I Might Be Melting…

Out where I live in East County, there’s about 10 days a year when it’s so hot it’s hard to sleep. I don’t have A/C. I have a bunch of fans. My house holds heat too, which is nice in winter…not so much in summer. And it’s summer here. In Southern California, summer comes in September and spills into October, at least in terms of the weather. The real summer wasn’t so bad. We had a couple days of holy burning in hell, but it’s been worse since school started. It always is.

So the last two nights were not sleeping ones, unfortunately. Last night, in fact, started with a baby lizard I found crawling over the edge of my bed, begging the question of where are all your brothers and sisters? Or your mom? I’m not sure how long lizards stick around to take care of their young. Usually not, but maybe this is a particularly maternal species. Luckily Kitten had left the room, so I captured the youngster and managed to get him outside with very little incident, although now I know I can open the door locks and handle with my pinky. I’m sure that will come in useful at some point…besides when I’m engaged as a lizard savior.

It’s hard to fall asleep, though, when you’re imagining the nest of lizard babies propagating somewhere around your head. Plus boiling temperatures. And then around 3 AM, Kitten starts rummaging around under the bed and the chest of drawers, making those hunty-chirpy sounds cats make. Dammit. Lizard nest located. I finally get up (because who can sleep through this?) and kick out the dog and cat, close the door, and start moving the dresser.

Nothing. Well, but fuzz balls, a folded up piece of paper that’s probably very important, a yellow pen, and some piece of trash. Yes, I pulled the dresser back over those items. It’s 3 in the morning. I’m not vacuuming. Or even leaning down to pick them up. I’m tired. No lizards. Fuck it. Let animals back in. Try to fall asleep with pillow over head after turning the fan up (I have noise issues). Hear cat rummaging again. Phone flashlight is ever so useful. Huh. She caught a moth. Well thank god. Just eat it, will you? Nope. She’s fussy. Not eating the moth. Just gonna play with it. At 3 AM. While you’re trying to sleep.

I have to admit that I killed the moth and carried it off, with Kitten chirping happily behind me. I vanquished it!

Try to sleep again. I know I slept at some point, because the alarms (yes, it takes two) were blaring loudly enough that they must have been going off for at least 30 seconds before my brain (which was still hiding under a pillow) registered the sound.

Aargh. I’m tired. And this is a long day, the first union meeting of the year. I won’t be home for 11 hours. And I’ll be tired. And it will still be hot, because however hot I thought it was yesterday? Today and tomorrow they have issued a heat advisory…you know, where they send out a bunch of notices on the news and whatever that it will be hot. Thanks guys. I wouldn’t have noticed. Not walking the dog tonight. Gonna sleep in the pool instead. I would if it weren’t for the bugs.

Suffice it to say that my eyes are still at half mast and I’m borderline cranky headachy. Hopefully my students will behave appropriately (ha! It’s a lab day).

Yesterday, I did manage some sewing. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to be working on this quilt again. It was hard to put it away to finish the other.

All I’m doing now is stitching the pieces down.

I have a rough estimate of time over the next three weeks to finish this, based on the big quilt from last summer. The stitch down should be less than 8 hours. I’m hoping to be done by Saturday. I think I have a big enough piece of batting and backing for this, so I shouldn’t have to go shopping until the binding (rough couple of months bill-wise). I’m guessing 40 hours overall to get it done.

I have until probably September 27? If I’m lucky? Aiming for before that of course, because the photographer needs time. I should probably email him now.

Here she is piled up on the machine.

I didn’t sew for long…started late plus it was hot plus I was tired from lack of sleep from the night before. The office is one of the hotter rooms in the house on these days. Even with the fan directed right at me, the lights are hot (someday I’ll replace them). I used to be able to open the sliding glass door and get some cross circulation, but there’s an issue with it now and I can’t get it to budge. If there’s a breeze blowing, it’s nice (unless I’m trying to iron tiny pieces down), but last night? Not so much. Sweat droplets dribbling down your face not so much nice.

But I’ve started the next step. I’m happy about that. The heat will be gone hopefully by Friday (or at least less than yesterday and today). We’ll probably get a few more heat waves between now and the end of October, when Autumn starts…or whatever that season is that has cooler temps, beautiful blue skies, and no rain. All the leaves already fell in the last windstorm. Plus we’re not allowed to water more than twice a week. It’s a miracle anything’s alive.

