Got My Music Back

One of the things that came out of the depression I went into July 2013 was that I had a really hard time listening to music. For a good year, huge swaths of my musical library caused me to weep interminably, which really sucked, because I love music. Always have. All types. I’m a total music slut, although the majority of rap, hip hop, and country are outside my music love arena. So usually when I trace Wonder Under, pick fabrics, and cut stuff out, I watch TV…mostly Netflix but increasingly Amazon Prime Video as well, and some stuff on the Tivo, when I’m in the other room. I watch that when I’m ironing the whole thing together too. But when I’m quilting or stitching stuff down, I always used to listen to music…in the early days, to my iTunes, but now mostly Pandora, which is just one HUGE channel of Kathy’s music and everything she likes. I love my Pandora. At the gym, when I’m hiking by myself, when I’m quilting, whatever.

And I couldn’t listen. Because the 80s were reminiscent and the 90s too and then the 00s and fuck me, there was very little that I could listen to. And trying to quilt a million miles an hour while crying was just a recipe for disaster. I did it a lot though. And then I switched to putting on bad TV, or TV I didn’t care too much about, while I was sewing, because it was dialogue and it was easier to take than music. It didn’t trigger anything. I guess music ties into some very deep emotional places in my brain. TV just distracts it. And I needed the distraction. But TV isn’t ideal for quilting and sewing things down, because you’re meant to watch it, and I can’t watch two things WELL at the same time (notice how I didn’t say I couldn’t watch two things at the same time…I am a middle-school teacher. I regularly watch 36+ things at the same time.).

You know what I’m doing right now? Listening to music AND sewing. Ha! Fuck you brain. Finally beat it. How many months. Fuck. Don’t even count. Just say thank you. Now REM’s Everybody Hurts will still kick my ass, my perimenopausal brain’s ass, and make me sob like a motherfucker, but that’s fucking NORMAL. I’m OK with that. I can listen to all the other stuff and sing along and get up and dance sometimes, because that’s what music is supposed to do to you, thank you very much, and if I cry occasionally because it’s a really sad song…there’s another Amanda Palmer one that kicks my ass…The Bed Song.

But see, that shit’s normal. It’s OK to have a song or two that rips your heart out. It’s not OK when it’s 90% of what you’re listening to.

I got my music back bitches. 2015. It’s all good from here on out. Seriously. I feel really good about that.

So yesterday I had a plan to go to the gym and then come back and do quilty things, but I have to be honest. The quilty things were screaming at me, so I ended up just doing that all day, and ignoring everything else. Yup. Again. Because sometimes that’s how I roll. This morning, I still have the same plan, but I’m actually going to go to the gym. Really. I am. First I have to pay out a shitload of money to the kids’ colleges, but then I can go relax by beating myself up on a bunch of machines. I’m OK with that. It feels good.

So what did I get done yesterday? A lot. First I ironed the whole thing down onto the background…I had a couple of dark blues lying around that I bought a while ago for this quilt or for something else. I like dark blue for backgrounds, so it’s never a waste. I liked this one, a batik…

When I started ironing, I put the bathtub with the figure in it on first, but then remembered not to iron the edges down because there was stuff that had to go under. Well, I mostly remembered. I didn’t iron heavy at this stage, but this is the new plasticky Wonder Under…it came up, but it wasn’t happy about it.

It didn’t take long to get it all ironed down. And I don’t know what I was looking at yesterday, but my times were completely off. It took 10 hours and 54 minutes to iron the whole thing together and down onto a backing. Not bad.

I always keep the trash from trimming the fabric until I finish ironing, in case a piece is in there. But then I often forget to look in there for any missing pieces. There were a few. They were small. I recut them. No biggie.

Then I started stitching down. Because I was committed at that point. I was fairly sure I could finish the stitch down yesterday…

Midnight really wanted to sit on this. In fact, once I turned around because the boychild was helping me figure out why the damn computer backup wasn’t working, and there she was, plopped right in the middle of it. Damn cat.

More stitch down. I went fast. I sew like I’m driving a sportscar. I started sewing before I learned to drive. You might say one prepared me for the other.

When we left for dinner, I wrapped it up around the machine like this so the cats couldn’t sit on it.

The back is sometimes even more interesting than the front. I look at the back to try to find all the places I missed…I missed quite a few this time, but I fixed them all. So hopefully that was it. I hate fixing them later, because I have to change thread. Annoying. Changing bobbins and changing thread. That reminds me…I need to go thread shopping today. I don’t think I have enough and I don’t want to run out on a holiday. Except maybe JoAnns is open tomorrow. Interesting. They close early tonight but are open tomorrow. OK. Keeping that in mind. I have a spool and a partial of the color I want.

