The Bitchy Stitcher

I won't be seeing you at Quilt Market. Here's why.

2013-05-17T08:53:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I put the last corrections onto the PDFs that I create for the layout of Generation Q and uploaded them to the printer. I then gave the final approval for those pages and got the word from our technical service representative that the magazine was going to plate. I had finished my fifth issue, and it was a good one. It was also my last.

As of now, I am no longer the creative director of GenQ. I made this decision around Christmastime, and gave my official notice at the end of January (though it had been made known to Jake and Melissa in less formal ways a few weeks earlier). I said that I would see them through the next issue and I also agreed to continue writing my column plus two other uncredited pieces that I have been writing for each issue so far, and I agreed to continue maintaining the website.

It is very important for me to emphasize that I am not leaving that role at GenQ because I was unhappy with GenQ, but because I was feeling a desperate need to pursue my own creative goals. Being a part of the creation of GenQ has been an amazing ride, and I have accomplished things I never thought I could do. I have no formal training in graphic design. I once taught myself just enough Quark Xpress to layout a simple book, and later, as the assistant editor of a very small, local magazine, I learned some InDesign just by putting things into the template our graphic designer (the boss's son) had already set up. I learned just enough to occasionally design some ads, and later designed a logo and more ads for a friend's business. Then I didn't touch it for about three or four years. Taking on the design and layout, with no help, of an entire publication with only that much experience in my pocket was like deciding to ski down the double black diamond trail after having sledded down a backyard hill on a lunch tray a few times. It felt reckless and stupid. But I was all we had.

As a start-up, we simply couldn't afford a real graphic artist, and though nobody knew I had any experience at all when we started and I could have kept my mouth shut, I offered to try my hand at working up a logo. I had it down within just a couple days, and it was so much fun. But I still assumed that somehow they would find a way to bring on a real graphic designer for the first print issue, and I also assumed that the first print issue was a lot farther off that it actually turned out to be. Less than a year after we launched the web site, we were planning the first issue. And, by default, I was going to have to put it together.

This was terrifying. I don't now how many times I sat with my husband, my head in my hands, saying, "I can't do this. They think I can do this but I can't. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm a writer, not an artist. I don't even know how to number the damn pages or make sure the text all lines up at the bottom. They're depending on me and they won't listen when I say I can't do it and now I'm going to have to fail and I hate that." I was so upset and so convinced that I was going to let everybody down.

But I didn't. I did it, and it was good, and then I did it four more times, and I loved doing it; I really did. Every time I finished designing an article, I felt exhilarated, and I still flip through the pages of all the past issues and give myself little secret pats on the back. That why this decision was so incredibly hard for me. I'm not giving up something I hate. I'm giving up something I love so that I can have the freedom to pursue other things that I love even more. Designing GenQ made me realize, as almost nothing has before, that I really can do anything I want, even if I don't already know how, and so I knew I needed to start doing all those things I've been wanting to do, or time would surely run out and I'd regret never having done them.

And yes, I am sure that my brother's illness and death had a lot to do with this decision, though it didn't feel consciously so at the time. It may be a cliche, but you truly never know how much time you have.

As proud as I am of what I have done for GenQ, in my heart I do not feel that magazine graphic design is what I am meant to do. It turned out that I was okay at it (considering my experience) but I knew that I would probably never be great. I also knew that even though I loved the work, there is work I love more, and that is writing. I cannot remember a time when I didn't want to be a writer or when I wasn't writing something, even if it was doggerel. When Quilter's Home died, I took that as my signal to start doing several things that I had wanted to pursue: write a novel, expand the blog, and eventually start teaching and lecturing, all of which went on the back burner when they asked me to join GenQ. Since then, I have discovered even more things I want to do and write and create, and I have learned that the work of designing GenQ takes up so much of my creative energy that I have very little left over for other pursuits.

In other words, I want to make my focus a creative world that is entirely my own. And to do that, to really go for all of that, I need time and freedom. And so for months I cried big, copious tears because I knew in my heart I was going to have to step aside from GenQ.

I will forever be grateful and loyal to Jake and Melissa for all they have done for me. From giving me my first humor column to entrusting me with the look and feel of their new magazine, they have given me some of the most wonderful opportunities of my life. I am forever in their debt and am even more so now as they accepted my decision with such grace and kindness and have allowed me to remain on staff in a much-reduced capacity. I am also grateful to the rest of the GenQ staff: Scott, Vicki, and Tracy for all their understanding and support. If you have become a GenQ reader through me, stick around. My column will continue and, who knows? You may see my by-line on other articles and projects in the future.

I am really looking forward to the next phase of my life, but I'm also completely terrified. The last few weeks have been hard as I've been second guessing my decision and wondering if perhaps my prime has already passed. All I can do is forge ahead, and hope that the chance I've taken is the right one.

Expo-sition

2013-05-13T11:12:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, I wheedled and begged and got my husband to drive me into Baltimore so I could attend the Original Sewing and Quilt Expo at the convention center. My youngest daughter wanted to see the U.S.S. Constellation and the U.S.S. Torsk, which are both docked in the harbor there, and my oldest daughter claimed she wanted to come to the quilt show with me. Yeah, right, kid. I believe that. Bet you ten bucks you head off with your dad and your sister at the last minute. No, Mom! I want to see quilts with you!

Easiest ten bucks I ever made.

Part of my wheedling was to get us there as early as possible because I was hoping to avoid standing in line for tickets. So, when I got there I walked right up and got my wrist thingy without waiting, feeling all proud of myself for the result of my superior nagging skills, but then later I realized there just weren't that many people there. I talked to some of the vendors and they all said that every one of these shows they had been to had been successful for them, except this one, and they all seemed to think it was because Baltimore is scary.

Really? Baltimore is scary? I can't remember ever feeling scared in Baltimore. I realize there is some very serious crime in Baltimore, and the politicians are just like evil Disney rodents in suits, but downtown? At the Inner Harbor? It's all Cheesecake Factory and Hard Rock Cafe and Orioles games. It's full of kid stuff: The National Aquarium, The Maryland Science Center, Port Discovery, The Museum of the American Crack Whore. All wholesome, family-oriented stuff. I guess people thought Omar Epps was going to jump out from behind a recycling bin and pop a cap in their ass, like that happens all the time in broad daylight in the most touristy part of town. That's right: Charm City, motherfuckers.

Still, it meant that I didn't have to shove little old ladies out of the way to see anything. I don't know if the show is usually larger in other places, and when it is not so close to Market, but there honestly wasn't much. Maybe I only say that because I'm now used to Market, which is freakishly huge. But at Market, I can't buy anything, which is more frustrating than you can possibly imagine. Here, I could buy stuff, but there just wasn't that much that I wanted. If I wanted novelty fabrics or batiks, well then, SCORE, but not so much for the stuff I like. One vendor did have some bolts of Echino, which I've never had and always wanted, but it was just so expensive, and he looked cranky. I didn't want to bother him. Despite my shyness, I do like chatting with the vendors, and the ones who glare at me just seem like they wouldn't be up for meaningless banter and I can't bring myself to approach them. Yes, I'm insane.

I did get a few things, though.

There were also several quilts on display, and since Harper bailed on me, I had no one who could appreciate that I actually know some of the people whose work was featured there.

There was Lisa:

And Lisa again:

And Ebony Love:

And okay, maybe I don't technically "know" Victoria Findlay Wolfe, because if I saw her I wouldn't go up to her and hug her the way I would with Ebony or tackle her and give her noogies the way I would with Lisa, but I have exchanged business-related emails with her! And she seemed to find me mildly amusing, so I'm sure I'm in her will by now.

And there was one quilt on display (and no, I'm not going to show it, though I did take several pictures) that was just...bad. Badly pieced and badly quilted. And this was not one from a local guild or anything, which I would have forgiven, but one from the Faculty Showcase. I was very surprised to see something so poorly done on display, but I wondered if anyone else was bothered by it, or if I've just become really snotty and picky. Does there come a point where, if you are a famous enough personality, the quality of your work doesn't matter to anyone? I'm all about embracing mistakes, and I have no problem holding up one of my quilts and pointing out its flaws, but I couldn't put that same quilt in a showcase alongside others where people had clearly, you know, tried to make them look good. I have part of a quilt next to me as I'm typing, and it's a quilt that might maybe possibly be shown in a book next year, and I am trying SO HARD to make it good enough to stand alongside quilts from other, less spastic quilters. If I were famous, would I not care so much, because I'd know that people would accept whatever shit I produced just because it had my name on it? Or does there come a point where you get so busy, you can't take the time to produce quality work anymore? Do they have to rely on stunt sewers and just accept whatever they produce, because they're too busy being stalked on Facebook to do all that sewing themselves? This strange world I have found myself in fascinates me.

Having said that, I have made a major change in my place in this strange world and I'll tell you all about that later this week. If I'm not killed and eaten on the mean, mean streets of Baltimore first.

Been there, quilted that

2013-04-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

Because we are all so, so jaded, I have a new t-shirt/mug/tote bag design up in my Cafe Press shop (thanks to the reader who suggested it):

This should make my husband happy, as he is forever telling me I should design more shirts, as though marginally amusing quilt-related t-shirts are the key to our financial success. That, or he just thinks it's cool. I imagine it would be nice to be the mogul of the first marginally amusing quilt-related t-shirt empire. The Martha of marginally amusing quilt-related t-shirts. Or maybe more like the Donald because I have similarly insane hair and have the same basic body shape. You know, I could tolerate being this fat if I at least had a waistline, but I never did have one even when I was skinny, so it's not going to happen without major surgery. I once interviewed a local plastic surgeon for an article and she was so nuts, I just fell in love with her. She kept going on about how she knew when she had a brief job training as a dental assistant that she had "healing hands" and this all worked it's way down in some mystical journey to nose jobs and tummy tucks, and I was all, "If I ever need to have the fat sucked off my gut, I totally want you to do it." I mean, have you ever noticed that general surgeons are all, like, incapable of relating to other human beings and if you try to crack a joke or, I don't know, express your mortal terror, they just either look at you all blank like, "I do not understand your ways, human," or they say something really condescending to let you know that they are going to gut you like a fish so you best remember who here has the medical degree and who is just a freelance writer with a marginally amusing quilt-related t-shirt business on the side? Aaaand we're on-topic again! Sort of.

Anyhoodle, the new shop section is here: http://www.cafepress.com/bitchystitcher/10041844. Tell your friends. Tell your general surgeon. Ask him if he has "healing hands." But wait until after he's done gutting you like a fish.

