Category: quilt art

Oldest What?

OK, the 6th day of this blog challenge is one of those topics that I feel like is more about project people than art people (and there’s some serious overlap there, y’all…art people sometimes just make projects, like me and the baby quilts, and project people sometimes make their own art)…Oldest UFO. I seriously don’t care if I have UFOs. Some of them will get done eventually, some of them will end up in another piece, and some were just so I could figure out how to do something (or how NOT to do something), and its existence in my current stash is really just because I hate to throw things out.

I know that somewhere in this house is an old cross stitch or embroidery from when I was a kid that I haven’t (and probably never will) finished. I’m OK with that. Also, some early quilts from when I was learning how to do things…that I will never finish…like this one.

There was some painting and some fusing and there must be some piecing that I don’t remember (I think there are directions somewhere, yo Susan, I think this was one of yours?)…

That is SOME cloud there. I don’t know that I will ever finish this, and I’m totally OK with that. I took a lot of classes when I started learning how to quilt and I have a bunch of unfinished stuff from it. This was when I learned how to do hand applique.

I did a lot of it for a few years. I think every single one of those quilts is unfinished. Sewing things together is not my forte, unless it’s one of my art quilts. There are only two unfinished art quilts, no three; the first two probably don’t need to be finished. They were experiments in a style that didn’t really work. The other one is hand applique and will eventually be finished. It takes so long to make an art quilt in my style by hand.

I also did a lot of crazy quilting for a while…

These are still in process. I think there are 20 of them…and they are all just hanging around, waiting to be stitched on. And maybe they will be finished in the future…

But like I said, the art quilts get done. I have a drive to finish them that beats all the projects I do as hobbies. I guess every drawing I make could be considered a UFO, since less than half of them become quilts. Some years I draw a lot and some a little (this is a little year…which sucks, but I can’t get my head out from under the day job and carve out more time and energy).

So the oldest UFO? Those are all old. Some older than others. I don’t really care about that. They will either get finished or not. I even have other people’s UFOs…unfinished quilts and blocks. UFOs come to me to live an unjudged life. I will love them, unfinished or not.

No art has happened in two days. I’ve been really tired and working a lot. I am making walking and exercising a priority, best I can, so Saturday afternoon was a long walk/hike thing outside. This is the Walker Preserve Trail in Santee…

It’s pretty flat…

Not very strenuous. Might have been all I could deal with. There was a line of painted rocks at one end of it.

A rock snake, as it were…

Interesting idea…I do like these signs…

I think lots of people need to see that sign.

Maybe not that one.

We did a little over 3 1/2 miles. Probably could have done more, but the man’s back started acting up. My next walk is hopefully Tuesday. Too many meetings this week. Too many things I have to do. I’m fairly sure I’ve forgotten some of them. I’m holding space in my head, a bubble, where I can feel OK with the world. I can’t stay in there for long, but it helps. Many things are hard right now. More walking, more art. Speaking of which, getting off this machine and onto the ironing board (not ME on the ironing board…the fabric y’all).

First Quilt…I Think…

OK, y’all, I have made it five whole days posting every day. I know I used to post 6 days a week before COVID hit (you’d think I’d have more time with being at home all the time, but no, I don’t. Don’t ask me why, well, except for that pesky day job that continues into the early morning hours and often wakes my tired ass up at 2 AM to poke at my to-do list and stress me out).

Today’s challenge topic is my first project. Well, I started sewing at age 8 (or was it 7) and no way in hell does that project still exist anywhere, because I am old and I occasionally get rid of stuff I don’t want any more. So then I thought about my quilt start…which was at age 23…and I THINK this is the first project I did? I had walked into this quilt/country stuff store and saw they offered classes (this is back in the day before websites, so I literally would have had to WALK into the place to even know this existed), and I signed up for a quilt class with this crazy woman named Susan, who is to blame for my deep dive into a fabric stash that has taken over the world. Now I don’t actually remember which was the first project I did with her, because I did MANY, but it was early on, and I think it was a pieced quilt…before I knew I don’t like to piece things because that involves straight lines and making a lot of the same block and ugh boring. (No offense to those of you who enjoy it. I’m just not one of you.)