So that was after dinner, but it was still early (by my clock). So. Hell. I’m all in. I have to clean the floor before I can lay a quilt out (too many muddy feet tromping through there), so I do that. Then I go hunting for a backing…end up using the rest of what I used on the front. I have other stuff I’d rather use, but batiks tend to be wider from selvage to selvage, and I didn’t want to piece it…this size fits perfectly on a batik that’s about 44″ wide…the image is about 34″ wide. I love not piecing (so stop making monstrously huge quilts, woman). Laid it out on the floor, yelled at one cat who tried to use it as a slip-n-slide…

And pinbasted her.

It took less than an hour to do that. And the stitch down was only 3 1/2 hours. Speedy. I’m guessing the quilting will be 11-12 hours though. I’m hoping to start today, maybe get in 3 or 4 hours (which means I need to get my butt in gear and get outta here). Yes, I have plans tonight. Sheesh. They’re really complicated, involving food and champagne and movies on a TV probably. And my sketchbook. Because if you can’t quilt your way into the new year, you should draw your way into it, right?

Anyway. It’s in progress. My goal is to have it done, binding on (dammit, I don’t have binding, do I?) by Sunday, so I can sew the binding down at my meeting that afternoon. We’ll see. That’s a lot. The boychild’s birthday is in the middle of that too. Sigh. And I wanted to hike. Balance! Sheesh.

But music. That’s a good thing.

Making Things Flat

Ironing is such a strange activity. Making things flat. No wrinkles. Folding only where you want it. I don’t iron my clothes hardly ever. My iron rarely sees fabric that isn’t in a quilt. And yet, I will iron quilt fabric to fold it up and shove it in a storage container (it folds better when ironed). I don’t iron all of it…just when it comes out of the dryer completely in knots or folded. I love ironing fabric I’ve recently dyed…you can see all the tiny changes in color that happened in the dye process. It’s very relaxing. Put some movie on and spend an hour or so ironing fabric. Ask me to iron your shirt? Yeah. Not happening. I might iron one of my shirts or a pair of my pants if they were awful, and when the boychild was doing college interviews, I ironed his stuff. But the girlchild did her own. Yeah. That was sexist. But she knows how and he does too…he was just being a stubborn widget.

Kids. Sheesh. I am handing them their expiring passports and letting them deal. If they’re smart, they’ll do it here while they have access to a car. It’ll be interesting to see how much mess gets left behind when the girlchild leaves. The boy is neater.

I iron mostly to stick pieces of fabric together to make a picture. Not to make things flat. Which is even weirder. Yes. It is.

So I ironed until the wee hours last night. Actually, it was before midnight. I actually BRIEFLY considered ironing the whole thing onto a background last night, but then it really would have been the wee hours, and I decided that wasn’t a good plan. But I got everything ironed together so far…a whopping 11 1/2 hours. Why? Well the damn wine glass alone was a bitch and a half to iron. Who thought reflections on glass and wine were a good idea? Yeah. The designer Kathy, who never thinks through the production part of the design process. She’s a pain in the ass sometimes.

I had finished the legs and one arm the night before, so I started on the torso…

Which has lots of overlapping crap on it, making it a minor pain in the ass. Lungs under and blood vessels over. So sometimes I just start putting stuff together and push vessels out of the way.

I ironed the whole wine glass with fingers on a separate section and then put it on top…because it has like 40 pieces in it.

It actually will turn out great I think in the long run, once the outlining is in there, but it was a pain in the butt…mostly because I ironed one piece in the wrong place and then had to cut a new piece for another section. Who knows what happened to that piece, but I did find the missing purple sock piece (314) hiding in the 700 bin. I had already cut a new one though.

Then it was time for the face…

I love seeing the face put together, because it’s the character of the piece, and I never really know what it will look like until it’s ironed…

This quilt is all about perimenopause and getting older. I hate this brain…it forgets shit randomly, acts like a teenager in the worst ways, cries at the drop of a hat, sometimes for no apparent reason. It is frustrating to deal with how the hormones fuck with your brain and emotions…knowing you don’t have enough control over all of it. I should have put more white or gray in her hair, more like my own, but I’ve noticed most of my friends and family that are my age dye their hair. I don’t care about the white…it’s interesting to me. Maybe Bathtub 6 will own the age part more…this was more about the brain. The brain part just sucks.

