Beth Ferrier’s Blog

Where have I been? Um, here. Sitting quietly mostly, thinking. On the rare days when the sun is out you can find me working in the garden. Otherwise, it’s just puttering around the house.

I must admit to a new addiction. Kent gave me an MP3 player last Christmas, which I pretty much ignored until about a month ago. It started out slowly, as these things do. First it was podcasts. Talk of quilters, knitters and food filled my ears while I folded laundry or pulled weeds.

And then, an audio book. My daughter in law suggested the Sookie Stackhouse vampire series, so I downloaded the first book. Downloaded the entire book in just a few minutes. Practically instantly, right there on my computer. Oh, my, this is almost as good as my own private book mobile! I can “read” and do chores all at the same time! No more guilt about ignoring my responsiblities while my nose is stuck in a book.

Next it was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I read it when it first came out a million years ago, and introduced it to my boys when they became teenagers. To say that they loved it would be an understatement. So, with a quick teaching trip to Chicago on the calendar I downloaded book one and two in the series. I felt that I really needed to be reminded what all the fuss was about. It was a lovely distraction when the fellow next me reeked of alcohol (and consumed two more mixed drinks on the 45 minute flight) and spearment gum (as if that would cover the smell of booze).

After that is was Atlas Shrugged, all sixty-three hours! Ayn Rand’s book has been one of my lifetime favorites. I was introduced to her in high school. I read Atlas Shrugged again in my mid thirties. Considering all that is going on in this country right now, I’ve been needing a dose of self-determination.

Somewhere in the middle of Atlas Shrugged it became clear that instead of listening while working I was looking for work that would let me listen. My garden has never looked better.

And then I listened to The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Absolutely charming and delightful book. Hard to imagine that a story about the German occupation of the Channel islands during WWII could be described so frivolously, but it was so lovingly told. Highly recommended!

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See is up next. I read her first two books, Snowflower and the Secret fan, and Peony in Love and thoroughly loved them.

I’ve learned that if I fall asleep listening my dreams tend to have a narrator. I find that I feel a little sad when I finish listening because there is nothing to put on the bookshelf. I’ve learned that I shouldn’t listen to a book read with an obvious accent on the way to a teaching gig. The Sookie book reader had a beautiful southern lilt, which took me three days to get out of my voice.

So, that’s where I’ve been, to Louisiana, the end of the Universe, New York and Colorado, Guernsey and next to Japan. There was also that little detour to Trenton, NJ to keep up with Stephanie Plum, but that was a real book. What a busy summer vacation!

The brown envelope containing my advance copy of the magazine has been sitting on my desk for a few days. While I knew that the issue would include a project from me, I had no idea the quilt would end up on the cover! It was a fun little quilt to make. The applique was completed on one of my teaching trips earlier this year.

The fabric has great designs for applique. Especially the border print, its large flowers were perfect for the inner stars of the applique flowers. One of the coordinating prints has zippy little starbursts that just begged to be turned into circles. How could I resist?

The issue is on the newsstands now.

My sister Stephanie is sewing for charity. She’s raising money for breast cancer research, making adorable fabric drink coasters. Check out her Etsy shop, here.

Last fall I realized that I almost never chose fabric from my main fat quarter shelf any more. Into a box they went, over four hundred fat quarters. I pawned them off on two of my sisters, Stephanie and Pam and my mom. It was so fun watching them go through the box, trying to be polite on the first pass, finally devouring the lot.

Working only with the fat quarters, Steph was sewing and selling single coasters. I thought she might be able to collect bigger donations if she could put together sets of coasters.  (Sorry, the business/marketing part of my brain kicked in, sometimes I can’t help it.)

So, off went two big boxes, bolt ends left over from kits, batting samples, more fat quarters. Steph thinks I’m being generous, but I’m not, really. She’s doing me a huge favor by taking the stuff off my hands! What good is having a stash if it’s just taking up space? There are so many charities that can put our stash mistakes to good use. Even if we don’t have the time or the interest to sew for charity we can still be helpful by making donations.

For more information on Stephanie’s project (or to make a donation, which would be lovely), go to One of Eight or Steph’s personal page.

In the twelve years since I started Applewood Farm Publications I have been blessed with endless deadlines. Projects for patterns, books, magazines, television appearances all followed one after the other. Teaching jobs lined up, a few at first and then more each year. I’ve been all over the country (so far I’ve been to over half of the states!) and Australia too (wouldn’t I love to go back there!). Pretty cool opportunities, like designing fabric and product development have presented terrific challenges to keep life interesting and busy.