One cup of tea in. No sign of life. Except I might be melting.

She’s Hung…

So my head is in a new place. The piece is installed. She even has a name. And I have installation photos…photos that I’ll post after the opening. Actually, I think she’s a great photo opportunity…

One of the Space4Art curators photographing me photographing her.

Many thanks to Linda Litteral for encouraging me to propose for this, to also think off the wall (and onto the ceiling). And for helping me hang this beast on a hot day in a non-air-conditioned space, and for having water, because I left mine at home. It took two ladders, fishing line, nails, and the magical thread and needle she had in her car (I find that amusing…I’m the fiber artist. She’s a painter and ceramicist, but she had needle and thread.). And about an hour and a half later, we were done.

It was a relief to drive away from that. I was worried about how she’d turn out, about how she’d be in the space, and I think she’s fine. She’s awesome even. There are things I would change, fix, but then that’s always the way when we hang them. I wish I’d done this. I wish I’d done that. Here’s one: I wish I’d given her nipples. It bugs me that she doesn’t have any.

Anyway, the exhibit is called Response and it’s at Space4Art in downtown San Diego. The opening is this Saturday from 7-10 PM. There will be performances, soundscapes (some interactive), art, a food truck, and refreshments (whatever that means). And one crazy 17-foot-long woman quilt.

Here’s the official PR blurb: Space 4 Art’s biennial fall show focusing on artist collaborations returns with an emphasis on how art can be displayed in novel ways, viewed from different perspectives, and used to activate unexpected areas. Thanks to a grant from the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Space 4 Art was able to support invited artists to consider new ways to re-contextualize their work, draw inspiration from the building and grounds to create site-specific pieces, and work together to create new and unexpected collaborations for Response. The show features sixteen recognized local artists from a variety of disciplines working around the theme of shifting perspectives and creating responses to the buildings and grounds of Space 4 Art, as well each other’s work. Response includes installations, immersive sonic environments, interactive pieces, dance, and musical performances – both inside and outside, on-stage and in the ground.

So I wish I could say I jumped right into the two projects that need finishing, but what really happened was planning for school and doing grades and inputting grades on the computer, and then some writing that needed to happen, and not a lot else. Plus I walked the dog a lot and it was hot, which kinda sucks my brain out. In fact, what’s strange is I don’t think I slept last night…at least I remember looking at the clock pretty much every hour and feeling like I’d just been lying there, wide awake, the entire time. Like my eyes wouldn’t stay shut. Like I’d had way too much caffeine. It was truly bizarre, and this morning, I kinda feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.

But hopefully tonight I will give up on grading early and start sewing, because if I don’t do that soon, I will be doing that crazy last-minute dance of 4 hours a day after work, trying to get it done, and being stressed beyond belief. I don’t need that. And yes, I do some of that to myself, but I honestly thought this was a cool opportunity, and sometimes when those present themselves you just have to say Fuck It and do them, because you don’t know when you will have the opportunity again.

So I did.

Enough Enough

The load’s not completely off my shoulders, and surely 5 other things have jumped in to take its place, but I did finish sewing that giant fucking woman yesterday. Rather early even, in the afternoon. I’m installing this afternoon…completely nervous about it. Not sure it will work or look good or be big enough, or enough enough, or even enough.

That’s the thing though. It has to be. At this point, it has to be.

In a situation like this, where you’ve made a piece specifically for a show and they have a space set aside for you, well, you just have to show up with what you have. There’s this worry in your gut that it’s not good enough, it’s not the right size, it’s not what they expected, even now, after doing many of these. I still worry. I still stress. But I’m also really happy it’s done. I won’t know until I hang it if I’m happy with it in general.

Yesterday, I laid it out and started ironing it as flat as I could…

I had to pin the hole on the side to get stitched up. The fingers…those damn fingers. They pressed out OK…

And then I clipped and turned the belly hole. That was easy enough. I didn’t hand stitch it closed…I just used the machine.

Then I stitched around the entire edge. Took a while. It’s 17 feet long and I had to go up it and down it and then up and down each arm and up each side of the legs as well. It was not a short and sweet affair…

But then there she was, all folded up, ready to go. Well, except for that place in the hand where I had to add a backing piece. I did hand sew that closed.

