"It was a scene of peerless tranquility, tossed out in Nature's devil-may- care way, which says, Just open your eyes, my friend, and I'll astonish you every minute of your life." - Lawrence Millman, Last Places: A Journey in the North
	I have not pieced a quilt in a long time. This past week I have rediscovered the joys of pressing, starching, sewing fabrics and watching blocks grow and emerge into interesting designs, depending on how the images in the fabrics are haphazardly cut and re-joined. In my love of pursuing quilting ideas, I have neglected one of the pleasures that enticed me into making quilts in the first place. Now I am spending happy hours working away, cutting and sewing lovely colored fabrics together to form new designs. I did make one of the borders upside down and backwards, and I haven't quite decided if I will leave it as a testament to that devil-may-care spirit of pioneer quilters, or take it off, remake it to the right specifications. It would be "right" either way. It just depends on which I could live with easier in the long run. PS - I re-did it!
	In the last few years I have been engaged in a neverending contest of wills with various types of packaging. I can't seem to open anything anymore without pulling a muscle, breaking all my nails at the base, or going berserk trying and ending up handing it to someone stronger and wiser than I. There is something about this frustration that drives me wild. I can spend hours fiddling with quilting, or picking up a dropped stitch in knitting, but a few seconds with a CD package and I go animal. I even ordered an assortment of "openers" - for pop-tops, and medicine bottles, and even water bottles, but when they arrived I couldn't open the shrink-wrap packaging without a lethal hunting knife. I keep these implements of destruction everywhere in the house so I can grab a knife, scissors, or letter opener and hack away at whatever refuses to open. I long for the days of cellophane or plain paper bags.
	"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." Winston Churchill
	"Every quilt that is made is a memory preserved, for the event it celebrates, for the recipient and, ultimately, of the quilter who made it with love." Carol Baker
	Quilt calendars are a great way to really learn about quilts. You look at one quilt every day for a month and see new things in it every day that otherwise you may have missed or not noticed because you did not grow comfortable with the quilt. Also, you look at them from across the room as well as close-up as in a book illustration. From a distance you can see totally different aspects of the design than you do closer up. Colors blur, designs form and re-form, art is born. I have many quilt calendars in my house and I save them and have a wonderful library of superb quilts to get out and look at over and over, for years down the road.
	Starch is such a great thing to use for quilting. It helps the piecing and applique stay stable and precise, and gives the backing of quilts that nice smoothness so the quilt slides easily over the bed of the machine. So many quilting teachers are now recommending it. I remember some of my first classes I taught, and after mentioning it had numerous younger students ask me what it was, how you found it in the store, what is ironing (!), etc. This from a perma-press or knits generation! I grew up with the sprinkling bottle with the top that had little holes in it and a cork to put in the bottle of water. We then sprinkled the ironing with water and rolled it up. The dampness permeated the cottons and then they were ready for ironing. My mother let me learn to iron when I was very small, and when the very large heavy iron was turned off and unplugged I was allowed to press my father's handkerchiefs with the remaining heat. It was a delight to see the wrinkled fabric turn smooth and flat and smell so clean and fresh. Sometimes we did use starch on a few things, and that was the best scent ever. Now when I mix up a batch and then press my quilting fabrics with it, it brings back those innocent days of childhood when I thought doing the ironing was a special treat....
	If I have enough of the luxuries in life, I can skimp on the necessities.
	Today I had a very special experience while happily working away in my sunny but cool studio - great music playing, cats napping in slanting sunbeams, fan slowly turning side to side bringing me a cool breeze. I heated the iron to the cotton setting, and carefully spread out my slightly creased label that came in the mail recently. This label denotes and authenticates that my quilt, "Through a Glass Darkly: An American Memory"has been named Masterpiece Quilt. I need to press it and then hand sew it to the back of my quilt. It was one of those moments as I looked down at my hands carefully smoothing and positioning the label, unbelieving that this honor had come my way after years of standing in the same way at my ironing table pressing pieces of beautiful cottons for all my quilts, and now this one last bit of simple muslin with the lettering on it proclaiming something I had made and sewed and pressed in this room, in this spot, was considered a Masterpiece. Awesome.
	Chocolate is the best thing for improving machine quilting skills.
	I received the following e-mail from a former Wisconsin resident, now living in Florida, and have her permission to share it with you, because I think many of us will be able to relate to what she says: "I sat at my grandmother's feet as she quilted. As I grew older, she handed me the needle and I began to quilt. As a young adult I put down the needle and began a hectic life traveling all over the world as an executive assistant to a mighty corporation president - this went on for 23 years. Six years ago we left New York City for Florida and I picked up the needle, cloth, bought the quilt frame and returned to the craft I 'sew' love. Why do I tell you all of this . . . your quilts are beautiful, inspiring and the breathtaking quilting is something we would all strive to accomplish. But it all brought tears to my eyes when I saw where you offer classes . . . in Wisconsin in cities that I visited when I lived in that beautiful state when, as a child I sat at my grandmother's feet. It is said that life is a circle. I believe that life is a circle, quilting is a circle of women around the world and if we stop for just a moment someone is quilting in Brown Deer, Wauwatosa, Pewaukee, Singapore, Milan and I'm sure in Heaven. Your website is wonderful and brought me some peace, because it allowed me to 'go home' for just a little while." Jayne Torres.
