Welcome to the Spiromaniacs Blog!

Welcome to the Spiromaniacs Blog!  In addition to information about my spiral quilting techniques, lately I’ve begun adding posts about my own “spin” on life and quilting.  (There, I knew I could tie it to spirals somehow!).  I hope you find your visit inspiring.

Spiral Quilt workshops (both in-person and online): New online classes are beginning in February 2010!  To see course offerings and register click here or on the link under “Blogroll” at right.  To see all my schedule in-person events and online classes click on RaNae’s Calendar.  To learn about how online classes work, click on Classroom at right.  Also check out the student gallery page.  If you’re registered for an online class, look for the class name and your name at right.  Schedule now for your show or guild so you’ll be first to present these great new designs!

To look at finished spiral quilts, click on the Inspiralling Quilts and TA DA! pages listed at right.  Then, if you’d like to learn more about the individual quilts, click on the quiltmaker’s Work-in-Progress page.  All of the quilts (except for mine) were made by people who had never made a spiral quilt before.  Quilters of all levels accepted the challenge to learn spiral quilt techniques, then design and make a quilt of their own.  I think you will agree that the results are simply amazing!  And if they can, you can!

To purchase the book Simply Amazing Spiral Quilts go to the Store, or click on the link under “Blogroll” at right.

For Spiral Quilt workshops (both in-person and online): To see course offerings and register click here or on the link under “Blogroll” at right.  To see all my schedule in-person events and online classes click on RaNae’s Calendar.  To learn about how online classes work, click on Classroom at right.  Also check out the student gallery page.  If you’re registered for an online class, look for the class name and your name at right.  Schedule now for your show or guild so you’ll be first to present these great new designs!

To sign up for the newsletter and receive a FREE PATTERN click here or on the link under “Blogroll” at right.

For current Spiromaniac news scroll down below this post.  (This one is “sticky” so it stays at the top of the page, while current news posts below it, with the most up-to-date at the top.)

I’m now on Facebook!  Click on RaNae’s Facebook to become a friend!

To write a comment to a post (here on the main page), click on “Comments” below the title.  To write a comment to a page, scroll to the bottom of that page and write in the box.  (Your comments come to me automatically as emails.) Or, send me an email at ranae@ranaemerrillquilts.com

If you find errors in the book, check the page Corrections to SASQ.  If you find one that is not listed, scroll to the bottom of the page and write a comment.  (Apologies, and thanks, in advance!)  The next printing of the book is about to happen, and many of these changes will be made.

I look forward to hearing from you!  Spiral on!

RaNae

 

After the Holidays

The Spiromaniacs muse is back! 

I love haiku — the double meanings, paradoxes and tiny poignant reflections on life contained in 17 perfect syllables.  And they are short enough that often I can compose en entire poem during Morgan’s morning walk.  Which is what happened today.  There’s something wonderfully fulfilling about knowing that no matter what else happens for the rest of the day, today I have completed a work of art.

Panettone french toast
Powdered sugar, falling snow
Wintersweet breakfast

 

The empty fridge gourmet

The origins of patchwork are in the attempt to take whatever materials happen to be available and turn them into something of beauty.  Of course, most of us quilters have long passed that point, as our voluminous stashes will attest.  However, I still love a similar challenge: turning whatever happens to be in my nearly-empty fridge into something delicious, and tonight I believe I succeeded beautifully. 

Here’s the menu, if you want to join me:
Mushroom Bread Pudding with Roasted Root Vegetables

For the bread pudding: I had a couple of eggs, a bit of milk, a few strips of bacon, a bit of parmesan rattling around in the bottom of the bottle, a scrap of cheese, a few mushrooms and some very stale, hard bread.  I chopped the mushrooms and sauteed them butter, garlic and herbs (you could use any vegies).  Meanwhile, I spread the bread in a baking pan and sprinkled it with the parmesan and grated cheese.  Three eggs got mixed with 1-1/2 cups of  milk, some salt, pepper and a dash of nutmeg.  The bacon went in the microwive until it was crispy.  When the mushrooms were done, I spread them over the bread, doused the whole thing with the eggs & milk, sprinkled the bacon on top, then covered it with foil and let it sit overnight in the fridge so the milk could soak all the way into the bread.