Really, I should tape her down to get rid of hair and threads before I go over there. I have a ladder in my car. I have to get some fishing line, strong stuff. I’ll need some tools. I had to make a sign. So I had to pick a name. I’ll tell you later, when I have photos of it hanging, hopefully tomorrow. Unless a disaster happens. It’s possible.

She took almost 33 hours to make. About a third of one of my big quilts. A little less time than the one I just finished, which is pretty small. I have three nasty burns on my left arm from the iron. My fault. No holes in my fingers. I still have spray baste on one finger…keep finding bits and pieces of it everywhere.

So you might ask what I do when I finish a project? I spend a few hours grading papers instead, because school has started and I’ve been blowing it off. Tonight, I’m hoping to be back on the sewing machine with the little commissioned boob and with the big piece. I really don’t have time to take a break. I just need to put my head down and get back into it.

It Won’t Take Long

So. This will be quick, because I need to get to work. Someone asked how I find time to write these. First of all, I write quickly. Second of all, I write about what I did the day before, and if I was really smart, I took pictures of it to remind me what to write about. Third, I don’t really edit what I’m writing. This drives some people nuts. Then they can go read someone else’s precise blog about exactly what they did in art yesterday. Walk On!

I did about 7 hours yesterday…started with finishing the spray baste…actually, no…first I had to drive to my parents’ house and raid my mom’s 505 stash. I finished the big one the night before, but I found the four smaller ones she had hidden around her studio. One was already almost empty, so really all it did was throw spray snot everywhere (who thought that was a good idea?)…

Then I emptied out the next one, which was probably a third full…

All I really had left were the arms and some edges where the batting wasn’t wide enough. I think I used half of the third small one and didn’t even touch her almost full one…so I’ll return those to her tonight. I’m not totally sold on this stuff, but I may try it again. Not sure how to make it so the stuff doesn’t clog and send snot trails everywhere. There’s probably a trick. And I still have some on my hands today. Couldn’t get it all off.

I wasn’t sure what to use for the backing. At first, I thought because of the way I WAS going to hang it to accommodate the group I was working with, that the only part of the backing that would show would be the backs of the arms. But then I realized the whole back would show so it couldn’t be a confusing mismatch of all my leftovers. My SIL had sent me a huge box of fabric from her house, and in it was about 10 yards or so of an upholstery fabric…this one…

But the green was way too busy. So I flipped it. It reads as mostly white on the back…or at least a toned-down version of this. So that’s OK.

Then I remembered I had to hang this this somehow and I started looking around at the ribbon I have stashed from doing crazy quilts, not thinking I would have enough of anything appropriate, until I remembered my friend Vickie had a friend who sent me a bag of those binding strips…bias tape. Holy hell, it’s the motherlode.

There was a dark blue that was unopened…I used it.

The green wasn’t wide enough at one hand…literally one and a half fingers not wide enough. So yes, most people would have pieced it, but I just pinned it (and I had to flip the pins later when I realized this was the back and now the seam was showing on the front). In the long run, I’m glad I did that, because it meant I had an opening in that hand…

It took two hours just to pin it down. I ironed at the same time I pinned, rather then iron ahead of time, so that was part of it, but it was just a lot of fussy work…trimmed too as part of that. Then I sewed…another hour…

I left an opening in the side to flip it, although I could have flipped it all through the hole in the belly if I’d thought about it. It flipped easily except for the fingers. The fingers were a bitch and a half. I trimmed the batting on the second hand before trying to flip and it was a little easier, but not a lot. I used a chopstick, pins, my teeth (seriously…I did), and my fingernails (which ache today). I think it took two hours just to pull all 10 fingers out. That’s how that hole in the one hand helped…easy access. The other hand, I had to shove my arm into the quilt arm, and it was too tight, so then pull the arm up onto my arm until I could reach the fingers. So it’s warm and I’m wearing a quilt. Plus I left about 10 pins in after I sewed, so I had to go around and find those inside the quilt.

So there it is, in a pile, all flipped. I have to iron it, stitch down the edges, hand sew the hand shut, machine sew the side and the hole shut, and then maybe quilt the three motifs that are in there. I don’t think it needs more quilting than that, although I have some ideas if I think it does…

And then I have to hang it tomorrow. I’m worried it’s not big enough for the space, but I originally designed it with the other group in mind and they were going to enclose the space slightly. So that’s a little annoying. I guess worst-case if it looks really small, I could go buy some more muslin and enclose the space the way they originally were going to. Sigh. I don’t have time for this! I’m installing tomorrow afternoon, so it will be done no matter what.

