I Swear It…

Well. Happy late Mother’s Day to all of you. I was quite glad to survive mine with only one trip to Home Depot and some strewing of tools all over the entryway floor. But at least I can open and close the front door now. I got almost nothing done yesterday besides the door, but whatever. I’ve been incredibly efficient this morning in the last 7 minutes, so that bodes well for the rest of the day. Maybe. I just realized what time it is. Fuck.

It’s OK. I will survive. I felt incredibly overwhelmed yesterday, even Saturday (hit 5 stops in 2 hours…no biggie) and last night could’ve used an assist or five.

So yeah, there was this…

That is a hole to the outdoors…it didn’t start out that way. I’d brought half the groceries up and then went to grab the handle to go back outside, and it pulled apart. It had been loose before, but not heinously so. In fact, I’ve tightened it before. My dad will tell you it’s because I’m hard on doors, but honestly, WTF, you should be able to pull on a door handle and not have it fall to pieces. I suspect it’s because it needs to be attached at the bottom too, but dad said no, it was a pain and unnecessary (I’m gonna do that bit sometime soon…OK, maybe summer). My dad will tell you all breakage and damage is because I’m hard on stuff, and maybe that’s true. But I’ve never had a handle pull apart like that and I’ve opened a lot of doors over and over and over again. So I think that’s bullshit.

After analyzing the pieces (because when the other side dropped, pieces flew…pieces that had previously been attached and now were not) and calling the ex, who gave his analysis of “I don’t know how the fuck this goes back together” and “You seem to be missing at least one piece” (goes digging around the pots and plants that are around the front door, like I haven’t already done that shit), and having the debate of Go Buy Another One (they ain’t cheap) or Call a Locksmith (they ain’t cheap either), I drove off to Home Depot and found the same damn thing and installed it in about 14 seconds flat.

And yes, the door needs painting and I should probably pick up all that crap on the floor, but I was sort of emotionally a disaster at that point. So there. I left it. Walked the fuck away.

Mother’s Day. Sigh. My ass. Girlchild posted a photo on Instagram which is kinda how we roll…

My students will tell you that’s how I take all photos with them. Like I know it’s gonna be a bad photo, so let’s OWN that bitch.

After making lunches for the whole week (stupid recipes that lie and say it will take 30 minutes to make this…in whose world? The one where someone’s helping you by chopping it all up? And why does yours look so colorful? Mine is decidedly brown. With brown overtones.) and dinner and reading while eating, I said Fuck You to my job and wandered into the studio for some me time.

Might as well iron this thing.

So I did…

It’s very meditative, this ironing stuff.

And it’s kinda cool that I’m doing this now, because I drew this on the flight home from dropping off the girlchild at college, and she’s done on Thursday, though I won’t see her for another 10 days because she’s gonna visit her cousins first. So I guess this ushers her home.

I stopped thinking about parents and students and the girlchild stressing out over finals and other shit and crap and doors and a house that needs more maintenance than I can handle.

I ironed the stuff in her hair separately…

Then plopped it on. It was almost midnight at that point (there’s math in the clouds by the way…I totally love that).

So I made the intelligent decision to go to bed instead of continuing to iron…even though I wanted to. Hopefully that will make me a less irritable person today, although it’s hard to say. There are 28 days of school left, and I’m feeling every single one. I have a ton of money-making work to do tonight (art CAN be money-making, but usually not), so I don’t know how much time I’ll get for ironing. But there will be some. I swear it. On the crap that is still strewn all over my entryway floor, I swear it.

Willy Nilly

So the good news is that I finished ironing all the pieces down onto fabric on the newest quilt. It’s not a huge piece, maybe 18×26″ or so. It’s from one of my smaller sketchbooks. It’s not FOR anything, no show, no deadline. Although it technically has no nudity in it, so that’s a plus for those weird little shows that want small pieces but can’t show boobies. After the last few demanding pieces, I wanted to do something just for me, something mellow, something easy, something that didn’t have a million hours attached to it. So it took about 5 hours and 45 minutes to pick out fabrics. Next I’ll start trimming them, probably at my quilt class on Thursday. I might work on the drawing tonight, try to get it done, since it’s probably the next one I’ll work on. That perennial debate between working on what I want to work on, and trying to make work that will get into shows. Everything has a theme and this one doesn’t fit many of them. That’s why I’m doing it though. Just a break from the artistic rat race.

