Updated stars

Here is our updated quilt diagram:



And a photo of some stars lying on fabric that will be incorporated into the non-star squares:

Star quilt, Makindu, consulting

Progress continues on the star quilt. I have 6 of the large stars completed, and have procured additional white-on-white fabric to make more. (We want to have some stars spinning clockwise and others spinning counterclockwise, so I thought I would make four of each: this guarantees we'll have enough for each direction, no matter whether Becca makes "lefties" or "righties".)

I should give credit where credit is due. Part of what inspired us to make a raffle quilt for an organization that is personally meaningful to us is the fact that my mother and several of her friends are nearing the homestretch on a raffle quilt for Makindu Children's Program. (This is an organization that provides healthcare, education, and support to children orphaned in Africa.) I have seen photos of their quilt in progress, and it's pretty impressive. I hope to be able to show you pictures when they have the top finished, and will also share a link to the raffle if Makindu puts it up online.

In other quilt-related news, I am helping another online friend plan out her first quilt. (I imagine she may in part be referring back to the instructions I wrote up for Becca last year, which I will be modifying for inclusion in this blog once we get started working on the Good Wishes quilt.) She will probably post about her quilt project on our bulletin board when she gets started (this summer). It sounds like it will be very like one of the Good Wishes quilts in certain respects - but since this is her project and not mine, I'll leave it to her to talk about the specifics.

Friendship stars

What, me, only work on one project at a time? Never!

Last year I taught my friend Rebecca how to quilt over the computer (using lots of words and lots of pictures). We didn’t know how well it would work, but she did a great job - she was very focused and stuck with the task all the way through, and her quilt looked really great when she was finished.

Well, last night we were talking on the computer and we decided that it would be fun to try to make another quilt together - but this time, we'd be working on the same quilt instead of on parallel ones.

I usually make my charity quilts for Project Linus, but this time we thought we would contact a charity near and dear to Becca's heart, the National Stillbirth Society, to see if they would be interested in doing a raffle. Becca says that some of the parents like to imagine their babies as being stars (like in Greek mythology) so she thought we could make a quilt with stars on it. She picked white-on-white stars on a scrappy blue background.

These are two sample stars I made:


And here is the layout we are working on. (She's put together a neat idea for the last two rows, using 6" stars instead of 9" stars, but I haven't diagrammed that part yet):



We haven't talked about what happens after we put the stars together... but I guess we'll see when we get there :)

Names and meanings

One of the hobbies Sandie and I share is collecting names. So, while I know that she already has some ideas for her baby's name, I thought I would post this list of Chinese names for girls in case it might be of interest.

Whenever I look at a group of names from a particular culture, I can't help but think about what the names' meanings say about that culture. A lot of the meanings in this list refer to the beauty of the natural world, and the images they bring to mind are truly lovely.

Look at many of the meanings of elements in the old Germanic names (coined by my bloodthirsty naming ancestors) and you get a rather different picture. My name book, making a similar point (I swear I didn't lift the idea), cites the following meanings as examples: war, strife, battle, protection, rule, counsel, raven, wolf, and bear; adding that Germanic female names "are no less warlike in meaning than their male counterparts" (A Dictionary of First Names, p. xvi).

Were we as a culture so single-mindedly focused on fighting back then that we really couldn't come up with anything else worth commemorating? Oh dear.

Really gives me a new appreciation for the 19th century love for flower and gem names...

Qianjiaxiu: 1,000 families embroidery

Last month I wrote about the East Asian tradition of making robes for children out of 100 pieces of fabric, as referenced in a museum exhibit of antique children's clothing. Like the Good Wishes quilt custom, the Hundred Families Coat tradition incorporates the idea of sewing 100 pieces of fabric together into a lucky item for a child.

I wanted to introduce you to another tradition that overlaps with the ones we have been examining. (What's so exciting to me here is that this time, there is not only a quilt involved in the custom, but also a [general] locale where this custom was practiced, should we feel inclined to search for more information.)

Back in the spring of 2002, an article appeared in "New Internationalist" magazine about a project intended to bring attention to the importance of China’s dying folk art. A teacher and five students traveled along the Yellow River collecting pieces of cloth from farming families in the area. They assembled these pieces, 1,000 altogether, into a 350 meter long patchwork quilt which they termed "Qianjiaxiu," or 1,000 families embroidery. (NB: 350 meters of quilt would be around 230 lap quilts in a row!)

Why did these artists use patchwork to underscore the importance of folk art in the region?

The idea... came from an ancient ritual in the Yellow River Valley, in which local families praying for good harvest and fortune made a quilt out of 100 embroidered pieces to please the deities. The tradition has been dying out as more and more people have left their villages for towns and cities. (Findarticles.com, "Folk fabric: Chinese villages where unsung artists dwell"; originally printed in "New Internationalist," April 2002)

If this Yellow River custom of creating lucky quilts from 100 pieces of fabric is truly "ancient," I wonder if it could possibly be the basis for the Hundred Families Coats (ca. mid-19th-mid-20th centuries), and ultimately, the basis for our 21st century 100 Good Wishes quilts today?(!)