Pamela Thiele Art Quilts

BB Anonymous

A very large white curly haired dog is looking at me right now with equal measures of hope and resignation. She feels I would be a lot happier if I were playing what in our house is called Bronco Ball. Since her favorite ball is orange and blue and is sold under the name of the Denver Broncos, our NFL team.

I have written before about what Bronco Ball means to Luka but that was then and now I think some of us, aka Luka, have slipped from having fun with Bronco Ball to being addicted to it. Way addicted. Because we have already had two good games of BB today. At least, I thought they were good. Apparently they didn’t go on long enough, by which timing I mean, they didn’t last all morning and all afternoon. I imagine she feels, as have my other dogs in my life, that I have a miserably short attention span. Play BB with me for 10 minutes and then I am bored. Humans. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

Luka is a labradoodle. Mostly she’s like her poodle ancestors. But in a few ways, she is all labrador. For instance, no poodle I’ve known much sees the point to fetch. You throw the ball, you should have to be the one to bring the ball back. Yawn. This is how Button, the poodle, feels. She watches Luka chase after toss after toss after toss with amazement. She will try to distract Luka by — oh, say, grabbing her tail or chewing on her ear. Fun games all but no, Luka can not be dissuaded from BB. So eventually Button will take a nap or go somewhere else. If they’re playing in the yard, Button will find something disgusting to eat that will make her hork later. Now THAT’s a good time. But Luka will play BB until she drops, if we let her.

On warm days like this, we play inside, downstairs in my studio which is cool and has a nice fan. But it is still kind of WARM and there is just so much running a dog should do. Or so we dumb humans think. We force Luka to stop with the chasing and rest. At which point it becomes apparent that she is panting HEAVILY. But eager to continue. If only we humans had the stamina.

She has right now put the ball down at my feet. Button will steal it to engage Luka’s interest in her, Button. But it takes Luka about 1 second to get the ball back and put it down by my feet. Now Luka has lovely big brown eyes and a sweet earnest face and it is WAY hard for me to say no. But I do. Because she is already panting like crazy.

You might ask why does she have the ball if the game is over. This would only be something someone who has never had a Lab would ask. You fool. In order to get the ball, and despite the fact that basically she is a well trained dog with a strong drive to be VERY VERY GOOD, it’s a BALL DUH and she is not giving it up.

I figure I could take the ball and put it away one of these times she drops its spit-covered gloriousness on my left foot –but that just seems like cheating. Maybe it’s time to lock myself in the bathroom.

eeny meeny

I’ve been doodling with some fabric while I work on finishing the three quilt tops I need to quilt and the one mystery top I am working on in top secret with the curtains drawn. So of course I have made a little top while I was thinking about doing all those things. This is an example of what I call  Quilter Logic.

The doodle quilt is a basic shoo fly. However the blocks are each not quite 18″. What do you mean, “what does ‘not quite’ mean?” It means I don’t feel like measuring. They are around, about or close enough to 18″.

So there are nine blocks. And I have had to make some extra because two of the first nine didn’t work. Great fabrics. Fun blocks. But not for this quilt . I’m referring now to the quilt on the left, and specifically, to the lower left and upper right blocks. The minor prints are too busy. In the lower left, the major print is totally lost.

So what to do? Well I went to my stash (always glad of an excuse) and found some orange-ish background prints and some two-color, silhouette, large floral prints. So I made those two blocks. And now I’m worried if having two silhouette prints is one too many. In the quilt on the right, they are the block on the left side of the second row and on the top right.

It is amazing how many combinations you can get with just nine blocks. It is actually either amazing or absolutely irritating or totally confusing or completely crazy-making.

I need to keep the two silhouettes away from each other. I believe. And yet keep the quilt in balance. So that the other blocks continue to complement each other. And so no block takes over the quilt. Right now there are a couple of very insistent backgrounds — the hot pink one, the bright, light orange one. And I want to avoid having two blocks with bright main fabrics next to each other, if at all possible.

I also think I want the center block to remain in the center. It is a handkerchief which I’ve reenforced with iron-on, lightweight facing. I love the huge flowers on it. And I really would like the animal print, which is an African fabric to stay put in the middle of the upper row. I think. I made this quilt because I wanted to use that African print. And this was the only valid way I could figure out to use it.

