Later…

I wish I were more organized some days. I wish everything was filed in the right place and the right order, that everything I needed was easy to find and right at my fingertips. But that would be more time taken away from the stuff that keeps me sane, like artmaking and exercise and spending time with people. There just isn’t enough time to be that organized. So that whole roof leak thing…need to find a piece of paper, maybe two, from X number of years ago, with X less than 10, but more than 5. I suspect my parents have a file somewhere labeled “roof”. Actually they probably have a “roof” file for all the houses they own and maintain. I however am not that organized. I have a file labeled “house” which is pretty efficient in itself, but the roof stuff isn’t in there. Because I never got around to filing it. Because I don’t have time. So it’s in the pile labeled “to be filed”…and that’s a pretty ugly pile.

So I’m going hiking this morning with the kids instead…last hike before they leave. You could argue my priorities are weird, but there really aren’t enough hours in the day for everything, and I obviously choose some stuff your average chick doesn’t. I spend a lot of time making art. Yesterday was 4 hours on a binding, although almost 2 of them were while I was hanging out with friends. That’s pretty rare. Most of my quiltmaking activities are solitary, not transportable. Sometimes there are people in the house when I work, but only when the kids are around really. That does actually make it easier…the human presence and sounds and occasional interactions. Because sewing the binding on is kinda boring and repetitive and doesn’t require much brain power, it’s really easier with people around.

That said, I finished. Bathtub 5 (which needs a real name) was done as of last night. 68 hours total. Started a little over 2 months ago, besides the original drawing, which was done April 20, 2015. I added some stuff to the drawing once it was enlarged in early November.

I had emailed the photographer yesterday about photographing it tomorrow…thus forcing myself to finish. Because it wasn’t as high a priority, but it will be easier to get it to him this weekend than next, and it has to get done soon enough.

I also started going through the existing quilt stash figuring out what can go to the Grossmont show. Some of the newer stuff is already spoken for. Bathtub 2 (aka In Deep) is going to Ohio for the Artist as Quiltmaker show there…

So I can’t hang her. I can’t hang anything that might get into a show before mid-March…and I have three entries planned for the next two months. So that takes up some of them.

So I started by going through the pile on my dresser, which needs to be put away. Then I pulled the three large rolls of quilts hiding in my closet and the girlchild’s closet. I went through each roll and pulled anything I thought might work. And piled them on the lightbox.

Some already have dowels or slats, which is good, because that’s my next job. The one I was supposed to do like Tuesday.

We met, the two artists and the curator, back in November? Or something? And she gave us this gallery map and we talked about where quilts would go and where sculpture would go…

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And I’ve been in the space and I know how big it is, but that still doesn’t help figure out how many quilts to take. So you can talk about linear space, and your can look at it visually (I’m visual by the way) and also being a bit anal, I like to graph it out…

And list everything and then I get overwhelmed, because it is an overwhelming thing, and I’m not sure how much space to put between them. I suspect it’s more than I think. I don’t want to take too few pieces, but I also don’t want to take way too many. So yeah.

Kitten…

She got it right. Anyway. So that’s where I’m at. Kids just showed up and we’re going hiking, even though Dad wants me to find the roof paperwork like right now and all those quilts need ironing and stuff and I probably need to do school stuff and grade and holy crap, I need to work on the new quilt too.

Later.

Lots of Pieces…

Rain does one good thing for us, besides soak the ground and fill the reservoirs (I guess those are pretty good things)…it makes us stay indoors. Now honestly, on breaks, I’m kind of a hermit anyway. At some point, I don’t want to leave the house at all, because there is art to be made. And lots of it! So I do that. And I like it. Even if the weather is lovely out…which it’s not.

I have a leak in the roof…it’s been dripping very slowly through a light fixture (ever so safe, water and electricity). I suspect half of Southern California has a leak in their roof at the moment, honestly. Luckily it’s over a tile floor in a relatively unoccupied section of the house, so I’m politely ignoring it and hoping I can deal with it later…because accessing that section of the attic means pulling my studio apart. Not thinking about that. Might think about it tomorrow.

Otherwise, we’ve had 2.6″ of rain where I live…I’m such a weather geek that I have a website linked to a local weather-info-gathering station about a mile away.

