Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Flea Market Finds

I grew up in Royal Oak, MI in the Detroit suburbs. For over 40 years my family has been going to the Sunday flea market in downtown Royal Oak. Over the years we have discovered some real jewels there. A few years back we got five Mid-Century Modern bar stools for $50! Sometimes I get vintage hankies, or a great book. Some Barbie doll clothes found there became part of my Barbie quilt.

This week I found a pile of quilts from the Eastside of Detroit. The seller was clearing out a house for someone. He found an attic trunk full of quilts! He also had sewing patterns, dress forms, and various other items from the house.


Detroit is the poster child of Rust Belt decay. One writer called the Eastside an urbane prairie. All over Detroit you find empty houses, vast blocks denuded of houses, and areas of high crime and low hopes. You see the photos of these lovely bungalows from the early 20th century, abandoned and falling apart, and it breaks your heart. The Eastside has the highest crime rate in Detroit. Looking at these quilts I saw a woman's hope and dreams, joy in creativity and beauty, who made something out of scraps and loved them enough to keep them safe in a trunk.

I had already purchased a quilt indoors before I discovered this wondrous stash and was broke. He was selling the quilts for $25 to $40. So I ran to the bank and got some cash and ran back to the market.

I bought two quilts. One is a trip around the world and the other a scrappy Lemoyne Star variation. The quilts were all primitive in workmanship and the quilting consisted of large stitches in a fan shape.


Both had blocks that were hand stitched  There were many areas where the stitches were loose or broken. But there was no fading to the fabrics. I loved that they shared several fabrics in common: a red and white gingham, a pastel print with stripes and a wavy dark line, and a floral print with pink and white background and a purple flower.


I sewed up the loose seams and gave them a much needed washing.

The Lemoyne Star was different from what I have seen, as each arm of the star consisted of two fabrics. The blocks are riotous and discordant. Sometimes the fabrics make up a star, and sometimes they do not. Some fabrics were from dresses, others are pants or suiting weight. I adored the big strawberry print on gingham.


The first quilt I found and purchased was adorable, a Triple Sunflower with a prairie point edge and yellow sunflowers with blue sashing.

Some times the green stems met the flowers. Some times they did not!

All the quilts had muslin backing and cotton batting.

My previous trip to the flea market I found a $10 quilt top, a simple nine patch. The setting blocks have a small check with yellow centers.



The seller was going back to the house to find more treasures and will be back at the flea market next Sunday. I will be there! There is another quilt or two I hope I can get to first.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Sending my Heart to Lancaster, PA

This week I shipped my quilt "I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet" to Paducah, KY. They will then take it to Lancaster, PA to appear in the American Quilt Society quilt show there next month.

I Will Lift My Voice Like A Trumpet when it appeared in a quilt show in Muskegon, MI

I had only entered one juried show before--the World Quilt and Textile Show which travels to different venues. My Barbie Quilt appeared in their Lansing, MI show. I have some quilt pics on My Quilt Place (http://myquiltplace.com/profile/NancyBekofske), which is part of the AQS website, and received an email from AQS inviting me to submit quilts for consideration. I knew that this quilt needed to be seen, and submitted my entry.

It was exciting to find an acceptance letter in the mail. Then my stomach flipped over and I decided I was not sure my quilt was 'up to' coming out in public. Especially I hated the binding job I had done, which was too thick and awkward.

I had recently found a great binding tutorial online, and it motivated me to rebind my quilt. (quilt.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2hWQ5-ZccE&feature=share)  I spent a day removing the original binding. Then another day preparing the new binding, another to sew the binding on, and two more to hand sew down the back side of the binding. The new narrower binding made the quilt look SO MUCH BETTER!

And yet taking my quilt to the post office, I felt nervous. Would it get lost out there? Would people see all the technical flaws in workmanship? Hopefully, the message of the quilt, honoring the sometimes forgotten women who risked everything to make their voices heard for freedom, is what viewers will remember.

After learning Redwork embroidery by making Michael Buckingham's pattern for The Presidents quilt, I had designed a quilt of the First Ladies. At that time I was disturbed to realize that, at that time, only European Caucasians were represented on these quilts, and I wanted to do something that celebrated America's broader and more inclusive heritage. I considered various themes before emailing a local college professor of African American history. She told me about a book, Freedom's Daughters, which she used in her course.