Although maybe I’m being too rigid about what STAYS where.Sooooo, I have moved the African print and the sky has not fallen.

I think I am getting close to a layout. COOL! Once I abandoned the rule I’d set: these blocks don’t move around — then the quilt started to come together. I did try moving the middle block, incidentally — all over the place. But it just didn’t work anywhere else. I think because the major print reads light and has a little bit of white in it. It really needs to be in the center. To my eyes.

Below is the final choice. For now. Unless I decide that two silhouette blocks don’t work. Then I’ll make something else. We’ll see.

george steinbrenner and quilting

Okay, maybe this is a stretch. Still, The Boss’s death gave me a moment to reminisce. It’s just about three years since we left New York for Colorado. And I love it here. And I keep insisting there’s nothing I miss about back East.

But is that true? Reading through all the obits and op eds about Steinbrenner, I found myself smiling. Gleeful over all the rude things he and other Yorkers had said or done. New York – the place where the ruder you are, the more you are respected.

And I miss this?? Honestly yes and  no. I like living here in the Southwest because I can drive without constant fear that someone is going to run a stop sign or refuse to pull over for an emergency vehicle or pass me in the right hand shoulder going 70 mph. It happens, yes. But not as a rule.

People are pleasant here. It’s a whole different way of negotiating life. Here blustering is mostly considered bad manners. In New York, you either bluster back or roll your eyes. But you don’t give ground. Here you compromise or agree to disagree. For the most part.

Of course there are times when you agree to be disagreeable at each other. But I can go to the store here fairly confident that I will not come home with my blood pressure higher than it was when I left.

There is a kind of live and let live functioning here. Not about everything. There are certain areas where temperatures run high. But often I notice people prefer to back away from an issue, rather than discuss it. There are issues I insist on discussing. But for the most part we have agreed somehow, non-verbally, to disagree, my neighbors and me about politics, say.

Do I miss a good ole New York verbal brawl? I find I don’t. It’s nice not to have to engage over every little thing. I know in New York I was always loaded for bear, as they say. Ready and willing to pick a fight with all other people. Here, I have let my guard down.

This has had an interesting effect on my quilts. I feel freer than I did – and I always felt free – to do what I want. I am seeing things differently. My designs seem more about possibilities and less about defending what I’m doing. That’s very liberating.

I still think a lot of people don’t understand what I’m doing but out here they are giving me room to do it anyway.

Some say Steinbrenner changed baseball forever for the worst. I think he was just in the vanguard of the inevitable change that was coming. He did what he thought was best to create a winning team. And although I was a Mets fan and a Cubs fan and a BoSox fan, and am now a total Rockies fan, I have to admit that watching the Yankees play was a real pleasure. Baseball at its best.

Consequently I am going to take a page from George’s playbook and decide to continue to do what’s best for my quilting – ignoring the old rules, and honoring my inner voice. Steinbrenner said it was all about winning. I think actually it was all about bringing out the very best in each person. And that’s what I’ll take with me. Ignore the critics. Figure out what’s wrong with your failures and fix it. Revel in your successes. Embrace who you are.

travel is broadening

I used to think I knew a lot because I had traveled a lot in the eastern US and Europe. Even made it to Australia.And I thought I was pretty fearless when it came to going to see those sights that sounded interesting.

Somehow however a certain fear of heights has snuck up on me over the years and I now find I am responding with what I would prefer to call a wee bit of trepidation when confronted with sights that involved a sharp increase in altitude – or decrease, if you’re the glass half empty kind of person. Discovering the glories of the American southwest has exposed me to heights I never imagined. And to my own discomfort with these heights.

I first noticed this discomfort when we visited New Mexico five years ago. We went looking for what was supposed to be a canyon formed by the Rio Grande. We were driving, however, on what seemed to be miles and miles of flat land. I am used to a canyon being associated with mountains or some sort of indication that there is topography. This area of New Mexico had none. Flat as a board. Flat as Kansas. And no sign of a river.

