Ironing

This is another one of those "little slice of my life" posts.

I was ironing off some quilt fabric today. And I realized why I enjoy it - for one thing, ironing "simple" stuff (where there aren't collars or buttons you have to worry about) is easy and, on a cool day, kind of pleasant. Meditative.

I also realized that it reminds me a bit of ironing my dad's handkerchiefs when I was a kid. This is how a lot of girls first "learned" to iron - maybe that's not done any more, I don't know. I've read references to having little girls iron handkerchiefs in books from the 30s through the 50s and I wonder sometimes if this is just another way that I was sort of a generation to a generation-and-a-half behind some of my friends - a lot of the things I was into, a lot of the things I learned to do, seemed to be stuff that my friends and their families seemed to regard as obsolete. (Of course, it also might have been a function of being an academic family in a town full of, mostly, executives and small-business owners, and of having parents who, if they hadn't exactly KNOWN poverty growing up, had certainly heard it rattling the doorknob.)

I also had friends who, when they expressed a desire to learn to sew or crochet or something, their moms were like, "Why do you want to do THAT?" as if they were wasting their time, or setting the women's movement back 30 years (and that's not just my imagination; I've read other people who have said that some of the more feministy moms in the 70s didn't want their daughters to learn to cook or sew, thinking that somehow made them more "independent." Well, I can cook - and cook darn well, if I say so myself - and I can say I'm "independent." I'm certainly "independent" of having to depend on carry-out or frozen dinners...)

But I do think my being a little out-of-step with my generation cohort may be a function of the fact that the three generations of my mom's family (me, her, and her mother) span back over 100 years - my grandmother was born in 1897, "during the Spanish-American War" as she used to say. She grew up on a farm and married to get off the farm - her husband was an accountant in the lumber camps and from what my mom's said, there was never a whole lot of money, but they made do.

My mom was a late-in-life baby. She was born in...well, heck, she doesn't read this and I don't think she'd be offended if I reveal it, but she was born in 1936.

Yup, my mom is the same age as "too old to run" McCain. (Which is why I give a pretty hostile stare to anyone who makes old jokes about McCain. Say what you will about the man's policies, or temper, or whatever - but don't dismiss him solely because he's the age he is. My mom could run the country (though I know she would never WANT to) without her age being a factor (and she could probably do a damn sight better at running it than some folks who have tried for the office, and possibly a damn sight better than some folks who've actually HELD the office).)

And I was a late-in-life baby (well, not by today's standards, for sure. My mom once remarked, I think, that she was irritated by one of the doctors branding her a "geriatric mother" because she was over 30 when she had her first baby).

So sometimes I think the reason I'm less technologically plugged-in than some of my peers, the reason I like swing music and doo-wop more than most of what passed for Top 40 when I was a teen* may be because of my family background. (I also adore classical music - and am enough of an aficionado to want to say "classical sensu lato there - because my parents always had Mozart or Beethoven records playing in the house, and I used to listen to "Adventures in Good Music" with my dad).

(*though that might just be because I have better taste. [joking, not dissing anyone who likes mid-80s pop...])

Anyway. Back to the quilting. One thing I'm wanting to do this fall is go through some of my fabric "stash." (and wow, do I have a LOT of fabric. I've been buying it for nearly 20 years - I've been a "for reals" quilter since 1990 or so, and even as an impoverished grad student would by a half yard now and then just because I liked it and it made me happy). And I want to organize a lot of the fabric I have into groups based on fabrics I want to use together.

I have lots and lots of different color combinations. One of the reasons I enjoy quilting is the opportunity to play with color and pattern. It's my artistic outlet. I have a colleague who writes short stories and poetry (I think he's even had a few published) and who is working on a novel...I've told him the quilts are like my poems; I just need to express myself some way that is non-verbal.

I have fabric from a lot of different "lines." For people who aren't quilters - there are a number of different fabric companies out there (Moda is one of my personal favorites). They have different "lines" that are made by designers - for example, Mary Engelbreit will design a "line" based on her illustrations - they will all go together, will all have similar colors and be of a similar style.

The good thing about using fabric from the same "line" is you know it will all work together well. The not-so-good thing, in some cases, is that it's very "matchy" (it can make a quilt look almost too "commercially made") and sometimes the fabric colors don't contrast well. So I usually use fabric from a couple different "lines" in a quilt, it makes it more interesting to me. And sometimes I will find two fabrics I bought at different times and realize they look really good together, and that I want to use them together - which is part of the purpose of the sorting and stacking this weekend; I want to line up some projects where the fabric's all washed and ironed and ready and I can just start cutting when I figure out what pattern I want to use.

