This is an example of Gloria’s work, which includes eagle imagery within the star pattern.

There is something simple, yet very evocative, about a star.  Stars can be cute, they can be beautiful, and, in the case of Lakota (Sioux) quilters, they can tell a piece of a story about a culture.   Nine months ago, I began working with a new client for my day job – the Saint Francis Mission.

The mission is on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, and as part of their work, they run one of only two Lakota museums in the world, called the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum.  As I was learning about the museum, I ran  smack-dab into some lovely examples of Lakota Star quilts.

I am not a quilter (as you will see in future articles), nor was I then even slightly conversant in the various craft traditions of the Lakota people, so I was surprised to see quilts being featured.  They were lovely.  They were colorful.  They all appeared to have the same motif – an eight-pointed star, created out of diamond-shaped patches of fabric – done in cotton or satin.  As I was also planning on going to the International Quilt Study Museum for an article as well, I wanted to learn more.

The museum director, Marie Kills In Sight, was kind enough to let me speak with one of the artists whose work the museum both showcases and sells, Gloria Crazy Cat. She is a quilter with years of experience whose work uses the form in some interesting ways – as you can see in the quilt to the right, she weaves in the form of an eagle into the star motif in this particular quilt.  As the eagle, and the star motif are both important to the Lakota people, the quilt is both beautiful and combines historical imagery.

Gloria shared with me that the Star Quilt tradition – and Lakota quilting in general – started only a few hundred years ago when the Lakota were moved onto reservations.   The quilters learn from other, more experienced quilters.  In Gloria’s case, her teacher was a woman named Isabelle Young, who sewed on the Mission.  Gloria was hired by Young as an assistant, quilting five days a week and learning to make the Star Quilts from a true master of the craft.

The quilts act as more than just “quilts” – and are given for major occasions including births, deaths, marriages, graduation and are given by members of the tribe to visiting dignitaries.  (Note to Johnny Cash fans: If you go to the Buechel Museum, you’ll see a guitar of Cash’s on display, with a picture of June at the Rosebud receiving a Star Quilt).  These quilts aren’t just quilts, they’re the markers of major life events.

They’re also a source of income.  While Gloria has a day job, some of the other ladies whose work is featured (and sold) at the Buechel Museum make most of their living by making Star Quilts to sell to outsiders.  They don’t just keep the Star Quilt tradition going – in some cases it helps keep them going as well.

According to Gloria, she and other quilters in the area can finish a quilt in a few days.  This is truly incredible if you see the quilts up close – the small diamonds that make up the stars can be small or large, and my mind literally explodes at the thought of piecing everything together and keeping it straight.  The background stitches also vary in how the quilting on the fabric behind the stars is done – some are straightforward stitches while others are tight and intricate. (Not to mention, they don’t get a pattern out of a magazine and repurpose it, most of these designs are freehand and from the mind of the quilter).

I had a chance to visit the Rosebud reservation this spring and saw many Star Quilts up close.  Nothing in the pictures I had seen online prepared me for the absolute beauty they had up close.  The first thing that strikes you is the color – while some are done in with different colors in the same tone others are a riot of color that doesn’t make sense when you say it out loud – red, blue, green, white – but looks beautiful when put together.  One rainbow-colored quilt I saw when I first walked in the Museum took my breath away – I’m not a fan of rainbows, but the colors were just fabulous.

I would love to see these ladies get appreciation for their brilliant designs and play on color – and for creating a vibrant, ongoing tradition.

The Ewe and Us Farm

* Felting Fun  at the Farm*

Ewe And Us is hosting a day of felting classes.  June 1st from  9-4.
Will cover basic wet felting, including 2 small projects, plus beginning
needle felting, flat work.  Bonus includes a farm tour, baby lambs, and wool
information focusing on selection of wool for felting.

Cost is $75. includes all materials used for the days projects, plus felting
needles, 2 oz wool, and foam back board that’s yours to take home.

Space is limited, to allow for individual attention.  No students under 12
without special permission please.

For more information, and contact information for the class, visit their site here.

Knitters hate cotton. As any fiber crafter can tell you, stories build up about certain fibers – stories that may be based on truth, but often get overblown to damm or glorify whole types of fiber. (Don’t believe me? Go into a local knit night and say “I hate cotton!” and see how many responses you get).

Cotton is hard on the hands. It droops when you make it into sweaters. It’s only good for dishcloths. It was one of the fibers that those poor people who can’t knit with wool have to use.  Needless to say, after listening long enough, I started to think the same way. I remember when I bought No Sheep for You, I read everything with interest but – totally going against the message of the book –  I found myself wrinkling my nose at the cotton patterns.  I sometimes found myself at a knit night, or on a message board, expounding upon how I just didn’t knit with cotton.  I was a cotton jerk.

