Oh sigh

Last Tuesday my two quilts that were in Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza came home. As you probably know by now Wizards’ Duel got a blue ribbon as Best Interpretation of Theme and Night on the Bayou did not place. PNQE is a Mancuso show and they usually provide comments that are often helpful and sometimes just a little depressing. This time, I got wonderful comments on both quilts and I wanted to share with you, gentle readers.

Wizards’ Duel

For this quilt I placed it in the Innovative category. They don’t have an all art-quilt or all pictorial quilt category.

(E=Excellent S=Satisfactory N=Needs Improvement NA=Not Applicable)

I got all Es for their set items:

DESIGN

Artistic Impression/Graphic Impact

Use of Design/Pattern in Quilt Top -balance, proportion, scale – balance, proportion, scale

Use of Color & Fabric – pleasing, value contrast, scale of fabric

Degree of Difficulty

Quilting Design – enhances top, is sufficient

Innovation/Creativity

WORKMANSHIP

Piecing/Applique – precision, stitches, shadow-through

Quilting Technique – even stitches, making stops and starts

Best Features of this Quilt (handwritten comments)

Visual impact of radiating center. Very innovative use of embellishments. Good interpretation of theme

Areas that needs improvement (handwritten comment)

Nothing!

Ok, so I don’t think I have ever had a quilt where judges’ comments are provided that actually said “Nothing!” for areas that need improvement. Here is where I have often managed to save a quilt to go on to other shows that made them place. Indeed, this very quilt was shown at Mid Atlantic Quilt Festival and my quilting and treatment of the rocks was called down as needing improvement. So I improved them between shows, and it clearly paid off. Sometimes I disagree with judges’ comments and in such cases dismiss the comment. This would be when my artistic opinion conflicts with theirs, but I have also gotten really good and helpful advice from such suggestions. Judges for this quilt were Augusta Cole and Marjan Kluepfel

Night on the Bayou

For this quilt I placed it in the Wall Quilt category and the grade sheet had the same categories and grading system, except the judges wrote in G=Very Good and gave me all Gs on all the categories!!! Harrrumph! Not only did they choose the nonexistent G for all the categories, their grades seemed to compete a bit with their comments. See what you think.

Best Features of this Quilt (handwritten comments)

Absolutely LOVE the moss hanging from the trees!! Beautifully executed

Well chosen quilting designs enhance visual texture of tress vs water vs sky

Splotches of orange lights prevent monotony from happening

Areas that needs improvement (handwritten comments)

Some surface distortion noted [I can probably fix this with a new and better blocking and hopefully dryer and cooler weather for future shipping…I think it was caused by the hot very humid weather for shipment, coupled with the heavy yarn and thread treatments]

Perspective is good but not quite perfect [uhhh…artistic opinion and I submit that art quilting in particular is never “perfect” anywhere. She might have been more impressed if I had been able to get more moonlight filtering through the trees as my friend who attended the show suggested. I’ll see if I can accomplish that before sending it out again. For the most part, the paint just sinks into the quilt on this fabric]

Sew what do you think about this? I was really pleased, even with the comments on the Bayou quilt. I was not pleased with having a whole scale special grade that was less than “excellent” on all the categories and that then conflicted with some of the comments. I can only think at least one of the judges is a person who has a really hard time rating anything as “perfect”. I can guess which judge this came from, but will not say. The judges for this quilt were Dierdra McElroy and Bobbie Bergquist

If you look up all four judges you will find that none of them are art or pictorial quilters. They are all four traditional and a couple specialize in hand quilting, which should tell you something about how far they had to stretch their view of quilts to make a judgement call on the art and pictorial quilts and therefore, I think they did a fine job. All four of them. It’s a hard job when faced with such fabulous quilts throughout a national or international show.

Sew overall, I am happy, and now believe both quilts have the potential to bring in some nice ribbons from future shows. I’m going to have to do some choreography in placing them. Houston rejected Wizards’ Duel, but that was before I fixed the rocks. I think perhaps I need a new set of pictures for both of them. Pictures make a big difference in what a show will take.

Sew happy everyone! I wish you fun in your studio or office and that you be surrounded with love.

