I am a keen reader – and I loved that Facebook poll that asks which books you have read from the 100 listed- I don’t remember the exact tally but it was pretty good, perhaps 70%, over a spread of authors from different nations and eras.   It contained a lot on my ‘I must read, sometime’ list, including classics like ‘War and Peace’ by Tolstoy, but also on that list is to finish the rest of ‘Uttermost Part of the Earth’ by E.Lucas Bridges, and E.L James’ other two volumes following “50 Shades of Grey”.  although everyone’s talking about them, and one of my friends is circulating her copies, I just don’t have time just now for ” 50 Shades Darker” and whatever #3 is, being as I am in the midst of a piecing and quilting storm.

One of my favourite authors is the American, Pat Conroy (“Prince of Tides”,  “South of Broad” “Lords of Discipline” and others including one I must read but haven’t yet read, “The Great Santini”)  A book of his I listened to recently – “My Reading Life” read by himself and so itself a real treat – outlined the incredible depth and breadth of his lifetime of voracious reading which was started on a firm footing principally by the influence of his mother.  Reading aloud, bringing home books from the library, talking about them with her kids….  (I wonder whether I got a pass or fail on that one)  He reads at least 200 pages every day, and before commencing his day’s writing he reads a little poetry, (keeps a volume or two on his desk) – and his library totals many 1000’s books… no doubt he lives in an old large Charleston house to accomodate all of it.  Today’s e-readers, such as my kindle, accomodate several thousand books, so, that’s OK, I can read 200 pages each day if I put my mind to it, without necessarily needing space for shelving massive quantities of books.  The trouble is, I am sucked in so often by (a) the fabric and thread world (b) the digital world.  Does it count to your daily tally if you listen to about 200 pages a day?  which I am doing at the moment, with my iPod touch nestled in a pocket and playing as I sew, sew, sew…    The fascinating book to which I’m currently listening is “Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945” by  Tony Judt.  Being an early Baby Boomer, it’s actually covers my entire lifetime, really, and explains a lot about things in my earlier life, which being a young Australian, was then very, very, Eurocentric compared to the more multidirectional outlook Australians have today.  Although I didn’t then understand why really, being very young, I do remember the  frontpage newspaper pictures,  (b/w of course) harrowing escape stories and divided family accounts following the sudden erection of the Berlin Wall – and now understand more of why my parents seemed so shocked.  And so much more.  I had opted out of history at the earliest chance, because the teacher, our principal, Miss Rooney, was so very boring in her presentation of what should have been such an exciting subject.  I had no idea what I was missing until well into my university degree.  Not saying that I would have wished to study history as a major, but as an adult I’ve become progressively more interested in history.  Reading the occasional history-based, fiction or non fiction, is helping fill some of the yawning gaps in my education and understanding.

On my bedside table at the moment is “Explorers Of The Nile” by Tim Jeal – its going to have to pick up a bit if I’m to finish it by wednesday ‘s book club meeting – I think it is very interesting, but I need to find the Dr. Livingstone- Menry Morton Stanley part of the book, read that and then let the rest go- have to hand the book in that day and someone is waiting for it.  “Call the Midwife” by Jennifer Worth is apparently the first in a series about a London  midwife in the immediate postwar years and ’50’s – I’ll try to get the book club to order the others, it was great – but why oh why are so many authors now putting out series and trilogies  (normally I seem to tune in at #2 or #3)  What’s wrong with a large engrossing single volume story, like Ken Follett’s books, and James Michener’s….. can’t modern authors handle the one large epic story  in one go?  Or is it the point that modern readers can’t handle the large story?  Is it a brilliant thing from  the marketers and actually all about money?

And this just occurred to me –  is this the same phenomenon as people making small  1m x 0.75m quilts and referring to these as ‘large’?

In a recent post on sample making and decision making, and I did say I’d post the same areas of that new quilt once the quilting is done – so, here those two areas again.  The quilt is actually bound now, too, but the sleeve doesn’t exist yet.  However, I think at this point I have freedom to move on to another new work that’s been on my mind, same series, background of black chintz (polished cotton) and I need to make a choice of colour ways – OR – I need to really put my foot down and make two more quilts …. Quilt National entry closing date looms, september 14th.  Pedal to the metal time ;-p

Today on the Quiltart list a member, Kathy,  asked those of us who blog various questions like why blog, why did you start, what do you get out of it, whether it’s a painful chore or something enjoyable, whether it has helped any of us sell quilts, and stuff like that.   Some of the answers in my reply would be a bit different  if I were more focused on marketing! but, really, most of its value to me has been as a visual diary.  Writing about photos I’ve taken, samples or techniques I try out, writing about landscapes, cultural experiences, history, architecture, films or books that capture my attention I hope gives my collectors and fans more insight into why I do what I do.  But more than that, writing about them helps ideas crystallise in my mind as well as provide a record, and so blogging regularly is probably the closest I’ll ever come to journalling.  Some artists put almost as much time into journalling as they do into their art and living itself.