Here she is hanging off the ironing board. She’s not huge…the final quilt will probably be about 40″ w x 50″ h or so.

So this morning, I’m going to iron her onto the background and then start stitching down. I think I was supposed to start that Monday, but I didn’t think the ironing would take that long. I guessed 10 hours, and I suspect after it’s all on the background, it will be closer to 13. I’m guessing 5 to stitch it down…we’ll see. I could get that done today if I don’t do anything else (ha!). We’ll see. Sandwich tomorrow? I think I have a big enough piece of batting…and surely I can find a backing in this disaster of a studio.

Kitten says I can…

Cold weather…cats find the humans and stalk us.

In other news, a friend recently published this book…

Which was reviewed well by Donna Freedman (former MSN Money writer, current freelancer in Anchorage, place of my birth). It is the time of year for thinking about weight loss, right? In my house, there are still Christmas cookies. Makes it hard! Check it out…anything helps, right? Cooking better, eating right, exercising. Means my gym will be way too busy for the next 6 weeks. Oh well. Actually, my gym has new machines that you can sign into, and then it tracks everything on an app. Which reminds me…I should be heading there today as well. Aack. Already overscheduled. Isn’t it vacation? Sigh. Don’t ask me about grades.

Iron All Night

My dad always gives me shit for not getting up early in the morning (despite the fact that I do when I need to, like if there’s a soccer game or I have to go to work). But he falls asleep by 8 PM every night, and that’s when I’m just getting started. I am a night owl. Always have been. And last night, I was on an ironing roll and felt like just staying up until I finished…until I looked at the clock and realized if I did that, I’d be going to bed around 3 AM. Which would be fine if the world didn’t wake me up around daylight with noise and dogs who need to pee and Kitten, who will hurdle me until I feed her. So I went to bed. At a semi-reasonable hour. And I’ve been up long enough to feed and pee things, living things, and make some tea, and wonder why the world is so fucking bright (ugh…artists like nighttime. Artists like me anyway. Semi-vampiric artists who burn when light touches them.). But the other two adults here are NOT awake. Amusing since I went to bed AFTER both of them.

I wonder if I can make one of them empty the dishwasher. AND put the dishes away. Gonna try anyway.

So I ironed for about 5 hours yesterday…and that doesn’t count the ironing I did the night before that was technically also on the 28th of December. It was good because I finally stopped grinding my teeth. My jaw has ached since school got out with stress over the holidays and grading and money and everything, but now that I know the cure is to iron for 5 hours…yeah. That ain’t gonna work most days. But it’s a step in the right direction. Art brain mode…meditative state.

So sometime before the soccer game in the rain, but after I had prepped dinner, I started ironing…

I don’t remember what I did the rest of the day. I’m sure it was very important. Oh yeah! I went to the gym. That was important. And I tried to enter an art show, but perimenopausal brain (which is amazingly spacey and stupid and forgets shit all the time) couldn’t read instructions, so instead of taking 20 minutes, it took all morning and the help of the nice lady on the other end of the email, who probably thinks I’m a total space cadet, and apparently, sometimes I am. Sigh. GIANT ASS SIGH. I hate when my brain does not behave well.

THEN…at some point after showering and eating, then I started ironing.

The rug on the other side of the bathtub. I went to the soccer game in the middle of all of that. Alumni game, so the alumni play against the current team. It was amusing. Girlchild held her own. I hope she remembers how much she likes to play when she gets back to college, and finally goes to the coach and maybe sings her a song and brings her baked goods and begs to shag balls and maybe even try out.

Or not.

Then I started on the bathtub, which was annoyingly complicated, because you have to consider how everything overlaps, and I didn’t do the best job EVER on tracing pieces logically, but then I always think that, and maybe that has something to do with perimenopausal brain’s influence over art brain.

This is where I first thought…hmmm…probably should call it a day. Finished the water. Good stopping point before I start doing the fleshy bits.

Yeah right. Even Kitten knew we were in it for the long haul.

I kept going…until I got two legs and a foot and most of an arm. Oh yeah, and a floating uterus. Because honestly, the way mine behaves sometimes, it would just be better if it were removable. Oh, I know you can take them out, but mine isn’t doing much but producing hormones in a psychotic manner at this point, so I’m willing to wait it out.

Today? Well, I have to do some stuff midday that might require me to shower first (dammit), but then I’m coming back and making lasagne (sauce has to cook for an hour, but I don’t have to be right NEXT to it for it to do that) and ironing the damn torso. And maybe the head, although that wine glass has way too many pieces in it. Glass. It’s a fucker to draw and iron.

