Never Really Done…

Sometimes I can be really damn efficient…like when I’m not sick and when a bunch of drama isn’t stalking me (have I mentioned that colleges have started notifying and the girlchild is a mess?). Yesterday was in fact one of those days. I picked up my quilt from the photographer after a science meeting, came home and graded an entire stack of crap, made dinner from scratch, exercised, and ironed for two hours. Well done, woman, well done.

I’m 9 1/2 hours in…so this sucker is taking much longer than I thought it would. I was obviously dreaming things though, because the last big quilt had about the same number of pieces and it took 12 hours to iron to fabrics…and I’m guessing that’s how long this one will take as well.

I ironed some sunflowers and this is a snake…

My snakes are usually green…I’m not sure why, seeing as how all the snakes locally are mostly shades of brown. That wouldn’t have worked on this quilt, though, because the snake goes all the way across her chest (not political or violent!) and crosses a wide variety of leaves, branches, a cat, and a heart…so it had to contrast with all that (and it does…surely it does). I always think of this kids’ book that is somewhere in the house (OK, I just googled “kid book snake turns yellow to green” and got the title)…Verdi.

Verdi is a python who doesn’t want to be green (young pythons are yellow). ANYWAY. Know that I am always thinking of that snake when I put them in quilts, apparently…or at least his coloring.

I ironed a bird next…more feathers…

I decided to keep it in the brown range, because it sits behind and under a bunch of stuff, and I didn’t want it to overwhelm…although that beak is a bit bright! I was having some major orange issues last night. It took 20 minutes to deal with orange and try to find something that would work. I don’t know why. My orange drawer is really unsatisfying at the moment. Designers go through different color stages. I got some really good yellows and off-whites last time, but the orange drawer needs help.

After that, I ironed a cat and a heart, but I didn’t photograph them. I wasn’t going to go that far, but it was just a few more pieces! Really! (Now you know how I stay up so late.) I finished the 500s and laid out the 600s, so I have a little less than 300 pieces to go…well over halfway, which is good.

Here’s everything I’ve used so far…

I added a lot of off-whites, browns, a few greens and yellows, some orange last night. I do reuse colors throughout the quilt, so one of the reds from elsewhere was used in the heart, and two of the browns from the ground were used in the bird. The cat’s eyes came from the acacia trees in the elephant section. Simple stuff like that. It’s a lot of fabrics though…and notice, I’ve added almost no blue…just the gray blue in the heron. No worries…the hair is the ocean, so there will be bright turquoises up there to support the water-loving animals. Really, I’ve finished most of the torso…I just have a little grassy knoll on her shoulder to do (grass and roots)…then we’re up in the hair. Hopefully I have some big enough gray/white pieces for the clouds. We’ll see.

Here’s the pile waiting to be cut out…

The box is getting full. I might need to graduate into a bigger box. I have quilt class Thursday, so I will definitely be cutting pieces out starting then. Wait. Apparently I don’t have quilt class Thursday. Huh. So much for that plan. I need to be done cutting by the end of next week. Cutting doesn’t take as much time as ironing. I lied. On the last quilt, it took 11 1/2 hours. So whatever. Marathon cutting sessions in my future. I have a soccer tournament this weekend. Maybe I can persuade girlchild to drive while I cut. Or I can sit in Starbucks and cut for hours in between games (can you say ugh?). I actually want to grade papers so I can have as little as possible to do over Spring Break. Of course, I always say that and it never really works out that way.

Progress…I’m getting there. Closer to done. For some definition of the word done, that is, because with art, I am never really done.

Ironing Like a Beast…

Sometimes stuff pisses me off.

I know you’re shocked by that.

But when it does, I do what my counselor always tells me: take care of yourself. Do something nice for yourself. Now with a normal female, that might mean a pedicure or shopping for a new skirt or chocolate. Eh. I make art. So when life conspired to punch me in the face yesterday, and I was sitting there, grading shit, still grading shit, always grading shit, hands shaking, so angry and upset and frustrated that I was about to cry, I took a deep breath, set a line for the end of the feeling and grading of shit, and decided to make art for most of last night.

Well, except, I also needed to sleep. So I did that too.