So I've been ironing off fabric and stacking it up. The part that made me think of ironing my dad's handkerchiefs is ironing the fat quarters. (For non-quilters: fabric comes by the yard. You can buy any increment; a yard would be 36" long by [typically] 40 to 44 inches wide. A half-yard then would be 18" by 42", a quarter-yard would be 9" by 42". Except quarter yards cut that way are long and skinny and hard to work with and they tangle up when you pre-wash them before sewing with them and they're just generally not as fun as fat quarters. A fat quarter is half of a half-yard - that is, 18" by 20" to 22". There are dozens of patterns and a good number of books out there with patterns specifically designed for fat quarters. Most quilt shops have stacks and stacks of them - so you can buy fabric without having to wait to have it cut, if you just want little pieces for a scrap quilt or a fat quarter quilt).

So a fat quarter is not that different in size from the big handkerchiefs my dad used to carry (and still does, in fact). I used to iron them and fold them when I was a kid and was "helping" (under my mom's watchful eye and with the iron not set TOO high). I fold the fat quarters the same way today, which is what made me think of it.

Yeah, my dad carried handkerchiefs. The big plain white kind, some kind of fine fabric (lawn, I think) with a rolled hem and those little stripes that were worked in a heavier thread. (If you've seen the type I'm talking about, you know what I mean). He always had one. When I was a kid, if I had a sneezing fit or a crying jag, he'd quietly pull out the handkerchief and hand it to me. If I found a neat rock and I wanted to take it home, he'd wrap it up in his handkerchief for me. A few times as a young teenager, when I had little money for birthday or Christmas presents and couldn't think what to get him, I got him new handkerchiefs, and he used them, and I felt good about it, because I had picked a gift he actually could use.

So I smile as I iron and fold my fat quarters and think about that. And I'm grateful that I was a kid with a "good dad." And a "good mom," for that matter. (And I'm also grateful that I still have both my dad and mom.)

Smiling

I saw this this morning (linked on another craft-blog I read) and it made me smile.

It's a woman who has done embroidery "portraits" of people she thought of as "heroes" when she was a child: Jacques Cousteau, Crystal Gayle (The hair! I love how she did the long hair!), Shel Silverstein, and Bob Ross.

That kind of thing just makes me laugh with delight - don't misunderstand, I'm not laughing AT the person for doing it. Not at all. I'm laughing because it's so wonderful, it makes me so HAPPY.

And it makes me think: who were my childhood heroes, that I would try to capture in embroidery? Mr. Rogers would have to be one; I'm inclined to think that Margery Sharp (although I've never even seen a picture of her) would be another. And Jim Henson. And maybe Marie Osmond (don't laugh, lots of kids looked up to her I bet)

(Margery Sharp is the person who wrote the "Rescuers" series of books, upon which Disney loosely based the 70s cartoon movie. The books are a lot better, though - they're almost little comedies-of-manners in some places and are very intelligently written.)

embroidery floss

One of the things that makes me happiest, for some reason, is embroidery floss.

I think it's the possibility it represents - all those little bundles of pure color, waiting in their little bins, for someone to find a use for that particular shade.

I love color and I love working with color. But I can't paint very well (and paint is messy, even watercolors - and I don't currently have a good "messy work" setup in my house). So I use floss and fabric as my stand-ins for paint.

I also like the physical nature of floss. Unlike paint, which has to stay in its tube until you use it, you can set the skeins of floss in a bowl and look at them - or even just keep them in a box and take one out and look at it now and again.

I find I need that kind of color sometimes. Sort of like the pioneer woman I remember from a story who wept when her husband brought her home a forced narcissus in the middle of winter because all she had had to see for weeks and weeks was grey, brown, and tan, and the green was almost too much for her.

There is a purity to the colors of the floss. Some of them are very strong and saturated; I find those are the ones I tend to be drawn to. Also, I don't generally go for the primary colors - I like jeweltones or strong "secondary" colors.

