A Rant About Copyright Rants

Unless you've been bound and gagged and locked in a "naughty box" by your significant other for the past couple of months (I don't know what you people get up to in your spare time, but I'm not judging), then you are surely aware of all the hullabaloo and folderol surrounding the issue of copyright in the world of quilting. Everybody who's anybody (and probably a lot of people who aren't) has weighed in on the topic. I thought that the tidal wave of umbrage and pseudo-legal opinions had passed, but, no. I just read two more this morning. A dead horse will keep on twitching as long as there are bloggers out there to get indignant about it.

There are a lot of things that bother me about some of these rants that keep ending up in my email inbox, but the main one is how, after soapboxing grandiloquently about laws that, as far as I know, may not even exist, people are now starting to call for civility. "Let's all remember that, when all is said and done, we are all sisters. And brothers. Well, some gay brothers—not that there's anything wrong with that—and a few heterosexual brothers who are totally welcome too. So let's stop calling each other names like 'stupid meanie-pants' and 'booger-butt.' "

Please. For the love of all that is good and holy in this world, do NOT stop calling each other "stupid meanie-pants" and "booger-butt." Because if quilters stop saying stupid stuff on the internet, what will I have to write about? I'm not just a humorist, I'm a satirist, for god's sake, and if people don't act like asshats, I won't have any ridiculous attitudes to lampoon. And besides, you know me. I think people are entirely too tame. I'm willing to bet that you cannot find one comment on any blog anywhere on this topic where somebody has called someone else a "fucking copyright whore." Nope, not there. I checked.  (They must have deleted my comment.)

I can't help it. I love controversy in the world of quilting, and though it has made me some enemies, I'm still going to point it out and laugh at it when it happens. I think that we have to laugh at ourselves and our  little quilter squabbles in order to move on from them and to ultimately learn from them. And because, if we don't, we're all just a bunch of cocksucking booger-butts.

Still alive, with significantly flatter ass

I am beginning to understand why they say sitting at a desk all day, every day, shortens one's lifespan. I'm pretty sure that as a result of my efforts to design the first issue of Generation Q Magazine, I will die a good ten years earlier than I would have otherwise. My back hurts. My neck hurts. My right wrist is a mess. My eyes are always burning. It's fucking awesome.

I'm dead serious. Even though I feel like a big blob of pain, I am having the time of my life. I probably won't say that next weekend, as we approach deadline, but in general, I'm truly enjoying the work. And it has gone the way so many things I do has. At first, I approach the project thinking, "There's no way. There is no way in hell that I can do this. Why the fuck are they making me do this? Idiots. I told them I couldn't do it, and now I have to go through the process of failing and then telling them I'm failing and then go crawl in a hole because I let everybody down even though I TOLD them I couldn't do it."

And then I do it.

The mag is well over halfway done, and every time I take a moment to scroll through the pages and look at it, I think, "That there looks like a real magazine." I honestly don't think it looks like people are gonna pick it up and go, "This was obviously made by a middle-aged woman in between obsessing about her weight and telling children that boogers belong on tissues, not on fingers." That falls somewhere between projectile vomiting in horror and disgust and having spontaneous, multiple orgasms on the scale of How People Will React To Seeing The First Publication I Ever Designed All By Myself.

I even managed to write my column for it, and I was pretty sure that wasn't gonna happen either. Then the good old internet came to the rescue with all kinds of inspiration. I think it turned out pretty good and there's even a little eye candy to go with it. Ah, it's good to be a magazine designer!

I even ended up doing photography. All the quilts for our projects need flat shots as well as "lifestyle" shots, so that you get a pretty picture of the quilt "in use" as well as a view of the entire quilt. Unfortunately, some of our shots didn't work out in the original photo shoot and they couldn't be shot again, and I start to get twitchy when I can't be there to control everything. "Are you using enough light? Don't rely on ISO to make up for low light—it'll just end up grainy. Can you do it outside? You have to make sure it's perfectly flat and you have to make sure your camera is parallel. Hey! Where are you going?" Turns out, Jake was going to the FedEx office, because she sent me all the quilts. So then I had to suddenly come up with a way to get flat shots.

