Seems So

As my time as a resident of beautiful southwestern Colorado winds down, I vacillate between wistfulness and excitement for new adventures. This emotional pendulum can swing over hours or seconds. As a native Coloradan, this state will always have a piece of my heart and I’m proud to be from here, even if it has changed a lot over the years. I am a sentimental gal.

Since I’m in the throes of selling a house, moving 3 states away and working full-time, I don’t have the mental and physical bandwidth right now for big, all consuming quilt projects. Enter my new favorite thing to make: placemats! Placemats are wonderful for dozens of reasons. One, they are useful; I don’t want anything I make to be clutter or precious. Two, you can use up a bunch of scraps, which is also one of my favorites ways to create. Three, you can experiment and play with techniques and colors before embarking on a larger piece. Hooray for the humble placemat!

I made my first set of placemats for my mom for her birthday and really enjoyed the process. For the original placemat set, I made sort of improv log cabins using a lot of bright colors from my scrap bins. I really had no plan other than to make something rectangular. As someone whose paycheck is dependent upon precision and lots and lots of rules and regulations, I relish the times in my life when I can just zone out and craft without worrying about perfection or a prescribed pattern.

This second set is for my dad and stepmom and a different style from the first. For this set, I dug into my strip stash. When I first learned to quilt, the local quilt shop hosted a “Strip Club” (hahaha, quilters are so punny!) and as a newbie those ladies loaded me up with strips, many of which still languish in my closet. One benefit of working with scraps while in the process of packing is that I can simultaneously purge and donate the fabrics that I will not use. For this set of mats, I used strips in darks and lights anchored by the cohesive blue fabric. I then took a slice from each mat and inserted it into the other. Again, I just played around while jamming out to my tunes and the end result is quite fun, and also rectangular!

Speaking of tunes, all of the music behind this creation is Denver based. This selection is partially based on sentiment and also that there are some damn good Denver musicians out there. Denver has always had a robust but underappreciated music scene that has really come on strong in the last few years. Little known fact about this quilter — I managed a band for a year in college. Obviously this was not a great gig for someone who considers 10 p.m. late, but it was fun and gave me a deep appreciation for the struggles that local musicians and their support systems go through. I feel that for many years the music coming out of Denver proper was overshadowed by the jam bands emerging from Boulder and Nederland, that “Colorado sound” defined by String Cheese Incident, Leftover Salmon and Yonder Mountain String Band. WALDT (my new favorite acronym!) and I am happy to see Denver musicians getting the recognition they so deserve. I really haven’t kept up on Denver bands as well as I could, so I know that there is a treasure trove of good stuff just waiting for me to discover.

In college and post-college, one local band that I really enjoyed were the Apples in Stereo. They have a distinct pop sound (very Beach Boys and Beatles) and catchy lyrics. Interestingly, in my early 20s all of my Denver friends were listening to bands out of the Northwest and not invested in what was being created in our own neighborhood like the Apples, Dressy Bessy and Slim Cessna’s Auto Club. I moved to Portland when I was 25 and everyone I met there was way into these indie artists from Denver. In the mid 2010s, the powerhouse Lumineers came blasting out of Denver with their large, orchestral sound. Then along came Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats again putting the Denver music scene on the radar of listeners everywhere. Both the Lumineers and Nathaniel have garnered a lot of attention for Denver and they deserve all the popularity and accolades. Nathaniel’s album “Tearing at the Seams” is excellent and on regular rotation in our household.

Stay tuned — Project Placemat will continue and may evolve to include table runners, pot holders and napkins. Viva la scraps!

Albums listened to: Apples in Stereo “Tone Soul Evolution”, “Fun Trick Noisemaker”; The Lumineers “The Lumineers”, “Cleopatra”; Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats “Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats” “Tearing at the Seams”.