I also think I like it because it's crazy cheap. I'm kind of a cheapskate in some ways and one is that I don't like to spend huge amounts of money on myself. But with floss - when I need a little treat, I can go and get a couple of skeins inexpensively, usually 4 for a dollar these days. And a single skein goes a long way when you mostly make small projects.

I also like that it's widely available. I can even get it at my local wal-mart. And I can get my standard brand at the wal-mart (which is unusual; so many of those big box stores carry only the crap brands of craft supplies, because that's what they can get cheap and in big volume, and that's about what their typical customers either can afford or are willing to pay for. Yeah, I'm a snob about some things. Sue me because I don't like acrylic yarn.) But they carry DMC floss, which is the standard brand I buy.

I know there are fancier, "nicer" brands to be had at needlecraft shops, but I've found that good old DMC works fine for me. And, as I said, you can even get it at wal-mart if you need. And the colors seem to be pretty true: 825 is going to be 825 all the time, with little variation from batch to batch.

I like having a lot of floss on hand. I do some embroidery, mostly simple stuff, outline-stitched cartoony designs, kitschy things. I make tea towels with chihuahuas or the Eiffel Tower on them for example. (And yes, I use my embroidered towels to dry my dishes. If they wear out I can always make more). I like having a wide variety of colors so that when I'm seized with the desire to start a new project, I can just plunk down and DO it, without having to run out for all these colors of floss.

Sometimes I buy with a project in mind. More often, I just buy what grabs my attention - I was out today and at one of the larger craft-type emporia in my area, so I bought a couple bucks' worth of floss - as is typical of me, I chose "complicated" colors - greyed purples and oranges that shade over into red and greens that are almost yellow. I just grabbed what appealed to me, I said, "I'll spend $5 on floss and just get some different colors."

And it made me happy picking it out. Perhaps part of it is the ghost of the memory of my childhood; for a few years there was still a shop in my hometown that made an effort to sell penny (and nickel, and quarter) candy - and not just typical grocery-store candy but some of the real old traditional things like Black Jacks and those chocolate babies. And I remember going to the store with my mom once in a while, and she'd give me a quarter or something, and I would take fifteen minutes (sometimes more!) figuring out how I'd spend that quarter.

There's a certain pleasure in being able to pick what you want, in being able to get "lots" for a little amount of money.

Probably some of the colors I chose will duplicate ones I already have; I don't really organize the floss by color or number like some people do. I keep it in one of those big plastic shoeboxes and have to hunt and dig a little when I'm looking for a color that I think will work. But there's also the element of serendipity in not-knowing exactly what you have; there's the chance to find something totally unexpected.

There's a book of poems out - called "The Very Stuff" by Stephen Beal. He wrote poems inspired by different colors of the floss. One of the neat things is that the color-number-code for each poem is given at the top of it, along with a little square printed in the color that the floss is.

Beal seems to favor reds; in fact, some of the reds he writes about in different poems (that have different numbers) do not look all that different to the eye.

Some of the poems are nice but some are a little eye-rolly for me; I get the feeling that "the gentleman doth protest too much" (the "I'm NOT gay, really, even though I'm writing about embroidery floss") because a lot of his poems are about women and his wanting to be with those women and his wanting to do certain things with those women. (I described one poem to a friend as being one that fantasized a "fatal Viagra moment" for the author that was brought on by a woman in a dress of a particular shade of red.)

Beal doesn't talk much about greens (other than one, apparently, that Rita Heyworth was meant to be dressed in). But green is my favorite, and the one I tend to buy the most of - because there are so many greens. There are the pale, baby leaf greens, almost yellow. Some of them almost glow in the dark they are so pale yet bright. And there are the soft gray sage greens - which is a color, incidentally, that I look good IN, which may be partly why I like it. And emerald green. And all of the blue-greens from teal to jade. To my eyes, green seems to be the color with the widest range of variation in what you would still call "green," with maybe only purple as a rival for this title.

And so, it is greens and purples I buy the most of. And some pinks and peaches and some browns (and brown, that is another good color, another color that can have forms that are redder and forms that are yellower and some forms that are even almost purple).

And I take my floss home and take it out of the bag and range them on my coffee table for a while, just to look at. And then I put them with the others, and plan to sometime soon pull one of them out, and use it - for the flower on a water-lily perhaps, or the scales on the Chinese dragon I stamped onto another tea towel, or to make stars in a night-scene.

There is something private and close about the colors of floss; I can hold them in my hand, they can belong to me. And I love that.