It has been terrific, because it was great fun along with the hard work. All of the heady experiences (Simply Quilts! Twice!) were exciting because I just didn’t believe they were really happening to me. I’m just a quilter, after all, not a televison star, but there I was, on a really-for-real sound stage in Beautiful Downtown Burbank. Who knew?

Quilters have liked my designs well enough to pay good money for the patterns, always a bit of a surprise to me. My background is in science. The only art class I took in college ended with the professor suggesting that science was a good career choice for me. Yet here I am designing little bits of fabric art as if I knew what I was doing.

I love, love, love to teach. (Lectures still make me a little queasy, but I can pull out the quilts and it’s all good.) The novelty of airline travel has long worn off but now that I’ve figured out how to work an mp3 player and download audio books I’m almost looking forward to my next day in midair. (And it doesn’t hurt that I can also sometimes get bumped up to first class where there is enough room for my long legs. It sure is easier to get off the plane if my feet haven’t fallen asleep.) Not much makes me happier than a classroom full of eager students, open to laughter and playing with fabric.

But somewhere along the way I tipped over from being a mom that quilted to a business owner, author and teacher. In the process I found myself giving up a lot of my favorite things. No, I can’t work in the garden today, I have an article due. No, I can’t redecorate the kitchen, I have a book to edit. No, I can’t start in a new direction, this path is too well worn. No, no, no.

For while now (can’t say for sure when it started) I’ve been chafing at my quilted collar. To be perfectly honest I’ve been on the edge of bagging the whole deal more than a few times. Enough already. I want time to sew, bake, garden, read. Put a fork in me baby, I’m so done. Now, the last thing I want to do is whine. I know how blessed I am to have the career I do. My BFF, Karen, would call it “crying hungry with a loaf of bread under my arm.” But have you ever found yourself thinking that, man, this used to be so great, but geesh, what happened?

Luckily, commitments have kept me moving forward. Teaching jobs exhaust my body but replenish my spirit. Writing is a lovely joy, untangling words to capture a picture. Deadlines always have a terrific way of focusing one’s attention, that is for sure.

Since meeting my last deadline at the end of April I have given myself time to do all of the things I’ve missed, and (*gasp*) even do nothing at all. It’s been a time of reconsidering. I’ve been purging my stash, donating the stuff that no longer fits with the kind of quilts I make and reorganizing the stuff I’ve kept. Next I will whittle down and sort my thread stash, and make room for some of the new materials I’d like to use.

It’s been a time of reflection. Where do I want to go next? These weeks without direction have been both a challenge (like putting a type A personality in an empty room for an hour with nothing to do but retie her shoes) and a blessing. I can feel my internal spring gently uncoiling, relaxing. No longer drowned out by the shouting schedule, new ideas are perching nearby, peacefully waiting for my attention. And I want to play with them!

Instead of the no, no, no to distractions winding me tighter and tighter, I feel quietly poised for the next step.

 I’ll be heading out to Naperville, IL next Tuesday, for a lecture and my fav workshop, Hand Applique by Machine. There are still spaces available in the workshop. If you are interested, please contact Valli.

Lecture: When Finishing is Highly Overrated

Tuesday, June 9 at 7pm

Grace United Methodist Church, Fellowship Hall

300 E. Gartner Road

Naperville, IL

Workshop:  Hand Appliqué by Machine

Wednesday, June 10, 9:30 amd to 4:00 pm.

See you there?

The toughest decision every year is settling on a color scheme for the planters. Mostly I just head for the garden center and go with what catches my fancy, sort of like picking fabric for a new quilt. This year I wanted to create an old fashioned garden feel, so I settled on red and white. Red geraniums and a tall glass of lemonade on the porch swing, that says carefree summer time to me. (I do feel a quilt coming on. Red and white? Red and green and white? We shall see.)

Along the front of the house we have two hanging baskets, four urns and two planters. I decided to just start with those and consider the back yard planters seperately. See the bird’s nest on the ceiling fan? Momma robin was very patient with me as I worked on the porch. We’ll wait for her babies to fledge before knocking down the nest.

The plants wait their turn, sassy red geraniums, verbena and superbells (those adorable tiny petunias), and white bacopa, diamond frost and mini daisies. Tall daisies, medium geraniums mixed with trailing verbena, like a quilt, dark, medium and light.

