo for me, as I forgot my camera.  DOH!

Jo's Fracture Quilt

Jo took the original photograph for her quilt in her garden.  We didn’t really know what the background was, as she brought a black & white photo, and said  that the ground was covered with “chips” or “mulch”, or some other not very descriptive phrase, so that we wouldn’t be too literal. I like the fact that there are different backgrounds, and yet, the fractured flowers all come together as foreground anyway.

We also discussed options for a group project this year, and it looks like we’re going for something a bit simpler, partly because the group is growing, and partly because of the time commitments the fractures took  (“You panic for the first week, then you start to get some ideas, then you have to go buy fabric, and finally do what came into your head…. it can be pressure!”)  Ok. that’s a combination of many comments into one big sentence, but it COULD have been a quote.

I still think this group is GREAT.

Minnesota Statehood Quilt Top

Here’s MG’s fracture quilt top put together and with an added border.

Moroccan Mosque Quilt, Completed

Here’s MN’s fracture quilt, completed.  (Sorry about the less than terrific angles on the photos)

Of course, you may have seen previous versions of these, but not in this state.  These quilts were made based on original drawings, simplifications of  photographs.  We, as  a group, used photographs that were in the public domain, or with the permission of the photographer (as in MN’s daughter, J, in the case of the one above).

Given the current action by the AP, this brings up a few important questions about art, original works, and “fair use” of copyrighted materials.

Our Friendship Circle used photographs for the basis of our quilts.  All of us have done the following things to protect the copyright of the original photographer, and separate our works from them:

1. made our quilts for our personal use and display at home (no threat to the original photographer’s rights to benefit monetarily  from his/her images)
2. made original drawings (simplifications) based on, but not exact copies of the photos
3. cut the drawings apart and gave them to group members to create original works in fabric (the individual fracture pieces)
4. combined the original  fabric works (fracture pieces) together
5. added more design elements (borders, quilting, details)

Note that I AM NOT A LAWYER,  but I believe it is reasonable to say that the photographs were original inspirations, but that the finished quilts are significantly different from the original works (i.e. quilts of fabric, not photographs, and there are many different steps of original work and interpretation that separate our works from the original photographs), and that there would not be any mistaking that the original photographer’s work is much different from ours.

We did our best to protect ourselves from situations like what the Associated Press is in with Shepard Fairey.

Why am I blogging about copyright issues and quilts?  Because of something of local significance.  Minnesota has been celebrating its sesquicentennial (150 years of statehood), and the bridge in the image of the Minnesota statehood stamp is the one that goes from our town across the Mississippi to Wisconsin.  So, this bridge, and the river around it, now has some local historical significance.  Did I mention that the quilter’s guild we belong to was started by the Winona County Historical Society?  And that we meet at their building?

As it happens, someone at the Historical Society suggested that it would be really cool if the guild would make a quilt for display in the Historical Society based on the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Stamp.

This would be cool, for lots of reasons.  It represents the Winona County Historical Society’s appreciation of quilts.  The general image represented would be about Winona County and its relationship to the Mississippi River, and the regional landscape.  If we made a quilt that looked like the stamp, it would also represent the significance of the Sesquicentennial, and a view of Winona on the national stage.

But now we need to be more careful, since any potential quilt we might make for the Historical Society would be a quilt displayed publicly, not for the pleasure of an individual quilter.  And now,  it makes copyright a valid concern.  And the last thing we’d want to do is to have the Winona County Historical Society, which does a lot for the quilt guild, to be sued for violating copyright.

I sent an email to the press contact for the Minnesota Statehood Stamp from the USPS.  Below is my text.  We’ll see what happens.

Mr. Nowacki -

Thank you for taking the time to read my email.

I am the President of the Winona Area Quilter’s Guild, in Winona, Minnesota.  We meet at the Winona County Historical Society, which founded our organization long before I was involved with it.

Someone at the Winona County Historical Society approached a guild member and asked if we could make a quilt for display in the Historical Society based on the Minnesota Statehood Stamp, to commemorate the local significance of the image, and to represent the Sesquicentennial.

We have not done anything so far but listen to the request, and wonder about the copyright issues associated with doing so, as this would be a quilt for display in the Historical Society.

Given the current action that the Associated Press is taking against an artist who made Obama images based on a photograph an AP employee took, we want to make sure that we could ask for appropriate permissions to make a derivative work based on the stamp image.

My question for you, sir, is how would we go about requesting the permission?  Would we need permission not only from the USPS, but also from Mr. Richard Hamilton Smith, who took the photo?  And also Ethan Kessler, who designed the stamp?

Please let me know if you can point me in the correct direction for us to ask for that permission.

Thank you,

Jennifer Sanborn
President, Winona Area Quilter’s Guild

Now I’ll see if I can send some similar requests for permission to the photographer, and the stamp designer, and see what happens.

Stay tuned….

Now that we have all the fracture quilt pieces completed, let’s look at them as a group, in no particular order:

First, the last one we did- Melissa’s

Melissa's Interpretation of the Minnesota Statehood Stamp

And then Sue’s

Sue's Gears, before it was finished

And then Mary’s

Mary's Mosque in Morocco

Then mine, since I can find the photo:

Fruitful Friendship

And Kathy’s:

Kathy's Pieced Old Barn

I’ll provide an update when I get photos of the last two quilts.