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Nic
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people, the people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back of years I named this territory because it belongs with what this show is about the ways we decide whose lives are valued whose work is taken seriously and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed those decisions shape everything this show sits inside that this is was and always will be First Nations land that's not a formality It's consistent with everything I and this show stand for. My guest today is Dr. Alessandra Springman. I know her as Sondi. Sondi is a planetary scientist with a PhD from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. She spent years studying asteroids and comets, and her work has included the NASA OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample, returning mission, and two years of planetary radar observation at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She quilts. Her quilting practice lives on Instagram at at intergalactic cactus. So today we're talking about quilts, what draws her to the work, and what making things by hand means when your professional life is built around looking towards outer space. Sondy, welcome to The Work Between.

Sondy
Thank you,

Nic
Now, for my listeners, I have to be open. Sondy and I go way back and we've been talking about quilting a lot but let's let's try and formalize things a little bit tell me a little bit about your creative practice what is it that you do obviously quilting but tell me more about that

Sondy
For the most part when I make quilts I am turning secondhand fabric into something more interesting than stuff that doesn't get sold at the thrift store that may wind up in a landfill. The project that I'm working on now is a lot of work shirts and work pants from an uncle figure of mine who's a contractor who builds boats, repairs boats. He met his wife while they were working at a boat yard. She was the manager and he rose up in the ranks because he could weld and he was smart um he's a he's a real uh he's so we were going through his clothes a couple years ago when I was staying um in a little cottage on their property and he was saying that he would love a quilt made from secondhand shirts because it was it would be soft I said okay richard um so here we are almost two years later and it's been a really fun way to figure out how do you take something you know how do you take a set of half a dozen work shirts and carhartt pants all made of canvas and denim and other tough materials and make them make them something soft and how do you arrange them in an pleasing way and how do you do it in a way that doesn't make you want to lose your mind, or if you are going to lose your mind, providing for losing your mind in the process. So I'm doing something called quilt as you go, which involves cutting out the batting for each little part of the quilt before hand, rather than sewing the top of the quilt, sewing the back of the quilt, and then sewing the top of the quilt, the batting and the back of the quilt together in uh one big sandwich and so for this I'm making tiny little hexagon sandwiches and rather than lose my mind cutting out each hexagon of batting and fabric uh by myself by hand I went to the library makerspace and used the laser cutter to laser cut the batting into hexagons and to laser cut his uh denim work pants and work shirts into in canvas work pants and work shirts into hexagons so I didn't ruin all my uh cutting tools at home so it's been a fun way to you know take something as mundane as you know the clothes off his back but you know clothes that have been well loved and some of them have fun paint stains and some of them you know there's the fading that's really interesting under the seams uh men's work shirts often have like a little I think it's a pleat at the back of the neck and so the that area under that doesn't fade as much as the rest of the shirt. So I've managed to capture that in a few places. So I think it's a really fun way to take something, you know, like his, you know, these clothes that are such a fundamental part of us, you know, they're close to our heart, we wear them out, and they sort of fade into the woodwork, and to turn them into something soft, something comforting, and something that will, you know, keep him warm.

Nic
How do you take something that's not inherently soft like denim or or work canvas and make it into something soft and cozy

Sondy
First of all you give those garments to someone who will wear them until they are worn out and they have been washed so many times that they are incredibly soft on their own and then one of the things I have figured out in quilting is if your fabric is ugly or if your fabric is otherwise too much if you cut it small enough it suddenly is less ugly or less firm so having these um pieces of you know canvas carhartt work pants cut to hexagons that are about six inches tall makes it much easier to have them be soft and the whole quilt isn't denim or canvas there's a lot of um there's thrift store shirts there's shirts from friends there's some corduroy pants in here there's quilting cotton all the backs the hexagons are quilting cottons so there's a huge variety so if you don't have the hard things dominating your quilt you can get away with a lot

Nic
How did you learn quilting

Sondy
Well in 2020 uh in march 2020 when my roommate at the time and I were like well we're at home what do we do with ourselves she had gone to fashion design school. And so she had been an accomplished sewist. She had done costume design in New York, including Broadway musicals. And so she was, she was very competent. And so we said, let's sew some masks. And I thought I knew how to sew. I'd, you know, done some basic garment sewing. I'd sewed my prom dress in high school. And, you know, after I borrowed a sewing machine from a friend and Carrie looks at my sewing and she, you know, you can tell the thoughts are going through her head. Like, wow, Sondy, you think you could sew? That's a really nice idea you have there. But she taught me kind of how to sew as an adult rather than seat of the pants sewing that my mother had taught me. And once you do something hundreds of times, and we sewed 500 masks. I had a spreadsheet tracking all this. Once you do something hundreds of times, you get decent at it. So I sort of got more consistent with my pinning, got more consistent with stitching, learned some binding, learned all sorts of things, learned some very silly couture techniques, which I've never really used since, but it's good to know that they exist. And, you know, after it became clear that supply chains had resolved themselves and we could get good N95 masks. Again, I had all the scrap fabric left. And one of my friends in town was an astronomer who was moving to a job at an observatory in Hawaii, and she was downsizing. And she gave me a bunch of fabric that I didn't realize was like fancy designer quilting fabric until I had all these scraps sitting around and said, what should I do with them? Uh, and I'm, I'm Jewish, but you know, most of my friends are celebrate Christmas. And I decided to make a Christmas stocking for a friend out of these scraps and didn't quite realize that what I was doing was quilting until I had done it and realized, Oh, this is, this is quilting. I should, I should learn more about this. So I went to the library and I went to the shelf of the library that had quilting books. And I this was you know a neighborhood branch it wasn't the main branch and I grabbed the five most interesting books out of six that they had on the shelf and I took them home and I found one by Blair Stocker called Wisecraft Quilts and she turns fabrics into meaningful patchwork and I read this book you know I opened this book I read her philosophy and I turned a few pages in and I saw this quilt where she was using the value or the brightness of fabrics rather than the color or the pattern to dictate the pattern dictate the layout of the quilt and I was completely sold and probably within within three weeks of making that Christmas stocking I had put an alert on Craigslist for sewing machines at estate sales and yard sales I had driven 45 minutes down to a suburb of Tucson. I threw elbows. I got a gigantic Janome sewing machine that Ginger Downing had spent like $2,600 on new that I got for $600. And it came with all the accessories. And I have sewn so much on that machine since. And I've made some pretty cool quilts, if I don't say so myself. It's been really fun to finally feel like I have a creative practice. Both of my parents are artists my mom has done oil painting and acrylic uh big big canvases she's done some mixed media but she really sticks to like big abstract acrylic canvas works my dad was a portrait photographer for most of his career he photographed Georgia O'Keeffe in 1974 at Ghost Ranch so he's you know so my mother's father was an animator her mother was an illustrator my dad's mother sewed and she crocheted and she knitted so you know I come from this family of creatives and I'd never really done anything regularly and I think everyone was sort of like sitting around waiting for me to do something consistently so when I finally started quilting I think everyone I think my mom in particular breathed a sigh of relief and four months after I started quilting she came to visit me in Tucson and I was picking up my sewing machine from being serviced at the, um, the sewing machine store and she paid for it. And she's like, no, I want to encourage this. So it's been, it's been cool to get into quilting. It's been cool to find out how many people around me quilt or know someone who quilts, uh, you know, someone's mom tried quilting and she gave me the, what they call a pig, a project in a grocery bag of her first attempt at quilting and she decided she didn't like quilting after she'd started that. And I looked at what she'd done and I said, yeah, of course you didn't like quilting, Pat. You were not, no one taught you how to do this properly. No one taught you how to cut your fabric properly. Of course you hated this. So, you know, it's fun. And then I've moved up to Boulder a few years ago and through a desperate post on the Young and Millennial Quilters Facebook group, found a wonderful long arm quilter up here and joined the Boulder Modern Quilt Guild. And it's been great to meet other people who are really interested in secondhand materials quilting. There's one guy in the Quilt Guild, Elu Hernandez, who's a bit of a big deal making quilt set of reclaimed jeans. And so he's been really encouraging about this project. And there was a Quilt Guild open sew and he said, give me seven of those hexagons. I want to take them home to sew them together for you. So he took seven of the 188 hexagon pieces and sewed them together. So now I get to add his name to this quilt. So it's been really fun to learn this, to find the community, community. I try to read a lot, you know, random quilt books, blogs. The Facebook group has been fabulous and educational. There's a lot of Facebook groups that are badly moderated or that tolerate very bad politics and behavior from their members. And this Facebook group is, I would say, it's one of the things that keeps me vaguely active on Facebook. And by vaguely active, I mean logging in twice a month to ask a question or see posts there. So I've enjoyed the community. I've enjoyed being able to make things.

Nic
I want to come back to community in a little bit, But before we explore that, I want to talk influences. Obviously, your family background is very much into creativity, but it sounds like nobody really quilts. Have they?

Sondy
My dad has started quilting in the last few years.

Nic
As a follow up on what you're doing, right? So the influence into quilting from their creative and artistic endeavors, has that tickled through or is just, tell me about that relationship.

Sondy
I think it's interesting because my mother loves color. She loves reds and oranges and yellows and she loves her blues and her greens and things of that nature. But my mother doesn't really think about value in her her paintings she doesn't think about the contrast between colors she just says you know she's a very intuitive painter and you know she went to she I think she went to art school for a little bit she had some um post-college art education so I know you know I know she's familiar with color theory I know she's familiar with value and contrast and tints and tones and shades and all that um but she you know I she knows all that but it's all you know in her heart at this point we've talked about sort of like patterns and scale but you know she she creates with paint she creates very fundamental she creates in a very fundamental way with paint whereas you know I'm using things that already exist and I'll look around you know at the fabric and say hmm this would be good for this I think it's a very different creative process than than what my mom does and I have some of the fabrics that her mother designed as an illustrator for the launch of salzburg in los angeles and I'm like a lot of this stuff is just like not it's just not interesting to me like I can't figure out what to do with it but I hold on to it because

Nic
Because it's fabric right how how can you not hang on to fabric and stuff

Sondy
It's the great thing about having a quilt guild and a center for creative reuse in boulder is that I can just bring fabric to quilt guild and say hey who wants this or bring fabric to the center for creative reuse

Nic
That quilt guild uh you're part of that as a community what does that connection do for you

Sondy
For one thing uh this hexagon quilt that I'm working on that I started just under two years ago. I started working on it at an open sew and L.U. Was enchanted by the process. I don't think he was really familiar with doing hexagons for quilt as you go. And then I let it sit for a while because it was parts of it that were frustrating and I hadn't quite figured out how to mitigate the frustrating. And at some point in the last year, LU asked hey how's that hexagon quilt going and I kind of grumbled at him and so I started working on the hexagons again so it's been really nice to have encouragement uh it's been really nice to have feedback when I need feedback it's been nice to have a smaller place to ask for smaller scale advice there's now a couple of us who have been inducted into the singer featherweight cult though uh I think all of us have one featherweight so we're not really cultists

Nic
You ever have enough featherweights

Sondy
I don't know I take issue with like I've got 10 featherweights and I sew on none of them like get them out in the ecosystem folks say they uh they need to they need to be used so for folks who are not familiar with singer featherweights Singer made these lovely little sewing machines between the 1930s and the 1960s. And they are mechanical. They draw 0.7 amps, less if you put an LED bulb in them. I mean, they draw less current than your phone does when it charges. And they are, some of them have been running for 90 years. If you keep servicing them and keep putting oil and grease on them, they will run for another 90 years. I mean, they are the most robust little machines. And I like to say that they are the most heterosexual sewing machines of all time, because you will not find a straighter stitch on any other sewing machine. So it's been fun to learn the basics of featherweight maintenance and where to grease and where to oil and how to clean things with kerosene and how to adjust the timing and what has changed in the intervening uh 81 years since my sewing machine has been made and what has not in you know what remains the same between this machine and modern machines like the needle that this machine uses it's the same needle that modern machines do

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
The bobbin case okay yeah bobbin cases are very particular on the featherweights but modern machines are very similar into how that all works. So it's just a really cool way to sort of fundamentally understand how sewing machines have evolved and haven't evolved and how to use them. And I feel like it informs better how I use my machine that was made 15 years ago. And yeah, it's nice to have more technical understanding of how a sewing machine works and how to adjust it and how to tune

Nic
It well we're talking about equipment but one thing I'm curious about is um what does your workspace tells you about yourself that you didn't really decide it kind of involved or arrived at

Sondy
So I I've got some lower back stuff from uh being rear-ended twice while driving my car So I have figured out that standing for machine sewing is best for my ergonomics. I have also discovered that since getting a heart rate tracker about nine months ago, that standing to sew also does really goofy things to my heart rate. I don't know if it's a POTS thing because I can walk like three or four miles a day, no problem. But it's the standing that seems to just not agree with heart rate stuff, which is fascinating or that like stand sewing is just like a stressful thing is, you know, it's, it's creative, but it's like, am I just sort of like going into like, you know, high stress focus mode to do this? So that requires more, experimentation and investigation, but I've now gotten to the point where all these hexagons have been, I've done everything I need to do for the hexagons themselves to machine sew them. Now I'm joining them by hand, all seams of them and that can be done on the couch it can be done at my partner's wood shop it can be done uh at parties it you know it's a very portable task in that regard so that's been cool and it's also like okay I will not be worsening my heart rate while I do this part of this project I will have to stand to sew to do the machine binding but it's also just a nice way to slow down a bit and kind of figure out how do I do hand sewing because I've never been interested in doing hand sewing I've always found it annoying but when you do something uh you know 127 times you you get a little better at

Nic
It you could always hand stitch the binding

Sondy
I don't I'm really bad at sewing straight like sewing like long straight lines whip stitching to join hexagons is is fine uh because you've already got the straight line there but I don't know I guess I could try it but I feel like that would just be when it comes to putting binding on a quilt I'm just like get me through this let's just go like

Nic
Final mile final get it out

Sondy
And uh I know richard probably will not listen to this but I know that richard will never um he will never wash this quilt and a lot of the fabrics you know there's some like a thrift store skirt that had boats on it and a few other ones that I'm like yeah this would be fun to include but it's way too light and I got some indigo dye and did indigo dyeing last year to darken some of these fabrics and so the fabric I have I'd gotten in Ghana for uh and had originally given to his wife Millie but you know they were never going to use it and so I'm like oh I have an idea of what to do with it but it's kind of a like a medium light sky blue with like a darker vine print on it and so I've been darkening that with indigo with the idea of using it for the binding because the binding of the quilt is part of the quilt that is used the most and gets like all of your oils from your fingers on it from like pulling it and touching it and I don't like fighting reality right like I accept that gravity is is a thing I don't like to fight gravity unless well there are circumstances in which I have successfully fought gravity and won we can we can get back to that one um so I like making sure that the bindings of my quilts are dark so that they don't show as much finger oil don't need to be washed as often

Nic
If it comes down to a choice between working alone on a quilting project and working in a group what what's your preference why

Sondy
So another march 2020 thing that I started was a zoom crafting group uh so rather than it being stitch and bitch I named it loom and zoom and here we are six years and uh a month and seven days later and we are still going twice a week on zoom where we work on crafting projects together we have a group chat where we talk about ideas so for me really up until I moved to boulder and joined this quilt guild quilting sewing whatever was not really a in-person social event um but you know I still I still like hanging out on zoom to do things with folks and now I can have a project that is portable I can take it places there is a hand sewing group that the quilt guild has I think they meet in coffee shops and so now I'm kind of like huh I should make sure I have a hand hand sewing project at all times and the quilt guild open sews those are fun I've really enjoyed those I'm the only person masked them but that's fine and now that I have a it's much easier to bring a sewing machine to them than to haul like all 26 pounds of my main sewing machine downstairs in the car take it over to the community center

Nic
I'm gonna ask you about your relationship with disability you you mentioned a few things you mentioned pots you mentioned um chronic back issues so what's your disability what's your relationship to that

Sondy
For I have had ibd for over 20 years I have got you know another fun constellation of other other things you know laryngopharyngeal reflux and interstitial cystitis and some lower back stuff from, uh, drivers in Tucson. Um, I deal with headaches. I deal with some joint stuff and RSI stuff. Um, so for like half, half of my life, I've been dealing with, living with chronic illness and some form of disability. And I have found that most of my friends are disabled, have some sort of disability of one type or another. A lot of my friends have a chronic illness or deal with chronic illness. There's someone at Quilt Guild who, you know, I've interacted with her very briefly twice and she says she doesn't drive. And I'm like, huh, that's interesting. You know, there's so many reasons that a person may want to drive, whether it's from disability or from a moral perspective. And I'm like, I kind of want to get to know you better because you've thought about this. You've made a decision that runs contrary to what the rest of the world expects or experiences. That, you know, huh, interesting. And so that's one of the things that I really appreciate about disability communities is that disabled people have thought about how they move through the world, how they interact with the world and whether it's their choice or otherwise they they have had to think deeply about sort of the fundamental tenants that society uh expects and that's something I really appreciate about disability community

Nic
Yeah that's funny you say that I was I was gonna ask you um I was gonna to say some people argue that navigating a world not built for you produces a kind of creative thinking and do you think that connects to your practice or is that just too neat a framing but you mentioning getting to meet and talk to people that have been doing that kind of thinking before Or leads me to think that, yeah, maybe it works for you?