If I sound a little frustrated with the piece right now, I am. It’s OK. It will be fine. I just can’t visualize it in the space, so that’s freaking me out. Plus the dog is farting heinously in here so I think I’m a little light-headed. Ugh. Put dog out, eat something, make more tea (sleep? What is that?), and then iron and sew. Do I need to iron? Yes. I need to iron first. It won’t take long. (what SHE said)

A Faint Light at the End of a Long Tunnel

Lined with fabric. And batting. With spray baste fumes. And a back that needs a chiropractor. That’s where I’m at. I really really want to be done with this project. I just hope that when I get it all done and transported to the space that it does what I want it to. Because there’s no guarantee that it will. You have a picture in your head, an image. I don’t know if I can get that. With my other quilts, I’ve been doing them long enough that I’m usually pretty sure I’ll get to the picture in my head, maybe even better, but this…this is different. I know that it’s a good thing…this challenging of what I do and how I do it, but it’s still hard…harder yet during the start of the school year AND losing both kids to college. And yes, the house is still a mess. I pick up one thing and put it away while I’m waiting for my tea water to boil. I put two things in the recycle bin when I’m cooking dinner and waiting for the microwave to defrost or the oven to finish preheating. It’s slow, but it’s progress. I can see it. Suspect no one else can. (Not that there are many people coming here, so I guess that’s a good thing.)

Anyway, so I came home from work last night semi-invigorated. I don’t know how or why. I know all that energy ran out early, well before midnight (OK, well, 30 minutes), but I used it while I could. I had a snack when I got home and read a bit of my book (disappointing read…will talk about it when I finish it…maybe it will improve). Then made my tea and came in here and finished a leg.

It did not take long, maybe 30 minutes. I had been texting the boychild about a walk they always took Calli on; I’d been on it once, but couldn’t remember where the turn-off was. He sent me a map. Nice kid. So I took her on a walk, about 2 miles and a bit. She was tired. You’d think I would be tired too, but apparently not. I finished the other leg. Strangely, it took longer.

Then I put away all the blues and purples, got them out of my way. Well, most of them. There was a cat in a blue drawer, so I couldn’t clean up all of it. Then I started quick drawings of the parts I wanted to add…traced them on Wonder Under (really old shitty WU that I should just throw out, it’s so annoying, I might add)…

Ironed them to fabric, cut those out, and ironed them on. Yeah. I just wanted one eye.

The heart in process…I still had all the fabrics piled up from the other big quilt, so I used those. Easy access. No more digging in drawers.

Ironed them on…

And a couple of Fallopian tubes and ovaries off of the hole.

Not complicated. Took less than an hour.

Then I had decided not to stitch around the edge again, but to just trim the piece to about the right size plus a 1/2″ seam. It takes a really long time to stitch around the whole thing and it wouldn’t gain me that much…I’m not too worried about perfection obviously.

This is preparing to trim. You can see the seams on the back.

And the torso, which gets a bit more complicated…

It took about 40 minutes to trim the whole thing.

Then for precaution’s sake (WU doesn’t always do a permanent stick on commercial fabrics), I stitched down my parts…really quick.

Then I was going to hold off and do the next part tomorrow. My original plan anyway. Mom gave me her 505 spray baste and there was no way I was pinbasting this fucker. I’d gone over how I was going to do this in my head about 100 times, because this thing is BIG, even considering washing down the pool deck and laying the whole thing out there on Saturday morning (hard to do it in the dark, but trust me, I considered it)…but when I thought about it, I decided doing bits at a time would be easier. I was trying to use up all my smaller pieces of batting, the long skinny ones that never get used because I make these freakishly huge quilts. And it wasn’t even 10:30. I couldn’t stop then.

So I sprayed the batting and laid the head on top.

Wow. That was easy. (I should admit I’ve never spray basted before.) Then I trimmed that section, and moved the batting up on the board, and sprayed the next bit.

It worked pretty well. I even got the hole cut out.

