A Saturday Suddenly Free…Sort of…

Well, I was supposed to be leaving for a soccer tournament any minute now, but girlchild is too sick to play, or even to get out of bed, so I guess I am the lucky one who gets to stay home with her. She’s asleep still, so it’s pretty easy, but last night’s whining and nose-blowing drove me out of the living room, so then she started texting me things like “MOOOMMMYYY.” Yup. She’s 17. Anyway, I was planning on getting a bunch of grading done on the soccer field, so I will probably still try to do some of that, and certainly I was going to stitch on birds, but I think I’d rather do some yardwork (seriously, it’s getting that bad), since it’s currently kind of cool in temperature out there. Yes, I realize there’s still snow everywhere else, as boychild reminded me, but we’ve been in the 80s on and off all week, so it is Spring and the plants are going bonkers. But it’s like I suddenly got a free day, a Saturday without any preplanned stuff, except that I am so capable of filling it almost immediately.

Yes, I will do art as well. Don’t panic. In fact, I finished the bathtub drawing last night…

This one’s all about menopause.

Here’s the first one I did, which still needs a head (ran out of paper)…

Perhaps it needs two heads. I kinda like no head on the one in the water…It’s a little disturbing.

Then I did this one…which honestly is the one I think for sure needs to become a quilt…

Wait. Except that’s not done. Turns out about 6 weeks later, I added stuff…

Because it’s not just about what’s in the bathtub…it’s about what surrounds the bathtub too. I still have ideas for this. I like the parts that are submerged and slightly showing, like the fingers and toes. And not knowing what’s under the water. And I just thought of something to add to the one I finished last night too! Anyway. It’s all distracting me from what I really need to be working on (but that’s not a bad thing…a little distraction like this is beneficial to the artmaking process).

Last night, I sorted the browns for the recycled quilt…

There’s a lot of them, which is good. Funny…Mariah tends towards mostly browns and blues, like my daughter. We’ll have to see if the quilt tends that way too. It might have to.

I also sorted the grays, which took like 13 seconds and I didn’t even photograph, because she only had like 5 of them. I have yellows and blacks and a pile of owl fabrics that don’t fit in any specific colorway. So I could stop procrastinating and pick those fabrics for that quilt today. It’s small. It won’t take long. (trying to persuade myself…it’s gonna be a challenge to only be able to use what’s in the box.)

And then I spent over two hours cutting tiny pieces out…

At some point, I had to stop and do arm and finger exercises, because they were cramping, and the muscles in my forearm were definitely sore after Thursday night’s cutting session. I’ve actually woken up with a swollen hand before. It feels OK today though, probably because of the exercises. We did figure out that the elbow pain from the Fall is not from weightlifting…it’s from moving the quilt under the sewing machine. So I have to wear an elbow brace while sewing. It’s an extreme sport, people. An extreme sport. The pile on the left is cut out. Trash is in the middle. So colorful. Still to be cut out is on the right. I’m over 4 hours in…still thinking 12 hours total, but maybe not? I don’t know. I get distracted and have to take a technology break, check Instagram to let my brain recover from staring at pencil lines on Wonder Under. That’s part of the task time too…persuading the brain not to give up.

OK. Girlchild is awake. Not happy about it, but being upright when you can’t breathe due to snottiness is better than lying down. Gonna get some work done, whatever that consists of…garden, house, school, art. Hoping for some recharging time later…

Why I Need a Robot

So. The good news is that the girlchild doesn’t have strep, her face has stopped swelling up like a balloon, the cat is back home and feisty about her meds (might be worms), and I actually had dinner before 9 PM last night. I really need a wife. Seriously. A MadMen wife who has dinner on the table when I get home and has done all the laundry and cleaned the house. Except I know that’s totally sexist. OK, I need a robot wife. Totally. I do. Right now, she’s making my breakfast AND my lunch and she made a nice little surprise dessert for me and is hiding it in my lunchbag, because she knows yesterday was a clusterfuck even though all ended well (OK, except for some seriously tiring and frustrating moments with teens, not all of them mine). Is that a bad thing to wish for?

