This is my “Am-I-blue-without-you-in-Colorado-Judd” quilt. The first week I was in
Grand Junction I found a behemoth of an old baby blue sewing machine at
Goodwill. Seriously, it must outweigh what three of my Singer featherweight
sewing machines would weigh or 1.5 of what my Pfaff weighs. (Yes, now I have
three sewing machines again. I gave away my mother’s Brother last year.) Baby
Blue looked like it had all its working parts. Although I could find NO brand
name anywhere, for $14.99 I schlepped it back to the Residence Inn to see if it
would work. I was told I had 1 week to bring it back if it didn’t it. It did!
I had received a Jo-Ann Fabric gift
certificate from Judd for Christmas and it is quite a luxury to pick out new
fabrics instead of shopping in my fabric stash for various sized scraps with
which to make-do. I picked out 8 dark blues and 8 light blues and a couple of
accents. (And now I have new scraps for future mini-projects.) The quilt pattern
is from a Stack a Deck quilting book where you free-hand cut shapes and shuffle
a pre-arranged stack of 9 x 9 inch fabric squares. You don’t have to match
corners when you sew; you just plan on overages at the edges but after you
pizza-cutter cut the edges, you end up with 7 x 7 inch big squares all the same
even though all the concentric internal squares are catawampus. I just love to say that word. You might have
a pile of seven squares the same shapes, but because you’ve scrambled the
fabrics, no two squares are alike. Voila!
Thought you might find his exchange which is about Gandhi and his views on the sewing machine etc of interest as you admire the one and are quite expert with the other.
ReplyDelete--- On Fri, 4/13/12, Bindu Desai wrote:
From: Bindu Desai
Subject: Re: Fwd: Gandhi on Luddism
To: "Balaji Narasimhan"
Date: Friday, April 13, 2012, 6:53 PM
I love this answer of Gandhi's.It is highlighted in my repeatedly read copy of Hind Swaraj. Yesterday Narayanbhai Desai ( Mahadev Desai's son) who spoke at a Quaker Meeting Hall in Berkeley,asked that technology should provide:
1) Tranquility to an individual
2) promote Equality in society
3) be in harmony with Nature.
Would that this would be a REALITY!!!
I am sending this to friends so you will get it again.
Bindu
--- On Fri, 4/13/12, Balaji Narasimhan wrote:
From: Balaji Narasimhan
Subject: Fwd: Gandhi on Luddism
To: "Bindu Desai"
Date: Friday, April 13, 2012, 12:21 PM
(It must be obvious that I quote this because it resonates with what I was reading about Luddites last week.)
Mahadev Desai in his preface to the Hind Swaraj, 1938 edition:
The Attack on Machinery and Civilization
... I shall reproduced a dialogue that took place in Delhi. Replying to a question whether he was against all machinery, Gandhiji said:
“How can I be when I know that even this body is a most delicate piece of machin- ery? The spinning wheel is a machine; a little toothpick is a machine. What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such. The craze is for what they call labour-saving machinery. Men go on “saving labour” till thousands are without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation. I want to save time and labour not for a fraction of mankind but for all. I want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of a few, but in the hands of all. Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the backs of millions. The impetus behind it all is not the philanthropy to save labour, but greed. It is against this constitution of things that I am fighting with all my might. . . The supreme consideration is man. The machine should not tend to atrophy the limbs of man. For instance, I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the case of the Singer’s sewing machine. It is one of the few useful things ever invented, and there is a romance about the device itself.”
“But,” asked the questioner, “there would have to be a factory for making these sewing machines, and it would have to contain power-driven machinery of ordinary types.”
“Yes,” said Gandhiji in reply, “but I am socialist enough to say that such factories should be nationalized, State-controlled. . . The saving of the labour of the individual should be the object, and not human greed the motive. Thus, for instance, I would welcome any day a machine to straighten crooked spindles. Not that blacksmiths will cease to make spindles; they will continue to provide spindles but when the spindle goes wrong every spinner will have a machine to get it straight. Therefore replace greed by love and everything will be all right.”
“But,” said the quetsioner, “if you make an exception of the Singer’s sewing machine and your spindle, where would these exceptions end?”
“Just where they cease to help the individual and encroach upon his individuality. The machine should not be allowed to cripple the limbs of man.”
....
Reply to: Reply to Bindu Desai
Thought you might find his exchange which is about Gandhi and his views on the sewing machine etc of interest as you admire the one and are quite expert with the other.
ReplyDelete--- On Fri, 4/13/12, Bindu Desai wrote:
From: Bindu Desai
Subject: Re: Fwd: Gandhi on Luddism
To: "Balaji Narasimhan"
Date: Friday, April 13, 2012, 6:53 PM
I love this answer of Gandhi's.It is highlighted in my repeatedly read copy of Hind Swaraj. Yesterday Narayanbhai Desai ( Mahadev Desai's son) who spoke at a Quaker Meeting Hall in Berkeley,asked that technology should provide:
1) Tranquility to an individual
2) promote Equality in society
3) be in harmony with Nature.
Would that this would be a REALITY!!!
I am sending this to friends so you will get it again.
Bindu
--- On Fri, 4/13/12, Balaji Narasimhan wrote:
From: Balaji Narasimhan
Subject: Fwd: Gandhi on Luddism
To: "Bindu Desai"
Date: Friday, April 13, 2012, 12:21 PM
(It must be obvious that I quote this because it resonates with what I was reading about Luddites last week.)
Mahadev Desai in his preface to the Hind Swaraj, 1938 edition:
The Attack on Machinery and Civilization
... I shall reproduced a dialogue that took place in Delhi. Replying to a question whether he was against all machinery, Gandhiji said:
“How can I be when I know that even this body is a most delicate piece of machin- ery? The spinning wheel is a machine; a little toothpick is a machine. What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such. The craze is for what they call labour-saving machinery. Men go on “saving labour” till thousands are without work and thrown on the open streets to die of starvation. I want to save time and labour not for a fraction of mankind but for all. I want the concentration of wealth, not in the hands of a few, but in the hands of all. Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the backs of millions. The impetus behind it all is not the philanthropy to save labour, but greed. It is against this constitution of things that I am fighting with all my might. . . The supreme consideration is man. The machine should not tend to atrophy the limbs of man. For instance, I would make intelligent exceptions. Take the case of the Singer’s sewing machine. It is one of the few useful things ever invented, and there is a romance about the device itself.”
“But,” asked the questioner, “there would have to be a factory for making these sewing machines, and it would have to contain power-driven machinery of ordinary types.”
“Yes,” said Gandhiji in reply, “but I am socialist enough to say that such factories should be nationalized, State-controlled. . . The saving of the labour of the individual should be the object, and not human greed the motive. Thus, for instance, I would welcome any day a machine to straighten crooked spindles. Not that blacksmiths will cease to make spindles; they will continue to provide spindles but when the spindle goes wrong every spinner will have a machine to get it straight. Therefore replace greed by love and everything will be all right.”
“But,” said the quetsioner, “if you make an exception of the Singer’s sewing machine and your spindle, where would these exceptions end?”
“Just where they cease to help the individual and encroach upon his individuality. The machine should not be allowed to cripple the limbs of man.”
....
Reply to: Reply to Bindu Desai