That said, I think this was my first official quilt.

OK, wait. It’s a quilt top. I never quilted it. It was big and that was a million years ago (OK, thirty or so), and I didn’t have quilting skills then. Even now, I’m not sure it would fit under my machine.

Yeah, even then, I was into weird color combos and strange patterns.

I mean, the whole idea was that you learned a 9-patch and whatever the other two blocks are called and you made a quilt. I figured that shit out.

I’ve pieced a few more quilts over the years, mostly baby quilts all using the same easy peasy pattern that makes like four different blocks, using really bright colors. I pieced another quilt, also supposed to be for my bed, that has the same issue of not being quilted, because I don’t have a machine big enough to quilt it. It has a lot of alien fabric. It might even be the same pattern I used for the baby quilts. I don’t piece.

From there, I pieced I think one landscape quilt, and then went full on into hand applique, which eventually led me to what I do now. CAN I piece? Sure. Do I want to? Not really. I did one earlier this year with my quilt guild as part of the pandemic shutdown, and it is also still a top, albeit a much smaller top. Not quilted.

Meanwhile, my day job continued last night until 10 PM or so…I did game during that, but honestly was off my game, mostly trying to figure out how to teach tsunami alert warning systems and Google Drawing for 6th graders. Exhausting stuff. But I managed an hour of ironing for the newest quilt, which felt really nice (it’s like I forget that every time…get your ass off the couch and go iron and you will feel SO MUCH BETTER).

Some vining ivy there…

Still lots of green. How many pieces have I ironed? I think I mostly finished the 400s and the 500s, just a butterfly here and a bug there. And then moving up into the sky. Actually, I think I have a lot of the 500s to do. Never mind. I think it’s all bugs though. Not even halfway. Getting there.

Have you see the thing on the NY Times where you can predict your place in the vaccine line? Check it out. I don’t know how I feel about it.

At first, I was like, oh man, only 210,000 before me? That’s not bad. Although I have to admit to being terrified of vaccines, having had some really bad reactions to them. I can’t even have the tetanus vaccine any more. It’s been 20 years (?) since I had the last one. I’m still good, still protected. So there’s me.

But this made me pause. I want those 868K other elderly to go before me. And the homeless. And the other essential workers. And the teachers who are actually teaching in a school with kids, I want them to go first, and I want the prisoners to go before me too, because they can’t control their environment and COVID is raging through the prison system.

I may hate teaching online, really, I do, I so miss being in the classroom and at school and it is so fucking isolating and trying to talk to parents and help kids is so fucking hard, but I don’t NEED the vaccine yet…maybe by next summer, when I want to go back to school in August (are we going back in August? Who the fuck knows). Then you can give me the vaccine. Until then, I’m like the crazy bitch in the grocery line letting everyone go before me. You go, you go, no you go.

OK, lots to do this weekend, hopefully some of it art (the left eyelid is twitching like a bitch, so I need to do something relaxing).

The Tool Belt Box Thing

Tools. First thinking of the saws and screwdrivers and that big thing that takes the shower head off. Plus those cool leather belts or the one pocket-thing that goes on the 5-gallon bucket. I have no need for a tool belt, but they just look fun and cool and then I could walk around the house with all the screwdrivers and wouldn’t that be…um…well clanky and probably heavy and unnecessary for the shit I do here. Then how when you are a teacher, they are always talking about putting things in your Tool Box (of tricks and skillz and all that shit you have that makes you a better juggler of teacher things).

But NO! As a quilter/sewist/art quilter/fiber artist/geez, what am I anyway, these monthly posts are always asking what my favorite tools are, and hell, they haven’t changed much over the years. For a while, my mom would always be buying me the newest thing, to see if it would help me sew this way or that way or faster or more efficiently or just better serve me…and some stuck. I still use Machingers gloves…I buy a pair a year. I even wash them, because I use them enough that they get dirty. When the sticky stuff wears off, I buy a new pair, because they’re comfortable, they do the job, and they’re not hot. Sure, there’s 17 new types of fancy machine-quilting hand covers since Machingers came out, but they work, so WHY on Earth would I need to get something different? I don’t.

