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Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Today has been a peaceful day. I have been deep into a research project and have found other authors who have confirmed my suspicions all along. Books and I have always interacted well together. In fact, after such an addictive and peaceful day, I am unwilling to jump into the fray of the issues of the day that are constantly debated to no avail.

These days, there seems to be a lot of people with personal agendas. Weren’t there always? Everyone wants validation, recognition and to be considered a contributor to the knowledge possessed by society. I am no exception and neither are you.

I can understand why some folks get hooked on comic strips, science fiction, and romance novels. None of those are to my taste, but I “get it.” They are escape tools. After all, “Maxine” can get away with the most insulting remarks that no one would ever dare to say in person. Science fiction brings us visions of other worlds, and romance novels seem to give a real boost to late middle-aged women. One particular series was a great favorite of my mother when she was in her late 60s and still had the vision to read.

That said, quilters have their own form of escape. To focus on a new design, to choose just the “right” fabrics for it, and to sit and stitch by hand affords a trance-like, meditative experience, or … it can. I have never had the same feeling when a machine came between me and my work. If I want to piece precision squares, I’ll pull out the Singer Featherweight. If I want repetitive embroidery stitches along the length of a long border, I’ll access a different machine. But, for me to really enjoy quilting or embroidery, I use the two hands the God gave me.

Quilting in this manner, I can think about my life and its meaning, world events, and situations, and family members whether dead or living. I can listen to national public radio without the hum of a sewing machine interrupting the words. I can hear Prairie Home Companion, or the Diane Rehm Show, or folk music. It’s all good. Furthermore, I am enveloped by a sense of peace and the feeling that all is right in my world … because it is!

Tomorrow, I plan do some quilting. I have a couple of quilts that will take no time at all to put the finishing touches on, and I’m thinking about making a quilt to donate to a worthy cause. I think I can manage to create a 22″ quilt, if only by adding to some block or other that is sitting there doing nothing. My goal, beyond the obvious, is to seek peace. The ways of the world are making me feel very weary. I need to rest my mind and be restored.

Having just watched a movie, “Cider House Rules,” in part about migrant workers, I share this song I recorded some time ago:

Patricia Cummings

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Friday, February 5th, 2010

Turquoise has been selected as the 2010 “color of the year.” The color does not appear on any standard Color Wheel, unless one is using the Charles Ives model. In thinking about this color, it is amazing to think of the way colors and styles go in and out of fashion. In my senior high school photo, I am wearing a turquoise sweater that I loved. There is something very special about that color.

Ives Color Wheel constructed by Patricia

A teaching tool made by Patricia Cummings to illustrate the Charles Ives color wheel that features turquoise

Pat - high school picture/turquoise sweater

Patricia wearing a turquoise sweater in a faded photo from 1969

This morning, I received an e-mail from a shop that is offering a small quilt with just square patches, some of them … turquoise! The photo showed a small wall quilt with large square, machine quilted. It is funny to have lived long enough to see colors, that were familiar in home decoration and in clothing, making a revival. Large prints were the rage in the 1950s period. I remember being mortified when my mother purchased a skirt for me that featured a bold designs with swirling purple colors on a white background in curvilinear lines. I didn’t want to wear it!

The idea of cutting squares and sewing them together is “retro,” as well. An art quilter wouldn’t be caught dead doing that. Yet, for the beginner, that type of sewing is the most comfortable way to learn. With more advanced training, quilters can attempt appliqué, curved piecing and other more advanced techniques. We all start (started) somewhere.

On Sundays, it seems that public television stations often bring back videos of bands from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, in particular. We are treated to the first performance of the Beatles in America, a show that I saw, as it was happening, and a show that fans of the Beatles now, who were in diapers then, or not yet born, can enjoy.

Themes of art, and music, often seem to be recycled. Perhaps this is true because there really is nothing unique in the human experience. Often, ideas are universal in scope. They remind of our roots and our beginnings, as does our artistic output.

To read more about color, see my file:

Have a great day!