Sondy
I think I've, at least for quilting, I'm someone who likes, I like solving problems in interesting ways. Or I've done sort of enough thinking from reading, you know, reading about color theory or value quilting. Or like looking at a stack of fabric and being like, what can I do with this? This is the project in the grocery bag. This is the pig fabric that was given to me by the friend's mom who decided she didn't like quilting and for some people they see what I wind up doing and they're like wow that's wild like how can you look how can you look at these strips of these fabrics and turn them into you know this thing I'm like well I've been thinking about value and contrast for a while and like what what combinations of fabrics you would need to have you know to make something effective out of to make this particular thing and have it be effective and so people don't necessarily see all of that like thinking and experimenting and work that goes into producing something that looks really cool but also you know folks in the quilt field being like I don't understand how your brain works that you can have these, you know, go from this step to that step. And I'm like, oh, there were a lot of steps in between and a lot of frustration. There was a lot of experimenting. There was a lot of banging my head against the wall and being frustrated that I put all this effort into this thing and then abandoned it. But, you know, two years later, coming back to it in a completely different way no one sees all those experimental steps that led up

Nic
To

Sondy
It and you know for this hexagon quilt you know figuring out oh yeah I've used the laser cutter a couple of times at the library makerspace including for a really cool quilt that I made for a mutual friend of nick's and mine so you know had some precedent you know there'd been some in my life for doing laser cutting for quilting so you know there's there's a lot of work that people haven't necessarily seen that leads up to my current creative way of moving through the world you know it comes from like going to the there's a the colorado quilting council puts on a quilt affair once a year and someone was doing a demo of her reverse applique system and you know sitting there watching her do this and I was like I don't I need to make a quilt that has Chinese characters in it but I don't want to do any of this by hand and I'm watching her do this reverse applique and I you know figured out from what I knew about laser cutting and her reverse applique method that I could do this could have a laser cutter do a couple of steps for me and not have to worry about figuring out a bunch of stuff by hand and having it look not the way I wanted it to look so it's um yeah it's been fun in that regard to figure out how to put a bunch of disparate things together and also kind of fun to see people just blown away by the end result

Nic
I like this contrast between Sondy is using a nearly 100 year old featherweight singer's sewing machine and is using the latest laser cutting technology I think that's that's just awesome Sondy are you a disabled quilter or are you a quilter who happens to be disabled

Sondy
I think I'm a disabled quilter uh I'm always trying to find more ergonomic ways to do things I'm very aware of how the ergonomics of pretty much any fiber art are awful doesn't matter what you're doing you know is it knitting is it crocheting is it uh needle you know needlepoint needlework is it cross stitch is sewing on a machine all of this is bad it you know you're hunched over on your machine some people put wedges under their machine to tilt it up a bit but I like having the big extension table off the side of my machine so like having the machine tilted up doesn't like creates this other problem so I feel like you can't really fundamentally separate how I quilt from my being disabled and yeah this heart rate stuff this is interesting um I don't really have a provider I can talk about this with but I don't know I guess I I guess I need to ask around and see what what other people experience

Nic
What are you trying to get better at right now

Sondy
I'm trying to get better at being consistent and doing things at a sustainable pace um for me it's sort of this like this boom bust cycles of doing things now that I feel like I've gotten to the point where, you know, 24, 23% of the way through sewing these hexagons together, I'm just like, I just want to crank them out. I just want to get them done. I want to get them out the door. Like, let's go. And that's, you know, after like months of not doing anything, you know, then I'm like staying up past midnight hand sewing and I'm like it's not not great yeah I've got this other quilt that I've like should be working on I'm like trying to get back to but like you know it's like okay well I need to deal with this well that means dealing with that and then you're like five steps away from the original issue and it's like that's so be nice to consistently show up and do work without it sort of being too much or not at all. Yesterday I was up at my partner's woodshop hand sewing, and he always likes having a body double there to kind of keep him on task. And I was saying, hey, is it helpful having me here? He says, well, you know, I'm pretty locked in on this task I'm doing. You know, I think I would have been doing it and stayed focused on it even if you weren't here. You know, but it's nice it's nice to have company uh and he asked you know is this helpful for you and I'm like well I'm not trying to make a living off of my quilts necessarily

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
But you know it's like I really should be cleaning the house I should be doing physical therapy I should be doing should be like cooking more meals I should you know I should be tidying the sewing room which is just devolved into chaos uh yeah there's a whole bunch of things I should be doing and well okay we're gonna we're in a boom we're in the boom part of the cycle uh that's just how it's going there will be times when I'm in the bust

Nic
It seems like you're you're working in cycles Do those cycles relate to either feeling stuck and then kind of not abandoning but slowing down or, you know, hey, it's going well, let's get things accomplished while it's going well? Or is it something unrelated to that that dictates the boom-bust, quick, slow approach?

Sondy
Sometimes it's related to disability in october we doing botox injections for this headache and I got the fun reaction of uh my so when you do botox sometimes your neck muscles are like whoa whoa whoa what my head is so heavy and your head is the same weight your neck muscles are just responding completely differently. So I got all of this like neck perceived neck muscle weakness that caused tremendous pain if I bent my head forward for more than like a little bit at a time. And that was really terrible. And I couldn't machine sew. And I'd been kind of like okay yeah let's get back to machine sewing um but fortunately fortunately uh the guy who had serviced my sewing machine had screwed something up so I couldn't sew until that got fixed

Nic
Right

Sondy
And I couldn't sew because of my neck um and so like yeah that really sucked but there was like that in combination with something else was not not the worst

Nic
Has making the work the quilting has it made it harder rather than easier so you know you're you're making these quilts you've you've had uh the the botox and and you've had barriers but you're also keeping at it so I'm I'm assuming doing the work the quilting is is actually somehow making your life easier in some ways but has it also made it harder

Sondy
Yeah I think you know there's definitely the times where it's like oh look I'm staying up too late hand sewing or I'm getting distracted by this to the uh I'm getting distracted by this and it's you know negatively affecting other things in my life um I mostly buy secondhand fabric or I inherit fabric or I you know given fabric so spending money on this hobby isn't necessarily a problem especially since I make t-shirt quilts for friends occasionally and you know that helps subsidize things so yeah like the ergonomics of hand sewing right now you know like having like poked myself in the finger so many times or like how it's worsening this really thick callus on my thumb which means that like the sense you know the nerves are now like having a hard time it's like okay yeah the sensitivity of like the left side of my or the outside edge of my dominant hands thumb is like having an issue um or like oh I should really be doing pt but look at me I'm sewing instead I'd had ankle surgery last year and was like finally out of the boot and probably should have had the boot on but like my sewing machine had been on the floor and I'm like okay I'm gonna lift it up and put on the table and I'm like should I have been lifting 26 pounds at that point

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
Probably not it could have been much worse I guess but it's um I guess for the most part sewing has generally been a positive thing because it really felt like before the pandemic started in 2020 that I didn't I was never getting enough done as a grad student that I was always uh not productive enough to have hobbies and that was really a time where it's like yeah no one's getting anything done like having a hobby having a hobby that involves like sewing masks socially great keep up the good work you know it was like oh I'm not gonna get anything done I'm gonna go for a hike and I'm not gonna feel guilty about it so I think for the most part sewing has been generally a positive thing in my life and has not been too detrimental damaging or distracting from other things.

Nic
Have you ever made something you regret making?

Sondy
I've certainly started projects where I'm like, I don't... Do I really want to finish this? Do I really want to get back to this? Okay, if I was starting this now, I would make all these different choices. So that's definitely been, been the case for some, some things.

Nic
You could always just shove it all in a bag and give it to somebody else.

Sondy
Yeah. Okay. I do, I do regret one thing. I had a friend in town who moved nine months ago, coincidentally when this headache started. And anyway, the move, the move was a shipwreck of epic proportions. And before she was moving, I'm like, Hey, I'll, I'll make a t-shirt quilt for you and so I've like stabilized all these shirts of hers I've cut some of them out she even like came to the library makerspace and helped me with some of the stabilizing and cutting and now I'm just like ah darn it what do I do with these they're like all in a bin plastic storage bin like shoved under you know like on the bottom of a shelf in a cabinet where like I can't see it but you know she hasn't thanked anyone for helping with the move she hasn't apologized to anyone. This is not the first move that I've bailed her out of. So kind of like regretting that. And I'm like, she did give me her FedEx number. I'm like, I could just FedEx all this to her. And I know a lot of t-shirt quilters like hate, hate, hate taking on t-shirt quilt projects that other quilters have started. But like, I'm no amateur. I've made, I've made three t-shirt quilts one that a friend has paid me for I'm precise I'm accurate I am not sloppy a lot of people who start t-shirt quilt projects don't they haven't done a lot of reading they don't know what the common pitfalls are and I think anyone who got this uh pib project in a bin would not be unhappy yeah uh like given that I've done most of the most annoying parts of the work and given that it's been like nine months and she hasn't apologized to anyone

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
I don't think it's worth having this taking up space in the house

Nic
That seems making sense to me

Sondy
Yeah

Nic
That's

Sondy
But hey she didn't move nick I'm not joking t-shirts

Nic
That's a massive quilt

Sondy
And uh no it's not and but like in another dozen garments if each t-shirt is 12 by 12 inches that's a foot a queen size quilt is eight by eight feet that's 64 shirts

Nic
Yeah all right that works

Sondy
So it probably won't be king size but

Nic
Yeah when you make a quilt what are you hoping it does how are you hoping it's received and and does it land that way usually

Sondy
Two years ago two years ago a friend graduated from library school and she didn't know I was making her quilt but I'd actually been working on it while she was showing up at crafting group on zoom like right under her nose and she would she would practice the cello while I worked on this quilt on zoom like right under her nose and so the quilt was supposed to show up the day before graduation and it didn't but it showed up the day of graduation and her parents got these photos of her wearing her cap and gown opening this box not knowing what's in the box and just like the look on her face and you know just how excited she was and she she's just looking more and more excited and like the final photo is her like with it around her shoulders like a cloak and she's like spinning her you know head with the cap and the tassel and she looks ecstatic uh and I posted this on young and millennial quilters and they're you know every so often there's a post there with someone being like I made this quilt for you know my mother-in-law or my and you know she was so ungrateful and she sent it to the thrift store and like or this person was you know I'm like hey don't make quilts for people who are going to be ungracious right like don't do that but a lot of people were like right this is this is why we do what we do and this is the correct response to receiving a handmade quilt so people have been people have been pretty happy and you know I think I put some fun surprises in I made a t-shirt quilt for someone that like some of the t-shirts have like interesting tags one of them was uh the brand was junk food with like a heart-shaped american flag so you know I put labels on my quilts and I included that as one of the labels I'm like sure this is fun and weird

Nic
Is there a quilt someone else made that you wish you'd made

Sondy
There's a bunch of these like judy niemeyer quilt works quilts and I'm like man I really want to do that but I also don't want to spend 400 on fabric some of the some of the color schemes for some of the judy niemeyer quilts that people come up with I'm like I see why you're into that that is not to my liking but I would like to do I would like to do more of those but you really you have to put a lot of and time and effort into the planning because you can't just be like I'm gonna buy these fabrics when there's like fabric options they have a quilt planning tool where you can try out different fabric combinations color combinations the the fabric picker is a huge pain in the butt it's not just like let me filter by red like just let me put red here let me put blue here you know just just give me like a you know a hex code color picker right come on those exist there's apis for them

Nic
What do you know now about your quilting practice that you couldn't have articulated when you started five six years ago

Sondy
I think it's really important for me not to cut all the fabric for a project before I start. I think it's really important for me to cut sections because if I get bored with a project or decide I want to do something a different way and I've got the fabric all cut, then that's a problem that, you know, it's hard to reuse it if it's been cut a certain way. For me, it's really important to put a lot of time and effort into precision and accuracy uh people like that's just you being a raging perfectionist I'm like well no there's a purpose to it and that is if you do things in these certain if I do things in these certain ways it's easier to get a it's easier to put things together it just makes subsequent steps easier so if you invest the time into getting things a certain way here it's those problems are not going to propagate out the way they would if I was just being like it'll be fine and I don't know like I look at I've got one quilt I've got a quilt pattern for something that I want to try and I'm like this is one of it's not like the most popular quilt pattern of like the last 10 or 15 years that's like the exploding hearts one that's all half squares triangles which like forget about it miss me on that one but it's the ranges quilt by modern handcraft and that one I'm like people have been putting this together and it's looked fine and people have like not been accurate with it they've not put in the effort to have it you know and it's turned out fine so like let's put it together and see what happens

Nic
You talk about perfectionism and that always makes me think a long long time ago I was a chef and people say chefs are artists and I kept saying I'm not an artist I'm an artisan an artist has the luxury of failure the artisan doesn't and I'm curious in view of your raging perfectionism are you an artist or are you an artisan

Sondy
Yes um I think there's there's time you know that the first project I started that's still you know sitting in a bin upstairs that I don't know if it's a failure it'd be really great to finish it I don't know what finishing it is going to look like I think it's going to be a lot of time it's like oh I really want to take all these apart and sew them back together knowing what I know now because it would make it much easier blah blah blah um and you know is that a failure I don't know it's part of the learning process that's you know like you had to go to cooking school right you had to learn you had to fail a lot before you were a professional so there's a thousand hours yeah exactly um so there's that expectation that you have to learn somehow and you know there's you have to invest that I think, you know, it's just really important to understand that, you know, I'm not, I'm not punching out t-shirt quilts for a living. There are people who do that. And, you know, I could, I could, I guess, if I really wanted to, but I can't stand the smell of people's fabric softeners. You know, they can, they can make my headaches worse. So no thank you on that regard. And yeah so I think you know there's an this is a craft at some level uh I do it mostly for fun if it wasn't fun I would probably not do it I'll probably make a t-shirt quilt or two more for friends over over the years um I got I got one quilt finished last year part of what I mean I did have foot surgery at the end of February, but it was just, just didn't, just didn't sew a lot last year. There was, you know, the issues with machine, there was the issues with like my head and my neck. And that's, that's fine. It's a, my partner is a woodworker. He he wants to be a commercially successful woodworker. He has an artist background. He's, you know, painting oil painting. Uh you know he's got a lot of experience with color and creativity and he doesn't feel like he's got the space to fail right now yeah really that he's got the space to experiment because he wants to be able to make a living uh making art and you know so it's like well yeah I mean you've and you know an artist is worried about marketing and so I think you know at some point this is kind of is still sort of a hobby but I think it's it's both art and craft for me it's art and artisan and you know it's just fabric nick no one's gonna get food poisoning right like no one's gonna leave me a bad review on yelp or whatever right like it's I'm not gonna give anyone an upset stomach or send them to the emergency room it's just fabric

Nic
Yeah well have you tried eating fabric it'll give you an upset stomach

Sondy
Yeah but if anyone's eating my quilts we have other problems nick right like I so I don't use scented scented um spray starch I don't use scented laundry detergent yeah I tell people not to wash things in scented detergent because those you know all that buildup can reduce the lifespan of the fibers in the quilt um I try to avoid using polyester thread when you know or polyester anything if I can avoid it my quilter prefers using polyester thread because it's stronger when it's wet and I'm using polyester thread to join these hexagons by hand because I know there's gonna be a lot of stress on these seams but you know I try to use cotton for everything and try to think about try to think about how things are going to be used the person using it um try to use good quilt batting yeah so hopefully yeah hopefully I don't give anyone an upset stomach or you know a migraine

Nic
Yeah what do you wish people asked you about your work that they don't

Sondy
That's a good question uh I think you know the point of like yeah like what is the toll on you like what is you know clearly this is something that compels you to to make and create but like what are what are the downsides like what is this doing to your body I think a lot of people don't kind of realize the brutalness of all of these quote unquote traditional women's crafts you know the things the the fiber arts that they're just really hard on a body and I don't think people realize that I don't think that people respect that and a lot of people see quilting as sort of like oh yeah this is this is what grandma does and you know but the average quilter is like a 60 something year old wasp um that that this is yeah like you know if you look at the quilt guild it's a whole bunch of you know gen x white femme presenting women in the quilt guild plus lu hernandez right like it's uh yeah like okay we have a couple people over 60 the demographics are not you know we're not like treated you know average demographic but it's still like what what makes this interesting and different and um and also like what are what are the hard aspects of this

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
You know you hear about port like all the accommodations for knitting like how do you make knitting hurt less you know there's the portuguese knitting there's people who take uh tennis balls or makeup brushes and stick their crochet hooks in them

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
So they can get a more ergonomic grip uh I want to look into getting a needle puller or um some more like finger protectors because like this is this is a lot of grip strength pulling this needle through and I think I can do better

Nic
You know what I've noticed makes a big difference do hide homemade thimbles one on the thumb one on the index and suddenly I don't need to grip the needle as strongly and there's more friction so I can pull the needle easier

Sondy
Yeah I've got this uh I think it might be doe hide it's a very soft

Nic
Yeah um yeah that looks a little bit like what I do

Sondy
So it's nice but then like if I'm tying knots I have to take the thimble off and yeah I might want to learn how to tie knots better I don't know I check out books from the library on quilting I'm like certainly one of these quilt as you go books won't suck so many of these quilts okay I checked out a bunch of books on garment sewing from the library and all of the examples are stitched with like contrast thread on fabric but the quilt as you go community is like oh no

Nic
No

Sondy
Any example quilt that we use in our books has to be a final quilt that we're gonna like want to give away to someone yes no contrasting thread the fabric is a solid so it's the same on the front as the back so you can't see like what's the front of the fabric and what's the back of the fabric oh well if you want to do it by machine just do it by machine it's like no this is a hand stitching example you got to give us the mystique I don't know I kind of like want to write a quilt as you go book of like you know quilt as you go that doesn't suck like

Nic
There's your next project in your downtime

Sondy
I I read through uh I don't know I was reading through the alumni magazine of where I went to undergrad and I was like damn I need to write a book I don't know what this book's gonna be but like salty quilting

Nic
Now you do hey Sondy I really have enjoyed this conversation um I want to ask you one last thing um is there something that you would like to say that I haven't covered that ties your quilting with your disability

Sondy
I think those of us who've been forced to look at the world differently, I think we get to make more interesting choices about what we make. Those of us who can't sort of take everything for granted, whether it's our bodies or how society lets us move through the world. I think there's a lot of disability inherent in quilting. I think there are a lot more disabled quilters out there than folks may admit to themselves that, you know, especially for hand stitching, right? Like if you can't sit, you know, there's hand stitching available. Or if you can't, you know, sit up at a machine, you know, if you, you know, there's so interesting like you know posts on these facebook groups of like hey I can't do this or I need I need a thing that does that and you know all the people who are happy to hop in and be like yeah here's an accommodation for that here's an accommodation to that or like I've got the same thing and it sucks like it's uh I appreciate and I know that's not like terribly really personal. But I think there's just so much of, you know, a lot of us who are disabled can't take, we can't take things for granted. We have to think, we have to question, we have to create new ways of moving through the world and interacting with things. And, you know, as you create something that no one else has before, I think that's a lot of fun. You know, there can be a playful aspect there's a lot of joy there and that's something that I've really appreciated about disability communities is seeing you know thriving disabled joy in a way that society society doesn't want you to society you know and you know quilt quilting wants you you know buying other people's patterns and using other people's ideas and not like and you know there's a lot of folks who are like yeah there's space in the quilt industry for people to come up with their own patterns and to come up with their own things. That, you know, not everyone, that it's, you know, it's hard for me, especially to keep like a whole bunch of thoughts in my head at once. And so to have time and to be able to read and to think and to put different things together is really validating. That's something that's been really hard for me as a scientist to come up with my own research ideas to do to you know read through the literature I really have never enjoyed that aspect or I've never like kind of figured out the right accommodations to be able to do that or to ask interesting questions and so to have a thing in my life where I feel like I can do that is uh it's really it's really great you know someday there'll be a you know science support and facilitation position where my weird weird experiences will be rewarded um but we haven't gotten there yet

Nic
Yeah hey I just thought of something we you mentioned microgravity earlier and we didn't come back to that now I know from past conversations that you've actually been on microgravity flights doing experiments which sounds like a lot of fun what would quilting look like in microgravity or no

Sondy
Funny you should ask that astronaut karen nyberg has quilted in space

Nic
How awesome is that

Sondy
Yeah yeah it's pretty cool um she even has two lines of quilting fabric uh called earth views one is prints that are really cool I actually have the whole set I'm gonna do a bigger hex bigger hexagons that have been like traditionally machine pieced for a friend out of those she does um like mars mission work where she you know her she works on one of these cameras that points down at mars and gets really cool landscape aerial landscape photos of mars and then karen's next fabric line is going to be batiks if it's I think it's already come out

Nic
Cool

Sondy
So yeah someone someone someone's done that there's been there's been quilts in space if I ever uh get an llc for my t-shirt quilts it'll be quilts in space awesome like muppets pigs in space

Nic
Sondy thank you so much for talking to me about quilting about disability about the work between um where can people find you or more about your quilting

Sondy
I have not really been active on social media in a while so uh if you happen to be in a you know the same discord or slack that I'm in um look for me there some maybe someday I'll post things on intergalactic cactus I think I have a blue sky for quilting but yeah you're just gonna have to social media has just not been fun for me so

Nic
Yeah I can relate to that Yeah, so I've just

Sondy
Enjoying putting my time and effort into smaller communities and doing the thing.

Nic
Awesome. Dr. Alessandra Springman, quilter, scientist, and a good friend. Thank you.

Sondy
Thank you, Nick. You're the best.

Nic
That's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is The Work Between. If this sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Key themes

Show notes Quilting, Disability, and Making Your Own Way Through the World with Dr. Alessandra “Sondy” Springmann

Dr. Alessondra “Sondy” Springmann studies asteroids, comets, and planetary science. When she’s not doing that, she’s making quilts from secondhand fabrics, worn-out work clothes, and other materials that still have something left to give.

In this conversation, quilting becomes the doorway into much larger topics. We talk about disability, adaptation, community, and the practical reality of making things when your tools, your environment, or your body don’t always cooperate.

Sondy shares how she learned to quilt during the pandemic, why she combines ninety-year-old sewing machines with laser cutters, and some of the physical demands that come with fiber arts. We also explore the connection between disability and problem-solving, and the ways creative people build systems that let them keep making the work they care about.

It’s a conversation about quilts. It’s also a conversation about finding ways forward when the obvious path isn’t available.

In this episode

Turning worn-out work shirts and denim into quilts with history and meaning
Learning to sew by making hundreds of masks during the early pandemic
Combining traditional quilting techniques with laser-cutting technology
The role of community in sustaining a creative practice
Disability, adaptation, and creative problem-solving
The physical realities of quilting and other fiber arts
Boom-and-bust creative cycles and the search for sustainability
Artist, artisan, or both?
Why experimentation matters more than getting things right the first time
Quilting, science, and finding ways to ask better questions

A quote that stayed with me

“I think those of us who’ve been forced to look at the world differently make more interesting choices about what we create.”

About Sondy

Dr. Alessondra “Sondy” Springmann is a planetary scientist whose work has included asteroid and comet research, participation in NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and planetary radar observations at Arecibo Observatory. She is also a quilter whose work often incorporates reclaimed and secondhand materials.