I kicked some ironing ass last night. But before I did, I started sorting all the recycled pieces from Mariah’s quilts for the second piece in Diverted Destruction 8, which opens June 27 in Los Angeles, by the way. I figure I’m going to need them grouped together instead of piled on the floor in the living room if I ever want to make a quilt out of them. Here’s pink sorted and purple piled…

And here I am working on the green.

Blue is mostly done. I did it while I had pneumonia. Sitting on the floor was doable then. So I have a few more colors to sort, and then I’m done with that. It’s overwhelming to sort these, so it’s better if I just do a little each day. I don’t have very much of most colors, so that makes it more difficult…lots of squares and triangles and strips…but that’s what this show is about. How do we take stuff that normally would get tossed out or put aside, and then turn it into art.

THEN I started ironing like a beast…this is all the flesh in the Ventura quilt…

There isn’t much, because remember? No nudity, no politics, no violence. So she’s mostly covered. Her face and hands show, and her shoulders. And there’s bits of flesh showing behind things. But that’s it. So to iron the flesh colors, I had to pull pieces from the 300s, which is where I’m at, all the way through the 700s. So now I don’t know how far I am, except that I have 7 hours in. When did that happen?

And then I pulled fabrics for the great blue heron that makes up her left arm…

Grays and blues, but the blue in the wings had to show up on the background, so that was a challenge. So now it has some purple in it. I’m OK with that. The idea of the heron will be there. And I picked some really interesting wing-feather fabric. Had to fussy cut the bits I wanted, because it goes all over the place into pink and I didn’t want that. Much. There’s some turquoise in there too. I left a little of that.

Anyway, so that got me to the end of the 300s, but half that wing was in the 400s (all the pieces from 435-485, basically…who numbered this thing?), so again, no idea how far along I am, but maybe have something over 500 pieces ironed? Maybe halfway? It doesn’t look like halfway, but what do I know? It must be halfway. I spent 2 1/2 hours ironing last night and then had a very hard time stopping. Made myself stop. Still tired this morning though…here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…

You can see the fleshy run and the heron is all on the left. Next up is sunflowers I think…and then a cat? Or the heart. Not sure. Yes, she’s covered in plants and flowers, but there’s still a giant anatomical heart. This is all for a show where I have to jury in, by the way. So I might not get in. And I will only have one entry, because every single other piece I have has nudity, politics, or violence (or all three) in it. Sigh.

Here’s pieces ready to be cut out…filling up the box.

Two weeks until Spring Break…and I’m still on schedule. Miraculous.

Here’s a chair that Kitten has destroyed…

And now inhabits. I’m not fixing it until she’s gone. There’s no point, unless I use bulletproof fabric…and I’m not even sure that would stand up to Kitten claws.

Luckily, she leaves my fabric stash alone.

Not Thinking Too Hard…

I brought home 119 science packets last night, the last unit we completed. I had already graded 21 of them at school, one small class’ worth, but I really need to finish the rest over the weekend. Funny, this is the smallest number of students I have ever had (maxed out at 190 one year), but I still can’t balance the grading. You take a weekend off or you schedule it so everything is due at once, and all of a sudden, there’s an avalanche. I just started my 14th year of teaching, and I still can’t find a best practice on that part of the job.

So I sat there for about three hours…and I got through 68 of them. The pile on the right is done…

The pile on the left is still staring at me…balefully. I watched a bunch of TV to drag me through it, and I got faster and faster (which is why sometimes it’s better to just bully through and do ALL of it at once, because once you’re on a roll, you DO get faster and faster). I stopped and made dinner in the middle (girlchild blew me off for yet another Friday night…whatever), and at around 10 PM, I quit. I have my smallest class and my largest class left. It’s easier to grade the good students, because everything is there, complete, and in order. The ones that kill me are the kids who don’t put anything in order and put random stuff in there (one kid stapled a field trip permission slip in there…guess it made it look more full). Sigh. Worst part of my job…well, besides navigating politics and administrators.

Anyway. I was exhausted by then, but in true Kathy fashion, I don’t ever let that stop me from making art. OK. Sometimes I do. But not last night. Just grading all night and not doing something for me makes me cranky. So I dragged myself into the office and looked at what was next to be ironed. And remembered I needed to do a label for the quilt that sold, so I did that first. By the way, the second Catching Cancer is available, if anyone’s interested…

It’s 10 1/2″ w x 12 3/4″ h, $140. Let me know.

