Allie Aller's Stanied Glass Quilts Reimagined: Fresh Techniques & Design

I have enjoyed following the Allie's in Stitches blog and thought it was time I looked at Allie Aller's book Stained Glass Quilts Reminagined.  The quilts are gorgeous. Black makes colors pop and its use as 'leading does something wonderful to colored fabric.

The three approaches used to make stained glass quilts are:

• Couched leading, sewing a thick fiber thread down around applique or pieced blocks
• Appliqued leading, sewing ribbon or trim along the seams
• Iron-on leading, using bias fabric treated with fusible web

Modern Rose Window by Allie Aller

 Allie offers ideas for pattern idea sources to develop and create an original pattern. There are practise exercises with photographs showing the steps to help quilters master the skills needed.

Silk fabrics will give the quilt luminosity, but batiks and solid cottons and even wool will also work for stained glass quilts. The fabrics must have a tight, fine weave.

Six beautiful projects are included in the book:

• Windy Sunshine, a summer throw made in pastels and an abstract block pattern
• Leaf Vine, a bed quilt with green vines on white
• Mondrian's Window, a geometric pattern  'couch quilt' 
• Window for Frank, an improvisational couch quilt inspired by the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright
• Welcome Wreath, a wool and cotton applique floral wall hanging
• Tiffany's Peacock, a classic stained glass wall hanging, seen on the book cover

The Parish Farm by Allie Aller

Allie's quilt gallery illustrates stained glass technique applied to applique, printed fabric, and pieced quilts. I had never considered couching or stich-in-the-ditch leading on a quilt before. I was pleased to see her made her own fused bias; the one stained glass quilt I made used purchased prefused bias tape, which was costly.

I recieved a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This book is available now fro C&T Publishing.

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World

Jeff Goodell traveled the world to report on how rising sea levels are impacting human society across the globe. His new book The Water Will Come takes readers to shrinking Alaskan glaciers with President
Obama and into the flood-prone homes of impoverished people living in Lagos, Nigeria.

"By that time, I'll be dead, so what does it matter?" Quote from a Florida real estate developer, The Water Will Come 

I long wondered how bad it would get before people broke down and changed how we live and do things. I consider how Americans gave up comforts during WWII rationing, all pulling together for a great cause we all believed in. I don't see that happening today.

As Goodell points out, "fossil fuel empire" Koch industries money has swayed government. Private citizens can recycle and lower the heat and ride bicycles but the impact is small. As long as governments are more worried about big business than national security endangered by climate change we can't alter what is coming.

What? you ask; national security?

Well, consider that military bases across the nation and world are located in areas that WILL FLOOD. Like the Norfolk Naval Base, the Langley Air Force Base, and NASA's Wallops Flight Facility! Along with the financial district of New York City and expensive Florida beach front homes, we will be losing the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site in the Marshall Islands, where 12,000 Americans operate space weapons programs and track NASA research.

So if the loss of Arctic ice and habitat and the Inuit way of life doesn't concern you, perhaps this information will.

So many issues are raised in the book. Consider: We have not established how to deal with climate change refugees. Where are these people going to go? Countries in Europe, along with the U.S.,  are closing borders--the same countries whose fossil energy use is the primary cause of climate change behind rising sea levels! What is their responsibility?

There are a lot of ideas of how to deal with rising sea levels, including the building of walls and raising cities. It seems, though, that people are more interested in coping with the change than addressing the root cause of climate change. We just don't want to give up fossil fuels.

The book is highly readable for the general public. Although the cover photo made me think of an action disaster movie, the books is a well-researched presentation of  "fact, science, and first-person, on-the-ground journalism."

I received a free book from the publisher through Goodreads.

Hear an interview with Goodell with NPR at https://www.npr.org/2017/10/24/559736126/climate-change-journalist-warns-mother-nature-is-playing-by-different-rules-now

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
by Jeff Goodell
Little, Brown & Company
$17.95
ISBN-13: 9780316260206

As Bright as Heaven: Surviving And Thriving

In 1918 the Bright family leaves a tobacco farm in Quakertown, PA to move to center city Philadelphia. The father is to work for his uncle's funeral parlor, which he would then inherit. They have suffered the devastating--but at that time all too common loss--of a baby. Their grief travels with them into their new life.