Originality, Quilting, and Serbian Penis Hats

2013-04-25T10:30:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, a reader suggested this as a topic for a post: how do you know if a pattern you create is original? Apparently, she had been working very hard on a pattern and a technique that she had never seen anywhere else, until finally, several Google searches eventually turned up something similar enough that she felt pretty discouraged about the whole thing.

So now here I am, farting around with fabric and wondering: does the stuff I come up with qualify as a "design," something that I could put my name on and submit to a magazine or possibly sell as apattern? My GenQ editors keep telling me I should design something and submit it to our own publication, because they somehow have gotten the idea that I can design things other than magazine layouts and the occasional t-shirt. And I have to say they are probably right, but what keeps me from moving forward is wondering how you know when you've actually designed something?

This answer should be easy. I have next to me a copy of American Patchwork and Quilting and the cover quilt is called Color Me Crochet, and the suggestion is that the pattern makes the quilt look like crocheted granny squares. What it looks like to me is the Scrappy Trip Around the World that everybody and their dead grandmas were doing just a few months ago. That particular craze was started (possibly) by Pink Castle Fabrics (at least that's where I saw a lot of the inspiration for it being credited), but they got it from Bonnie Hunter, who posted it as a free tutorial back in 1999. Now, the quilt in the magazine uses a slightly different technique to create the blocks that give you this particular effect, but the result is exactly the same.

American Patchwork & Quilting/April 2013

And a Scrappy Trip Around the World made by Julie of Distant Pickles . See the similarities?

Bonnie notes that this pattern uses the Trip Around the World block, which is as old as, well, really old stuff, but is just scrappy. That's it. She took a traditional block and made it scrappy. So did the author of the AP&Q cover quilt. Did she copy Bonnie? No, I don't think so. I don't think it is such a leap of mental prowess to come up with the idea to make a traditional block scrappy that the only possibility is that one is a copy of the other.

Here is a quilt from the book 101 Fabulous Rotary Cut Quilts that dates from 1900. It uses blocks that are larger than the Scrappy Trip Around the World, and it uses the same fabrics in each block to achieve the effect, but I think you can see the similarity:

How often have you opened a quilt magazine and seen a pattern for something that is basically a traditional block? Or a combination of traditional blocks? How many times have you seen a quilt and thought, "Huh. That looks familiar." For another example from the same magazine, as soon as I saw this quilt:

I thought of this book cover:

Are they exactly the same? No, but similar enough to stir something in my grey matter that made me wonder if it was the same designer. (It's not.)

I don't really have an answer here. Is the magazine owl quilt a copy of the second? Is the magazine "crochet" quilt an "original design"?

Right now, laid out on my ironing board, are 8 blocks that I just "made up" a couple days ago and I LOVE them. I think they look sooooo cool and when they are all done, the resulting quilt might be worthy of being called Joe (for my beloved Joe Manganiello, of course). And believe me, I have Googled the ever-loving shit out of it, and though I have seen some things that come dancing close, I have seen nothing yet that is exactly the same. And yet I still hesitate to call this a "design," to think that it's worthy of attaching my name to and putting out into the world in any other fashion than a hey-look-what-I-made-now post on this here blog. Why is that? Why, when I am so ready to smack down others for being too copyright-happy, am I unwilling to claim a design as my own?

I think part of the reason is the fear that if I take the leap to put my work out there, someone will try to call shenanigans on me. They won't have a leg to stand on, and I know it, but I have seen so many "waaaa - you copied me" hissy fits out there—some of which have resulted in actual threats from actual lawyers—that I hesitate to run the risk of the stress and bother (and possible lawyer fees) that such a hissy fit would cause. Also, I'd have to smack a bitch, and no one wants that.

And part of it is that I am kind of freaky about wanting to produce original work, and this may come from being a writer and editor by trade. When I was an editor, I could spot a plagiarized article a mile away (and since the idiots always plagiarized from the internet, I could prove it while hardly lifting a finger) and got into some pretty heated arguments with my bosses about why we weren't firing the writers' asses and telling them why. (They didn't like to "burn bridges." I figure you should dynamite any damn bridge that leads to a plagiarist.) I work very hard to make sure the words I put on a page are mine, and I get deeply offended by those who think they can get away with copying and pasting and then take money for it. So, when I sit down to think about a quilt, I tend to think about it like a writer, and try to come at it so that the result is a reflection of my style, my brain, my thoughts alone.

Design, like writing, takes practice. When I first started doing the design for GenQ, I looked through a lot of magazines for inspiration and ideas, because I was new and unsure of what I was doing. Now, five issues in, I don't pay much attention to other publications at all. I now have a way of approaching a layout and creating what I need without having to see how others have done something similar, and this is simply because I've now had enough practice at it.

So, I can only assume that designing quilts would be much the same: that with enough practice, I would begin to produce more original work. But I also think that, in quilting—and particularly when we are talking about straight piecing and not applique—it is just inevitable that certain configurations will show up again and again in independently created designs. It is not inconceivable that two people would think, "How can I make an owl out of just squares and rectangles?" And that they would think of that without having seen it somewhere else. Instead of assuming a design has been somehow copied or misappropriated, I almost think we have to assume it wasn't. (Now if the written instructions are copied — that's easier to tell and be concerned about, and that's where copyright law is actually clearer.) And we have to trust ourselves to enjoy and appreciate the work that comes out of our own heads, even if it turns out that somebody else, somewhere, thought of it first.

Remember that design isn't necessarily creating something that no one has ever seen. When I work on magazine design, it's not like no one has ever seen an article on hidden penis motifs in late-twentieth century Serbian quilts before. But it has never been that article with that title and that particular artwork (a banner of flying penises in traditional Serbian hats) placed in exactly that configuration before. Even if someone, somewhere used the same art (because, let's face it, those little penis hats are everywhere), it's still not the same design. Furniture, houses, clothes—nearly everything that has a visual design element has a basis in something that came before it. Just look at all the flower prints in quilt fabric out there. And dots! How do you design dots? By putting down some circles and coloring them in and having the confidence to say, "Here are my dots, made just the way I wanted them." You could do the same with penis hats, too. For my quilt, I should have the confidence to say, "This is my design," knowing that the work did indeed come from my own little noggin, even if someone else eventually says, "Been there; quilted that."

So, how do you know when your design is original? You might not know. It might not be original by your (or someone else's) standard. But the way you put it out into the world—your fabric choices, your block configuration, your method, and your way of writing about that method (i.e., your instructions)—can be very original and very much your own.

Especially if it includes Serbian penis hats.

Read More: Here are some things about originality in design that I have found interesting:

An Essay on Hedi Slimane and the Saint Laurent Paris Fall 2013 Collection: "If you think about it, we’ve seen it all. Fashion is fickle, yes, but is any of it ever actually new? What’s new to me is a designer choosing—in this digital age where we can work from anywhere—to make his work where and when he’s inspired, regardless if it’s a known fashion hub or not. What’s new to me is a designer brazenly choosing to reference not only his own house’s original designer but another designer, too (whether intentional or not). What’s new to me is a designer choosing to celebrate up and coming artists and musicians that aren’t household names."

Originality in Logo Design: "The less intricacies involved in creating your masterpiece, the more likely it is that someone has already created it."

Petrarch's Apes: Originality, Plagiarism and Copyright Principles within Visual Culture: "The artist or designer judges originality on the basis of aesthetic merit -- that is, the particular quality of the idea expressed in a particular way, so that idea and aesthetic are generally approached as though they are inextricably linked, or symbiotically related."

Just a Photoshoppin' fool

2013-04-04T06:00:00.000-04:00

The bane of my existence as creative director of GenQ is photography, my own as well as everybody else's. And this is mainly due to the fact that I have absolutely no freaking idea what I am doing. I do have a simpleton's understanding of aperture and shutter speed, but I can never seem to make that "knowledge" work together to produce a decent photograph. And in the magazine business, we often have to use photos taken by even less knowledgeable people, and the assumption is that I, in my infinite wisdom as a graphic artist whose degree came from the University of Looking It Up In A Book One Time When I Had A Free Minute At Lunch, will be able to "fix" it.

So last night, on a lark, I started looking up Photoshop tutorials on Pinterest. Apparently, I had a free minute, even though it wasn't lunch. I take all tutorials, tips, and instructions found on Pinterest with a grain of salt, because basically you are just looking at someone else's Post-It notes: "Remember to maybe look at this sometime! If I have a free minute during lunch!" But, miraculously, I found a couple things that seemed to actually work. And, boy, is improving photographs addicting:

Not that any of these are perfect, mind you. (Except I really love that birdhouse one.) These go quite a bit beyond my usual boost-the-exposure-and-maybe-the-contrast-or-the-vibrance-or-both-depending-on-my-mood-and-how-bad-I-need-to-pee method.

But so far, none of these experiments has worked on photographs of quilts! Embroidery? Oh, hells, yes:

But the quilt shots I've tried to improve so far have been a big bust. So, this is now my Holy Grail: gorgeous, popping quilt shots.

I'm gonna need a bigger lunch.

The Prime Directive of Quilting

2013-04-01T06:00:00.000-04:00

Last year, I showed you some pictures of the first quilt my mom ever made:

I knew my parents were in the process of cleaning out the closets where I found this, and I asked mom if I could take it. The quilt has never been out of a closet for its entire existence, and I was desperately afraid that it would end up in a storage facility somewhere and then lost. Considering how important quilting has become to me and my sister, and that this comes to us directly from our mother, this quilt is an important piece of family history and I knew my sister would feel the same as me: we want to see it preserved and kept in the family. Mom was reluctant to let it go, being concerned that my sister might want it, since mom had never made a quilt for her and had for me. So I waited until she could talk to Kelly about it. She never did, so when Kelly came by for an afternoon during our visit, I dragged her downstairs and showed her the four quilts that were stored there and asked her what she wanted to do with them. She said she had no room, but wanted, like me, to make sure they were not lost, so she asked me to keep them.

As Kelly and I were looking at Mom's quilt, I noticed this on the back:

D.R.S. are my mother's initials. the "m.l." are the initials of the quilt teacher whose classes started mom on her quilt journey. I have one quilt my mom made me that has a label, but none of the others do. All my sister's quilts that she has made for me and my girls (except one) have labels. I have only labeled the quilts that I have made for others, never my own. But looking at this quilt, I get it now. I get why we should label our quilts.

It is so easy to dismiss our own work as unimportant. I think perhaps my mom did this. To her, this wasn't a masterpiece, but just a sampler produced from a class she took when she was first learning. But for me, this is history. This is memory and legacy and when my mother is gone, things like this will keep her alive for me because it wasn't just a thing she owned but a creation that flowed from her hands. Every single thing we make, we put ourselves into, from the first halting and meandering stitches to the sure-fingered masterpieces. Those who love us, and who will live on after we've gone, will hold these things we've made because they can no longer hold us. And later, someone else who will come along long after and who will never have known us, will know something of who we were. And we have the chance to tell them even more.

