It’s Saturday. Y’all probably already know this, but I keep having to tell myself what day it is because I conveniently forget when on break. It’s a nice thing to get to that point, except when you have to be somewhere at a particular time and people want you to be there ON time and with all your crap so they can leave with you. So I’m watching the clock and probably need to get my act in gear soon.
In awesomely good news, I finished the Project Paint thing yesterday…in fact, it’s all I finished, although I left the house twice for things I had to do, and in both cases almost got creamed by another vehicle who was driving idiotically in my lane when previously they had NOT been in my lane, so it kinda makes me think I shouldn’t leave the house like ever. Not happening, of course, but it’s what my core brain is saying. Don’t leave! People drive badly! Just stay home! It’s nicer here anyway!
OK, brain, I hear you. Still not happening.
I started with ironing bits together…this is the easy stuff…
These are part of the strips for top and bottom.
I wanted a relationship between the people and the place they live…the bigger place.
And that one monkey made it underground.
Plus a rocket into the sky.
It’s so fast to do these little pieces…
Then I put each one onto a background…
So I could piece things. Here’s where I admit that I suck at measuring and piecing. One reason why I’m not a traditional quilter. The second one being that I hate all that repetition.
I pieced the top, adding a canvas square in there for my collaborator to paint something on.
He says he’s more abstract normally. So he can go sky abstract here if he wants. Or whatever.
And here’s the bottom strip getting stitched down, with another canvas square in the ground…for ground abstract.
We’ll see what he does with these.
This part made me nervous, the stitchdown on the actual canvas, so I tried it out on a scratch piece first.
Seemed to work. So I went for it…
Slow and steady.
I did all of it…with no problems…there’s the back…
OK then. Now piece it all together…strip on top and bottom…
I was thinking about how I didn’t want to bind it, but I needed to finish the edges and figure out how to hang it. I need it to be able to go back to the original guy so he can finish painting, but I won’t get it back before it goes in the show.
So I put wide-enough strips on that I could use it to finish the edges.
Then I made the backing. The rules are that I can’t use a piece of fabric that’s bigger than 6″ square, because they might be able to use it as a disguise.
I’m not arguing with the prison system, but I feel like once you sew them together, they are still a really bad and ugly disguise. Bleck.
Batting, backing, oh I skipped the whole thing where I quilted around each box and then inside the fabric stuff, but I tried the quilting on the paper and decided it would be a clusterfuck.
So I left the center piece unquilted. I pinned the extra around the back and then put two sleeves on, top and bottom, for hanging.
And then sewed the whole thing down…
And stitched the sleeves down. Done. A day early. I still need to do a write up before I leave this morning, but it’s getting delivered today. Whoo! Off my plate! I’ll see it again in May. We’ll see what he does with my crazy. Me? Outside my box. It’s good to do that sometimes.
Speaking of crazy. This dog.
She’s such a weird sleeper.
I finished that other stuff around 9:30 PM after working on it a goodly chunk of the day. Then I drew this…
Cool. I like the idea. Might run further with this someday.
And then I cut stuff out for a little while.
Still way behind where I wanted to be. Oh well. And I’ve graded nothing for two days. Probably need to do some schoolwork. School starts Monday. Ugh. So not ready. Never ready.
And there’s this. The second installment in the weird mailing I got a few weeks ago about an imaginary relative…now bringing in time travel and artifacts and my duty as the descendant of this relative.
I still don’t know who set this up, but it’s cool…we got all the letter snippets into some order and will wait patiently for the next installment. Don’t ruin it! I know it’s a gift thing and I am appreciating the mystery. Plus looking forward to time travel.
OK. Shower, food, pack stuff up to take with me to meeting, long drive to and from meeting, long meeting, need more time before Monday, but maybe it’ll all be OK anyway. Don’t even ask about my blood sugar. It’s a disaster. I am, as always, a work in progress.
Kathy Nida 