In the autumn of 1918 the Spanish Influenza hits Philadelphia, leaving over 12,000 dead in its wake. The mortuary fills and the uncle dies. When a daughter falls ill, the mother keeps her alive but, worn down, succumbs and dies of the disease. Friends die, and a beloved neighbor leaves for the trenches of France. Amidst all this loss, one of the daughters rescues an infant in distress in a house full of the dead, and the child becomes the family's heart and reason to go on.

The women, the mother and her four daughters, speak in alternating chapters, their unique personalities and perspectives revealed through their own words. Philadelphia has a distinct presence, although fictionalized and geographically ambiguous at times. (The cover photo shows Logan Circle with City Hall in the background.) The time period, between 1918 and 1926, covers the flu and the war but also prohibition and the rise of the speakeasy.

The story is about people who suffer great loss and live through horrible times, who carry their ghosts and demons with them, until they are able to see that life goes on and somehow the world can be bright again.

My Goodreads friends have rated this a four or five star book and found it very engaging. So I will safely say that readers of historical fiction and woman's fiction will enjoy Meissner's book.

SPOILER ALERTS

I had several issues with the writing.

I lacked emotional connection to the characters. It could be the multitude of voices, but I think it was because the story is too much told and not enough shown. For instance, one daughter develops a crush on an older man who goes to war. He is gone for the bulk of the novel, and returns at age thirty-eight and the girl is still "in love." There is not enough interaction between them to make me believe she is "in love" with him for life. It seems contrived.

I found the book preachy and full of clichéd lessons. The ex-soldier, once returned home, consoles his now grown-up lover that the war was horrible and he had to heal. All this healing happened off camera and lacks emotional impact; he is just telling her a lesson he learned. Make peace with the past, he advises. Later, the foundling brother's family is discovered to be alive. The father forgives the Brights, saying that he was angry for a long time by his losses and is finally seeing there is good in life, ending with the old chestnut of 'we are all doing the best we can with what we have'. Nothing new here, kids.

And the story wrapped up with far too many predictable and implausible outcomes. I won't even go into them. There is talk of fate and destiny and finding patterns.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Consequently, although I had looked forward to reading As Bright As Heaven, especially for its setting and the time period, I found the book an average read. For those who are not familiar with the Spanish Influenza, who like feel-good endings, and who want the horror of history softened by wish fulfillment romantic endings, this is the book for you. It was not my cup of tea.

As Bright as Heaven
by Susan Meissner
Berkley Publishing Group
Pub Date 06 Feb 2018
Hardcover $26.00
ISBN: 9780399585968

Favorite New Classics: Stoner by John Williams and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

I was thrilled to find John Williams' novel Stoner on my library book club list. Soon after I had bought a Kindle I purchased the ebook and it became one of my favorite discoveries.

Stoner is one of literature's great characters, an Everyman/Job/Willie Loman who endures life's bitter realities, often dejected but with bursts of resistance and empowerment.

Stoner was the child of uncommunicative, distant, Midwestern parents, observing their joyless life fighting the barren land to survive. His father was convinced to send him to agricultural school to learn modern methods that would perhaps make their farm successful.

Stoner is disconnected and passive until he faces the big unknowns and questions posed by literature. He struggles to understand, switching his major to English. His mentor realizes Stoner had  found something he loved.

When he learns his son will not return to the farm, Stoner's father merely replaces his son with a hired hand.

During WWI, Stoner's mentor convinces him not to enlist and abandon his studies; his duty is to keep the world from snuffing out the flame.

Stoner falls in love with a woman who 'doesn't mind' and seems to be more interested in escaping her father than desiring a marriage. Their relationship is a disaster and a disappointment to Stoner.  His wife punishes him every way imaginable, even interfering with his writing and career. He carries on, accepting rejection and isolation.

He never leaves his Alma Mater, eventually becoming a good teacher. Then a new department head promotes a gifted student who relies on charm and blarney while neglecting true scholarship and mastery of his subject. Stoner and his boss clash over the student's dissertation when he insists the student is unworthy. He will not lower his standards. Stoner is punished for not playing the game with the loss of his specialty course and only given freshman level classes.