And yes, in Seattle (which was sunny yesterday), this is nothing. But our annual rainfall has been as low as 3.3 inches before…our annual is somewhere around 9″/year. So getting almost that in 2 days? Roads underwater, rivers running through sidewalks, standing water everywhere. Plus no one knows how to drive in it, so when girlchild’s friend asked her to come over yesterday in the worst of it? I said nope. No. Not driving anywhere right now. Sure enough, people had to be pulled out of cars etc.

A damn good excuse to stay home and sew, if you ask me…although I did do a lot of grading too. But that’s just a survival thing. I’ll do it again today. I finished grading another assignment…and one class worth of the big unit that they turned in…just two more classes of those. I’ll do one today and one tomorrow. When I finish that one, I only have 3 assignments left to grade, and one is posters that three kids worked on, so do the math…I only have about 50 of those to grade instead of 155. Not that everyone turns in their assignments anyway. I should probably knuckle down and finish the torturous one that I did one class’ worth and then quit. Sigh.

Anyway, besides grading, I finished the drawing for the next quilt. Now this is for a deadline that I may very well not make. But I’m going to try. So it has to be within a certain size…easy enough for me to do. It needs to be a smaller quilt so I can get it done in time, right? I start the drawing…y’all have seen the headless woman with way too many arms…and then I added more.

She has 10 arms total and 3 heads (way more than anyone really needs). Each hand has an object associated with it as well.

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The drawing is about 30″ wide by 42″ high, so a finished size of maybe 40×50″? Same as the last one basically.

And I know I have about 7 weeks to finish it. With a major installation and school starting back up and grades due. But there are three 3-day weekends in there! It might not matter. I did finish one quilt in just under 6 weeks during school (well, with Thanksgiving and Winter breaks, so not really just school)…but I think it had a lot fewer pieces. Because I numbered it last night. And I was a very bad girl. I drew a LOT of pieces. As I was doing it, I was thinking to myself…that’s a LOT of pieces, Kathryn. But I did it anyway. Because it asked for them.

OK, the one I did in 6 weeks was 768 pieces…this one is 980. Big-eyed stare. OK. I own that. And I will figure it out. Either it will get done on time or it won’t.

I am one step closer to that happening though. Tracing Wonder Under tonight? Maybe.

Most of the afternoon, I spent piecing blocks for a baby quilt…

I was given the colors…cheated a bit with the one on top. Oh well!

I don’t make baby quilts often, and I always use the same pattern.

It took about 2 1/2 hours to make 20 blocks, and that’s because I was being careful, not fast.

I don’t piece particularly accurately unless I pay really close attention. Now I can lay them out…although I might wait until my parents’ dog is gone again. It’s hard enough to keep the cats off it. It usually takes about 5-6 hours for me to do one of these. Not hard. And it’s for a good person. Hopefully the baby won’t be too early, because I think she’s due in less than three weeks. It’s OK! I got this.

The post-it with tasks on it did not get much crossed off yesterday, mostly because what’s on there is huge things like “fix bookshelf” and “prep Grossmont show.” Which I really should start to do today. Like now. Except I need to grade too. AARGH. Too much. I got a lot done yesterday…and it still feels overwhelming today. Gotta work on that…the FEELING. Because the lots-of-stuff-to-do? That never goes away.

More Do

There’s a day during vacation (and this really isn’t a vacation, people…it’s way too stressful) when you realize you have to go back to work at some point and you have 700 things that still aren’t done. Yesterday was that day. Actually, it kind of feels like Every Single Day of Winter Break has been like that, where I’ve looked at the calendar and tried to parcel stuff out amongst the days and completely failed. I actually went old school yesterday and wrote the to-do list on a post-it. And then crossed stuff off as I finished it. But every time I walked past it, I wrote more stuff on it, and that’s just not helpful. I crossed off 4 things yesterday. I worked on three others, but didn’t finish them, so I can’t cross them off. And I did three or four other things that weren’t on there, but I should retroactively put them on there so I can cross them off, right? Sigh. Sigh!

Meanwhile, all of San Diego is underwater. I did manage to do my driving errands yesterday in non-rain hours (it happened)…well, except for groceries, which were flood-level hours, and that was just in the parking lot. Today is supposed to be worse (I should probably check on the garage…it gets wet in rain). I did sweep leaves out of a drain that wasn’t…well…draining…and in fact, it needs to be done again (I can see that one from this chair). Haven’t seen any roof leaks, so that’s good…it’s a relatively new roof. But it gets gloomy and cold, and I don’t want to run the heating and turn all the lights on unless I have to…too much money. So I rummaged through the firewood and started a fire around 3 PM that (due to the monster-sized pieces of wood from trees that have fallen on my property) kept going until well after midnight. And warmed up that part of the house and looked nice as well.