 The President's Quilt, on which I learned Redwork. I added a border of new and traditional blocks.


Detail of my Remember The Ladies, my original quilt of the First Ladies and my second Redwork Quilt

I had been reading Life Up Thy Voice by Mark Perry, about Sarah and Angelina Grimke', and had already read about Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, and Harriet Tubman. Lynne Olson's book, Freedom's Daughters, The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970 was just what I needed to read. The stories of these women, many of whom I had never heard of, were inspiring. I was too young to understand the battles that had occurred in the early Sixties. I did not read newspapers, or watch tv news, or hear about current events in the classroom when I was ten years old. It was not until the Detroit riots the summer I turned sixteen that I became aware of Civil Rights and the fight for equality in America.

So this quilt was a part of my self-education as I read about these women and designed the quilt.

Now it is out of my hands, and open to the world.

Monday, February 11, 2013

Les Miserables


When I was growing up, I would go shopping with Mom. She would buy me Golden Books, and when I was older, gave me a quarter to buy comic books. I could get two comics, or one Classics Illustrated. The Classics soon became my favorites to buy,. And of all the tales, my favorites were The Count of Monte Christo, Lord Jim, and Les Miserables.

I was in sixth grade when I encountered a dusty old volume of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables on the shelves of the school library. I took it home and trudged through it, quite overwhelmed. Each year after that I tackled it again, and each time understood a little more.

After viewing the new movie version of Les Miz, I was inspired to revisit the novel. I had not read it since I was fourteen. I obtained a free version for my Kindle. The book was still quite formidable, with all the French history and untranslated French. This reading, I endeavored to follow Hugo's diversions into history, which includes the Revolutions of '93, the Battle of Waterloo, the revolution of 1830, the rise of the convents, and the construction and reconstruction of the sewers of Paris.

Reading the novel as an adult, and as a more sophisticated reader willing to follow more than the plot line, was very rewarding. I was moved to tears by Hugo's retelling of the Battle of Waterloo, seeing the Calvary charge and tumble into the hidden ravine which became their graves, forever changing the landscape. The horrors of the prison system, the harsh realities of the convent, and the poverty that made girls old before their time were all presented in chilling detail. 

My favorite chapter is not one in the musical, or the movies, or the condensed retelling of the novel. The chapter is not essential to the plot line, and would be considered 'bad writing' by today's ideals of story telling. It tells of two tangential characters, the small brothers of Eponine (the Threnardier's daughter who loves Marius and dies at the battlement) and Gavroche (the gamin who gathers cartridges at the battlement and is shot, brother to Eponine). Unwanted by their mother, they are 'rented out' to an unmarried woman whose sons have died, so she may continue receiving support from the father of the deceased boys. The boys have returned home to find their 'mother' missing, as she has been arrested. They are given a paper with an address, but they cannot read and it becomes lost, leaving the boys wandering the streets. 

Gavorche, unaware they are his brothers, takes them to his home in the massive and decrepit Elephant of the Bastille for the night. He has bedding surrounded by wire mesh, and at night the boys hear the rats endeavoring to gnaw their way to them. The next day, Gavroche returns the boys to the street with instructions to met him at the elephant at night.


A good history of the monument can be found at http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2012/04/les-mis-update-and-elephant.html


But the funeral of a hero of the Revolution sets off the simmering rebellion and Gavroche and the boys become separated. The children find themselves in the Luxembourg Gardens. Hugo's glorious language describes the beauty of the park after the rain, a place of sunlight and glory.

On the 6th of June, 1832, about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated, was charming. . . .The statues under the trees, white and nude, had robes of shadow pierced with light, these goddesses were all tattered with sunlight, rays hung from them on all sides . . . in this marvelous expenditure of rays, in this infinite outpouring of liquid gold, one felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible, and, behind this splendor as behind a curtain of flame, one caught a glimpse of God, that millionaire of stars."

Such glorious language! Such sumptuous glory! What a setting for what comes next.

"In the garden of the Luxembourg...two children were holding each other by the hand. One might have been seven years old, the other five. The rain having soaked them, they were walking along the paths on the sunny side...they were pale and ragged; they had the air of wild birds. The smaller of them said: " I am very hungry."

