quiltersmuse.com Blog

After visiting a very pleasant quilt shop today, a one-woman operation, I began thinking about all the other quilt shops I have visited over the years. Some of them have employees that are so aloof, they look right through you. They disappear altogether, when you have a question as to where to find something. Some shops I have visited are run by whiners. There is always something to complain about, whether it is aging parents, illness in the family, or the fact that you have been the only person to show up all day, and it is late afternoon. (I wonder why?) Everyone has problems, and perhaps they are in your quilt shop to think about something creative, to take their minds off of those other issues.

One thing to keep in mind is that quilters are generally friendly people. When they go into a shop, they are on a mission, and that mission usually includes buying the fabric and tools to make something uniquely their own (just because they made it, they chose the fabrics, and they made the choices of construction methods, if not for some other reason – such as they made the original design).

Now, once in the shop, most quilters are not concentrating on the price of a fat quarter. They are serious. They want what they want and they usually have discretionary income with which to pay for their purchases. If they have to pinch pennies, they would be shopping elsewhere, paying less for less than high quality goods from businesses that handle liquidations, or fabric produced with substandard methods.

A quilt shop should have quilts hanging around … everywhere: quilts for classes that will be taught; quilts for sale; and antique quilts, just for inspiration. What is presented in the shop is one thing, however, perhaps the most important role of a quilt shop owner is to have enthusiasm for what she sells, and not to let the “selling part” interfere with her willingness to help a customer, or to maintain a joyful attitude toward quilting.

As a shop owner, do you LOVE quilting? If it is just another job, why not go to work for a company where you will get a steady paycheck and have no responsibilities other than doing your job. As a shop owner, it IS your job to inspire, instruct, keep up with the latest trends, maintain and expand your own skills and knowledge, in addition to keeping up with all of the business-end components of running the shop.

Many quilt shops in New England have gone out of business in the last year – 23 shops in all. I suppose that some of them blame the Internet with its easy accessibility, unlimited choices, and hassle-free shopping. I’d like to say that many of us would go to shops more often, if we had not run into unpleasant situations there, in the past. To go to a shop for a specific tool or ruler or pencil or whatever and be told by the owner that she is “plumb out,” and has no idea when she might ever place an order again, is not a satisfying experience. To visit a shop and have an owner pick your brains, if you are a quilt teacher, and then somehow manage to come up with a similar class to the one you’ve described AND offer it before the class date you’ve set, is not pleasant. I could go on and on and on, but the examples I’ve given are sufficient unto the cause.

To be a good teacher is to be willing to give your student abilities he or she did not possess before, and then, when like a baby bird who has been launched from a nest, the student surpasses even the teacher’s knowledge, that teacher should be happy, not jealous.

A book was once written that has a title - Do What You Love – The Money Will Follow.” I like the title.

If you are a quilt shop owner and you are not doing what you love, get out, while the going is good. Take up bungey-jumping, or white water rafting, or whatever hobby you consider to be a thrill. We need friendly quilt shops that carry adequate supplies and that have loving owners and staff who are willing to share their time and talents to promote the industry. My new favorite quilt shop in New Hampshire is “The Chestnut Quilter.”

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

Time was when … every home in New England had a spinning wheel. We can attribute the word “spinster” to that situation: a single woman who sat and spun wool into yarns, all day long. Many homes possessed a loom, but not every home. In Rhode Island, at the Slater Mill historic site in Pawtucket, a few years ago, we toured their representative home where a four point loom was set up. These looms are large, and houses were small. In fact, children did not have their own bed. They slept side by side, parallel to the top and bottom of the bed to conserve room, and to add body warmth to each other, in those days before central heating.

Time was when … children were exploited and made to work in unhealthy conditions in the factories, in mills such as the Slater Mill. With the windows nailed shut, and the door kept shut, to maintain a high humidity in the small mill, air borne cotton fibers found their way into lungs, causing consumption (TB), emphysema, pneumonia, and often, death. High humidity was kept so that cotton threads would not become brittle and snap, during the process of spinning the threads onto cones.