At some point yesterday night, I started cutting out pieces for the Ventura quilt, but I was sitting there in my office, because I couldn’t sit on the couch, because there was a dead body in there (girlchild didn’t leave until after 8), and I was getting crankier and crankier, feeling absolutely disconnected from humanity and frustrated with my existence and my inability to get truly healthy, let alone to the gym like I was supposed to yesterday (ha! at the vet until 7:30 PM) and wondering how to change all that shit, because someone said something about the evening getting better than the day (well, the NIGHT at that point, because I spent the evening at the vet and well into the night in a texting argument with the girlchild that I kept trying to get out of because there was no point), and I thought…well how the fuck is the evening supposed to get better? Because I’m cutting out 900 tiny pieces of fabric? Because I’m watching TV by myself while cutting out 900 pieces of fabric? I mean, yes, it’s relaxing on some level, it’s very meditative, cutting those beasties out, running the scissors along, considering as I cut, what is the most efficient way to cut this tiny piece out or do I want to wait until I’m ironing so I don’t lose it and where are my tiny sharp scissors and maybe I should take that JoAnns coupon and buy me some better scissors (there are a LOT of things that run through my head when I’m making stuff…it’s like Babble City). What WOULD make it better? Ice cream. Cheesecake. Nope, both unnecessary and fattening. A visit from Santa Claus? Eh. A robot cleaning my house? Yeah. THAT would make it better. How about someone sitting next to me and having a conversation and not yelling at me for being stupid or insensitive (I am mostly not either of those things) or complaining or whatever. And joking about whatever we were watching. Or commiserating. Yup. That would have made it better. I need a robot that can do that. And maybe give me a backrub while it’s sitting there. I get a little of that (the connection part…not the backrubs), but not enough apparently to recharge my depleted personal batteries at the moment.

As it was, I was relieved to have everyone more well than I had thought they were in the morning. And then I stopped cutting and got my sketchbook…and the other bathtub drawing that I tried here…

I stared at it for a bit, and then I sat there and drew most of a new one last night…

It’s not done. It needs animals. And maybe a robot! But I got the hands and legs where I wanted them. And it was finer than the other one. And the whole bathtub got in the picture. Yeah. It was really a relief to draw it. It’s been in my head for weeks. There’s another one too. But I don’t know when I’ll be able to draw that one. It’s big.

Before I did all that, while dinner was cooking and girlchild was yelling, I sorted more recycled fabrics from Mariah…the oranges…

And then the reds…

Which included one of my favorites…

I’ve never had the one with the hearts though. I’ll have to find a way to use that in the recycled quilt. Or something.

All folded up and ready to be in the next quilt…

I’m keeping them separate from the rest of my stash right now, so I can make the quilt from them. Then they’ll go play with the others. It really is a random bunch. I still have browns and blacks to sort…and a few yellows. And I never finished the blues.

Then I settled down and cut out little tiny pieces of Ventura for about two hours…

Cut out pieces on the left, trash in the middle, pieces left to cut on the right. It’s gonna be a while.

But I got started. And I’ll try to draw more tonight, to finish up that bathtub…and someday, maybe I’ll have enough of the required shit out of the way so I can start MAKING the bathtub series (ha!). And a robot to clean the bathtub…that would also be good. Actually, enough money to rip out one of the bathrooms and redo it with a NICE bathtub, because ours suck and I miss having baths (they are very relaxing), so that robot needs to come with a trust fund and a remodeling routine. Yup. Robots. That’s the solution.

A Relatively Healthy Balance

I think I did an OK job this weekend of getting schoolwork done, but also feeding the art brain. There are only so many hours in the day, and stupid things like grocery shopping and laundry have to get done, but the remaining hours, they don’t all have to be about your job. I negotiated in my head…if I grade for the length of this TV show, then I will be able to work on art afterwards. That was Sunday. Saturday? Saturday I tried to grade, but got pissed off by some kid trying to cheat his way into a passing grade (because I’m an idiot and won’t catch him?), so I just stopped. I piled all the school stuff up, dumped my grading pens on top of it, and walked the fuck away from it. Because when you get to the point that you’re angry about it, it doesn’t help anyone to be grading kids’ papers. And yeah, I’ll get a bunch of kids FREAKING out this morning because I didn’t update their grade (because they handed everything in late?), but I will just fix my laser glare upon them and they will instantly stop their whining.

Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?

So I made art. And it looks like I did a lot, but really, it was only about 4 1/2 hours over the whole weekend (that’s not really a lot for me).

I pinbasted the upholstered woman (wait, that’s a better title than what I’ve been using so far)…

And then I panicked about actually quilting it. I bought some heavier thread for it, because I thought my regular quilting thread would sink into the upholstery too much, but I was worried about how my machine would handle it…so logically, I turned to something I knew I could do…the cancer hands. I outlined them first…

Which was a piece of cake and took very little time, despite those psychotic, spiky little breast cancer cells…

And then I was lucky to have a thread that worked with the background…seriously, I don’t have much of a thread stash…so I started doing the backgrounds as well.

And before I knew it, they were both done and it was time to head off for my daughter’s CIF soccer game…

They were first in their division, so they didn’t have to play earlier this week. Saturday they played in the quarterfinals…it was a tense game. I stitched a lot. I can’t show you any of it though because we’re not allowed to, which I find kind of irritating, but whatever. I do want designers to make money off their work, but we live in America, Land of We Think Everything Is Free for the Taking, so designers have to protect themselves. And then we’re back to the kid who was cheating in my class, the kid I have to deal with today, the kid who is going to deny it all.

ANYWAY. I stitched. They tied at the end, and you can’t tie, so they went into 15 minutes of overtime…all the while, it was supposed to rain on us, but it held off…

And with 3 minutes and 20 seconds to go, we scored the winning goal. Pro: we’re going to the semifinals! Con: we’re going to the semifinals! More soccer. More cold bleachers. More tense game-watching (more stitching?). It started raining as soon as I got in the car (thank you for that reprieve).

Sunday, I finally took a deep breath (after grading for a proscribed amount of time) and threaded my machine with the heavy thread and went for it…and at first thought it was going to be a giant clusterfuck…

The thread required many prayers to the Goddess of Unbroken Thread, although there are some interesting nests on the back of this quilt. I cleaned them up the best I could…I managed to get all the way around this beast before going to the parentals to cook dinner (girlchild was sick). Then I came back and miraculously had the right color of thread for the background…

which was way easier to quilt, a relief honestly. No super-slow stitching to persuade the machine to go through many layers of upholstery, no swearing as the thread shredded in the needle. Here’s the back…

I didn’t finish all the background quilting, because I remembered that going to sleep on a Sunday night at a reasonable hour makes the rest of the week easier to get through. I usually forget this by Wednesday or Thursday night, unfortunately.

So I’m hoping to trim and bind the two hands, plus finish quilting this one as well this week. I’ve also got a pile of Wonder Under to cut out (and grades for Trimester 2 to finish, but I almost have that under control). Perhaps I should thank that cheating kid for throwing my brain under the bus and forcing me to make art instead of finishing the grading. It all turned out OK, right? As long as I can stay on top of the rest of the grades this week…thanks to my teacher’s aide and my refusal to take any more makeup work, I should be fine.

My constant goal of a healthy balance between all the parts of my life…the art brain always wants more than it gets. I don’t blame it…it certainly is the first to suffer when there’s an issue like illness. But I feel pretty good about what I got done this weekend, so I think I’ll just hold on to that feeling for a while…until I need to motivate myself past the next big step.

Iron out the Puckers

Whatever that fluke of physical nature that slammed me the last few days has finally settled into a normal, voice-killing cold, always good in my profession. I don’t feel uber-bad, though, despite runny nose and phlegmy cough, so I did manage some art last night. I was feeling like it had been days (it pretty much had), and that never feels good, sick or not.

I started by stitching down the two cancer hands…

Which took no time at all. And then I sandwiched and pinbasted them, so they are ready for quilting. That also shouldn’t take long. Maybe tonight? Maybe not. Multiple meetings today. There may be nothing left of me by nightfall.

