So my original plan of getting all the fabric picked for the Women at War quilt did not happen. That whole watching-soccer and planning-for-school thing just kicked my butt. Plus digging holes and trimming dead branches off trees. And maybe sleeping. But only a little. Sleep is still not my friend.
But I’m not giving up. I set these goals to keep me on track. Like writing…I am still trying to do some every day; I’m just not worried about hitting a word limit every day any more.
This is what my NaNoWriMo graph looked like…
I was pretty consistent. I’m happy with what I did.
Then Saturday night, after late-afternoon soccer, I started ironing again…here’s the 4 different flesh piles I had…
Because this quilt has more bodies in it than I think I’ve ever done. Well, maybe not. I have some with tiny bodies…but these are big…and there are about 9 of them. I think. Hard to tell, honestly, down in the pile. By the end of Saturday, this is what I had in the bin to cut out…
And these are the other fabrics I’d used besides the flesh tones.
And here’s the pie I had in the middle of all that…
So the last two nights, I kept ironing, trying to stay on top of it…
This is Sunday night…and honestly, I wanted to be done Sunday, and I wasn’t…
Here’s all the fabrics I’d used by then…not very colorful.
Lots of browns and a ton of flesh colors (which aren’t even in that pile). Here’s the box of pieces to be cut out (guess what I’ll be doing next?)…
Monday night, I laid them all out so I could see them…again, this is still without the flesh colors…when you realize the red, yellow, blue, and green pieces are little tiny pieces in the big picture, it really is a mostly brown and flesh-colored quilt.
I finally got to the main figure last night. Usually, I number so that the main figure gets cut out first. I don’t know why I did it differently this time. I only had this much of the lightest fabric…
I had to fussy iron the pieces on there…but I really wanted to use it. So I made it work.
As of last night, this is what’s left to iron.
Here’s the pile of fabrics I used for the main figure. That tiny pile on top is what’s left of that light fabric. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it…
Make a really tiny flesh thing. So it was after midnight when I finished cutting out all the flesh of the main figure. This is what was left…
The bones, hair, nipples, lungs, heart, bandolier, and bullets. Oh. And a gun. Fun stuff. I was too tired to deal with that many choices, so I left it for tonight. And it’s only Tuesday, so I’m two days late. Not so bad. I should set another goal now. I plan to have all the pieces cut out by (Kathryn, think this through…you have gym and a soccer game in the rain and a meeting and a hike)…let’s say Sunday night. Then I can iron it together next week and (holy crap, I was looking at my calendar and freaking out about how much time was left, and then I realized it was still on November. Damn.) start stitching down the following week, and get it quilted Christmas week. Right? Sure. No problem. We’ll see what that looks like in real life.
Saturday’s soccer…
was playing against the team whose coach is the same for my daughter’s high-school team. We’ve never liked him, so it was awesome when girlchild made the first goal against them…
And I think we went on to make 4 more…
I was grading papers. I also wrote some of the novel. It was not particularly warm.
Yes, we had soccer yet another day…
Girlchild is playing well, no back problems at all. She starts the high-school season this week.
So I’m going to be spending a lot of time freezing and/or wet on metal bleachers.
But it’s the last year of that, which is kind of weird. Guess that’s part of why I’m an emotional mess all the time. Oh yeah, well, and there’s other stuff. But whatever. I’m getting lots of art made. And entering more shows. And reading a lot. It could be worse. I could be holed up in bed and never taking a shower. You’re thankful I’m not like that. Hell, I’m thankful I’m not like that. I wish I could say that making all this art makes me feel better, but all I can say is in the moment, while I’m picking fabrics or drawing or stitching, in the moment, there is peace and some level of forgetfulness of all the shit, and that is a good thing.
Kathy Nida 