Time was when … one did not go to the store to buy new sneakers. A cow had to be slaughtered and the hide harvested and “tanned.” Shoes were custom made from the leather, sometimes by a father, or sometimes by a village cobbler. My mother, who worked at the International Shoe Company in Manchester, NH, (in the office, she always added), claimed to know good shoes and judged their quality by their “last.” The last is part of a shoe, and I really never inquired of her, during her lifetime, what she meant by “last.” I always thought it to be the inner support and general underpinnings. Maybe someday, I will become ambitious and try to find out the true meaning.

Time was when … and it was not so long ago, that when a person was sick, he or she was “bled” to rid the body of toxins. After awhile, physicians began to realize that patients died too often as a result of this practice, becoming weaker by the minute. In fact, during the nineteenth century, patients seems to have survived in spite of doctor care. There was no state of advanced medicine back then, and diseases that can be understood in this century, were a total enigma then.

From time to time, I like to think about the past. It is fun to think about how people lived. In our old house, there used to be a “root cellar” for storing garden produce like carrots, parsnips, potatoes, etc., during the long, cold winter. With a granite foundation, and no heat down there, it was an ideal location. Most of all, I like to think about quilting bees and barn raisings and other communal get togethers that ended in a banquet and a dance with fiddlers and such. It is fun to recall when communities came together for a common goal and a common sense of caring, something that we so often lack in society, today. Quilts represent so much, whether in the hands of the wealthy, and as products of the less-well-to-do. Begun as a pastime of the more well-heeled, traditionally, they are not the scrap craft art that is always mistakenly assigned to the women of Colonial History. That is a point that so many people and writers get wrong.

All for now,

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

Today was a very special and joyous day for Americans. In a way, it represented an end to long years of struggle for Black Americans to be seen as capable and acceptable. With a willing spirit, millions of Americans and friends around the world have embraced the notion that Barack Obama will serve well in the office of president. We saw a sign today outside of a business in a small New Hampshire community. It said, simply, “God Bless the President.” That sentiment expresses what we are all feeling about now. We were ready for a change, and change has finally come. The new president is a deep-thinking, educated, no-nonsense kind of a man, a man whose eloquence was mocked, during the election, but who is unsurpassed in delivering great speeches and firing up the crowd to be on his side. Who could not trust him? If he referred to any notes during his speech today, that was not apparent.

Sense and sensibility have prevailed. Everyone is happy. However, the president knows better than anyone that he will have to work hard to retain the trust of the American people. In the end, talk is cheap, and action speaks louder than words.

As my astute husband pointed out, over breakfast, the companies who are laying off workers are short-sighted. When the economy turns around, as it must, and as it always has, those same companies will not have trained workers and will not be able to compete in the marketplace. In essence, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

As far as education goes, the state of California has issued a letter to all employees, including my nephew who is head of a department at a state university. They have all been given the word that, instead of a paycheck, they should expect to receive “I owe you” notes, in lieu of money. Unfortunately, paper notes do not pay the mortgage, or the groceries, or put gas in the car, but California is bankrupt.

I have no fears. Barack Obama has surrounded himself with intellectuals and proven thinkers, not people who have financial motives for securing family business interests, and that is refreshing. With so many people focused on “getting it right,” I strongly believe that the change we all desire will happen, and will happen, as soon as possible. It is very difficult to undo some of the mistakes that have been made, or to extract ourselves from foreign soil, since we are so enmeshed there. The road ahead is long and winding, but somehow, I do not believe that this president will lose his way.

Let me join the chorus in wishing the new president and his family the very best, and to the cynics, I say this, “Yes We Can,” remembering his words. Let his presidency truly be a “patchwork” of the American Dream.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

This photo was taken in northern New Hampshire, where beauty abounds!

In New Hampshire … we are a proud and independent people. We do not take to being bossed around. We like to think our own thoughts. We like having the first in the nation primary election. We dislike people with money moving here from Massachusetts and elsewhere. Please visit and vacation, leave your travel dollars, and then, please go home!