So still off schedule, because I was supposed to be done ironing yesterday and hopefully start stitching down (bwa ha ha), but if I can finish ironing today? Is that possible? There’s a lot of complicated stuff left, but only about 300 pieces. So three or four hours. And then ironing down to the background. Eh. Maybe? Stitch down tomorrow…then sandwich? I might still be able to pull this off. Except it means I’m pulling that old art brain maneuver where all I do is art and occasionally run the dishwasher or prep a meal. I don’t do anything else. I was going to grade a bit this week, and one period’s worth of one assignment does not really count as “a bit.” Aarrgh. We’ll see. Not in the mood right this second.

What I want to do is iron this sucker together. Like now. Despite the complaining tummy and the need to shower and the appointment in two hours and the full dishwasher and the living organisms who dammit just got into the shower. Bloody hell. Well there goes the hot water. Ugh. Note to self. Shower when you rise. Then you beat the younger generation to the hot water. By the time I remember that clearly, they’ll be gone again.

Don’t Bug Me…

Well. Yeah. Goals are nice. And they’re nice even when you blow them. So I barely ironed Saturday and I didn’t even START ironing last night until after 11 PM. Life got in the way. Shopping for food and cleaning stuff up and finishing some writing that needed to be finished and trying to grade things and getting all the holiday cards ready to mail…all those things conspired against me. Much like this morning, when I tried to enter an art show, which should have been an incredibly easy thing to do, but ended up with three browsers not working and emails to the woman in charge, who was very helpful, but unable to diagnose the issue. Whatever. It’s done. She let me enter via email. Hopefully it worked. You know…email. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sigh.

So a frustrating morning soon to turn into a productive afternoon, if I have any say over it.

Rug one ironed together…

Owl ironed in the deep dark hours of the morning (really, I just told myself to not look at the clock…it’s not like I’m sleeping well anyway at the moment).

This is the same owl I did as a one-off (which is still available)…but in different colors. I like this color version of it.

So I’m into the 300s now…going down the other side with a tree that has a million pieces and then another rug (or the same rug?) on the other side of the bathtub. I said I’d be done ironing today. I lied. I know I’m at a soccer game in the rain tonight, plus I think I have to make a casserole this afternoon for dinner, so the boychild can just insert at the appropriate time. Obviously haven’t done that yet. Still debating the gym. Ugh. So tired. So stressed about work and quilts and money. Exercise would help with that. Remember that.

I was down in the garage yesterday and found a replacement entryway rug for this one…

Which my mom made for me a million years ago, when she still was a weaver…it’s falling apart. Too many washings and the warp is unraveling. Poor thing. Anyway. Trying to clean stuff out still. Will never be done with that apparently.

OK. Art entry done, blog done, breakfast? That would be smart. And then the gym and making a casserole and ironing fabric. Lots of that today. Seriously. No other side gigs today. Ignore the kid who emailed about her grade yesterday. Phone just rang. Quick tech support for parental units. I’m done. Not answering the phone or the door. Don’t bug me.

Bathtubs

I finally made it to the best part of making the quilt. Well, besides the drawing. I love the drawing part, but I usually make quilts a really long time after I’ve drawn them, so that’s a totally separate endeavor in my head. My favorite part of making the quilt is ironing it together. I don’t make a master colored drawing, so I never really know what it will look like until it’s all ironed together. It’s all in my head up until then. My head’s a big place, apparently, with lots of colored drawings in it. And undrawn drawings. And piles of worry. I did try drawing last night, but I’ll need a redo. It’s OK…it’s a process…especially if I haven’t drawn for a while. I can get a little rusty. It’s harder to get what’s in my head out on paper. But it’s coming. Today I think.

Anyway, so you’ll see the not-so-good drawing and then the better one…I promise you. I hide nothing. Well, almost nothing. I’ve hidden how many cookies I’ve eaten in the last five days. But who needs grocery shopping? We have cookies! Breakfast lunch and dinner, there’s cookies. Yeah. I know. Whatever.

So I started ironing yesterday, just like I planned…I didn’t get far.

