Ami's Roman Holiday

Ami and Ami's Mommy wearing stupid hats.

The trip was a mix of vacation and "scouting" for the next Quilter' s Tour and it was a success on both counts, in spite of less-than-wonderful weather. We took off on December 26th on an evening flight out of Detroit, via Philadelphia, arriving in Rome early on the 27th to temperatures 30 degrees colder than expected. The first thing we bought were scarves and hats! Selection was rather limited in a city with temperatures mild enough for palm trees. About all that was left were these "dork" hats we found in the children's department at the UPIM, Italy's version of K-Mart.

Before I get into the trip itself I need to tell you of my new packing system. Those of you who have ever picked me up at an airport for a teaching engagement know that I bring a lot of luggage with me. Usually this includes a large wheeled suitcase filled with teaching supplies that usually weighs in just under the airline maximum of 70 pounds, a garment bag in which one could conceivably stuff an additional family member should one ever wish to accompany me, a large carry-on filled with quilts that can only be stuffed into an overhead bin with the assistance of several other passengers, another large carry-on I laughingly refer to as a purse, and a foldable wheelie-cart to schlep the additional boxes of books I ship ahead. With each teaching trip, my arms increase several inches in length. Another couple of years and they will undoubtedly scrape the floor when I walk. When I travel for pleasure, I try to cut down.

I happen to have the best carry-on made anywhere. Correction, that used to be made anywhere. Lifestyles International, the company which makes the Ciao! Bag with the expandable (up to 4 inches) and removable lid has replaced my favorite bag with a similar, but inferior product. (Please call them at 1-800-996-2426 and complain, will you?) Anyway, we've each got one (mother and I have the good ones, Steve and Jen, the inferior ones) and that' s what we packed in. And we checked them through. Now I know what you're thinking. If they're small enough to fit in an overhead bin, why check them? Because every time I fly to teach mine is stuffed with quilts. It's a constant source of anxiety. I have to keep track of them, I have to beat up on other passengers so that I can get MY bag in the bin instead of theirs, all the lifting and the hauling on and off the conveyer belt so it can go through the x-ray machine. It's work. I'm on vacation, remember?

So we checked them all, but not before protecting them against would-be thieves and airline mishandling. The name and address of our hotel plus arrival and departure dates was typed on a piece of paper and placed in each bag. Then I made stickers with the same information and slapped those on the outside. Each bag was locked with two sturdy padlocks which I got at Ace Hardware. Get this: all 8 of them were keyed so that one key could open them all. We each carried a key. Luggage tags were attached to each bag, as were two jingle bells. (I get seasick watching the luggage go 'round on the carousel, so I figured I'd be able to look elsewhere and hear them jingle when they arrived. Also, what thief would want to try and snatch a noisy bag?) Then, and this was the "piece of resistance" as we say in French, each bag was wrapped with a bright purple garbage bag and cinched with a rainbow colored luggage strap. Holes where cut out for the wheels, handle, and for the "pull bar" and all cuts in the bag were reinforced with packing tape. (Yes, extra bags and tape where packed for the return trip; I'm not as dumb as I look.) The garbage bags kept everything clean and we could spot our luggage at 50 yards. Everyone from the van driver where we parked the car at the airport to the ticket agents who checked them in commented on our purple jingle bags. We also turned plenty of heads as we marched the half mile from the bus stop through the streets of Rome to our hotel, jingling over cobblestones like four giant eggplants.

Steve and Jennie check in at the US Air counter in Detroit.

I see this is getting a tad on the long side, so I'll skip descriptions of each meal I ate (15 different kinds of spaghetti sauces, only 3 repeats), my search for more ball point pens, going in the "out" door at the Vatican Museums, surviving multiple rides on bus #64 (known at the "wallet-eater" because of all the pick-pockets) and our hotel room that was so small I could touch opposite walls of the room without moving my feet. (My knees only cleared the wall in the bathroom, if I sat all the way back on the toilet seat!) The best part of the hotel was the marble floor in the lobby that certainly was "quilty!"