We don’t like what Nashua has been turning into – namely, a suburb of Boston, and a haven for street gangs and crime (in parts of the city). We don’t like the violence on the streets of Manchester, including a police officer being shot down in the line of duty, within recent memory. We don’t like all the trees being cut down to allow for building housing, and we don’t like the high end, $400,000.00 condos like the ones that are plunked in what used to be a field to graze cows on, nearby. We don’t like our favorite restaurant going out of business so that yet another pharmacy could be built in its place.

In New Hampshire, we enjoy the sound of our own Yankee accent, and in fact, we like

BEING

Yankees, with a mind of our own. We don’t cotton much to strangers, ’round these parts. We are insular. You are not a true Yankee until your family has lived here for many generations and is familiar with the word, “A-yup!”

In New Hampshire, we like our victuals – those hearty beef stews, those lobster feeds, and those barbecued ribs. We are suspicious of doctors, some of us with good reason. Our state university started out as a “cow college” for people to study agriculture (as one of my brothers did). Many of our old timers think that someone with an advanced degree is an “educated fool,” although, that is not the most current trend of thinking, probably due to the “newcomers’” arrival.

We like the seacoast with its Isles of Shoals, a perennial hangout for artists and poets in the nineteenth century. We keep the memory of the “Old Man of the Mountain,” a geological formation of rocks that resembled an old man in profile, until it fell. We enjoy the lakes and streams, and go smelt fishing on Great Bay in Portsmouth, a tricky situation with incoming and outgoing sea tides – but boy, are the smelts good!

If you don’t live in New Hampshire, eat your hearts out. If you do live here, then celebrate! Begin by celebrating our own: President Franklin Pierce, Sarah Josepha Hale, Robert Frost, Donald Hall and Jane Kenyon, Hans Reyes, (the creator of Curious George), Grace Metallious, J.D. Salinger, Joyce Maynard, Alan Shepard, Christa McAuliffe, Celia Thaxter, Faye Labanaris, Ellen Peters, Carol Doak, Gerald Roy (a recent transplant), the Shaw’s Brothers, Tommy Makem, Bill Staines, Daniel Webster, and Ellen Emeline Hardy Webster, as well as a host of others who made themselves known to the public by their contributions to creativity, music, quilt history, quilt teaching, quilt travel trips, space travel, or the written word.

The scenery of New Hampshire is so inspiring, as are the birds and wildlife, the change of seasons, the covered bridges, and the old men, whose favorite saying is, “Ain’t from ’round here, are ya?”

Please visit us in any season. We will be happy to welcome you to our ski lodges, our lakeside cabins, and our fine restaurants. If you are a quilter, there are lots of quilt shops in the state, including Keepsake Quilting. The Machine Quilters Expo is set up in April at the Center of New Hampshire on Elm St., in Manchester; and the International Quilt Festival, by the Mancuso Brothers, visits the state, at the same venue, once per year. We are quilters, and there are lots of little quilt shows and some larger local guild shows. Quilting is alive in New Hampshire, the “live free or die” state.

Where the Purple Lilacs Grow song

Patricia Cummings, quilter and quilt historian
Quilter’s Muse Publications

In New England, we are in the midst of another snowstorm, with 4-8″ expected in my area. The rest of the country is gearing up for the Inaugural events that will take place on January 20, 2008 when our 44th president takes the oath of office. Security is high in and around Washington, D.C. and the plan is to keep evacuation routes readily available, should some untoward and unexpected activity happen. This morning, I heard from a band member whose band was chosen to play for the new president. How exciting is that? In fact, the word “excitement” does seem to be the appropriate word. Most of us are looking forward to a new start, in a new year, and with great expectations that this country can begin to turn itself around a bit.

So that people from outside the country can see the broadcast from CNN, that station is offering a sign-up event on Facebook, whereby the news feed with download to your computer wherever you are: in Canada, in the library, or with your laptop. This means that you don’t have to be sitting right next to a television to access the coverage. What a nice service. At last count, about a million and a half people had signed up for this service, that is by invitation only. The only requirement seems to be membership in Facebook which includes a free sign-up.

Whether I watch this event on the television or on Facebook, rest assured that I wouldn’t miss it.

We watch, and we wait, and we pray that all goes well. This is history in the making.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications