Planning to Hit It Out of the Park

Growing up, I dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. While I was an okay softball right fielder, being female was not the only reason I was never drafted by my St. Louis Cardinals or any of their competitors. Despite that, turns out I'm on a wonderful All-Star team — a team of 18 top-notch quilt teachers.

Saturday, May 22, I'll be among teachers who will be part of the Global Quilt Connection's two-day All-Star Sampler live Zoom webinar. Each of us will have 15 minutes to share how we teach, especially how we teach via Zoom.

I'll demo a portion of one of my favorite courses to teach: "Demystifying Design for Foundation Piecing." We'll begin with photos of single images, like mine of our state flower, the Rocky Mountain blue columbine.

After studying the image, we'll create straight-line drawings that an be turned into foundations toward creating blocks — or mini quilts. Mine is 8" x 8".

I'm so honored to be part of this exciting and creative event. I'd love to have you tune in not just to see my presentation but to also be introduced to the full team of all stars. You can sign up to attend through the Global Quilt Connection as an individual or guild — https://www.globalquiltconnection.com/specialevents.html. The event is from 3-6 p.m. EST, 2-5 p.m. CDT, 1-4 p.m. MDT and noon-3 p.m. PDT. You won't be disappointed as every teacher will present a different technique.

As of today, May 4, there are an estimated 8,000 quilters who plan to sign in. I hope you will be one of them.

Images above — Columbine block, columbine photo and columbine drawing all © by Dana Jones, 5.4.2021. All rights reserved.

Quilting On and Off the Grid

Work in progress by Dana Jones

After dropping off four quilts to long-arm quilter Rita Meyerhoff (see glimpses of her work on my version of Elizabeth Hartman's "Patchwork City" below), I wanted to relax by doing some quick and easy piecing. I'm part of a quilt group that is focused on log cabin quilts this year — Log Cabin Fever to be specific. I began thinking about a great workshop I did with Sarah Nishiura — https://www.sarahnishiura.com — last year in which she had us work with half square triangles warping them to create an illusion of circles. My brain has been thinking about warping grids ever since.

As a career photojournalist who has spent significant time laying out magazine and newspaper pages, my life has long been focused on grids. When I began quilting, I saw the surface of quilts as grids but then began to wander from that idea only to realize I'd left behind something I love. That realization came during a 2014 class at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago when our instructor, Liz Ensz — https://sites.google.com/view/liz-ensz/liz-ensz?authuser=0 — had us read Chapter 1, "Brick," from Hannah B. Higgins' The Grid Book (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009).

I was drawn to Elizabeth Hartman's Patchwork City (C&T Publishing, 2014) because her use of an interlocking grid for up to 75 blocks made in three sizes is genius. This isn't a quilt you make overnight. Every block is unique. Every block offers possibilities for fussy cutting. Every block provides a piecing challenge and joy.

I will teach this quilt for Holly's Quilt Cabin in a series of Zoom sessions in June. More on that soon. In the meantime, enjoy a few photos of Rita's quilting. She finished it yesterday, and I will pick it up tomorrow.

Patchwork City, design by Elizabeth Hartman, made by Dana Jones, quilting by Rita Meyerhoff

Patchwork City, design by Elizabeth Hartman, made by Dana Jones, quilting by Rita Meyerhoff

I'd love to hear how you are quilting on or off the grid.

Hand Stitching as Meditation

Detail of "Proclaim Liberty," 2020 by Dana Jones

When I began quilting, all the classes I took were machine techniques. I enjoyed them and didn't really think about hand stitching. Then I took a hand quilting class. I soon found myself practicing my hand quilting during work meetings. It made daylong meetings seem shorter.

Last year as I designed the quilt I would submit to Colorado Quilting Council's annual show, I knew I wanted to include some hand stitching. We were in the midst of the pandemic with no clarity around when vaccines would be available. I was learning of friends who were sick and some who had died. I found hand stitching a great way to relieve stress, and so I decided to embroider the words from the Liberty Bell onto the quilt I was making for the show, which had a theme of Red, White and/or Blue.

Detail of "Proclaim Liberty," 2020 by Dana Jones

As I stitched, I thought about what those words mean to all who seek a better life in our country: "...proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof..." The words come from the King James Version of Ephesians. I thought about what it means to extend radical hospitality. I found myself calmer, more focused, and as I neared the end of my stitching, I wished I had more embroidery to do.

This weekend as I finished reading Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle (Abrams Press, 2020) by Clare Hunter, I found affirmation for the value of hand stitching. A shout out to this author and her words that are challenging and inspiring. She weaves stories from around the world across centuries, even across millennia, that chart the importance of stitching, the relegation of stitching to insignificant women's work in a world dominated by men, and the enduring power of needle and thread despite all attempts to make it otherwise. She writes:

"Sewing is a visual language. It has a voice. It has been used by people to communicate something of themselves — their history, beliefs, prayers and protests....But it is not a monologue, it is part of a conversation, a dialogue, a correspondence only fully realised once it is seen and its messages are read....It has evolved, primarily, as the voice of women who, through the centuries with limited access to literacy, or little assurance that if they did write, their words would be preserved, chose needlework as a medium to assert their presence in the hope that it, at least, might persist and, in time, be heard."

I recently had the joy of teaching Introduction to English Paper Piecing (EPP) for the Stitchin' Den in Estes Park, Colorado. It was a delightful day as we fashioned hexagons, triangles and clamshells by hand, trying numerous ways to baste the pieces and multiple hand stitches for joining them.

If you haven't done any hand stitching lately, give it a try. Be it EPP, embroidery, hand quilting, knitting or crocheting, I think you'll find your heart lighter and your spirits lifted. Like meditation, the rhythm of pulling needle and thread will flow with your breathing and the beat of your heart.