My Hand Sewing Kit

I've just delivered a stack of newly finished quilts to a professional photographer. To get ready for that delivery, I spent most of last week sewing labels and sleeves onto quilts. That's a lot of time hanging out with my hand sewing kit.

How about a little tour? It really does all fit into that mini metal lunchbox pictured above. (Except for those two spools of thread. Choices were made.)

Top row, L-R: Needle threader (unused), sake cup pincushion with pins and wonderclips clipped around the rim; Liberty of London pincushion for backup pins (made by my friend Elizabeth)

Row 2: Scissors, spools of thread in various weights

Row 3: 2 bobbins with more thread (I try to keep a range of light to dark colors handy), lip balm*, hand balm, heavier threads for hand quilting, measuring tape

Row 4: Bandages (not so much for stab wounds, but for when my fingers get too sweaty), mini-mint tin with needle grabbers, sticky thimble patches, and other aids, adorable needle holder that looks like lipstick, another needle grabber, one button, magnetic needle minder, roll of washi tape, thimble (unused), backup scissors, one paper hexie

* Lip and hand balm because who wants to get all snuggled in to their hand sewing nest with the tv on and realize oh crap, my skin is dry, I have to get up to get the stuff? No one, that's who.

Here's a closer look at my beautiful sake cup pincushion. (I think the cup was made by Ty Illgen, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

What's in your sewing kit? More importantly, why do you keep it in a cookie tin? :)

The Thing You Just Knew You Could Do

Image: Sarah drawn by Sarah's Mom, circa 1984

Remember when you were a kid and when you saw someone do something, you thought, “I can do that, too?” And then you just DID it, in your kid way? That hopefully didn’t result in serious injury? :) What was that thing for you?

I remember an episode of Reading Rainbow that showed a person playing a Koto. (I’ve already gone down the Youtube hole looking for this episode, I think it’s s05 e04, “The Paper Crane.” Here's a different video example.) I gathered up an empty shoebox, paper cups, and rubber bands. I wrapped the rubber bands around the shoebox, using the paper cups as bridges. Then I put paper clips on my fingertips and plucked away at my instrument. And then it was time for dinner.

I haven’t always been that confident. But as an improvisational quilter, I keep that YES sign turned on. I learned to apply the “Yes, and” mentality to quilting from Sherri Lynn Wood. If that sounds familiar, it’s a principle of improv theater as well. In my studio, the conversation is usually, “What if I did ____?” followed by “YES. DO IT.” 

Try saying "Yes, and..." to something today.

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The Business Tool No One's Talking About

tl;dr: Get yourself a plain text editor. You probably already have one.

Google docs. Sticky notes. Voice memos. Notebooks. It's a lot to keep track of. Don't you feel frustrated when you have a great idea, put it somewhere, and can't find it later? Ever write a killer blog post and click Publish, only to see an error message along the lines of "Oopsies, our bad, now your post no longer exists ha ha ha"? Ugh.

I’m not a programmer, or a novelist, or a journalist. But I do a lot of writing in the course of my work as an artist.

I compose all of my blog posts, social media posts, and even some emails in a plain text editor.

Not Word. Not OpenOffice, Google Docs, or any other text-capturing software. Not rich text. Plain text.

Why?

1. No weird formatting or metadata. Have you ever tried to copy a letter or outline from Doc to Word to PDF and had the spacing come out all wrong? Did you get up this morning thinking, "I want to fight with Microsoft Word about what is and isn't a headline"? Even copy-pasting "as plain text" isn't 100% reliable between platforms. Plain text is free of formatting, other than line breaks. When I compose in a plain text editor, then copy-paste to the text's final destination, I know I'll have the formatting under my control.

2. No bells or whistles. Sometimes I just need to write. I don't want to distract myself with fonts, line spacing, kerning, and all the things that make my document pretty, but should wait until after I'm done getting the words out. If I'm trying to write and I see a notification, popup, etc., my train of thought is derailed.