I’m not the one the quilt shops and designers market to. I’m the one who will find what works and buy it over and over and over. Until I can’t. And then I’ll find a replacement.

So my favorite tools? Number 1 (and 2)? A nice big sketchbook (prefer 14×17″) and a black pen, Sharpie, or my new favorite for full-size pattern drawing, the Lumocolor by Staedler. Probably there are nicer pens, but they might be harder to get or more expensive, and until these don’t work for me, I’m good. I did once buy a bunch of different types of fine black pens, and tried all of them, and kept using the Sharpie. Ultra Fine. The pen, y’all, not me.

Scissors…again, I have some generics, some Fiskars, and some other fancy ones my mom got me. I use them all. I think there are probably 50 pairs of scissors in this house, maybe more. I use these spring-action ones for cutting fabrics. I’m lazy and never get them sharpened, because it’s always days and times I don’t even know about when you can drop them off. I wish I could just bag them up and leave them on the porch, and the traveling scissor sharpener fairy would come by and sharpen them all and leave me their Venmo handle, and that would be the end of it. I’d pay them and put that little scissor emoji in there and be so happy. So yeah, they all are dull. Because no fairy.

Wonder Under…is what I use to fuse my quilts together. I’ve been through many iterations of the Wonder Under formula, and it’s pretty stable at the moment. Easy to get, relatively cheap, has the paper I need for my process, works for what I need. Totes happy about that.

I think that cutting matt is the first one I ever bought, which would make it probably 25 or 30 years old. Does that seem possible? I bought a new one, but I still pull out the old one, because I don’t want to ruin the new one. That’s my grandmother, the one who reused her tinfoil and saved all the rubber bands (um. I still do the rubber band thing.). Sure, there’s other tools I use: an iron and ironing board (so fancy), plastic shoe bins for sorting stuff, a giant light table, a mechanical pencil, tape, some plastic rulers for trimming stuff and cutting binding, some really big Teflon sheets for ironing. That’s really it. I came out of the quilting world a bog standard quilter, except for what I put on the front of them, eh?

OK. More of this 31 days of blogging…I see a few topics that will challenge me because um, yeah, no. But it is making me write. So there.

School? My art students finished their stuffed animals today. Mine will never get finished. The advanced class is still doing self portraits, working on the creative part. I decided I didn’t want to draw hair. So I’m not. And both classes are doing monster zendoodles…which is more my roll. Science is deep into tsunamis for now.

I’m so exhausted. School. Wildfire. Family stuff. Exhausted.

Gaming tonight. It wasn’t really with cats. Long story. It’s Star Trek gaming. That still doesn’t explain it.

It’s late. I want to iron fabric to Wonder Under a little bit tonight though, because it’s been nothing for two nights (thank you, job) and it starts to drive me more than a little bonkers to not make art. Too right.

Mah Machina

OK, old music wandering through my brain. Today’s 31-days-of-rambling about my sewist existence topic is my machine. You know, the beast of burden that helps me make all the quilts. I started sewing on a 1962 Singer sewing machine, y’all. When I was 8 (I was not 8 in 1962, just to clarify). It’s still in the garage. From there, a Viking from the 70s, then a Viking from the 80s? Maybe 90s? I drove at least one of those into the ground. My repair guy sourced another Viking for parts. Until this last one (um, still a Viking), all my machines were hand-me-downs from my mom, which was fine, because they were good solid beasts and they were free. The last one…well, that was my Christmas present because I’d…um…well…I think I ran that one into the ground as well and mom didn’t have a hand-me-down available for me.

My repair guy says most people use their sewing machines like little old ladies use their vintage Buicks…only a few miles a week, and at a slow pace. I use mine like a Corvette, pedal to the medal, outracing the law. Across the country and back. In a race. Off road. In the rainy season.

This is a Viking Sapphire 855. She works.

She’s used. A nice little old lady driver used her before me. She goes in for service at least once a year. Because I’m hard on machines. I quilt at about 400 miles/hour.

Weird things about my machine. OK, they’re actually weird things about me that involve my machine. There is always a roll of tape on the top right.

