Hello Friday…

Hello Friday. I’m glad you’re here, although you will be long and full of tests and whiny kids who didn’t study because they think grades are magical things that happen to them and there will be soccer and a plane flight and lots of girly squealing on the other end…wait…no…this is me and Vickie…we don’t girly squeal…we guffaw and snort and make rude comments. So there’ll be lots of that. And maybe I’ll be allowed to sleep…who knows? But there will be lots of food and a musical and hanging out with Tanya and Ethiopian food and maybe some SCIENCE and some art supplies and who knows what else.

But it’s Friday at least, and although I will get absolutely no art made today, Saturday, or probably even Sunday, that’s OK, because I will be feeding the artist’s mind with all the experiences and laughter and goofiness and serious discussion that it needs to be what it is. To do what it does.

Plus I have Monday off, so I can catch up!

Who am I kidding? I will never catch up. Seriously, I have three assignments that need grading from last week, can’t hand any of them off to my TA because they’re too complicated, and I’m about to get four more today. Really I should take all my grading with me (not happening). Or I should stop assigning things.

I am looking forward to coming back and getting my focus on…it’s been off this week for a variety of reasons. I need to stitch down, sandwich, and quilt the two cancer hands. I need to stitch down (although it will probably fray like a bitch) the first of the recycled pieces and pick fabrics for the next one, because they are currently in piles in my living room. I need to start tracing Wonder Under for the Earth Mother from Ventura (seriously, I think that’s her name). That’s next week. Ha! Because I won’t have 7 assignments to grade, 2 soccer games, a union meeting, and god knows what else that hasn’t even hit me upside the head yet?

Yeah. Whatever. I can do it.

And I’m taking my sketchbook on the plane. I’m hoping to sit beside some conservative businessman and draw scary boobs with eyeballs in them. Wait a minute. I really do like that idea. I have not done that. How have I not done that?

Hey Vickie, can I sit at the breakfast table with your kids and draw? She’s gonna say yes.

Meanwhile, my FFAC donation quilt will be winging its way to a newish art quilter in Florida, while mine comes from Belgium…

I’ll post pictures when it gets here. Could be a while. I can handle waiting. Then maybe I will hang art in the living room, ignoring the girlchild’s edict of no nudity. My house. My rules. Ha. Like that works.

In other cool news, Earth Stories is now traveling through the middle of 2017…

It will be in Athens, Ohio, May 23-September 7, 2015; San Jose, California, November 6, 2015-February 28, 2016; Huntington, West Virginia, June 25-October 2, 2016; and Erie, New York, January 20– June 11, 2017. Plenty of opportunities to see it…I’m aiming for the San Jose one of course.

I fly places once or twice a year…my quilts? They get to go all over. Lucky beasts.

Tomorrow Is the Day

Tomorrow is the FFAC donation day…10 AM Central Time (that’s 8 AM Pacific time, if you’re time-challenged like me)…email as directed. Here’s Virginia’s instructions and my piece, which could be yours (artwork is randomly assigned). I just need one person willing to donate for this thing to work…

1 Day – 100 Artists – 100 Patrons – $10,000
This Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Opens 10 a.m. Central

How The Fundraiser Works

1. On February 4, the first 100 people to contact me (Virginia(at)VirginiaSpiegel.com) beginning at 10 a.m. Central will be given a link to donate $100 by credit card directly to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.

To be fair to all, no e-mails time dated before 10 a.m. Central will be opened. I am not responsible for the vagaries of the e-mail system.
Please note your donation to the ACS will be credited through the Forest Lake Area Relay For Life. Why?

2. Each donor will receive an artwork from one of the 100 generous and talented artists listed below. Assignments of artwork will be made using a random number generator by someone other than me. Artwork will not be shared here in advance, but may appear on artists’ websites or other social media before the event. See ourPinterest board for previews of many artworks. Thanks to Deborah Boschert for maintaining the board.

3. The artwork may be any size as long as the minimum retail value is $100. Artwork smaller than 8×10″ will be mounted to 8×10″ or 9×9.” The artwork will contain fiber and may or may not be stitched. The artwork may or may not be made specifically for this event.

3. Each artist will receive her/his patron’s e-mail address to arrange shipping. Artwork will be shipped directly from the artist. Please note this is an international roster of artists. Please thank the artist for not only donating the artwork, but also shipping it to you.

4. Each artist would love to receive a low res photo of the artwork in situ from the new owner. This is not required, but the best photos may be shared here after the event.

Questions? Contact me at Virginia(at)VirginiaSpiegel.com
or here is a series of Q&A about the event.
If you would like to be sure your Request to Donate does not go in my spam folder on February 4, send a trial message today.

Special Note: Our goal of $10,000 will make Fiberart For A Cause’s donations to the American Cancer Society a nice even one-quarter of a million dollars and FFAC will be happily retired.

My FFAC The 100 Donation Quilt

So if you like this little beauty, it will be up on February 4th, 10 AM CST, in an attempt to raise $10,000 in one day for cancer research.

This is Fly, Be Free, and it measures about 12″ w x 10.5″ h. It has a hanging sleeve on the back.

The first 100 donors will get one of the 100 quilts donated by quilt artists from far and wide. No, you can’t choose which one you get, but there are some beautiful quilts I’ve seen so far. If you would like more information about the donation process and the background of Fiberart for a Cause and Virginia Spiegel, go look at her website here.

Binding Late

I have a significant callus on my middle right finger from a teeny tiny needle poking the crap out of the same spot. I don’t thimble, because I just move to a different finger if there’s a thimble there. Can’t figure the logic of that out, but if you hang out with me long enough, you’ll realize logic isn’t my strong point. I’ve got it…it just doesn’t look like yours.

I had a goal last night of finishing grading one assignment from December (ugh) and then I would be allowed to work on the two quilts that are hanging out in my office at the moment. Or is it my studio. Some days it’s hard to tell. It’s my Offudio. Or my Stoffice. My Studice. Those are awful. It’s my workspace. Anyway…I managed to grade everything during the girlchild’s game because she was sick and only played 20 minutes…so instead of sitting there and stitching (I could have worked on birds…although I haven’t been doing that much), I graded those suckers and got them done. Insert hallelujah here. Don’t get really excited yet though, because the huge project from before break is still ungraded and mocking me.

Dinner was in the crockpot, although despite an email, a verbal reminder, and a text, the boychild forgot to put it in and turn it on (sigh)…when girlchild got home, she put it in on high though, and it worked fine. So while dinner finalized (aka tater tots…the sign of a good mom), I logged grades and listened to the snuffles of the sick child who has three college apps due today that she has not done. After dinner, I started working.

I started with the outline quilting of the FFAC The 100 donation quilt…

This is not a big quilt. When the outlining was done, I went on to the background quilting…

That didn’t take long…seriously, total quilting was barely over an hour.

Trimmed it. It’s about 10×12″.

Then I trimmed the other one that’s been lying around for days and found a binding that worked for both of them…they’re kind of in the same blue tone, although the donation quilt is much brighter…and I got the binding on…

This one is bigger, about 19×18″. It needs ink too. I’m about halfway done with the binding on it. Yes, I stayed up way too late. At some point, I looked at the clock and chastised myself, realizing I COULD stay up and finish the binding, but that was fucking crazy. So I went to bed. You don’t want to know what time.

I did actually finish the binding on the little one. Ouch.

The ouch is for the hole in my finger. The quilt’s really not that lumpy…in the picture above, it’s all pinned and it distorted it. I’ll photograph it for real this afternoon. It’s nice and flat and square corners. Really. It still needs a label. I couldn’t name it last night…but this morning while resizing the photos, it came to me: Fly, Be Free. I say it all the time. So there’s my third finish of 2015. If you like it, you have a 1 in 100 chance to get it through the FFAC The 100 donation drive on February 4.

It’s funny. I want to make another big quilt before Spring Break. I really do. And I have no shortage of drawings that could become a large quilt. But then it’s so easy to make these little ones…it’s tempting to just do one every couple of weeks instead. I have enough smaller drawings…I could totally do that. And there’s the greater possibility that small pieces will sell. There are two small ones I’m doing after this, the hand/cancer cell pieces. The big ones are the better pieces for shows though, so I need to work on that (so I can get more rejections! Now there’s attitude for you.). Realistically, I can only make 5 or 6 big quilts a year, and that would be starting now. I’ll have to decide soon. Because I have this art drive that does not freakin’ stop. No down time, I guess. I should not complain…no artist’s block for me. Knock on wood.