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

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Thursday, February 4th, 2010

With great interest, I have been following the lead story out of Haiti, the plight of the missionaries who, in their do-good way, have created a pile of trouble for themselves. An old Haitian man was interviewed. He practices voodoo, as do many others in the country. He said that he cannot understand what the Christians are trying to save him from. He has his voodoo religion and that is good enough for him.

All of this reminds us that there is a fine line between “helping” or “trying to change the status quo.” Some people in this world do not want help, and any missionary is at risk of imprisonment or worse, at any time, whether they are in Africa, South America, or elsewhere. Attempting to “save” the children, in order to brainwash them with a particular brand of religion, is odious to the natives. Now, the government officials are fighting back.

At the minimum, it looks like the “leader” of the group will spend some serious jail time in Haiti. I don’t even want to think about what that experience will be like. The nine others are in jail at the moment. The Secretary of State calls the whole situation, “unfortunate.”

When an American ventures into any other country, it is wise to play by the rules. I can think of a number of examples of when Americans have found themselves in deep trouble, or have even died because they were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

As for helping, “charity begins at home.” Yet, Americans shall never be disabused of their good intentions. We all have big hearts and we open them, as well as our pocketbooks for many a worthy cause.

The latest cause is Haiti. It is the poorest country in this hemisphere. Trying to assist seems like helping old ladies to cross a street when they do not want to go. As has been pointed out many times, there is a fine line between helping anyone and overstepping unwritten boundaries.

The people of Haiti want to believe as they always have, and as their culture dictates. What is to say that the man who practices voodoo religion is not entitled to his lifelong practice? He feels that he is right when he says, “I don’t needbuy viagra Jesus. I don’t need to be ‘saved’.” To him, that is a true statement.

As for me, I will keep my money and he can keep his religion. I will mind my business and let the meddlers do as God directs them. Meanwhile, Americans are cooling their heels in jail, a great “thank you” for trying to help. In the end, arrogance will get no one anywhere. Yes, I agree with Mrs. Clinton. This is a most unfortunate situation and you can bet that it will make a few people re-think their good intentions.

God bless the children.

Patricia Cummings

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Thursday, February 4th, 2010

February is Black History Month. This year, so far, I have not heard one person try to state once again that the so-called Secret Quilt Code is fact, not the fictional story that it, buy viagra, is. Has America come to its senses? One can only hope so.

Just as escaping slaves wanted to hop on the bandwagon to be hidden under blankets or whatever and thereby make an escape to “somewhere else,” so have the charlatans grabbed onto this idea of the secret quilt code of the Underground Railroad. It did not matter that it was all a falsehood. After all, it provided a way to “clean up,” for those who found it a way to capitalize on buy viagra history.

Just dupe people into believing that they are acting in a compassionate manner and are oh-so-politically-correct. They will try to purchase just the “right” fabrics to make a “reproduction” of a quilt that never existed, and blocks that were never made for the purposes stated.

I am beginning to think that all that matters in this society is selling items based on false advertising and lies. Of course, it helps if the “big Whigs” endorse the idea.

Today, I had someone tell me that she doesn’t like books or magazines. That statement allowed me to judge the level of her ignorance with a capital “I.” Traditionally, books have been a vehicle of understanding. Take the book, “Our Nig” – yes, there is more information about it on my website, Quilter’s Muse Publications. The book is written by a mulatto woman who was an indentured servant to a well-to-do Milford, NH family who mistreated her. The life she lead was a tragedy, just as Harriet Tubman’s life was because of an injury inflicted upon her when she was hit in the head.

The hardship and suffering of African-Americans is swept under the rug, while their Caucasian counterparts make pretty quilts that have nothing to do with the escapes of Blacks, nor freedom. These same ladies, some of them, have told me that they are doing their part to save history because they love it so. For heaven’s sakes, do they read HISTORY? If they did, they might understand exactly what the “Underground Railroad” was, and if they read all of buy viagra about why the quilt connection is an impossibility, they would not feel so self-righteous in their false pronouncements.