And then I started looking at elephant pieces. Teensy weensy wrinkles and eyeballs and lots of gray gray gray, which can be blue-ish or yellow-ish or brown-ish. Grays annoy me. I use them all the time. I love gray. But it drives me nuts. If I were really anal-retentive obsessive compulsive, all my grays would be sorted by their base color and I wouldn’t have to search all through a million bins trying to find the RIGHT gray (I never have the RIGHT gray. I am always buying more gray). So I needed a run of 7 fabrics for the elephants, because they are standing in front of each other, so you have to think about that.

Well, YOU don’t. I do.

There’s only three elephants, but they take up about 100 pieces of Wonder Under…

And I had to add fabrics for eyes and tusks. Here they are all laid out. The old Wonder Under is releasing like crazy. The new stuff is fucking awesome. It doesn’t release and the paper comes off like a dream. The only issue I’m having is that my iron is getting stuff stuck to it from the old Wonder Under, and I can’t get it clean enough, and that is having an issue with the paper of the new Wonder Under, which is really plasticky. I didn’t read the instructions (ha! never do…), so maybe I need to reduce the heat. Or clean my iron better.

It took about an hour to iron all the elephant pieces down…

The next thing on the ironing list is an apple tree with the tiniest pieces ever…because some crazy woman thought that was a good idea. Then I move onto HUGE pieces of body parts and bird wings. I might need to go gray/white shopping. Seriously. There’s a huge heron wing in there, so I have to figure out what color that is. Blue gray? Maybe?

Underneath my feet while I iron…

She was very tired. So was I at the end of it…girlchild came home way too late (apparently clocks are so passé). By then, I was sitting again (so tired yesterday…couldn’t stand to stand and iron for long), working on the binding, which has to get done today, so I can get it photographed tomorrow. Boom! Then I need to start the other recycled piece.

It’s good to be finishing these and moving on. I’m not enjoying the Have-To’s on the quilt front as much as I enjoy the Want-To’s, but those Have-To’s get into shows, and right now, with my rejection rate on the stuff I LIKE to make, if I’m going to be in shows, I have to cater a bit to whatever the hell it is they think they want. I can’t try to figure out why the stuff I really want to make, the stuff I enjoy, why it’s not getting into shows…unless it’s an invitational, so they don’t see it beforehand. I just have to move on and try to balance the stuff I really like with the stuff I need to make for whatever reason…paying the bills, participating in a group show. It is what it is. And I do actually think this Ventura quilt will be cool in the end…even though I really had to fight my own inclinations to get it drawn.

All right…I’m sewing that damn binding on now. Obviously I am Thinking Too Hard.

Catching Cancer

My students sometimes think all diseases are contagious, even cancer, and you have to explain that some things are genetic, or inherited, and some things are mutations, like cancer, which can be caused by things like smoking or UV radiation, but can also be somewhat random, and then there are the things that are contagious. But for a while, I always have a group of some kids who must have cotton balls in their ears who think not only that rocks are alive, but that you can catch cancer from the kid sitting next to you. They also think Mountain Dew can keep your sperm from getting a girl pregnant, so keep that in mind.

I drew these hands because…this is convoluted, but this is how my brain works too, so hang with me…I was doing the FFAC donation quilt, which benefits cancer research, and I was flailing for ideas, so I took my sketchbook to my monthly stitching meeting with two creative minds, so I could try to get something down. They talked a lot about ideas and I did some weird sketches, and I don’t think I did the final FFAC drawing until later, but they did try to help. Because of that, one of them, who is a breast-cancer survivor, sent me a link the following day to some breast-cancer cells, which honestly, I had never closely looked at, and they are freaking spiky scary-looking beasts.

So I was sitting in a bar later that week (like you do), waiting for a friend to show up, and I started drawing these things…in a hand. And I couldn’t tell if the hand was catching it or letting it go or just being spiked all to hell by it…

And later I did another drawing…

And then two people showed interest in those. So I made them into quilts…this is Catching Cancer 1…

(10″w x 11″ h) And I should admit that I screwed up when I traced the Wonder Under on this one, which is why it’s reversed.