Often, people with put quilts on the floor and then find a way to get above them and shoot down, but that is fraught with problems unless you have a very specific set-up. I decided the quilts needed to go on the wall, but then, well, I needed a wall. Naturally, the only wall in my house that is suitable is in my sewing room/office, where George hangs:

So, David and I broke down all my sewing tables on the other side of the room and moved the sofa over to where they used to be, then George got re-hung in between the two windows on the west wall (and when the kids first saw what we had done, their first question was "Where's George?" followed quickly by "When are you going to put it all back exactly the way it was because we liked that better?"). After we moved George, Devon felt a need to show her support for the project:

Then I had to figure out how to get something on the walls that I could pin entire finished quilts to. After a couple false starts, I finally got a phone consultation with a wonderful woman known far and wide as Shortbread Sam. Shortbread Sam is a friend of Jake's and now she's a friend of mine AND THAT IS JUST THE COOLEST THING. Honestly, the idea that I have all these people whom I've never even met in person just kills me. I love it. Anyway, Sam suggested good old posterboard and these 3M Command strips that are used for hanging pictures. Nine panels of posterboard and nine packages of 3M strips later, I had a wall. I got some cheap reflector lamps from Amazon as well as some very bright, daylight balanced light bulbs, and set up my tripod.

The background gets completely Photoshopped out, so the seams in between the boards don't matter. It's not perfect, and doesn't really work well for very large quilts, but it did acceptably well for the smaller ones.

A few days after getting my boards set up, I got a package in the mail from Sam. She has made these super cute buttons and she sent me a whole set:

"Sewinatrix" immediately found a home on my purse. Sam will be selling these on Etsy soon, so keep checking her blog to find out when they go up. Sam is also letting me test her paper piecing patterns for letters. I want to make a big, inspirational message quilt for my sewing room. You know, something with a quote or saying that will keep me going when my ass hurts and my carpal tunnel is acting up and I just think I can't take any more goddamn quilts. So, it's going to say: RIDE IT LIKE YOU STOLE IT. Cheers me right up every time I think about it.

Anyway, thanks for being patient with me while I am "on leave," as it were, to work on this project.

Alive. Thank god.

I am still alive, y'all, but barely. I've been putting in long hours on the magazine, which, combined with the time I can't work on it because my parenting duties take precedence and thus are also work hours, means I have been working 15–18-hour days and only managing about 5 hours sleep a night somehow. It caught up with me on Friday and I was so tired I could barely stand up, so I've tried to catch up on sleep and get a little R&R this weekend (swimming, watching The Descendants and eating). I'm feeling better today so I'm hard at work, but then I get a Facebook message from a high school friend who wanted to let me know that my high school boyfriend was ill. The little bit of research I could do suggests that he has cancer and that things may not be going to well for him right now. A student of his, on one of those "rate my professor"-type sites, said that he told his class he was dying shortly before he left permanently.

It was such a typical teenage story, and someday, when I have time, I will write it all out, but suffice to say he was my first everything and I thought I loved him, and he thought he loved me, until he didn't anymore. But while he did, he was my adventure. Like me, he wasn't blessed with grace or good looks, but was smart and creative. I think of him every once in a while, and when I do it is always with that sweet and boundless affection that is as much for the kid I was then as for the kid he was. The kind that sort of floats out into the world with no place to land because he and I have no connection anymore. I haven't spoken to him since high school. I never friended him on Facebook, and now I am glad I didn't, because I would feel compelled to, like so many people have done in the last few days, post some weak message on his wall that he may never be able to read and that doesn't even remotely say what I really feel, which is this:

Tim, thank you for noticing me, for flirting with me, for sticking notes in my locker and and asking me to prom. Thank you for all the furtive things we did in ridiculous places. Thank you for giving me your poetry, all bound in your dad's shop. Thank you for breaking my heart, and helping me grow up just a little. I did love you, the way only a 15-year-old girl can, and I still love you now, the memory of you, the way a 42-year-old woman happy in herself and her life can. I wish you peace.

Article alert

Okay, right now I am up to my eyeballs in panic and despair because SOME PEOPLE decided to go ahead and participate in the GenQ Kickstarter campaign and we met our goal in NINE DAYS. And so now I have to make a magazine. It is not like I actually know how to do this. Yes, I once worked at a magazine and did layout and design there, but the template had already been set up, and it was very easy for me to just fart around and learn as I went. Then I had to go and open my big, fat mouth to my GenQ cohorts and go, "Oh, yeah, I'm kinda familiar with InDesign. I could probably work up a logo." And from there they went "FREE GRAPHIC ARTIST" and now I am designing an entire magazine even though I have protested and told everyone I not a professional and I'm pretty sure I will probably end up designing an erectile dysfunction medication brochure instead of a quilting magazine.

So, right now, most of my "free" time is spent trying to design and layout a magazine in time to get it printed before Spring Market. And still, I managed to produce a fairly sizable piece of writing for GenQ today, the real, unexpurgated story of my first quilt. It's not technically a humor piece, but, you know me, so there's a couple chuckles in it, I suppose. Go here if you want to read it.