Soccer…yeah…even sick, she played well…

Although this was a moon ball.

Back to work. The school type of work…another day of trying to explain how the brain works. I probably shouldn’t be talking…

Remembering How to Sleep…

Remembering how to sleep…something I have to relearn each time we start school again. People ask me all the time if I sleep, because I do all this stuff (I do a lot of it at the same time? Maybe?). I read at the gym. I am still writing that sci fi novel, mostly at the gym. While I’m waiting for dinner to cook in the oven, I’m in here writing or resizing photos or cutting stuff out. Drawings build in my head during quiet moments in the car or staff meetings (shhh…don’t tell). They color themselves in while I’m cutting onions or listening to a parent make excuses for their child. I grade papers at soccer games, in waiting rooms. Hardly anything in my life happens just one thing at a time. Right now, I’m eating breakfast and typing, while listing the things I need to take to work with me, accepting that I might not finish this post before I have to leave.

I do sleep. I don’t sleep much, that’s for sure, and the sleep I get isn’t great. I know that’s not good for me, but I can read any number of articles about how I should sleep more and better, and they don’t actually help me sleep. I’ve never ever been a good sleeper. I’ve always been a night owl. Nothing has changed. I’m just older. When I can sleep, I do. Last night was not one of those nights.

I didn’t start ironing until after 10:30. I was lucky and got out of school meetings early, raced to the gym (wrote my book and read my book), came home and cooked dinner, graded some papers (part of my plan to get caught up is to actually grade every day…what a concept), and then headed to the ironing board. It’s not like it would take long to iron this…

But ironically, I had missed numbering and tracing a part. That was lame. Picked a background…

Needs outlining. Nice camera strap in the photo there…late-night art photography. Did it on purpose! I would have stitched it down and pinbasted it last night if I didn’t have another quilt already under the machine. I hate changing out thread, so I decided to finish quilting this instead.

It was only another 37 minutes. Now you know how I stay up so late.

Even after that, my brain was racing, on overdrive. They talk about shutting computers off, that electronic light messes with your sleep. Hell, it wouldn’t matter. My art brain messes with my sleep. It wanted to finish both quilts last night and my adult/mom brain put the kibosh on that. Are you kidding me? You have school tomorrow. You are teaching young minds something tomorrow (shit, wish I could remember what I’m teaching…something ironically to do with the nervous system…this is why I lesson plan on Sundays, when I’m awake). You did not get enough sleep Sunday night. Now is not the time to take a stand for your art.

Anyway, so the one needs a binding and the other needs a couple hours of work. Honestly, it’s bigger and more complicated than it should be, but I’m OK with that at the moment…because it’s getting done. And the next big quilt is chomping at the bit in my head.

Making a Donation Quilt…Finally…

It figures I would wait until the day before school starts to actually begin work on the FFAC donation quilt. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go here to read about Virginia Spiegel’s fundraiser to raise $10,000 for cancer research in one day: 100 artists creating 100 works for a donation of $100 each. The event is February 4 starting at 10 AM Central time.

Yes, you’ve read my whinging about trying to come up with an idea for weeks now, and it finally took an episode of The Walking Dead to get it in my head (which is amusing, because all I actually drew during the episode were the hands). I did have the heart part in my head, but got distracted by good TV Saturday night (not an oxymoron), and waited until Sunday night, after dinner was made and was in the oven, at my parents’ house, sitting at their table, before I could draw it. I did actually steal the heart from the Gender Equality quilt that is in the Visions opening this Saturday, so if you’re there, you may recognize it…

The wings were new. And it’s not that I got the idea from the TV; it’s that the TV distracts the talkie annoying part of my brain long enough for the artist brain to just jump in and draw.

