Jumping Around

I’m doing a lot of jumping around between projects at the moment…maybe I really am ADD…

On Monday, I sat down and I cut out all the pieces I could for the Earth Stories quilt. I actually did that for 7 1/2 hours on Monday. I watched a lot of Battlestar Galactica. I did get up every few hours and walk around. At some point, my right hand hurt so much from the scissors that I wanted to quit, but I was so close to being done that I didn’t want to leave it for another day. So I didn’t.

I should admit that my hand is still sore today. Oh well.

I should also admit to being somewhat obsessive. But you knew that already.

I wanted to sort all the pieces yesterday, but I was too tired in the evening to do that. I did it today…

I started with all those empty bins lined up on the light table…and this box of pieces…

It was a little daunting starting with all those tiny pieces, but I had three episodes of Battlestar left and it was relatively cool today compared to yesterday (heat doesn’t help). It took 2 hours and 7 minutes to sort all 2000 of them.

There they all are, so I can start ironing pieces together tomorrow. Woo hoo! Because that won’t take 20+ hours or so. Sigh. My plan is to start tomorrow because it’s still supposed to be cool for another day or so, until it hits hot again next week. It’s very hard to iron when it’s hot.

I also was quilting yesterday; I finished all the outline quilting, and then started the background quilting, but after the thread broke 5 times in about 10 minutes, I gave up. I changed the needle, cleaned out the bobbin area, and rethreaded everything. It might be old thread, but I was using the Sewers Aid too…so I just turned it off and walked away. I may try again tomorrow. I do want this quilt done soon…but I’m juggling more than one thing at the moment, so I can afford to walk away from one project for a day or two.

No pictures. It irritated me too much.

I didn’t have much work time yesterday…I actually did school-related work (I got paid!) for part of the afternoon. I’d rather be involved in making some of the new policies and practices about teaching science than have others do it and be annoyed by it. Yes, I’m a workaholic. Yes, I do this to myself.

The last thing I worked on today was finally tracing the Pussycat drawing, which is officially called Babygirl at the moment, after the crazy cat of that name, who is still here, rampaging. The kids and I are re-watching the Merlin series…we haven’t seen all of season 4 or any of season 5, so we crazily decided to start from the beginning (ah, Netflix…). It’s good motivation for me to get stuff done at night…family time…

I guess my family time also involves work of some type. It took me an hour and 38 minutes to trace all 200 pieces (I thought there were 197, but I missed 3). This is the one that needs to be done by August 1. It’s small; it won’t take long. So now I can cut out the Wonder Under, maybe tomorrow night. It won’t take more than a couple of hours. Based on another small quilt I finished this year, I should be able to finish this in about 20 hours. So it’s not unrealistic to need it to be done in…20 days. And photographed.

I should probably call my photographer. Plus I want to take the one that’s under the machine now at the same time, so it would need to be done as well. Yeah. I know. Crazy.

I meant to post these earlier, but got distracted by art. Julie’s been making these little Salley Mavor fairies, mostly as pins. You’ve seen them before on here, but she finished one for our mutual friend Susan, because she gave her hair fluff (Susan spins and knits…and quilts, but not with fiber). I was supposed to wait to post the last one, because Julie didn’t want Susan to see it…but here’s the whole family…

 

I can’t remember what order she did them in now…but the one below on the right is Susan’s…

She tried one on a leaf, like in Salley’s book…and she did one really tiny one…

This one is a gift for someone who doesn’t read my blog…it’s the one Julie worked on at Susan’s house last week…

The one above is before we started and the one below is at the end of stitching time…

A lot of Susan’s friends quilt or sew or knit, and many of us are teachers or retired (or both), so we meet once a week during the summer at her house (it’s air-conditioned) to work on stuff. Anyway, Julie took her home and finished her with some delightfully blue hair from Susan…

She says it’s her last one. I don’t know if I believe her. Anyway, the hats are obviously acorn caps, the heads are wooden beads in a variety of sizes, the hair is fiber before it’s spun into yarn. She makes the arms and legs and neck with chenille stems (you saw them sticking out of the top of her head above). She has a couple of patterns from Salley’s book for the tunics, which are made from felt and then embroidered in a variety of patterns and sewn directly on to the doll. The skirts are fake flowers pulled apart. She did wrap the arms and legs of one of them (because we told her to…I think it was the smallest one, which used floral wire maybe instead of chenille)…but most of them, she’s left as is and they look fine.

I see her tomorrow night…we’ll see what she’s working on next…

I’m feeling good so far about the summer. I do have some frustrating days when not very much gets done, but today included cleaning the bathroom (counter and mirrors, at least…still need to do the floor), packing up 3 bags for the thrift shop of crap that’s been on the floor in my room for almost a year, some of it (I really can’t deal with anything but school sometimes), and cleaning the kitchen floor. Of course, all that was procrastination so I wouldn’t have to sort those damn tiny pieces OR put away the 150 or so fabrics from the last quilt…I got most of that done after dinner, while waiting for the boychild to be done so we could watch Merlin. I hate putting fabric away, but I can’t start the next step until it’s all neatened up…there just isn’t enough room. I have a LOT of brown and gray fabrics at the moment. Not sure why. I probably bought them, eh? Yeah. Using them up is the next step…trying to keep the expenditures low this summer, so I will need to do a lot of Using Up. Not a bad thing…