OK I’m writing on a Sunday because I didn’t realize it was a Sunday because I’ve finally reached the part of my Winter Break when I have no idea what day it is until someone tells me. And this clears my brain and lets me set goals for the day or even the week, although right now, let’s just focus on one day at a time, because more than that makes me panic about deadlines and stuff like that, and that’s not a good place to be right now. Right now should be all cookies and kittens, people. Maybe some puppies or bunnies too, and a cute little sloth or hedgehog would also be appreciated. Plus clean floors. Still don’t have those.
So with that, I spent a lot of time yesterday ironing…for good, not evil, no worries. No clothing was harmed in the process. And I’m totally OK with having all that time to iron. I wanted it. I did not leave the house. And it was fine.
Before I did that, I cut some background blocks for the moons I bought from Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth…I’m planning some of my typical fusing on each block and then a bunch of hand embroidery.
It’s not something for a show…it’s just something for me. What a concept! Trying something new anyway. That’s always a good thing. This is the project that will occupy me on Sundays, so I needed to get it up and running. Fusing next.
Then I hung the drawing for the new piece…twice, because it does have a top, but sometimes I get confused by where that is.
Goddess forbid I label the damn thing with TOP. It’s big…more horizontal than usual. More horizontal than vertical.
There’s a lot of flesh in this. Five heads means five different flesh runs. This is the first and the smallest of the figures. Kitten is fascinated.
Geez. So there it was after I found all the pieces for that person…I think it’s the only one that has a torso down into the legs. They all have arms though.
Some of the biggest pieces in here are arm parts.
For once, I numbered intelligently. I numbered everything in each figure and then everything that touches it that’s not another figure. So logical. This is the third fabric in the flesh run. Fitting all the pieces together. I am giving a talk at my local quilt guild in January and I need process pictures.
I don’t really like puzzles, but I also don’t like wasting fabric. So I’m very thoughtful about how I iron.
Then I started picking fabrics for Figure 2…bigger pieces, but still only a run of 5 fabrics for the main fleshy bits. I have to worry a bit about having enough of each fabric to actually cut out the pieces…the second one was a bit tight.
Or maybe it was the first one. Can’t remember. It’s OK. I want to use up fabric and have them be in quilts. I don’t want them to languish away in drawers, lonely and bereft of admiration.
I did take a few hours of a break and finished grading that big assignment (yay! Yes, there are 6 more, but they’re all smaller, hallelujah) and then drew this crazy thing while watching a movie with the sick man.
I can’t explain it. I just didn’t know what to do with the legs. They were too far apart to put a body on them, and besides, the paper wasn’t long enough for that, and it was really about being underground anyway, and someone was making me watch the news at some point, and that’s never a good thing.
When the sick guy went to bed (hope he’s better soon…he’s miserable), I went back and ironed down the last of the fleshy bits on Figure 2. Here’s everything ironed down so far.
I still have to do all the non-flesh bits of Figure 2, like the heart, lungs, and eyeballs. I ironed for almost 5 hours yesterday. Perfect! Hoping for a repeat today, but…well…we’ll see. More stuff going on today. I’m not sure where I am in the pieces…I pulled from the 200s and the 300s, but didn’t iron all of them down, so I probably have at least 300 pieces ironed. I’m guessing it will take about 20 hours to iron all of this…so it’ll be sometime this week. I think. I do have other stuff to do, lots of family stuff, which is good, but eats into my artmaking time. That sounds cranky, but I am in serious hermit mode right now and didn’t leave the house yesterday. I won’t be able to pull that off today. I will have to fight holiday grocery store crowds and be nice about it. Ugh. And I should grade something and I will definitely draw again. Hopefully something less psychotic, but honestly, it doesn’t matter, because I’m just drawing to draw…and I finished that sketchbook last night (from 2014), and found another one that I started in 2014 (why? Why two in the same year? I cannot say.), so now I’ll try to fill that one.
But for now, I’m waiting on the children, so I can go to the grocery store and get that over with. Woo! Love it! Yeah! Then ironing. Please.
*iamdynamite, Hi Lo
Kathy Nida 