Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Spring has Sprung!

Spring is in the air! The UPS man just brought my new rosebushes! What? I have a column due? It can’t be due yet; I just sent you one. That was four weeks ago? Hmmmm… but the weather is gorgeous outside! My daffodils, crocus, and hyacinths are blooming; this box of roses just came today. The temperature is supposed to be 74 with the sun shining! Isn’t there someway for me to just work outside today then tomorrow when it is supposed to rain, I can write the column? The printer is waiting on my column? I’m holding the whole press?
Have you ever heard parrots sing in the spring? Actually, it really isn’t singing like a canary, but they yell at the top of their lungs rejoicing on a beautiful sunshiny day like today. I love to sit in the Adirondack chair by the pond and watch them play with the new toys I got them last month at the bird fair. Oh, you don’t want an article about the birds playing? This column is for a quilting magazine, not a bird magazine. Ok…..
Spring is in the air! I know I already said it, but I’m hoping all of you north of the Mason-Dixon Line will start believing me. General Lee (our southern groundhog) didn’t see his shadow so I know spring is in the air! General Lee is never wrong!
What does General Lee have to do with quilting you ask? Well, his coat is a luscious brown. Have you noticed that brown and pink are back in vogue this year? In fact, brown with any other hot color is definitely the in thing this year!
Just as the seasons come back around so does vogueness. The first documented time for brown and pink in quilts and fabrics is the 1870s. Brown didn’t just fade away for over 100 years. It resurfaced again with rusty tones in around 1885.
Patchwork, appliqué, redwork, crazy quilting, wholecloth quilts all tend to make their appearances in a new exciting form every 15 or 20 years. My ears just perk up when someone starts asking how a designer ever came up with this new technique, then they kind of drop when the designer starts describing how she did it. Usually, the technique is not new at all, but a revised or updated version of a very old technique or pattern.
Various tools from our husbands’ workshops or even our kitchens have also inspired various quilt tool manufacturers as well. Just think if the local pizzeria hadn’t used that pizza cutter in front of a quilter, we might never have had rotary cutters!
If the local architect’s wife hadn’t been a quilter, we might not have ever had acrylic rulers to use with our rotary cutters. Architects have some of the neatest measuring and drafting tools imaginable! What is old becomes new again!
What? You still want that quilting column? Well, now that I have daydreamed the afternoon away with suppositions about what will be in vogue next year, I better get to writing!

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