You know how when you wash quilt fabric, the edges, the loose threads, they get all tied up in knots? When I iron pieces onto the fabric, I try to cut off as many of those knots as possible, mostly because they take up room in my fabric containers (space is at a premium), but also because they alternately annoy and fascinate me. I’m fascinated by the colors of the threads and the shape of the knots they make. I’m annoyed by how they get in the way, ruin the line of the fabric, waste space.
I’ve got some knots in me that need trimming. They need to go. They’re wasted space.
I spend hours when picking fabrics just unfolding, cutting knotted threads, and refolding the fabrics. It’s a meditative process. There’s a right way to fold them. The folds only go one way. If I cut really big pieces out of the fabric, then I might need to rethink the fold so everything stays in a nice square-ish packet, but usually they just get refolded over and over into the same shape.
I’ve been ironing for almost 9 hours on this piece at this point and I’m up to piece 630. My original ironing estimate was at least 20 hours…I think it will be more than that. Part of that is because I’m only doing an hour or two a day, so it takes me longer to get my brain back into it. The transition times are more frequent. One of the reasons I try to cut out all of a section of the quilt at a time is because there’s less of that down time…but I can’t always stay up really late and blow everything off (much as I’d like to) to make it work.
Tonight, I was working on this little thing…really, it IS little…
It’s about 8″ square…there’s not even that many colors in it. I managed to get all of it done except for the monitor head and the broken chains. I got tired. I only ironed about 110 pieces tonight. That’s been my average for these school nights. And they were all small pieces…
So it doesn’t look like much. Yes, that’s 110 pieces right there. All the other pieces are in another box. I had an art group meeting today, so I took the pieces with me to cut…I got a bunch done…
about two hours’ worth. Not bad. I actually made art for 3 1/2 hours today…more than most weekends, but that’s because I never just sit through a meeting…I’m always doing something.
This is probably what I’ll be ironing tomorrow night, assuming I get grades done and I finish the monitor head…
Not even halfway through at this point. Haven’t even started the main figure yet. Will have to revise my flesh-colored fabrics for that. The ones I’ve used so far for the two smaller figures won’t work. I don’t have big-enough pieces. Besides, I like the main figure to stand out by being different shades of flesh. Hence the need for 500 different flesh colors? Yeah, I don’t know. And yes, there probably are that many here. I have more flesh colors (including the pink range) and green fabrics than any other colors. The least? Yellow. Then orange and red. Weird, huh? I keep trying to get more reds, because I do so many hearts and arteries and veins, but it’s hard to find good reds. I don’t need a lot of orange apparently. Yellow? I use it often enough, but…I really don’t know why I have so few. I know I use the same ones over and over again from quilt to quilt. I don’t have much gray either (by “not much” I mean you know, maybe 100 fabrics…yes, I know how crazy that sounds).
I now have 4 returned quilts in my entryway, and two more coming home in two weeks. I started making a list of new shows to enter in the next few months. I have new work that’s never been in a show. There was a lot of talk of working to a theme at the meeting today…of putting together exhibit proposals with themes in mind. That’s harder for me to do, unless the theme is wildly vague. We’ll have to see how that goes. I also don’t really want to make a quilt for an exhibit with a theme when I don’t know if I’ll get in or not. I have enough pieces that I want to make that fit no theme, and still have one where I chose how I would fit into the theme (and I know they will show the quilt). It seems like I am far enough into the mature artist realm that I don’t need to go backwards.
That said, the work needs to get out of the house and on to a gallery wall. So you have to figure out how to make that happen. Magic!
My whole life would be different with magic, eh? Magic would make it so I could stay up for the next three hours ironing and maybe not have to go to work tomorrow? Magic would erase all the foggy depression that clouds my mind. Magic would clean the house and do all the errands. Magic would fold my laundry and find me happiness…deliver it in a small plastic Easter egg. Open it up and a cloud of happiness spills out.
I might be delirious at the moment. Speaking of delirious, girlchild stopped taking her Benadryl yesterday because it made her tired, and sure enough, those damn hives came back with a vengeance. She texted me from Lancaster…wish she would listen to the doc and her mom occasionally. She did better tonight. Asked me to wake her up at 10:30 (she was tired) to give her the next dose. The screeching I did this morning on the phone must have had an effect…she put the epi-pen in her school bag as well…not sure she can take it there without a note, but I’ll write one just in case. Yeah, I know…teenagers know everything. Moms know nothing. Sigh.
Maybe magic should put me to sleep as well.
Kathy Nida 