The floor in the lobby of the FIRST hotel was the best part. Even though the hotel had GREAT floors, we switched hotels after a few days.

Ami relaxes after a hard day of sightseeing.

The second best part of the hotel was the European Foot Soaker, otherwise known as a bidet. Not the most comfortable, but it works in a pinch.

I do want to bring you up to date on the quilting scene in Italy. After multiple visits to Rome I was finally able to connect with some Italian quilters. They are there, and you can't imagine the enthusiasm. Before I left I was able to correspond with Maria Luisa Gariboldi, the author of Italy's first quilting book.

Ami's Mommy, Ami, Maria Luisa Gariboldi, and Linda Beath.

Maria Luisa learned to quilt both here in the United States and in England. I also had a chance to meet Linda Beath, a Canadian quilter living in Rome who I originally "met" on-line. It was great to meet them and we had a super time sharing and talking quilts. Both have gone out of their way offering to help with the next Quilters' Tour.

The four of us had lunch together and then Maria Luisa, took my mother and I on a tour of churches with Cosmati floor patterns. The designs, named for the Cosmati family of stone masons, were laid several hundred years ago in many churches throughout Italy and other parts of Europe. The name refers not only to the work actually done by the Cosmati, but also to those floors made by their contemporaries during this same period. The designs are incredibly quilty and include Ohio Star, Square Within A Square, several variations of Flying Geese, zigzag, Clamshell, all done in colored marble.

One of the floor mosaics at the church of San Clemente in Rome.

Central nave of one of Rome' s less visited churches, the basilica of Quattro Coronati.

Many of the patterns were adapted to curves and surround large circles of solid colored marble, originally pilfered from old Roman columns. It was fun to see the same designs repeated in so many church floors. I had visited Cosmati churches on other trips, but this time I got to see some of the less "touristed" churches. We had a blast.

Later in the week I met Emanuela D'Amico and Stefania (Stefy) Mancinelli, sisters-in-law who own Il Mondo Di Pezza (The World of Piecing), Rome's only quilt shop. It's located in the area of Laurentina, a short subway ride from the city center. I was treated to a wonderful lunch at Stefy's apartment and gave them information about American quilt products, most of which they had never heard of. After lunch we went back to their shop.

Emanuela and Stefy.

Gathering for the workshop at Il Mondo Di Pezza.

The whole shop is only 15 meters square! By time the shelves and displays are added in there's no space large enough to baste a quilt! They do that at home. They sell quilting supplies, American fabric (about 4 times what we pay here in the States), and ready-made hand-quilted quilts and pillows. They make everything themselves and hand quilt most of it. When we arrived at the shop, the students were waiting for us. After a short time we piled into cars and caravanned to the workshop site which was someone's dining room since the quilt store was obviously too small to hold workshops in.

I had hoped to teach my Invisible Applique workshop in Italian. While my restaurant vocabulary is pretty good, after a very short time I knew that just wouldn't be possible. I can understand about 95% of what is spoken, but my return conversation potential is a miserable 25% or so. It' s been way too long since I was fluent, and even when I was at my best, my skills didn't include quilting or sewing vocabulary. Maria Luisa offered to be my interpreter. Luckily, I could understand enough to know what she was saying and could correct her if the translation of my instructions was not correct. (That didn't happen often. Not only is Maria Luisa an excellent teacher in her own right, she speaks beautiful English and is a wonderful interpreter, too.) Thankfully, I could understand all the questions the students had, so all she had to do was translate my answers. Everyone was incredibly patient. Still, it was one of the most difficult workshops I had ever taught and I was exhausted at the end.

Many of the students had appliqued before, which is what I was teaching. (And, judging from the quilts that their teachers Stefy and Emanuela had made, their applique was very good.) Either because they were familiar with Invisible Applique, or they have an extensive familiarity with many forms of needlework, they all picked it up rather quickly. They also exhibited a certain patience with themselves while they were learning. Most of my US students want to "get it" immediately. They are very critical of themselves and get discouraged easily. The Italians, on the other hand, "got it" and then concluded that they would get even better with practice. They were very up-beat. After the formal workshop had ended and I demonstrated hand quilting and how I make pictorial quilts that we really started to rock and roll. They couldn't ask enough questions. This was their first experience with an American quilt teacher and I felt so honored to be there. So much of what I said wasn't familiar to them and they just soaked it up. It was so much fun.