There are moments of glory in Stoner's life.

His wife got the idea of having a child but found no joy in motherhood. She became an 'invalid', so Stoner had to care for the infant and child, cook and clean. His daughter bonds with him, and in vengeance's Stoner's wife separates them.

A graduate student falls in love with him and their relationship is carried on behind closed doors for a year. When the department chair learns of  their relatiobship, Stoner is pressed to make a decision; he cannot abandon his wife and their daughter. The love of his life moves on to her own career.

Depressed and feeling his age, Stoner plods on until one day he throws away his freshman texts and instead teaches the upper level material he has been denied. His freshman class finishes with higher scores than their peers.

One book club member used the word miserable for Stoner's life. We discussed his fatalism and acceptance, his inaction to better his life, and the reasons behind his choices and lack of action.

I drew attention to his achievements: he held to his values at any cost. He was, as a college friend pointed out early in his life, a Quixotic dreamer out of joint with the world. At the end of his life he understands and accepts his life with unexpected contentment. In his last moments, there is a clarity to his life. Stoner and his wife forgive each other, and a strange comfort envelopes him.

The book group filled the entire hour with our discussion. And that is the sign of a great book--it made us think and reflect and endeavor to probe the mystery of the human experience.

Read the New Yorker review here.

“A masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man” —The New Yorker

*****

This month I was also thrilled to reread another of my favorite 'new classics', Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winner Gilead. I read it nearly ten years ago, then reread it for a book club. I believe this is my third reading of the book. It is an affirming book that inspires us to pay more attention to the wonder of human existence.

Yes, being married to an ordained pastor who spent 30 years in the pulpit does impact my love of John Ames, a third generation pastor living in a small Kansas town. His grandfather came to Kansas from Maine during the Bloody Kansas days, a vehement abolitionist who knew John Brown. The image of his sainted grandfather was Biblical in size.

But when he returned to his pulpit with a gun and bloody shirt, preaching abolition and taking up the sword, his son went to worship with the Quakers. His pietism was also strong, and lived on in his son, John Ames.

John lost his wife and newborn baby early in life. In his years of sadness and isolation, he resorted to his books for consolation. His dear childhood friend Broughton is a neighboring pastor, once a vigorous man and remarkable preacher, now crippled with arthritis. Broughton named a son after his friend, a child to 'share.' But John Ames Broughton, known as Jack, was a troubled child prone to pranks and deviltry, culminating in an act that drove a wedge between him and John Ames.

A miracle happened to John in later life. A woman wandered into his church. He noticed her sad and quiet face. She asked to be baptized, and in time proposed that he marry her. They had a son. The joy they brought into his life is profound. But John Ames is now turning seventy-six. He has heart disease and knows his days are numbered.

The novel is John's letter to his son, to be read when he reaches adulthood. In the letter he writes about his love for his son and tells stories of their family history, his personal life, his personal theology, and Jack's story. 

Each entry is gorgeous and moving. John has suffered and struggled. Love comes late. But he is in awe and wonder at the beauty of existence. "I love this life," he writes to his son while watching him blowing bubbles with his mother.

****

Gilead is the story of fathers and sons. John Ames loves the son of his late life, and is concerned for what his life will be like growing up without a father.

John returns again and again to the journey he and his own father took during the Depression to find his grandfather's grave. The journey took many weeks across dusty roads. They were thirsty and people along the way had little food to spare them, even for cash payment.

He talks about his father's troubled relationship to his grandfather. During the days of Bloody Kansas, Grandfather was a supporter of John Brown, and perhaps had even killed a man.

Then there is Broughton's son Jack, named for John Ames to compensate John for his lost child. Broughton's children, Glory and Jack, have returned to help their elderly father. John knows Jack's failings and sins. He is distrustful of Jack. As a pastor, this causes a crisis of conscience and calling and he struggles with his inability to trust and forgive Jack.

Jack has been friendly with John Ames wife and son. He plays catch with the son while John watches, his heart too frail for activity. Should he warn his wife and son against Jack?