Links

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انگلیسی

ایالات متحده آمریکا

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در این اپیزود

# karen nyberg

lu hernandez

judy niemeyer

elu hernandez

blair stocker

alessandra springman

nic steenhout

alessondra springmann

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رونوشت 🔗

WEBVTT
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Nic: Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between. This
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Nic: podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and
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Nic: unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people, the people
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Nic: of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back
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Nic: of years I named this territory because it belongs
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Nic: with what this show is about the ways we decide whose lives
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Nic: are valued whose work is taken seriously and whose experiences
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Nic: are treated as problems to be managed those decisions shape
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Nic: everything this show sits inside that this is was and
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Nic: always will be First Nations land that's not a formality
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Nic: It's consistent with everything I and this show stand for. My
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Nic: guest today is Dr. Alessandra Springman. I know her as Sondi.
00:01:13.875 --> 00:01:18.315
Nic: Sondi is a planetary scientist with a PhD from the Lunar and
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Nic: Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. She spent
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Nic: years studying asteroids and comets, and her work has
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Nic: included the NASA OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample, returning
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Nic: mission, and two years of planetary radar observation at
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Nic: Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She quilts. Her quilting
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Nic: practice lives on Instagram at at intergalactic cactus. So
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Nic: today we're talking about quilts, what draws her to the
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Nic: work, and what making things by hand means when your
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Nic: professional life is built around looking towards outer
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Nic: space. Sondy, welcome to The Work Between.
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Sondy: Thank you,
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Nic: Now, for my listeners, I have to be open. Um Sondy and I go
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Nic: way back and we've been talking about quilting a lot but let's
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Nic: let's try and formalize things a little bit tell me a little bit
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Nic: about your creative practice what is it that you do
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Nic: obviously quilting but tell me more about that
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Sondy: for the most part when I make quilts I am turning
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Sondy: secondhand fabric into something more interesting than stuff that
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Sondy: doesn't get sold at the thrift store that may wind up in a
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Sondy: landfill. The project that I'm working on now is a lot of work
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Sondy: shirts and work pants from an uncle figure of mine who's a
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Sondy: contractor who builds boats, repairs boats. He met his wife
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Sondy: while they were working at a boat yard. She was the manager
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Sondy: and he rose up in the ranks because he could weld and he
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Sondy: was smart um he's a he's a real uh he's so we were going through his
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Sondy: clothes a couple years ago when I was staying um in a little
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Sondy: cottage on their property and he was saying that he would love
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Sondy: a quilt made from secondhand shirts because it was it would
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Sondy: be soft I said okay richard um so here we are almost two
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Sondy: years later and it's been a really fun way to figure out
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Sondy: how do you take something you know how do you take a set of
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Sondy: half a dozen work shirts and carhartt pants all made of
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Sondy: canvas and denim and other tough materials and make them make
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Sondy: them something soft and how do you arrange them in an
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Sondy: pleasing way and how do you do it in a way that
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Sondy: doesn't make you want to lose your mind, or if you are going
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Sondy: to lose your mind, providing for losing your mind
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Sondy: in the process. So I'm doing something called quilt as you
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Sondy: go, which involves cutting out the batting for each little part
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Sondy: of the quilt before hand, rather than sewing the top of the
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Sondy: quilt, sewing the back of the quilt, and then sewing the top
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Sondy: of the quilt, the batting and the back of the quilt together
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Sondy: in uh one big sandwich and so for this I'm making tiny little
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Sondy: hexagon sandwiches and rather than lose my mind cutting out
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Sondy: each hexagon of batting and fabric uh by myself by hand I went
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Sondy: to the library makerspace and used the laser cutter to laser
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Sondy: cut the batting into hexagons and to laser cut his uh denim work
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Sondy: pants and work shirts into in canvas work pants and work
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Sondy: shirts into hexagons so I didn't ruin all my uh cutting tools
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Sondy: at home so it's been a fun way to you know take something as
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Sondy: mundane as you know the clothes off his back but you
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Sondy: know clothes that have been well loved and some of them have fun
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Sondy: paint stains and some of them you know there's the fading
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Sondy: that's really interesting under the seams uh men's work shirts
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Sondy: often have like a little I think it's a pleat at the back
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Sondy: of the neck and so the that area under that doesn't fade as
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Sondy: much as the rest of the shirt. So I've managed to capture that
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Sondy: in a few places. So I think it's a really fun way to take
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Sondy: something, you know, like his, you know, these clothes that
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Sondy: are such a fundamental part of us, you know, they're close to
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Sondy: our heart, we wear them out, and they sort of fade into the
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Sondy: woodwork, and to turn them into something soft, something
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Sondy: comforting, and something that will, you know, keep him warm.
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Nic: how do you take something that's not inherently soft like
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Nic: denim or or work canvas and make it into something soft and cozy
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Sondy: first of all you give those garments to someone who
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Sondy: will wear them until they are worn out and they have been
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Sondy: washed so many times that they are incredibly soft on their
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Sondy: own and then one of the things I have figured out in quilting
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Sondy: is if your fabric is ugly or if your fabric is otherwise too
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Sondy: much if you cut it small enough it suddenly is less ugly
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Sondy: or less firm so having these um pieces of you know canvas
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Sondy: carhartt work pants cut to hexagons that are about six
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Sondy: inches tall makes it much easier to have them be soft and the
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Sondy: whole quilt isn't denim or canvas there's a lot of um there's
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Sondy: thrift store shirts there's shirts from friends there's
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Sondy: some corduroy pants in here there's quilting cotton all the
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Sondy: backs the hexagons are quilting cottons so there's a
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Sondy: huge variety so if you don't have the hard things dominating
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Sondy: your quilt you can get away with a lot
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Nic: how did you learn quilting
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Sondy: well in 2020 uh in march 2020 when my roommate at the
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Sondy: time and I were like well we're at home what do we do
00:06:51.249 --> 00:06:55.809
Sondy: with ourselves she had gone to fashion design school. And so
00:06:55.959 --> 00:06:58.959
Sondy: she had been an accomplished sewist. She had done costume
00:06:58.989 --> 00:07:03.569
Sondy: design in New York, including Broadway musicals. And so she
00:07:03.719 --> 00:07:07.289
Sondy: was, she was very competent. And so we said, let's sew some
00:07:07.589 --> 00:07:10.769
Sondy: masks. And I thought I knew how to sew. I'd, you know, done some
00:07:10.829 --> 00:07:13.709
Sondy: basic garment sewing. I'd sewed my prom dress in high school.
00:07:14.849 --> 00:07:17.939
Sondy: And, you know, after I borrowed a sewing machine from a friend
00:07:17.999 --> 00:07:22.339
Sondy: and Carrie looks at my sewing and she, you know, you can tell
00:07:22.549 --> 00:07:24.919
Sondy: the thoughts are going through her head. Like, wow, Sondy, you
00:07:25.039 --> 00:07:27.949
Sondy: think you could sew? That's a really nice idea you
00:07:28.009 --> 00:07:32.719
Sondy: have there. But she taught me kind of how to sew as an adult
00:07:32.809 --> 00:07:35.899
Sondy: rather than seat of the pants sewing that my mother had taught
00:07:35.959 --> 00:07:41.589
Sondy: me. And once you do something hundreds of times, and we sewed
00:07:41.979 --> 00:07:46.329
Sondy: 500 masks. I had a spreadsheet tracking all this. Once you do
00:07:46.419 --> 00:07:51.309
Sondy: something hundreds of times, you get decent at it. So I sort of
00:07:51.519 --> 00:07:54.519
Sondy: got more consistent with my pinning, got more consistent
00:07:54.639 --> 00:07:59.739
Sondy: with stitching, learned some binding, learned all sorts of
00:07:59.919 --> 00:08:03.419
Sondy: things, learned some very silly couture techniques, which I've
00:08:03.479 --> 00:08:05.549
Sondy: never really used since, but it's good to know that they
00:08:05.579 --> 00:08:11.579
Sondy: exist. And, you know, after it became clear that supply chains
00:08:11.699 --> 00:08:18.509
Sondy: had resolved themselves and we could get good N95 masks. Again, I
00:08:18.629 --> 00:08:22.639
Sondy: had all the scrap fabric left. And one of my friends in town
00:08:22.699 --> 00:08:26.779
Sondy: was an astronomer who was moving to a job at an observatory in
00:08:26.779 --> 00:08:29.179
Sondy: Hawaii, and she was downsizing. And she gave me a bunch of
00:08:29.209 --> 00:08:32.839
Sondy: fabric that I didn't realize was like fancy designer quilting
00:08:32.929 --> 00:08:36.199
Sondy: fabric until I had all these scraps sitting around and said,
00:08:36.289 --> 00:08:39.829
Sondy: what should I do with them? Uh, and I'm, I'm Jewish, but you know,
00:08:39.919 --> 00:08:42.969
Sondy: most of my friends are celebrate Christmas. And I decided to make
00:08:43.059 --> 00:08:46.689
Sondy: a Christmas stocking for a friend out of these scraps and
00:08:47.709 --> 00:08:50.139
Sondy: didn't quite realize that what I was doing was quilting until I
00:08:50.139 --> 00:08:54.369
Sondy: had done it and realized, Oh, this is, this is quilting. I
00:08:54.489 --> 00:08:56.709
Sondy: should, I should learn more about this. So I went to the
00:08:56.769 --> 00:08:59.889
Sondy: library and I went to the shelf of the library that had quilting
00:08:59.979 --> 00:09:04.979
Sondy: books. And I this was you know a neighborhood branch it
00:09:04.979 --> 00:09:07.919
Sondy: wasn't the main branch and I grabbed the five most
00:09:07.979 --> 00:09:11.009
Sondy: interesting books out of six that they had on the shelf and
00:09:11.009 --> 00:09:13.769
Sondy: I took them home and I found one by Blair Stocker called
00:09:13.859 --> 00:09:18.209
Sondy: Wisecraft Quilts and she turns fabrics into meaningful
00:09:18.419 --> 00:09:22.039
Sondy: patchwork and I read this book you know I opened this book I
00:09:22.189 --> 00:09:25.579
Sondy: read her philosophy and I turned a few pages in and I saw
00:09:25.729 --> 00:09:29.119
Sondy: this quilt where she was using the value or the brightness of
00:09:29.149 --> 00:09:32.899
Sondy: fabrics rather than the color or the pattern to dictate the
00:09:33.079 --> 00:09:37.519
Sondy: pattern dictate the layout of the quilt and I was completely
00:09:37.639 --> 00:09:43.599
Sondy: sold and probably within within three weeks of making that
00:09:43.689 --> 00:09:46.959
Sondy: Christmas stocking I had put an alert on Craigslist for sewing
00:09:47.049 --> 00:09:50.349
Sondy: machines at estate sales and yard sales I had driven 45
00:09:50.589 --> 00:09:54.549
Sondy: minutes down to a suburb of Tucson. I threw elbows. I got a
00:09:54.729 --> 00:10:01.019
Sondy: gigantic Janome sewing machine that Ginger Downing had
00:10:01.199 --> 00:10:05.729
Sondy: spent like $2,600 on new that I got for $600. And it came with all
00:10:05.759 --> 00:10:09.359
Sondy: the accessories. And I have sewn so much on that machine since.
00:10:10.019 --> 00:10:12.449
Sondy: And I've made some pretty cool quilts, if I don't say so
00:10:12.719 --> 00:10:16.049
Sondy: myself. It's been really fun to finally feel like
00:10:16.109 --> 00:10:20.099
Sondy: I have a creative practice. Both of my parents are artists my
00:10:20.189 --> 00:10:25.939
Sondy: mom has done oil painting and acrylic uh big big canvases she's
00:10:26.179 --> 00:10:28.669
Sondy: done some mixed media but she really sticks to like big
00:10:29.719 --> 00:10:33.739
Sondy: abstract acrylic canvas works my dad was a portrait
00:10:33.739 --> 00:10:37.069
Sondy: photographer for most of his career he photographed Georgia
00:10:37.189 --> 00:10:43.179
Sondy: O'Keeffe in 1974 at Ghost Ranch so he's you know so my
00:10:43.749 --> 00:10:46.569
Sondy: mother's father was an animator her mother was an illustrator
00:10:49.359 --> 00:10:53.859
Sondy: my dad's mother sewed and she crocheted and she knitted so
00:10:54.639 --> 00:10:56.529
Sondy: you know I come from this family of creatives and I'd
00:10:56.529 --> 00:10:59.079
Sondy: never really done anything regularly and I think everyone
00:10:59.109 --> 00:11:02.459
Sondy: was sort of like sitting around waiting for me to do something
00:11:02.519 --> 00:11:06.389
Sondy: consistently so when I finally started quilting I think
00:11:06.419 --> 00:11:09.629
Sondy: everyone I think my mom in particular breathed a sigh of