I persuaded the boychild to let me drive by the copy place on the way home from the parentals, thus vastly confusing the girlchild, who was driving home in her car, as we turned off north, away from the house. But after I had cleaned up and started laundry and graded some papers (hey, there’s a reality check…school starts in an hour and 13 minutes…shut up!), I numbered it (41 pieces) and traced it onto Wonder Under…

Then I cut out the Wonder Under while finishing up Fargo, a series that really grew on me. Back to The Next Generation for fabric choosing…I’m almost done with this whole series…will miss Jean Luc supervising my fabric choices. He’s been so helpful.

None of it took very long…because it’s small and it doesn’t have 2000 pieces in it. Duh.

I used 12 fabrics. TWELVE.

And then yes, I stayed up to cut them all out, even though school started in the morning, because you know what? Teachers don’t sleep well the night before school starts after a break anyway. Our brains are worried the alarm won’t go off, we don’t have everything done, the power will go out, the world will end…although why that would be a bad thing in terms of making it to school on time, I don’t know. I just know we don’t sleep.

I also did a redraw on the breast cancer cell in the hand.

There’s a possibility that either this one or the previous drawing might become a quilt as well, but first I have to finish the FFAC quilt. Ironing tonight, hopefully, and as far as I can get on the rest of it. But right now, I need to find something besides pajamas to wear to school (the laundry wasn’t quite dry). This is the hardest part of being an artist…going off to the day job when you just want to work on the art.

Twitching Eyelid, Missing Stovetop

No, this is not a single-mom’s version of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon…or is it?

So this is where my stovetop used to be…

Yeah. I had a replacement, but it was too small. We can talk later about why it was too small. Let’s just say it was too small. Meanwhile, the nice installation guy had to cut the wires to get the old one out…it was half-functioning, which is still a lot more functional than this hole is. So when we realized it was too small, my day kind of slapped me upside the face.

It’s OK. I got my car back. I’m just going to drive it until whatever caused issues with it up on Sunrise Highway happens again and it dies again. Not much else I can do. He wouldn’t charge me anything for trying to figure it out. I offered him a turkey. The stovetop installation guy also wouldn’t charge me anything for not installing a stovetop. Turkey? No? Getting the car back meant I had time to go to Sears, return the too-small stovetop, and order one that would fit, because the girlchild now had a car to go to her soccer game. The stovetop? For January 19. OK. It’s all right. I have a mostly working oven, a toaster, an electric tea kettle, and a microwave. Oh, and a crock pot. We can eat. We can toast things. We just can’t fry things or make sauces. Or pasta. Although there’s been some contemplation if we boiled water in the tea kettle over and over again and kept pouring it over the pasta, it would cook to some extent. Insert evil eye glare here.

So there’s that. And I went into my classroom and found all the crap for Monday’s lab and organized some stuff and copied the stuff I need for Monday. So I don’t have to go back there until Monday. Which is when school starts, so I really should be there. But I can sort of ignore it for two days. My left eyelid, however, is not ignoring it. It’s still twitching like a motherfucker.

While the guy was not installing my stovetop, I started sorting all of Mariah’s hand-me-down fabrics by color…

The kids say they couldn’t possibly make the decisions I do about multi-colored pieces. Or where I draw the line between brown and orange or white and yellow. Or even green and blue. Whatever. It will probably take me months to do this.

The day kicking my ass found me in a bar (oh yeah) with my sketchbook and a glass of wine, trying to make sense of cancer donation quilts once again…first of all, breast cancer cells are alternately terrifying and beautiful in their spikiness.

But I think I need to draw something not related to cancer. I think these spiky cells will end up in something though. How can they not?

And when I came home, I figured out how to cook the previously planned dinner without a stovetop, because someone, whose name will stay unknown, kept texting me that she was hungry but couldn’t possibly handle making dinner, and then I tried to quilt, but I was really really tired…

Yeah, drinking in the early evening after a long stressful day can do that to you. So I didn’t finish her. And today I’m hiking and I don’t know what else, but it isn’t quilting and it isn’t grading papers…it’s whatever it takes to get the damn eyelid under control. Because that’s a sign of stress and it needs to wander off somewhere else.