Quilting is virtually brand new to Italy. Although one of the world's oldest quilts was found in Sicily, there is no modern tradition of patchwork as we have in the United States. Still, there is much interest and they are on the verge of a quilting explosion. Quilt shops are popping up in the north, and Italians who have begun to quilt are passionate about it. I did not see many quilts, but most of what I saw were traditional American designs. The majority are working with imported US fabrics and sampler quilts are popular. I would hope that after an initial experimentation the Italian quilters will discover a style of their own, looking to the marvelous history that surrounds them for inspiration.

Strange as it sounds, the fabric stores in Italy are virtually no help to the quilters. The clerks flatly refuse to sell anything less than a full meter of cloth. Silks and rayons are more prevalent than cottons, except for shirtings, but both are expensive compared to our standards. Poor quality Chinese knock-off quilts are sold in many department stores in Italy at rock bottom prices, making the general public at least aware of quilting. The quality of both fabric and technique, however, is atrocious.

Patchwork in Italy refers to both piecing and applique and is the common name for this hobby of ours. It does not necessarily imply quilting. It also refers to creating patchwork designs of cloth that are not quilts, but rather traditional block designs pressed and glued into Styrofoam! Quilting is used in the strictest sense to refer to what one can do to some patchwork, that is, stitch it together with batting and lining. If you go to a book stores, you ask for books on "patchwork" not "quilting." After the workshop, Maria Luisa whisked me away to see her studio and some of her quilts. WOW!

Maria Luisa Gariboldi with one of her quilts.

After the tour she dropped me off at the restaurant where many of the students and Stefy and Emanuela had gathered for dinner. The specialty of the house was pizza, cooked in a wood oven. My translator gone, I was back on my own and got lots of good-natured ribbing about my attempts at Italian. One of the things I tried to say was that while I like to eat, I don't enjoy cooking. I went for "I don't like to cook." Evidently I selected the wrong verb for "cook" and it came out that I don't like to BE cooked!

In Italy, in case you were wondering, there are two kinds of pizza. The first is pizza that is ordered in a restaurant. It comes in one size only, about an inch larger than the size of your dinner plate. Everyone orders for themselves and there is no sharing. The crust is very thin and a healthy dollop of olive oil goes on the top just before it comes to the table. It isn't sliced and you eat it with a knife and fork. Pepperoni as we know it is non-existent. You can get pepperoni, but that's roasted sweet red bell pepper. The second kind of pizza is called "pizza rustica," and that has a thicker crust and is baked in a pan. It is sold in a pizza shop and portions are re-heated (unless you're lucky enough to walk by when it comes out of the oven) and wrapped in paper. You are charged by the weight of your pizza. Most places don't have tables or chairs, so you eat it as you stroll along. There are fewer choices, with plain cheese, mushrooms, and potato and rosemary (yum) being pretty standard.

We started dinner with a basket of fried appetizers. I recognized the SUPPLI which is a ball of rice in tomato sauce wrapped around a chunk of mozzarella cheese. It's about the size of an overgrown Ping-Pong ball and when you bite into it, the mozzarella strings can stretch as long as your arm and then some. I also got to try some new things: fried spinach, fried olives stuffed with meat, fried crab meat (with a crab claw or leg inside---in the shell!), and fried zucchini flowers. Those were the best.

I ordered my pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni (red bell peppers, remember?) to the consternation of the waiter. This is evidently an unheard of combination. With many laughs and much rolling of eyes, my dining companions explained to the waiter that I was American, and my ignorance couldn't be helped. This from people who ordered pizza with clams(!), pizza with artichokes, and pizza with double anchovies, olives, eggs, and squid! Yeah, right!

After dinner Stefy drove me back to my hotel as we discussed plans for September when I get to come back with the group of American quilters.

Arrivaderci,
(Italian for "so long")

Ami