Artwise, I didn’t finish the binding. Dammit, I need to email the photographer (write it on the list). There are 15 things on the list for today. I need kid assistance on some of them. Artwise, I cut and taped the headless drawing and then started working on it…this was the after-3PM activity, with dinnermaking and some grading tossed in for variety.

So I knew I wanted to add some width, although not a lot, to this drawing, and it definitely needed a head, so some height. Maybe more than one head. She’s already got 6 arms. Again Kali is where I started…I always think of moms as Kali, many-limbed destructive forces, but still earth-mother-like. Earth Mother doesn’t always have to be nice. Nature isn’t always nice. And that’s kind of where I stopped drawing Kali and started drawing something more in the mom range. We do many things, multitask (have post-its with too many things on them), and yet we’re juggling all those things in a not-so-healthy way sometimes. I read somewhere this morning about the purpose of marriage (or partnership) not being all the religious, societal stuff, but just to have a partner to help with all the crap in life. You aren’t the ONLY one emptying the dishwasher and cooking the food. You have help.

Oh My Lord. And there it is. Because I think that’s all I’ve ever wanted. I’ve spent years without it honestly, even with grown-up kids (they’re gone a lot), so many tasks have to be managed or directed or whatever. And I’m so tired of that. Just walk in the house and do what needs to be done. Someone walk in and fix the stuff I don’t have time to do…take a look at that post-it and cross something off of it (because you did it…not because you’re being a smartass).

Anyway. So I added paper to the sides and the top.

Then I started adding arms and a head…I did start with pencil at one point…just to make sure I didn’t screw it up too badly at this stage, although I’ve cut off the additional drawing before and started over, so that’s always an option.

And I kept going. There’s a lot of time spent staring into space or at the blank parts of the drawing, figuring out what fits there. I remember one college painting professor getting mad at me because I don’t draw all those iterations…I do them in my head. He wanted 30 or 40 sketches for each painting. I did one or two. And then argued with him about the waste of time to put them all on paper. They were in my head. He said I wouldn’t be able to do that forever. Well. OK. Maybe so. But I’m still doing it now.

So that tree took a while to appear. I am timing this part of the drawing process…

I don’t usually keep track of the time I take doing drawings in the sketchbook, but I do on the enlarged drawings because it’s usually the harder part, and I like to know how long it takes. HOURS. It takes hours.

And at some point, my brain craps out and stops looking. Hence the liquid paper on the left arm and thumb. Walked away after that.

Granted, it was late. I’d been drawing (well, or thinking about drawing) for an hour and 20 minutes. At some point, it’s diminishing returns. I’ll finish today. And number it. And then figure out a schedule. Can’t really do that without a piece count. This one will be tight. I might not make the deadline. But the quilt will still be a good thing. So I’ll do it anyway. And I already have one in line behind it. Aack!

Because of the cold rainy day and the fire in the fireplace, I had cats…

Any time I sat on the couch, there they were. In fact, Kitten is sitting on the quilt that needs its binding done. You can tell I grade here too, right? Notebook, 17 colors of pens (I might as well enjoy the grading with pen color choices, right?), piles of papers. Ugh. Need to do more of that this morning. In fact, it’s the next thing on my list unfortunately. Which is why I’m still writing. Procrastination.

View of the driveway during some of the worst of it.

It’s a giant pool of water. Yes, I know it rains where you are…but like I said yesterday, when we get our average annual rainfall in one week, we all freak out. Strangely, it’s sunny right now. It wasn’t 10 minutes ago…it was raining. But there’s another inch and a half coming in the next 24 hours…after flash-flood warnings yesterday. So if I had errands that needed driving, now would be the time…except I’m missing the kids, and they’re the ones I need to errand with today. Ugh.

OK, grade, draw, cut, organize, prep. Those are the things I need to do today. Less worry. More do.

