Beth Ferrier’s Blog

 Like my favortie Christmas carol, we too are in our deep midwinter, the earth is hard as iron; water, like a stone. The snow keeps falling, snow on snow. It’s been cold, really cold, below zero cold. The snow is fluffy and sparkly in this fridgid weather, and the sunrise is often pink. When the frost clings to the tree branches the meadow takes on an other-worldly guise. I love it when winter is like this.

Lucy and I both find ourselves gazing out at the snowy garden. So beautiful, but not inviting. I’ll admit to thinking that nature is best appreciated through plate glass.

See that poinsettia plant next to Lucy? A gift from my in-laws a year ago, I nearly killed it off last winter. Just in the nick of time I started watering it again. In the spring I cut the branches way back and left it sitting by the french doors in my studio.

It’s always been one of my goals, to bring a poinsettia back into bloom. It’s a simple matter of controling the length of the daylight that the plant gets. Many years I’ve made half hearted attempts, covering the plant and then forgetting it. Putting it into an unused room, and then forgetting it. Or just forgetting it.

Last summer, in my never ending quest for balance in my life I made a promise to myself to leave the studio around six when Kent comes home. I’ve been slowly putting back the things in my life that I put down while I built the business: baking, knitting, reading, gardening, feathering my nest.

Those lovely blooms remind me that seeking balance is its own reward.

Motherhood has taught me many lessons, humility being the first. I’ve learned that anytime I had the lack of good sense to swear that my child would never do such a thing he was probably just about to be caught in the act. (And most likely with witnesses.)

 I’ve learned that showing works much better than telling, and that they are always, always watching.

I’ve learned that boys are truly different animals than girls. Body noises are an art form. The toilet is a concept, not an object. And regularly brushed teeth is the first indication of a crush.

The hardest lesson I’ve learned is that there are some things that I just can’t fix. There is no mom magic that can take away the sting of a broken heart. And nothing hurts more than seeing my child hurt. I would so much more easily bear the pain myself than to watch his. 

One of our girls has left us. I wonder if she knew when she was breaking up with the boy that she was breaking up with us, too. We were all happy to have her in our family. We will all miss her. And we wish her the very best as she moves forward in life.

All the platitudes, it’s for the best, better to have love and lost, you’re young, they are all true and all so unhelpful. Except that maybe they remind us that what we feel today may be new to us, but not unique. There is comfort in knowing that we’re not alone. 

Our broken hearts remind us that people will come and go from our lives. Sometimes they will leave us, sometimes we will leave them. I believe that people touch our lives for a reason. We have only to open our hearts to the lessons they bring. Easy or hard, they make us who we are.

In early March I’m teaching at a quilt show put on by Pieces From the Heart Quilt Guild of Morris, IL. These ladies have been working hard to make the show a success. I have to admit, as an avowed quilt show shopper, the vendors list has me looking forward to my free time!

To make it easy for folks to register online they’ve put the classes up on eBay. Of course, the event planners asked my permission before posting the class, and I happily agreed. This is a first for me, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It seems like a terrific way for a guild to be able to handle credit card (or pay pal) payments for classes without having to deal with a merchant account. It also allows for online registration without having to pay for a high end web page.

 What do you think? Would you buy a class on eBay?

And how about that “Miracle on the Hudson”? I just can’t seem to get that crazy water landing out of my mind. I’m not afraid to fly, but flying has become a bit of a test of wills. The vast majority of the time I arrive on time, with all of my luggage. My trip karma is good, all of my travel adventures, so far, have been on the way home. But each I time I leave for a trip there is always that little worry in the back of my mind that I won’t be on time for my lecture, and that there’s really nothing I can do about that.

As I watched the news unfold, seeing the folks plucked off the wings of that floating plane, all I could think about was how they were now all late for whatever they were heading to. (As if surviving a plane crash is nothing more than a hiccup in their travel plans.)

And then I thought about my quilts. My favorite quilts, would be under water, in the belly of the plane, for how long? How long would I have to wait to get them back? And what kind of shape would they be in after being wet for so long. (The good news, the Hudson is salt water at that point and salt helps to prevent colors from running.)

If nothing else, this amazing event has reinforced my habit of asking for exit row seating. Prized for the extra leg room, it comes with the bonus of being the first out. Works for me.

My fingers are itching to get started on the new block of the month. Choosing the fabric is both the best and worst part.

My organized side want to pull all the fabrics now (in tidy little fat quarters), get them in sorted light to dark and get on with the cutting. This system works really well when writing a pattern. I can easily measure how much of each fabric is used. With all of the decisions out of the way, it’s also a very efficient way to complete the project.

My plan was to pull a bunch of fat quarters and then narrow the selection to five shades of each color. The groups to the left are commercial prints. The groups to the right are batiks.

My artist side is chafing a bit at all this premeditation. How fun would it be to just dive in, choosing little bits of dozens of fabrics, making the creation of the quilt more of a voyage of discovery than simply completing a project. It’s a riskier path, sometimes the parts just don’t add up to a whole quilt. It’s a slower process, too, taking smaller bites along the way.

Since the applique pretty much covers the main background fabric I’ve decided to use just one fabric throughout. Since I collect fat quarters this required a trip to the local quilt shop.  I found a really cool pin dot, shiny white dots on very pale cream. from Lakehouse. Perfect. And also a bright white dot for the block backgrounds.

And the coolest warm black batik I’ve ever seen. So, I started pulling from my batik stash too. Have I lost my mind? Make the quilt twice? Maybe so, but I’m going to give it a try.