So I had all these cactus spikes lined up in order for ironing…

I had misnumbered some of them (I do this all the time), so there’s double numbers with letters to tell them apart, but in the long run, it’s cactus spikes. It doesn’t matter much. I actually used three different colors of spikes. Kinda crazy there.

Here’s the fabrics I used. Shit. I usually count them.

64 fabrics for a piece that has about 400 pieces. I needed lots of variety in the greens because she has lots of different types of plants covering her, from cactus to vines to sunflowers.

Here’s the pile, ready to be cut out…

It’s not a very big pile. I figure cutting them out will take less than 4 hours. I do remember that I’m missing part of her eyeballs. I had the Wonder Under pieces and then they disappeared. Probably on a fluffy cat butt somewhere.

I have two other smallish drawings like this that I copied and numbered. I thought I would work on them next, but I think looking at the time available (and yes, I am already thinking about summer projects…), I need to start on the big one next. I like to have at least one big project planned for summer, since I have more free time for long bouts of standing at an ironing board without having to work the whole day before I do that. I have a job that requires a lot of standing and walking. I hardly ever sit down. So walking all day and then standing all night is pretty tiring.

Last year I did it a little differently though. I had a piece I wanted to work on that I started in May or so and finished in late June…there was a show I wanted to enter. Ironically, it didn’t get in, but another piece did. Then I wanted to enter another show at the end of July, so I finished a smallish piece for that. It’s been gone since September, I think. Some of that was a shipping issue (not mine), but it won’t come back until late October this year, I think. Then I finally worked on the big monster piece for the summer, not starting until the end of July, which honestly, is right before school starts. This year, we have to go back August 15 (oh god, way too early). So the summer is really July. I didn’t finish that big piece until right before it was due, the end of October I think. Or was it September? Can’t remember. End of September. And I forgot the other giant Earth Mother I did last year, which I finished in April. It’s strange for me to finish a big piece during the Spring. It’s so crazy at school this time of year. But I had a deadline for that one as well.

So there’s the question. Do I work better with deadlines? Yeah probably. More efficiently anyway. So I guess I have to accept their existence. If I sucked at it, I might be able to ignore them and wander willy nilly through my artmaking process, but I’m deadline-oriented and it makes me get work done. So there we are. Try to pick deadlines that make sense with my work and not just make it for the theme. Make the stuff I would make anyway.

But instead of making right now (and I would like to be, trust me…know that I leave for work most days with art screeching at me to STAY STAY!), I need to work to pay the bills. Like most of us do…

Apparently I Have to Sleep at Night

A relief this morning…finding out all the financial aid documents have been processed. That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems that will come up down the road, like last year, but at least we got past that hurdle. It’s a fucking miracle. A massive relief as well. Now we wait.

It’s Reach Higher Day today, Michelle Obama’s program to encourage kids to go to college. At our school, if you ask them right now if they want to go to college, what they want to do, a lot of them say yes, and they want to be doctors and lawyers and other educated professions…and some of them make it, some of them get full scholarships for sports or academics. We get little blips of info from them as they become seniors in high school. But most of them get bogged down by life, grades, the lack of support…no one knows how to fill out these damn forms (they take persistence and a little crazy, honestly). So today we are supposed to wear a t-shirt from our college (oops. I don’t own one…but I have my kids’ shirts) to help kids realize that almost every adult around them at school is walking around with a college degree…or in my case, like three of them. There’s so little parent support for this year’s kids…and there are plenty that would do well in college and should go. I hope they figure it out.

I walked the dog yesterday…I love the post-work 3-miler we do. It’s incredibly relaxing, although then it’s hard to get up and make dinner. I have to plan so that gym and hiking nights have food already prepped for afterwards. Smart move, when I can pull it off.

I had grading to do as well…never-ending pile (except mostly it’s online, so it’s a virtual pile…harder to hold sway over you if you can’t physically see it). But I was in here ironing at about 9-something. I wanted to be done…but…apparently I have to sleep at night.

When Midnight does this (and she is always in the green drawer for some reason), I can’t get to about half of my green fabrics.