00:11:09.659 --> 00:11:13.289
Sondy: relief and four months after I started quilting she came to
00:11:13.289 --> 00:11:16.229
Sondy: visit me in Tucson and I was picking up my sewing machine
00:11:16.289 --> 00:11:20.809
Sondy: from being serviced at the, um, the sewing machine store and she
00:11:20.959 --> 00:11:24.289
Sondy: paid for it. And she's like, no, I want to encourage this. So it's
00:11:24.349 --> 00:11:28.189
Sondy: been, it's been cool to get into quilting. It's been cool to find
00:11:28.279 --> 00:11:30.349
Sondy: out how many people around me quilt or know someone who
00:11:30.439 --> 00:11:35.359
Sondy: quilts, uh, you know, someone's mom tried quilting and she gave me
00:11:37.069 --> 00:11:42.429
Sondy: the, what they call a pig, a project in a grocery bag of her
00:11:42.579 --> 00:11:45.039
Sondy: first attempt at quilting and she decided she didn't like
00:11:45.099 --> 00:11:47.409
Sondy: quilting after she'd started that. And I looked at what she'd
00:11:47.799 --> 00:11:49.599
Sondy: done and I said, yeah, of course you didn't like
00:11:49.719 --> 00:11:53.589
Sondy: quilting, Pat. You were not, no one taught you how to do this
00:11:53.799 --> 00:11:56.109
Sondy: properly. No one taught you how to cut your fabric properly. Of
00:11:56.169 --> 00:12:01.919
Sondy: course you hated this. So, you know, it's fun. And then I've
00:12:02.039 --> 00:12:07.079
Sondy: moved up to Boulder a few years ago and through a desperate
00:12:07.199 --> 00:12:11.159
Sondy: post on the Young and Millennial Quilters Facebook group, found a
00:12:11.279 --> 00:12:13.559
Sondy: wonderful long arm quilter up here and joined the Boulder
00:12:13.619 --> 00:12:17.249
Sondy: Modern Quilt Guild. And it's been great to meet other people
00:12:17.429 --> 00:12:20.399
Sondy: who are really interested in secondhand materials quilting.
00:12:21.419 --> 00:12:25.519
Sondy: There's one guy in the Quilt Guild, Elu Hernandez, who's a bit
00:12:25.549 --> 00:12:29.269
Sondy: of a big deal making quilt set of reclaimed jeans. And so he's
00:12:29.299 --> 00:12:33.169
Sondy: been really encouraging about this project. And there was a
00:12:33.829 --> 00:12:36.439
Sondy: Quilt Guild open sew and he said, give me seven of those
00:12:36.499 --> 00:12:38.509
Sondy: hexagons. I want to take them home to sew them together for
00:12:38.569 --> 00:12:46.479
Sondy: you. So he took seven of the 188 hexagon pieces and sewed them
00:12:46.539 --> 00:12:50.379
Sondy: together. So now I get to add his name to this quilt. So it's
00:12:50.439 --> 00:12:53.829
Sondy: been really fun to learn this, to find the community,
00:12:53.949 --> 00:12:58.479
Sondy: community. I try to read a lot, you know, random quilt
00:12:58.899 --> 00:13:02.969
Sondy: books, blogs. The Facebook group has been fabulous and
00:13:02.999 --> 00:13:05.069
Sondy: educational. There's a lot of Facebook groups that are badly
00:13:05.159 --> 00:13:10.019
Sondy: moderated or that tolerate very bad politics and behavior from
00:13:10.109 --> 00:13:12.809
Sondy: their members. And this Facebook group is, I would say, it's one
00:13:12.809 --> 00:13:18.989
Sondy: of the things that keeps me vaguely active on
00:13:19.079 --> 00:13:23.719
Sondy: Facebook. And by vaguely active, I mean logging in twice a month to ask
00:13:23.749 --> 00:13:28.669
Sondy: a question or see posts there. So I've enjoyed the community.
00:13:29.389 --> 00:13:31.039
Sondy: I've enjoyed being able to make things.
00:13:31.610 --> 00:13:33.920
Nic: I want to come back to community in a little bit, But
00:13:34.850 --> 00:13:39.470
Nic: before we explore that, I want to talk influences. Obviously,
00:13:39.950 --> 00:13:46.690
Nic: your family background is very much into creativity, but it
00:13:46.720 --> 00:13:51.340
Nic: sounds like nobody really quilts. Have they?
00:13:54.130 --> 00:13:58.510
Sondy: My dad has started quilting in the last few years.
00:13:59.350 --> 00:14:03.840
Nic: As a follow up on what you're doing, right? So the
00:14:05.100 --> 00:14:09.180
Nic: influence into quilting from their creative and artistic
00:14:09.270 --> 00:14:14.400
Nic: endeavors, has that tickled through or is just, tell me
00:14:14.490 --> 00:14:15.450
Nic: about that relationship.
00:14:16.830 --> 00:14:18.780
Sondy: I think it's interesting because my mother
00:14:19.050 --> 00:14:22.880
Sondy: loves color. She loves reds and oranges and
00:14:22.940 --> 00:14:26.510
Sondy: yellows and she loves her blues and her greens and things of
00:14:26.540 --> 00:14:30.440
Sondy: that nature. But my mother doesn't really think about value
00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:35.480
Sondy: in her her paintings she doesn't think about the contrast
00:14:35.480 --> 00:14:38.540
Sondy: between colors she just says you know she's a very intuitive
00:14:39.380 --> 00:14:45.490
Sondy: painter and you know she went to she I think she went to art
00:14:45.580 --> 00:14:50.500
Sondy: school for a little bit she had some um post-college art education
00:14:50.590 --> 00:14:52.420
Sondy: so I know you know I know she's familiar with color
00:14:52.540 --> 00:14:55.450
Sondy: theory I know she's familiar with value and contrast and
00:14:55.480 --> 00:14:59.860
Sondy: tints and tones and shades and all that um but she you know I
00:15:00.330 --> 00:15:03.210
Sondy: she knows all that but it's all you know in her heart at this
00:15:03.330 --> 00:15:07.080
Sondy: point we've talked about sort of like patterns and scale but
00:15:07.230 --> 00:15:10.290
Sondy: you know she she creates with paint she creates very
00:15:10.590 --> 00:15:14.820
Sondy: fundamental she creates in a very fundamental way with paint
00:15:14.970 --> 00:15:17.070
Sondy: whereas you know I'm using things that already exist and
00:15:17.760 --> 00:15:19.890
Sondy: I'll look around you know at the fabric and say hmm this
00:15:19.950 --> 00:15:22.880
Sondy: would be good for this I think it's a very different creative
00:15:22.970 --> 00:15:27.590
Sondy: process than than what my mom does and I have some of the
00:15:27.740 --> 00:15:31.670
Sondy: fabrics that her mother designed as an illustrator for the launch of
00:15:31.730 --> 00:15:34.700
Sondy: salzburg in los angeles and I'm like a lot of this stuff is
00:15:34.730 --> 00:15:38.030
Sondy: just like not it's just not interesting to me like I can't
00:15:38.090 --> 00:15:39.980
Sondy: figure out what to do with it but I hold on to it because
00:15:42.410 --> 00:15:47.650
Nic: because it's fabric right how how can you not hang on to
00:15:47.950 --> 00:15:49.450
Nic: fabric and stuff
00:15:49.930 --> 00:15:53.770
Sondy: it's the great thing about having a quilt guild and a
00:15:53.830 --> 00:15:57.070
Sondy: center for creative reuse in boulder is that I can just bring
00:15:57.220 --> 00:15:59.950
Sondy: fabric to quilt guild and say hey who wants this or bring
00:16:00.130 --> 00:16:01.680
Sondy: fabric to the center for creative reuse
00:16:02.820 --> 00:16:06.330
Nic: that quilt guild uh you're part of that as a community
00:16:07.650 --> 00:16:09.960
Nic: what does that connection do for you
00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:14.550
Sondy: for one thing uh this hexagon quilt that I'm working
00:16:14.670 --> 00:16:19.110
Sondy: on that I started just under two years ago. I started working
00:16:19.200 --> 00:16:23.630
Sondy: on it at an open sew and L.U. Was enchanted by the process. I
00:16:23.660 --> 00:16:26.870
Sondy: don't think he was really familiar with doing hexagons for
00:16:26.930 --> 00:16:31.760
Sondy: quilt as you go. And then I let it sit for a while because it
00:16:31.760 --> 00:16:34.280
Sondy: was parts of it that were frustrating and I hadn't quite
00:16:34.370 --> 00:16:38.690
Sondy: figured out how to mitigate the frustrating. And at some point
00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:43.420
Sondy: in the last year, LU asked hey how's that hexagon quilt
00:16:43.480 --> 00:16:49.210
Sondy: going and I kind of grumbled at him and so I started working on
00:16:49.210 --> 00:16:51.220
Sondy: the hexagons again so it's been really nice to have
00:16:51.280 --> 00:16:54.940
Sondy: encouragement uh it's been really nice to have feedback when I
00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:59.170
Sondy: need feedback it's been nice to have a smaller place to ask for
00:17:00.070 --> 00:17:06.480
Sondy: smaller scale advice there's now a couple of us who have been
00:17:06.600 --> 00:17:12.360
Sondy: inducted into the singer featherweight cult though uh I think all
00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:14.940
Sondy: of us have one featherweight so we're not really cultists
00:17:17.820 --> 00:17:19.590
Nic: you ever have enough featherweights
00:17:20.969 --> 00:17:23.899
Sondy: I don't know I take issue with like I've got 10
00:17:23.989 --> 00:17:26.719
Sondy: featherweights and I sew on none of them like get them out
00:17:26.719 --> 00:17:30.709
Sondy: in the ecosystem folks say they uh they need to they need to
00:17:30.739 --> 00:17:33.469
Sondy: be used so for folks who are not familiar with singer
00:17:33.559 --> 00:17:37.309
Sondy: featherweights Singer made these lovely little
00:17:37.399 --> 00:17:41.709
Sondy: sewing machines between the 1930s and the 1960s. And they are
00:17:42.249 --> 00:17:45.819
Sondy: mechanical. They draw 0.7 amps, less if you put an
00:17:45.879 --> 00:17:48.699
Sondy: LED bulb in them. I mean, they draw less current than your
00:17:48.789 --> 00:17:52.899
Sondy: phone does when it charges. And they are, some of them have been
00:17:52.959 --> 00:17:56.229
Sondy: running for 90 years. If you keep servicing them and keep
00:17:56.289 --> 00:17:58.629
Sondy: putting oil and grease on them, they will run for another 90
00:17:58.689 --> 00:18:01.319
Sondy: years. I mean, they are the most robust little
00:18:01.349 --> 00:18:03.899
Sondy: machines. And I like to say that they are the most heterosexual
00:18:03.959 --> 00:18:06.569
Sondy: sewing machines of all time, because you will not find a
00:18:06.629 --> 00:18:11.459
Sondy: straighter stitch on any other sewing machine. So it's been
00:18:11.579 --> 00:18:14.609
Sondy: fun to learn the basics of featherweight maintenance
00:18:15.299 --> 00:18:18.569
Sondy: and where to grease and where to oil and how to
00:18:18.659 --> 00:18:23.989
Sondy: clean things with kerosene and how to adjust the timing and
00:18:24.379 --> 00:18:29.929
Sondy: what has changed in the intervening uh 81 years since my
00:18:30.019 --> 00:18:34.639
Sondy: sewing machine has been made and what has not in you know
00:18:34.729 --> 00:18:36.919
Sondy: what remains the same between this machine and modern
00:18:36.949 --> 00:18:39.499
Sondy: machines like the needle that this machine uses it's the same
00:18:39.529 --> 00:18:41.109
Sondy: needle that modern machines do
00:18:42.009 --> 00:18:42.069
Nic: yeah
00:18:42.370 --> 00:18:46.090
Sondy: the bobbin case okay yeah bobbin cases are very
00:18:46.150 --> 00:18:49.600
Sondy: particular on the featherweights but modern machines are
00:18:49.600 --> 00:18:52.660
Sondy: very similar into how that all works. So it's just a really
00:18:52.750 --> 00:18:56.380
Sondy: cool way to sort of fundamentally understand how
00:18:57.940 --> 00:19:01.530
Sondy: sewing machines have evolved and haven't evolved and how to use
00:19:01.650 --> 00:19:05.820
Sondy: them. And I feel like it informs better how I use my
00:19:06.540 --> 00:19:12.210
Sondy: machine that was made 15 years ago. And yeah, it's nice to have
00:19:12.330 --> 00:19:15.090
Sondy: more technical understanding of how a sewing machine works and
00:19:15.120 --> 00:19:16.950
Sondy: how to adjust it and how to tune
00:19:19.350 --> 00:19:24.290
Nic: it well we're talking about equipment but one thing I'm
00:19:24.380 --> 00:19:29.450
Nic: curious about is um what does your workspace tells you about
00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:33.620
Nic: yourself that you didn't really decide it kind of involved or
00:19:34.490 --> 00:19:35.000
Nic: arrived at
00:19:36.860 --> 00:19:42.190
Sondy: so I I've got some lower back stuff from uh being rear-ended
00:19:42.250 --> 00:19:45.760
Sondy: twice while driving my car So I have figured out that standing
00:19:46.150 --> 00:19:50.680
Sondy: for machine sewing is best for my ergonomics. I have also
00:19:50.740 --> 00:19:55.210
Sondy: discovered that since getting a heart rate tracker about nine
00:19:55.270 --> 00:19:59.770
Sondy: months ago, that standing to sew also does really goofy things to
00:19:59.800 --> 00:20:03.600
Sondy: my heart rate. I don't know if it's a POTS thing because I can
00:20:03.840 --> 00:20:06.990
Sondy: walk like three or four miles a day, no problem. But it's the
00:20:07.200 --> 00:20:13.110
Sondy: standing that seems to just not agree with heart rate stuff,
00:20:13.140 --> 00:20:16.740
Sondy: which is fascinating or that like stand sewing is just like
00:20:16.800 --> 00:20:20.330
Sondy: a stressful thing is, you know, it's, it's creative, but it's
00:20:20.390 --> 00:20:23.960
Sondy: like, am I just sort of like going into like, you know, high
00:20:24.320 --> 00:20:27.650
Sondy: stress focus mode to do this? So that requires more,
00:20:29.090 --> 00:20:33.320
Sondy: experimentation and investigation, but I've now
00:20:33.530 --> 00:20:36.770
Sondy: gotten to the point where all these hexagons have been, I've
00:20:36.860 --> 00:20:38.990
Sondy: done everything I need to do for the hexagons themselves to
00:20:39.050 --> 00:20:42.850
Sondy: machine sew them. Now I'm joining them by hand, all
00:20:43.810 --> 00:20:46.930
Sondy: seams of them and that can be done on the couch it can be
00:20:47.170 --> 00:20:52.630
Sondy: done at my partner's wood shop it can be done uh at parties it
00:20:52.840 --> 00:20:56.290
Sondy: you know it's a very portable task in that regard so that's
00:20:56.410 --> 00:21:02.610
Sondy: been cool and it's also like okay I will not be worsening my
00:21:02.730 --> 00:21:05.640
Sondy: heart rate while I do this part of this project I will have to
00:21:05.730 --> 00:21:10.290
Sondy: stand to sew to do the machine binding but it's also just a
00:21:10.350 --> 00:21:16.500
Sondy: nice way to slow down a bit and kind of figure out how do I do
00:21:16.590 --> 00:21:18.750
Sondy: hand sewing because I've never been interested in doing hand
00:21:18.810 --> 00:21:20.720
Sondy: sewing I've always found it annoying but when you do
00:21:20.840 --> 00:21:28.880
Sondy: something uh you know 127 times you you get a little better at
00:21:30.380 --> 00:21:34.280
Nic: it you could always hand stitch the binding
00:21:36.860 --> 00:21:41.860
Sondy: I don't I'm really bad at sewing straight like sewing
00:21:42.220 --> 00:21:46.420
Sondy: like long straight lines whip stitching to join hexagons is is
00:21:46.750 --> 00:21:50.800
Sondy: fine uh because you've already got the straight line there but I
00:21:50.860 --> 00:21:53.230
Sondy: don't know I guess I could try it but I feel like that would
00:21:53.260 --> 00:21:56.440
Sondy: just be when it comes to putting binding on a quilt I'm just
00:21:56.440 --> 00:21:58.570
Sondy: like get me through this let's just go like
00:22:00.220 --> 00:22:02.790
Nic: final mile final get it out
00:22:03.779 --> 00:22:06.989
Sondy: and uh I know richard probably will not listen to
00:22:07.019 --> 00:22:10.049
Sondy: this but I know that richard will never um he will never wash
00:22:10.169 --> 00:22:14.699
Sondy: this quilt and a lot of the fabrics you know there's some
00:22:15.029 --> 00:22:18.329
Sondy: like a thrift store skirt that had boats on it and a few other
00:22:18.479 --> 00:22:20.899
Sondy: ones that I'm like yeah this would be fun to include but
00:22:20.899 --> 00:22:24.829
Sondy: it's way too light and I got some indigo dye and did indigo
00:22:24.919 --> 00:22:28.849
Sondy: dyeing last year to darken some of these fabrics and so the fabric
00:22:28.939 --> 00:22:33.739
Sondy: I have I'd gotten in Ghana for uh and had originally given to his
00:22:33.829 --> 00:22:37.579
Sondy: wife Millie but you know they were never going to use it and
00:22:37.639 --> 00:22:39.589
Sondy: so I'm like oh I have an idea of what to do with it but it's
00:22:39.649 --> 00:22:44.739
Sondy: kind of a like a medium light sky blue with like a darker vine
00:22:44.859 --> 00:22:47.439
Sondy: print on it and so I've been darkening that with indigo with
00:22:47.439 --> 00:22:49.959
Sondy: the idea of using it for the binding because the binding of
00:22:49.959 --> 00:22:52.989
Sondy: the quilt is part of the quilt that is used the most and gets
00:22:53.049 --> 00:22:55.869
Sondy: like all of your oils from your fingers on it from like pulling
00:22:55.929 --> 00:23:02.769
Sondy: it and touching it and I don't like fighting reality right
00:23:02.829 --> 00:23:06.479
Sondy: like I accept that gravity is is a thing I don't like to fight
00:23:06.509 --> 00:23:09.869
Sondy: gravity unless well there are circumstances in which I have
00:23:09.899 --> 00:23:13.109
Sondy: successfully fought gravity and won we can we can get back to
00:23:13.109 --> 00:23:16.919
Sondy: that one um so I like making sure that the bindings of my quilts
00:23:17.009 --> 00:23:22.069
Sondy: are dark so that they don't show as much finger oil
00:23:22.159 --> 00:23:23.329
Sondy: don't need to be washed as often
00:23:25.370 --> 00:23:29.330
Nic: if it comes down to a choice between working alone on
00:23:29.420 --> 00:23:33.740
Nic: a quilting project and working in a group what what's your
00:23:33.770 --> 00:23:34.700
Nic: preference why
00:23:36.859 --> 00:23:41.979
Sondy: so another march 2020 thing that I started was a zoom
00:23:42.099 --> 00:23:45.519