In his journal, John writes about his morning sermon on Abraham and Isaac, Hagar and Ishmael. John notes that Abraham, who is too old to father more sons, must trust the Lord to watch over them both, one sent into the wilderness and the other intended to be a sacrifice. And he continues,

"...any father, particularly an old father, must finally give his child up to the wilderness and trust to the providence of God. It seems almost a cruelty for one generation to begat another when parents can secure so little for their children, so little safety, even in the best circumstances. Great faith is required to give the child up, trusting God to honor the parents' love for him by assuring that there will indeed be angels in that wilderness."

At one point, John Ames spends considerable time mystifying the Fifth Commandment, honor your mother and father, as related to our relationship to God more than to community. He contends that we must see the spark of God in every human, and learning to see God in our parents is the beginning.

*****

Can people change? Is Jack a changed man? John's wife is sure that people can change. She has not shared her secret past with anyone, but John has seen the sadness in her face and known she had a hard life. What did she need to do to survive all those years before they met? She had no family, and lived through hard times. She and Jack seem to 'understand' each other; unlike John and Broughton, they have been out in the world beyond Gilead.

In the last pages of the novel Jack finally tells John why he has really returned to Gilead, the sorrow and pain of his inability to believe, and the secret heartache that has worn him down.

*****

It happened that the book club members who most loved the novel had all settled next to each other. Most wish there was a stronger, linear story line, or less theology and religion, but most appreciated the beautiful language describing the simple joys of existence and fatherly love. One woman hated the book, hated Jack, and said she hated the Prodigal Son parable he seemed based on. And another could not read about fatherly love, having been denied the opportunity himself.

It is always interesting in a book club to hear how one work of art affects people is such diverse and personal ways.

Self Portrait With Boy

Art is rooted in experience, and artists plumb their lives for their art. I think of F. Scott Fitzgerald and how he appropriated Zelda's letters and diaries and story for his work, or Thomas Wolfe whose first novel Look Homeward, Angel caused a ruckus in his hometown that was so thinly veiled in the book. And I think of Elizabeth Strout's recent novel My Name is Lucy Barton whose character is told she must be ruthless in her art. Artists are faced with telling the truth or protecting others.

On the first page of Self Portrait With Boy, we are told the main character,  photographer Lu Rile, is described as "ruthless," single minded. Lu, looking back on what happened twenty years previous, talks about the trauma behind the work that catapulted her into the limelight.

The novel begins with Lu admitting that at age twenty-six "there were so many people I had not yet become." I loved that line because it reflects how I have seen my life since I was a teenager: life as a continual process of growth and change, so that we become different people as we age.

Lu was a squatter in an old factory inhabited by artists. She worked several low paying jobs and barely scraped by. She felt like an outsider, a girl who grew up poor and does not understand the world of the well-off and well-known artists around her.

Because she can not afford anything else, Lu became her own model and every day takes a self portrait. One day, she set the timer on her camera and jumped, naked, in front of the large windows in her unheated apartment. When she developed the film she discovered that in the background she has captured the fatal fall of a child.

The child's parents became alienated in their grief, the successful artist father moving out while the mother, Kate, leaned on Lu for support. It had been years since Lu had been close to anyone. She is unable to tell Kate about the photograph.

Weird occurrences made Lu believe the boy was haunting her and she became desperate to get rid of the photograph. Lu's father needed money for surgery, and she was pressured to join the others in the building in hiring a lawyer. Lu knew her photo was an amazing work and she struggled between reaching for success and the love she felt for Kate and her admiration for Steve.

Rachel Lyon's writing is amazing. I loved how she used sights, sounds, and aromas to make Lu's world real. This is her debut novel.

Self-Portrait with Boy: A Novel
by Rachel Lyon
Scribner
Pub Date 06 Feb 2018 
ISBN: 9781501169588
PRICE: $26.00

Intuitive Color & Design: Adventures in Art Quilting by Jean Wells, Updated 2nd Edition

Jean Wells started one of  America's first quilt shops in 1975, which she runs with her daughter, quilter and author Valori Wells. She has published thirty books, including the updated, second edition of Intuitive Color & Design.  