Then because the machine was already set up for stitchdown, I went ahead and decided to do the upholstery piece. It’s scary, because you know it WANTS to fray. You can see it in the edges…they’re ready to pop free and wander off somewhere.

So I set my zigzag stitch longer and closer together (if that makes sense) to try to tame the savage beast.

And it freakin’ worked. Mostly. And my machine went through the multiple, heavy, sometimes still sticky layers with no issue at all. The thread only broke once.

You can see it’s almost a satin stitch on the back…

And it’s puckering like crazy…my camera is giving me trouble…the display is apparently gone. I’m sure I did something to make that happen, but I don’t know what. I am apparently very hard on cameras.

So stitched down doesn’t look a whole lot different than ironed down. That’s good. There’s some puckering, but I was able to iron most of it out…violently and with steam, lots of it. I think the rest will come out in the quilting (knock on wood). I didn’t have the energy (it was after midnight and I am actually sick) to sandwich and pinbaste it last night, but maybe tonight. She’s kinda scary looking. It’s the neck I think.

I did finish sorting all the batiks for the other recycled piece, but they are in piles on the floor…not very conducive to picking and choosing. So I will have to sit down for a while and sort through each color pile for each piece of that color and fold them all up together, because that’s how I like to keep fabrics. Anal, I know. What can I say? Some parts of my life are utter chaos, as was apparent yesterday afternoon and evening, so I control the few things I can, and fabric appears to be one of those things.

My FFAC quilt is ready to mail…I made a label for it last night and packed it up. I didn’t have a car yesterday, though, so I couldn’t mail it, and today I am booked through 5:30…I can’t remember when the post office closes, but I think it’s 5. Because working people? I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder.

Today I start a brand-new, never-been-used assignment with my kids…seriously hoping it’s not a clusterfuck. It could be! That’s the wonder of new technology though…you have to experiment to find out what can go horribly wrong. And then you move on. Meditative breathing might come in handy there…

Ironing Her Down…

My hand hurts tonight from cutting the upholstery fabrics for two nights running…it’s harder to cut through than cotton quilting fabric. And my scissors probably aren’t great.

There’s the trash…

Here’s the upholstery fabrics I used…texture really was the only pattern.

I had all the pieces ready to cut out on Monday night…

Oh yeah, I had two cottons…white because there wasn’t any, and black for the pupil, because it was going to be tiny and the nipples are bad enough in this stuff…

I started cutting stuff out Monday night (and almost finished). You can see the seam in the arm.

I did find a background fabric that works. I usually pick them first, but because my fabrics were limited, I started with what I had for the body. I figured I could thrift shop a background fabric if I couldn’t find anything in my house. Which yes, of course, meant that I would be carrying around cut-out body parts, like boobs and things, to local thrift shops. I don’t always think these things through. There it is…it’s purple…it’s a Jinny Beyer tiny dot print probably from the 90s. ANCIENT. Or vintage. You decide.

What’s left in the box is what I had left Monday night at 1 AM, when I decided sleep was in my best interest. Sometimes I think these things through…not last night, though, because I was up Way Too Late. I blame the full moon. I blame it for lots of things.

Tuesday night, I finished cutting pieces out and then started ironing.

This quilt only has about 150 pieces, so I could lay them all out at once…

The textures were interesting. Here’s me ironing the eyeballs separately. Then I can lay them on the face at the same time and make sure spacing is right and they don’t look kittywampus.

I was going to go to bed around midnight, like after I had ironed a whole bunch together, but then I realized I was almost done, so I didn’t stop. This is what causes my sleep issues. My art. The part of my brain that thought that was a good idea.

And here she is on her background.

Looking much pinker than she is in reality…she’s more the yellow tones in the upper picture.

The bitchy bit is going to be the stitchdown, because I think it’s gonna fray like crazy. I debated putting tulle over it, but I don’t think that will stop it and it will just annoy me. So I’m just gonna go balls out and stitch it down. I don’t know when that will happen though, because I’m going to be gone for a few days and I’m way too tired tonight (see last night’s excess for explanation) to start anything that involves a needle going up and down very fast near my hand. I’m going to finish this post, print one thing for school, and go to bed. Well, first I’m going to have to rinse the girlchild’s dishes, because although I asked her to do it before she went to bed, I don’t think she did, so I will have to do that so I can run the dishwasher. I was gone for 13 hours today and she couldn’t manage to get the dog from her dad’s house and feed both the beasts. Ugh. She needs to go to college. I love her dearly, but she needs a reality slap upside the head.