Into the park comes a bourgeois with his son, who is holding a brioche.The boy is sated. The father has been instructing the boy on life.  He sees the lost children, and ignores them.They have no place in this garden, they are ugly realities he chooses to ignore. He tells his son to throw the bread to the swans, as it is good to be kind to animals. After the father and son leave, the older boy reaches into the pond, vying with the approaching swan for the bread. He dredges up the sopping mess, and giving the larger part to his smaller brother, instructs, "Ram that into your gullet," having already learned the lingo of the streets from their time with Gavroche. We never hear of these children again.

This gem of a story reveals all of human frailty. How circumstances throw us into a fate we did not deserve. It tells of our turning away from the evils we see, perpetuating and condoning even the starvation of a child. If we cannot feel kinship and pity for Jean Valjean, or Fantine, or Cosette, or Eponine and Gavroche, we must feel for these two tots lost and starving in the midst of the Garden.

Hugo writes this of his novel:
The book which the reader has before him...in its entirety and details [is a] progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life, from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God.

Throughout this novel, love and pity change lives. The Bishop is the first person ever to show compassion to Jean Valjean, saving his life when he gives him the candlesticks and tells the police that the galley slave and convict did not steal the silver. Jean as M. Madeline reclaims his life for good. He shows pity for Fantine, and thereby finds love in the shape of the child Cosette, changing Jean's life again with new purpose. Jean having turned to love and God and the right, even spares the life of the policeman Javert. And finally, his love for Cosette brings him to save Marius, her beloved, which is a great sacrifice as he knows it means he will lose Cosette. She will no longer be his, and his alone. And in the end, Jean separates himself from Cosette by telling Marius the truth about himself, knowing his discovery as a convict is inevitable and would destroy Cosette's happiness. His death clutching the crucifix is an interesting metaphor, for Jean Valjean has sacrificed himself continually throughout the book.

I believe I will read this novel once more, in book form with a good translation and great footnotes. Reading it over 50 years, seeing the many movie versions, I realize I have barely begun to understand Hugo's full vision and message. Many years ago the question was discussed of what five books would you take with you to a desert island. Perhaps Les Miserables would be one of mine.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Memory Quilts

This month my father-in-law passed away. He was 96 and had Macular degeneration. We all knew his life had lost it's meaning after the death of his wife in January four years ago.

I brought home Herman's shirts to make a memory quilt. I made my first memory quilt after my mother died in 1990. Mom was 57 years old when she learned she had cancer, and died two weeks later. Mom was a painter and had a collection of plaid shirts which she wore when painting. I turned these shirts into quilts for my grandmother, my aunt, and myself.

I found an fan block called Dobbin's Fan which I used to make two quilts for Mom's sister.An adaptation of this pattern was accepted to appeared in Quiltmaker Magazine. That was an exciting day!  I also had a Christmas tree pattern accepted after that.


A simple four-patch with an appliqued heart used two plaid fabrics from Mom's shirts. This was the second quilt I ever made. I was still doing everything WRONG when I started. Then a quilter taught me the basics. You can see my progress in this quilt as my applique and quilting stitches improved.


I made a lap quilt for my grandmother using blue and beige shirts.This was also made withing my first year of quilting. I used the Sho-Fly block.


I made this Flying Geese quilt for my dad using some of Mom's shirting fabrics but mostly new fabrics. I choose the feather print first and coordinated the scraps. After I finished, I was told it was an ambitious pattern for a new quilter to tackle. At this time, I was using templates and not rotary cutting and easier techniques that developed shortly afterwards!

After her death, I used my mother-in-law's hand work to make memory pillows for the family. Laura did amazing work, and embellished every shirt and sweatshirt she owned, as well as finger tip towels. I used the shirt fabrics,  Laura's handkerchiefs, and rick-rack and buttons from Laura's craft room.


Making a quilt from men's shirting fabric has been around for centuries. I have several  in my collection. This one was made from factory remnants and printed markings appear along the edges of some blocks. It is a summer quilt and is reversible.


A quilter friend uses men's shirts to make amazing one-patch quilts for charity. She buys the shirts at the end of rummage sales and likes stripes with bright  background colors, like yellow, pink and green.


Herman's shirts were to be donated to charity, along with most of his few possessions. Living in a small apartment in assisted living, and being blind, he left behind little. His real legacy lives on in his three sons and  grandchildren. But it is nice to have something tangible as a constant reminder of those who have shaped our lives and made us who we are today.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Santa's Book of Fun


For something completely different, here are some vintage coloring book pages! 
I found this coloring book last summer for 50 cents. 