And then I ran out of spray baste at about 11:30. Good thing, because I was exhausted by then. Physically about to fall over. I was piecing batting in by then…the legs and torso were wider than that piece, and I still have to go back and finish both arms, but the body is ironed except for part of one leg. And there’s a bit on one side that needs to be pieced in. And my parents are out of town, but mom has three more partial cans (really?!) hiding about her house and she emailed me their locations, so I’m going to break in, steal all their (non-chocolate) cookies and her spray cans and race back here (OK, first I’m going to finish the cup of tea that is helping me function right now and then shower and probably even put a bra on, I know, TMI, but I’m really tired of those things, and I should probably eat something besides cookies).

Did I mention I cooked dinner in there somewhere too? From scratch? OK, it wasn’t complicated, but I did it, and I should get points for that. Before I trimmed, I cooked. Four plus hours of artmaking plus dinner from scratch plus walking the dog. Yeah. I rock. Some days. Some days I roll and some days I barely function, but yesterday was a rock day.

Hopefully today will be too, until later, when I can relax with zombies and maybe dinner and a glass of wine. Or something.

I can see the damn light at the end of the tunnel finally. Barely, and it’s flickering like a bitch, but I can see it if I squint.

Remember…

Remember. Remember that school only started about two weeks ago. That you feel this exhausted every year for the first few weeks. That it kicks your butt. This might be why I write a blog…simply so I can go back to early September every single year and read, “I’m tired. I’m so tired.” And then I don’t feel so bad about it. It’s normal. For a teacher.

On top of that, I think I’ve developed an allergy to chapstick after all these years. Or something. I feel like I could sleep for the entire weekend. But I can’t.

So I have completed many tasks in the last 24 hours…sending photos for a show I’ll be in come January, trying to get new house insurance because the Auto Club doesn’t like me, paying this bill and that bill, making a label for and packing up a quilt that needs to ship today!, trying to find a cord online so I don’t have to buy it in a store, stupid shit. Grading papers at a stitching meeting because I need to get them done (I didn’t get them done yet). By the time I got home from the stitching meeting, I was exhausted again. Shocking really that doing a lab all day made me tired…OH MY, we all have one period, sometimes two, where Listening to Instructions just doesn’t happen…but the best was when a kid asked “How do you measure length?” 1. The same way you did yesterday. 2. Weren’t you listening yesterday? 3. What did you do yesterday? 4. I repeated instructions today. Were you listening? I think I got a tad frustrated with that class.

Our team has had to be hard on these kids. It makes us feel bad sometimes, but there are certain behaviors I won’t deal with and now is the time to crush them. They’re really elementary kids at heart…and this is 7th grade. So while I’m standing up front giving instructions, some tiny beast will be wandering up to me and standing right in front of me and wanting to ask a question. Um. What are you doing? Go sit down. I swear, I wonder sometimes what goes on in other classes. I suspect they are just like us and kids are just like dogs…they want to be in your space. They want your attention. They hate to wait. They do believe they are the most important person in the world and no one else exists. This behavior training is exhausting as well. Sit down. Raise your hand. Ask the people at your table. Look at the board/screen for instructions. What part of it do you not understand. Don’t say “I don’t get it.” I will just walk away. “Don’t get WHAT?!” Meditation. Yup. During passing periods. Already meeting about kids who are unable to read or write in 7th grade. Meanwhile, count your extra books, put your books in piles by period for the state government check on whether we have textbooks (which we can’t check out to kids because the state hasn’t checked up on us yet), then we give you two new kids and you have to find them books, and how many headphones do you have? Tell me by Friday. Tell me the number of extra books by Thursday AM, but 10 minutes later you need two of them.

Sorry. Ranting. I have no one to talk to most of the time. That’s kinda sinking in as well. When I’m buried in work/art, it’s easier not to think about it, but last night, it was not easy to not think about it. My brain says, “Hey walk down the hall and check on a kid, just say hi.” “There is no kid.” “What? No kid? When will they be back?” “Almost 4 months. Shut up.” So that’s going well. I’m sure it will get easier. But not before it gets harder.

After a day like that, even though I had an enjoyable coupla hours with Julie, I was not ready and willing to sew, but I knew I had to. I wanted the legs done last night…and that didn’t happen. I got the second leg done down to the first…

I really am so close to done on this part of the sewing…

That’s it. That’s all there is. Here’s the purples already laid out for that last leggy bit (that was at 11:45 PM)…

For tonight’s sewing excursion.

