Just talk to people…

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I enjoy solitude, but when I’m out and about I recognize that each and every one of us has a story to tell and I am not shy about talking to people I do not know.

Before I left my Minneapolis hotel this morning, I visited with the nice lady who was the hostess at the restaurant. She was about 70, if I had to guess. We got to talking about the quilters who had been at quilt market and she remarked that the crowd included a lot of younger women this time, and it made her happy.* I hadn’t actually noticed but I realized she was right. How great is that… there are lots of young quilters!

*This non-quilter’s memory was very good, and she was a good observer of people. It’s been 3 years (I think) since quilt market was in Minneapolis. I was impressed.

On my way to the airport, I got to visiting with man who drove my taxi. He had a lovely accent and I asked where he was from. It turns out he was from Ethiopia and he has led a very interesting life. He is a Coptic Christian (this might be a relevant link), and a singer, who traveled to sing in different churches at Easter and Christmas and other holy times. His family was scattered all over the world. He has worked in the tech industry, and I think he still does. Driving a taxi was sort of a side note for him. The drive to the airport could have been longer and I would not have cared because he was an interesting person.

Not long after, I was in an airport restroom, washing my hands next to a young woman who was fixing her head scarf. I mentioned that it looked nice on her and that I’d often wondered how women keep a scarf in place so well on their head. That led to a short conversation about face shapes and how individual women use different scarf-management strategies. We each went away with a sincere smile on our face. We were people, not stereotypes.

Here’s the thing: I talk to strangers—especially ones that are different from me. Most of the time, strangers turn out not to be strange—they are just people I don’t know. Visiting with them makes me more aware of the fact that each of us has an interesting story. We are all more the same than we are different.

A lady I met at the airport on a different trip.

A lady I met at the airport on a different trip.

So the next time you are in a place with someone you don’t know, maybe on an elevator or standing in line, just say something nice. You may be very surprised at how much you enjoy visiting with someone you do not know.

Ready, set, go!

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Quilt market is so interesting! It’s the place where retail and wholesale come together into the big happy family that we are all a part of. It’s all new to Lorna and she is loving it. 
Market is not open yet but I can share some pictures. Here is my booth, at least one side of it. 

  

Lorna and I got to watch Tula Punk in action today. Love her, love her fabric! You are going to love it too! I should have better photos but was slow. This dot, however, is amazing. 

  

   

Some market booths have amazing displays (not mine, but that’s ok). I love the walls of silk flowers at Michael Miller. 

  

And, gotta say, Minneapolis is just full of lovely buildings. If you keep your eyes open you can see so much!

 
And you may as well go inside to see more :-). This is subtle, but lovely. 

  

Can you help this quilter?

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UPDATE: Caron has found a pattern! Yay! So you can either read what I wrote or just skip down to the pretty picture :-).

I got an email from Caron who wrote:

Hi!  I bought this book (The New Applique Sampler) on Amazon.com, but did not notice until I received it, that it was a used book.  Of course, the pattern was not in it.  So disappointed.  I just watched your dvd of Teach You to Applique and wanted to start trying this!  I did check your website, but did not see the pattern for this one. Do you sell just the pattern so I can give this a try??
Thank you so much!!

Amazingly enough, I don’t have the printed copies of the patterns from that book—or from any of our out of print books. There’s only so much room in my house :-). I also don’t have the pattern in a downloadable format.

But the patterns in that book are nice and I would like to help. Caron said she would be very happy for me to post her email address along with her plea for the pattern pages. She said that even if someone has the pattern and could copy it for her, she would be happy to repay their expense.

If you can help, click to email Caron.

Important Side Note: In this case, I believe that it’s OK to make a copy of the patterns for her. She did buy the book in good faith. It is not the same as making copies of a pattern for all your friends so that they don’t have to buy a book—that would be copyright infringement.

And, because it’s pretty, I’m posting another strawberry photo. This is the one I turned in for my homework assignment—a photo on the color ‘red’.

To market, to market…

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I leave for Spring Quilt Market in Minneapolis on Wednesday. Lorna is going too—it will be her very first market! I am looking forward to sharing the experience with her :-).

We’ve been consulting over what to wear. There are times when I wish I could just put on a business suit and call it done. And then I get over that. Men’s clothes may be easy, but they lack the wild variety available to women. Wild variety is nice.