Dark Blue on Dark Blue in the Dark…

Progress is slow, but at least I’m moving in the right direction. Now if someone would just clean up the kitchen besides me. I had professional development all day yesterday on coding, which I’m actually OK at, but there still isn’t a clear and easy way to use it in science without sitting down and reading a 38-page PDF. It’s interesting that we walk away from 6 hours of “learning” and I still don’t have something I can use in the classroom without spending more time and energy of my own. But that is how it always is. So I stash it away (with the giant-ass book, yet another one) in my cupboards and will try to implement it at some point, but probably not this year, because I don’t know where it would fit in our current curriculum and I’m finding that this year is already pushing my buttons.

I also graded yesterday, which caused a few panicked emails after midnight last night from students who hadn’t turned in that assignment. OMG! More work. Another assignment to be graded today. I want to start with my head above water next Monday…because it will quickly be under again, right?

Already I have 10 12 things on my to-do list for today, and some of them require going out in the rain…over an inch today. Amusing, since some years we total 5 inches of rain in the whole year…they’re guessing close to 4 inches here just this week. I have a garage that has leaking issues, so boychild and I went down last night and made sure there was nothing cardboard or paper on the floor. Many years ago, probably the last serious El Niño, we put everything up on shelves so that when the water leaches down the slope through the wall into the garage, nothing is ruined. It let me throw some more stuff away too.

I was up late finishing the machine stuff on the newest Bathtub quilt, hallelujah. It took another hour and 20 minutes of quilting, running out of thread (this is why I braved JoAnns hell on Saturday), quilting dark blue on dark blue in the dark (the lighting in here sucks)…

Nine hours and 34 minutes total in the quilting…that was less than I thought. Less breakage than on the last equivalent quilt? Less stuff to fill in? Who knows. Just glad it’s done. Don’t get me wrong…I like this quilt, I like quilting…but school is rushing towards me and there’s a lot of stuff going on in the next two weeks…enough that I’m doing a lot of deep breathing and reorganizing my brain to take it all on.

There it is…like you can see it. I ironed it to get it relatively flat. Mostly my quilts are flat anyway, but ironing helps because I do quilt heavier in the background than in the image. I know real quilt people want even quilting density all around, but I don’t. I want the image to pop, and it does that when I don’t quilt evenly between background and foreground.

Laid it out and stared at it for a while, because it’s not gonna be straight no matter what…and that wonky is OK. There’s no actual straight lines in the quilt. It’s the way my brain is…sorta wonky…made even wonkier by old-lady hormonal surges and fluxes.

I like her. I like her better than the last bathtub quilt. It’s good that I like my own work, isn’t it? (laughs)

I had another backgroundy fabric that I had considered for this one, but I’m glad I didn’t, because it was just a tad darker than this one and worked perfectly for a binding. I have a hard time with binding colors on these dark blue quilts…and yes, I make a lot of dark blue quilts. It’s a good background for the images I do. But you need something darker or a color from in the quilt to work as a binding. I don’t like using the same color, because then it doesn’t frame it. I like the eye to have a place to stop at the edge and then bounce off and wander back in. See. I did have art training. So there.

Anyway. I still have to do all the handsewing.

And email my photographer. Because this sucker is done early (well, if you look at deadlines) and that’s good, because I need to get another one done in less time. Which might be nuts. That’s one of the things on my list for today…tape together the enlargement and finish the drawing…which could be a good 5 or 6 hours of drawing.

But first, venture out into the rain and get the driving errands done. Should have grabbed some firewood for the fireplace…it’s going to be cold all week and I don’t really want to jack up the heat. Hmn…pollute the air? Or make my utilities bill horrendous? It’s a tough call. I only use the fireplace about twice a year anyway, so I’m not sure I feel too bad. I’m sure my footprint is entirely too large anyway, being a carnivore and a quilter (fabric dyes, cotton, electricity for all stages).

Crap. Now I need a name for that quilt too. Sheesh. OK. While I’m sewing on the binding. I know what this one is about (just like the last one)…so I’ll let that percolate.

Not Ready…

And there isn’t even a major holiday for me to be not ready for…

I did not reach my goal of having the binding on the quilt yesterday. I ran out of time. Now I could have blown off all social engagements (which would have included dinner and cake with my son for his 20th birthday), but I remembered I was a human and went and did ALL the things, and now I am about to go to school for professional development, so it’s early and I’m tired and I’m not quilting. I could have quilted last night, but I got home relatively late from a stitching thing and potluck that was fun and nice, so I vegged around on the couch (yes! I do that!) and then went to bed with a cat, a dog, and a book. Maybe tonight. I hope. I really only have about an hour of quilting left, around the very edges. Then I need to trim it and bind it. I also copied the next one, but it needs more drawing. Luckily, San Diego is getting rained on for days, which just reinforces my hermitlike tendencies, so I can get stuff done. But also…baby quilt, figure out what’s going in the Grossmont show and prep all of them (iron, dehair, hardware), and grade stuff. So not a stress-free relaxing week. It’s possible that I don’t know how to do those. I admit it.