As we drove over what seemed to be an unnecessary bridge, I finally said What canyon?!?! And Lauren said GASP and I looked out my side window and looked down and down and down. The canyon was right underneath us. That’s why there was a bridge. Not exactly unnecessary. My palms started to sweat. Honest.

On the far side of the bridge, we pulled over into the official parking lot and joined all the people walking out on the pedestrian part of the bridge. Although we were the ones who were clinging to the inner rail. I didn’t even make it to the center of the bridge. I have no idea when I got so spooked by heights. It has snuck up on me.

I can tell myself that it would be a rare event indeed if someone, such as me, were suddenly to be hurled off a bridge by some magical force and into a crevasse of any ilk. But it makes no difference to whatever part of me is reacting.

My mother was terrified of heights. I remember driving up Mount Washington in New Hampshire when I was a little kid. Mount Washington is a big mountain especially for an East Coast mountain. Out here it would be a middle range but that’s just nit-picking. Anyway the road up was lovely and I seem to remember not all that scary, but at one point Mom declared she could go no further. Dad stopped the car and Mom got out, taking me with her. We picked wild blueberries and sat on a rock for the hour or so it took Dad to complete the trip to the summit, which my older siblings were eager to do.

So I vowed I would never be like my mom, in this regard. That’s why when I was a junior in college, I found myself clinging to a ladder in a fire watchtower in Massachusetts, unable to move in either direction. I had not wanted to be like Mom so I’d talked myself into climbing something I should have totally avoided. Eventually one of my friends talked me down.

But my memory can be very convenient so when we moved here to Colorado. I volunteered to drive a van full of our friends up Mount Evans. One of the highest peaks in the Rockies. A 14er. Which means over 14,000 feet high.

The road on Mount Evans is the highest paved highway in American and is closed for much of the year. In fact, it opened this June after the two-story -high snow drifts were cleared and had to reclose two weeks later, because of a late Spring snow storm.

To call it a road is to be generous. It is a strip of asphalt barely clinging to the edge of some amazing drops. At points, the “road” has sheered away and only one lane remains. At points that lane has had the edges gnawed off it. There is no guardrail. Probably because it would last about two weeks and then, also, fall off the mountain.

I started on it with élan. But at one point, as I looked at the road ahead, there was no visible road, just a curve into infinity. My palms started to sweat. Never a good sign.

I made it up and we all survived. However then we had to go down again. I decided for the return trip that I would yield the inside lane to no one. Not even the cars driving up it, who could be said to own it. They would have to go around me. Because I was not getting any closer to the edge. Which was constantly crumbling.

We made it down. I had a tremendous sense of accomplishment. And of having dodged the proverbial bullet. Would I do it again? I have no idea. I can’t imagine how a road hugging the side of a mountain can be repaired so I suspect the road is still as narrow as it was when we went up. Although I know myself well enough to realize that I am fully capable of saying I’d be glad to do it again.

I would have to drive. Because frightening though that was, it would be so much worse to be a passenger and have to rely on someone else to keep us from certain death. Not that I over dramatize.

If I said I’d do it, the question is would I freeze at some point. Which wouldn’t really work on Mount Evans because there is no other way up or down unless you’re an eagle. I am not. And I have no idea how someone driving can be talked down a mountain, the way I was talked down that ladder long ago in Massachusetts.

Just  last summer we decided to go over the Berthoud Pass, another high point in the Rockies. It’s a passage across the Continental Divide. This road is wider (three lanes, even), more maintained, and more or less stays open all year, depending on whether there’s a blizzard (ulp). I drove up and up and up to until suddenly I felt the need to “take some pictures.” Then I told Lauren that if she were eager to drive, I would not stand in her way. In other words, I had had it with the switchbacks And I needed to unclench my teeth She got us to the official Divide parking lot and commemorative sign, where I actually did take some photos.  And then I looked down and down and down. And opined that Lauren could continue to drive, if she insisted. Never look straight down. Ever.

The day after we visited the Berthoud Pass, a truck fell off the precipice where we had been. Which validated my fears in a way I wish it hadn’t.

Anyway there are other heights to conquer.  For instance, train rides across trestle bridges in canyons here in Colorado that I’ve said I want to take but Lauren is skeptical. About both of us. Still I imagine we will work up our nerve. I want to see these places and they are certainly closer to us now than they were on Long Island. And Lauren is very good at talking me to safety. Or at least, clinging to me as I cling to the railing, which gives me a great sense of solidarity.