Sondy: crafting group uh so rather than it being stitch and bitch I
00:23:45.639 --> 00:23:53.679
Sondy: named it loom and zoom and here we are six years and uh a month
00:23:53.799 --> 00:23:57.219
Sondy: and seven days later and we are still going twice a week on
00:23:57.339 --> 00:24:00.599
Sondy: zoom where we work on crafting projects together we have a
00:24:00.629 --> 00:24:05.429
Sondy: group chat where we talk about ideas so for me really up
00:24:05.519 --> 00:24:08.339
Sondy: until I moved to boulder and joined this quilt guild
00:24:10.349 --> 00:24:14.489
Sondy: quilting sewing whatever was not really a in-person social
00:24:16.529 --> 00:24:21.079
Sondy: event um but you know I still I still like hanging out on zoom
00:24:21.169 --> 00:24:25.249
Sondy: to do things with folks and now I can have a project that is
00:24:25.369 --> 00:24:29.509
Sondy: portable I can take it places there is a hand sewing group
00:24:29.539 --> 00:24:32.059
Sondy: that the quilt guild has I think they meet in coffee shops
00:24:32.689 --> 00:24:35.089
Sondy: and so now I'm kind of like huh I should make sure I have a
00:24:35.179 --> 00:24:40.189
Sondy: hand hand sewing project at all times and the quilt guild open
00:24:40.279 --> 00:24:44.499
Sondy: sews those are fun I've really enjoyed those I'm the only
00:24:44.529 --> 00:24:47.769
Sondy: person masked them but that's fine and now that I have a
00:24:47.829 --> 00:24:50.079
Sondy: it's much easier to bring a sewing machine to
00:24:50.139 --> 00:24:53.319
Sondy: them than to haul like all 26 pounds of my main sewing machine
00:24:54.639 --> 00:24:58.029
Sondy: downstairs in the car take it over to the community center
00:25:01.350 --> 00:25:03.510
Nic: I'm gonna ask you about your relationship with
00:25:03.660 --> 00:25:07.980
Nic: disability you you mentioned a few things you mentioned pots you
00:25:08.040 --> 00:25:15.540
Nic: mentioned um chronic back issues so what's your disability
00:25:15.630 --> 00:25:17.100
Nic: what's your relationship to that
00:25:19.620 --> 00:25:26.840
Sondy: for I have had ibd for over 20 years I have got you
00:25:26.840 --> 00:25:33.140
Sondy: know another fun constellation of other other things you
00:25:33.170 --> 00:25:36.140
Sondy: know laryngopharyngeal reflux and interstitial cystitis and
00:25:36.200 --> 00:25:45.970
Sondy: some lower back stuff from, uh, drivers in Tucson. Um, I deal with
00:25:46.300 --> 00:25:53.680
Sondy: headaches. I deal with some joint stuff and RSI stuff. Um, so
00:25:53.890 --> 00:26:01.890
Sondy: for like half, half of my life, I've been dealing with, living
00:26:01.920 --> 00:26:06.810
Sondy: with chronic illness and some form of disability. And I have
00:26:06.870 --> 00:26:10.650
Sondy: found that most of my friends are disabled, have some sort of
00:26:10.710 --> 00:26:13.980
Sondy: disability of one type or another. A lot of my friends
00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:18.690
Sondy: have a chronic illness or deal with chronic illness. There's
00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:22.220
Sondy: someone at Quilt Guild who, you know, I've interacted with her
00:26:22.400 --> 00:26:24.740
Sondy: very briefly twice and she says she doesn't drive. And I'm
00:26:24.770 --> 00:26:27.260
Sondy: like, huh, that's interesting. You know, there's so many
00:26:27.320 --> 00:26:29.330
Sondy: reasons that a person may want to drive, whether it's from
00:26:29.360 --> 00:26:32.510
Sondy: disability or from a moral perspective. And I'm like,
00:26:33.230 --> 00:26:34.790
Sondy: I kind of want to get to know you better because you've
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:38.900
Sondy: thought about this. You've made a decision that runs contrary to
00:26:38.960 --> 00:26:43.600
Sondy: what the rest of the world expects or experiences. That, you
00:26:43.630 --> 00:26:48.010
Sondy: know, huh, interesting. And so that's one of the things that
00:26:48.190 --> 00:26:51.310
Sondy: I really appreciate about disability communities is
00:26:51.460 --> 00:26:54.760
Sondy: that disabled people have thought about how they move
00:26:54.820 --> 00:26:57.490
Sondy: through the world, how they interact with the world and
00:26:58.120 --> 00:27:02.520
Sondy: whether it's their choice or otherwise they they have had
00:27:02.550 --> 00:27:06.210
Sondy: to think deeply about sort of the fundamental tenants that
00:27:06.270 --> 00:27:10.380
Sondy: society uh expects and that's something I really appreciate
00:27:10.500 --> 00:27:11.670
Sondy: about disability community
00:27:13.500 --> 00:27:17.730
Nic: yeah that's funny you say that I was I was gonna ask
00:27:17.880 --> 00:27:23.750
Nic: you um I was gonna to say some people argue that navigating a world
00:27:23.810 --> 00:27:28.640
Nic: not built for you produces a kind of creative thinking and
00:27:29.000 --> 00:27:32.630
Nic: do you think that connects to your practice or is that just
00:27:33.110 --> 00:27:38.540
Nic: too neat a framing but you mentioning getting to meet and
00:27:38.600 --> 00:27:41.740
Nic: talk to people that have been doing that kind of thinking
00:27:41.800 --> 00:27:45.190
Nic: before Or leads me to think that, yeah, maybe it works for you?
00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:53.530
Sondy: I think I've, at least for quilting, I'm someone
00:27:53.650 --> 00:27:58.720
Sondy: who likes, I like solving problems in interesting ways. Or
00:27:58.810 --> 00:28:02.670
Sondy: I've done sort of enough thinking from reading, you know,
00:28:02.760 --> 00:28:07.080
Sondy: reading about color theory or value quilting. Or like looking
00:28:07.140 --> 00:28:09.750
Sondy: at a stack of fabric and being like, what can I do with this?
00:28:10.320 --> 00:28:12.600
Sondy: This is the project in the grocery bag. This is the pig
00:28:13.230 --> 00:28:16.140
Sondy: fabric that was given to me by the friend's mom who decided
00:28:16.170 --> 00:28:22.370
Sondy: she didn't like quilting and for some people they see what I
00:28:22.460 --> 00:28:26.240
Sondy: wind up doing and they're like wow that's wild like how can
00:28:26.330 --> 00:28:29.240
Sondy: you look how can you look at these strips of these fabrics
00:28:29.300 --> 00:28:32.750
Sondy: and turn them into you know this thing I'm like well
00:28:32.930 --> 00:28:38.360
Sondy: I've been thinking about value and contrast for a while and
00:28:38.390 --> 00:28:42.910
Sondy: like what what combinations of fabrics you would need to have
00:28:44.800 --> 00:28:47.800
Sondy: you know to make something effective out of to make this
00:28:47.890 --> 00:28:51.010
Sondy: particular thing and have it be effective and so people don't
00:28:51.040 --> 00:28:54.190
Sondy: necessarily see all of that like thinking and experimenting
00:28:54.670 --> 00:28:58.660
Sondy: and work that goes into producing something that looks
00:28:58.750 --> 00:29:01.980
Sondy: really cool but also you know folks in the quilt field being
00:29:02.010 --> 00:29:04.080
Sondy: like I don't understand how your brain works that you can
00:29:04.650 --> 00:29:07.620
Sondy: have these, you know, go from this step to that step. And I'm
00:29:07.680 --> 00:29:10.860
Sondy: like, oh, there were a lot of steps in between and a lot of
00:29:10.890 --> 00:29:13.800
Sondy: frustration. There was a lot of experimenting. There was a lot
00:29:13.890 --> 00:29:17.700
Sondy: of banging my head against the wall and being frustrated that
00:29:17.730 --> 00:29:20.510
Sondy: I put all this effort into this thing and then abandoned it.
00:29:20.660 --> 00:29:24.530
Sondy: But, you know, two years later, coming back to it in a
00:29:24.530 --> 00:29:28.640
Sondy: completely different way no one sees all those experimental
00:29:28.730 --> 00:29:29.630
Sondy: steps that led up
00:29:31.190 --> 00:29:31.250
Nic: to
00:29:33.020 --> 00:29:36.230
Sondy: it and you know for this hexagon quilt you know
00:29:36.320 --> 00:29:38.360
Sondy: figuring out oh yeah I've used the laser cutter a couple of
00:29:38.390 --> 00:29:40.990
Sondy: times at the library makerspace including for a really cool
00:29:41.080 --> 00:29:48.040
Sondy: quilt that I made for a mutual friend of Nic's and mine so
00:29:48.190 --> 00:29:50.440
Sondy: you know had some precedent you know there'd been some
00:29:50.470 --> 00:29:54.520
Sondy: in my life for doing laser cutting for quilting so
00:29:55.480 --> 00:29:58.870
Sondy: you know there's there's a lot of work that people haven't
00:29:58.900 --> 00:30:04.950
Sondy: necessarily seen that leads up to my current creative way of
00:30:05.010 --> 00:30:08.430
Sondy: moving through the world you know it comes from like
00:30:08.520 --> 00:30:11.880
Sondy: going to the there's a the colorado quilting council puts
00:30:11.940 --> 00:30:16.530
Sondy: on a quilt affair once a year and someone was doing a demo of
00:30:16.680 --> 00:30:21.800
Sondy: her reverse applique system and you know sitting there watching
00:30:21.860 --> 00:30:26.570
Sondy: her do this and I was like I don't I need to make a quilt
00:30:26.930 --> 00:30:30.080
Sondy: that has Chinese characters in it but I don't want to do any
00:30:30.170 --> 00:30:32.780
Sondy: of this by hand and I'm watching her do this reverse
00:30:32.930 --> 00:30:35.540
Sondy: applique and I you know figured out from what I knew
00:30:35.930 --> 00:30:39.530
Sondy: about laser cutting and her reverse applique method that I
00:30:39.590 --> 00:30:42.280
Sondy: could do this could have a laser cutter do a couple of
00:30:42.400 --> 00:30:45.880
Sondy: steps for me and not have to worry about figuring out a bunch
00:30:45.910 --> 00:30:49.060
Sondy: of stuff by hand and having it look not the way I wanted it to
00:30:49.120 --> 00:30:56.530
Sondy: look so it's um yeah it's been fun in that regard to figure out
00:30:56.560 --> 00:30:59.800
Sondy: how to put a bunch of disparate things together and also kind
00:30:59.860 --> 00:31:02.640
Sondy: of fun to see people just blown away by the end result
00:31:04.590 --> 00:31:13.680
Nic: I like this contrast between Sondy is using a nearly
00:31:13.800 --> 00:31:18.660
Nic: 100 year old featherweight singer's sewing machine and is
00:31:18.780 --> 00:31:23.150
Nic: using the latest laser cutting technology I think that's
00:31:23.330 --> 00:31:32.810
Nic: that's just awesome Sondy are you a disabled quilter or are
00:31:32.930 --> 00:31:35.150
Nic: you a quilter who happens to be disabled
00:31:36.890 --> 00:31:40.690
Sondy: I think I'm a disabled quilter uh I'm always trying to
00:31:40.750 --> 00:31:47.620
Sondy: find more ergonomic ways to do things I'm very aware of how
00:31:49.270 --> 00:31:53.860
Sondy: the ergonomics of pretty much any fiber art are awful doesn't
00:31:53.860 --> 00:31:56.320
Sondy: matter what you're doing you know is it knitting is it
00:31:56.410 --> 00:32:00.580
Sondy: crocheting is it uh needle you know needlepoint needlework
00:32:00.910 --> 00:32:05.400
Sondy: is it cross stitch is sewing on a machine all of this is bad
00:32:05.790 --> 00:32:08.640
Sondy: it you know you're hunched over on your machine some
00:32:08.670 --> 00:32:12.960
Sondy: people put wedges under their machine to tilt it up a bit but
00:32:13.680 --> 00:32:16.320
Sondy: I like having the big extension table off the side of my
00:32:16.380 --> 00:32:19.830
Sondy: machine so like having the machine tilted up doesn't like
00:32:19.890 --> 00:32:23.180
Sondy: creates this other problem so I feel like you can't really
00:32:23.240 --> 00:32:28.550
Sondy: fundamentally separate how I quilt from my being disabled
00:32:30.680 --> 00:32:36.560
Sondy: and yeah this heart rate stuff this is interesting um I don't
00:32:36.560 --> 00:32:40.190
Sondy: really have a provider I can talk about this with but I
00:32:40.220 --> 00:32:42.940
Sondy: don't know I guess I I guess I need to ask around and see what
00:32:44.560 --> 00:32:46.390
Sondy: what other people experience
00:32:48.130 --> 00:32:50.020
Nic: what are you trying to get better at right now
00:32:51.610 --> 00:32:54.820
Sondy: I'm trying to get better at being consistent and doing
00:32:54.880 --> 00:32:58.930
Sondy: things at a sustainable pace um for me it's sort of this like
00:32:59.410 --> 00:33:04.020
Sondy: this boom bust cycles of doing things now that I feel like
00:33:04.080 --> 00:33:09.330
Sondy: I've gotten to the point where, you know, 24, 23% of the way
00:33:09.600 --> 00:33:13.500
Sondy: through sewing these hexagons together, I'm just like, I just
00:33:13.530 --> 00:33:15.600
Sondy: want to crank them out. I just want to get them done. I want to
00:33:15.600 --> 00:33:21.740
Sondy: get them out the door. Like, let's go. And that's, you know,
00:33:21.800 --> 00:33:25.040
Sondy: after like months of not doing anything, you know, then I'm
00:33:25.100 --> 00:33:27.890
Sondy: like staying up past midnight hand sewing and I'm like it's not
00:33:28.130 --> 00:33:32.750
Sondy: not great yeah I've got this other quilt that I've like should
00:33:32.750 --> 00:33:35.090
Sondy: be working on I'm like trying to get back to but like
00:33:35.210 --> 00:33:37.040
Sondy: you know it's like okay well I need to deal with this well
00:33:37.430 --> 00:33:39.590
Sondy: that means dealing with that and then you're like five steps
00:33:39.620 --> 00:33:43.330
Sondy: away from the original issue and it's like that's so
00:33:43.360 --> 00:33:47.260
Sondy: be nice to consistently show up and do work without it sort of
00:33:47.350 --> 00:33:51.970
Sondy: being too much or not at all. Yesterday I was up at my
00:33:52.270 --> 00:33:57.070
Sondy: partner's woodshop hand sewing, and he always likes
00:33:57.130 --> 00:34:05.010
Sondy: having a body double there to kind of keep him on task. And I
00:34:05.130 --> 00:34:08.100
Sondy: was saying, hey, is it helpful having me here? He says, well,
00:34:08.220 --> 00:34:10.620
Sondy: you know, I'm pretty locked in on this task I'm doing. You
00:34:10.620 --> 00:34:13.260
Sondy: know, I think I would have been doing it and stayed
00:34:13.530 --> 00:34:16.350
Sondy: focused on it even if you weren't here. You know, but it's
00:34:16.350 --> 00:34:19.890
Sondy: nice it's nice to have company uh and he asked you know is this
00:34:19.950 --> 00:34:23.570
Sondy: helpful for you and I'm like well I'm not trying to make a
00:34:23.720 --> 00:34:25.520
Sondy: living off of my quilts necessarily
00:34:25.550 --> 00:34:25.610
Nic: yeah
00:34:29.779 --> 00:34:33.589
Sondy: but you know it's like I really should be cleaning the
00:34:33.649 --> 00:34:35.869
Sondy: house I should be doing physical therapy I should be
00:34:35.959 --> 00:34:39.709
Sondy: doing should be like cooking more meals I should you know
00:34:41.629 --> 00:34:44.769
Sondy: I should be tidying the sewing room which is just devolved
00:34:44.799 --> 00:34:49.509
Sondy: into chaos uh yeah there's a whole bunch of things I should
00:34:49.569 --> 00:34:55.329
Sondy: be doing and well okay we're gonna we're in a boom we're
00:34:55.359 --> 00:34:59.289
Sondy: in the boom part of the cycle uh that's just how it's going
00:35:00.119 --> 00:35:01.859
Sondy: there will be times when I'm in the bust
00:35:02.699 --> 00:35:06.899
Nic: it seems like you're you're working in cycles
00:35:08.609 --> 00:35:13.769
Nic: Do those cycles relate to either feeling stuck and then kind of
00:35:15.839 --> 00:35:20.719
Nic: not abandoning but slowing down or, you know, hey, it's going
00:35:20.809 --> 00:35:23.959
Nic: well, let's get things accomplished while it's going
00:35:24.019 --> 00:35:27.499
Nic: well? Or is it something unrelated to that that
00:35:28.399 --> 00:35:32.539
Nic: dictates the boom-bust, quick, slow approach?
00:35:34.700 --> 00:35:39.740
Sondy: sometimes it's related to disability in october we
00:35:39.950 --> 00:35:45.400
Sondy: doing botox injections for this headache and I got the fun
00:35:47.230 --> 00:35:54.490
Sondy: reaction of uh my so when you do botox sometimes your neck
00:35:54.580 --> 00:35:59.080
Sondy: muscles are like whoa whoa whoa what my head is so heavy
00:35:59.890 --> 00:36:01.980
Sondy: and your head is the same weight your neck muscles are
00:36:02.040 --> 00:36:08.160
Sondy: just responding completely differently. So I got all of
00:36:08.190 --> 00:36:12.870
Sondy: this like neck perceived neck muscle weakness that caused
00:36:13.080 --> 00:36:17.100
Sondy: tremendous pain if I bent my head forward for more than like
00:36:17.520 --> 00:36:22.520
Sondy: a little bit at a time. And that was really terrible. And I
00:36:22.610 --> 00:36:27.290
Sondy: couldn't machine sew. And I'd been kind of like okay yeah
00:36:27.470 --> 00:36:32.180
Sondy: let's get back to machine sewing um but fortunately
00:36:32.540 --> 00:36:36.170
Sondy: fortunately uh the guy who had serviced my sewing machine had
00:36:36.230 --> 00:36:38.900
Sondy: screwed something up so I couldn't sew until that got
00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:39.260
Sondy: fixed
00:36:39.350 --> 00:36:39.530
Nic: right
00:36:39.980 --> 00:36:43.270
Sondy: and I couldn't sew because of my neck um and so
00:36:43.390 --> 00:36:47.080
Sondy: like yeah that really sucked but there was like that in
00:36:47.200 --> 00:36:52.180
Sondy: combination with something else was not not the worst
00:36:54.460 --> 00:36:58.930
Nic: has making the work the quilting has it made it harder
00:36:59.350 --> 00:37:04.170
Nic: rather than easier so you know you're you're making these quilts
00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:12.030
Nic: you've you've had uh the the botox and and you've had barriers but
00:37:12.180 --> 00:37:17.730
Nic: you're also keeping at it so I'm I'm assuming doing the work the
00:37:17.940 --> 00:37:24.140
Nic: quilting is is actually somehow making your life easier in some
