I hope you all had a decent weekend, that you got outside and maybe did something you wouldn’t normally do, as long as it was safe and socially distant and you’re not in a 2-week quarantine right now, waiting out the consequences of the doing. I didn’t really do anything different…just checked things off the to-do list and grocery shopped and ate and did some schoolwork and some art. The schoolwork means my hands hurt today, after a lot of mousing cut-and-paste bullshit that is just annoying and could have been avoided if the district were smarter, but will help my students. Some formatting, some moving stuff around, some formatting challenges because some dumbass coded something stupid because they aren’t an end user. It’s fine. I’m the queen of workarounds at the moment. Or as always. I’ve got one more for this afternoon. Woohoo! Exciting.
We learn every day, if we’re paying attention.
I’m really close to being done with the fabric-choosing portion of this gigantic quilt…I made it to the angels…which I decided should be wearing red and white polka dots. Well, the dots are red and background is white, but I had a pretty good stash of them.
I had this vision while walking Saturday evening of this almost clownlike costume, but referring to angels in white spattered with blood. I know. Dark. But you read it here, so if I forget it when someone asks me about it in the future, you will know.
At the end of Sunday night’s ironing, here’s where I was…
Honestly, I’ve been starting the process pretty late, just because of other things happening. Last night, I did the angels’ fleshy bits…
Pale with a tendency toward green and gray. I have a ton of boxes out right now that are full of fabric, but I picked new ones for this. I didn’t want them to look like the still-living figures in the quilt.
Here was my setup last night, sans Golden Retriever…
But with Kitten. Sometimes Calli lies just at the end of the ironing board, and I have to step over her to get to any of the fabric on that side of the room. I guess it’s good practice for balancing.
These are all the pieces that are left…eyeballs, hair, halos, and some medical accoutrement.
No masks on these. Only thing wearing a mask in the whole quilt is the skeleton.
Angels don’t need masks. They’re supernatural. Or dead. However you visualize that.
Almost there.
Angel faces, ready to be cut out. Hopefully I’ll finish ironing tonight. That would be good.
Dots! Sunday night…below the green spool…
and a closeup…the pink one with the blue flower.
Wait. I took a real closeup in daylight.
Ah, the cat hair in this thing.
I also took closeups of the previous two dots…mutated ladder stitch…
And this…
Then last night was a watermelon slice…under the black and brown ball.
The seeds are large…
Getting close to 2/3s done.
I also stitched down and put in a quilting line on the two small quilt tops I made for the Patreon reward…
I’m going to clean them up and finish the edges, and then send them off to the first three patrons who are at reward level…after supporting me for a year, they deserve it.
I also redrew the drawing from last Wednesday, fixing the head, during an anniversary party online.
I need to scan it and upload it for this month’s Patreon drawing. I had dogs with me the whole time…
And the man for a little while…
He’s watching the hummingbirds buzz around the feeder.
As always, the animals are ever present…Nova likes to destroy paper bags…
Luna’s death glare after being wakened from a cat nap…
Much as I look in the same situation, I’m sure.
And Simba, who will do anything for cuddles…
Including song and dance routines. He will be devastated when the girlchild goes back to Boston.
And this guy, with no name…
Because honestly, he’s probably bird food by now. I see plenty of these but never the cocoons. Too many birds around for that, I think.
OK, well it’s warm here, but at least I’m cheating the energy company out of electric dollars. I have one more class today, and then hopefully I will walk when it cools down. I have no idea what’s for dinner, but it’s probably going to involve some sort of leftovers or frozen thing. I STILL want cookies (yes, I know I could solve this, but it’s better if I don’t). I will sew a dot tonight and hopefully finish ironing, and then spend 20 or so hours cutting pieces out before I get to the next stage. It’s quiet today. My neighbor isn’t mowing or sawing anything and there are no screams of tiny beings in the air. So I’ll turn the fan on and hope I don’t fall asleep and miss class (makes up for my inability to sleep until well after 1 AM)…
Kathy Nida 