The drawer she’s in and the drawer directly above her…if I were smart, I’d move the drawers around occasionally so I wasn’t always pulling out of the top drawer. Or yeah, I could chase her out.

Kitten is more well-behaved and picks the chair…when she’s not trying to climb up the window screen to get at the lizards that keep climbing all my windows.

I ironed for a couple of hours…forgot to take any photos while ironing…but these are all the pieces I have left to do…not many.

I think there’s some cactus and a sunflower or two in there. And then I’m done. Again, a small quilt for me.

I ironed for about 2 hours last night. There’s probably less than an half hour left in there. Here’s the pile of stuff ready to be trimmed.

I have quilt class on Thursday, so now I have something I can work on there. That was part of my motivation to get in here instead of out there with the big drawing.

Here’s the growing pile of fabrics I used, completely disorganized.

It was late and I didn’t feel like making it all nice. Sometimes sleep is a goal.

I forgot…I am still working on going through the pile of crap I pulled out of the studio and piled up in the boychild’s room. I know it doesn’t look better, but I threw out another pile of stuff and recycled some more.

So it’s getting there. I’m a little afraid of that red box on the left…it’s chock full of I don’t know what. I emptied the yellow bin. I have lots of piles of stuff based on where it should be going. It was a little sad going through the school stuff, because I found out Friday for sure that most of what I have taught over the last 14 years is going away. So I have samples of stuff…and you just don’t know if you’ll ever teach that again, so in some ways, it would be a good time to just toss a lot of stuff, which I did when I went most digital anyway, but we do some stuff on paper still when it makes sense. So I was filing assignments I will probably never use again. Teaching body systems and cells and genetics has been what I love…and I will have to find a way to love the next batch of stuff.

OK. I’m running late…as always. But art tonight…finish ironing that batch and maybe go back to the drawing. We’ll see.

You Get What I Mean…

Whoa Nelly, this feels like Monday. Teachers get Sunday panic, and then we don’t sleep Sunday nights, and then Mondays are rough. Then again, I’m just not a morning person. Don’t talk to me until I have one full cup of tea inside me, whether it’s a 6:30-AM wakeup alarm or an 8:30 version (when I’m not in school). Something woke me up around 6 AM and I thought, Holy Crap, it can’t possibly be morning. I just fell asleep. You always know that’s a good start to a work day. Don’t feel like I slept last night. I even went to bed a bit early. Well. 15 minutes. And then I couldn’t fall asleep. Brain in a twizzle.

Twizzle is probably a bad word somewhere. Then again, everything is a bad word somewhere. Nope. It’s a move in ice dancing. A twizzle is a multirotational one-foot turn in figure skating. The twizzle is most commonly seen in ice dancing, where it appears in a number of compulsory dances and is a required element of step sequences in the short dance, original dance, and free dance. Ah there we are…also a word for a form of crystal meth. Then again, probably every weird-sounding word is a form of crystal meth somewhere.

I’m working my butt off every weekend, it seems…trying to get school stuff done, getting through art stuff, not even catching up with anything. We must be getting near the end of the school year. I thought I had 43 days of school left, but it turns out we’ve been back after break for three weeks, not two, so there are only 38 days left. That’s good. I was thinking 43 sounded long. But I also lost a whole week in there somewhere. That’s gotta be a problem.

I had a meeting with one of my art groups yesterday, so I had to finish a bunch of stuff Saturday to make sure I had food in the house and my school stuff was ready. It was a good meeting…long drive, but good news about upcoming shows. In fact, membership is coming up in October, so if you live in the Los Angeles/San Diego area and you’re a fiber artist, and you can commit to 4 Sundays a year, then joining California Fibers might be a good thing for you. I’ve picked up some great shows with this group; plus they bring a wide range of talents and information. There’s membership info on the website here. I’ve been in the group for a few years and enjoy it.

We have a presentation of sorts every meeting, and this time, two of the members had been to Guatemala to look at the textile collectives there, and they brought back some samples. If you’re on Facebook with me, you probably saw the detail of this…

This is the bottom of a strip of fabric that would become one leg of men’s pants. Which is boggling in itself. This is machine-embroidered by a Guatemalan man who does it all freehand. Amazing stuff. He works out of books, looking at the pictures for ideas. There were other things, beautiful soft scarves and beading, but this thing blew me away.

