The Fold: Better.

This first appeared in the May edition of my newsletter, The Fold. Want to get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up here, and be sure to check your email and spam folders for the confirmation.

We interrupt this newsletter to announce that Sarah Atlee is now accepting orders for custom-made quilts!

​This is the first time in a long time that I've been available for commissions. I'm really excited about making quilts for collectors, aka folks like you! If you have any questions, or would like to take your next step down the quilted path, please get in touch! sarah@sarahatlee.com

Invest in joy today. Click here to start your custom-made quilt.

Back to The Fold.

I'd like to thank you for joining me on this path. Writing an email newsletter hasn't always been easy for me, but this time around, I'm loving it. I get to share stories with you that matter to me, and you have been so generous in your reception. So pour yourself a hot cuppa and pull up a chair. There's pie.

Now, I'm going to ask you to indulge me, because I am having the most First World Problem ever.

I don't love folding laundry. People know this about me, including my musical friend Paris In Stereo. But I love having clean clothes. So. I learned that you can take laundry to a cleaner's and they'll - get this - wash it, dry it, FOLD IT, and give it back to you. (For a fee.) I don't indulge in this service all the time, but during a busy week, it's a huge help.

I like things folded the Konmari way. The service doesn't fold laundry the Konmari way.

So, do I spend time re-folding my laundry so it's more pleasing to put away? And does this cancel out the convenience of using the service? Or do I accept the folded laundry as-is and live with the daily irritant of my clothes not looking as nice when they're put away? And who even cares? Besides me?

Side note: Before I started The Fold, I asked my Facebook friends to name any associations they had with the word "fold." Angie LaPaglia said,

"I think about laundry. when all the towels are folded and stacked like soft terry cloth soldiers waiting for duty. I think about the act of folding my children’s clothes when they were little, how close to them I felt. I think about everything being folded and put in its place. everything is where it belongs. everything is in order. everyone is tucked in. everyone is safe. everything’s gonna be ok."

Laundry is a small problem that makes a big difference.

I get why we focus on small problems. They’re solvable. Controllable. Can I solve (huge problem affecting every living thing)? Not today, and not alone. Can I fold this t-shirt into its Optimum Form Factor? Watch me. Boom.

I have a challenge for you: Solve a small problem.

Identify something that irritates you, but that you’ve been living with anyway because it’s “too small” to spend energy fixing.

• Replace or upgrade a tool that’s worn out.

• Discard something that doesn’t fit any more.

• Clean that one thing that doesn't usually get cleaned.

• Set a boundary, with yourself or with someone else.

These two books will give you some great ideas: Set Boundaries, Find Peace by Nedra Glover Tawwab / The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi​

Please drop me a line and let me know what you fixed! I'm always open to ideas for small improvements.

There's a great recipe coming up, but first, I'd like to introduce you to Basic Split.

Basic Split​

Deconstructed garments and other cotton fabrics, machine pieced and quilted by Sarah Atlee.
60 x 43 inches, 2020.
$1,135 Click here to purchase.​

Basic Split is, in its own way, a series of small solved problems. The "problem" I set for myself was: take a rectangle, split it, insert a smaller rectangle. Repeat until the quilt is done.

Already have a crush on Basic Split? Wanna make it official? Click here to bring this quilt into your life.

As promised, here's a small improvement that's doing me a world of good:

Stupid Easy Chicken Tortilla Soup

Inspired by the cooking episode of How To ADHD (the salsa chicken starts at 8:59)

In a slow cooker or stovetop soup pot, add:

• 1 quart of broth

• 1 jar of salsa

• 1 packet of taco seasoning

• Any amount of chicken in any state (just be mindful of what “bite size” is for you)

• Brands don’t matter.

Add any/all of the following:

• Extra herbs & spices to taste

• 1 can diced tomatoes

• 1 can beans

• Potatoes, squash, greens, carrots, celery, onion, in either cooked or raw state (use up your leftovers!)

• ½ cup uncooked rice

Level 2: Roast the chicken and/or veggies before adding to the soup.

Level 3: Make your own taco seasoning.

Simmer until all the parts are cooked through. Then add 1 can of cream style corn. Wait until it gets hot again, then serve.

Toppings!

(Add these when the soup is being served, not when storing in the fridge/freezer.)

• Chopped fresh cilantro

• Chopped chives or scallions

• Avocado

• Shredded cheese

• Sour cream or Greek style yogurt

• Crunched up tortilla chips

• Lime wedges

Makes great leftovers, and freezes well.

Bonus for those who read this far:

​More ways to fold better.​

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It's About Surrender.

"To be is to be perceived. And so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other. The nature of our immortal lives is in the consequences of our words and deeds that go on apportioning themselves throughout all time." Sonmi451 / Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell​

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (Knees and Toes)

Do you do yoga? I practice sometimes. I first tried it in college (where my $cholar$hip paid for classes!). My favorite asana has always been the forward fold.

"Uttanasana" translates roughly to "intense stretch pose," but for me, it's about surrender. I surrender to gravity. I surrender to the reality of my body that day. I surrender the desire to make a perfect shape, surrender to imperfection. I surrender my thinking mind to my physical senses. To stillness, non-doing. And I love the journey, from all-the-way-up-there to all-the-way-down-here.

What have you surrendered lately?

A Soft Place To Land​

A Soft Place To Land. Cotton fabrics, 13x15.5 inches
Machine pieced and quilted with additional hand quilting
$368 ​ Update: This piece has gone to a loving home.