Drawing Cancer…

Oh holy vacation we call Winter Break, as you slither from my fingers and wither away into workload from hell, I miss you already. I spent time yesterday writing homework for next week. I had to go to school to find the journals I thought I had brought home with me. I have tried to pin my brain down to decisionmaking on the lesson-planning front at least five times, and it wanders off halfway through, complaining that it would like to finish the book it’s reading, or go see a movie, or even clean the kitchen, because that is way more engaging than slogging through a lesson plan revamp. Or is there any point in the revamp? All the science standards change next year…why am I working so hard on adjustments this year, when I won’t even be teaching this content next year?

Who knows. I don’t. It was easier last year to let things like that drop. I should keep remembering that. Let It Go. Oh god, now that fucking song is in my head; make it stop.

All right. So yesterday was a giant clusterfuck of you have to be here or there or everywhere and then sit for an hour in a parking lot, and girlchild’s formal dress disaster (aka the genetics of the female body and how none of us look good in those skimpy dresses), and finally at some point, I found myself realizing that I need to get this cancer quilt done. Or at least started. It’s not going to take long, but I know what the next three weeks look like and I’m flailing.

So instead of taking the endless Christmas stocking that will never be finished (hence the endless part) to my monthly stitching meeting, I took my sketchbook and a couple of pens. I figured I would force myself to draw and even if it was crap (boundless crap), I would have a start and maybe I could come home and draw something that wasn’t crap. The night before, I started with the hand in the middle…

Totally fucked it up. Decided to keep going and drew the mouth, and then the pizza just jumped in there. Crap drawing. But drawing. And I haven’t been doing much of that, so I’m out of practice again. Remember my plan to draw every Friday night? Yeah. So do I. OK. The drawing isn’t crap. The cat is crap. The rest…I could do something with that. The hand sucks. Whatever.

So then I was staring at the paper in this Starbucks in a Barnes & Noble, and although I often draw in public, I don’t really draw with people watching me much. So I drew the hands…

Which I think are good…remember this had to be simple. But then the bird. And I hated the bird. This morning? Staring at the picture of it? I don’t hate the bird. But he’s got too many damn pieces for this one. I could do the hands again and put something else there (like an anatomically correct heart…not a uterus…I mean, I COULD put a uterus there, but…that would kind of mess with my decision that this piece should not scare the crap out of some poor donor in some state that can’t handle the existence of a uterus). So reject. For now.

Meanwhile, I’ve got Julie and Kathy talking to me about cells and cancer and infusion and ports (I purposely took the sketchbook to this group because Julie’s a survivor and Kathy’s a science person…I knew they could throw some stuff at me that would poke at the sleeping drawing brain cells and wake them the fuck up). So we were talking about more abstract representations of when the chemo goes into the body and attacks the cells, which Julie has obviously visualized (and experienced), and I’m trying to get my head around it, to make an image out of it that is still a Kathy quilt but goes where I want it to go…and I started with the side view…

Except now I have a breast in there, which breaks my rules for this quilt, and then it deteriorated into a tattoo from a photo I saw online and then there were antennae. If you are in charge of filming my retrospective, you should totally record Julie and Kathy, in a Starbucks in a Barnes & Noble, describing my drawing process. Because Kathy knew it was endoplasmic reticulum. And Julie wasn’t sure about the antennae.

Hell, I’m not sure about the antennae. But I’m getting closer. Really. I know it seems like I’m flailing all over the place, but I’m getting closer.

When I got home, I was tired…but wanted to get a start on the quilting of that other small quilt, which now has a name…

I woke up to it this morning…the name, not the quilt…

I do not take my quilts to bed with me.

I finished the outlining. It’s not really dark on that side…I just couldn’t get the camera to behave last night and I was too tired to fuss about it. Now I just need to do the background and bind it and it’s done. Except what I REALLY should be doing is lesson-planning and grading. UGH. I hate responsibilities.

Speaking of, I finished the two commissioned birds and sent them off to their owner yesterday…this is Owl 3…

And this is HeyBird 3…

The first two quilts of 2015.