So, to everyone who pledged money - thank you. I hope that when you receive your copy of the Generation Q Erectile Dysfunction Medication brochure, you feel that your pledge was worth it. I will try to check in here and on Facebook when I can, but please forgive me if my appearances are spotty. And as I told everyone on FB, I will make it up to you by telling you long and completely made-up stories about all the famous quilters I meet at Market.

In addition to designing the damn thing, I am also expected to write something for it. Naturally, my mind is a total blank. So, what do you think my first humor article in the first issue of GenQ should be about? I'm starting to worry that I've covered everything and there's nothing left to make fun of, but I know you're a resourceful group. What do you think I should write about? Other than wieners?

Ain't that a kick in the head?

Many of you who read this humble blog are aware of and read the other project in which I play a small part: Generation Q. For those who are unfamiliar, Generation Q, or GenQ as we like to call it around GenQ HQ, is an online magazine launched last summer by Jake Finch and Melissa Thompson Maher, the fine ladies who thought it was a good idea to publish whatever the hell I felt like writing every other month in Quilter's Home, where they were co-editors-in-chief. Of course, Quilter's Home bit it, most likely due to the fact that I wrote articles about the inevitable zombie apocalypse and once used the phrase "appliquéing penises all over Jesus."

You would have thought that when they decided to strike out on their own and create a new lifestyle magazine for contemporary and modern quilters that they would stay the hell away from me, but no. They asked me to come on board and I took on the role of Creative Director and Resident Humorist. We launched our website last July and I have written more ramblings for them every month since. But our goal has always been to get back into print. As Creative Director, I will be working on the actual design and layout of our first issue, an issue we hope to have printed by Quilt Market in Kansas City in May and on newsstands by July.

But the thing is, we are trying to do this without backing from a large, corporate entity. See, just about every quilt magazine out there is owned by some massive publishing conglom-co, which has its advantages money-wise, but can also result in tired, watered-down, same ol'-same ol' content. We want to do this independently, which will allow us to keep our voice and our vision. We won't be beholden to corporate overlords that don't understand the market, that don't get that there are quilters out there who want something fun and who just maybe like to read something thought-provoking or have a laugh while they get inspired by a cool pattern or fabric.

But, of course, none of us has any money. That's because none of us have jobs. What we do have is a shitload of talent, experience, and drive - and a passion to create something that reflects the newest waves in quilting.

To that end we have launched a Kickstarter campaign. If you are not familiar with Kickstarter, it is a web site where people with projects to fund can raise money. But it's an all-or-nothing proposition. You set a fundraising goal and set a deadline. If enough people pledge money to meet that goal before the deadline, you get the money. If you fall short, you don't. So, if you pledge, you will not be charged the amount of your pledge until and unless the goal is met. If not, you are never charged. And you are not expected to just donate money out of the goodness of your heart. You get something for your dollars - from a copy of the magazine, to a subscription, to an actual quilt made by one of us (probably not me, but you never know!).

So, if you can, please at least take a look at our Kickstarter page. There's even a video, and if you wait a couple minutes, there's a section with me in it, desperately trying not to look bloated and consumptive. When I showed my husband the video, and he got to the end of my part, he burst into applause and demanded the link so he could show "everybody I've ever met." You know a man loves you when he wants to show off his wife desperately trying not to look bloated and consumptive.

Obviously, I am shilling for dollars here. I know damn well that money is tight for all of us, but I hope that many of you will find even a $5 or $10 donation worth it. And I'll give you one final reason why helping to fund this publication is a good thing: I SAVE MY BEST SHIT FOR PRINT.

The Garment District

I was full of grandiose plans to lose 20 pounds before Market, but that hasn't happened because of being sick for so long. I still start coughing and hacking if I get the least bit winded, so exercise is out and then I feel sorry for myself because I am still blowing alien life forms out of my nose every 17 seconds, so I eat popovers. I have a thing about eating popovers when I am going through long periods of stress or discomfort. Some people need chocolate. I self-medicate with puffy bread.

So it's looking less and less like I will be skinny 3 months from now, particularly since I've managed to gain a few pounds (mmmm...popovers....) during my convalescence. How is a fat chick supposed to dress for being seen in public? Baggy, stained yoga pants and oversized t-shirts from Target are probably not going to cut it.

