OK, so this week is just plain weird. State testing for two days, so 3+ hours with kids for two days, then they leave and I hopefully am super efficient and finish grading everything (ha! hahahahah.). Then I leave at some ungodly hour on Thursday for Quilt National, knock on wood, everything goes well. You never know. I certainly don’t. Looking forward to it though. Seeing the art. Talking to artists. Fun stuff, really. It’s one of the things I appreciate about the art quilt world. In fact, I was at a local SAQA meeting on Saturday, and it’s cool to see people present their work and talk about what they do. It makes me feel like I don’t do much, though…they’re all starting philanthropic groups and teaching classes and writing books…and I just make quilts. It’s OK…I don’t want to teach quilt classes and I don’t know what I’d write a quilt book about that would actually get published anywhere, so for now, I’ll just keep making the work. Which is, in fact, the part I like best.

So on Friday, I had to put two heads back on, and finally decided that the clay coathanger was not gonna work, so I made a new hand with a hole in it, and I’ll make a metal coathanger to go in there. That’s a better idea anyway. I got everything reattached and put the first super light layer of underglaze on…

It’s a bit too pinky. I’ll work on that. I’m gonna be underglazing for a while, no matter what. I’m hoping I don’t have to keep fixing things, but I’m sure I will. There’s a lot of things attached to this.

I finished tracing the last of the pieces for the new quilt, which is small (for me), on Friday night. And then I cut them all out.

It’s only got like 137 pieces, so it was fast. I was going to start ironing to fabrics on Saturday, but Kitten had some major pee/poop issues and it involved some fabric bins. She’s decided that’s where she lives now, and I had them covered by towels, but that’s not enough in this case. So I ended up washing two bins of fabric with the pee remover stuff and then sorting through about 8 bins of fabric, culling fat quarters for donation. I never made it through all of my fabric over a year ago when I last did this, so it was a good time to do that. I keep the stuff I use the most, and because I use super small pieces with most fabrics, those are the ones I cut in half, donating some to Social Justice Sewing Academy and some to the Navajo Quilt Project. It allows me to keep buying some fabric (I like a huge palette), but not be drowning in fabric. Here’s some of what I sorted through.

Grays and blues mostly. It’s also nice to reacquaint myself with fabrics I haven’t seen for a while. There’s some in those bins that will be hair in the new quilt, I think. The blues, not the grays, just in case you’re thinking I’m normal.

Last night, I finally started ironing the pieces of the new quilt down to fabric.

Not so exciting in the color ranges at the moment. This won’t take long. I might even finish tonight. We’ll see.

At the SAQA meeting on Saturday, I recognized this artist, Ellen Ann Eddy…

I’ve always loved her work; I took one of her classes early on in my art quilt development, but obviously, her method didn’t really stick. I do have a baby I made in her style way back in the day that I meant to make into something bigger. Maybe should pull that out.

That is how I feel some mornings, but I’m definitely not 29. My knees are not anywhere close to 29.

Anyway, art tonight, grading all day, kids complaining that they still have to work…all day, every day. Book club tonight! Yes, I finished the book, thank goodness. I actually really liked it, although I’m blanking on it right now. Not really awake. Lots of meetings today. Gotta write sub plans. All good. Trying to live a full life means I have bits of bougainvillea in my thumb right now, a quilt in progress, many shipping dates coming up, at least one thing I need to enter, cat laundry to do (yes, more, but not pee this time), and four thousand things to grade. Or throw away? It’s possible I will do that. Shhh. Don’t tell the kids. Must go to work now.