Since I’ll be shopping for you, I have questions that only you can answer…

  • What would you like me to look for at market? I’m going to be on the lookout for applique-related notions but what else would you like to have available?
  • If I bought pretty packs of wool, would you buy it? Small pieces, or larger pieces?
  • Would you want wool that came with a pattern that I think is cute, but that is not a Piece O’ Cake pattern?
  • What about pincushions? If you are excited about pin cushions, do you want ones that are already made or do you want to make them from a kit?
  • There are lots and lots of fabric vendors available to you. I can’t compete with them but I thought I’d look for a few big prints that you might not find elsewhere. Is there something else that you can’t find that you think I should look for?

I’ll post to instagram while I’m away. I may post photos of different things to get your opinion. I’m sure you will feel free to tell me what you think :-).

And, because I can’t leave without adding a photo, here is strawberry glamour shot that I took this morning. My photo challenge homework this week is ‘red’. Strawberries are in season… what more can I say. I’ll have more strawberry photos uploaded to my smugmug page later today.

For the font junkies…

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If you are a font-lover, this will make you smile. The American Type Founders Company 1923 Specimen Book and Catalogue is a very hard-to-find book with 1148 pages of typefaces, typeface accessories, printing equipment, and insights into printing as it was in 1923. My favorite font (Caslon) is in this book, along with many others.

AmTypeFounders-Page

David Armstrong at Sevanti Letterpress has digitized the 1923 American Type Founders Company Specimen Book and Catalogue. It is in the public domain. Click here to find the digitized book. Click here to read more about the digitizing process.

Linda and I, as Piece O’ Cake Designs, were self-published for 8 years and I was in charge of all things related to layout. It was at that time that I really started to pay attention to different fonts and how they worked. These days I use fonts on the website and blog, and in downloadable patterns. When I want to put text into a quilt, I enjoy having access to the huge variety of fonts that are available today.

Even if fonts are not your thing, this book is laid out well and is full of surprises. You never know where that next cool idea is going to come from—it could be here. Enjoy!

PS – I learned about this from Chuck Green’s newsletter, which is always interesting.

I came home with fabric!

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Now, isn’t that a sentence that makes a quilter smile? The Northern Star Quilters put on a very nice show. The quilts were impressive—and so were the vendors :-). I bought fabric that I don’t usually find—but not too much because space in my suitcase was limited.

I stopped at Quilters’ Express to Japan where I bought the print on the right. The print on the left was a gift from students in my class at Empty Spools that I’ve been meaning to post for weeks. Both were designed by Yoshiko Jinzenji for Yuwa.

YoshikoJinzenji-1

I love her fabric and was sad to learn that she may not be designing any more. So, if you like her fabric, I suggest you hunt it down and buy it now. I also bought this kimono fabric—some vintage, some not. And a really cool Japanese panel print not pictured.

QuiltersExpress-JapaneseFab-1

I stopped at Handloom Batik. The owner, Oosha (whose name I may be misspelling) remembered me from years back—and she remembered that I bought a mustard-colored gauze scarf. I admit to being seriously impressed.

HandloomBatik-1

These fabrics are all hand stamped (or woven in the case of that central blue fabric). They have an attitude that is both casual and stately. I love them. (FYI: all of the fabrics pictured in this post have been washed in the washer and dried in the dryer.)

I bought another gauzy scarf. It is big, more like a sari. In fact, it could be a sari. I admit to not knowing. My new scarf is blue with accents of red and white. The fabric is light but also warm. Oosha says she uses one at home as a light cover when she’s chilly in her chair.

Batik

As Oosha was (carefully) folding my scarf, she realized that she had not ‘cleaned’ it. Women tie the fabric with fine thread to make that dotted pattern, before it is dyed. There are hundreds of thread wraps on each scarf. Oosha said that the women do this work while gossiping, thus making it both a productive and fun time.

ThreadBalls

She was going to take the time to pull the threads off for me but I said, no, I’d be happy to do that myself. In fact, I did enjoy it! It was sort of like peeling a sunburn, except that I wear sunscreen so haven’t had that sensation in years. (Funny to imagine that the day may come when people have no idea what that phrase means.)

You have to find Oosha at a quilt show and I hope you do find her. Handloom Batiks is not currently online.

None of these were bargain fabrics. I’m as happy as the next quilter to find a bargain but I’m also willing to pay the price for unusual, interesting fabric. I don’t want to encourage crazy spending, but it is true that I have never regretted this sort of purchase.