And, although I have tried to resist, metallic prints are sneaking in. Be still my heart! Do you have a soft spot in your heart for a special style of fabric?

A little while ago (okay, so it was more than six months ago) my sweet daughter-in-law asked me to recover a pair of chairs that had been hers as a child. Hey, I can sew right? And I have slip covered or reupholstered chairs in the past. We went shopping right away to choose just the right fabric. The chairs and the roll of fabric have been quite comfy in the corner of my studio, waiting their turn on my to-do list.

Once the book deadline was met it was time to tackle that list. After some serious thought I decided that stripping the chairs down to the frame and reupholstering them would be easier and better than a slip cover. The chairs were a little worse for wear, a little musty and a little water damaged. Better to start fresh.

Because I just don’t have the hand strength (I have carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands), my hubby, assistant and son were all enlisted to do the hard stuff, like removing the old fabric and staples.

 The frame is made out of oak, very sturdy, and in great shape.

 We replaced the seat fabric with clean canvas and used old batting scraps as padding, cleaning out a nice space in my closet for more, better stuff.

 We numbered each piece of the fabric as it was removed so that we would know what order to recover the sections. The pieces were used as rough patterns to cut the new fabric. I don’t know what I was thinking when we picked out a striped fabric. This is the second chair. I learned a lot while doing the first chair. The stripes on this one are a lot straighter. (Amanda, you can swap them out, if you want!) Once the arms were done all the hard parts were finished.

To finish up the little cushion was repadded with more batting and then covered. I thought turning the strips to vertical on the sides of the cushion would be fun.

And finally, even though the chairs arrived without feet I thought they needed a little something. I found these darling little bun feet at Lowes.

The plan is for one chair to live with Alex and one to live here so Alex can be comfy with us. The first chair was sent off almost the instant it was done, but footless.

They are totally not perfect (the first one is even less perfect than the second), but they are much better than they were. Not bad for a quilter, eh?

A new year means it’s time for a new block of the month project. I’ve been kicking ideas around for a while, since November even, but I needed to wait until other deadlines were met before turning my full attention to the new quilt.

Originally I had planned to offer kits. To be perfectly frank, kits bring in a nice chunk of change to my business. Quilters love kits. But kits really limit the number of fabrics I can use in my designs. Providing a little bit of a lot of fabrics means buying a lot of bolts with a lot of fabric on them.  I have to admit that as I was puzzling out the new project I just chafed at the idea of limiting my fabric choices, or fabrics from one collection. When I finally decided to let the idea of kits go the creative juices really started to flow.

As you will see, I’ve also giving up (for now) on the dark background. The truth is, just about every quilt I design is supposed to be the one that ends up on my bed. So far none of them has, but hope springs eternal.

I thought you might like to see a little of the design process. I’m a really big fan of the Electric Quilt program. They are up to EQ6 now. I’ve had it since it was just EQ and a dos program. The program is excellent for testing layouts. It’s wonderful to be able to easily push a seam allowance over, or take one out. Almost instantly I can play with secondary designs, shift values and color and move blocks around.

 Even though EQ has terrific applique tools I use Corel Draw to create mine. I learned the program many years ago so I could draw better graphics for my patterns.

This slide show (which I really hope works because I did it all by my silly self), shows only a few of the steps from start to finish. There were probably ten small changes to the project between each slide.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

The posting date for the first step of the project is February 14th, 2009. This quilt feels very romantic to me, what better day to start than Saint Valentine’s Day? (The supply list will go up sooner, I’ll let you know for sure when it does.) I can see this quilt in so many different colorways; the happy jewel tones you see here, soft and clear pastels, creams and white for a wedding quilt. I’m so tempted to make this one in silk. What will you choose?

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Some things you just say yes to, no matter what. When the wonderful folks at American Quilters Society ask if you’d like to teach at the show in Paducah, KY there is pretty much just one answer.

 The request came the day after my first book deadline, while I was in Houston at Quilt Market. I was already booked for the weekend of the show and ordinarily I would have just declined the invitation. But since AQS is a pretty big deal, and the group already camping out on those dates was able to shift to the next weekend, I was very happy to say yes.

 What I didn’t figure in was the amount of paperwork that would need to be done immediately. As in, before the next book deadline. As in, the instant I returned from Houston. Yikes! But  it all got done and now registration is open.

I’m thrilled to be teaching a ton of classes. One class is on a new applique technique that will be included in the new book.

Two piecing classes are available. The first is Tools Rule. This is a fantastic class for those of you who chop your stash up into strips or noodles or worms. Of course, the class will also include tons of my favorite sneaky piecing tricks and tips. (The fabric is way prettier than shown. I need to work on my photography skills.)

The other piecing class is Slick Slicing Tricks. I’ve squeezed lots of my very best sneaky piecing tricks into this little quilt.  Kits will be provided for all three of these classes, with lots of the prep work already done so we can get right down to business.

And finally, I’m teaching three classes on free motion quilting. It’s kind of funny. Guilds book me mostly to teach applique and piecing classes, but when I lecture most of the questions are about the quilting on my quilts. Even though I do mostly traditional quilts I would say that my quilting style is a little more contemporary. It is most definitely playful.

The first class, Romancing the Stitch, is an all day workshop that covers from basic design, specialty threads, bobbin work and fills galore.

Feathers and Ferns focuses on creating marvelous motifs in our quilting.

And finally, Beginning Free Motion Quilting is just the right class for those who have never dropped their feed dogs but would love to learn how.

Registration is already started and classes are beginning to fill. I’ve never been to the show at Paducah so it will be quite an adventure for me. Have you been? What words of advice do you have for me?