When my children talk about me in school, to their friends, they talk about me in terms of my quilts. To them, I am the things I make, and they are me. Quilting and sewing are my essential identity to them, and though I know they will eventually see and appreciate more of me (though not until after college, most likely), for now, this is who I am to them. When I am gone, and they are missing me, holding a quilt that I made just for them when they were little girls will give them a way to touch me once again, and to transport themselves back to a time when love was simple and mama cuddled them in pretty blankets. But their children won't have as close a connection and may not see why they should hang on to this ratty old quilt with all the mistakes. Maybe, if the quilt told them why, they would.

When I was at my parents' house, they wanted me to meet a friend of theirs who had recently lost his wife. She was a quilter, among other things, and they thought she had some unusual things I might like to see. As it turned out, what she had made wasn't anything spectacular or unusual, though it was indeed lovely. But what struck me about my visit was how this man so proudly displayed every single thing his wife had ever made. He had found things tucked away and had them finished and framed. He had a quilt top quilted and hung on the wall, and cross-stitch samplers framed and placed in a tableau with some other items she loved. One cross stitch piece was to be Santa and his reindeer, but she never got to the reindeer. Didn't matter to him - he still had it mounted and framed and put on display. Her stained glass work was all over the house as well, and he was so proud to show it all off and obviously took a great deal of comfort from having it all around him. But I wonder if any of those pieces had her name on them. How many generations will it take before no one knows what they are or where they came from? And how many pieces will be tossed aside when that knowledge is lost for good?

I realize this post has gotten rather serious, and I had other stuff to show you, but this has been on my mind a lot since my trip.

I have a lot of things to do this week, and in the weeks to come, but one thing I need to get started on is making labels for everything I have made. If you are not labeling your quilts, if you think they aren't worth it, I hope you'll reconsider.

I'll go ahead and show you the other things I brought home that were in that closet. This was another quilt my mom made:

I believe this is all hand pieced and quilted as well. When I asked mom about it she said, as though she was telling me a naughty secret, that she "copied" it from the front of a book she saw. Meaning, she didn't actually have a log cabin pattern in front of her—she just figured it out. The hand quilting is all in the ditch on this one, so you have to turn it over to really see it. The binding is just the backing pulled around the front and stitched down, which is not a technique anyone ever seems to admit to using anymore. Why is that? Let's blame Ricky Tims. Just because I like saying "Ricky Tims". RickyTimsRickyTimsRickyTims.

This lovely thing I had never seen before I discovered it in that closet. I have no idea where it was the whole time I was growing up:

In the upper right hand corner, a name is embroidered on the border:

All my mom knows about this is that it was given to her own mother when she was in a nursing home near the end of her life. She believes that Ms. Katt was another resident there who liked to make quilts and happened to give one to her mother. It's hand appliqued and quilted:

It doesn't have a binding, though. On the long sides, the edges are folded under and machine sewed together:

But on the short edges, the backing is brought around the front, in direct defiance of the Ricky Tims Directive:

I love this quilt.

Last is a baby quilt that I can remember seeing around the house when I was little:

The appliqued pieces are all embroidered, using a stem stitch for the details and a blanket stitch around the edges. In many cases, the thread blends in with the material so much you can barely see it, but others show up well:

This was made by a lady in Denver who babysat my brother and sister. They started coming to her shortly after my sister was born, so it is most likely she made this quilt for her. Again, this isn't something to keep because it's a masterpiece, but because it's a personal history piece, a connection to someone my family loved and who loved them.

Okay last one, I promise. I had asked my mom to look out for this as they were cleaning out closets.

My mom wasn't just a quilter, but was into all kinds of needlework, especially needlepoint. This was a sampler she made, and I remember her making it as well as seeing it hanging in our kitchen and other places through the years, until it finally ended up in a closet. It's in my kitchen now. The shop on the far left originally said "Shoes" on the pattern, but Mom changed it to "Smith." Whenever she wasn't looking, I would sneak over and touch all the different textures.

I love all these things so much, I can't even tell you.

Labels, people. Consider it the Megan Dougherty Directive.

Back on Monday

2013-03-27T22:00:00.001-04:00

I am still at my parents' house in Tennessee, and I have lots to share, but my internet access is spotty out here in the sticks, and I may not even make it through this brief post before it conks out on me again. Tomorrow is our last day and we'll be leaving Friday morning and returning home on Saturday. (If I attempted another 13-hour drive, I'd surely suffer permanent butt-nerve damage.) So, I'm going to skip my Thursday but I'll be back on Monday with a picture-heavy post—and some of it will even be quilt-related!

P.S. Scorpion count is holding steady at two. Except for the fornicating ones hidden in my luggage.

Scorpio rising

2013-03-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

My kids are on spring break and since we have a spanking new mini-van, which I love so much I do indeed want to marry it and have a million of its babies, I came up with the brilliant idea to load everyone up in it and drive to Tennessee to visit my parents. Never mind that deadline for the June/July issue is coming up. Never mind that David would not be able to come and I would drive all that way by myself and I am almost as scared of highway driving as I am of flying. Nope, I said I would do it and it turns out that when I say stuff like that, everyone believes me, so two days ago I packed up everything I thought one woman and two kids would need and got up at 4 a.m. to hit the road early.

I managed to drive the whole way in one day, though by the time we pulled into the driveway, I had permanent butt-numbness and when I went to bed that night, I still felt like I was hurtling downhill at 70 miles an hour. What happened to the 55mph speed limit? That was a reasonable pace. Seventy is what I consider an elude-the-cops sort of speed. It took me a while to work up to 70; I don't think I got there until somewhere in the middle of Virginia. Yes, I am a big sissy cry-baby.

There is not much to say about the visit so far. We have only been here a day. But if anyone is planning to visit Tennessee, you should know that it is no longer safe here. The state has apparently been the victim of some sort of plague:

SCORPIONS! This was INSIDE my parents' house. They crawl in under the french doors, and were apparently enough of a problem that they had to call an exterminator. So this one was dead by the time it crawled over the perimeter of poison and ended up in the house.

So was this one, who came in the next morning:

But you just know that there are more getting in who are resistant to scorpion spray, and they're probably in my suitcase right now, having scorpion sex and squirting out millions of scorpion babies, which I will then unknowingly bring to Maryland, introducing a new species to the state which will thrive and multiply and probably kill off all the labrador retrievers and take over the state legislature.

For which I apologize in advance.

Research indicates that these scorpions are actually native to Tennessee, but I think they're just telling us that to prevent a mass panic. I grew up in Tennessee and never once saw a damn scorpion. I think these have been sent as punishment for all the gun shops and porn parlors in a state where they try to outlaw saying the word "gay" in schools. "Dear Lord, I'm sorry for not makin' it to church this Sunday, but they got in a new shipment of Fleshlights down at the Smut Hut, and I had to get there before they sold out. Got so excited, I shot m'self in the foot. Shot the dog, too. Now I gotta go pick up some fireworks and Kona cottons for Mabel or I'm the one'll get shot next."

By Crom!

2013-03-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

Do you know Steotch? You may recall this gem, designed by the husband and wife team behind Steotch:

I've gotten further than that, but it isn't done yet. Why? Because cross-stitch is so freaking boring. But then Steotch went and designed another one that I HAD to have, so I can make it and frame it and hang it in my fo-yay:

click here to go to the etsy listing for this item

Do you know this quote? It's from a gem of classic cinema:

This is exactly the sentiment I wish to greet my guests with. Then I'll hang the ba-donk-a-donk one in the powder room. God only knows what will end up in the bedroom.

Meet Caleb and Theresa

2013-03-19T11:17:00.001-04:00

About two weeks after Jon passed away, I got an email from an old friend. It was actually a mass email, and my husband and I were included in it, letting many people know that he had just self-published a novel and giving the link to it on Amazon. Frankly, considering the type of people I have been friends with over the years, I'm surprised that this is the first email of this kind I have ever gotten. I suspect everyone I went to college with, plus a whole lot of others, thinks they have a novel in them. God knows I do. I've had one particular story in mind for many, many years, and I plan to start working on it for reals soon, but until then I have to face the fact that many first-time authors neglect: I've never written a novel and I don't actually know how to do it.

Sure, I know how to put a damn pithy sentence together. I can write a hell of a paragraph when I'm of a mind, and I've written articles/columns that were not vomit-inducing as far as I know. But novels are complex and while I think I'm smart enough to figure it out, I don't think I can make it sing on the first go. I feel like I need to take a couple practice runs at it first, not just to get the feel of novel writing, but also just to get back in the practice of writing fiction. You know, made up stuff and not just a description of my primitive quilt binding techniques. (I use large rocks and a series of grunts.)

I wasn't going to tell you about this until I was ready to do it, but since I have nothing else to tell you about today and it's Tuesday, I'll go ahead and fill you in on what I plan to start later this spring.

First, let me say that I love romance novels. LOVE THEM. I love many different kinds: contemporary, historical, "urban paranormal." Yes, that last one is a thing and it's awesome. A lot of people really hate romance novels because of all the sex, and yes, romance novels are, in many ways, just erotica with a LOT of plot. I see nothing wrong with this; I think it's fun. I have absolutely no issues with graphic descriptions of people getting it on, and some authors are better at it than others. But the sex is not the main reason I love these books. I love the hunt for a writer who can take a genre that is, frankly, fairly routine, and make it sparkle with snappy writing, great characters, and a story that might be just a little more interesting than the usual I-need-you-to-pretend-to-be-my-date-even-though-I-actually-hate-you-whoops-I'm-attracted-to-you-even-though-I-hate-you-let's-go-bump-bits-to-get-it-out-of-our-system-nope-it's-not-out-yet-so-let's-get-married-instead plot line. So, it's not like I whip every Harlequin off the shelf and love them all unconditionally. I also feel this way about mystery/thrillers, but not with quite the same affection, and I don't feel personally compelled to write about a hard-boiled detective who just can't play by the book because of his inner demons and sense of justice. There's just something about boy-meets-girl and their long pursuit of connubial happiness that I just think is fun. (Don't worry, I also have a whole list of "serious" writers whom I worship with something akin to a religious fervor, so I'm not just wading in pulp ALL the time.)

Anyway, I always thought it would be fun to try and write a romance novel, especially a comic one, and that it would be a great way to get the feel of character and pacing and plot that one needs in order to write a full-length story. Then I discovered the most glorious thing ever devised by the human mind: The Romance Novel Plot Generator. You can choose straight romance, LGBT romance, paranormal romance, or mystery/crime romance. I knew right away that I wanted paranormal, because I know I can make paranormal really funny, and this is what I got:

The girl's name is Theresa and she is energetic and a hard worker. She enjoys crafts. Her occupation is artist and overall she is suffering a physical problem . She is also able to heal through physical contact.