Don't you love these old illustrations? They sure bring back memories to me!

Have a wonderful holiday season!

Sunday, December 2, 2012

If Pat Conroy Likes It, I Should Read It

The last two books I have read had one thing in common: a blurb on the back cover by Pat Conroy. And since I liked these books, and have always enjoyed Pat Conroy's books, I suppose that in the future when considering a book, I should first check and see if Pat has a quote on the back cover.

First I read Rick Bragg's memoir, "All Over but the Shoutin'."  In the blurb, Conroy calls it one of the best books he's read, a work of art. If "art" is that which reflects to us our lives but in a way which makes sense our of the chaos, I would agree that it is a work of art.

Rick is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist. His writing style is beautiful, and his stories moving. In the second paragraph he claims, "This is not an important book. It is only the story of a strong woman, a tortured man and three sons..."  later he states that he had "put off" telling this story for ten years, because "dreaming backwards can carry a man through some dark rooms where the walls seem lined with razor blades."

And so Bragg begins to delineate the story of his family, about a beautiful woman who loved a man damaged in the Korean conflict and went down the the self-destructive path of alcoholism. How the man abandoned his family, and the woman picked cotton to clothe and fed her three sons.

Rick Bragg is not a Depression-era child. We are used to hearing these stories from that time period. But to read about someone my younger brother's age growing up in poverty rearranges my view of the world.

Bragg calls himself lucky, just a guy in the right place at the right time. His climb up the ranks, from writing sports stories for the local paper to feature writing at the New York Times is presented without bravado, not a jot of egoism sneaking through the words.

Bragg's descriptions of life in Haiti are chilling. While on the staff of the United Methodist Committee on Relief, my husband had visited Haiti several times between 1985 and 1989. Bragg's first trip was in 1991. Bragg writes, " I had come to believe that I was good at one thing, writing about people in trouble. As it turned out, I was a rank amateur  I didn't know what misery was, but I would learn." Bragg was over-whelmed by the poverty and garbage, death and despair around him. Three years latter he returned to find "not much had changed." Political upheaval and deadly repercussions still ruled the lives of  the citizens. The poor were still maimed-- or killed, their bodies stolen and held for ransom.

Real Life rarely has happy endings tied up nice and neat. So it was sweet to read about how Bragg repaid his mother's sacrifice by purchasing her a home of her own. "And I am grateful I could give her this much, before more time tumbled by lost. There ain't no way to make it perfect. You do the best you can for the people left..."

Bragg's father, on his death bed,  asked his sons to see him, and he tries to make amends for years of abandonment. He tells his son, "It's all over but the shoutin'."

The second book I read last month was "America, America" by Ethan Canin.  I bought the book for 50 cents at Big Lots. It sat on my shelf for at least a year. I picked it up and fell in love. I did not want to read it too fast, yet did not want to put it down.  In his blurb, Pat Conroy confesses  "I love this book." Well, Pat, I do too. I finished it over a week ago, and the characters and images live in my mind's eye as if I had lived the story myself.

Corey, the son of a blue-collar, working class man,  shares his father's high standards of careful workmanship. While helping his father replace a drain, and saving the roots of an aged oak tree, he is noticed by Liam Metery, who has inherited the wealth accumulated by his Gilded Age grandfather. Corey is asked to help around the Metarey estate, and as Liam Metary and his family come to respect Corey, he is invited into their lives.  Liam himself is a man who loves workmanship, and the simple pleasure of hands-on industry. He is also a progressive liberal who decides to back the great Liberal senator from New York State, Henry Bonwiller, in his run for the presidency in 1972.

As Corey becomes involved with the behind-the-scene machinations of politics, his world widens. Corey is especially taken by a journalist, who becomes his role model, leading him to his life's work in journalist. Corey is also affected by Liam's dreams of a better country, the end of the war in Viet Nam, and a government that aligns itself with the common man's good. Liam recognizes the boy's potential, and assists him with a scholarship to a private school, and later leaves him money for a Harvard education.

The fairy tale unravels, dragging Liam and Corey into the ambiguous black hole created by Bonwiller, and their loss of innocence reflects the national loss of idealism in the 1970s.