And here is Catching Cancer 2…

(10 1/2″ w x 12 3/4″ h) Which I finished Wednesday night? Yes. After the banquet. When my brain wandered off into depresso world.

It only took that long because I was sick for most of February. And the first one is already sold. The second one? Maybe. There was interest, so I am waiting to hear.

I’m lucky in that my DNA has not mutated into these spiky fuckers (they really are terrorful things), although y’all know I’ve had more mammograms than your average 40-some-year-old due to some weird shadow beast who lurks in my left breast. I was glad to make these, glad they will find good homes.

Now I just need to finish all THIS stuff…

So I can get onto the OTHER stuff I need to get done. Tonight? After gym and grading, maybe I will be able to function well. Not the last two nights, although last night, I had to create an assignment and a webpage for school today. Someone needs to tell Google that teachers don’t want to make assignments at the last minute. Give us a scheduling button, you dumbasses. All I can think is that they don’t know how to schedule themselves. So yeah, I was working at 11:30 PM last night. Do you hear that politicians? Huh?

Yeah. Moving on. Survive school. Make art. Maybe sometimes sleep.

To Write or Not to Write

For those who have been reading for long enough, you’ve seen my moods swing all over the map. I wrote out an entire year and a half of recovering from depression. Was I recovering? I think so. Is it recovering when it’s depression, or just reclaiming the self you were before, which doesn’t exist any more, because you went through whatever it was you went through? So surviving might be a better word. It’s like a tsunami: major damage in the beginning and then you rebuild and it takes time and everything looks a little different afterwards. It will never be the island town it was before. Mine was a tsunami anyway…a major unexpected change in my life that I apparently couldn’t process for a very long time. For some it’s maybe more like climate change, slow and deliberate and mostly out of your control, but inherently world-damaging.

And I know now that I didn’t cause the tsunami…and I’m the one who did the rebuilding. So I guess that’s useful information. And I know that my own health issues, whether hormones or thyroid or iron deficiency, didn’t help the post-tsunami destruction, and I still am dealing with some of those health issues, because you can’t run away from perimenopause and it fucks with a variety of body systems.

But I had many people tell me I was brave or thank me for writing about what I was going through, commiserating with me, telling me how they felt the same way.

But they couldn’t write about it.

I wrote myself out of that hole. I can’t live in my head with this stuff. It drags you so far down that it’s like there’s no way out at all or ever, and if I didn’t write, I don’t know that I would ever have gotten out of bed. Art helped too. So did having two kids who were standing around trying to figure out where their previous mom had gone and whether she would ever come back. I think some version of her did.

And I don’t want to go back there. But you can’t control all the physical things that affect depression and you certainly can’t control a ton of external things, so once you have been depressed like that (and here’s where I admit that although that was the worst I had ever experienced it, it certainly wasn’t the first time I had to seek help for that), then you are at a higher risk for experiencing it again. “Experiencing” it. Like it’s a roller coaster ride (it’s not). Surviving it. Having it wallop you in the face. Throw you down that hole again. Send the wolves after you. Rain on your parade…endlessly.

You can choose not to say anything to anyone. I think at some point it’s obvious to those who know you. Or maybe everyone.

Why write now? I’m teetering on the edge. I can’t even tell you all the things that have pushed me to that edge, although the biological shit is just fucking annoying. If I could control that stupid shit, I’d be a lot better off. But I can’t at the moment.

Know that I continue to make art…although last night, that consisted of sewing bindings, because honestly, after having been gone from the house for over 13 hours, I was mostly braindead. So my goal of an hour ironing pieces? Yeah. Didn’t happen. Because I didn’t have the brain power or the desire and I was in my head, racing around like a wounded dog, snapping at everything my brain tried to push at me to mollify me. This is when having deadlines and being a responsible artist (ha! Not an oxymoron) comes in useful. I have to finish this shit. I told people I would. I do what I say. So I have to do it. And I will.

And I’ll keep writing about it because it helps me. And maybe it helps you to know that a lot of art comes out of this need to heal oneself, to remove whatever is inside from festering and spill it out onto paper or onto the screen. Put it where it can’t hurt me any more.

I don’t know. Maybe I just write. And I would do it no matter what.