I spoke from what I thought was experience.  I’d “gone there” a few times.  There was my dishcloth and towel period after Mason Dixon knitting came out.  Then there was my attempt to make peace with cotton when I ended up with a box of DMC crochet cotton by accident. My attempts hurt my hands, my larger items drooped, and the ONLY thing that came out right were my dishcloths.  I heard turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’d see the cotton commercials on television, and roll my eyes.  Clearly, Zooey Deschanel never tried to knit a baby sweater with dishcloth cotton – it would not make someone sing in a twee, dreamy way, not at all.

So I bitched and moaned.  I faked a shudder when someone brought up Cotton Classic (never used it).  I avoided cotton projects like the plague. It wasn’t until two things happened that I snapped out of it: Tim Gunn and felting.

They might not seem to go together, but stay with me.  In his book, “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style,” Gunn mentions that every woman should have a lovely, fine gauge cotton sweater to take her through any season. I laughed, and moved on. Then I stopped and looked at the sweaters in my closet (Shut up, I like a nice fine gauge sweater, but I sure as hell am not spending two years making it).  Sure enough, my favorite black sweater was made of…..cotton. I stopped, and looked at some other labels. Cotton, cotton, cotton.  I thought to myself “What am I missing?” Lots of cotton in the closet, no cotton in the stash.

Then I remembered felting. I hated felting. My first issue of Strandszine (RIP)was an exploration in felting.  Why? Because I hated it.  (I like to torture myself). I grew to love felting – maybe if not for its texture, but for the final product.  Plus, needle felting – a craft I’d literally snorted at the first time I saw some needle felted items – turned out to be something I found incredibly soothing. Maybe I was wrong (again)?

I'm still in shock that I thought this charming ball of fluff would hurt my hands.

What I was missing, of course, was a full vision of the fiber.  When I picked up the dishcloth cotton (and its friend, the worsted weight cotton yarn) I was looking at just an infinitesimally small piece of the picture – like looking at a star and saying you could map the universe.  I needed to broaden my horizon, and so I walked into a yarn store a year ago with the mission to get several different types of cotton yarn.  I bought four different yarns – all totally far away from my DMC crochet cotton.  Still, I worried that the soft, fluffy, plummy skeins that I bought to use would be hard on my hands, or that I would be disappointed in what I made.

They weren’t, and I wasn’t.  Each was soft and inviting and made some lovely fabric that wasn’t just serviceable – it was inspiring.  I made my first (of about 20) cowls out of one, and a lovely, soft shrug out of another.  Both of them are items that I literally love to both wear and feel (if you’ve never petted any of your clothing items, you’re totally missing out here).  One of the skeins was a yarn was a thick-thin yarn with slubs that I was desperate to learn to make myself.  This led me led me to my next cotton hurdle, which was spinning cotton.  I thought it would be hard, and it was, but in a way that was fulfilling and fun, rather than frustrating and teeth-gnash inducing.

The shrug I made from one of the cotton yarns. The lace held really well.

Sometimes when you hear time-honored wisdom from those who have practiced a craft before you, it’s entirely true.  Sometimes, it only tells a small part of the story.  Looking into the world of cotton – beyond the dishcloth – led me into an entirely new set of tools for the craft.  I have a number of other fiber prejudices (seriously, ask me sometime about rayon) but I’m starting to realize that saying you won’t work with something (unless, of course, you’re allergic) is limiting and keeps you from recognizing some great joys in the world of making things with your hands.

My life pretty much looked like yarn barf during the last two months.

This life lesson isn’t so much about knitting, or spinning, or taking the time to do things that you want to do as it is an even more boring and hard one:

Make sure you save stuff on your computer. If you don’t, you will be sad.

For years, I backed up certain files (pictures of my son, client invoices & reports, files that went out the door) but never once thought about my personal data – the photos taken, the yarn cataloged, the patterns I downloaded off of Ravelry but forgot to put in my queue.  And yes – the writing that I do for myself, for Strands(zine) and for my other blog. After all, they don’t pay me so why back them up?

And now, due to one bonehead server move and another (even more boneheaded) dropping of a certain Macbook on the floor of a certain doctor’s office, I’m left with recreating the entire contents of The Cotton Issue from my brain.  I can retake photos, I can rewrite articles (and for that, I’ll say, some of you are lucky) but I can’t get everything back.

The life lesson here, while incredibly trite, is to remember to back up your computer. Not just your important work files and your iTunes library or the photos. But piddly things like patterns and the like.  The other life lesson (at least for me) is that I’ll probably be printing more stuff out now.  Backups are nice, but having them in print can be just as handy.

Gone. Gone. Gone.