I used it to get the pet hair off the fabric as I’m quilting or stitching stuff down. Always. I have 5 furry beasts in the house. They prolifically make and discard their hair. Quite annoyingly.

Arcane symbols that help me quilt.

This was on the last machine, and I moved it to this one. Yes, it makes sense to me. You’d think I could remember settings on the machine, but I can’t. So there.

Ah, so nice. I never use any of those.

Not ever. Nope. Uh uh.

Ironically, the only other pictures I have for this post are of something that has absolutely zero machine stitching on it.

All by hand. Hopefully there will be more.

I was hoping to iron stuff last night, but a wildfire popped up a couple miles from here and had us debating evacuation gathering (when you gather all your stuff in piles in case you have to evacuate in the middle of the night). I’m paranoid as hell since the fires down here that jumped 8-lane freeways. Plus the winds were crazy last night. In good news, the fire is contained and I think only one structure was completely destroyed…no humans lost, hopefully no animals as well. Scary though. The wind is one level of scary, because I have some massive trees on my property, and the fire is another level of scary. Mostly I think I got about 3 hours of sleep last night, and the boychild might have gotten less, because he was monitoring CalFire for us. And yes, I taught all day, ladidah. Like you do.

Tonight, I had a stitching meeting, where I worked on something I’m not allowed to show until they publish the book (not mine), and then I worked on school stuff, because although my new curriculum is “digital”, what that really means is “we have papers you can make into packets and sometimes there will be stuff online”. I am now way more of an expert on how to make shit drag and drop and draw and color code without a pen or pencil. Ugh. Hate this.

Other shit is still shit but might be hopeful shit but we don’t know shit. So explain that to my brain. I’m gonna have a nightcap and then bury my head in a pillow and hope it helps tomorrow.

Sewing Space

OK, those words together are something that I never call this room…or for that matter, my house, because I can honestly tell you that there are maybe three rooms in this house that don’t have sewing or art supplies in them, and only two of those are bathrooms.

This is my studio. Except when it’s my office. Because I’ve always had other jobs plus that school day job, and office-y type stuff needed to happen somewhere, so there’s a computer and a printer and a bunch of files (I tossed a lot of them) PLUS all the stuff I use to make art quilts. No, that’s a lie. I have stuff to make art quilts in a LOT of other rooms in the house. This might be the most concentrated area of stuff for making art quilts. Maybe. Not sure. Under the bed runs a close second.

So yeah, computer, printer, usually 2 chairs, but one went to my online teaching of middle-school kids space out in the living room, so only one chair, plus two desks and a table and three bookshelves and twenty billion fabrics. Maybe. And usually a cat. Tonight? A dog. It’s an 8×10′ room that has a sliding glass door that is rarely opened (because there’s a desk in front of it) and a view of the slope (best place to see a hawk eviscerating a mouse on the tree branch out there). The ironing board moves around to wherever it needs to be used.

I would love a larger studio. It’s not happening. Have I told you about the light table that lives in the living room? It’s 3×4′ and is currently also being used to stage tsunami demonstrations for middle-school science and a stuffed-animal drawing for middle-school art. Yeah.

I’ve been an artist forever and a fiber artist for almost that long. I’ve always worked in multiple rooms while living with cats, dogs, and kids, and that hasn’t changed. The entryway floor is great for pinbasting quilts (you can square a quilt up using the grout between the tiles), and the laundry room stores a bunch of dyeing supplies. Same with the kids’ bathroom.

So “Sewing Space” means the house, I guess. Oh shit. The garage. Um. I probably have sewing stuff in there too.

In other blog news, this quilt is in progress…

That was dirt and volcano day. Followed by grassy hill day.

Which came with wine in a sippy cup.

I don’t know how much is done at this point. I have some 300s and 400s that still need ironing, and almost all of the 500s, so maybe close to halfway? But probably not. Perhaps tonight.

This is part of a drawing for my Patreon.

It started with a cough.

I walked last night…

People have started decorating for the next holiday.

I’m still chasing sunset when I walk…too early.