Then I’ve gone through what happens next about 100 times in my head and I’m not sure exactly what will happen, but I’m not pinbasting anything. I do still want to add some stuff on top, and I don’t think it would take much time, but I’ve basically told myself it has to happen tonight. AND I have to trim it to size tonight, which won’t be easy either. All that after an exhausting week. Then tomorrow…spray baste to batting, cut a backing, sew it on, flip the fucker, iron it, maybe stitch it a bit. Have to remember to insert tabs so I can hang it up. Install is Monday. House is still a mess. Brain is a mess. Woo hoo! Incredibly behind on grading. Haven’t put any grades in the computer at all. Could be a shocker for the kids…

Anyway. Wish me luck. I’m really wanting to be done with this one and back on the other one. Although I really really have to finish the commissioned boob first. It won’t take long. I’m hoping to get it done by the end of the weekend. I’m hoping to get some sleep too though, so we’ll see how all that goes.

She’s Got Legs…

Yes. Now that song is in my head All Day Long. And probably yours too. If not, don’t think too hard about it. Avoid the earworm.

So after totally sucking Tuesday night (well, at least on the art front…wait, I lost both games too, but I was close for a while on one), last night I completely rocked. Four hours of sewing and ironing (hello chiropractor on Friday, because that twist and turn I do to get the fabric and iron to the side without standing is a killer). I’m feeling much less panicked about getting this done now (although still not completely out of panic mode…I might need a margarita party Monday night once it’s hung). I’m actually thinking about the next steps…OK, so I thought about those on Sunday and called the Mom Store for supplies…I really would have gone out and bought them, but she handed it to me and…well…there we are.

You have to understand that I am doing almost nothing else when I get home. I feed myself (barely) and the animals. I pet them. I sleep and shower. But I’m not (really) cleaning. I occasionally move something or throw something out because it seems easy to do it right then, but the house isn’t getting cleaner or even presentable. Sigh! Art waits for nothing. Deadlines wait for nothing.

I started before dinner last night…decided to get to a certain point before I was allowed to eat. I needed to finish the ribs to the hole. That sounds awful, but it makes sense when you’re looking at it. Have I mentioned this thing has a giant hole in it? It does. Originally something was going to hang through it. I could still do that, but it would probably have to be a baby doll and not fabric. I thought about gluing small pieces of fabric all over the baby doll…like decoupage of old, but…eh…time and I just don’t know if I want that.

So it was still daylight when I started on the other side (which I technically started Monday night)…

I had originally sewn the outline with this red old thread from Sandi, and I think the stitching was too close together with the muslin being so light and foofy, so to keep the base fabric flat, in some places I have to rip out a stitch and pull to lay it flat. This section was particularly bad for some reason…

I finished the side, and girlchild called from Boston. An hour later, I’m pretty proud of all the things she’s trying to do. Apparently moving 3000 miles away makes you braver. Good for her. I cooked dinner while talking to her and then ate after she went off with her friends to study Anthropology.

Then I finished around the hole. I thought I had more torso until I hit pubic area, but no. It was right there. So I formed that over the purple that would be the legs.

I keep burning myself on the iron. This one looks worse this morning. I don’t know how I’m doing it…just reaching around the fabric and hitting it, I think. I tried to move it behind me after that so I wouldn’t keep burning myself.

Sometime around 10 PM, I got all that done and tried to see the whole thing. It’s getting harder…

So all that’s left now are the legs. I put away a bunch of the blue (at least the smaller bins…I’ll wait on the larger bins) and pulled purples.

I don’t have anywhere near as many purples as blues, but I still have a lot. Purple’s weird though…such a range of red-purple to blue-purple. Seems harder than blue.

Here’s the legs coming off the bottom…I think they’re at least as tall as I am. If the whole thing is 17 feet, then 5 feet for legs is actually a little short, but I did make the body the biggest part. Oh yeah. And now you can really see the hole. Although it’s not currently a hole. Yeah.

Purples piled for legs…

I rested for about 20 minutes with the dog on the couch in the dark before starting this. I could legitimately have gone to sleep, but I am still worried about having enough time to finish, because I honestly don’t know how long each step will take.

That’s the plus to keeping track of your time. Then you can estimate better for next time. I spent about 45 minutes on this part of the leg (and picking fabrics out). It’s halfway done. I should be able to finish the legs tonight after my meeting. Really. I should.

I’m 15 hours into the piecing. Someone asked if I would sell this. Thing is, I’m already almost 19 hours into it and it’s not near done yet. And it’s weird. Where are you going to hang it? A wall that’s over 17 feet high or long (I could hang it in my hallway or my living room or even my entryway), but it’s not even configured to hang on a wall. It could be, but that would take more time. And it’s not going to be cheap because of the time involved.