Her hair is blonde and long and straight. She is 5'8" and is softly rounded and with generous curves . She wears off-the wall, unique clothes that make her stand out in a crowd

She meets Caleb at his work. He is a Fireman , distinctive and sad , and he enjoys gardening. He appears to be worried . He is also able to sense the emotions of animals.

His hair is streaked with blonde highlights and very long. He is 6' and has a well developed chest and strong arms. He wears sexy shirts and expensive trousers, like a playboy.

The paranormal situation these two face is a coven of good witches has been spotted.

Answer these questions:

Why do they meet there?

Why is she there?

Why is he there?

The obstacle to their romance that they must overcome is that if people found out about the paranormal situation and their involvement, there would be serious social consequences. When one of them is willing to sacrifice themself to save the other it brings them to the realization that they can overcome the obstacle.

IS THAT NOT THE GREATEST THING EVER? As soon as I read this—well, okay, after I got up off the floor and wiped the tears of laughter off my face—I knew I had to try and write it. A blonde, long-haired, sad fireman who enjoys gardening and can sense the emotions of animals? I'm on it. A curvy blonde artist/crafter who wears "unique" clothes and can heal through physical contact? Needs work, but we'll get there. But the absolute best part is where it says the obstacle to their relationship is that if anyone found out about "the paranormal situation" there would be "serious social consequences." That is so hilarious, it makes me happy every time I read it.

So, in a month or two, I am going to start writing this book. It will probably suck, but that's okay, because it is meant to be for practice. And for fun. And I'm going to share it as I write it. I'm going to start a new blog, serioussocialconsequences.blogspot.com, and as I write, I will post the sections and chapters there. People who keep up can read the posts as they appear, but I will also maintain a section of pages that has the whole book in order.

I think this is going to be a lot of fun and I hope you'll pop over now and again to see how it's going. I'll warn everyone if I decide to write anything steamy and I'll probably offer alternative scenes for prudes, wimps, or relatives. There's no reason the victims of our sex-negative society should miss out on the fun. A coven of good witches has been spotted! This could have serious social consequences! I think this is a plot we all can enjoy. And make fun of.

I'll make another announcement when this is ready to go. Meanwhile, I'll be daydreaming about a hunky fireman dressed like a pimp, wiping a tear from his eye as he pets a basset hound who only pooped in his marigolds because of low self-esteem.

Words I cannot say

2013-03-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

I just realized that the title of this post sounds as though I'm about to discuss something heavy and possibly dramatic, something so powerful mere words are too weak to adequately describe it.

But, no. I'm just talking about words that I cannot say out loud without wanting to harm myself in punishment. Words that are just squicky.

Some time ago, I remember reading some things online about people being glucked out by the word "moist." I guess, for those individuals, it conjures images of fungus and open wounds in secret orifices and not, say, cake mix. And when they hear it, it causes very unpleasant shuddery feelings and a desire to take a decontamination shower. I get that. I don't have that reaction to the word "moist," but I do to the word "pleasure."

Yes. Pleasure. Honestly, right now? Just having typed the word twice? I had to change my clothes and then picture a flowery meadow until the demons went away. I think my hatred of this word comes from my childhood when I went to an ultra-evangelical elementary school. At this school, they were forever telling us what was going to send us to hell, which included dancing, playing cards (not that this was ever clarified into "poker for stakes" or anything like that - just "playing cards"), listening to rock music, reading books other than the Bible, anything involving science, and saying "gosh" or "gee" because these were just substitutes for "God" and "Jesus." And one thing that people like this are highly suspicious and, dare I say, afraid of is...pleasure. Of any kind really, but when they say it—and even if they are saying it in reference to, say, cake mix—they say it in such a way that you know what they really mean is sexual pleasure. These people truly hated their own tingly parts. And ours. But the thing was, we were in elementary school and they weren't going to be even remotely explicit about it, because as everyone knows, if you mention a weenie to a pre-pubescent girl she suddenly sprouts boobs and pubes and starts pole dancing at truck stops. Boys and men were clearly unable to control themselves around even the merest suggestion of girl flesh, so girls couldn't wear shorts. Ever. Not even for gym when we had to run around outside in the sweltering Tennessee heat. So we learned that sex was very, very bad without ever learning the first thing about actual sex. But we heard a lot about pleasure. All those things I mentioned that would send us to hell? Those were, we were told, pleasures...of the flesh.

Imagine the word "pleasure" actually meant something like, "an itchy, painful, pus-filled sore that is highly contagious and appears primarily on the eyeballs" and then imagine the sneering, disgusted way someone would say it while thinking of how gross and vile it is while also secretly being fascinated by it. Now add a southern accent and a contemptuous, pedantic attitude. THAT'S what I hear in my head every time someone says the word "pleasure." This has occasionally made knocking boots with the opposite sex a trial because some dude would have the notion to use that word in reference to what we were doing and I would have to stick my fingers in my ears and sing the Star Spangled Banner at the top of my lungs until he promised never to say it again. Which is kind of a boner-killer.

So, yeah. Please don't ever say it was a pleasure to meet me or that it's a pleasure to work with me. I'd hate to have to hurt you.

And while you're at it, don't call me a "gal." Don't say "gal." Don't write "gal." Okay, you can say it or write it if in some way you are existing in the 1950s, but please don't say it and mean it. I don't know why this rubs me the wrong way, but I hate reading something that is otherwise perfectly innocuous and then discovering that the writer likes to call women "gals." "Gal" just sounds to me like what the ad execs on Mad Men call their secretaries while patting their butts after a quick and mandatory shag on the desk. And if I say it out loud it just sounds wrong, like I tried to say "girl" but got smacked in the back of the head while it was coming out. We used to watch this show on Nick with our daughters called The Upside Down Show, and it was from Australia, and anytime they had little kids on it, the adult performers would ask them silly questions and the answers were always an emphatic, "No!" But for some reason, the little Aussie accents made the "no" sound like "NAR!" to my ears. So, maybe my dislike of this word is just a combination of too much Don Draper and a need for an ear canal irrigation.

This is acceptable. (Also, I want this.)

As is this. BUT NOTHING ELSE.

Oh, and I get hives whenever anyone refers to her husband as her "hubby." AND EVERYONE ON EARTH DOES THIS. (You do it too; I know you do, I've seen your Facebook posts, and I love you anyway. You know I love you, baby.) I'm sure people who speak other languages have appropriated it and and are peppering their speech and writing with it just to make me suffer. "Hubby" sounds like a nickname you'd give a plump baby, not a term of endearment for the man you make the plump babies with. I cannot actually say this word, and if it happens that I have to read something out loud that contains it (and this occurs more often than you think), I replace it with "eunuch."

Of course, what all of this essentially means for me is that I have to avoid Cosmopolitan magazine at all costs, because it's highly likely that they have and will use ALL THREE words in the same sentence, quite possibly on the cover. So, if I ever mysteriously keel over in a grocery store checkout line, you'll know it was because I read: "Gals! Learn 56 New Ways to Pleasure Your Hubby With String Cheese and a Moist Towelette."

Note to readers on iPhones and iPads and other portable devices: my comment system doesn't seem to work on tablets and smartphones, so if you leave a comment, I will see it, but it won't necessarily appear here unless I do a copy-and-paste thing for you.)

All in good time

2013-03-12T17:33:00.000-04:00

Do you guys remember Mark B.? Marky Mark? Magic Marker? Mark B. Goode? Sparky Mark?

Perhaps this will refresh your memory:

If you recall, that right there is my magic ironing board cover, a gift from my friend Peggi.

WANT ONE?

Remember that auction thing I was gonna do to raise money that my calendar didn't make because I have been a terrible blogger this past year? (Go back and read this post if you need a refresher.) And then remember how the whole beginning of 2013 just sucked big donkey balls?

Okay, let me back up for a minute.

This blog means the world to me. I started it back when I started teaching myself how to quilt, and it has grown right along with my sewing skills. Then...a bunch of other stuff happened, semi-career-wise, and I got, let's say, distracted. I have been promising myself (and you) over and over that I would be back, that I would stop shoving this blog I love so much to the side, but it just didn't work out that way.

But that's got to change. It has to. I can't let this baby wither and die. I've been going on for a very long time knowing that my life wasn't right, but not knowing how to fix it. And now I know.

I need to sew. And I need to write—I need to write for me. Those are the things that bring me joy. And dirty ironing board covers, on occasion.

Several weeks ago, I got a call from a friend who wanted me to make a quilt for her. It was okay if I couldn't do it; she would understand. But it would be a cool thing for her and me if I could do it. (Vague, yeah, but that's all I can say about it.) I knew I had to say yes. I also knew that I had barely touched my sewing machine at all in the last 12 months, so I might have been promising more than I could deliver. So, I had to sew something. Just to see if I still could.

So, I started with these bags (which, honestly, look a hell of a lot better hanging here than they do up close. The pattern (which you can find here)involves weird twisting and pinning and folding and there are places where they're just being held together by static electricity or something.):

Then these pillows (the paper piecing pattern for the design on the left is here and a tutorial for the Somerset star on the right can be found here) :

And then I dug out some fabric I had cut for another project that didn't work out, and decided to sew them into nine patches and combine them with some Kona charcoal on point. With little slashes of color mixed in. (My "design", if you want to call it that. Or, my what-the-hell. Whichever.):

And that quilt top? I'm hand quilting it. Nope, I've never hand quilted anything, but I figure, why stop now? Might as well learn everything while I have the chance, right?

So, anyway. Yeah. I think I can still sew okay.

But can I write? Do I still have anything to say? That's harder. I didn't have my regular column in the last issue of GenQ, because I just couldn't come up with anything. It's the first time in, I don't know, ALWAYS, that I haven't turned in a writing assignment. I would sit and stare at the screen for hours and if I did manage to type something, it was dry and bland and not even remotely amusing.

I've come to a lot of realizations concerning this over the last few months, and eventually, I'll tell you more of them. But for now, I'll say this. I can't write if I don't write, and I haven't been writing at all. And that has got to change.

This blog has always been where I can write without obligation. I don't have to please anybody but myself here, and I have to remember that. Even if all my readers have gone away, then fuck it, I'll just start over. And it may not be as good as it was at first, but then again, maybe it will be like the sewing, and I'll find I'm still okay at it. But whether it's good or whether it sucks the aforementioned donkey balls, at least it won't be nothing.

