Controversial quilts

“The American Quilter’s Society refused to show two artworks in an exhibition centered around the color red after claiming they could be controversial… One quilt could be interpreted as depicting female anatomy, while the other references abortion access.” (Link courtesy of InarticulateQuilter.)

What absolute cowards. I actually went to that exhibition when it toured Australia at the Sydney Quilt Show last July. I saw the “Your Mother. Your Daughter. Your Sister. Your Grandmother. You.” quilt and felt it was both beautiful and powerful… but also, without the sign giving it context, it’s just a quilt made of red squares. I also saw quilts inspired by the Covid pandemic, school shootings, and climate change, and many of them were way more overt than this one.

Although to be fair, I don’t remember seeing the “Origin” work. Feels like I’d remember that. 😜

A quilt referencing the Covid pandemic with red flowers over a litany of excuses for not masking

An abstract quilt with bold splotches of colour referencing a school shooting

A small woven artwork referencing climate change, showing rising temperatures and raindrop beads

Aubrey/Maturin novels

Actually, Master and Commander is a Domestic Fantasy About a Codependent Life Partnership! Olivia Wolfgang-Smith on the Queer Subtext of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin Series…

Okay, I saw the movie version but don’t remember much about it. I certainly didn’t think I was interested in reading the books… until now. 😂 (Link via Metafilter.)

3D-printed overlocker waste tray

I bought my Singer overlocker many years ago (as an Aldi Special Buy!) and while it’s a great little workhorse, it doesn’t have a lot of fancy features… like a waste tray. For those who are unfamiliar, these specialised sewing machines use multiple threads to finish the edge of fabric and keep it from fraying. They also have a cutting blade that trims the edge as you go, and on mine, the bits of fabric and thread just fall straight down onto my sewing table. It’s annoying and messy.

Recently I had a thought: “I wonder if anyone’s designed a waste tray for it?!” Of course they have. I sent that link to my friend Bobbie, who also printed my pegboard spool holders, to see if he’d print one for me. “What colour do you want?” he asked. I figured red would match the logo nicely.

And here it is! Fits perfectly. How cool is that?

Tending to my digital garden

I’ve been thinking a lot about link rot lately, and how many of the links I have shared on my blog over the years are now dead. I also have a lot of old posts that are missing titles, categories, and tags. Therefore I’ve taken a cue from Terence Eden and I’ve started a project to “tend to my digital garden” every day. I installed the On This Day plugin, and now I have an archive page that shows all the posts from this day across all the years of this site. Every day I’m going to do my best to click through those posts, checking for broken links and updating them as best I can. I’ve already had to resort to the Internet Archive several times, but here’s one bit of good news –  the Sydney Morning Herald still maintains links going back 20+ years! That was a happy surprise.