I’m Not About to Stop Now…

Getting up earlier is hard, but the sunrises are worth it. Couldn’t find the camera in time though…the pink faded too fast. I realized this morning that I only have 2 1/2 weeks until Spring Break and everything has to be at a certain stage by then, so I really need to get my act in gear. This quilt is harder to cut out, for some reason, than other ones have been. Maybe it’s because I’m tired. Who knows. But I did work on it yesterday for an hour or so…here are the mountains…

I debated brown and gray, but purple won (as it should). I was a little concerned about how dark they are because the background is fairly dark, but there’s snow and wind around them, so I think it will be OK. I don’t ever really know though until I iron it together, which is strange, I realize. It’s sort of half-colored in my head, but it’s staticky sometimes, so I lose the image. I color it as I go usually. Like the big black and white drawing is on a projector in my forehead and I grab some pens and color in each section as I pick it. I don’t really see the whole quilt colored in until…well, until it is. At the end of the fabric-choosing phase.

Probably not like other people do it. I used to color in copies of my drawings back when I did screenprinting, but with that, you have to know what to block out to keep it that color, so maybe it was more crucial to know ahead of time? I don’t know. I don’t do that any more. Now I pretty much wing it. I figure my color sense gets me through most of the time.

Then I picked out the acacia trees…

That was a little easier because I try to reuse colors throughout the quilt to make it more unified, so I pulled the browns for the tree trunks from the browns for the ground in the base area. There were a lot of pieces in the acacia section though. I’m still in the 200s…although I’m about 3 1/2 hours into the ironing. Based on that, I could estimate about another 7 hours of ironing. So I might be done the middle of next week? Maybe? Then I have to cut them all out. I’m still on schedule…I’m OK.

Here’s everything I’ve used so far…added the purples and a few more greens from the night before.

I would love to come home from work tonight and work on this for a few hours, but I have a union meeting and a soccer banquet. Ugh. Sounds exhausting. I’m still planning to do at least an hour though. It’s a good way to end the day. It helps me sleep. Brings some peace.

Although Daylight Savings is still kicking my butt on that, so probably I would sleep pretty well anyway.

My mood was better yesterday…guess whatever that weird wave of sad that threw me under the bus over the weekend has finally wandered off, which points directly to hormones, unfortunately. It was a weird deja vu though, a peek at the depression that haunted me last year at this time. This concept of free will we have…it’s hard to reconcile it with the instinctual and hormonal and plain old crazy shit that the body and brain seem to do of their own accord. I am glad, though, of my ability to balance the art within the larger scope of my whole life. My house isn’t as clean as it could be, my yard is a mess, I don’t always grade stuff as quickly as I could, but I have this other thing that helps me be human and connected to the world. I try not to let the constant rejections from shows from the last year bring it down. I know the work I’m making is good…but challenging…and maybe doesn’t play well with others.

I can’t be mad at myself for that. I’m OK with making art that is unique and challenging. I’m not about to stop now.

Fighting a Mood

I think I started yesterday’s post with Oh Holy Hell. Or did I? I was sick yesterday apparently. No really. I was. Ran a fever and everything. It was strange. Woke up nauseous as hell, ran a fever, fine today. I do not understand. I feel like I have completely lost touch with my immune system. Or for that matter, my reproductive system. Possibly my nervous system as well. Digestive? Fuck. HELLO BODY. Please come in. There is no connection. We need to re-establish communication here.

So seriously, need to get back to exercising and hiking and the gym. She says, as she looks at this week’s calendar and snorts Cheerios out her nose. Huh. Good intentions.

So after I lolled around on the couch yesterday afternoon, feeling like crap, tired as hell, supporting a cat’s claws with my fleshy bits, I eventually dragged myself up and did the stupid independent study contract I needed to do for the kid who will be gone for two weeks before Spring Break but who already does no work, so I spent an hour making this thing for him and he probably won’t do more than half of it, if that, based on his current grade. Dear Politicians: I didn’t get paid for that time, but I did it anyway.

Then I finally got my act together and started picking out fabrics…well, I started with laying Wonder Under out…

Which requires almost zero brain power, and yet I fucked it up. I love it when I recut a complicated piece and then find it later in the wrong pile. Did I tell you I was running a fever? I was. Piece 29 was down in the 70s. No idea why. I didn’t actually get very far…

Fewer than 100 pieces ironed…the flames kind of discombobulated me. I couldn’t figure my own drawing out. (FEVER!) Here’s what I’ve used so far…

There were a lot of clouds and snow. It was good to get started though. It will be easier to keep going now…momentum you know. It keeps you moving. Science!