Tonight, I chopped into bite-size pieces some sweet potatoes, onions, carrots and parsnips that had been languishing in my crisper for a while (you can use any vegetables or potatoes), tossed them with a bit of olive oil, a dash of balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, and spread them on an oiled cookie sheet to roast in the oven while I baked the bread pudding.

40 minutes at 400 degrees later (with a couple of tosses of the vegies in the interim) out came this delicious meal.  I tossed the vegies with one last dash of balsamic vinegar and sat down to enjoy!

Now, back to quilting . . .

 

Spirals for the Holidays

And now, for a commercial break….

Spiral Holiday Wreath

Back by popular demand, this festive wall hanging is a great introduction to spirals and can be completed in a weekend. The complete kit contains fabric and pattern, as well as preprinted foundations to make the project quicker and easier than ever before.  Make one for yourself and another for someone you love! 

Click on image to purchase

 

 

Spiral Christmas Stockings

These spiral Christmas stockings are unique and irresistible — you’ll want to make one for everyone in your family!  Kits include all fabric needed for one stocking, plus translucent foundation material for foundation piecing the spirals.  The pattern appears in the 2009 Holiday issue of American Patchwork & Quilting.   If you don’t already have the magazine, purchase it in addition to the kit. 

Click on image to purchase

 

A new use for fabric bolts

I have three weeks to finish the manuscript for my book.  I’m spending some very long hours writing with the computer on my lap.  The computer, the graphics tablet and the board they sit on seem to be getting heavier by the day, but today I found a surprising solution.

I have my grandmother’s legs:  Thick.  Heavy.  Poor circulation.  When I write, I sit sideways on the couch with my legs up.  The heavy laptop isn’t helping the circulation in my legs.  And my knee and hip joints are beginning to complain too. 

This morning I looked all over the Web for a laptop cart that will hold the computer and still let me work on the couch: 30″ wide (or more) work surface that will hold the laptop and the full-size graphics tablet.  2″ (or less) wheeled base that will fit under the couch.  Lowest adjustable height 20″.  A “C” configuration that allows it to extend over my lap on the couch.  Guess what — it doesn’t exist.  (If someone finds one, please let me know!)

I considered a lap desk with legs (like a breakfast tray) but if the height wasn’t right I’d set myself up for wrist problems.  And besides, I didn’t want to wait a week for it to arrive.

So, I thought, what about adding legs to the board I’m already using?

Wood seemed the obvious choice for legs, but I didn’t want to spend an entire afternoon going to the hardware/lumber store and back, getting out all my carpentry tools, doing the project and then having to clean up.  (And besides, it is raining and I don’t have a car.) 

I wondered if I had something around the house that might work.  And that’s when I remembered the 4 empty bolts that I threw in the trash yesterday.

I made a quick trip to the basement to retrieve them, and got out a ruler, a serrated bread knife and some packing tape.  I cut off the ends of the bolts at 6″, strapped two bundles of 4 ends together with packing tape, then strapped a bundle to each end of the the board with more packing tape.  Half an hour later, here I am, happily writing away on my “new” “writing desk.”  It’s not pretty, and it’s not a permanent solution, but my legs are much, much, MUCH happier for now!  (And the price was right, too.)

And now, back to writing the book.

P.S. What creative uses have you found for fabric bolts?

 

Here we come a wassailing

Yesterday when I went out to walk the dog winter became official: it was the first day I came back inside to add another layer of clothing.  This is why people invented quilting to begin with.  (I wonder, should I make myself a pair of quilted pants for dog-walking?)

Morgan doesn’t mind the cold: she’s half golden retriever and half chow, so she grows a thick undercoat at the first sign of a falling leaf.  Her favorite place to sleep in the house all winter is a bathroom with a cold tile floor where I leave the window cracked open for her.  Conveniently, it’s also right next to the front door so she can answer to her guardian instincts as well.  Her favorite walk, no matter what the season, is a park along the bank of the Hudson River; last night the wind was whipping up whitecaps on the water, but she didn’t seem to notice the cold at all.

I did, however.  And on the way home I stopped at the grocery store where I picked up the ingredients for wassail.  If the double-layer weather wasn’t enough, the wassail definitely made it official: it’s winter.  And the holidays. (The tree, for which I bartered a copy of my book, will get decorated this weekend.  Can’t put that off till after the January book deadline!)