Wells begins with the basics of design and its application to quilting then teaches how to design and complete an original quilt. Assignments throughout the book offer readers a chance to learn through experience. The book is heavily illustrated, showing inspiration photographs, finished quilts, and line drawing showing the processes.

Inspiration for Quilt Design explains how Wells uses photographs, inspired by light and lines, for the basis of her abstracted interpretations. In her chapter on Journaling she illustrates how she uses journals and sketchbooks.

In Elements of design, she shows how to create abstraction from life, and use scale, shape, pattern, texture, value, and color.  Principles of Design explains balance, center of interest, repetition, variety and proportion, unity or harmony.

Color Through My Eyes considers inspiration, palette choice, color and pattern, principles of color, value and contrast, intensity, contrast, and volume. Palettes can reflect seasons, places, or personality.

The Design Process in the second part of the book leads quilters through tools and techniques used in art quilting, including piecing techniques, choosing batting, and finishing the quilt. Piecing techniques include intuitive angle piecing, rulerless butting and piecing, narrow-insert piecing, straight-line insert, detail piecing, and corner-curve piecing. Piecing techniques used for art quilts is very different from traditional piecing. Wells offers assignments to help quilters to master them.

Finishing the edges of art quilts include raw-edge finish, using a facing, creating a fabric 'matting' behind the art quilt, and creating 3-D quilts.

Wells offers Advice on What To Do When You Get Stuck and the critique process.

Fields of Provence by Jean Wells 

This is an essential book for serious art quilters.

from the publisher's website:

Jean Wells gives you the assignment of your life: put away your ruler and use your inner vision to design and piece spectacular, free-form quilts you'd never have guessed you could create. In this updated edition of best-selling Intuitive Color & Design, Jean’s workshop assignments get your creative juices flowing, giving you challenges to expand your quilting horizons. Start by learning to see line and color; study the nuts and bolts of design; develop your color work and composition; and when you get stuck, there’s expert advice on problem solving. You will never see quiltmaking in the same way again.

• Creative exercises take your use of color, line, design, and piecing in dramatic new directions
• Use photographs and journals to find inspiration and develop your ideas with Jean’s updated, expert guidance
• Learn innovative finishing techniques to show your quilts at their best
• Classroom-proven techniques make the adventure easy for any quilter

Available now from C&T Publishers in soft cover and ebook.

Daphne by Will Boast: Fleeing from Passion

When thirteen-year-old Daphne was reading The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy she was overcome with the wild passion of teenage imagination; first a buzzing sensation lit her body and then she dropped the book and was unable to move.

It happened, too, with sudden noises, fear, or strong emotions. She hid her affliction as best she could, for Dr. Bell's infinite tests brought no cure, only an unwelcome explanation: an autoimmune disorder had attacked part of her brain.

Daphne became an expert in tightly controlling her life--no unexpected jolts allowed, no passion--just routine, and her mantra and calming images to ward off the attacks that left her immobile and vulnerable.

Until into her life came a man, sweet and kind and patient. But can Daphne allow him into her life?

I read this short novel in a day. The inspiration is the myth of Daphne, a nymph pursed by Apollo who was saved from his lust when the river god turned her into the Laurel tree.

Apollo and Daphne by Bernini

Daphne grapples with numerous challenges along with her disability. Her father died when she was only five. Her mother has finally met a man and is ready to move on with her life. Daphne feels responsibility to her support group members, her childhood best friend who takes big risks for business contacts, and to her staff at her job in a lab which uses dogs as test subjects studies in longevity. She tries to keep boundaries up and yet she would also like to free the dogs.

When life seems too much to bear, she considers her options. Should she, like her support group friend, end it all? Return home, vanquished, admitting she failed at having a life of her own? Or accept that no one is perfect?

Daphne by Will Boast is a beautifully written book that caught me by surprise. I understood Daphne's weariness at being 'different', having grown up with a mother with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis; Mom once asked me if I had been ashamed of her. For all the pain and isolation of Daphne's life, the disappointment that no one can ever really understand her reality, she is resilient.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Daphne: A Novel
by Will Boast
W. W. Norton & Company
Liveright Publishing
Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
Hardcover $25.95
ISBN: 9781631493034