At some point, though, I was too tired to stand. Or sick. Hard to know. So I sat and sewed bindings for a while…

Yes, I used kiddie fabric on the back of the cancer hands. It was happy fabric. I used it to make baby quilts. I think we should totally fight breast cancer with baby quilts. (No, I’m not fucking delirious. Why do you ask? The fever is completely gone this morning.)

I finished the smaller one.

Then I started the larger one and went to bed. Perchance to sleep. Until 5:30 AM, when the girlchild came in and told me she was sick. (no fever) And then I couldn’t go BACK to sleep. Sleep is such a THANG for me at the moment. I never get enough, even when I try to get enough.

So I have some other random stuff here, like this video from IQF Houston last November…this was the official video they took…

It’s pretty much the same as what Margaret Fabrizio posted (because she was standing there recording me while I did this one!). But you should go check out their other videos. I will…when I have time…I swear! They will just keep playing in a row, so if you’re standing there ironing fabrics, like I might be some time this week (looks at schedule again and chokes up with laughter), you could just watch all of them one after another. Though that might be more quiltspeak than you can handle.

And then there was this…the cats who hate each other…

I was sitting between them, but they stayed when I extracted myself and did not hiss at each other.

Cat in a box. All the cats have been in this box. It’s in the window in my studio, right behind the sewing machine. Apparently it is the best cat place ever.

I do not know why this cat tolerates this…

I delivered a quilt yesterday, so I had to put a label on it, dehair it, and provide sticks of hanging.

It’s a good thing I had that yesterday, because I got rejected from two shows in three days. I’m on a fucking roll! Whatever. While I was dropping it off, I was checking out the gallery space where me and one other artist will be hanging our dual show in January. So big fat whatever, right? Sigh. I don’t know what to think about all the rejections. Oh well. Move on. It’s not like I’m going to stop making art all of a sudden. I’m way too stubborn for that.

Yeah. I’m fighting a mood. I’m sure I’ll come out of it soon.

Put a Binding on It…All of It…

Oh holy hell, the daylight savings spring forward…it’s a Monday, it’s my birthday, and it was dark when I got up. The morning is making me nauseous. Not fair, as my students would say. I so want to go back to bed and sleep another hour or so, but the day marches onwards, with or without me, and unfortunately, I need to catch up.

Artwise, I used my weekend well…which is good, because the moods were like to kill an elephant. There is nothing pretty or pink about old lady hormone swings. They are more like a baseball-bat swing aiming at your head and uterus than a gentle porch swing with a glass of lemonade and a cute boy. So even when you try to manage the moods, plan for things that you know will help, sometimes life just doesn’t work that way and the brain can’t adjust quickly enough.

I started by quilting…with a cat almost on the quilt.

Mar 9 15 001 small

I ran out of purple thread with just a small section left…turns out I would be cutting that off anyway.

Although there was a weird break in the thread in a lower section that I had to cut and tie off, but you can’t see it, which is good, because I didn’t have any more purple thread that would match. So it was either go balls out and use orange, or hope no one could see it. The latter worked.

So here I was, achieving art, finishing stuff…but the moods, they descend upon you like a piano falling from a 3rd-story apartment window, like a tornado plummeting towards the earth from a sickly greenish sky, like a plane dead in the air pointing nosewards towards the nearest mountain or empty field, to strew metal pieces and body parts across a 10-mile swath of land.

And I thought music was OK. But Pandora, she is fickle. She can make me bounce and dance, and she can draw on my heartstrings and make tears drop from the tip of my nose, falling on the quilt as I stitch about 100 miles an hour, just missing my fingers.

And then this song…

It was somewhere around there that I realized it wasn’t even something under my control. I drew…

And then I went to CIF finals…

They make them line up and do all this processional stuff…I have lots of blurry pictures…

The field lights were really bright, much nicer than the ones we have on our home field (I judge them by my ability to see my stitching), but not quite bright enough for good pictures. They played hard…they lost by one point though…a penalty kick in like the 71st minute. Which sucks. But they did get into the finals for the first time in four years, so that was a cool way for the girlchild to end her high-school soccer season.