I did get my holiday photo of kids and animals…

Calli refusing to look at me, both cats pissed off, and boychild refusing to smile. Oh well. Nothing new. Actually, he used to smile in the past. Kitten being reluctantly held by boychild and Midnight looking like a black blob being held by girlchild.

And then girlchild with her dog…who just went in the pool even though it’s cold and raining…

That dog drives me nuts. Notice Midnight trying to get into the photo on the right.

So that’s done. And the tree is divested of its ornaments and just needs sawing in half, which we decided against doing in the dark at 11 PM last night (but only barely). Because once Christmas is down, you just want everything put away as quickly as possible.

Anyway. So back to the goals…because if I can keep them clear in my head, I can maybe achieve some of them. Finish bathtub quilt in the next day or so…quilt and trim tonight? Maybe get binding on depending on exhaustion/frustration level (I really should grade stuff). Tape together enlarged drawing for next quilt (which has to be done very quickly, so remember that as you’re doing the rest of the drawing). Finish drawing it. Number and start tracing onto Wonder Under…OK, here’s the problem with that. I was going to use the light table to pile quilts that were prepped for Grossmont. Rethink that plan. I can’t wait to start tracing until after I install on the 18th. Stack quilts in office until done with Wonder Under? Yikes. Keep thinking. Has to be somewhere the dog can’t lie on it. The cats are going to be a whole ‘nother management level. Start baby quilt. Baby is officially due in like um dammit, I don’t have a 2016 calendar next to my computer like I always do so I don’t have to pull up an electronic calendar (I’m a visual person…it needs to be Right There). I was using the My Owl Barn artists calendar, but they don’t seem to have done one this year, so I will need to be more creative later. Not now. I think I have 3 weeks and a bit before baby is due. Almost 4 weeks. No problem. I should start cutting this week though.

See how vacation is eaten up? Yeah. Me too. OK, off to work in the rain. Not ready. Ugh.

I’m on Etsy…

So I finally got my act in gear and made an Etsy shop for the smaller quilts. It’s here (also in the sidebar). I had to mess with the prices slightly to fit their system. On here, the shipping costs are already in the price. On Etsy, due to their fees and separate shipping fees, I had to change it slightly. These quilts are small enough that I can’t really float the shipping in the price. I was kind of amazed by some people shipping for very cheap, but I usually have to buy a tube and ship that, which costs more, but protects the larger quilts. The smaller ones, the 8×10 quilts, they can go in a padded envelope. Anyway. It’s another experiment, right?

The next step is to photograph the other bird that didn’t sell (bad photo) and put it on there, and then decide how I want to deal with custom work. I have friends who successfully use Etsy for their work…we’ll see how that goes. I left most of the weird stuff off of there…figure that’s why you’re here, on my website.

Anyway, more work towards putting kids through college. I’ll be glad one day when I don’t have to think so hard about it.

Hermit Quilting Mode

I quilted a lot yesterday…not as much as I could have, because I graded papers and stuff, but mostly I sat down and I quilted…

I did all the outlining yesterday. I finished off the partial spool of thread and started the full one. Hard to say at the moment if I will need another one. I haven’t made it to JoAnns yet. I went into hermit mode. I do that a lot when I’m quilting. I refuse to leave the house.

That said, what I really need, if I’m going to stay on schedule, is to finish all the quilting in the background as soon as possible, so I can figure out if (1) I’m going to run out of thread and need to buy more and (2) I can buy the binding and get it on before tomorrow’s thing where I will have plenty of time to hand stitch the binding, unlike Monday, where I have to go to work and pretend to be a teacher. Well. It’s professional development, so I have to pretend to be professionally developed.

The thread hasn’t been breaking, which is nice. I put a new needle in and that seemed to solve the early problems I was having. So yeah. Change your needles. Yes, that means you have to buy more. I should look at my stash and see how I’m doing with that. Note to self.