This is a small wall-hanging quilt I recently made, in response to a thought-work exercise with Kyla Mitsunaga, aka the Asian Auntie You Didn't Know You Needed. I'll tell the whole story another time, but this piece is about surrender.

I surrendered to some scary thoughts, deeply embedded in my subconscious. I let them come to the surface, which felt like momentary freefall. With Kyla's help, I gave them a safe, soft place to land. This experience is already giving rise to a new series. A Soft Place To Land is the first iteration.

The Cutter

I have a quilt on my bed that's about a hundred years old. This is useful for several reasons.

1. It's warm. People sometimes ask me why the quilts they remember from childhood are warmer/heavier/cozier than quilts today. That may be partly nostalgia, but wool and cotton battings were much more common in previous decades. Now quilt battings are usually polyester or a cotton/poly blend.

2. It's beautiful. We musn't dismiss the utility of beauty.

3. This quilt was made with a technique unusual for the time. My friend Martha (a quilt collector who sold me this piece) told me that the quilting is freemotion, but it was done on a treadle machine. Now, if you're a quilter, your eyebrows are likely raised. Freemotion quilting is how you make loop-de-loops and pretty much any design besides straight lines. This is easy with a longarm quilting machine, and with some domestic machines (depending on the quilt's size), but I struggle to imagine getting this done on a treadle, especially considering the consistency of the stitches. Wowza.

[Why isn't this quilt being kept under archival conditions? Because some of it looks like this:

And some of it looks like this:

In the industry, this is called a "cutter."]

4. My favorite thing about this quilt: It has a history. And - this is crucial - I don't know what that history is. I only know what's happened since I saw the quilt at Martha's garage sale. Previous chapters are closed to me.

Here's why that matters.

Did you read the book or see the movie Cloud Atlas? The narrative is structured around big time jumps and seemingly unrelated characters. But it's all connected. Because no one knows what part of your life is going to go on existing after you're gone. You could be a lawmaker or a tycoon or a research scientist and your contributions to future generations might be obvious. But most of us don't know what our legacy will be. It's out of our control. We have to surrender.

Creators are often preoccupied with the idea of legacy. We are surrounded by messages telling us who to be, how to be, how to ensure our efforts make an "impact" in an atmosphere of noise. It's a lot of pressure. By choosing to acknowledge our very limited control, we can find freedom.

I don't know who made the quilt on my bed. There's no label on it. (FYI: Label your quilts!!) The maker was probably a woman. So I'll tell her now: Dear Ms. Quilter, Somehow your quilt made it into my hands, and I appreciate what you created. Thank you.

Everything Sucks, So... issue #8!

It's a good time to order the latest issue of the ESS zine. Why? Because issue #8 (Add It Up, aka By The Numbers) is the last one. For now, anyway. I started this zine as a pananoramadingdong project and I feel that it has served its purpose. Issue #8 is available now in my web store. Back issues of ESS (both paper and digital editions) will remain available as long as y'all keep buying them, whether that's through my website or in OKC at DNA Galleries or Literati Press Bookstore. Thank you for coming with me on this journey.

Thanks for reading!

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Hospital Corners (It's the Little Things)

UPDATE: The Fold is now weekly!

This is an excerpt from my monthly newsletter, The Fold, originally published in March 2022. Sign up here to receive The Fold every month in your email inbox. (Be sure to check your email and spam folders for the confirmation.)

It's The Little Things

You know how we have these pet peeves that seem relatively insignificant compared to *gestures around*, but they become that thing you would go to the barricades for?

Mine is pockets. I would plant my flag on the hill of All Clothing Should Have Pockets. As long as we're still segregating clothing by gender (unnecessary, see Degendering Fashion), those clothes should have places to put things.

Hence the title of this quilt, Pockets, aka Can You Hold This For Me?

Pockets / Can You Hold This For Me?
Deconstructed garments and other fabrics, machine pieced and quilted. 57x59 inches, 2021. $2575

To purchase, visit my web store.

L-R: Detail of top left corner, detail of back including visible mending, detail of center

For the backing, I used a vintage bedsheet - yummily soft, faded and worn with time. As you can see in the photo above, there was a spot that needed repair before quilting. I'm a fan of visible mending.

Pockets is one of several pieces I've just added to my web store. (Click here to see what else is new.) You can read more about the process of creating Pockets here.

Hospital Corners - Still a Thing?

I used to think hospitals were scary places. But after a few inpatient stays (shout-out to autoimmune disease!) and sitting with my mom through some procedures, I've changed my tune. Hospitals are where we go to get the care we need. They have snacks, and socks, and warm blankets, and really really nice people helping you to get better. It's no suite at the Hilton, but there can be unexpected niceties.

Picture this: January 2021, pandemic, I'm in a hospital bed, and patients are not permitted to roam the hallways (for good reason). Late in the evening, a sound travels down the hall. It's warm, and warbling... it's a human voice. It's a man, and he's singing.

I thought, oh, someone's listening to a church service (it was a Sunday), or there's an opera special on TV. The next morning, there it was again. Again I thought, TV, or a video online or something. That afternoon, again.

My fellow sick person was singing. Like, trained, operatic style. A tenor. He continued to serenade us over the next few days. I didn't find out if he took requests, but he did get around to O Sole Mio the day I went home.

You just don't know where you're going to find beauty.

You know what I didn't find at the hospital? Hospital corners. Maybe they still do this in the military, but apparently it's not a thing in hospitals any more. They use the sheets with the elastic corners like us normal folks. Easier, and more practical.

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