Indian Quilts

As you know, I got to spend some quality time with my stitching stuff on airplanes, including the newest issue of Piecework. Gee whiz, you'd think that it wouldn't take 8 years of teaching composition for a person to be able to tell what makes bad reading. There's an article on Indian quilts, that while informative, just sucks. About 3/4 of the way through the list that passes as an article, the writer begins discussing Chinese, Indonesian, and Southeast Asian quilts. What, all Asians look alike to her? About three paragraphs later she explains that Indian fabric is used by all of those other countries. What an effective transition! Too bad she didn't know where to put it. My friend AC, an Indian, says she also likely misused the word "Hindustani." His word's enough for me.

The magazine has done a redesign, and unlike the last one, it's pretty easy on the eyes. Lots of white space, and truth be told it looks like they are wanting for content; I mean how many pages does a magazine need for letters to the editor? And they practically beg for story and project ideas. Nevertheless . . . There are a couple of new features: one that shows how to "preserve the spirit" of an old textile, but if you needed a magazine article to tell you to make an old quilt into a stuffed toy, you need a lot more than just a magazine. How far are they going to be able to go with that? We'll see . . .month after month. The other new article is a portrait of "someone who has made a difference in the world of needlework." They started with Erica Wilson; okay, so they took that made (past tense) very seriously. The final "new" column will be rerunning a bunch of old patterns. I love that crap (cf: Better Homes and Gardens project recycling). The only mag that's ever done this sort of thing successfully was an old McCall's craft mag, and they re-ran patterns from before I was born. Now that's what I'm talking about! Finally, there's going to be a little pattern used as an icon throughout. It seems like it will change in each issue. A person might be able to make an interesting little sampler from them. But we'll have to see how the other ones look.

For the card makers out there, I learned an interesting technique last night. Stamp on white paper and copy it onto a plastic sheet. Color in different areas with glue, apply fine glitter, wait 20-30 seconds, repeat. In the interest of fairness to the instructor, there's a step I left out--a way to avoid static cling. At any rate, you use the creation plastic side up for cards, etc. I've already been playing around with clip art and different places to put it. It was fun, I should get out of the house more!