OK, I got a little further than this…started on the rug on the right side. But it was a good start. A pile of books, some scissors, some embroidery thread, and a hoop. Because yes, that’s what I have hanging around my bathtub. Just to clarify, I don’t have a free-standing bathtub like this. At all. I don’t even know if I’d like one. I do love baths but don’t take them often because the kids’ bathtub is not particularly comfortable. And cats like to walk the edges. Well, not all cats…just Midnight. And she’s a big ~~fat~~ fluffy cat, and occasionally she falls in. So that frightens me. Well, and taking a bath is such a thing…I used to do it in the old house all the time, especially pregnant. Soaking in warm water. It sounds quite nice at the moment, but I don’t have time. Maybe that’s part of what this series is about…taking the time to soak in the tub with all your things around you, populating the room. Yes, I am admitting now that I didn’t think out this series before I started drawing. Yup. That’s pretty much how I always work. Just start drawing. Sometimes there’s an idea or a spark or a phrase or a theme, but the bathtubs came out of nowhere. That thing I used to do to relax. Hmn.

Anyway, I’m hoping to iron for 4 or 5 hours today. Isn’t that what I said yesterday? Can’t remember. Yup. But I also said iron a few hours yesterday and that turned into about 45 minutes, because it took longer to pack stuff up to ship, and then I finally FINALLY finished the Christmas letter (it’s OK, I titled it Holiday Letter, and it’s still the fucking holidays, so get off my back) and printed it, and now all I have to do is address all the envelopes and put stamps on them and decide if the kids should sign them, and yes, it would have been smart to sign the original before I copied it, but here’s one OTHER thing I decided…sometime between now and the start of the next school year (that’s 8 months from now-ish), I’m buying a new color printer, because mine is crap. It’s seriously older than my divorce and it won’t print color for shit…and I’m done with it. So there. Maybe even in a combo with a scanner so I can get rid of that beast as well. Maybe. I have a small space in here. Because that would be cheaper than copying the letter elsewhere, plus I print color stuff for school sometimes.

So. I did that and I moved money for college, and that’s where my head went down a giant financial rabbit hole, because that’s a whole shitload of money I need to make in the next 5 months. OK. So there it is. I need an extra 1-2 K a month. Deep breaths. I can do this. Probably not if I spend a bunch of time in a bathtub.

Really it’s much better to deal with the short-term goals for today: shower (always a good plan), grocery store (for something besides cookies), clean up a little, maybe even start pulling quilts for the exhibit before I put everything away in my room, and then iron. I’m even going to grade some shit. Seriously. I am.

Bathtubs though. I’m thinking a big deep white bathtub somewhere in the house (is the boychild coming back this summer?). Or maybe just in my head. For now.

I Got No Title…

Hope you all survived Christmas, if you celebrate it. There’s always too much food and everyone needs a nap. I did manage to finally finish cutting out all the pieces for the next Bathtub quilt…it took 10 hours to cut them all out…seems like too long. But it takes however long it takes. I sorted them yesterday afternoon…

Meanwhile, the girlchild is texting me about a missing muffin pan (pan, not man). So I had hoped to make it in the studio and start laying stuff out for ironing, but I had to deliver a table and chairs and said pan and a bunch of other stuff. So I took over my bird embroidery and sat and did that while the girlchild cooked. I’m so far behind on this one. Oh well. I’m not super-motivated at the moment. Oh well. Still brain dead from school ending.

We made a ton of cookies (this plate was fuller by the end of the day)…

Kitchen in the middle of baking chaos…there is not enough room in there.

Dad with Calli…always a ball in her mouth…

Told ya…

Calli helping to open her present…

And sleeping later on…with her mom and her grandpa…

We cooked up the rest of the cinnamon buns…so the dough wouldn’t go bad. But I think I’m freezing these.

I finally got the Seattle presents wrapped and in a box to ship today…

I did get fabric for Christmas…I like when people pick out fabrics they like for me, because it helps my stash if other people contribute. I buy the same types of stuff, really. So this is a plus…

The studio is almost ready to iron this bathtub together. I need to move the fabrics out of the way and clear part of the floor…

But I’m remarkably brain dead this morning. Last night, I just sat on the couch with a cat, a dog, and a kid and vegged out. I’m hoping my brain lets me get something done soon. Work looms in the back of my head. Need to look at what pieces will be in the Grossmont show…will have to prep all those quilts for hanging as well. I’ve booked the week after Jan 1 for that.