At one point, I sewed the edge of the backing into the quilt, but it was easy to release. No biggie. Pay better attention now so you don’t do it again. The background quilting is really just all the stuff at the edges, around the bathtub, so it shouldn’t take long. Put music on and start! Except I’m hungry. The boychild made some heavenly smelling breakfast. Something about cumin and paprika. And salsa. He’s 20 today. Yikes! I have a 20-year-old now. And he cooks with spices! Bonus.

So I guess I need to cook some food now to appease the stomach. And then quilt. And then buy binding and maybe thread. And sew some more. And maybe grade some more. I did some yesterday and it didn’t totally kill me. Mostly. I didn’t copy the drawing because the copy place was closed. So I guess that’s on my list too. As well as make something for tomorrow’s thing. Food. Yeah.

Here’s my view at the moment. A winter pool with lots of trees and blue sky (hard to see that in very bright picture)…

Trees on all sides (need to clean those windows). I love trees. Surrounded by them. Yes, they can fall down and they drop leaves (I don’t really care about that like some people do)…

But I’d rather look at trees than houses. I’m expecting a new neighbor up there any week now. It’s been almost a month since it sold. I hope they’re not annoying. Then again, perhaps I am annoying…sewing in the middle of the night with music blasting. It’s probably not too bad now, because it’s cold and the windows are closed…but I do this in summer too.

Food. Then quilting. Worry about other shit later.

It’s OK. I Have a Plan…

Hello 2016. It’s nice to see you. You are bright blue skies and slightly warmer weather. You are currently quiet and peaceful (except for that crazy kitten racing down the hallways chirping at me) and I think you will be a good year. My biggest challenge for the year…at least right now…is money. And balance. It’s always balance though. The art brain wants more time. It always does.

With that, here are the 25 quilts of 2015…

Oh yeah baby. Nice job. Five major pieces, one freakishly long lady, three smaller works, and a host of small pieces for sale…still working on that part. One commission as well. And one ready to be finished hopefully in the next 4 or 5 days. You gotta love starting off the new year with a finish.

I already have plans for the new year of quilts…I have one I started drawing last night (more on that later) that has to be finished next. Then I have a plan for the next one, a la Earth Mother. And I’m hoping for a big one over the summer, like always. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing the smaller ones for sale. I’m going to toss them on Etsy and see how they do. I don’t want to waste time on them if they won’t bring in some extra money. But I’ll consider doing some smaller ones that are more Kathy style and see how those do. I have a lot of drawings I copied last year that I want to try…so this is the year, I guess.

Next week, I’ll be picking the work that will go in the Grossmont show…ironically, most of what’s in that collage up there can’t go to that show because it’s already promised out or traveling. But I have plenty.

So back to the drawing. I didn’t draw much in 2015. There were reasons for that, but I’m hoping to get past those this year. I’ve been working on it. So a week or so ago, I started this one based on those muses I posted earlier in December.

I’m redoing this. I don’t like the proportions on the middle female. And yeah, I’ll have to enlarge and then add legs once I’ve enlarged. But it’s a start.

But I know I have another deadline coming up and I wanted to work on that one last night. On New Year’s Eve, I like to ring it in with artmaking in mind…so I’ll either be quilting or picking fabric or drawing or something. I was watching science fiction (Ex Machina and then The Zero Theorem), but I had this idea with Kali, the Hindu goddess with all the extra limbs. I had read up on her, but didn’t want to just draw another Kali…and I’ve done multi-limbed women before.

This is another one that will need enlarging so I can add all the stuff that goes beyond the arms…remembering that the max width is 40″ (ha!).

No problemo. I can do that. It’s more detail than I wanted, and there’s another set of arms…or two more sets. I haven’t decided. In fact, I might just go copy it today like this so I can draw the rest at full size. Maybe. Enlarge 200%? That’s 28″ wide right there. Gives me about 10″ to play with. That’s plenty! (The part of my brain that draws is excited. The part that makes the quilts happen is a little nervous.) So a trip to the copy place today. And the grocery store for the boychild’s cake ingredients. Plus some grading. And a ton of quilting…because I didn’t do much yesterday…

I started…

I’m most of the way around the outside edge, but I really should have done the bird while I was there and I forgot. Whoops. And there’s a shitload more quilting to do.

It’s OK. I have a plan. Sort of. Balance? Yeah. Working on it.

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.