I’m still watching a lot of this…

And honestly not getting a whole lot done while I watch. A tiny bit of grading, maybe some stitching, but mostly just watching and brain dead. I know it’s OK to have some down time after finishing major work, and I’m trying to let my brain have that, but there’s definitely a push in my head for getting the next thing done…today being the last real day of vacation before going back, I’m definitely kind of buried in that rushed feeling of checking stuff off the to-do list. Which sucks. And I still need to draw the cancer quilt. Damn.

The 100: Should I Draw or Should I Not?

So I’ve been thinking about this donation piece I’m going to do for FFAC The 100 Fundraiser, and I have some drawings that are already done (OK, I have hundreds of drawings that are already done)…and this time of year is apparently going to kick my butt in terms of getting any work done (almost nothing last night…again), so I pulled out one of the medium-sized sketchbooks to see what was there, because why remake the wheel? If I already have something that will work…

Yeah. That’s got way too many pieces in it. One of the things we’re supposed to try to do is keep it in the $100 range, at least 8×10″, which means looking at a sketchbook that’s 10×12″ is probably a mistake. But this would make a cool smaller quilt.

Then I had some drawings that I had already exploded (OK, that’s not the right word, but I haven’t had enough caffeine yet to come up with the right one…dammit…ENLARGED), but same issue.

They’re going to be too big or too complicated. Recognize that bird? Yup. It’s the original drawing from whence the purple bird came.

This drawing is really old…never got done. I even numbered all the pieces. It’s been a bit beat up.

I might have to ship the piece overseas, so I want it to fit flat in a padded envelope, ideally. Shipping can be really expensive. Maybe just the bird and the hand in that one? That might work?

And then I saw Kathy York’s piece, and I wanted to be one of the 100 donors. We’ll see what money looks like in February. Odds are it’s gonna be ugly (college apps). So you should do it because you might get that canoe and that canoe is awesome.

So I went back to considering my options (and being irritated because I haven’t even started yet and the other Kathy is done…not irritated at HER of course…she’s awesome…and I’m just too busy and that sucks at the moment).

So this one is still hanging around (as is Calli)…although very cool and possibly small enough, it’s probably way too complicated.

The two smallest of the birds came out at about $100 calculated hours. Keep that in mind. That’s like less than 20 pieces (very hard for me to go that simple) and they were 8×10″.

So I’m still thinking about it. Keep it simple, right?

This one is simpler…

but too big. And those leaves are pretty fancy schmancy. I could go back to its original size? Or I could just pull out the smaller sketchbook and draw with size and pieces in mind…starting over…

Calli’s no help with this. Sigh. Will keep mulling this over until I have time to deal with it!

FFAC The 100 Fundraiser to Fight Cancer

So I never do these. But Virginia is a good person and has done a ton of work for cancer and for SAQA and she asked nicely. I am excited to be an invited artist for “The 100,” to be held Wednesday, February 4, 2015. The goal for this fiber fundraiser for the American Cancer Society is to raise $10,000 in one day. My job is to make one piece of art and to persuade at least one of you to donate $100 on February 4. You will get an original piece of art (randomly assigned) from one of The 100 (100 artists who agreed to be a part of this).

You can see all the details on the FFAC The 100 website.

I am sure you want to be one of the exclusive 100 patrons who will receive an artwork from one of the 100 extraordinary international fiber artists. Hell, I want to be a patron (hmmm…send kid to college? Or buy more art. It’s a tough one.).

Fiberart for a Cause has already raised $240,000 through the generosity of fiber artists and patrons.

I will be showing you what I’m making here on the website (as soon as I finish the one that has to be done by January 1). You’ve seen me do the birds in the last year; that’s about the size we’re looking at…at least 8×10 (and I can’t work that small). My internal debate, which is yet to be resolved, is whether to do a nude or not? Because I know that not all of the 100 patrons will be pro-nudity, but then again, it’s what I’m known for. I’m not sure how many of y’all want a uterus hanging on the wall, though. So yeah. My brain is leaning towards a nice, cute, furry or feathery animal.

But then the rebel-bitch in me wants to do a giant boob.

So there we are. Click on through, check out the artists, consider how cancer has affected you, and decide whether it’s worth the crazy risk to get a cool piece of art that you didn’t get to choose yourself. It’s kinda cool.