How'm I Doing?

When he was mayor of New York City, the Hon. Ed Koch famously asked his constituents, How'm I Doing? 

(I hate the use of the word "famously" in that context, but it's so prevalent that I just felt all band-wagony and had to jump on and say it.)

In fact, How'm I Doing became not only his catch-phrase but the title of his best-selling autobiography.

Now, I used to think that if you weren't handed a pink slip, a summons, an arrest warrant or a divorce decree, things were going pretty well for you.

But over the past couple of years, I've started selling things on etsy, and I've made the -- ahem -- occasional Facebook and Pinterest post.

And suddenly, my performance in those venues has become a very big, if somewhat capricious, deal to me.

I crave the 100% Positive  Feedback rating on etsy, which I 've earned, but I fret when someone buys something and doesn't leave a report. As with my writing, I take pride in my sewing and customer satisfaction is important. I've told myself that if someone were unhappy with the quality of the quilt she ordered from me, she'd say so. But, it's still nice to hear the "I love it and it looks great over my fireplace" remark.

I monitor my Facebook "Likes" like a latter-day Stuart Smalley: They are my affirmation that my status update was good enough, smart enough and, doggone it, people like me. (I'm not sure when Facebook posting became a competitive sport, but I'm in.)

I'm please when I find out someone new is following me on Pinterest, even though the idea of being followed used to be at least creepy, if not dangerous.

So, today, I thought I'd show you how I'm doing on sewing through the Kona cottons. This isn't the final layout, but the individual blocks are coming along well. The only bad part is that when you're cutting strips no wider than 2", you don't exactly steam through your stash.

Feel free to Oooh and Aaah. You know I like to hear it.

It's Not a Quilt if it's Not Quilted

I don't know much about the writer Gene Fowler, except that he gained a reputation for impertinence in an interview with the Army scout and Indian fighter Wild Bill Cody, during which he spent more time inquiring about his many love affairs than anything else.

But Fowler did come up with one of my favorite quotes about writing. It goes something like this: It's easy to be a writer. You just sit and stare at a white sheet of paper until blood forms on your forehead.

(As a writer almost since I could, well, print, and the 6-year-old author and illustrator of a story called "Kippy the Kangaroo" that became a minor sensation in Mrs. Bastian's first grade classroom, I also like this, by P.G. Wodehouse: I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose.)

Whether I was trying to rend something Plath-like on a notepad as a teenager seated at the kitchen table ... pound out something lucid in journalism school on an electric typewriter ... or tappitty-tap a client's annual report on my keyboard, I have experienced the very tangy sensation of blood dripping from my pores known as writer's block.

But I've never had quilter's block.

The problem with quilts isn't starting them. It's the finishing.

Not the piecing. The quilting.

I hate the quilting.

I know there are many who find the rhythmic rocking motion of needle through cloth layers that produces those tiny stitches soothing, therapuetic, Zen-like.

I stab and stitch. It doesn't sound pretty, and it doesn't look good, either.

Haunted by the specter of Unfinished Objects -- yes, UFOs -- and the idea that a quilt is defined by its quiltedness, I've hired professional quilters to finish my quilts. One time, my good friend even let me try her longarm machine, an experience that was as nervewracking and exhilarating as I imagine it is to be in a runaway car.

But now, I've taken quilting into my own hands, thanks to my embroidery machine.

I'd wanted an embroidery machine for at least a decade, although I had only some vague sense that it would improve my quilting. I really didn't imagine embroidering little flowers onto squares and then inserting them into my quilts. And I found most of the built-in patterns to look like Nixon-era throwbacks.

But I couldn't shake my desire. (For the machine. I've gotten over Nixon.)

With the advent of etsy, the world of embroidery designs opened wide.

So I went to my favorite sewing machine shop and took a couple of models for a spin.

Yeah, they're fun. But will I ever use them for quilting, I asked. I don't need a completely new hobby, like embroidering duckies on baby bibs.

"You know you can quilt with this, right?" the clever salesman said. He showed me a child's quilt with appliqued letters, all done on the embroidery machine. Then, he shoots! he scores! told me about actual quilt patterns I could buy that would emulate longarm machine quilting. The Elna 8200 was mine.

My contest quilt -- shown in my first post -- would still be just a top, a batt and a back if not for my embroidery machine.

And here's my latest. I made a long, summery table runner from a charm pack of 5-inch squares and quilted it with a sun motif  from Advanced Embroidery. I like the subtle texture that the embroidery/quilting adds, even though it's not an overall design.