I used to love wearing tunics and leggings and I've seen people even bigger than me manage to carry this look off, so I started perusing catalogs. But everything is either cut wrong or too expensive, so on a lark I started looking at patterns. Not that I would actually make one or anything, because that would be insane. I am a hard person to size because my boobs are not as proportionally big as the rest of me, and I have no waist and a round belly. All those skinny people that make a living telling fat people what to wear say to emphasize the slimmest part of you, by which they mean the waist or the area right below your boobs. But from my armpits to my crotch, its all basically one big blob. There is no slimmest part.

But then I saw this and temporarily lost my mind.

What cool sleeves! What a flattering shape! And it says perfect for beginners! Surely if I can do curved piecing I can sew in a fucking sleeve, right? Oh, okay, what the hell.

And it was a breeze. No problems, no frustrations. I whipped that thing together in a couple days and it turned out perfect.

It looks like ass on me, of course. but on a hanger? Hot shit.

Now the girls had gotten quite used to hearing me say that I could make them skirts but nothing else because I didn't know how to make anything else, and as soon as I finished this and stepped back to admire my work, they jumped on me and demanded dresses. With gathers and zippers and shit. So I let them pick out fabric and we chose another pattern, and yesterday afternoon, I got started.

I worked on it periodically until the girls went to bed, and then I focussed on it while I "watched" the Oscars. I used to care deeply about the Oscars, back when I was child-free and had time to see the films and could stay up late with my friends getting shit-faced on champagne and trying to outdo each other with dumb celebrity jokes. Now I can't afford the hangover, but I still feel compelled to watch, and by "watch" I mean "have it on in the background while I do far more interesting things with my time." I was done before Meryl won for that movie I will never, ever see because at this point in my life, films about British politics are probably lower on the list than films about American politics. Or anything about any politics. I really fucking hate politics.

So it was with great pleasure that I got to tell Miss Devon this morning that her dress was all done:

Now it's Harper's turn, and then I will try again for myself. I have picked out two more patterns that look good in theory, but will surely fail upon practical application. And after I spend all that money on patterns and fabric I might have just enough left over for a new pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt from Target.

A question having nothing at all to do with quilting

I've been losing a bit of sleep over this and since the internet seems always so forthcoming with unsolicited advice, I thought perhaps I'd solicit some and see if together we can solve an odd problem.

Every day I drive my youngest daughter to daycare, 20 minutes away, then drop Harper off at school. In the afternoons, Harper gets picked up first and then we ride out to pick up Devon. There are several routes we could take to get to Devon's daycare, but the one I finally settled on has the least amount of traffic and seems to get us there and back the fastest, even if it isn't precisely the shortest drive. Shortly before we get to the neighborhood where her daycare provider lives, we drive along about two miles of windy, slightly hilly 2-lane road. It's not mountainous or anything and not full of crazy dead man's curves, but is just hilly and windy enough that there is no passing allowed along it's entire length. There is no shoulder anywhere.

After this road we get to a light and make a left onto a larger, divided road that has a wide shoulder on both sides. A few days ago, I noticed, as we turned onto this road, a young mother and two little girls—I'm guessing around 5 and 7 years old—walking along the shoulder. Since the girls had backpacks, I assumed they were coming home from school, though, knowing where the nearest elementary school is from that spot, they had already been walking quite a ways. Then as we drove back along the two-lane road, they were there, trying to navigate the non-shoulder. The little one wasn't paying much attention and as I came around the curve and they came into view, she was well into the road. If I had been distracted by anything at that point, I would have hit her.

I have now seen them every day this week, and yesterday, despite my vigilance as I was driving, I felt I came too close to them again. I am terrified something is going to happen to one—or more—of them. Since I have driven this same route every day for over a year and this is the first I've seen them, I'm assuming that mom has lost her car for some reason. I would think the kids would be on a bus route, considering how far they are walking, but there are clearly circumstances I do not know at play.

The most obvious thing would be to offer them a ride, but I only have room for one more person in my car, not three. I am never in a position where I can pull over and ask if there's any way I can help - divided road or no shoulder. I can't be sure what school they are coming from (or even if they are coming from a school) so it seems less that helpful to blanket all the area schools with letters or calls saying, "There are two kids who need a ride but I don't know who they are." The mom might not even accept a ride from me - even if I had a nice big mini-van and had the room - because who the hell am I? Hell, I'd be scared to get into my car if a strange woman approached me and offered me a ride. It's full of used tissues and trash that I'm too lazy or busy to get rid of. It looks like a junkie's car, except for the cute kids in the back.

So, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. Maybe there's nothing I can do. Maybe she'll get her car back soon and it won't matter anymore. But the thought of a little one being hit by a car on her way home from school is plaguing me, and if there is something I can do I want to try to do it. I just don't know what it is.

Any ideas?