So, I'm going to set a goal of two posts a week for now. Maybe Mondays and Thursdays. (Yes, this is Tuesday. Whatevs.) I think I can handle that. You up for it?

So, where was I? Oh, yeah. Mark the Shark and his Magically Appearing Wonder Wiener. Peggi sent me two Mark B.-emblazoned ironing board covers for the auction, so now I really gotta get my ass in gear and have the damn thing. But, knowing how much I have neglected the blog and how few people are still reading it, I thought I'd try my two-posts-a-week experiment for a while and see if we can get some readers back before we start. So, I'm going to say that the auction will start in the first week of May. There will be fabric and patterns and calendars and naked men—pretty much everything this blog stands for.

Wish me luck.

Stop all the clocks

2013-01-27T22:16:00.000-05:00

You know that Auden poem, Funeral Blues? It's the one that John Hannah recites at his lover's funeral in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral. I kept thinking of those first four words: Stop all the clocks. Because when someone you love dies, your world stops, but nothing else does. Kids still demand to be fed and entertained, work still has to be done, you still have to get out of bed and get dressed and present yourself as though nothing is wrong but everything is wrong. It feels as though nothing will be right ever again and the fact that nothing else in the world is reflecting this fact back at you makes you feel so resentful of everything that isn't stopping.

When my sister called to tell me Jon was gone, I was in bed. It was a Tuesday afternoon, but I was in bed because I had been up all night barfing my intestines out, after having nursed the girls through the same stomach bug for the three days prior. The previous day, I had gotten a phone call from Jon's wife. She said a friend of hers had given her some money to use for Jon in some way, and she decided that the best thing she could do with it was to fly me down so I could see him. She thought that would mean more to him than anything else she could do with it. "He sleeps most of the time now," she said, "but I just tell him I'm there and sit with him while he sleeps and he seems to like that." I didn't have a chance to start looking up flights before I started to feel ill. The next day, he was gone.

His memorial service was that Saturday, so I had to frantically finish the next issue of the magazine and cross my fingers that I did everything ok so I could fly out Friday morning. I stayed with my sister, and we stayed up that night trying to write something to say at the service the next day. We both knew we'd never get through anything without breaking down, and we toyed with the idea of getting someone to read it for us, but ultimately I decided I would get through it somehow and made Kelly promise to stand next to me while I read it.

His memorial service was packed, and it was evident how much Jon was loved. He had that ability to relate to anyone and that, combined with a sense of humor that was both sweet and wicked, endeared him to everyone he met. His wife's cousin gave the eulogy, and it was the most eloquent and moving and perfect tribute to my brother anyone could have given. Jon was a member of the U.S. Military Vets, TN 2 Motorcycle Club, and his brothers in the club were a major part of the service. They were all dressed in jeans and leather vests or jackets, looking every bit like what you would expect a bunch of bikers to look like, except they were at a funeral and not a dive bar. They sent Jon off (after playing Taps and presenting his wife with a flag, as though at an actual military funeral) by going out to the parking lot and revving the engines on their bikes. Jon would have loved that, even though the rest of us were giving all the bikers the stink eye at that point.

I started grieving the moment I knew what kind of cancer Jon had almost three years ago. I've been able to let go of that grief for fairly long periods as he thrived and beat all the odds, but I always knew what was coming. It was when he had his surgery last summer, and could no longer use his left side and would never be able to, and thus came the decision to stop treatment, that the worst of the grief began to work its way through me. I went back to see him one more time, and I have not written about that visit because it ripped my heart to shreds. It was, in many ways, a wonderful visit, because we laughed together so much, just like we always have, and because there was a moment when Jon reached out and took my hand and looked me in the eyes and though I probably won't write about what he said specifically, I knew that no matter what happened after that, my brother knew just how much I loved him and would never be in doubt of it.

Jon once told me, just a few months after he was diagnosed, that he would not have traded the experience of having cancer for anything, because he got to see so much love and goodness and care come out of people. And I know that I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to tell him what he meant to me—what he still means to me now and will forever—but I also feel such despair because the cost of that was losing him.

I will grieve for my brother forever. Grief doesn't really end, but it does get better, and I know it will get better for all of us. I have thoughts all the time about little things I want to do, just for myself, to keep his memory alive and to pay tribute. Perhaps it's the writer in me that loves the symbolism in little gestures like that. But no matter what I do to memorialize him for myself, I know that I will always feel him near when I hear a song I know he loved because he shared it with me, when I hear the growl of a Harley's engine, and when I look up at the night sky at the stars swirling above me.

Rest in peace, big brother. I love you.

1971

2004

2010

Where I am

2013-01-19T22:51:00.000-05:00

I realized this evening after getting a "where are you?" comment, that many of you may not be on Facebook and so do not know that my brother passed away on Tuesday. I am currently in Tennessee at my sister's house, having attended his memorial service this morning.

I hope to write something here soon. There is so much I need to say. But I will be here with my family for another couple of days, and it will take me some time to write after I come home.

Thank you, everyone. For everything.

Going once, going twice...hey! Where are you going?

2012-12-06T09:27:00.002-05:00

First of all, I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has purchased this year's QSMASB calendar. A lot of sales were made during Lulu.com's big promo and that has helped a great deal, but, sadly, this year's total sales are still far, far below last year's. Now I know much of that is my fault. I haven't been able to push and promote and ask people to spread the word as much as I could last year, so I'd like to try one more thing and maybe get your feedback on some of the details.

The S.O. of one of the models tried to order seven calendars to show off her nekkid man to all their friends, but oops, she ordered 2012 instead of 2013. Lulu.com was awesome and replaced the calendars for her, but didn't want her to return the 2012s, so she sent them to me in the hopes that I could do something with them. I thought about auctioning them off and asked my Facebook hive what I could include with them to sweeten the pot. So, based on their suggestions and my own ideas and a generous donation from the always awesome Sam Hunter, here's what I have to offer:

Each 2012 calendar will be autographed by me (yeah, I know - big whoop, but people kept suggesting it so there it is). One calendar will be offered with this:

And one with this:

And another with these:

One calendar will be paired with this set of 21 buttons from the incomparable Sam Hunter (my favorites are "sewinatrix" and "rhymes with stitch!"):

The amazing, intrepid, and always fan-fucking-tastic Sam has also donated EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HER PATTERN COLLECTION. EVERY. ONE. Including Blanket Statement, her incredible paper-pieced alphabet that also includes a CD of all the letters. See why I always talk about Sam in superlatives?

But that makes 5 and I have seven calendars. So, for the last two, I will add this: I will embroider a curse word of the winner's choosing on a 10X10 square of white Moda fabric. Of course, that would have a lot more impact if I had a finished example to show you but, just work with this for now:

I'll even add flowers and shit to make it pretty! Now, these will take a while, so you have to be willing to wait a month or two to get it, but I'll do my best to make it worth it.

So, here's what I'm thinking: I'll put each item up as a separate post, but I'll put them all up on one day. I'll leave the auction open for several days, and in that time you can bid on what you want by leaving a comment with the amount of your bid. I'll have comment moderation turned on, so I'll see your comments but no one else will. A couple times each day, I'll update the item's post with the current highest bid so you can bid again if you want. Once bidding has closed, I'll announce the winners for each.

Does that sound reasonable? I'd like to do this here rather than on eBay, so this seemed like a good way to go about it. Leaving it up for several days gives lots of people a chance to bid whenever and maybe no one will yell at me. And I also won't have to give a bunch of the proceeds to eBay in fees.

And second question: before or after Christmas? I know this is a rough time of year financially for lots of people so maybe this is the kind of thing you'd want to do after Christmas. I mean it is a 2012 calendar, so it's not like you HAVE to get it before January.

So, please let me know what you think and I'll let you know in a day or two how I've decided to go forward.

Love,

Douchy McAsshat

Sewn Hats: A Review

2012-11-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Note: Back a long, long time ago, way before I started working on GenQ, I had a whole bunch of plans for this blog, one of which was to occasionally do book and product reviews. But, you know, good ones, not just rah, rah cheery ones so that people will advertise and send me free stuff. I am trying to renew my commitment to keeping this blog alive and in that spirit, I give you my first book review.

I've pretty much decided that all patterns for all things should be written by people who have advanced degrees in some scientific field. I am fairly sure that this is the key to me not wanting to take the author of any particular pattern and smack him or her around for a while for writing such incomprehensible gobbledygook. When I was a new quilter, I stumbled and cursed my way through a lot of bad patterns, and the difficulty in interpreting poorly worded instructions kept me from attempting more complicated things, even when I was probably ready to do so. Fortunately, this is often what I wrote about and managed to turn that into a minor career as a quilting humorist, so THANK YOU, CRAPPY PATTERN WRITERS.

I had also avoided attempting to make clothing, except for the odd skirt that required only straight lines and some elastic in a tube. But sleeves? Hell, no. Zippers? There was no way anybody could possibly explain—with, you know, words and stuff—how to sew in a zipper. People who made things with zippers were clearly giving it to their moms to do for them and then lying about it on their blogs.

And then I discovered Carla.

Well, to be more specific, I discovered Sis Boom Patterns, which are created by both Jennifer Paganelli and Carla Hegeman Crim. (Carla also has her own line of patterns under the name The Scientific Seamstress.) I made the Patricia Tunic for me and the Marissa dress for each of my girls. Sleeves! ZIPPERS! And the instructions were so incredibly good, I kind of fell in love. Carla has a degree in molecular biology, and I have become convinced that the rigors of scientific research and writing (and the aptitude for such things) have helped make Carla into the incredible pattern writer she is today.

See, I love clarity, and I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can speak, write, or otherwise convey information in a way that is easy to understand without being overly simplistic. With the Sis Boom patterns, I felt like I had a teacher with me, helping me along and making sure I didn't sew my hand to my face while also letting me know that the techniques I was about to attempt were perfectly doable by anyone who was not completely (or partially, for that matter) drunk. AND I learned to sew zippers. Myself. No mom anywhere.

I have since purchased a bunch of Carla's patterns and more Sis Boom patterns, and when I heard on Facebook that Carla was publishing a book on hats I was SO excited, both for Carla because, yay—book!, but also for me. See, I love hats, but I never buy them because I have a gigantic melon head. Seriously. Hats do not fit me. They sit perched on top of my skull like something Princess Eugenie would wear to the gym. I turn every hat into a sad fascinator.