And I need more sleep.

Finding Fabrics

I’ve been sewing since I was 7 or 8. My first machine-sewn piece of clothing was a 70s floppy blouse made from my mom’s old yellow curtains and some lace. I sewed many of my clothes in middle- and high school, thus assuring my freak status. It did mean I always had bits and pieces of fabric leftovers, off cuts from this or that outfit, lying around.

When I got older, I started sewing for the house: curtains, cushions, couch slipcovers, and whatever. In 1990, at the age of 23, I took my first quilting class. I started by buying 1/4 yards of fabric. Now I buy 1/2 yards unless I need it for something in particular like a backing or a background where I know I need more than that. Over the years, many people have gifted me fabric, some randomly sending it through the mail, some giving me gifts at Christmas and birthday, and more commonly, divesting themselves of THEIR stash by moving it on to me. I rarely say no. When crazy people say things like, “I have too much fabric and I need to get rid of some,” it just confuses me. One woman about 10 years ago went through her stash and gave me about half of it. I still don’t really know why. She was a smoker, so that took some work, but I wash everything anyway. My SIL sent me offcuts from when she quilted. When my grandmother died, I got all the leftover pieces from all the pajamas she had made as Christmas Eve gifts over the years…talk about vintage. I did actually pack a bunch of those up and sell them on eBay for quite a profit. I kept small pieces of some of the more interesting ones.

So this show came up on the radar for a group I’m in called California Fibers. The Loft at Liz’s is a gallery in Los Angeles that does a Diverted Destruction show every year, suggesting people use recycled materials to create work. Our group was chosen to do a show there this summer, and Liz got us access to those upholstery fabric sample books you see when you go pick out your next couch or whatever. I chose one that was texture, not a lot of color really…

Mostly because I couldn’t visualize my process in any of the others. I’ve removed all the labels off the back and cut them out of the book, then ordered them vaguely by color. OK, there’s some pink and red in there, and even some green and blue…but none of the pieces are particularly big, which might be a problem. I could also paint over them. This is an option I have used before.

So I have a drawing for this one…

I think the big pieces will lend themselves nicely to using texture…but I think the major body pieces might be an issue. Still trying to figure that part out.

The other drawing…because I’m apparently supposed to do two…

Has more detail and really lends itself to being done in cottons…just because of the piece sizes…so for this, I turned to my second recent stash of recyclables: Mariah.

Mariah texted me around the new year and asked if I wanted some of her offcuts from making quilts. She’s made baby quilts and sold them around town, plus she’s made some beautiful batik quilts for her family. But once you have these long strips or tiny triangles or squares cut, they aren’t good for much except making a big pile in the sewing room. Since she was pregnant with baby number 2 at the time (born last week!), she was trying to clean up and pare things down, so we filled two trash bags with fabric…here’s halfway through my color sorting at home.

I still have the problem of small pieces in general, though…although there are some large pieces in there that I took for backings. They aren’t really body appropriate though. There’s a LOT of blue and brown…

Not very much white or gray…

And these randomly pieced bits that are leftovers, which I’m trying to figure out how to get into the quilt…I think I can do it…

So the biggest problem with this batch, besides folding it all or figuring out how to store it, is how to make sure the quilt isn’t a crazy mismatch of stuff, because I can’t choose from my whole stash. I might need to piece the background if I can’t find something that’s recycled, in my stash, and appropriate. There are about 10 fabrics that were big pieces that are currently in the dryer, but most of them would compete too much with the image.

So there’s that. Sometime this week, I’ll start picking fabrics out for this. Until then, know that the show will be June 27-September 8 at The Loft at Liz’s, and one of these pieces will be there. And I’ll keep you updated on the process as I muddle my way through it.