So that’s not why I make art. I suppose that’s obvious to most.

OK. School calls, along with about 75 damp and mushy gummy bears (don’t ask). And I try not to look at the calendar and see Monday looming (that’s install day, although I can push to Thursday if I have to, but it’s not like Tuesday and Wednesday are days that have a lot of sewing time available). I want this fucker done and out of my hair. I like how it’s coming out, but fuck me. It needs to get out of here. And my head.

Stuff That’s Out There

So I didn’t get any art done last night. I didn’t get home until 10:30 and then I was exhausted. It means I’m kinda panicked about tonight, getting lots done, so wish me luck…I’m going to come home from running a lab with 150+ 7th graders and gummy bears and water, and then I’m going to NOT lie prone on the couch like a corpse. I am going to get in here and sew all night. Really. I am. I mean, I had fun last night playing games and hanging out, but aack.

So because I don’t have pictures of anything I did or didn’t do last night, I’ll have to use stuff that will be in exhibits this month.

The SAQA exhibit Celebrating Silver with my piece Awakening the Crone will be at the St. George Art Museum, St. George, Utah, from September 12 through December 31, 2015.

This piece was just at Quilt! Knit! Stitch! in Portland, Oregon.

The SAQA exhibit People and Portraits with my two pieces I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket and Fully Medicated will be at the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts in St. Bonaventure, New York, from September 25, 2015 – December 19, 2015. Ironically, these two quilts will be a whopping 128 miles away from my son at college. No, he will not go see the show and no, I cannot afford to see the show and him. Oh well.

I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket below…the only quilt whose description is a haiku. Or a short poem anyway. I might not have counted out the syllables.

It’s got some crazy going on.

Fully Medicated…whenever people go on about homeopathic this or that (and holy crap, there are some things you just go to the doctor for because it’s crazy not to), it makes me feel bad for being on so many meds. I do a lot to try to keep myself healthy and my body just doesn’t freakin’ care. And I do take a lot of vitamins and natural supplements as well…but…so homeopathic for diabetes? Not so much. This is Fully Medicated…

All about the meds in my body. The background I hand-dyed myself. Not on purpose for this quilt. Just for fun and it happened to work out really well for this piece. Both of these are relatively old. The first from 2010; the second from 2011. Funny. I think they feel older than that even.

OK, I’m dealing with a vomiting cat and prepping my lunch and I still have to prep at school, so nothing coherent is coming out of my head except EW GROSS at the moment. Hopefully tomorrow will show progress.

Sewing Ribs…

I should listen to my left eyelid. It’s twitching at intervals. It’s stopped again, but it was going like wildfire when I was feeding the animals. It’s a combination of high stress (too many deadlines! too many people want something from me! too many things need to get done!) and not enough sleep. You’d think if I were that tired, it would be impossible for me to wake up at 3 AM and be unable to go back to sleep, but no. It’s not. Because my brain’s in overdrive. I keep forgetting to do things because my calendar didn’t remind me (let’s put blame where it belongs…I didn’t put it in the calendar because I was sure I would remember…ha!) or it reminded me too early and I couldn’t do it right then and then I forgot about it. I’m a chicken with my hair on fire.

The funny thing is, I know in about a week, a huge part of the stress will be gone, although I think I’m replacing it with more stress (just bid on a copyediting job…but dammit, I need the money!). Whatever.

So yesterday I did manage things quite well. School was exhausting, but it always is for the first month. I have to remember that this is only the second full week of school. I especially have to remember that with certain students who are already an issue. Because I have 37 more weeks with them before I boot ’em to 8th grade. And maybe, just maybe, I can get that crazy under control. Or not.

I even went to the gym for the first time in a month, post-procedure. It was awesome, but I wanted to read my book and I had to deal with dueling texters and a Clash of Clans end-of-war that was kinda disastrous…so I didn’t get to read much. It helped to have dinner already pretty much cooked from the night before (keep that in mind). I was able to start sewing around 9 PM.

I had piled up the next batch of blues the night before…darker and more vibrant blues.

You can tell I’m not even trying to match anything. I did originally think this was going to have more color, but…well…it’s not. There’s enough chaos going on. There will be more color as I go down, because it did finally color itself in my head the other night (while I was asleep), so that’s a good thing. It’s nice to know where you’re going.