Sewn Hats has patterns for babies, kids, and adults, and the adult hats fit all the way up to Gigantic Melon. I know this, because she has a very easy-to-read chart that shows where your head circumference fits in the range of sizes that are given for each pattern. (And yes, I measured my head, and it is, apparently, freakishly huge, but is at least actually on the chart. Unlike some of my other parts.) And instead of an envelope crammed with tissue paper pattern pieces, which I despise, you download a PDF of the project and print them yourself. If the pattern has different sizes, the first page will tell you which pages to print for the size you want. Then, if you want to make the hat again in a different size, you just print out what you need—no more trying to salvage those damn tissues you already cut up. This is pure genius, and is the same way all Carla's individual patterns have been done, but the first time I have ever seen it in a publication. I suppose it's possible that other books have been done this way, but if they have, I'm totally going to ignore it and give Carla all the credit.

The first chapter has a ton of great information about tools and techniques, so don't skip it. I tend to gloss over this kind of section in most books, because it's usually all "I'm going to teach you to sew in 4 pages" and doesn't tell you anything worthwhile, but Carla isn't doing that. This gives you specific info on the stuff you will be using to make these hats (think interfacings, glues, and starch), techniques you might not be familiar with, and tips on reading the patterns themselves.

The patterns are exactly what you would expect, considering the high praise I've already given. This is a curated book, meaning that Carla has her own patterns here but has also gathered patterns from many other people such as Melissa Stramel, Bari J., Betz White, Shelly Figueroa, and many more—but the patterns have all been written and edited and illustrated to be consistent with Carla's style. And that makes me confident about every pattern in the book.

And, oh, the hats are so stinking cute! I apologize for the crappy photography, but the book won't fit on my scanner.

There's every kind of hat you can imagine and several you probably can't. There's cute, pretty, silly, fussy, simple—even a good old do-rag. If you can't find a hat in here you like, well then you are clearly just a soulless hat-hater and no good can come from any association with you.

Just so you know, Carla did give me this book, but I have determined that I will never praise a book on this blog that I don't actually love, so if it had turned out that I hated it, you would never have heard about it at all. I don't give praise lightly, so when I do give it, you know I mean it.

By the way, your ass looks fabulous in that hat.

For lack of anything else to post about...

2012-11-12T10:36:00.000-05:00

...I am going to share more of my Market pictures, ones that weren't used on GenQ. Enjoy!

Cool stuff from Tula Pink:

This is going to be sold as a kit with pre-cut hexies!

Can you see the quilted rope around the anchor?

Retro chic is still a thing.

Brights were big at Michael Miller:

See? Retro again. Bet you ten bucks somebody makes an 8-track tape quilt pattern soon.

I really liked these updated Dresden Plate patterns at EZ Quilting:

As usual, Amy Butler's booth was big and beautiful, and usually jammed packed with people. (I scared 'em away for the shots:

And David Butler's booth right next door was tiny (but awesome) and I never saw anyone in it. Except David:

And this was Melody Miller's booth. All that retro chic? Pretty much her doing. But she does it really well.

What shocks me when I go back and look at my pictures is how much I didn't shoot. I still feel shy about it, for some reason, like somebody is gonna go, "Hey, you can't photograph that!" And that is not necessarily an unlikely thing. As I have discovered, Quilt Market is a place where you can easily get a lot of, "Hey, you can't!" We were trying to pick up schedules for Schoolhouse, and the woman handing them out was desperately trying to weed out the undesireables by being as intimidating as possible. I'm surprised we weren't asked to show our papers.

I'm going to try to get a review of Sewn Hats up on Wednesday, and then be sure to come back Friday because I have some begging to do then and you know you don't want to miss that!

I hear Ty Pennington is hosting Extreme Introvert Makeover

2012-11-04T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm just going to say it. I'm going to just say it flat out and damn the consequences. I may be shunned and become a social pariah for the rest of my - OH, WAIT.

I really hate going to Quilt Market.

"But, Megan," you say. "How can you possibly hate meeting your quilting idols, being surrounded by so much eye candy, and receiving the love of GenQ/Bitchy Stitcher fans every day? Have you no soul?"

Yeah, I know. For a lot of people, all of those things are wonderful, and the networking opportunities are endless. I do enjoy looking at the fabrics and patterns and I did meet some really great people. But for the love of all that is good and holy in this world I was just never meant to be put in such close proximity to so many people for so many days in a row. By the end of the first day, I was so done, and I was actually praying for a major gastrointestinal event so that I would have an excuse to lock myself in a room and be alone for more than a minute and a half. I simply do not have the gene/gland/section of medulla oblongata that causes other people to walk into a room that is stuffed wall-to-wall with total and near strangers and go "WHASSUP, MAH BITCHEZ? IT'S PARTY TIME—WHO'S GOT THE EASY CHEESE?" Instead, I just feel a constant sense of dread and unease, and the stress makes me feel constantly ill. Yes, I know it's pathological and weird, but this is what events such as this are like for extreme introverts. (NEXT TIME, ON EXTREME INTROVERTS, MEGAN RESORTS TO HIDING HER HEAD INSIDE HER OWN SHIRT)

This is not to say that I don't like the people I went to Market with. On the contrary, I like them all very much. And I did have some great times with them over the course of the weekend. My roomie Bev must absolutely be my roomie on all future Market trips. I want to be her when I grow up, she is that awesome. She is friends with our editor-in-chief, Melissa, and comes to Markets to help us out in the booth, which she is excellent at. Woman can charm. She used to be a color commentator for car racing for ESPN back when women did NOT do that sort of thing, and I would pretty much give my left nut to see some footage of her work. And Tracy Mooney is just a pure pleasure to be around, despite the fact that she is tall, gorgeous, and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. There are few other people I'd do this with/for:

Nor are there many other people I'd go to a sex-n-hookah shop with when I'm already so tired I can barely see straight. This was directly across the street from our hotel:

A 24-hour smoke and porn shop. Naturally, we had to go. And naturally, when we walked in, another group of quilters was walking out. NO ONE CAN RESIST THE ALLURE OF GIANT DILDOS AND SEX SWINGS AFTER DRINKING ROBERT KAUFMAN'S FREE ALCOHOL.

And I know what your next question is: did I buy anything? Sadly, no. For one thing, I was truly exhausted, and one simply cannot purchase filth without a clear head. Also, the TSA has suddenly started rifling through my checked baggage. When did this start? I've never had my suitcase lock taken off before, never seen one of those "TSA was here" notes tucked into my stuff. I certainly don't need some bored government inspector getting his dirty mitts all over my brand new leather restraints. And, as usual, I just couldn't really afford anything. I mean, I suppose I could have bought some Dick Tarts or something, but yawn—been to that sex shop, bought that.

So, let's see. What were some of the other highlights?

1. Stuff. I know most people come home from Market with way more stuff than I had. For one thing, I couldn't go to Sample Spree (and frankly, Sample Spree is a total mystery to me. Everybody says that they only let certain people in, like the buyers for quilt shops, and then everybody and their grandmother shows up the next day and says how much they bought.). And for another, people just don't give me things. Again, other people? They go to a booth and say, "Hi, I'm from Generation Q Magazine," and suddenly they're all "Oh, my god, here, take some fabric and some books and some patterns and wait lemme look in my purse I might have some mints or an unexpired condom!" But if I go to a booth and say, "Hi, I'm the Creative Director of Generation Q Magazine," I get The Look. The look that goes, "Uh huh. And I care about this because...?" And I'm lucky to get a post-it note with a website scribbled on it.

Still, I managed to come home with some cool shit. For one thing, I won a collection of Aurifil embroidery thread from Bari J at Schoolhouse, and then I won a set of Christmas embroidery threads from Presencia.

The swag bag from the Fabric 2.0 party was pretty sweet, and also included some magazines (ours included) which I cannot seem to find at the moment:

But the absolute best thing - and right now, for me, there is not much better than embroidery stuff - was this:

Carla Crim is truly one of my idols because her patterns are Just. So. Good. We became acquainted when I reviewed one of her patterns for GenQ and found out that we lived in relative proximity. Sadly, before we could actually meet and hang out, she and her family moved to upstate New York, but in the meantime, she had promised me a copy of her book, and she had one for me at Market! And even without the book, it was a blast to meet her and find out that she really is as cool as you would imagine somebody who is Just. That. Good. would be. She is definitely someone I will look forward to seeing again. (And I'm going to be reviewing this book more in-depth in the next few weeks.)

2. People. I amy not be a people person, but I did have some great moments with actual human beings. I got to meet these two ladies:

Those would be Kelly Biscopink on the right and Andie Johnson on the left, and they have written a new book called Modern Designs for Classic Quilts. I saw their Schoohouse presentation, and then was able to chat with them a bit in our booth later, and they were just very easygoing and funny, and I really hope we get to work with them in the future.

Of course, I saw this freakazoid:

That damn woman spotted me in the hallway during Schoolhouse and actually tackled me. TACKLED. As in ran to me at full speed, jumped on me, and threw us both to the fucking floor. I seriously love her.

And I got to meet the great Sam Hunter live and in the flesh:

Sam has become one of those great friends I've never met (until now, obvs.)—somebody I truly adore and respect whom I have only known through email, facebook, texts, and phone calls. She's also a kick-ass quilt designer. Go buy her stuff.

And there were a few people—not many, mind you, but a few—who stopped by the booth to meet me, and that was just so, so wonderful. I'm sure the reality of meeting me is something of a disappointment, since, you know, the introvert thing, and I just feel so tongue-tied and awkward and I think people expect me to be just the way I write and I can be, but only after I've known you for a long time, not at first, and especially not when I'm tired and overwhelmed and missing my family so much. So if you stopped by, and weren't particularly impressed, blame my faulty genes/glands/medulla oblongata. And if you stopped by—thank you. You made me feel really good.

3. And of course there were the booths and all the fabrics and just the way booths were decorated. Sadly, almost all of my pics were taken for GenQ and I can't use any of them until they have been picked through for the GenQ Market posts this week. And there was so much that I didn't manage to get pictures of, because I was truly overwhelmed by it all.

Still, I came away with even more excitement about my newest obsession: embroidery. I worked on two special projects before I left, so that I could literally display my new obsession on my person at all times:

A cameo! Out of french knots!

This is a cuff bracelet made from wool felt. I drew the vine freehand with a water soluble marker and used a quarter to mark the outline for the flowers/buttholes. These are both projects I hope to perfect and possibly share with you in the future if anybody might be interested. Sadly, no one noticed them, but it's not like they were easy to see. Still, I'm proud of them and I feel like embroidery is going to be a big part of my life for a while.

I'm sure there's a million things I've forgotten, LIKE THE FREAKIN' HURRICANE, but it is way past my bedtime. Plus, my eyeballs are totally sore and bloodshot from the embroidery I did all afternoon. You guys, it's like I'm cheating on quilting with embroidery. It's awesome.