	"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."~Eleanor Roosevelt
	"Stand on a star, and blaze a trail . . .through the darkening dawn " ~Carly Simon
	When I first began quiltmaking some 20 odd years ago, I didn't know anything at all about quilt design. How wide to make the borders? What colors went with what? How do do various settings? What are side triangles anyway? I began by copying quilts in the very few pattern books I had, and trying to faithfully make a replica of the quilt in the photo. I look back and think why didn't I go my own way, but I was completely at sea when it came to this new skill of making quilts. I think by making a quilt you can already picture from a book will teach you about the very things you are lacking: color and design, proportion, quilting choices even. Then when you decide to design your own quilt you will have experience and can base your decisions on that. My first quilts (tied, not quilted) had a very wide binding because the instructions told me to make it that way. It wasn't until I had been exposed to more real-life quilts, both antique and newly made, that I knew I wanted a narrow, bias binding for a trim tailored look and so changed my methods right away. The nice thing about quiltmaking is you can update, change, learn, move on and always improve what you are doing to suit your own needs and specs. So don't be afraid to make a quilt from a pattern, a class, a teacher, a book - you get something you know you will like, and the journey will teach you many things. However, these should be for your personal use, and if you do enter one in a show, you must give credit to the originator of the quilt's design or pattern. Copyright laws need to be respected and taken seriously by quilters. If you take someone else's artistry and reproduce it with your technique, you are not the quilt artist and you can't be rewarded for someone else's creativity.
	"While we would like to think our cats need us to survive, we should know better. In fact, some might say cats were responsible for domesticating man." ~~Ed Kane, American writer
	As I was piecing the final triangles for the quilt I am working on, the sun was shining in on the surface of my machine, and I saw hundreds of little scratch marks, probably from pins holding fabric sections together as I fed them through the machine. This machine has seen many, many quilts go through it, some ordinary everyday ones, and some breathtakingly beautiful ones, and all have left their signature in the machine's surface, creating a brushed effect, a proud badge of service. I like to see a machine in excellent shape because the owner has cared for it well, but I also like to see the evidence of use - just what that machine is made for. When I see some wonderful old ones in my classes that quilters have picked up for a song at a rummage or estate sale, or a trade-in at a dealer, I always wonder what they would say if they could tell about all the things they have sewn. Mine has seen quilts, and clothing, and baby sleepers, and little girl's dresses with eyelet and lace, curtains and mending, but mostly quilts. It has served me well.
	"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so." --Mary Jean Iron
	"Happiness is good health and a bad memory." - Ingrid Bergman
	Why do all the good food items with natural ingredients or fewer ingredients cost so much more?? If you take out all the chemicals and junk, you'd think it would be less expensive . . .
	"Do what you can with what you have where you are." Theodore Roosevelt.
	"Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best." -- Henry Vandyke
	The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
	The naming of a quilt is as complicated as the naming of a cat, with apologies to T.S. Eliot. Should it be simple and straightforward, easy to spell, the name of the block? My early quilts were all titled after their patterns. Log Cabin. Feathered Star. Pineapple. Then I realized that other quilts in shows had wonderful, amusing, romantic, French (!) names unrelated to the quilt pattern. Hmmm . . . .and then if I were to make an additional log cabin, what in the world would I name that one?? I decided quilts definitely needed real names, just like cats or people. Amusing is OK now and then but be careful, as it can make your quilt itself seem less than serious. I know of one quilt that had a funny name and a quilt judge commented on it in a very negative way. If it's a humorous quilt, then a humorous name is perfect. I like word play too. I've named several of my quilts/projects this way: "Feather My Vest" and "Let Sleeping Cats Lie." Mostly, though, I prefer something meaningful to me. Others may have no idea what I refer to in the title, but it is something that strikes a chord with me and is memorable and very fitting for the quilt. "Sweetheart on Parade" is an example - lyrics from a favorite ballad telling of a fight against overwhelming odds. Plus it referred to my little sweetheart cat, Hillary, who fought tremendous odds to survive an injury/illness. It should sound pleasing when you say it aloud. "Butternut Summer" is one of my favorite names for a quilt. It evokes calm memories of beautiful summer days as well as refers to the color of the quilt and other things that only the quiltmaker knows. Sometimes a French title can be the perfect name, but remember that not everyone can pronounce or remember or spell them. I recall doing a television interview at Paducah when "Joie de Vie" was the BOS quilt, and the interviewer had a particularly difficult time pronouncing it, whereas my "Butternut Summer" went just fine, thank you m'am. My most recent quilts all had to be named. I kept calling the one with the wide red border the red square one, and it ended up being titled "Red Square." My log cabin made of deep hand dyed fabrics with splotches of bright gold and yellow here and there is titled "Through a Glass, Darkly: An American Memory." It refers to the whole history of the country as well as the fact that it looks like a stained glass window with a bit of light showing through, and of course, I consider the log cabin design to be quintessentially American. This quilt was included in the Japan 2002 expo as part of my exhibit. And my miniature quilt titled "A Visit to Wales" is based on traditional medallion style English/Welsh whole cloth quilts, with some whimsical spiral welsh designs worked in. I know it's too difficult for me to ever travel to Wales, so this is my imaginary trip, through a quilt. When all is said and done, it is your quilt and it will tell you its name. Just listen.