So I can set a goal…let’s look at how long it would take to iron this thing together…maybe 10 hours? Another 5 to stitch it down? A couple of hours to pinbaste it? About 12 hours to quilt it? Another 5 to bind it? So if I’m good and I start ironing today, maybe just a few hours…and then another 5 or so tomorrow? Then finish ironing Monday. Girlchild has a soccer game Monday night, so I will be freezing to death on metal bleachers for that. But maybe I can start stitching down Monday night…finish it Tuesday. Then maybe sandwich and pinbaste Tuesday? Start quilting (need thread…pretty sure I need thread. Might need batting as well). Quilt Wednesday and Thursday. New Year’s Eve…got plans. Won’t be quilting that night. But if I can finish Thursday during the day? Then trim and start binding on the 1st? Boychild’s birthday is the 2nd, but I don’t know what he wants to do…plus I want to hike again next week. So that’s not on the calendar yet. But let’s say I can get this thing done by next Sunday? I can do that. And then call the photographer…and get the drawing done for the next one that has to be done super quickly. And I can start it the following week, even though I’m prepping quilts for installation.

No grading this next week? I might try to do say one class one assignment per day. Just to make the following week less hellacious. We’ll see.

OK. First part of all this is get off this chair, take a shower, eat some food, and go ship that box. Then come back and start the ironing. This is how I get the quilts done. I have to make a plan and then I can go faster or slower, but at least there’s a guideline there instead of just doing it when I feel like it…sometimes I just have to get up and go because I wrote about it here and I know I’ll have to answer to that tomorrow, so that’s motivation…

Making a Gift

I occasionally make quilts as gifts…I sometimes get hints from people that they’d like a quilt, but often that’s just not an option for me…whether I don’t have an idea for them or because my larger quilts are pretty significantly time-consuming. You’ve got to be a fairly important person in my life to have one of those, and it might be even more difficult now, because I did give one of my big ones away and now I wish I hadn’t. It’s hard to think about one of my babies out there where I don’t think they deserve to be…but that’s life. I don’t mind selling them…that’s a fulfilling transaction. But if I give you a $2000 quilt, hell, you better deserve it. That’s months of work.

Anyway, so I made one gift quilt this year. I was making those cats and realized someone I cared about would probably like a quilt of his cat…so I took some pictures of Satchemo’s squished little face…

He has a tiny nose and kind of a grumpy cat facial structure. These pictures were dark too, and I realized I had no full-body pictures, so I trolled Facebook to find this one…

Perfect for his body coloring and how he curls up. Then I spent about an hour trying to draw him…the first few weren’t quite right, but then I got his face right, traced it, and added it to a better body shape.

So if you’re wondering if I could make a quilt of your cat…well, probably. Because if you had a perfect picture, that would be awesome, but obviously I can take one cool picture (the sink one) and mess with it to make a straight-on quilt. Although maybe I should have done the sink too. Except then there was no way I would have finished it in time.

Tracing the Wonder Under…

That’s all of it…

And then cutting it out…

Satch has 40 pieces, so more than most of the small cat quilts I did earlier this year. Some stages of the quilt took longer than with other quilts, because I wanted to make sure the quilt looked like its namesake. So color choice and drawing were kind of time-consuming. I’ve found that people like the quilts to be in the $100 range, but with the style of quilt I make, that’s really difficult. That’s about 3-4 hours of work, not counting materials, and I make these in more like 5 or 6 hours. And yes, I know people who would work on something for 10 hours and charge $100. I won’t. I work hard to put my kids through school and keep my head above water (most of the time). I’m not working for $10/hour, because my 25 years of quilting experience has to pay better than that.

I had the sink photo up for the body fabrics on my iPad. The face photo was up earlier. The grays are always a challenge.

Here they are all ironed down. I thought his back end was too dark until I saw him sitting there again. He really is darker in back.

It didn’t take long to trim the pieces…although now I’ve lost my little scissors. No idea where they went…and that’s the second pair gone missing. I need to do a deep clean. There’s gotta be 50 pairs of scissors in this house.

Ironing is the next step…I did the head separate to make sure it all went together well…

Before I put it on the body. Faces are important. If it’s human, I iron the eyes together separately and then put them on the face, to make sure they’re not horrendously crooked.

Then to pick a background…can’t be too dark, because of the dark parts. Can’t be too gray or too light, because the lights won’t show. Has to be a color and pattern that isn’t too busy.

I finally found one…mostly blue with some green in it. Then I stitched it down and pinbasted it. Starting quilting with a dark thread around the cat itself.

DSCN2752 small

Then found the thread for the background, except it wasn’t anywhere near a full spool. Oh well. It’s a small quilt, right?

Oh yeah, I ran out. Oh well. I did a fairly good job of quilting evenly around it before that happened.

It does change colors in different light.