So that’s MY Christmas tree…it lives on the deck during the year.

I think it grew about 2 feet this last year, maybe more.

I finished stitching this down during a district meeting that didn’t solve anything.

It needs more, but everything is at least basically attached.

Sigh. The words still suck. But at least I have topics now. Just follow the topics.

Who Am I?

I signed up for this blog-for-31-days-of-December thing because why I must be crazy. I used to blog 3 days a week, then 6 days a week, now I’m back to 4. The plus is that it comes with a list of topics for each day, because talking about what’s in my head really isn’t the place I wanna be right now. So here you are:

Write an Introduction, they say, like who are you and what do you do? Hmmm. I learned how to sew when I was 8, making my first top out of curtain fabric and some lace. I think it was four rectangles. It was also yellow, which is a color I have never worn since. Ever. I sewed my own clothes through high school and a little in college, until I figured out I’d rather sew other things. I learned how to make quilts at the age of 23, starting with (and quickly rejecting) piecing, then moving on to hand applique, which I enjoyed, but takes way too long. I took a bunch of classes from art quilters, since I thought that was where I belonged…wanting to make pictures in fabric. Joan Colvin and Laura Wasilowski pointed me in the direction I eventually wandered off toward…using fusible web and cutting out the actual shapes I wanted, then attaching them to a background.

(My most recent quilt, COVID Daughters)

From there, I developed my own crazy-ass way of making art quilts…I start with a pen-and-ink drawing, turn that into a pattern, number all the pieces, trace them onto Wonder Under, cut them out, iron them to fabric, cut those out, then iron the whole mess back together using the pattern I drew. Then stitch it down, quilt it, and bind it, like it’s a regular quilt. I’ve been making quilts for 30 years now (holy moly)…and I haven’t run out of ideas yet. I guess that’s a good thing.

Stay tuned for more info about the weird way to art quilt…some of the topics are a stretch for me, because I don’t do it that way. But I figure it’s good for you to see that too.

Three Pies…

Hope y’all have a good food day, whatever it looks like. Ours has three pies. I’m sure there are other things, certainly because I have some things I need to cook later today that AREN’T pie, but right now, all the kitchen is pie. Which is why I’m in here, because the other choice is at the work computer, grading those essays. I got through 29 of them yesterday before my brain completely shut down. There are 30 to go. I’ll get there. I promise. I have a schedule. I’m trying to stay on top of it.

The family is dealing with some major health stuff right now; it’s stressful for all and making it hard to concentrate on anything except pie construction and maybe reading a book (I say that, but I didn’t read much yesterday except kids trying to explain plate motion…remind me never to use this CER topic again…it sucked the first time around, and it still sucks the second time around.). But we will attempt to perform a Thanksgiving Day ritual because that is what we do on Thanksgiving. Peace to all of you and pie. There’s plenty of pie.

Standing and grading, so I can walk away in between every 4 or 5 essays.

In between trying to organize fabric, water plants, and grade shit, I have been steadily working on the current quilt. It’s the place I go at the end of the day. It’s mostly predictable, at least at this stage, and that’s a good place to be at the moment.

Apparently it’s a good place for Kitten to be as well.

She enjoys mommy time on the couch. She will also enjoy mommy time in the studio when I start ironing.

I finished watching the second season of The Bridge, and am now on the second season of Top of the Lake. Apparently murder mysteries and troubled cops are my thing right now.

Geez, my cat. She looks happy though. Yeah, no Hallmark happy Thanksgiving family romances for me. It’s all about dead bodies and kidnapping and sex trafficking. I can’t explain it. I stayed up too late (but it’s not a school night, so there) finishing the trimming…

That’s almost 8 hours of trimming there. It’ll take an hour or so to sort them, and another hour or so to clean my studio, because it’s a disaster. I went to Target yesterday and bought organizers for some of the fabric that’s accumulated, but am debating packing up the crazy quilt stuff more than it is? I don’t know. I still use it; I don’t want to get rid of it. I really just need a remodel of this space so it’s more useful. Not happening any time soon. It’s absolute chaos at the moment though. I should do something about that.

