You know, I used to get really excited when I’d finish picking the fabrics for a quilt…it was a turning point past really the most difficult part of the visualization. I basically color the whole drawing in my head and hold it there until I finish ironing, sometimes for days, sometimes weeks, occasionally months (really hard and not recommended). That said, it is also probably the most creative part of the quilt, besides the drawing itself. I can’t actually SEE the finished quilt, but each fabric is going to go with the one next to it and behind it and make the image in my head. It’s challenging…I need mental energy of a certain type to do that step, but it’s also somewhat meditative. I get lost in my alpha waves for at least some of it and it brings me some peace…sometimes even joy when I finish a particularly difficult section, especially like flesh tones.
Sigh. Not so much any more. There is a certain sense of relief that this stage is done this time, just because I am so tired and stressed right now and this seems to help and also hinder. The need to get it done keeps me up late, and once I’m ironing, it’s hard to stop, and when I do stop, I can’t get my mind to stop. It just wants to keep going. Pros and cons: the high of the creative buzz but the low from not enough sleep and the NEED to keep going. I had more buffers before, more balance, more things to do that would give that part of my brain a break, but also a break from the stress. I don’t have many of those any more.
I finished ironing the fabrics for Celebrating Silver tonight…finishing the owl up.
There were 88 fabrics in this quilt, mostly browns and grays by the look of it. Lots of flesh tones too…
Not in numbers, but in volume. Now I have to cut them all out.
I currently have almost 38 hours into this quilt. It took 13 hours and 12 minutes to cut all the fabrics for about 1250 pieces. Not bad. I usually figure an hour for 100 pieces for that. It will probably take less time to cut them out, although there are some significantly bitchy pieces to cut, if you look at that bin up there…the tips of the owl’s wings, for example. I’m figuring about 10 hours for cutting, and I already have 2 hours in. So maybe I’ll be done by next weekend? You never know. It could happen.
Meanwhile, I did spend time with my stitching friends, geeky stanchions of my sanity. We played with technology, googled Katniss’ cowl/shrug from Catching Fire, which the designer calls “woven, then knitted,” which makes no sense…but whatever…
I think we finally decided that they had woven something and then knitted the woven something together. Or whatever. And all the knitted versions suck.
We talked about stitching and children and Christmas ornaments (I never did look at the damn Just Cross Stitch ornament issue…Kathy will have to bring it back in January). It was a good two hours of not having to be the sad Kathy or the stressed Kathy. I finally restarted the girlchild’s Christmas stocking (originally started in 1997, don’t laugh). I couldn’t find the cream thread at all…it must be hiding somewhere. I must have pulled it for something else, but now I can’t find it. Sigh. This is how we end up with stashes the likes of mine. I lost two pairs of embroidery scissors in the search, but found two other ones, one of which I didn’t even remember owning, sad but true.
It’s a very exciting start. It’s actually fairly large stitches, which helps with my blindness, and I’m actually doing it on stretcher bars. It’s been ON those bars since 1997, so obviously I haven’t needed them. I told the girlchild not to expect it until she turned 21 (she’s 16. I should be able to meet that deadline). Every Christmas she would complain that everyone had a handmade stocking but her. Yes. I suck.
The right eyelid is still twitching, although off and on now. Ironically, I got in a screeching argument with the girlchild before I left for the stitching meeting where I was working on her stocking…OK, she was screeching. I was holding my brain together just barely. Typical for me at the moment. Just barely held together. Just by a thread. Grades. Cars. Something else. I think I knew everything when I was 16 too, so I get it…but I could use a break. I even asked her dad (jokingly, honestly, because I already knew the answer) if he could handle the grades conversation. He said quietly, “It won’t work if I do it.” Dammit. I don’t know if I have the mental strength to lay down the law right now.
I have about three drawings in my brain…not sure when they will be allowed out. Hopefully soon. I have been picking at the Christmas shopping…not happily, but getting it done. I’m buried in Have To and distancing myself from the emotional swamp that is my brain. Let it meditate. Let it psycho dance over there in the corner. I exercised tonight, but not at the gym…I’m scheduling the gym as often as I can. I slog through the days. Too many art show rejections lately. They don’t usually bother me, but at the moment, I could use some encouragement. Is the only purpose to my artmaking to fill the days so I don’t get more and more sad? Or is there actually an audience for my work? Or is it just too damn difficult to process? Who knows. I don’t usually care, but I’m feeling purposeless at the moment. WHY am I doing this again? What do I gain from it? Is it really sanity, because if this is sanity, well honestly, it kind of sucks. I think I need to work on some goals beyond “finish this part of this quilt.” I don’t know what those goals will be, though. because I have to want something to have goals. I’ve given up on wanting, because it just hurts. Wanting is sharp stabby things in the soft parts.
Shitty week. When you feel useless and worthless and like you’re doing it all wrong. I know that’s not true, but I need to find some piece of something that makes it all feel better at the moment. Time for a hike? Wish I had time. Or life drawing would help. Also no time for that. Maybe I just need to go get the Christmas tree…that smell. Sitting with the tree, lights on, in the dark. That always helps my mood.
“Searching for a light, a thread that will connect this moment to that one, a way to sew together the days so that they make sense.” Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall
I’m trying. I suck at it, but I am trying.
Kathy Nida 