00:37:24.230 --> 00:37:29.780
Nic: ways but has it also made it harder
00:37:31.460 --> 00:37:33.500
Sondy: yeah I think you know there's definitely the times
00:37:33.530 --> 00:37:37.010
Sondy: where it's like oh look I'm staying up too late hand sewing
00:37:37.130 --> 00:37:43.930
Sondy: or I'm getting distracted by this to the uh I'm getting
00:37:43.990 --> 00:37:48.250
Sondy: distracted by this and it's you know negatively affecting
00:37:48.310 --> 00:37:55.090
Sondy: other things in my life um I mostly buy secondhand fabric or
00:37:55.180 --> 00:38:02.400
Sondy: I inherit fabric or I you know given fabric so spending
00:38:02.700 --> 00:38:05.730
Sondy: money on this hobby isn't necessarily a problem
00:38:05.880 --> 00:38:08.310
Sondy: especially since I make t-shirt quilts for friends occasionally
00:38:08.520 --> 00:38:14.700
Sondy: and you know that helps subsidize things so yeah like
00:38:14.760 --> 00:38:17.700
Sondy: the ergonomics of hand sewing right now you know like having
00:38:17.760 --> 00:38:20.780
Sondy: like poked myself in the finger so many times or like how it's
00:38:20.990 --> 00:38:26.480
Sondy: worsening this really thick callus on my thumb which means
00:38:26.630 --> 00:38:29.720
Sondy: that like the sense you know the nerves are now like having a
00:38:29.780 --> 00:38:32.540
Sondy: hard time it's like okay yeah the sensitivity of like
00:38:32.540 --> 00:38:36.770
Sondy: the left side of my or the outside edge of my dominant
00:38:37.520 --> 00:38:43.900
Sondy: hands thumb is like having an issue um or like oh I should
00:38:43.960 --> 00:38:47.500
Sondy: really be doing pt but look at me I'm sewing instead I'd had
00:38:48.010 --> 00:38:54.970
Sondy: ankle surgery last year and was like finally out of the boot
00:38:57.010 --> 00:39:00.960
Sondy: and probably should have had the boot on but like my sewing
00:39:00.990 --> 00:39:02.850
Sondy: machine had been on the floor and I'm like okay I'm gonna
00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:05.010
Sondy: lift it up and put on the table and I'm like should I
00:39:05.040 --> 00:39:07.290
Sondy: have been lifting 26 pounds at that point
00:39:08.010 --> 00:39:08.070
Nic: yeah
00:39:08.460 --> 00:39:11.100
Sondy: probably not it could have been much worse I guess
00:39:11.430 --> 00:39:16.470
Sondy: but it's um I guess for the most part sewing has generally been a
00:39:16.560 --> 00:39:19.680
Sondy: positive thing because it really felt like before the pandemic
00:39:19.710 --> 00:39:22.790
Sondy: started in 2020 that I didn't I was never getting enough done as
00:39:22.820 --> 00:39:26.900
Sondy: a grad student that I was always uh not productive enough to
00:39:26.990 --> 00:39:30.080
Sondy: have hobbies and that was really a time where it's like
00:39:30.140 --> 00:39:32.510
Sondy: yeah no one's getting anything done like having a hobby
00:39:33.200 --> 00:39:36.620
Sondy: having a hobby that involves like sewing masks socially
00:39:36.620 --> 00:39:39.350
Sondy: great keep up the good work you know it was
00:39:39.380 --> 00:39:41.200
Sondy: like oh I'm not gonna get anything done I'm gonna go for
00:39:41.200 --> 00:39:45.610
Sondy: a hike and I'm not gonna feel guilty about it so I
00:39:45.700 --> 00:39:50.410
Sondy: think for the most part sewing has been generally a positive
00:39:50.590 --> 00:39:57.910
Sondy: thing in my life and has not been too detrimental damaging
00:39:58.330 --> 00:40:01.770
Sondy: or distracting from other things.
00:40:04.560 --> 00:40:06.540
Nic: Have you ever made something you regret making?
00:40:11.580 --> 00:40:14.700
Sondy: I've certainly started projects where I'm like, I don't...
00:40:16.200 --> 00:40:21.350
Sondy: Do I really want to finish this? Do I really want to get
00:40:21.350 --> 00:40:24.440
Sondy: back to this? Okay, if I was starting this now, I would make
00:40:24.620 --> 00:40:29.600
Sondy: all these different choices. So that's definitely been, been the
00:40:29.720 --> 00:40:32.660
Sondy: case for some, some things.
00:40:33.020 --> 00:40:36.350
Nic: You could always just shove it all in a bag and give it to
00:40:36.440 --> 00:40:36.980
Nic: somebody else.
00:40:38.300 --> 00:40:41.350
Sondy: Yeah. Okay. I do, I do regret one thing. I had a friend
00:40:41.380 --> 00:40:45.280
Sondy: in town who moved nine months ago, coincidentally when this
00:40:45.310 --> 00:40:49.360
Sondy: headache started. And anyway, the move, the move was a
00:40:49.420 --> 00:40:55.060
Sondy: shipwreck of epic proportions. And before she was moving, I'm
00:40:55.120 --> 00:40:57.850
Sondy: like, Hey, I'll, I'll make a t-shirt quilt for you and so I've like
00:40:57.940 --> 00:41:01.110
Sondy: stabilized all these shirts of hers I've cut some of them out
00:41:01.170 --> 00:41:03.600
Sondy: she even like came to the library makerspace and helped me
00:41:03.720 --> 00:41:06.570
Sondy: with some of the stabilizing and cutting and now I'm just like
00:41:06.840 --> 00:41:09.210
Sondy: ah darn it what do I do with these they're like all in a
00:41:09.240 --> 00:41:13.320
Sondy: bin plastic storage bin like shoved under you know like on
00:41:13.590 --> 00:41:15.630
Sondy: the bottom of a shelf in a cabinet where like I can't
00:41:15.720 --> 00:41:19.740
Sondy: see it but you know she hasn't thanked anyone for helping with
00:41:19.740 --> 00:41:22.760
Sondy: the move she hasn't apologized to anyone. This is not the first
00:41:22.790 --> 00:41:27.380
Sondy: move that I've bailed her out of. So kind of like regretting that.
00:41:27.470 --> 00:41:31.580
Sondy: And I'm like, she did give me her FedEx number. I'm like, I could
00:41:31.670 --> 00:41:34.340
Sondy: just FedEx all this to her. And I know a lot of t-shirt quilters
00:41:34.430 --> 00:41:41.320
Sondy: like hate, hate, hate taking on t-shirt quilt projects that
00:41:41.560 --> 00:41:44.830
Sondy: other quilters have started. But like, I'm no amateur. I've
00:41:44.920 --> 00:41:49.300
Sondy: made, I've made three t-shirt quilts one that a friend has paid me
00:41:49.480 --> 00:41:56.260
Sondy: for I'm precise I'm accurate I am not sloppy a lot of people
00:41:56.320 --> 00:42:00.360
Sondy: who start t-shirt quilt projects don't they haven't done a lot
00:42:00.390 --> 00:42:03.090
Sondy: of reading they don't know what the common pitfalls are and I
00:42:03.210 --> 00:42:12.990
Sondy: think anyone who got this uh pib project in a bin would not be
00:42:13.380 --> 00:42:19.590
Sondy: unhappy yeah uh like given that I've done most of the most annoying
00:42:19.680 --> 00:42:22.430
Sondy: parts of the work and given that it's been like nine months
00:42:22.460 --> 00:42:23.810
Sondy: and she hasn't apologized to anyone
00:42:25.010 --> 00:42:25.070
Nic: yeah
00:42:25.700 --> 00:42:28.400
Sondy: I don't think it's worth having this taking up space in
00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:28.670
Sondy: the house
00:42:29.690 --> 00:42:32.540
Nic: that seems making sense to me
00:42:34.520 --> 00:42:34.580
Sondy: yeah
00:42:35.450 --> 00:42:35.630
Nic: that's
00:42:36.530 --> 00:42:40.660
Sondy: but hey she didn't move Nic I'm not joking
00:42:40.990 --> 00:42:41.260
Sondy: t-shirts
00:42:42.610 --> 00:42:45.100
Nic: that's a massive quilt
00:42:46.050 --> 00:42:50.940
Sondy: and uh no it's not and but like in another
00:42:50.940 --> 00:42:54.690
Sondy: dozen garments if each t-shirt is 12 by 12 inches that's a
00:42:54.690 --> 00:42:59.910
Sondy: foot a queen size quilt is eight by eight feet that's 64
00:42:59.910 --> 00:43:00.450
Sondy: shirts
00:43:00.580 --> 00:43:02.160
Nic: yeah all right that works
00:43:03.450 --> 00:43:06.090
Sondy: so it probably won't be king size but
00:43:06.210 --> 00:43:12.930
Nic: yeah when you make a quilt what are you hoping it
00:43:12.990 --> 00:43:18.210
Nic: does how are you hoping it's received and and does it land that
00:43:18.360 --> 00:43:18.900
Nic: way usually
00:43:22.470 --> 00:43:25.130
Sondy: two years ago two years ago a friend graduated from
00:43:25.310 --> 00:43:29.210
Sondy: library school and she didn't know I was making her quilt but
00:43:29.330 --> 00:43:31.670
Sondy: I'd actually been working on it while she was showing up at
00:43:31.670 --> 00:43:36.530
Sondy: crafting group on zoom like right under her nose and she
00:43:36.680 --> 00:43:41.620
Sondy: would she would practice the cello while I worked on this
00:43:41.710 --> 00:43:47.050
Sondy: quilt on zoom like right under her nose and so the quilt was
00:43:47.080 --> 00:43:49.150
Sondy: supposed to show up the day before graduation and it
00:43:49.180 --> 00:43:52.360
Sondy: didn't but it showed up the day of graduation and her parents
00:43:52.390 --> 00:43:57.100
Sondy: got these photos of her wearing her cap and gown opening this
00:43:57.220 --> 00:44:00.070
Sondy: box not knowing what's in the box and just like the look on
00:44:00.100 --> 00:44:05.310
Sondy: her face and you know just how excited she was and she she's
00:44:05.340 --> 00:44:07.500
Sondy: just looking more and more excited and like the final
00:44:07.590 --> 00:44:10.440
Sondy: photo is her like with it around her shoulders like a
00:44:10.620 --> 00:44:13.230
Sondy: cloak and she's like spinning her you know head with the cap
00:44:13.590 --> 00:44:18.330
Sondy: and the tassel and she looks ecstatic uh and I posted this on
00:44:18.420 --> 00:44:21.500
Sondy: young and millennial quilters and they're you know every so
00:44:21.710 --> 00:44:24.200
Sondy: often there's a post there with someone being like I made this
00:44:24.290 --> 00:44:27.080
Sondy: quilt for you know my mother-in-law or my
00:44:27.170 --> 00:44:30.290
Sondy: and you know she was so ungrateful and she sent it to
00:44:30.380 --> 00:44:33.500
Sondy: the thrift store and like or this person was you know I'm
00:44:33.560 --> 00:44:35.810
Sondy: like hey don't make quilts for people who are going to be
00:44:35.930 --> 00:44:40.780
Sondy: ungracious right like don't do that but a lot of people
00:44:40.810 --> 00:44:44.530
Sondy: were like right this is this is why we do what we do and
00:44:44.560 --> 00:44:48.610
Sondy: this is the correct response to receiving a handmade quilt so
00:44:49.540 --> 00:44:54.190
Sondy: people have been people have been pretty happy and you know
00:44:54.310 --> 00:44:56.980
Sondy: I think I put some fun surprises in I made a t-shirt quilt for
00:44:57.040 --> 00:45:00.150
Sondy: someone that like some of the t-shirts have like
00:45:00.330 --> 00:45:04.380
Sondy: interesting tags one of them was uh the brand was junk food
00:45:04.890 --> 00:45:09.840
Sondy: with like a heart-shaped american flag so you know I
00:45:09.930 --> 00:45:12.270
Sondy: put labels on my quilts and I included that as one of the
00:45:12.330 --> 00:45:14.730
Sondy: labels I'm like sure this is fun and weird
00:45:16.289 --> 00:45:22.219
Nic: is there a quilt someone else made that you wish you'd
00:45:22.369 --> 00:45:22.609
Nic: made
00:45:27.560 --> 00:45:29.510
Sondy: there's a bunch of these like judy niemeyer quilt works
00:45:29.570 --> 00:45:31.640
Sondy: quilts and I'm like man I really want to do that but I
00:45:31.670 --> 00:45:39.500
Sondy: also don't want to spend 400 on fabric some of the some of the
00:45:39.590 --> 00:45:41.890
Sondy: color schemes for some of the judy niemeyer quilts that
00:45:41.950 --> 00:45:44.650
Sondy: people come up with I'm like I see why you're into that that
00:45:44.680 --> 00:45:48.460
Sondy: is not to my liking but I would like to do I would like to do
00:45:48.550 --> 00:45:52.480
Sondy: more of those but you really you have to put a lot of
00:45:52.600 --> 00:45:55.330
Sondy: and time and effort into the planning because you can't just
00:45:55.360 --> 00:45:58.960
Sondy: be like I'm gonna buy these fabrics when there's like
00:46:01.000 --> 00:46:05.310
Sondy: fabric options they have a quilt planning tool where you
00:46:05.490 --> 00:46:09.060
Sondy: can try out different fabric combinations color
00:46:09.120 --> 00:46:13.710
Sondy: combinations the the fabric picker is a huge pain in the butt it's
00:46:13.740 --> 00:46:18.600
Sondy: not just like let me filter by red like just let me put red
00:46:18.780 --> 00:46:21.590
Sondy: here let me put blue here you know just just give me like
00:46:21.770 --> 00:46:27.350
Sondy: a you know a hex code color picker right come on
00:46:27.830 --> 00:46:29.330
Sondy: those exist there's apis for them
00:46:30.650 --> 00:46:34.880
Nic: what do you know now about your quilting practice that you
00:46:35.450 --> 00:46:38.930
Nic: couldn't have articulated when you started five six years ago
00:46:41.480 --> 00:46:43.510
Sondy: I think it's really important for me not to cut all
00:46:43.600 --> 00:46:48.190
Sondy: the fabric for a project before I start. I think it's really important
00:46:48.220 --> 00:46:52.810
Sondy: for me to cut sections because if I get bored with a project or
00:46:52.840 --> 00:46:54.610
Sondy: decide I want to do something a different way and I've got the
00:46:54.700 --> 00:46:59.350
Sondy: fabric all cut, then that's a problem that, you know, it's hard
00:46:59.380 --> 00:47:05.370
Sondy: to reuse it if it's been cut a certain way. For me, it's really
00:47:05.460 --> 00:47:08.580
Sondy: important to put a lot of time and effort into precision and
00:47:08.700 --> 00:47:12.330
Sondy: accuracy uh people like that's just you being a raging
00:47:12.360 --> 00:47:16.650
Sondy: perfectionist I'm like well no there's a purpose to it and
00:47:16.710 --> 00:47:20.400
Sondy: that is if you do things in these certain if I do things
00:47:20.460 --> 00:47:24.860
Sondy: in these certain ways it's easier to get a it's easier to
00:47:24.890 --> 00:47:27.800
Sondy: put things together it just makes subsequent steps easier
00:47:27.920 --> 00:47:31.580
Sondy: so if you invest the time into getting things a certain way
00:47:33.560 --> 00:47:37.070
Sondy: here it's those problems are not going to propagate out the
00:47:37.190 --> 00:47:40.810
Sondy: way they would if I was just being like it'll be fine and I
00:47:40.870 --> 00:47:43.630
Sondy: don't know like I look at I've got one quilt I've got a
00:47:43.630 --> 00:47:48.280
Sondy: quilt pattern for something that I want to try and I'm like
00:47:48.340 --> 00:47:52.120
Sondy: this is one of it's not like the most popular quilt pattern of
00:47:52.210 --> 00:47:55.120
Sondy: like the last 10 or 15 years that's like the exploding hearts
00:47:55.330 --> 00:47:57.910
Sondy: one that's all half squares triangles which like forget
00:47:57.940 --> 00:48:00.990
Sondy: about it miss me on that one but it's the ranges quilt by
00:48:01.110 --> 00:48:06.630
Sondy: modern handcraft and that one I'm like people have been
00:48:06.690 --> 00:48:09.210
Sondy: putting this together and it's looked fine and people have
00:48:09.240 --> 00:48:13.860
Sondy: like not been accurate with it they've not put in the effort to
00:48:14.010 --> 00:48:19.590
Sondy: have it you know and it's turned out fine so like let's
00:48:19.680 --> 00:48:20.840
Sondy: put it together and see what happens
00:48:22.580 --> 00:48:27.110
Nic: you talk about perfectionism and that always
00:48:27.200 --> 00:48:34.880
Nic: makes me think a long long time ago I was a chef and
00:48:35.480 --> 00:48:41.620
Nic: people say chefs are artists and I kept saying I'm not an
00:48:41.710 --> 00:48:45.550
Nic: artist I'm an artisan an artist has the luxury of
00:48:45.730 --> 00:48:52.420
Nic: failure the artisan doesn't and I'm curious in view of your
00:48:53.860 --> 00:48:57.040
Nic: raging perfectionism are you an artist
00:48:57.190 --> 00:48:58.360
Nic: or are you an artisan
00:48:59.829 --> 00:49:05.159
Sondy: yes um I think there's there's time you know that the
00:49:05.369 --> 00:49:07.649
Sondy: first project I started that's still you know sitting in a
00:49:07.709 --> 00:49:12.149
Sondy: bin upstairs that I don't know if it's a failure it'd be
00:49:12.209 --> 00:49:15.689
Sondy: really great to finish it I don't know what finishing it is
00:49:15.749 --> 00:49:19.139
Sondy: going to look like I think it's going to be a lot of time it's
00:49:19.169 --> 00:49:21.529
Sondy: like oh I really want to take all these apart and sew them back
00:49:21.589 --> 00:49:23.629
Sondy: together knowing what I know now because it would make it
00:49:23.659 --> 00:49:29.809
Sondy: much easier blah blah blah um and you know is that a failure I
00:49:29.869 --> 00:49:33.619
Sondy: don't know it's part of the learning process that's you
00:49:33.649 --> 00:49:36.109
Sondy: know like you had to go to cooking school right you had
00:49:36.139 --> 00:49:40.249
Sondy: to learn you had to fail a lot before you were a professional
00:49:41.269 --> 00:49:46.689
Sondy: so there's a thousand hours yeah exactly um so there's that expectation that you have
00:49:46.719 --> 00:49:53.019
Sondy: to learn somehow and you know there's you have to invest
00:49:53.049 --> 00:49:55.539
Sondy: that I think, you know, it's just really important to understand
00:49:55.599 --> 00:50:01.289
Sondy: that, you know, I'm not, I'm not punching out t-shirt quilts for
00:50:01.349 --> 00:50:05.489
Sondy: a living. There are people who do that. And, you know, I could,
00:50:05.939 --> 00:50:09.299
Sondy: I could, I guess, if I really wanted to, but I can't stand the
00:50:09.299 --> 00:50:14.249
Sondy: smell of people's fabric softeners. You know, they can,
00:50:14.519 --> 00:50:16.829
Sondy: they can make my headaches worse. So no thank you on that
00:50:16.919 --> 00:50:25.159
Sondy: regard. And yeah so I think you know there's an this is a craft
00:50:25.489 --> 00:50:30.079
Sondy: at some level uh I do it mostly for fun if it wasn't fun I
00:50:30.139 --> 00:50:33.769
Sondy: would probably not do it I'll probably make a t-shirt quilt or