I sat on the couch for about 45 minutes last night and let this kitty knead my belly and the air and purr and it was OK to just do that.

Take the comfort and the kitty love wherever you can.

OK. I will check on the cooking/kitchen status and then go grade some shit. And eventually we’ll do the food thing. And hopefully things will get better on the other fronts. I want to draw but don’t know when or how that will happen. It is a beautiful day out: the chill of a Southern California autumn day with the smell of pie. Did I mention pie? Crows zooming around and squawking. A good book on the Kindle app. A reason to wear sweats and soft socks. Maybe it’s time for cider (but if I open it, I can’t fit the bottle in the fridge. Nix that for now). Peace to all.

Put That on the Calendar…

Whoa Nellie. Or is it Nelly? I hate how vacation weeks go so fast. Tuesday is almost over. I’m close to the halfway point, where I officially start to panic that I have nothing done. I may already be panicking. I may have never stopped panicking. Hard to say. I know I did no schoolwork until Sunday night. I know! Almost 48 hours without schoolwork! It was amazing. Not really. There’s been other stressful things going on that sucked up my brain and spat it out. But Sunday night, I realized I needed to get my act in gear in order to reach my goal of having everything that is possible to be done…DONE…by the time we start school again on the 30th. So I started grading. I did two assignments Sunday night, then three yesterday. I’m a third of the way through number 6 today so far, and when I’m done writing this, I’ll go finish that one. It’s one of the hard, thinky ones. I have one more of those to do for three classes, and then two hard, thinky, ARTY ones (this does not make it easier, let me tell you, I hate grading art assignments, IDK whether I’m being mean or too easy or WTF is going on) after that. Then some minor stuff and 17 thousand late assignments handed in by kids because I emailed their parents and told them they’d done NOTHING for weeks (my own fault. I should have kept my mouth shut and let them live with it, but no, I was a responsible teacher and tattled on them). Those will hurt. But OK. I’ll do it. Then planning is almost done for science for next week and (shhh, don’t tell anyone) not even started for art. Fuck me. I need an assist on that one. IT’S OK. I’LL FIGURE IT OUT.

So there we are. I’m working. My day job. That I currently am on vacation from. (From which that I am currently on vacation. Or something.) I have no choice. This is how we roll, 2020 school year, with a Fuck You here and a Fuck That there.

I have been dealing with Wonder Under. Sunday night, I finished tracing Wonder Under…

So technically, I think that’s 5 1/2 yards of Wonder Under. From what I can see. It took almost 17 hours to trace all that.

I was kinda slow. Oh well. Then I started cutting it out on Sunday night as well…

Kitten does not help. She just gets irritated that the boxes are in her way. Calli also does not help.

She wanted to be on the couch. Sometimes I let her, but Kitten was already there, so it just wasn’t going to go well. Monday night, she was on the other side.

I’ve only cut out a yard and a half, I think.

It doesn’t look like much.

More tonight. And the next night. And probably a few more nights. I need to clean the office/studio too, so when I’m ready to iron, I can. Because if I wait and try to do that once school is back in session, it won’t happen as quickly as I need it to.

The man and I are doing the Coast to Crest Challenge for 2020…we were going to do one of the longer hikes today, but we both needed to be in cell-phone range, so we chose the Lake Hodges section instead.

Neither of us had ever been here.

In general, this piece of the trail is pretty easy.

It would be really hot in summer though. There’s the dam…

And there were a lot of mountain bikers, which is annoying.

We only hiked about 4.5 miles…not bad for a Tuesday morning. Here’s the official photo so we can get the patch at the end of all this.

The man tested out his new hiking shirt. We both need better hiking hats. There was a cool telescope thing at the end. (Note, point it at the big yellow letters in the surrounding landscape.)

Not the most exciting hike in the world, but it was nice to be by water and see all the birds.

Three more to go. We will probably try to do another one on Friday? Maybe? Not sure.

Lots of work to do. School. Art: gonna finish trimming Wonder Under. Got some Thanksgiving cooking to do. Some yardwork. Housework. Cleaning. Fun stuff. I would like to do some drawing? I’ve got a few in my head. Put that on the calendar.