The garden beds are all perenials. The spring flowering bulbs are all done. Soon we’ll have flashes of color from the irises and peonies. This is the view from the front door.

And from the other end of the walk.

A few years back I decided to group collections of plants. Coral bells come in so many beautiful leaf colors, they are perfect for this partly shadey spot under the old apple tree, at the start of the front walk. Just a few feet away, a gathering of cone flowers, purple, white and red drink in the sun. And just beyond, delphiniums will send up fountains of blue, pink and white.

The lily of the valley smell heavenly for now, but they threaten to overrun the garden. Every year I cherish them as they flower and tear them out when they’re done. Anybody want a shovel full?

Just as a quilt should catch your attention from across the room and then draw you in with the details, I’ve added little bits of color under the main plants. These ornamental strawberries are just charming (looks like my favorite flower shape for applique, huh?) They will bloom for another week or so and then fade into the background.

On this Memorial Day, as I savor the routine tasks of tending a garden I’ll be remembering the men and women who gave their lives in service to our country. As one of my youngest son’s best friends ships out to Afghanistan, I am reminded that our freedoms come at a heavy price and must never be taken for granted. I am proud to be an American, and try to live my life in a way that honors the sacrifice of our military. Thanks, guys.

Here in Saginaw it’s been an uncommonly cold and wet spring. Even the most loyal Michiganians have been crotchety about the weather. We had frost again earlier this week! It’s probably a good thing that this cold has slowed me down, I would have been into serious planting mode if not for it.

We never know what we’ll find when the flood waters recede. One year an aluminum canoe was left behind. With no registration marks it was impossible to return. It sat for years in the side yard, waiting for what, I’m not quite sure. It finally found a home with a friend of a friend.

It’s when the water remains only in the low spots that it gets really interesting. Fish become trapped, making for easy pickings for the predator birds. This majestic fellow made an afternoon of it. Quietly perched at the water’s edge, every few minutes his head would snap down and up, another small fish sliding down his gullet. Watching him move, it’s easy to see how science can suggest that herons are ancient birds, a just feather away from being a dinosaur.

Yesterday one of these fellows showed up at my pond. I was so startled to look up from my desk to see the heron at the pond that I jumped out of my seat and scared him off. Since the fish have been in hiding for the better part of the week, I’m guessing that it wasn’t his first visit. I’ve only seen evidence of four of the seven fish. That doesn’t mean that the other three aren’t there, but I’m guessing that at least one of them became sushi.

As the last of the water sinks into the field, large walleye thrash about, no exit in sight. Our dog used to think it was his responsiblity to locate each dead fish and roll in it. He finally learned that rolling in stinky stuff always resulted rejection from his people and a humiliating bath.

This year a band of turkey vultures showed up to clear the field. Huge and ugly as sin, at least a dozen of these buzzards perched on the peak of the neighbor’s barn. From there they took turns swooping over the field, returning to the barn to brag about their finds. Not at all menancing, they looked more like a bunch of frat boys, shouldering their way into line and squawking about their conquests.

While our field has been fallow for some twenty years, our neighbor leases his for planting. It is finally dry and warm enough for planting. As the huge tractor turns over the soil he is escorted by a troop of seagulls, wheeling and diving, feasting on the newly exposed worms.

For just about the past week this has been my hang out, cuddled up with Kelly cat and a box of tissues and feeling really crappy. Waylaid by a miserable cold, I’ve been living pretty much on cough drops, juice and chicken noodle soup. At the worst of it I couldn’t even knit! Now that’s bad. But I’m finally on the mend and trying to get back into the swing of things.

 The new book is at the page layout design stage, but except for approving the design it’s someone else’s job to complete. All of the deadlines that weighed me down last month have been met. For the first time in a zillion years I have no deadlines. It’s confusing the heck out of me. I’ve always been goal driven, a list maker, a multitasker. 

I find myself at a glorious moment when I get to decide where I go next. Is it time for another book proposal? Time to finally make a stab at writing fiction? Time to shift direction or dive back into the next quilt. Or perhaps it’s a moment to catch my breath, sit quietly and let my next project find me. I’ll be out back on the cedar swing, sipping my coffee and listening to the joyful song of the orioles and goldfinches.