Then yesterday, in between cookie-baking, I trimmed and bound it…

Finishing the hand-sewing about 15 minutes before I was supposed to leave to meet the recipient (it’s OK, I had a backup plan).

I forgot to measure it though. I can do that later. But here’s the finished piece.

Satchemo took about 6 1/2 hours to make, not counting drawing time…in a commission, I would count that…legitimately. I think he looks like his namesake. That cat spends a lot of time on my lap, clawing the crap out of my thighs and/or boobs, so I’m prettty familiar with his face. And he was the 25th quilt I finished in 2015. I’m unlikely to finish another one by January 1, so I guess he’s the last quilt in 2015. Not bad. Now on to the next one…

Hiking for the Holidays…

Officially Christmas Eve here. Still got lots to do, although got through a bunch of cookie making yesterday. Just a little bit left for today, plus a breakfast casserole, but after two grocery stores last night, we’re still short a couple of ingredients. I’ll be leaving here in a bit on a search for those. We also did a 6-mile hike yesterday…with a late start, so a late finish…but Iron Mountain was conquered. I haven’t been hiking much…haven’t been able to find the time and energy, so it was not an easy hike for me, but I did it. Slowly. My fastest time up the mountain was 50 minutes, and it took 70 yesterday, but I did it…with the kids. Boychild out in front, long legs and all.

It was a bit chilly, although I did wear shorts (it’s San Diego in December after all) and stayed warm enough. It had rained the whole day before, so there was mud and water…even streams, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen on this hike.

Girlchild claimed this as her favorite pile of rocks…

The rocks and mud change colors as you move around the mountain. Plenty of puddles to miss…

Lots of long-range views, even with the clouds…this is to the east.

With the west looking much more ominous.

No more rain for a while though, apparently.

No pictures of artmaking. Maybe tomorrow. I have stuff I’m working on…it’s just not in pictures yet. Have to deal with all the family and holiday stuff first. I was actually worried yesterday that this was somehow a strange year, not getting anything done, but then I looked back at previous years (I do this a lot…my blog actually helps me remember that it’s ALWAYS like this) and realized the days between the end of school and Christmas Eve are notoriously bad for artmaking or anything but chaos, so I should stop beating myself up about it. I do often get a lot done on Christmas Eve and Day, though, once everything else is out of the way.

I really just want some quiet time, I think. Ironic since that’s what I hate most of the rest of the year! Ah well. Live and learn. Gonna get my act together and try to survive today. Best wishes to all of you doing the same.

Not Relaxing Yet…

At some point in all this holiday crap, you run out of time to do anything else, so you can relax. I haven’t hit that yet! Whoops. Waiting on a grocery list for the holiday meals, plus still have some wrapping to do (did a lot of it yesterday), and the tree’s not even decorated really (may give up on that), plus at least one gift in progress…maybe two.

I keep seeing all these teacher articles about burn-out and exhaustion and how we have to let ourselves forget about work for a week or so or we won’t have the emotional energy to go back. I suspect there are other jobs like that out there too. So I’m not stressing too much about the work pile over THERE (which is actually mostly on a computer, so it’s much easier to ignore).

I am almost done cutting these out…

Really couldn’t persuade myself to stay up any later to finish those. I’ve been really tired the last week or so. Trying to sleep through the night is an issue at the moment. Not sure why. So I saved those for today, I guess. Hoping to start ironing tonight, but we’ll see. I do have some other stuff I need to get done.

I went shopping for baby quilt fabric…got these (not for the baby quilt)…

I’m not sure where big raccoon eyes will be appropriate, but I got them anyway.

Here’s the baby stuff…

Not my normal color range. The darkest pink is for the binding, and I may rethink that when I get there. These were their color choices. Yup. It’s a girl.

I was cleaning stuff up in the living room and putting things away. Now that the shelves are installed, I’ll be able to put books and stuff back up there, which means opening boxes that haven’t been opened in 18 months. I found these in a bin…

I took a class from…ugh…I just had to search through all my likes on Facebook…Jude Hill! I took the class a long time ago and never got past this part, but wanted to…just don’t have time for all the things I want to do. She does beautiful work. I often wish I could just sit with bits of fabric and thread and create things like she does, but either my life or my personality don’t work that way. I want to be more spontaneous and slow about working, but if I do that, I never get anything done. The reason I can get so much work out there is because I plan for it and create in a very specific way. I’m not saying one way is better than the other, because obviously I still crave the time for the other way of doing it, but in reality, I work a million hours a week and I don’t have time to sit and stitch like that. I think. Sigh. Right now I don’t feel like I have time for it anyway. Too many deadlines I’m looking at, both art ones and life ones. Maybe when I am old and retired, I will create like this. Or maybe I just can’t because it’s not how my brain works.

