No job for sissies
Quilt show reflects talent, hours of patience and dedication
EL CENTRO — Much of what you think you know about quilting is probably wrong.
Forget that image you’ve got burned in your brain from watching too many reruns of “The Waltons” or “Little House on the Prairie,” where several sweet little old little ladies would gather amicably around a stretched and framed bedspread-in-progress and serenely stitch it together.
There’s nothing serene about quilting. It involves tearing, cutting, ripping and even cussing. Sometimes lots of cussing.
Jacki Alsip has been a member of the Desert Quilters of Imperial Valley, the local quilt guild, for more than 25 years. Sunday she was at the guild’s semi-annual quilt show, held this weekend at Southwest High School. She explained the creation of one of her showpiece quilts for the weekend, based on a pattern she found called “Something Blue.”
The quilt consists of several blocks heavily employing use of a sewing technique called paper piecing. The idea is essentially to take paper shapes cut from a pattern, wrap those shapes in fabric and then stitch the fabric together. The paper gives the pieces stability and helps keep everything aligned while the pattern is being assembled. Once the pieces of fabric are stitched, the fabric is removed.
In the case of “Something Blue,” or the name Alsip gave it, “The Blue Beauty,” each block consisted of dozens of small, interlocked triangle-shaped pieces of fabric. Even for someone as experienced as Alsip, the assembly process was time-consuming and often frustrating. Her spirits were not much improved on those occasions when her pet cat, with its white fur, would elect to rest on her project, often while she was trying to work on it.
Alsip worked on the quilt off and on for about six months before it was completed. She estimates she has more than 500 hours of work into it.
“When I started it, it was the ‘Blue Beauty,” Alsip said. “By the time, I was finished, it was the ‘Blue B **** .’”
Call it what you will, it was one of about 122 quilts on display at this weekend’s event, representing the work of about 28 different artisans, many of whom can share similar tales from the quilting trenches involving similarly colorful metaphors.
Carol Sassie joined the guild about 2.5 years ago, and she’s still what would be considered a novice in the craft. What that means in quilting is that she’s spent countless hours stitching together pieces of fabric only to find that the pieces didn’t line up the way she’d hoped or that the stitches themselves were too loose or too tight. That typically means ripping all of those stitches apart and trying it again.
Quilters are very persistent that way.
“I just had to learn to enjoy ripping (seams),” said Sassie, a retired game warden who lives in Brawley. “It’s just part of the process.”
It’s also a process that can involve a lot of toys. The days of hand-stitching are largely gone. Modern technology has yielded highly sophisticated machines capable of a wide range of stitches and functions. Many quilters have multiple pieces of equipment in their sewing rooms for sewing, seaming and embroidery. Beyond that there are scissors (never mess with a quilter’s favorite shears), cutting boards, bobbins, rulers and more.
But the biggie is fabric. Quilters are packrats by nature, and they’ll buy, save and trade mountains of fabric in the pursuit of their hobby. Almost no scrap is too small. Almost no pattern can’t find a home in a larger design.
“Once you get the bug, it’s not a cheap hobby at all,” Sassie said.
Desert Quilters was founded in 1985 and meets once a month on the third Tuesday of the month. Meetings on even months are at the Senior Center at Eighth and J streets in Brawley. On odd months, they’re held at the Sts. Peter and Paul Episcopal Church at 500 S. Fifth St.. El Centro.
Workshops are provided to members once a month at the Senior Center in Brawley.
Dues are $20 per year. For more information, visit the guild’s Facebook page at www. facebook.com/DesertQuiltersGuildImperialValley.