During Black History Month, if you want to honor African-Americans, please read more about what actually happened to them, and their roots, culture, and history. Putting a quilt together, under false pretenses, is rather silly and just proves that you are a victim of your own ignorance and the blatant capitalism that surrounds this topic. God bless the child who learns to read. A world of knowledge will open unto him. Here is a link to one of the files I wrote:

This is the book that started the controversy:

Patricia Cummings

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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

For some reason, this afternoon I am thinking about the trek west from New England and all of the hardships along the way, via wagon train. When I traveled west, fresh out of the university, I flew out of Boston and landed in L.A., best as I can remember. It was different in the 1800s, as you know. Folks ventured out in wagon trains, leaving behind their family, not knowing if they would ever see them again, and many did not have that opportunity.

No matter how hard humans try to have a successful life, unexpected events happen. They are so predictable, perhaps many of these events are not as unexpected as we might think. People we love die suddenly, or die a lingering death. Either way, they exit our lives forever, leaving only a memory of them.

The news each night on television is pretty amazing. To see the suffering of the children of Haiti: the burn victims, the amputees… It is remarkable that these children are already adapting to their new found disabilities. Perhaps the adults have a more difficult time. On the minds of all is one word, “survival.”

Most of us feel immune to tragedy, until it happens. Somewhere, deep inside each of us, is a resource that we can draw upon when times get rough or confusing. One name for this element is “courage.”

I enjoy a Bill Staines’ song in which he sings, “With children on our shoulders, we’ll face another day…” The question is this, “Are we holding up the children, or are they holding us up?” They are the future. Soon. we shall be “the past.” Meanwhile, the smiles of children help us to cope.

We do not have to look beyond our own neighborhoods to find poverty, old age, and suffering. We don’t have to try hard to find someone for whom we could make a quilt, or some organization that is now using quilting as a major income source to raise needed funds. Everywhere we turn, there are quilts in hospitals, in clinics, on the web, in antique stores, in fine art galleries: made for the “well-heeled,” and for the “low brows.”

Quilts as a comfort measure have become part of our survival kit for the 21st century, whether we are making a quilt to donate, to be part of a raffle for public television, Alzheimer’s research, or some other worthy cause, or just to hang on our own walls as artifacts that are aesthetically-pleasing and representative of our own tastes.

No matter what happens, the quilting tradition is so ingrained in our culture, I do not predict that the love of quilts or quilting will go away anytime soon. Instead, I believe that, like the undaunted human spirit itself, quilts shall endure.

Patricia Cummings

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Monday, February 1st, 2010

First of all, this is not an advertisement, and I don’t mean to be a pain in the wazoo. Philosophically, I am just pondering why there are now kits so that people can make quilts to look like the quilts of Gee’s Bend. Historically, the quilts were made for warmth. The quilters there were not “celebrated” or even “noticed.” Poor people don’t get much notice. Instead, and before Matt Arnett came along to “discover them,” the quilters in that dirt poor part of Alabama were just “poor.”

Now that their quilts have attained “status” by being shown around the country and a big deal made about them, people want to emulate them? Why?

I realize that companies drive the quilt industry and dictate what they want people to buy. But this? It is just too much. Why not support the quilters of Gee’s Bend by buying a quilt made there? Do they make quilts for sale? Or has their fame made their quilts so high in price, as art treasures, that no one can afford them? Isn’t there a quilt cooperative in place in the town?

Lest the reader misunderstand me, I like the raw folk art look, the untutored sense of the original quilts of Gee’s Bend. I own the books that tell about them and the quilters there. To me, it almost seems like taking something away from the quilters to make kits of their works, sort of like trying to copy a Caryl Bryer Fallert designer quilt, buy viagray, down to the last thread, not that anyone could because her quilts are so unique.

Maybe I think too much but this situation of kits for African-American “treasures” seems over the top. I’m sorry. I just don’t “get it.” But then again, I guess I don’t have to understand. I do comprehend the aspect of money involved, and that may be the only thing that is being considered by those who made this decision to offer kits.

I’m having a hard time formulating why I reject this idea. I guess the bottomline is that I am getting tired of spin-offs, phoneys, and/or poor imitations. I’ll leave it at that.

Opinion? Write to me -
or leave a comment. I’d be interested to know what anyone else thinks.

By the way, the color combinations and designs of the kits look lovely!

Patricia Cummings

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