There is no way I’m finishing this before I have to leave for school. And ugh. I am so not ready.

So now it’s after school, and I still feel like a bus slammed into me, but I had about 200 kids sing or say happy birthday to me (not all of them were my students), and even one of our security ladies came and gave me a hug (very sweet)…so it’s hard to stay cranky for long with that much teenaged love being thrown at you unconditionally. Because they hate you and love you and drive you nuts and beg for forgiveness, and that’s what teaching middle school is like. Oh yeah. And having teenagers.

So I decided a few things. First, I need to finish bindings because I was hoping to take my machine in to get it serviced, so I basically did all three bindings last night. I started by trying to find something in Mariah’s stash that would work for the recycled upholstery nude…

Yeah. I clean up quick. Not. But it was EASIER because it was all still strewn on the floor (keep telling yourself that).

This one was a real strong contender from the pile, because it had the red orange from her hair and the purple from the background…but it wasn’t good enough.

I was just intrigued by the orange/purple combination. I decided there wasn’t enough of it to get all the way around. Plus the strips were skinny.

I really liked this one. It seems strange to put green with it, but there is green in the quilt. Not a lot…just a little.

And the real kicker was that this was an offcut from something, probably an outer border or a backing. There were straight seams in it, but it was also wider than the other strips she had cut, and I like a doubled-up binding…easier to do the hand work I think. And I could get to 3″ wide on this…which is close to what I would do anyway…

And I had the 100″ that I needed. Not a lot more, but hey…100″ is all I needed.

Now I just need to do the hand-sewing. And email the magazine to make sure nudity won’t be an issue. Huh.

With that done, it was easy to turn to the other two smaller ones and do the same thing…

I guess I was really hoping my machine guy would say, “Sure! Bring it in today!” Because I know I will need it during Spring Break to sew down the Ventura quilt. I don’t think I’ll need it before then…

Turns out he’s as booked up as a gynecology department that assumes you are going through menopause and this isn’t the precursor to uterine cancer…or if it is, you’ve lived a long life anyway and there’s no rush.

Not really. I don’t disagree. So my machine is going in the first few days of Spring Break…it will be fine. Because I made an appointment, it will only be out of my hot little hands for 36 hours. I can survive that long. Seriously. I can. (Things Kathy will save in a fire: kids, animals, computer, sewing machine, quilts, sketchbooks. Huh.) Besides, I’ll be in the gynecology department. Ha!

I think I can finally focus on picking out fabrics. Maybe. If I can stay awake. What time is it? Hate. Daylight. Savings.

Outta Here…

The plus about yesterday is that it’s over. And my grades for Trimester 2 are done…four days early. Because I believe in a grade-free weekend around one’s birthday. I need to make sure my head is in the right place to celebrate my exiting my mother’s uterus. I don’t have a problem with getting older…the numbers don’t bother me. In fact, I have a hard time remembering how old I am on a regular basis without doing math in my head. So that’s a sign of old age! Not really. I’m not that old. At least in my head.

I wanted to start ironing fabrics last night, but there was some shit that got in the way. My office was a disaster area, so I had to put some stuff away and straighten up…plus I need a label on a quilt by Monday for delivery for a local show…so I did that…and hung the drawing so I can see it while picking fabrics…

Because you can’t tell which piece is which unless you do that. Yes, there’s still crap on the floor. Not sure when I will ever get that under control. I do need it…it just doesn’t have a home. Or it does and it takes time to sort through it all and get it into the right place.

So it’s ready. I just need to get my head there. I had plans for the morning, but they fell through, or they’re rescheduled. I don’t know which. So I’m trying to revise the head set. Mind set. I can get there I think. Maybe. But I need to finish the quilting too. So maybe I’ll do that first. The exciting part is picking fabrics. Not fighting fabric under the machine and trying to find a recycled fabric for the binding. Erg. Not looking forward to that. What if I pick a fabric for binding and then make a bandana out of it and wear it on a hike and then wash it and THEN use it for a binding. Yeah. I might do that.

I did this last night too. I can’t show you what this is for. But I needed more of them. Maybe I will try to take some artsy photos that just don’t show you anything at all. I think I’m not allowed to even do that. In fact, this might be a violation of my terms. I just don’t know.