A long overdue post

2012-10-23T09:52:00.001-04:00

I have tried several times over the last month to write something, but the words just aren't coming. I was deeply enmeshed in getting the Winter 2012 issue of GenQ done in time, and at the end of the process I got sick and it took a while to recover. I've been plagued with headaches for the last couple of weeks. And most of the time, I just feel sad.

There have been bright spots. I discovered embroidery during the layout process of this issue, because we needed some for illustrations and, like with the pincushions from the last issue, I figured my best bet was to do it myself. So, my very first embroidery project was the word "Embroidery":

But then I thought that was too plain, so I did it again, with some embellishment:

I didn't end up using either of these, but by the time I had mastered four different stitches, I was hooked. So I decided I needed some underwater invertebrates on a pillowcase:

And then I made this for Devon (who is enamored of the idea of going to Paris someday) and she elected to have it framed and put on the wall over her bed:

Plus, I have three other projects in the works that I can't show you because they are seeeeecret! I have always wanted to have a secret project that I can't show you!

So, there's that. Plus, my dear friend Amy delivered her sweet new baby boy yesterday and there is nothing, nothing so wonderful as a new baby to snuggle. I know Amy was hoping that I could take care of him when she goes back to work like I did for her first child, but with GenQ, I know that I can't and it breaks my heart. I got to see him for a few minutes last night, and I'll be taking the girls to meet him this afternoon (they are as excited as I am).

And...Market. I leave for Market day after tomorrow and my suitcase is staring at me, empty, because I just can't seem to get motivated to go pack it. I hate trying to figure out what to wear to these things. I look like a sack of potatoes no matter what I wear, so it really shouldn't be such a struggle. But I decided that this time I wasn't going to look like a goddamn silverback gorilla. I am supposed to be the Creative Director of this thing, and looking like a middle-aged, suburban mom who has "let herself go" is just not going to cut it. I can't seem to change the sack of potatoes quality, but I can at least change the hair. I went for my usual cut, but got double process color. I wanted the lighter parts to be a LOT lighter, but this still works.

So now every once in a while I catch my husband looking at my hair with a little smile on his face, so I guess he likes it. Probably reminds him of the girl he married. Even Devon keeps saying I look like I did "in the olden days."

And still, I am in a funk. I keep thinking that I am going to just write out everything that happened on my trip to Tennessee, but I just can't. Not because it was so awful, but because I still feel so raw. I have cried for Jon many, many times before, but seeing him this time, seeing the changes in him and knowing what's to come just ripped me to shreds. And, see? Now I am in tears just writing about not wanting to write about it. I cried while making the girls' breakfast this morning. It's just there all the time. And I can't write about it (much) and there seems to be little I want to say about anything else, and so - no post for over a month.

If any of you are going to Market, we are in Booth 960, so please stop by. We've got a fun project in the works in our booth and everybody can participate. I'll also be attending the Modern Meet Up and Fabric 2.0 and probably the Robert Kaufman cocktail thing, so just look for the potato sack with the fabulous haircut—that'll be me.

A brief journey

2012-09-06T22:16:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow evening I fly down to Nashville to visit my brother. Right now, he is in a nursing care facility, having been moved there from a hospital rehab unit a month or so ago. The neurological damage he suffered as a result of his last brain tumor surgery earlier this summer is, apparently, irreversible. Months of intensive physical therapy have produced no improvements. He is in many ways now incapacitated.

Soon, he will have to be moved back home, as his insurance will no longer pay for this kind of care.

The day after I returned home from California, my sister called. The girls were already in bed and I was chatting with David when the phone rang. She was calling to tell me that she and my sister-in-law had taken Jon to the oncologist that day, and during the meeting it was decided that they would discontinue the treatment for Jon's cancer. The damage that would likely result from further chemo and/or radiation would almost certainly incapacitate him further, and thus would not improve his quality of life, but most likely erode it more. So they all made the very difficult decision to let the disease take its course.

I knew this was coming. I had some warning in conversations with my sister a couple months ago, and I thought I was steeling myself for the final decision. But you can't steel yourself for something like that. You just can't.

The thing about this cancer is it moves fast. Insidiously, viciously fast. I know my brother is strong, and I know he's already made it far, far longer than most people with this disease do. But I can't continue to count on that. And, oh God the weight of that is almost more than I can take.

I wish so many things. I wish I lived closer so I could do something, anything, so I could be of some use. I wish health insurance wasn't such a fucked up mess. I wish my brother could walk and get on a motorcycle and take his boys to sports practice. I wish that someone I love with all my heart wasn't being ripped from me, from us, because its wrong. It's taking the wrong person. I want to beat my fists against something and have it give way but there's nothing.

There's not a single bloody thing I can do but fly to Tennessee and kiss my brother's sweet face and tell him again what I know he already knows: that I love him, that I will always, always love him. And then I'll fly back home and try to hold my shattered pieces together as best I can.

****

I keep saying this a lot, but I do want to thank you all again. So many of you have sent emails or Facebook messages, letting me know you have been thinking of me and my family as we go through this. I will never have the eloquence to express what your kindness and support has meant to me over the last couple of years.

Vision Statements

2012-09-05T13:47:00.001-04:00

Last night I went to my kids' school for the annual Back to School Night. I'm sure everybody has this at their school in one form or another. The beginning of the evening was all the perky little PTA moms and one upsettingly perky PTA dad (I'm sorry, but men should not be perky. Men who are younger than me, and are wearing sportcoats and have that old man, parted on the side haircut and talk about PTA budgets like they're selling me vinyl flooring cannot keep my attention for longer than two minutes, tops.) shaming us into taking out a second mortgage to donate to the annual giving program. They have changed the name of this program, by the way. It used to be called the Direct Donation Campaign, but now it's called Invest In Your Child, and the vinyl flooring salesman was SO PROUD of this. You could tell he thought this was the key that would open the wallets of every person in the room. Because we are all too dumb to understand that you are still asking for the same $100 bucks you ask for every year. Oh, so now you are asking me to INVEST my money? IN MY CHILD? Well, let me go sell some plasma, because that's TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

Next we heard from the project manager who is overseeing the building of the new kindergarten wing, and that would have been great because, hey, actual information, but he was one of those people not used to speaking with a microphone and he kept gesturing with his microphone hand. So his whole presentation was "mumblemumblemumblemumblemumblemumblemumble THE RETAINING WALL HAS BEEN COMPLETED mumblemumblemumblemumblemumble SEPARATED BY A FENCE mumblemumblemumblemumblemumblemumble HEY AT LEAST I'M NOT WEARING A SPORTCOATmumblemumblemumble..."

The best part of the evening was, and is always, the presentation by the principal herself. I have no doubt that this woman is a sterling educator, with years of experience and a proven track record, but she has clearly been to way too many business motivation seminars. Her presentation this year was all about the Vision Statement for our school. For our public elementary school. It's not a special school with a unique focus that might need to be clarified for the benefit of parents and other educators. It's a basic K-5 elementary school. It has, despite the complexities inherent in the task, a pretty clear job. I seriously doubt that there are any teachers roaming the halls going, "But what's our vision? I cannot competently educate without a clear vision."

The Vision Statement she finally revealed was, as you can imagine, a masterpiece.

It is the mission of our Elementary School to provide a positive and challenging environment where all students will achieve academic, social, emotional and physical success. School staff, students, parents, and community working together will achieve and maintain an atmosphere of respect, support, and high expectations.

And that's fine. There's nothing at all wrong with this and I'm sure it does no harm, but I can't help but wonder if the effort that goes into writing and refining and then presenting these kinds of mission statements and vision statements makes any bit of discernible difference in how teachers do their jobs or kids do theirs. At one point she emphasized that she would be working very hard this year to make sure that everyone understands the Vision Statement. So, is somebody gonna go, "Um, I'm okay with most of it, I think, but I'm a little unclear on the concept of physical success. That means I get to beat them into submission, right? With big sticks?"

I think I just have a general problem with having the obvious spelled out for me as though there was no way I could have come to that extremely self-evident conclusion on my own, or that I will somehow be subconsciously compelled to do something more or better because I read some touchy feely words. Now, the magazine I work for has a need for a statement of purpose, because we are hoping to reach a certain type of quilter. Being able to clarify that makes it easier for us to communicate with potential buyers, advertisers, and contributors and to keep our own focus when we consider projects and articles for inclusion. Because it isn't immediately obvious what part of the niche we are trying to reach. But, if that statement were somehow just all about how excellently we are going to excellent our excellence, I would have a hard time reading it what with all the eye rolling. OF COURSE we want to do our work well. Success - yes. Excellence - yepperoonie. THAT GOES WITHOUT SAYING. Or at least it should. If you're doing a job and not intending to kick ass at it, ain't no vision statement in the world gonna make you start putting in an effort.

But, you know, maybe I'm just naive and that's how the world works. Maybe people really do give more money to the exact same program if it's called Invest In Your Child instead of The Direct Donation Program. Maybe people really do need to be told what their job is and that they're supposed to try to succeed at it in order to, you know, succeed at it. Otherwise, why would seemingly reasonable people spend so much energy creating Vision Statements?

So, I figure maybe I need some more Vision Statements in my life. I'm probably not being excellent enough because my vision is unclear and ill-defined. I decided to start with my family:

The mission of the Dougherty Family is to provide the matriarch, Megan Dougherty, with enough snacks, fabric, and solitude to enable her to make a damn quilt once in a while. In return, she will clean some things occasionally, and cook some stuff, and will provide hugs on demand for all the shorties in the house. She will, if asked in JUST THE RIGHT WAY, also provide more adult-type hugs to the family patriarch as long as he is not in the doghouse for a birthday infraction or because he didn't take any Beano with that big bowl of chili and is now crop dusting every room he occupies. Everyone will do all of this excellently, with success and dynamic thriving growth and stuff.

And so, naturally, I figure this blog needs one too:

The mission of The Bitchy Stitcher blog is to enlighten, entertain, and inspire my readers through blog posts and Facebook status updates, which will only occasionally be about quilting. Oh, and there will be penis jokes. Excellent, excellent penis jokes. With success and dynamic thriving growth and stuff.

That's pretty fucking excellent.

Off to Cali

2012-08-23T11:23:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow morning I am headed to the airport to fly out to California for what amounts to about a day and a half, to meet with my GenQ partners Jake and Melissa to talk business talk and drink wine in each other's physical presence instead of listening to the sipping over the phone. The importance of face-to-face imbibing among professional colleagues cannot be overstated.

I find that I am far less nervous about flying this time than I was when I flew to Kansas City in May, though I still have nightmares about not being able to get to the bathroom while strapped in a flying tin can for six hours. But, strangely, I'm not freaking about getting strip searched by the TSA, because at least it would be some action! AMIRITE LADEEZ?

