Put a Binding on It…All of It…

Oh holy hell, the daylight savings spring forward…it’s a Monday, it’s my birthday, and it was dark when I got up. The morning is making me nauseous. Not fair, as my students would say. I so want to go back to bed and sleep another hour or so, but the day marches onwards, with or without me, and unfortunately, I need to catch up.

Artwise, I used my weekend well…which is good, because the moods were like to kill an elephant. There is nothing pretty or pink about old lady hormone swings. They are more like a baseball-bat swing aiming at your head and uterus than a gentle porch swing with a glass of lemonade and a cute boy. So even when you try to manage the moods, plan for things that you know will help, sometimes life just doesn’t work that way and the brain can’t adjust quickly enough.

I started by quilting…with a cat almost on the quilt.

I ran out of purple thread with just a small section left…turns out I would be cutting that off anyway.

Although there was a weird break in the thread in a lower section that I had to cut and tie off, but you can’t see it, which is good, because I didn’t have any more purple thread that would match. So it was either go balls out and use orange, or hope no one could see it. The latter worked.

So here I was, achieving art, finishing stuff…but the moods, they descend upon you like a piano falling from a 3rd-story apartment window, like a tornado plummeting towards the earth from a sickly greenish sky, like a plane dead in the air pointing nosewards towards the nearest mountain or empty field, to strew metal pieces and body parts across a 10-mile swath of land.

And I thought music was OK. But Pandora, she is fickle. She can make me bounce and dance, and she can draw on my heartstrings and make tears drop from the tip of my nose, falling on the quilt as I stitch about 100 miles an hour, just missing my fingers.

And then this song…

It was somewhere around there that I realized it wasn’t even something under my control. I drew…

And then I went to CIF finals…

They make them line up and do all this processional stuff…I have lots of blurry pictures…

The field lights were really bright, much nicer than the ones we have on our home field (I judge them by my ability to see my stitching), but not quite bright enough for good pictures. They played hard…they lost by one point though…a penalty kick in like the 71st minute. Which sucks. But they did get into the finals for the first time in four years, so that was a cool way for the girlchild to end her high-school soccer season.

There is no way I’m finishing this before I have to leave for school. And ugh. I am so not ready.

So now it’s after school, and I still feel like a bus slammed into me, but I had about 200 kids sing or say happy birthday to me (not all of them were my students), and even one of our security ladies came and gave me a hug (very sweet)…so it’s hard to stay cranky for long with that much teenaged love being thrown at you unconditionally. Because they hate you and love you and drive you nuts and beg for forgiveness, and that’s what teaching middle school is like. Oh yeah. And having teenagers.

So I decided a few things. First, I need to finish bindings because I was hoping to take my machine in to get it serviced, so I basically did all three bindings last night. I started by trying to find something in Mariah’s stash that would work for the recycled upholstery nude…

Yeah. I clean up quick. Not. But it was EASIER because it was all still strewn on the floor (keep telling yourself that).

This one was a real strong contender from the pile, because it had the red orange from her hair and the purple from the background…but it wasn’t good enough.

I was just intrigued by the orange/purple combination. I decided there wasn’t enough of it to get all the way around. Plus the strips were skinny.

I really liked this one. It seems strange to put green with it, but there is green in the quilt. Not a lot…just a little.

And the real kicker was that this was an offcut from something, probably an outer border or a backing. There were straight seams in it, but it was also wider than the other strips she had cut, and I like a doubled-up binding…easier to do the hand work I think. And I could get to 3″ wide on this…which is close to what I would do anyway…

And I had the 100″ that I needed. Not a lot more, but hey…100″ is all I needed.

Now I just need to do the hand-sewing. And email the magazine to make sure nudity won’t be an issue. Huh.

With that done, it was easy to turn to the other two smaller ones and do the same thing…

I guess I was really hoping my machine guy would say, “Sure! Bring it in today!” Because I know I will need it during Spring Break to sew down the Ventura quilt. I don’t think I’ll need it before then…

Turns out he’s as booked up as a gynecology department that assumes you are going through menopause and this isn’t the precursor to uterine cancer…or if it is, you’ve lived a long life anyway and there’s no rush.

Not really. I don’t disagree. So my machine is going in the first few days of Spring Break…it will be fine. Because I made an appointment, it will only be out of my hot little hands for 36 hours. I can survive that long. Seriously. I can. (Things Kathy will save in a fire: kids, animals, computer, sewing machine, quilts, sketchbooks. Huh.) Besides, I’ll be in the gynecology department. Ha!

I think I can finally focus on picking out fabrics. Maybe. If I can stay awake. What time is it? Hate. Daylight. Savings.