Double Wallop of Wallow

You would laugh at me if you knew why I stayed up so late last night. It was a lame reason. Really. It was. Whatever. My brain was still (is!) in that weird place after finishing a major project. And since I never let it wallow after the 17-foot woman, it’s like a double wallop of wallow. Although, did I really allow the wallow? Well, fuck no. I worked my butt off yesterday…bunch of stuff for school, some writing, answered some email, did some other crap…graded papers (more of them? Always.).

And then came in here and quilted. No really. I did.

I’ve had this small commission quilt on my books since late June, so it’s really lame that I haven’t finished it before, but she did tell me they didn’t have a place to move into until I think it’s next week. So I put it off. Silly really. It’s so small, it took no time. But the other part was in my head, because she didn’t want a binding…she wants to wrap it around a canvas. So it’s a different kind of construction. She only wanted batting on the front, and I kept visualizing ways to do that in my head, and in the end, I think there was probably a better way, but I did it and it looks good.

I started by cutting batting the finished size and putting it on the back of the top, right where it should be. I should admit to using one of those crease marker things to mark the 8×10 on the front of this…

Only because I couldn’t find a marking pencil in here to save my life. Seriously. I know I have at least 5. Where the fuck are they? Probably in with the hand embroidery stuff…

Then I pinbasted the thing together…

Midnight moved slightly away from the machine…she’s afraid I’ll sew her tail into a quilt (could happen)…

And I quilted it. Which took less than an hour. Because this thing is tiny.

The thread broke a few times. Suspect I should pull that needle out. It just did 21 hours plus of quilting, plus all the binding afterwards. You can’t really see, but the piece really barely has a background…just above and below the hand on the left. I did quilt that.

The hands turned out nice. This is from the Mammogram quilt, the one that will be at Visions in a couple weeks. She wanted just the breast, so I moved one hand over to make it fit the space a little better. This is the drawing’s original size, so a bit on the tiny-little-pieces side. So I think it’s done. I might finish the edges or I might not, depending on what she tells me. That was easy.

Now I need to find the cats…a pile of Wonder Under and drawings somewhere in the house, I’m sure. And I need to look at the sketchbook. In the end, I ran out of time on that last night. I say all this and I know I’m getting a copyediting job tonight, so really, I should work my butt off on that, so I don’t have to do it all this weekend in big 6-hour chunks right before grades are due. Oh yeah. Because grades are due next Tuesday.

Did I clean? Do I hear you asking that? No. I did not. I did pack up the boychild’s jacket that he couldn’t fit in his luggage (plus some food, cuz I’m his mom) so I can ship that. In fact, I might put a label on that this morning. I have time. I washed some stuff. I tried to come up with a title for the big quilt. I’m up to four possible titles. I tentatively picked one, but I’m just not sure. I’m sure a relaxing, non-stressful day at school will help me decide. I have been a very good girl and have not gone off on someone via email about a really snarly bit that happened on Friday. I put it to the back of my head and made it stay there in timeout all weekend. It’s still muttering and festering and really pissed off, though, so apparently I just need to let it go at some point.

But probably it’s a better use of my time to look at my sketchbook and figure out what’s next up on the big quilt table.