I had sewn a dark strip down the middle of the torso the night before, because I thought this would be the best way to fill in the space…kinda like ribs.

So I set the first piece as a triangle and followed it down.

It’s tiring to do this kind of sewing late at night. Lots of turning and twisting in the chair to iron and cut and get fabric. I wanted to quit many times, but I needed to get a significant amount done. The clock ticking down is freaking me out. So I got all the way down one side to the giant hole that will be in this thing.

You can see the dog’s legs underneath. There has been a lot of animal interest in this space, since I am the only human around.

Here you can see the arm next to it. The arms will hang down towards the ground. The rest will be suspended above. I hope.

Kitten has taken over the keyboard area. Midnight was behind the sewing machine for a while.

I even started the other side and thought I could get another big chunk done…until a wave of exhaustion kicked me in the ass. So I stitched it down to get rid of the pins, and then I packed up for bed.

Here’s where I’m sewing and ironing. You can see how much of the side is left, plus the legs coming down.

Oh holy moley. I’m not out of the woods yet. So my new goal is to have all the pieces covered, sewn down, by the end of Friday night. Then Saturday I can do batting, background, sew it all down, etc. Whatever that’s going to look like. I left Sunday open because I know I will need more time than I think I will. I have some other things I’d like to do if I have the time, but realistically? I may very well not. But there’s an eyeball and a uterus and a heart that could go on there…if there’s time.

Sometimes, though, you just have to do what you can and accept that it’s done. Like this blog post (school!).

Black Head…

What was my goal for sewing this weekend again? I know it was get the torso to some point…which I did. I feel like I didn’t get as far as I wanted though…the head wanted to be black…

There’s a reason for that. Interesting thing about severe depression. It actually changes your brain. Like physically. And then when bad shit happens, even when you just have a bad day, the brain spirals much quicker than it would before the depression. When I was sewing the head, my own head was in a bit of a spiral. It’s mostly out again, but it’s hard to kick that black head.

I sewed the head down over a neck piece that was already there. Then I started filling in the upper chest, which was kind of a pain because I couldn’t just string piece like I did on the arms. So I messed with it and made it work.

The dark is for under the breasts…it has to go down first so I can sew the breasts down on top of that.

That’s where I quit on Saturday…wanted to be further, but that didn’t happen.

Sunday, I really hoped to have more time, but that’s life. The plus is that my school website is up and running, all my school stuff for the week is done (well, mostly), and I prepped food for the week as well, hopefully to forestall the lame foodness of last week, when I didn’t really prepare. We’ll see how that works.

So Sunday night, late, I started in on the breasts again…

And got both done…plus a plan for the torso above the hole.

This is not the easiest thing in the world to photograph. But there’s the rest, the torso and legs, which still need to be done.

No. It’s not a small amount. The plus is that it finally colored itself in my head, and I think I have a plan for finishing the whole thing, although it may not matter, because if I run out of time, I’m cutting the finishing out.

I’m still not feeling OK about this getting done in time. I do have to teach and sleep and eat. Maybe I will feel better by Friday. I hope I feel better by Friday.

This piece is for a show called Response…

I don’t really know what to say about the response part, because that kind of disappeared for me at some point. But whatever. I’m still responding to them, even though their response was to run away! OK, not really. Sometimes a response is to hide or gather in a circle for protective reasons or to pull the blanket over one’s head. The opening is September 12 from 6-10 PM at Space4Art in downtown San Diego. I’ll be there for the early part at least. Not sure how long I’ll last.

There’s always at least one animal in here with me, often Kitten. Sometimes all three are in here. Right now it’s Calli. Last night it was Kitten.

I did take time out on Sunday to see the traveling bit of the SAQA trunk show that is in Southern California.

It was a nice break, got me out of my head for a bit.

Then I came home and prepped 12 breakfasts (bacon, egg, and zucchini muffins)…

Yes, they taste as good as they look. Plus 2 dinners and 4 lunches. Five lunches would have been better, but it didn’t work out that way. No, I don’t mind eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch for days. Dinner though? I need variety. So I tried to build that in there. We’ll see if I have the energy to actually cook it by the end of the week.

Wish I had more positivity with which to start the week. I think it’s just Head Down until I get enough done that I can breathe.