Gee Whizzes

Last weekend M and I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a special installation - Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. He went to the museum with his family over Thanksgiving and they all came back and told me that there was some special quilt exhibit there. "Gee's Bend?!?!" I exclaimed, with a dramatic gasp. I have been dying to see this exhibit and I didn't even know it was right down the road!



Gee's Bend is a town in Alabama full of women who have been making quilts since the 30s or earlier. The quilters all have a very specific style, and the community as a whole produces quilts that are entirely unique. A lot of them are variations on the housetop block or a combination of blocks and strips, so the patterns are very boxy and geometric. The color combinations are phenomenal and often unexpected too.





The exhibit was very well curated to display the uniqueness of this community of artists. Each room emphasized a different aspect of Gee's Bend quilt making. For example, a lot of quilts were made out of old work clothes, some with the pockets still on. There was an entire room full of these quilts, the well worn spots creating a pattern-within-a-pattern on each quilt.



Another room was full of quilts made out of green, brown, and yellow corduroy from the 70s, scraps from a nearby pillow-making factory. It was amazing to see the variety of patterns produced from exactly the same materials.




("Housetop" 2003 by Nancy Pettway. I love this one to bits.)

This travelling exhibit is the second showing of Gee's Bend quilts; the first one toured in 2002. Many of the quilters had long-since stopped quilting by the time the show began touring but were inspired to start again and many of the quilts in the second exhibit were made in the years since the first exhibit. The patterns and striking color combinations are still evident in the more recent quilts.



I apologize for the poor lighting in these photos; I was sneakily taking them from chest level while walking through the exhibit. I'm sure it's downright illegal but I honestly could not help myself. And I didn't use a flash, so I really don't see the harm in it. Enjoy them now, before I'm forced to remove them from the internet!

For more crafty inspiration come to the weekly Artists and Fleas craft fair in Brooklyn this weekend! My fellow crafter Jessica will be selling there and I'm sure the whole thing is going to be a huge drain on my wallet.

Quilting and Sewing and Weaving, Oh My!

My parents are asleep in preparation for their flight, so I think I can safely show off my finished "shawl" and some other works in progress.



This is an overshot weave called "Mexican Blooming Flower." I'm still not well-versed enough in the weaving lingo to give any more details, other than to say that the loom is a 4 shaft jack loom. I could look up the pattern if anyone is interested.



I wanted it to be a shawl, but as usual it is too short and a little too wide. The overshot pattern means that there are two strands going across the loom at once, one that is doing simply over-under-over to hold everything in place, and one that is a contrasting color doing the pattern. The pattern strands are just a bit too loose and I would be worried that they would catch on things if it was actually worn as a shawl. So I think it's more of a wall-hanging or something. But it looks pretty cool and it's really graphic, which I didn't actually expect.



NEXT!



This is the log cabin quilt that I've been working on for about two or three years now. It's my first full length quilt (it will be 6x6 feet) and I'm doing all the sewing by hand.



Log cabin squares can be rotated to create lots of patterns within patterns. Mine is going to be several large diamonds created by the blue-green and red-orange colors. And if all goes right, it will go from dark on the outside to light on the inside, as well as the same gradient within each square. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry, I'm going to try to lay it all out someday and take pictures.



I think the squares below are working out the best. The other ones need to be rotated and re-evaluated, I just threw them together to give you the general gist of the thing.



NEXT!

On the fourth of July a few friends and I decided to make sundresses. The only fabric I had that was big enough for any of the patterns was this ridiculous one. I got all the pieces cut out, but I haven't started to sew any of them together yet. It was over a hundred degrees on that day and I reached a serious breaking point sometime around 6 pm when I was kneeling on the floor trying to pin my pieces together and sweat was just dripping from my head. Intense. So hopefully it will eventually get finished, I'll keep my fingers crossed.



There you go, that's pretty much all of my crafting activity for the past few months!

Ribbon rant

Last weekend my friend Sarah and I went to a "Quilt, Craft & Sewing Festival" at the Cal Expo building in Sacramento. Unfortunately that great title was actually code for "a huge room where there are hundreds of people waiting to sell you things." Whoops. Actually, not only that, but when we got there we found out that the other name they were using to advertise the event was "The Sacramento Women's Show."


Please, that makes me want to hit someone. I almost asked a few men in there how they felt about that title, but I wasn't in the mood to be made to feel like a crazy person. Needless to say, we didn't stay for long. As we were walking in we noticed that every single woman walking out had huge bags full of purchases. We prided ourselves in having exactly zero bags as we exited, and Sarah even took a picture to document it.


To be completely honest what really happened is that I did buy some great ribbon, but we figured that it evened itself out because we also walked out with an armful of free towels that we got after listening to a guy pitch them to us for about 20 minutes. Fun. Here are my fabulous ribbons that I have no idea what to do with. The coiled one is from the "Women's Show" and the other two are from the Bower Bird store in town.