Wassail, if you don’t already know, is hot spiced cider or wine.  (In my family recipe the cider is not alcoholic, though it traditionally is.) If you’d like to know the history of it, you can read about it here on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassail.

So here’s my family recipe for wassail.  The name is a contraction of the Middle English phrase wæs hæil, meaning “be healthy”.  Which is accurate, because not only does it take off a chill, but it also has orange and lemon juice in it, which might be a good source for vitamin C to help ward off colds.  And it makes the house smell lovely!

Wassail

2 quarts apple juice or cider
1 small can frozen orange juice concentrate
2 quarts water
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup lemon juice
4 cinnamon sticks
15 whole cloves

Combine in a large pan and heat.  Once heated, leave it on the stove with the lid off and the heat at the lowest setting to slowly mull the spices, concentrate the juices, and scent the house.  Store leftovers in the refrigerator — save the apple cider bottle for this.  It’s better the second or third day when the flavor of the spices really permeates the juice.

And now, to those quilted pants…

 

Julie Andrews, feminist

I watched The Princess Diaries and Princess Diaries II: Royal Engagement this week as I was completing my Queen Elizabeth quilt for the new book.  They seemed appropriate under the circumstances.  And besides, I’m a sucker for “makeover” movies.

It occurred to me after watching these that Julie Andrews just may be the most sly and gracious feminist ever.  So often her characters challenge male authority (Mary Poppins, Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria, Princess Diaries) and yet she does it in such a warm and charming way that the men literally never see it coming.

Something to think about . . .

 

A smile

“She smiled.  It was a beautiful mouth.  It looked as if it had practiced smiling and kissing for the last sixty years and had reached perfection.”

 – Peter Hoeg, The Quiet Girl

 

Beyond the bend in the road

Sometimes as I walk around NYC, it strikes me that it feels much different to me today than when I moved here almost 15 years ago.  Of course, that’s to be expected, but why?  In a city that is infinitely variable and surprising, what makes the difference between the feeling of exciting discovery and the feeling of old familiarity?

I think it is this: now that I have lived here for so long, I have a map in my mind that extends beyond just what I can see.  I know what’s on the next block up- or downtown.  I’ve worked in that office building.  I’ve eaten in that restaurant.  And on and on…

With that familiarity comes the ability to predict:  I know where the subway goes.   I liked (or didn’t like) that restaurant.  I now make choices to go places or do things based on what has happened in the past.  I have developed patterns.

I love to travel.  One of the reasons, I’ve come to realize, is that I don’t have a map in my mind.  I know only what’s around me, what I can see.  There is no pattern.  Instead, there is an exciting sense of freedom and discovery in not knowing what’s beyond the bend in the road.

When you design a quilt, do you go with what you know or do you try something new?  Are you even aware of the assumptions and patterns that guide your design choices?  For example, think about gravity: it is an assumption so deeply ingrained in us that we never even give it a second thought.  But what if gravity stopped working today?  How would that affect your design choices?

Next time you set out to design a quilt (or anything else for that matter), ask yourself “what if?” and let those two little words take you beyond the bend in the road.

 

Adrenalin

We have all, at one time or another, experienced a rush of adrenalin before some big moment in our lives –  a job interview, a presentation, a performance.  When it hits, we usually experience one of two feelings: anxiety or excitement.  Anxiety is the dread of what we fear might happen; excitement is the anticipation of what we hope might happen. 

It’s not the adrenalin itself that elicits the feeling — that’s just a jolt of energy.  What determines our experience is what we expect: failure or success.

When I played the piano professionally, before every concert I had that adrenalin rush.  If I had prepared to the point where I felt that the piece was a part of me, I felt excited, revved up for a great performance.  If I didn’t have a comfortable grasp of the piece, I was terrified of giving a bad performance.  Either way I felt, that’s usually what happened.

Have you ever noticed how many times an Academy Award winner will say in their speech “I’ve imagined this moment my whole life?”  That expectation didn’t magically hand them a golden statue, but it did determine the choices they made every day of their lives that eventually got them to that point. 

What are your dreams and expectations — whether it’s a quilt you want to design, or an improvement you want to make in your life?  Make the choices today that will prepare for them happen.  Then, when your adrenalin-rush moment happens, it will be a thrill you’ll always remember — with pleasure.