Sigh. That's what I've come to. Bad TSA sex jokes.

I'm still kind of reeling from the response to my next-to-last post. So many of you have written to me to express that you experience much the same every year, and I still need to say how grateful I am that you felt comfortable sharing that with me. I continue to get emails, got one this morning in fact that is still haunting me a bit, and I feel like this is something that I will have to revisit at some point.

There is a lot on my mind these days. My baby starting kindergarten. My brother's move to a nursing care facility. The demands of GenQ which will only increase in the coming year (which is a good thing but is still on my mind a lot). The books I still haven't written and the quilts I still haven't made. The weight I continue to not lose.

So lets keep our fingers crossed that I come back from California with a great story about how we all ended up naked and wandering around Topanga Canyon with Lindsay Lohan and Prince Harry and had to sell our iPhone pics to TMZ to buy new clothes and pay for a cab home.

Mercy buckets

2012-08-15T09:43:00.001-04:00

Wow. You know, when I have these moments where something is overwhelming me and I make the decision to write about it here on the blog, I never know if I am just being self-indulgent, or if maybe something I say will resonate with someone else. Because every writer wants that, I think, that reflection coming back to them. On my good days, I hope to make you laugh. But on other days, days like yesterday, I can only hope that what I have to say causes somebody out there to say, "Oh, thank goodness it's not just me."

I don't have another major post for you today, but I wanted to say thank you. Everything you all took the time to write yesterday meant the world to me and truly helped pull me out of a deep funk, one that had been brewing long before my birthday rolled around. I wish I could round you all up and give you a big hug, but since I can't do that, I'll do the next best thing: your ass looks fabulous in those pants today.

To everyone who sent me messages and other things in my email: I will get back to each one of you individually as soon as I can. I have a sudden GenQ project I have to complete in the next 48 hours, but I'll be making my way through them as I go.

I truly love you all and your fabulous asses.

Crappy birthday to me

2012-08-14T11:00:00.000-04:00

In 13 days, my oldest child will be back in school. In 17 days, my youngest will start kindergarten and this week will be the last week I have to pay daycare fees forever and ever. So, I should be in a pretty good mood, or at least feeling a lightening of the gloom that always descends at the end of the summer when I am desperately ready to have my house back. But then that thing happened—that thing that keeps coming around every damn year, every August, to completely destroy any hope I may have had of feeling happy for 5 minutes.

My fucking birthday.

I turned 43 on Sunday. And my family rarely does anything special for my birthday, but every year on David's birthday, I give the girls a budget and they get to go to the dollar store to buy him goofy presents. I get him a couple real presents, and then we decorate the kitchen and make a cake and have a little family party for him. So, David has finally clued in that I am trying to teach the girls that we treat everyone in the family special on their birthday, not just them, and so I think he might have done the same thing for me this year, but we are flat broke, so we couldn't even afford a trip to the dollar store. Still, I might have thought that they would have tried to do something, expend some small effort to make the day feel a little bit special for me, but they didn't. He didn't. And he so often doesn't, and it just makes me unbearably sad.

When my oldest daughter turned seven a couple years ago, she complained later in the day that her birthday wasn't fun enough. I asked her to think back and remember what they had done for my birthday that year. She couldn't remember, so I told her: nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a card. Not a happy birthday, mom. Nothing.

If it wasn't for fucking Facebook, I would probably be able to forget it altogether, which seems like a damn good idea at this point.

If I mention that I feel ignored and sad on my crappy birthdays, he reminds me that he threw a 40th birthday party for me. Indeed he did. Do you know how many people came to my party? Four. It was at our friends' house and the guests were them and one other couple. We had takeout sushi and cupcakes. On David's 40th, I rented a really cool room, and had it catered. I had balloons everywhere and made these fun Japanese-themed gift bags for all the guests and invited absolutely everyone. My best friend and I made a huge chocolate raspberry cake with like five layers. And I loved doing all that for him.

And I know we couldn't afford such a thing now, and I know my friends are scattered all over the country, and I know he did his best, but it is still just so depressing to me that I am not supposed to hope for more than some takeout on a decade year. I know he's overworked right now, but this would have happened even if he wasn't, and I would have been happy with him making me breakfast, or taking the girls out for a couple hours so I could have some time alone. Shit, I would have been happy for him to just hug me and tell me happy birthday, but he couldn't even be bothered to do that. It's not the stuff I want. I just want him to want to do those things for me, to take pleasure in surprising me and spoiling me just a little.

And then, to top it all off, I called my mom to check on her while my dad is out of town, and she didn't say anything either. My own mom forgot my birthday.

And of course, I feel stupid and petty for even caring about this at all. I shouldn't give a shit about something so meaningless, and I am perfectly capable of doing things for myself, right? I can bake my own goddamn cake and make my own fucking breakfast and just tell him he's taking the kids because I'm going out and I'll be back when I'm back.

And then I remember I have almost no one to go see when I go out.

I want to be the kind of person that people want to celebrate with, but I'm not. I never have been. I remember once when I was in college, some friends shared a dorm room across a courtyard from my room, and I could see their room from my window. One of them was having a birthday, and they had a couple other girls over and cake and it wasn't anything major but it was a party and I had just seen them not long before and they didn't ask me to come. They didn't want me. I was always the sort of person who would be included if I happened to be around at the right time, but was never sought out. For a while, in my late twenties and early thirties, I found people I fit with and it was so wonderful, but then we had babies and more demanding jobs and people moved away, and now there is only one of them left. And I love her and am grateful to have her in my life, but still - the babies and the jobs mean I don't see her much even though she lives just around the corner. I have spent so much time alone over the last five years, and lost so much self-confidence, and have aged what looks and feels like 20 years in those five, that those parts of my personality that make me hard to approach and difficult to know have only become exaggerated. It's not that I am high maintenance—quite the opposite—but I'm just not bubbly.

I envy those people who can walk in a room and start talking to anyone and can be comfortable and never seem to feel like they are intruding or are unwelcome or alien. I always feel alien. And often, quite often in the last couple of years in fact, I can take that feeling of always being "other" and channel it into writing. I think that's where a lot of my humor comes from. But sometimes, like now, it just makes me feel freakish and lonely.

I'll get over this; I always do. I'm not always a whiny baby about this stuff. But I've had a LOT of shitty birthdays over the years, and sometimes one just gets to me more than the others. I'm not fishing for happy birthdays or suggestions. I just needed to get this out. Thanks for listening.

So, let's hear about the worst birthday you ever had.

Presenting the QSMASBC 2013

2012-08-01T08:00:00.000-04:00

I know I have been out of commission lately and I hope you all will forgive my long absences. Each issue of GenQ is at least 6 weeks of long, long days (and nights), and once that baby is put to bed, I go completely brain dead until we have to rev up again for the next issue, which is in approximately 23 hours. But instead of watching endless episodes of True Blood and reading trashy novels until my eyes cross, this time I spent my week off getting the awesomest of awesome things ready for you.

The Quilter's Shirtless Man and Spicy Burrito Calendar is here! Check out these beautiful chunks—I mean hunks—of hot, steamy manliness. We've got cuddly guys. We've got lean and lanky guys. We've got cut and buff guys. And we've got a kilt, a horse, some sort of farm machinery, a boat, and a naked booty for Christmas!

A big smooch and hug and endless thank yous to the guys who posed and the friends and significant others who took the shots. You are all beautiful and wonderful and I love you all. If your shot didn't make it in this year, please try again next year!

Check out the beefcake that could adorn the walls of your home next year:

December 2012

Steve, I am told, insisted on going commando under his quilt and is already recruiting others to participate in the 2014 calendar. Go Steve!

January 2013

A long-haired man on a horse, wearing a kilt, and sporting tattoos and two nipple rings. I'd have included this even without the quilt and the burrito.

February 2013

Okay, that thing looks like a lawnmower, a backhoe, and a dune buggy had some sort of weird three-way sex and made a mutant machine baby. Dan, however, looks totally laid back and ready to mow. Or hoe. Or hit the dunes. Duuuude.

March 2013

It's The Big Man In the Little Boat!

April 2013

Mark, as you may recall, was our cover model and Mr. October last year. He and his wife Ida are just the most wonderful people and they sent me a whole CD chock full of epic pictures of Mark. That quilt was made by Mark's mom and quilted by her aunt. Mom loved to piece, but hated quilting, and Auntie loved to quilt but hated piecing. I need to get into a relationship like that.

May 2013

Richard's friend looks embarrassed. I hope Richard had pants on.

June 2013

This is June AND the cover. I had to put this on the cover. And then I had to spend a reeeeaaaally long time looking at it to make sure it was just right. I better go check it again, just to be sure.

I thought I wrote about this somewhere else but I can't find it, so you get to hear about it again. I got this picture on Christmas Day last year from Lori, whose kids had made her a calendar with all her quilts in it. And the last picture in the calendar was this beauty. The boys all agreed to let me use it for our calendar. The three on the right are performers and you need to go to their website right now and bask in how freaking adorable they are. I highly recommend the video of them on American Ninja Warrior.

July 2013

Y'all remember a while back when I posted on Facebook about a fellow quilter whose boyfriend had two bikes stolen and how a friend of hers was raising money for them to get him a new bike (and replace the other stolen one that belonged to another friend)? Well, he got the bikes, and this is him with the bike that many of you helped him get.

August 2013

Alex just started quilting last year and this is his first quilt. One assumes that this is also his first time posing with that quilt shirtless while holding a burrito, but you never know.

September 2013

I happen to know that Chuck here is also completely starkers behind that guitar. I also happen to know that they are from the Nashville area, so I assume that Chuck is crooning a country tune and using his burrito as a guitar slide.

October 2013

This is one of my favorites. And though I'm sure they have a fence or a thick hedge or something, I keep imagining that the neighbors were all very intrigued by what was going on next door. And since Rob and his wife had to take this multiple times before we got a shot we could use, I also imagine those neighbors probably have some photos of their own that they're holding onto in case there's ever a property line dispute or something.

November 2013

Oh, Murray. Murray, Murray, Murray. Put that thing away, honey, before someone gets hurt.

December 2013

Christmas booty! Neil sent me a couple tush shots on FB (he does figure modeling) before he took this, which I thoroughly—and I do mean thoroughly— appreciated. His wife made the fig leaf mini-quilt especially for this photo. Of course, it's a BIG mini-quilt. Jumbo, really.

And there you have it! The calendar is again being sold through Lulu.com, same as last year and is the same price at $19.99. Thank you again for helping me help my brother's family and for being patient with me while I figure out how to balance my GenQ duties with my beloved blog.