This month we are working on our roses for our Now & Forever quilt. Yes, I did change the order in which the applique was presented. In my original plan the Sweet Peas were presented in April because that’s when they bloom in my neck of the woods. After working on them, and listening the the concerns on the yahoo list, I decided to switch to doing the simpler roses first.

Even though there are many parts to the roses, the shapes are relatively large and the curves are very gentle. The sweet peas, with all of their pointly leaves require a little more patience and confidence. Once we’ve accomplished our dozens of roses we’ll be up to the challenge.

So, here’s a quick step by step in photos. Of course we’d start by making our stabilizer (I’m using the Tear Away Magic Fusible here) or freezer paper shapes as described in my book, Hand Applique by Machine. You’ll notice that each of the template shapes have a letter and number code. This addressing system allows me to keep track of every bit without giving myself a headache.

The templates have been pressed to the wrong side of the fabric. The seam allowances have been trimmed and the “over” edges have been glue basted. You can see that only the inside curves have been clipped. Yes, there are pleats in the seam allowances, that’s perfectly fine. All that matters is that the turned edge is smooth. Glue basting allows me to continue to adjust the seam allowances until the edges are perfect.

Notice also that I didn’t cut the center out of the “C” shape yet. Leaving the center in place makes it easier to glue baste the edges.

Just snip into the fabric to start the cut, but remember to leave a scant quarter inch seam allowance.

 At home I work on a light box. I use a sheet of template plastic to protect my diagram of the applique shape. I almost always work with the paper side up, adding glue to the basted seam allowances as the motif grows.

I’m adding the “C” shape to the piece. Notice how you can see just a smidge of light around the inside edge. Both the light showing through and the diagram lines help me get the pieces placed just so.

The first round of petals get glued in place next.

And then the second round of petals go on.

This close up really shows how I use the back lighting to get the pieces into the best position. The “J” piece is “underdocked”. Too much light is showing, the slippery, fresh glue will allow me to continue to adjust the shape until it’s pretty near perfect.

Ta-da! A glue basted rose. Yep, that’s a bit of glue on the fabric. No worries, though, I know by the time all the applique stitching and quilting is done, this little bit of glue will flake off and fall away. And if some small bit remains after all that the first run through the washer will finish it off.

I’m making mirror images, some roses lean right, other lean left. It will be a subtle difference, but it will make my quilt more interesting. For some roses I’ll work with the diagram right side up.

 For the other half, the diagram will be wrong side up, but it will show up just fine on the light box.

Covering the diagram sheets with plastic makes it easy to glue the templates together without glueing them to the paper.

 The roses are pretty much done, glue basted any way. I’m making great progess on the sweet peas, which I think are so charming. They just tickle me. I’m having a bit of an disagreement with myself about how to stitch them together. I know that I want to add some details with thread, but I haven’t decided if that should come now, using thread that shows to join the parts together, or later, in the quilting, or perhaps both.

Now that all of my pressing deadlines are behind me I can give this project my full attention again. The pieced blocks are already done. You can see that the applique parts are nearly done. I really love this design, I want to do some really special embellishing on this quilt, using the techniques included in my new book. What do you think?

It’s not the boulder in the road, it’s the pebble in the shoe. We can summon up great courage to conquer the difficult obstacles in our lives only to be felled by small, daily annoyances. 

Not so long ago Kent and I were both running ragged. He was juggling several difficult projects. After working long and hard days even the ride home in his beloved Mustang couldn’t cheer him up. 

I was snowed under with prep for AQS on top of at least six other deadlines. One of the downsides to working at home is that it’s really hard to come home from work. Even though I can close the door between the studio and the rest of the house it’s hard to relax knowing the mess will still be there in the morning. 

So, I hatched a plan. “I’m running away from home next weekend”, I said to Kent. “Want to come with me? I don’t know where I’m going; anywhere will do, as long as it’s not here.”

 “Too busy,” he said, “too much to do.” 

“Hmm,” says I. 

It only took him two days to come around to my way of thinking. So, after a little discussion we decided to head south, to the Dearborn Inn, near Henry Ford Museum and GreenfieldVillage.

I love the black and white tile floor. Set on point, it enlarges an already grand space. We use this idea in our quilts all the time. Rotated a simple forty-five degrees and our pieced blocks take on a whole new look.

Filling the spaces between the conversations areas, the tile both sets the areas apart, lending a feel a privacy in this very public space, and joins them together to retain the grand sweep of the room.