I need to prep more for the CIF finals soccer game tonight. It’s going to be tense. Last time we played this team, it was a 0-0 tie with a major concussion thrown in and an ambulance and hospital trip (not my kid, but her friend). So…violence and a close score. Need needle and thread distraction.

The other thing I did after school yesterday was try to make a decision about the background fabric for the new quilt…

Yeah. I got it down to two. I think probably it will be the one on the left…but I have to stare at the two fabrics and the drawing a bit more to decide. More reason to wait a bit and finish the quilting. Give my brain time to make a decision. I do really like the one on the right though…but think it will wait for the next one.

Because my SIL called while I was at the store, I picked up my birthday gift certificate and used it right then…

Because. I need a palette.

OK. Stop wasting time. I’m outta here. Making art.

That Was Easy

Well, if you have a shitty day at work, then it’s easy to come home (after watching a soccer game) and say to yourself that you are done with your job for the day. There was a brief moment of guilt when I considered that I really should grade tests or extra credit or something, but then my art brain took over and explained how I had already used up THIS much energy on work today, and I wasn’t required to use up any more…so move on, little doggie, and make you some art.

Then there was the question of which project to work on, but I’ve got the Ventura quilt on my mind, kicking me in the frontal lobe, Hey! Get me done! Put me on the priority list! You don’t need to clean the house! I’m more important! So I cut out little pieces of Wonder Under while sitting on the couch with the girlchild, watching the same episodes of House that I’ve seen three or four times…until I finished. Wait. I finished. That was easy. I wasn’t expecting to finish cutting them out last night. But I said about 2 1/2 hours and it was just under two. Six hours and 17 minutes total…so not that far off the other one.

And it wasn’t super late…so I set up for sorting…

One bin for each 100 pieces…you know, it’s funny. I have this procedure now that I use with every quilt, and I don’t remember when or how I came up with it…I mean, at some point, I must have been sitting there with a few hundred pieces of Wonder Under (back in the day when I didn’t make quilts with over 2000 pieces?) and thought, how can I better organize this? It’s been so long, I don’t remember starting to do that. But now I have bins that are numbered, so I just go hunt down (in this case) bins 0-8 and lay them out and start…

Believe it or not, this quilt isn’t that complicated, so it was less than an hour. It’s funny that a 900-piece quilt is one I consider pretty easy to do at this stage in my art career. It’s big, but not huge. The one I’m planning for over the summer…I think I will be saved by the size restriction on it. Otherwise, it would have a million pieces in it.

Anyway, I’m ready for the next stage…fabric choice! Except I don’t have a background picked out yet, and that’s what I don’t usually have in my stash. I don’t know if I have time today to get a background…probably not, because she’s only open to 5 PM and I have dance practice (don’t laugh. It’s a long story, mostly unbelievable if you know me well enough) until 4:30 or so. Huh. So tomorrow probably, after school. I could do that. I should probably measure the drawing, though, so I know how much to get.

Exciting! I like the fabric part. The studio/office is a bit of a mess though, so I’ll have to deal with that too.

And complicating my schedule, as always, is soccer. Girlchild’s high school team was in the CIF (state) semifinals last night…

They started with this lineup that included the 9- and 10-year-old club players who hopefully will be future high-school players, which was cute. Apparently we were on TV too (local TV station).

It was a tense game against a team we had tied against before…

A very physical game…

Like check out the legs…

By the end of the second half, it was tied 1-1, and it stayed that way until the last 20 minutes of the game, when we got our second goal…

And under the light of the full moon, managed to keep the lead. There was a lot of screaming. This is the first time they’ve made it this far, and the finals are Saturday night. Not my favorite way to spend Saturday night, and I will have to stitch right through it to reduce the stress. Seriously…these games can shorten your lifespan if you don’t do something else while the girls play.

Anyway. It’s the last game of the high-school season…not to take a deep breath or anything, because the first tournament of the second half of the club season is two weekends later. Oh well. My trimester grades will be done by Saturday night…and worst-case? Her team comes in 2nd. Not a bad finish. And hopefully I’ll get some fabric ironed this weekend too (don’t think about having to grade tests and unit packets).