3. No vanishing acts. I use BBEdit on my Mac desktop and laptop computers. I save the files locally (see 3a). If my internet connection gets interrupted, my text doesn't disappear.

It's worth noting that I'm a ten-finger typist. I'm not great at writing on my phone. And while voice-to-text is getting better all the time, it still has a noticeable margin of error. So I prefer to write using a keyboard. (When I’m not scribbling on paper, that is.)

3a. My files are stored locally. I'm just not super comfortable with cloud-based storage. If that's a great solution for you, awesome. I prefer knowing that I can access my text files while offline.

BONUS: this makes it easy to recycle content from my archives!

I do back everything up; I use Time Machine for local backups and Backblaze for offsite.

4. A plain text editor is lightweight. No bloatware here. Text files (with the extension .txt) take up no space at all. It's easy to email them, put them on flash drives, etc.

5. Plain text is easily transferrable, for all the reasons I've listed here. I publish content on a variety of platforms, including Patreon, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, WhatsApp, and my Squarespace website. I also use InDesign, Canva, and PDFs to run my business. I use Gmail for emailing. I can paste plain text into any of those without a hitch.

ARTISTS: This is especially useful when applying for shows, grants, residencies, etc. that have online applications. Compose your bio, statement, resume, or whatever in a plain text editor, then copypasta into the online form.

Composing offline, with minimal distraction, knowing that my text doesn't depend on a particular platform, makes a huge difference in my workflow.

Here's my favorite thing about plain text editors: most of them are free. Whatever operating system you're using probably already has one (including iOS and Android).

As I mentioned, I'm a Mac user, and BBEdit is my plain text editor of choice. When you install BBEdit, it will show that you're in a "free trial" period, but don't worry - you can still use the app for free after that's over.

What are your favorite tools for writing distraction-free?

Hospital Corners (It's the Little Things)

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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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The Universe Kicks My Butt ...With Love

This is an excerpt from my monthly newsletter, The Fold, originally published in February 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.)

Workin' The Cattle

Deconstructed garments and other fabrics, machine pieced and quilted. 39"h x 33"w, functional -or- wall hanging, $675

Winter-yellow grass. Warm sunrise on dots of snow. A pervading hum.

Workin' The Cattle is a quilt I made inspired by the Jentel artist's residency in Wyoming. Jentel is on an idyllic piece of land surrounded by ranches. When I was there, the neighboring ranchers were "workin' the cattle". I didn't find out exactly what that means, but it was the source of a continuous, low-level mooing in the distance. Read more about the process behind this quilt on my Patreon blog (part 1, part 2).

To purchase Workin' The Cattle, contact Caroline at Cerulean Gallery by calling (214) 564 1199 or emailing caroline@theceruleangallery.com.

Love Letters, Delivered Obliquely

I try to be a good person. I try to meet the world with empathy and compassion, try to consider other people's perspectives before giving them the side-eye. I try, but I don't always succeed.

Recently I took myself to a hotel for a two-day work retreat (very productive, and coincidentally, the same two days as a winter storm). While enjoying the complimentary breakfast, I overheard the desk clerk deliver a rant about ...things I won't detail here. Suffice it to say, our views on The Way Things Are don't match up.

Reader, I judged. Hard. Then I went back to my room, packed up (it was the end of my stay), and prepared to head out. When I returned to the front desk, I saw these:

Y'all, the desk clerk, as in the person I was judging a second ago, made these. They're books with the pages folded over to form words and other shapes. She showed me pictures of other ones she made. (I asked her if she had an Etsy store or anything, but she said she gets so much work by word of mouth that she chooses not to advertise.)

I heard the Universe whispering in my ear, "Way to go, Judgie McJudgerface. See what happens when you pass judgement against another person? We turn around and kick you in the butt. Metaphorically. With love."

Love letter received, Universe.

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