My regular readers know I sometimes have nothing much to say, and therefore don’t, and also that I don’t apologise for the occasional lapse in posting – because I know you don’t want to hear me whine silly excuses.  But, over the 7+ years I have been blogging, I have certainly enjoyed the process of writing and posting  for people to read about my life and about how some of it translates to inspiration for my creative works in fabric – quilts and mixed media works.  As part of my response to Kathy, I looked back at some of my earlier posts including the first – and really, dipping into the several I re-read down the years, I think I am posting the same mix of things now that I did then.  At the time I began, I’d found myself living in a foreign country ‘for a while’ – where indeed I an still living temporarily – and I was mindful that not many people know Uruguay very well, so that things I found interesting and different would probably seem so to my readers, too.    This is still one of the themes of my posts, but I have developed more focus on several things that particularly interest me in terms of  inspration and thought behind my textile work.  These have assumed more importance than they had at the time my blog began in its first form, in Blogger, as ‘Greetings From Montevideo’ – the subject line I still often use writing to friends and family from here.

And as you might have noticed, at times it gives me a free forum to rant or vent if I wish – my readers are free to follow along, comment,  or simply press the close button. . . so far I have only once got into such a tiresome silly comment exchange with one reader that for a while  I had to turn on the ‘moderate comments before publication’ button.  She got sick of that really quickly and went away.  It hasn’t happened since and was ages ago – so perhaps this means I have been too bland and non-controversial? Or perhaps I’m just sleeping better or reading better books.

Oh and for the record – this  recent photo of me is in front of Ebb & Flow 15,   2009,  2.25m x 1.25m.  Since it was taken a few weeks ago, my hair streak is now a purply brown – perhaps my hairdresser picked up the wrong colour or forgot, didn’t have her glasses on in the prep room – whatever.    Could be something else next time, anyway ;-p  spring is on the way here.

Late last night after finishing layering and basting a new work, I wound a couple of bobbins, cleaned and oiled the machine, and most importantly then spent about 1/2 hour making a sample, pics above.  In a sample the best combinations of  thread, needle size, tension and stitch length are all resolved before starting the work on that prisitine, alluring, quilt sandwich; and if nothing else this minimises unpicking.  I used offcuts of the exact batting, backing and front fabrics of the quilt for the sample, and here are the choices I made with its help:

• The whole time I was piecing I had in mind I’d use a neon citrus yellow-green thread for the quilting.  So that’s what I started with, but the  result was disappointing, so I pulled it out altogether, don’t even show it on the sample.   This combination has worked before with these fabrics (see the New Work gallery elsewhere on this website) – but I’m sure it just didn’t translate well to the totally different scale this time (Some examples in my New Work gallery on this website)
• Next option was Gutermann’s Skala light grey.  I’m using it in the bobbin anyway, and always piece with this thread.  Last time I was in the US I bought 4 x 10,000 m cones, in white, dark grey, light grey, cream to add to the dark grey and black I have plenty of.  What I love about this thread is how it blends well with appropriate colours  including prints, in its range.  And for unpicking, you just pull the top thread and it glides out.  A breeze, and yet it is as strong as any other thread for machine piecing, with the added addition of it being so fine it doesn’t cause a ridge on the seamline.  You can tell I’m a fan !  The stitching worked well – see the left side of the pics of the sample, including some topstitching on the orange/purple dots)- and, although the texture would be marvellous, I want ‘more’.
• So my next choice, and one I’m going with, is silver metallic.  There’s no brand name on the very large cone I have.  I then had to decide whether to stitch right at the seamline between the grey and the colour (narrow orange and right end of sample), or to topstitch on those edges(broader bright deep pink strip) as well as out in the plain grey, too –  and I’m going with the topstitch effect.

This is a large work – it will be 2m  x 1m when finished.  The time taken for the sample making, photographing and writing this post about it, perhaps total 2 hours, are a fraction of the piecing plus quilting and finishing – and a worthwhile investment imho that I often make at this point in a new work.  The final check will be several rows into the quilting when I will pin it up and seriously examine whether the look really is what I’m aiming for.     The other two pics in the collage are of interesting points in the quilt which I will re-photograph and post so you can see how different the quilting makes it look.  Note a bit of wrinkling in one of them, which I am sure quilting will camouflage, and there are several other minor spots, too, but in my experience, it will be OK on the day!