00:50:33.859 --> 00:50:40.719
Sondy: two more for friends over over the years um I got I got one
00:50:40.749 --> 00:50:44.229
Sondy: quilt finished last year part of what I mean I did have foot
00:50:44.289 --> 00:50:49.719
Sondy: surgery at the end of February, but it was just, just didn't, just didn't sew a
00:50:49.779 --> 00:50:52.779
Sondy: lot last year. There was, you know, the issues with machine,
00:50:52.839 --> 00:50:58.749
Sondy: there was the issues with like my head and my neck. And that's,
00:51:00.129 --> 00:51:05.549
Sondy: that's fine. It's a, my partner is a woodworker. He he wants to be
00:51:05.669 --> 00:51:08.219
Sondy: a commercially successful woodworker. He has an artist
00:51:08.339 --> 00:51:12.689
Sondy: background. He's, you know, painting oil painting. Uh you know
00:51:12.689 --> 00:51:15.749
Sondy: he's got a lot of experience with color and creativity and
00:51:18.569 --> 00:51:21.199
Sondy: he doesn't feel like he's got the space to fail right now
00:51:21.739 --> 00:51:24.199
Sondy: yeah really that he's got the space to experiment because he
00:51:24.289 --> 00:51:31.279
Sondy: wants to be able to make a living uh making art and you know
00:51:31.459 --> 00:51:36.739
Sondy: so it's like well yeah I mean you've and you know an
00:51:37.129 --> 00:51:41.499
Sondy: artist is worried about marketing and so I think you
00:51:41.499 --> 00:51:45.639
Sondy: know at some point this is kind of is still sort of a
00:51:45.789 --> 00:51:52.329
Sondy: hobby but I think it's it's both art and craft for me
00:51:52.359 --> 00:51:57.519
Sondy: it's art and artisan and you know it's just fabric Nic no
00:51:57.519 --> 00:52:00.339
Sondy: one's gonna get food poisoning right like no one's gonna leave
00:52:00.399 --> 00:52:04.739
Sondy: me a bad review on yelp or whatever right like it's I'm
00:52:04.799 --> 00:52:06.779
Sondy: not gonna give anyone an upset stomach or send them to
00:52:06.809 --> 00:52:08.759
Sondy: the emergency room it's just fabric
00:52:09.299 --> 00:52:13.859
Nic: yeah well have you tried eating fabric it'll give you an
00:52:13.919 --> 00:52:14.549
Nic: upset stomach
00:52:15.270 --> 00:52:17.070
Sondy: yeah but if anyone's eating my quilts we have other
00:52:17.160 --> 00:52:26.990
Sondy: problems Nic right like I so I don't use scented scented um spray
00:52:27.080 --> 00:52:31.640
Sondy: starch I don't use scented laundry detergent yeah I tell people
00:52:31.820 --> 00:52:35.450
Sondy: not to wash things in scented detergent because those you
00:52:35.450 --> 00:52:38.360
Sondy: know all that buildup can reduce the lifespan of the
00:52:38.480 --> 00:52:44.080
Sondy: fibers in the quilt um I try to avoid using polyester thread
00:52:45.070 --> 00:52:48.820
Sondy: when you know or polyester anything if I can avoid it my
00:52:48.940 --> 00:52:51.070
Sondy: quilter prefers using polyester thread because it's stronger
00:52:51.130 --> 00:52:53.620
Sondy: when it's wet and I'm using polyester thread to join these
00:52:53.680 --> 00:52:56.920
Sondy: hexagons by hand because I know there's gonna be a lot of stress on these
00:52:56.950 --> 00:52:59.410
Sondy: seams but you know I try to use cotton for everything and
00:52:59.950 --> 00:53:03.060
Sondy: try to think about try to think about how things are going to be
00:53:03.150 --> 00:53:12.630
Sondy: used the person using it um try to use good quilt batting yeah
00:53:14.040 --> 00:53:16.500
Sondy: so hopefully yeah hopefully I don't give anyone an upset
00:53:16.590 --> 00:53:18.330
Sondy: stomach or you know a migraine
00:53:18.960 --> 00:53:24.620
Nic: yeah what do you wish people asked you about your work
00:53:25.040 --> 00:53:25.610
Nic: that they don't
00:53:28.310 --> 00:53:33.080
Sondy: that's a good question uh I think you know the point of
00:53:33.170 --> 00:53:36.770
Sondy: like yeah like what is the toll on you like what is you
00:53:36.800 --> 00:53:40.510
Sondy: know clearly this is something that compels you to to make and
00:53:40.600 --> 00:53:43.870
Sondy: create but like what are what are the downsides like what is
00:53:43.900 --> 00:53:48.310
Sondy: this doing to your body I think a lot of people don't kind of
00:53:48.520 --> 00:53:53.110
Sondy: realize the brutalness of all of these quote unquote traditional
00:53:53.230 --> 00:53:58.390
Sondy: women's crafts you know the things the the fiber arts
00:53:58.840 --> 00:54:02.580
Sondy: that they're just really hard on a body and I don't think people
00:54:02.700 --> 00:54:06.150
Sondy: realize that I don't think that people respect that and a lot
00:54:06.150 --> 00:54:08.850
Sondy: of people see quilting as sort of like oh yeah this is this
00:54:08.910 --> 00:54:13.200
Sondy: is what grandma does and you know but the average quilter is
00:54:13.230 --> 00:54:21.500
Sondy: like a 60 something year old wasp um that that this is yeah
00:54:21.680 --> 00:54:23.540
Sondy: like you know if you look at the quilt guild it's a whole
00:54:23.600 --> 00:54:31.610
Sondy: bunch of you know gen x white femme presenting women in the
00:54:31.610 --> 00:54:36.320
Sondy: quilt guild plus lu hernandez right like it's uh yeah like
00:54:36.770 --> 00:54:39.560
Sondy: okay we have a couple people over 60 the demographics are
00:54:39.620 --> 00:54:43.600
Sondy: not you know we're not like treated you know average
00:54:43.660 --> 00:54:46.810
Sondy: demographic but it's still like what what makes this
00:54:47.140 --> 00:54:53.530
Sondy: interesting and different and um and also like what are what are
00:54:53.530 --> 00:54:54.550
Sondy: the hard aspects of this
00:54:55.630 --> 00:54:55.690
Nic: yeah
00:54:56.739 --> 00:54:58.209
Sondy: you know you hear about port like all the
00:54:58.869 --> 00:55:01.199
Sondy: accommodations for knitting like how do you make knitting
00:55:01.559 --> 00:55:04.679
Sondy: hurt less you know there's the portuguese knitting there's
00:55:05.219 --> 00:55:09.629
Sondy: people who take uh tennis balls or makeup brushes and stick their
00:55:09.689 --> 00:55:10.589
Sondy: crochet hooks in them
00:55:11.100 --> 00:55:11.160
Nic: yeah
00:55:11.610 --> 00:55:14.910
Sondy: so they can get a more ergonomic grip uh I want to look
00:55:14.940 --> 00:55:19.230
Sondy: into getting a needle puller or um some more like finger
00:55:19.350 --> 00:55:22.310
Sondy: protectors because like this is this is a lot of grip
00:55:22.370 --> 00:55:24.560
Sondy: strength pulling this needle through and I think I can do
00:55:24.650 --> 00:55:24.830
Sondy: better
00:55:26.060 --> 00:55:29.960
Nic: you know what I've noticed makes a big difference do hide
00:55:30.830 --> 00:55:36.560
Nic: homemade thimbles one on the thumb one on the index and
00:55:36.770 --> 00:55:40.240
Nic: suddenly I don't need to grip the needle as strongly and
00:55:40.330 --> 00:55:43.510
Nic: there's more friction so I can pull the needle easier
00:55:44.560 --> 00:55:47.740
Sondy: yeah I've got this uh I think it might be doe hide
00:55:47.800 --> 00:55:48.640
Sondy: it's a very soft
00:55:48.970 --> 00:55:53.230
Nic: yeah um yeah that looks a little bit like what I do
00:55:55.180 --> 00:55:58.180
Sondy: so it's nice but then like if I'm tying knots I have
00:55:58.210 --> 00:56:03.090
Sondy: to take the thimble off and yeah I might want to learn how to tie knots
00:56:03.120 --> 00:56:06.960
Sondy: better I don't know I check out books from the library on quilting I'm
00:56:06.990 --> 00:56:09.090
Sondy: like certainly one of these quilt as you go books won't
00:56:09.180 --> 00:56:13.140
Sondy: suck so many of these quilts okay I checked out a bunch of
00:56:13.140 --> 00:56:16.230
Sondy: books on garment sewing from the library and all of the examples
00:56:16.290 --> 00:56:21.080
Sondy: are stitched with like contrast thread on fabric but the quilt
00:56:21.170 --> 00:56:23.150
Sondy: as you go community is like oh no
00:56:23.930 --> 00:56:23.990
Nic: no
00:56:24.710 --> 00:56:27.620
Sondy: any example quilt that we use in our books has to be a
00:56:27.710 --> 00:56:29.870
Sondy: final quilt that we're gonna like want to give away to
00:56:29.960 --> 00:56:35.360
Sondy: someone yes no contrasting thread the fabric is a solid
00:56:35.420 --> 00:56:37.910
Sondy: so it's the same on the front as the back so you can't see like
00:56:38.000 --> 00:56:39.590
Sondy: what's the front of the fabric and what's the back of the
00:56:39.650 --> 00:56:42.490
Sondy: fabric oh well if you want to do it by machine just do it by
00:56:42.550 --> 00:56:45.640
Sondy: machine it's like no this is a hand stitching example you
00:56:45.700 --> 00:56:49.330
Sondy: got to give us the mystique I don't know I kind of like want
00:56:49.330 --> 00:56:52.360
Sondy: to write a quilt as you go book of like you know quilt as you
00:56:52.450 --> 00:56:54.490
Sondy: go that doesn't suck like
00:56:54.910 --> 00:56:58.480
Nic: there's your next project in your downtime
00:56:59.409 --> 00:57:02.099
Sondy: I I read through uh I don't know I was reading through the
00:57:02.279 --> 00:57:05.039
Sondy: alumni magazine of where I went to undergrad and I was like
00:57:05.099 --> 00:57:07.469
Sondy: damn I need to write a book I don't know what this book's
00:57:07.499 --> 00:57:10.859
Sondy: gonna be but like salty quilting
00:57:11.640 --> 00:57:17.220
Nic: now you do hey Sondy I really have enjoyed this
00:57:17.310 --> 00:57:24.350
Nic: conversation um I want to ask you one last thing um is there
00:57:24.530 --> 00:57:29.630
Nic: something that you would like to say that I haven't covered that
00:57:29.960 --> 00:57:32.510
Nic: ties your quilting with your disability
00:57:34.040 --> 00:57:36.830
Sondy: I think those of us who've been forced
00:57:37.520 --> 00:57:42.310
Sondy: to look at the world differently,
00:57:42.460 --> 00:57:46.090
Sondy: I think we get to make more interesting choices about
00:57:46.180 --> 00:57:49.870
Sondy: what we make. Those of us who can't sort of take
00:57:49.990 --> 00:57:53.350
Sondy: everything for granted, whether it's our bodies or
00:57:53.410 --> 00:57:57.850
Sondy: how society lets us move through the world. I think there's a lot
00:57:57.970 --> 00:58:05.580
Sondy: of disability inherent in quilting. I think there are a lot
00:58:05.640 --> 00:58:09.690
Sondy: more disabled quilters out there than folks may admit to
00:58:09.720 --> 00:58:13.230
Sondy: themselves that, you know, especially for hand stitching,
00:58:13.350 --> 00:58:15.510
Sondy: right? Like if you can't sit, you know, there's hand stitching
00:58:15.540 --> 00:58:19.050
Sondy: available. Or if you can't, you know, sit up at a machine,
00:58:19.620 --> 00:58:22.940
Sondy: you know, if you, you know, there's so interesting like
00:58:23.930 --> 00:58:26.690
Sondy: you know posts on these facebook groups of like hey I
00:58:26.900 --> 00:58:30.950
Sondy: can't do this or I need I need a thing that does that and you
00:58:30.950 --> 00:58:34.130
Sondy: know all the people who are happy to hop in and be like
00:58:34.220 --> 00:58:35.900
Sondy: yeah here's an accommodation for that here's an
00:58:35.930 --> 00:58:38.330
Sondy: accommodation to that or like I've got the same thing and it
00:58:38.390 --> 00:58:42.640
Sondy: sucks like it's uh I appreciate and I know that's
00:58:42.670 --> 00:58:48.310
Sondy: not like terribly really personal. But I think there's just so much of,
00:58:50.830 --> 00:58:54.430
Sondy: you know, a lot of us who are disabled can't take, we can't
00:58:54.460 --> 00:58:56.650
Sondy: take things for granted. We have to think, we have to
00:58:56.710 --> 00:59:00.570
Sondy: question, we have to create new ways of moving
00:59:00.630 --> 00:59:03.360
Sondy: through the world and interacting with things. And, you
00:59:03.390 --> 00:59:06.840
Sondy: know, as you create something that no one else has before, I
00:59:06.870 --> 00:59:08.970
Sondy: think that's a lot of fun. You know, there can be a
00:59:09.030 --> 00:59:12.480
Sondy: playful aspect there's a lot of joy there and that's something
00:59:12.510 --> 00:59:14.850
Sondy: that I've really appreciated about disability communities is
00:59:14.880 --> 00:59:18.780
Sondy: seeing you know thriving disabled joy in a way that
00:59:18.990 --> 00:59:23.540
Sondy: society society doesn't want you to society you know and
00:59:24.170 --> 00:59:26.570
Sondy: you know quilt quilting wants you you know buying other
00:59:26.630 --> 00:59:29.780
Sondy: people's patterns and using other people's ideas and not
00:59:30.560 --> 00:59:36.110
Sondy: like and you know there's a lot of folks who are like yeah
00:59:36.290 --> 00:59:38.690
Sondy: there's space in the quilt industry for people to come up
00:59:38.720 --> 00:59:40.630
Sondy: with their own patterns and to come up with their own things.
00:59:43.030 --> 00:59:46.330
Sondy: That, you know, not everyone, that it's, you know, it's hard for me,
00:59:46.630 --> 00:59:49.360
Sondy: especially to keep like a whole bunch of thoughts in my head at
00:59:49.450 --> 00:59:58.450
Sondy: once. And so to have time and to be able to read and to think and
00:59:58.540 --> 01:00:02.070
Sondy: to put different things together is really validating.
01:00:02.160 --> 01:00:03.900
Sondy: That's something that's been really hard for me as a
01:00:03.930 --> 01:00:09.750
Sondy: scientist to come up with my own research ideas to do to you know read
01:00:09.810 --> 01:00:12.780
Sondy: through the literature I really have never enjoyed that aspect
01:00:13.200 --> 01:00:14.730
Sondy: or I've never like kind of figured out the right
01:00:14.790 --> 01:00:18.330
Sondy: accommodations to be able to do that or to ask interesting
01:00:18.390 --> 01:00:20.390
Sondy: questions and so to have a thing in my life where I feel
01:00:20.390 --> 01:00:25.340
Sondy: like I can do that is uh it's really it's really great you
01:00:25.370 --> 01:00:27.560
Sondy: know someday there'll be a you know science support and
01:00:27.590 --> 01:00:32.480
Sondy: facilitation position where my weird weird experiences will be
01:00:33.050 --> 01:00:35.840
Sondy: rewarded um but we haven't gotten there yet
01:00:36.710 --> 01:00:40.370
Nic: yeah hey I just thought of something we you mentioned
01:00:40.370 --> 01:00:44.380
Nic: microgravity earlier and we didn't come back to that now I
01:00:44.440 --> 01:00:49.840
Nic: know from past conversations that you've actually been on
01:00:49.930 --> 01:00:54.760
Nic: microgravity flights doing experiments which sounds like a
01:00:54.910 --> 01:01:00.810
Nic: lot of fun what would quilting look like in microgravity or no
01:01:01.860 --> 01:01:04.560
Sondy: funny you should ask that astronaut karen nyberg has
01:01:04.680 --> 01:01:05.700
Sondy: quilted in space
01:01:07.230 --> 01:01:08.100
Nic: how awesome is that
01:01:08.400 --> 01:01:11.640
Sondy: yeah yeah it's pretty cool um she even has two lines of
01:01:11.730 --> 01:01:16.770
Sondy: quilting fabric uh called earth views one is prints that are
01:01:16.770 --> 01:01:19.440
Sondy: really cool I actually have the whole set I'm gonna do a
01:01:19.590 --> 01:01:22.850
Sondy: bigger hex bigger hexagons that have been like traditionally
01:01:22.910 --> 01:01:27.530
Sondy: machine pieced for a friend out of those she does um like mars
01:01:27.650 --> 01:01:32.300
Sondy: mission work where she you know her she works on one of
01:01:32.300 --> 01:01:34.430
Sondy: these cameras that points down at mars and gets really cool
01:01:35.900 --> 01:01:39.740
Sondy: landscape aerial landscape photos of mars and then karen's
01:01:39.890 --> 01:01:42.910
Sondy: next fabric line is going to be batiks if it's I think it's
01:01:42.910 --> 01:01:43.510
Sondy: already come out
01:01:44.140 --> 01:01:44.290
Nic: cool
01:01:44.770 --> 01:01:47.770
Sondy: so yeah someone someone someone's done that
01:01:48.040 --> 01:01:52.150
Sondy: there's been there's been quilts in space if I ever uh get an llc
01:01:52.360 --> 01:01:57.520
Sondy: for my t-shirt quilts it'll be quilts in space awesome like muppets pigs
01:01:57.580 --> 01:01:58.000
Sondy: in space
01:02:00.670 --> 01:02:04.830
Nic: Sondy thank you so much for talking to me about
01:02:06.600 --> 01:02:13.980
Nic: quilting about disability about the work between um where
01:02:14.040 --> 01:02:17.340
Nic: can people find you or more about your quilting
01:02:18.600 --> 01:02:23.030
Sondy: I have not really been active on social media in a
01:02:23.150 --> 01:02:26.930
Sondy: while so uh if you happen to be in a you know the same discord or
01:02:26.990 --> 01:02:31.520
Sondy: slack that I'm in um look for me there some maybe someday I'll
01:02:31.850 --> 01:02:35.090
Sondy: post things on intergalactic cactus I think I have a blue
01:02:35.210 --> 01:02:42.980
Sondy: sky for quilting but yeah you're just gonna have to
01:02:42.980 --> 01:02:46.360
Sondy: social media has just not been fun for me so
01:02:46.600 --> 01:02:49.600
Nic: yeah I can relate to that Yeah, so I've just
01:02:49.870 --> 01:02:53.080
Sondy: enjoying putting my time and effort into smaller
01:02:53.410 --> 01:02:56.710
Sondy: communities and doing the thing.
01:02:57.940 --> 01:03:03.990
Nic: Awesome. Dr. Alessandra Springman, quilter, scientist,
01:03:05.070 --> 01:03:06.390
Nic: and a good friend. Thank you.
01:03:07.080 --> 01:03:08.610
Sondy: Thank you, Nic. You're the best.
01:03:08.610 --> 01:03:15.080
Nic: That's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is The Work
01:03:15.080 --> 01:03:18.770
Nic: Between. If this sounds like your kind of conversation,
01:03:19.010 --> 01:03:21.620
Nic: subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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سلب مسئولیت: پادکست و آثار هنری تعبیه شده در این صفحه متعلق به Nicolas Steenhout است که متعلق به صاحب آن است و به Listen Notes، Inc وابسته یا تایید نشده است.