One thing for certain, my kind of fabric work requires a good quality sewing machine, and I need to be able to both embroider and free motion quilt on it a great deal (to a professional level). Working as I do, I put a lot of stress on my main machine.

On Thursday my wonderful Bernina 830 LE, whose name is Gibbs (after the Gibbs in Wilcox and Gibbs who were historically important in the development of sewing machinery) went berserk in the middle of a simple embroidery stitch-out. First it started sewing really really fast, which I managed to stop. Then it started back sewing ok for about 10 stitches, and suddenly there was a “clunk” and the needle stopped going up and down, but the bobbin was spinning at a steady pace. I tried to stop the embroidery, but the bobbin still spun. I turned the machine off and on again, and, after a few seconds, the bobbin spun. I had noticed one time before that it had stitched very fast for no apparent reason, but that was months ago and it stopped after one incident, and I cleaned and oiled it and it went back to sewing ok. I was in shock and actually cried a bit.

Gibbs at work machine appliqueing with very narrow zig zag. Note the Sashiko that I stitched out on Gibbs using the embroidery module.

Sew I don’t know whether it is prohibitively expensive to repair it (in other words, it is “dead”), or whether it is repairable. I have put about 9 million stitches on it over the course of the past four and a half years, and have used it on average probably more than 25 to 35 hours a week, with some weeks being about 50 or 60 hours. I’m taking it in to the shop on Monday. I am blessed with a very good Bernina dealership and a first rate tech (Lew) at G Street Fabrics. It is about an hour from here over heavy traffic, so I only go when I have to.

This comes at a really bad time…not that these things ever are good times…but I had just begun working on building my son Ken’s special quilt design project. This is something that requires some bits of machine embroidery. I wanted to complete this very challenging project by mid August so I could enter it into the Pennsylvania National Quilt Festival.

I took Gibbs in for his spa treatment and to fix a minor problem in March, and Lew told me then that I really used that machine hard and should buy a longarm to “share the burden” of all that stitching. I knew then that I could not even get a longarm in the house even if I could afford one. But I also started thinking about a sit down longarm.

Yesterday, my oldest son came along with my daughter in law to pick up Kevin, my grandson. While he was here we all talked about the possibilities. They know that I have been putting extra effort this year into moving my quilting up a level competitively, and am also working on a couple of books…one on applique for fabric art and one on surface design. And I have really been making a lot of good progress on all of this. Also, I have limited funds and can’t really afford to buy a new 8 series Bernina or similar machine every four years. Besides, it interrupts the flow of work when it is out of service.

Sew something needs to be done if I am to continue on this path, which I hope will eventually start making me a bit more money..in fact, it already has, but not enough to pay for a new machine. It’s a wonderful career for me as I move into my senior years. I am not the type to not have a career even if I were very wealthy. It’s the joy of creativity, and I must continue in some fashion.

Yesterday I packed up Gibbs with everything he came with to take it out on Monday, and realized my studio really needs a good cleaning. So I started that. I am setting up my Bernina B350 (Edith Claire Head…ECLAIR) and my Bernina 1230 (Betsy Ross…BETSY) and getting them all cleaned and oiled to help me through this crisis.

I know there are a lot of fabric artists out there who do not have a big advanced machine, and they make beautiful fabric art and quilts. My problem is that I am something of a techie and I have developed paths that take advantage of what these advanced machines can do. I know I could go back to not having an embroidery machine or a big harp space, but I don’t think that is the right path for me. So it is a crisis.

I am considering what to do. I can’t decide, of course, until I know whether or not Gibbs can be repaired, or if I have to replace it. But even if it can, I need to figure out what to do about the possibility of a sit down longarm to add to my store of machines. It would be a wonderful addition, and would allow me to use the main machine mostly for quilt top construction. I do like to use decorative stitching sometimes in my quilting, but it is a small percentage of my quilting and I could still use it for that. Mostly I do free motion with my Bernina Stitch Regulator. Besides, I think I could do ever better fmq on such a machine.

Sew happy everyone! I’ll let you know how this goes. Have a wonderful Mother’s Day weekend!

Report on Quilts Back Home from PNQE

Thoughts about Machines