So they are back in a pile. And I’m not entirely sure what the one in the top left was supposed to be or even the box-like one. There’s two obvious cats and a butterfly, and I think the column-like ones were the lion-type creatures she makes, except I don’t want to make Jude Hill work. I want to make my own. And maybe that’s why I stopped there. I learned how she put stuff together and then I stopped. I don’t remember. Because at some point, you have to make it yours…

In case you’re interested, it was her Patchwork Beasts class, which she’s now put online here, but please donate if you use it. Artists should always get paid for their efforts.

I’ve been working on other things, but you will have to wait to see them. Meanwhile, I’m supposed to have kids here and we’re supposed to be hiking like now, and then grocery shopping (hell!), but there’s no sign of them. It’s still chilly and looks like rain, although that’s supposed to have stopped until tomorrow night. I’ve declined a copyediting job because I know nothing about Blender. I need more work, dammit. I’m going to be short money for college at some point in the next few months. Maybe I’ll stress over that for a while before the kids show up. It’s on my to-do list, and then I can hike off all that stress. Good plan.

If I Feel Like It…

Rain makes it all slow down, the crazy. It’s too wet to go out, to brave the crowds, the traffic. Although I am going to the gym. And the grocery store. But my Christmas shopping appears to be done…just waiting on things to be delivered (yes, Amazon, I heard your truck banging around out there at 7:22 AM…yes, many people are awake at that hour, but I am on my 4th day of vacation and have yet to experience a full night’s rest where I wake up…well…rested. The animals are needy, the kids are semi-noisy or just late and I’m a light sleeper. Seems funny to look forward to Christmas Eve for the sleep potential…no one in the house but me and the two cats…if I put tuna out, maybe they will fall into sleep comas and I will have peace until I have to be at the ex’s house for present exchange. Of course, it’s probably going to be pretty hard to exchange gifts if I don’t start wrapping some of them, eh? It’s on my list for today, along with make more cookies (or dough, as it were), finish cutting stuff out, do some ironing. Might want to finish decorating the tree even. Or call it a day. It has ornaments on it. My rule of “you can’t leave the house until you hang 10 ornaments” is not working. They just ignore me.

I was cutting stuff out for a couple of hours last night…the empty space on the couch is mine. Calli kept shifting one way and another…

On the other side of me is a cat, sometimes two (one above, one below) and the other box of stuff to be cut out.

I’m almost done…

Maybe another hour? My hand definitely is sore today. But there’s progress. The box on the right is what’s left.

I have two other things I’m working on…this tiny thing…

And then a baby quilt that is just a pile of recently washed fabrics in my dryer. Maybe you’ll see those tomorrow. The raccoon fabric did not make it in the quilt. The color choices on that were challenging for me, but the nice lady in the quilt shop said I did well. I need a traditional quilter to look sometimes and make sure I didn’t wander too far out of the realm of normalcy.

Have I drawn yet? Nope. Still not mentally there. Drawings screaming at the enclosure of my brain, begging to be let out, to be started, finished, made into quilts. Demanding little buggers. Instead I read and clean and cook and run errands. Most schools don’t give three weeks for Winter Break, but I’ve found two weeks (like I have at Spring Break) is never enough. The first week is always recovery from the last weeks of school, and in the case of Winter Break, it’s the Christmas stuff kicking your butt as well, because you didn’t get enough done over the last three weeks. Then the week in between Christmas and New Year’s, that’s recovery as well, and the last week is when I actually get refreshed and caught up on errands and grading and house-cleaning for the next round of school.

But that week for me will be spent prepping quilts for the Grossmont exhibit coming up. It’s called Contemporary Crafts and it’s just me and James E. Watts, a very cool sculptor and painter.

Put the opening on your calendar…come by. Should be cool. No, I haven’t decided (besides the two that are on the card) what to show yet. That’s for the week after New Year’s! I need to plan out my overwhelming stressful activities. Let’s not think about when the quilt I’m working on needs to be done either, OK? Or everything else that’s going on in January? It’s still December…for another 10 days. I can do this. No, I didn’t grade very much yesterday. Shut up.

Starting with the gym today (I can actually grade on the bike and the elliptical if I feel like it). Maybe that should be my mantra for Winter Break…If I feel like it.