What would you do to protect your most sacred dream? How reliable are the human vessels in whom you place your dreams? Can you live with the knowledge that you have compromised yourself?

One reviewer I read thought that the title "America, America" should be heard like a sigh for what might have been, knowledge of what has been lost.




Monday, November 5, 2012

My Green Heroes Quilt: Lois Gibbs

After completing my First Ladies quilt "Remember the Ladies"  I decided to make a series of  quilts on American leaders. I did complete "I Will Lift My Voice Like a Trumpet" which portrays women abolitionists and Civil Rights Workers. Life and several moves got in the way, but I finally  finished a quilt top for Ecology Heroes...Only because I found a wonderful website that offers information sheets and line drawn portraits for use in teaching, Better World Heroes (http://www.betterworld.net/heroes/ ).  I wanted to focus on American heroes, so I had to forgo using some favorite leaders, including Jacques Cousteau and Jane Goodall. I added a few that were not included on that website, such as Annie Dillard, whose Pilgrim at Tinker Creek impressed me so much when it was published.

I wanted to try a modern color scheme, and so chose green fabric and black embroidery thread.


I found a leaf print that added colors, including red, and set in a small border of red and green woven plaid. The blocks sat and languished for a year. I hope I get it quilted before another year goes by!

One of my favorite people on this quilt is Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal mom and activist.



Love Canal is not far from where I grew up in Tonawanda, NY. On Sunday afternoons we would drive to Niagara Falls and be back in time for dinner.

This part of New York is an industrial center. When we went to visit my cousins on Grand Island in the Niagara River,  we passed the Ashland Oil refinery which lined the road near the Grand Island Bridges. It smelled! In front of our house was an Ashland gas station which my grandfather had built in the late 1940s. My family sold the house and station in 1963, and several years later they were torn down and an apartment building was built on the site..

We'd go boating on the Niagara River and pass industrial sites of all kinds. The Tonawanda dumps, where my dad used to go as a kid, was full of hazardous waste. Uranium from  the Manhattan Project, the development of the atomic bomb, was dumped there! (We actually own a painting found in the Tonawanda Dump in the early 1970s.  I wonder if we should get it tested for radioactivity!)

The Linde Air Products plant was near the housing project in Sheridan Park where my mom grew up. Known as 'the Projects,' the duplexes housed the influx of workers for the war plants. My grandfather was an engineer at a Chevy plant. A 2001 report by Don Finch of F.A.C.T.S. states that  the Tonawanda problems  is not "as bad as the Love Canal findings of the 1970s" but he sees the entire Western New York area as a chemical wasteland. "If you move here you have a choice. Do you want to live on top of radioactive, toxic, or heavy metal materials?" The area's cancer cases were 10% higher than expected.
 http://factsofwny.org/fundmtls.htmhttp://westvalleyfactsofwny.org/chrono.htm

sitemap.gif (13k) Click to download

Love Canal began as a scheme to connect the Niagara River with Lake Ontario. Money ran out and water filled the site. In the 1920s, the canal became a City of Niagara dump. In the 1940s, the U.S. Army used the dump, including for waste from the Manhattan Project. Hooker Electrochemical Company also used this site as a dump until 1953. Hooker sold the property to the City of Niagara for $1. In 1955 the City of Niagara built a school on the property, and a second on was built a year later.And in 1957 the Love Canal housing project was built.

In 1976 reporters found toxic chemicals in sump pumps in the area. Birth defects and health problems were reported at higher than normal levels. On August 2, 1978, Lois Gibbs founded the Love Canal Homeowners Associations. The activists fought for four years until President Carter allocated government funds to Love Canal clean up. Nearly 900 families were relocated, and reimbursed for their lost homes. Congress passed the Superfund Act because of Love Canal.

In 1981 Lois created the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice.She proved that through activism, people can change the world.

Hooker Chemical also left behind a polluted area in Montague, MI, where we lived for four years. The site was fenced off, but it had not been cleaned up  Residents there were concerned that in the future people would forget its history, and build there.

My parents both died of cancer. When mom was diagnosed in 1990, at age 57, she was asked if she had been exposed to toxins, and she thought of Love Canal and the polluted corridor of Western New York.

For more information on Lois Gibbs:
http://chej.org/about/our-story/about-lois/
http://www.fredonia.edu/convocation/gibbsbio.asp