Just one little thing….

A few years back, I inherited a small amount of money and used some of it to buy a new sewing machine, a Bernina 440 especially for quilters. I love the machine; don’t get me wrong. It makes me smile. It was the first model with a quilting stitch regulator which, when I remember to use it, makes a good difference in my quilting. But I have a wee tad problem with the customer support.

I don’t think there is any actually. Now I recognize that perhaps my questions are not the serious, difficult ones a customer support person is probably used to. Whatever those may be.

My questions are from someone who uses the machine almost daily and tends to forget things. Especially the things that are not in the dumb instruction book that came with the machine.

When did everyone decide it was okay to post the large instruction books, the ones that actually answer questions, on line? And to give us consumers the crummy mini booklets which really don’t cover much of anything?

I don’t believe it has to do with saving paper because the companies who profess that they are saving paper by not giving us the instructions we need, do include all kinds of promotional materials. Bernina has included printed info on all kinds of products I don’t want. But for the instructions, I have to go on line.  Which takes an incredible amount of time and is beyond tedious.

So in the mini booklet they saw fit to provide, half the symbols the machine uses are NOT listed. Or at least the one symbol that I can never remember what the hell it means, is not listed.

Every time this symbol comes up, I search frantically through the book. Because the machine will not work when this symbol is displayed. So after ripping several more pages in my desire to find out what the hell it is, I turn to the Internet and customer service. That’s because the same people who put the damn instructions on line, also determined that we can only access customer service on line. Since we have nothing better to do with our time.

So I email customer service asking politely at first what does this symbol mean. And never once ever have I heard back from them. Even when I start getting not so polite.

I realize that I am forgetting a very simple symbol and one that everyone should automatically recognize. But when I purchased my Bernina for a few million dollars, didn’t I also purchase the right to ask the occasional stupid question?

I have become so paranoid about how Bernina customer service has been ignoring me for four years now that I have started imagining scenarios about why.

I imagine my initial request, “Please tell me what this symbol means ASAP since my machine will not run until I fix whatever it is which is wrong” coming into customer service in New York (which is where their Internet page says they are) and the person on whose computer it showed up, laughing wildly and then reading it to the other people in the room. And they all decide to send me the ole “this office is on  vacation and will get back to you when the office reopens.”

When I sent the next request for elucidation a few months later, I imagine they forwarded it to the folks at corporate headquarters somewhere in Switzerland so they could have a chuckle too.

And I fantasize that the Swiss customer service head said “Zis is too stooopid to respond to. Zend thiz cuzomter ze ole ‘on vacation’ email – forever.”

Because I still am waiting all these years for the answer to my question. And although I am grateful for the wonderful technological advances that have happened with our sewing machines, I miss the old days when a stupid question would actually be answered. Even if the questioner asked it over and over again.

There is a lot to remember in life.  I think I can be excused to forgetting what the symbol that indicates that, OOPS, I left the feed dogs down, looks like. Don’t you?

Done and done

I finished my circle quilt top today. Whew! I still actually like it. Sometimes I get this far and decide I don’t like the quilt or there’s something fatally wrong with it or I was totally off base with my thinking. But not this quilt. Lovely when that happens.

I intend to use a black batting simply because I have one and I’ve never used a black one before. We’ll see. I think it will be good for the look of the quilt since there’s a lot of black in it, and the red is very rich. I have no idea what prompted to me to buy a black batting since I don’t generally use black or dark colors–but the universe knew what it was signaling way back when I bought it, since it should really enhance this quilt.

I have also finished the back which I also really love. Haven’t pulled out a binding fabric yet but I am not concerned. I’m sure there’s something here that will work.

Names? I am toying with a couple of names. “Going in Circles”  Nope, not serious enough. I think this is a serious quilt.   Or “Meeting Myself, Coming and Going.” Again cool title but maybe not for this quilt. I think the title has to wait.

And the other question I have is — what is the top? I designed it the way I show it in the first photo. But flipped a little…I think it’s spectacular. And less expected. Can’t decide.