Anyway. So that was yesterday. I was so efficient that when I got home, I realized I had a chunk of time, almost free time. Because it’s never really free, is it? I really should be grading stuff at all hours, never-ending. I needed to straighten up the studio a bit, put fabrics from the last quilt away before I started a new one. So I did that.

And then I started laying out Wonder Under pieces and I hung up my original drawing with all the numbers all over it.

And I started picking fabrics. This is her hair. Blue is in.

I was trying to figure out why all of a sudden, after two weeks, now I feel like doing this.

Here’s the flesh…really not much in this quilt. She’s sorta covered in stuff that’s not flesh.

At the end of the night, I cover up the Wonder Under that’s still laid out so I don’t come back to it all over the place, some stuck to cat butts. The bin at the bottom is everything I’ve ironed so far, which is in the low 200s, I think. I believe the box to the right is all the 300s.

It’s a small quilt. There’s not a lot of pieces in it. I spent about 2 hours and 40 minutes ironing and I’ve probably got another 2 to go and then I’m done.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far. There will be more color once I get into the bits on top of the flesh.

So what got me going? Well I have all these shows coming up now with no work that will fit. Four of them have themes, although the themes are not necessarily limiting, and two of the shows have the same theme. I didn’t like the theme though, until I let my brain play with it and I think I got there, but for two different shows, and at least one being juried, I might need more than one related piece. And then I need a smaller piece for another show. Waiting to hear on nudity or not for that one. All these deadlines are in the next year, but it’s potentially about making 4 large quilts and 1 smaller one.

Although I had a few hours of whiny crap in my head where I just wanted to make whatever I want, damn all the themes. It passed, though, because I’m fairly sure I can still make what I want, but force it to work for these shows. But I can’t sit around waiting any more, because there’s work to be done! Beyond just staring at that drawing every night.

So I’d better get my butt in gear. Because I want to make the Earth Mother one too, and does she fit with any of the themes? One…barely…by the skin of her teeth. Wait. Dammit. She doesn’t have teeth. You get what I mean.

Find the Balance

Serious hermit behavior results in…well…results. Certainly not my original plan for yesterday, but I guess it turned out OK. Although I’m running a little crazy from the quiet. I finished watching The Killing finally and decided for a change of pace to watch Call of the Midwife…I’m not sure it’s a whole lot different, despite the era change and the content change. Maybe that’s just my brain. The next steps on this quilt will be performed to music instead, so that will be a change.

I did get my taxes almost done yesterday too AND walked the dog, so I did OK. But I also ironed for 6 hours…which is kind of pitiful maybe. Or not. That’s 6 hours of talking to no one. Well…briefly to my SIL. Texting daughter. Ex about daughter and taxes. That was about it. Next week…sigh. I will need to do some things besides art next week, although it will probably hurt my brain. I do need to have this to an almost-finished state by the 31st though. Yikes. It’s sounds impossible when I write it out.

I didn’t start ironing until after 3 PM, after I’d done all the stuff I needed to do.

I ironed the third figure apart first…it was easier than trying to fit the wings around the existing arm.

Then I put it where it belonged and ironed the other wing under her head.

I ironed the vine separately as well and then fit it around his head and hair.

Then all that was left was this bird…whose wings gave me fits. I misplaced two feathers and recut one and fit the others so the last one didn’t matter, but I don’t know what was going through my brain because I found the missing pieces as I finished up ironing. They were just in the wrong section, but I could have sworn I’d already checked there. Brain fade.

Then I ironed everything down to the background.

It’s supposed to finish down to 16 x 24″. The image is about 15 x 23″ I think. I didn’t want to leave a large border.

The next step is to stitch it down, hopefully today. I am going to the gym. Need to strengthen the body and clear the mind. It feels like cobwebs in there.

Then sandwich it Sunday and start quilting. It’s taken as long as a large quilt to iron down because of all the tiny pieces, but hopefully the next two steps will be quicker…although there is a lot of detail, so maybe I’m dreaming on that hope. And it needs a name.

Next up…financial aid, finish the silly taxes (the last form is giving me fits), yardwork, housework (still), and grading shit. Aargh. I can’t. I just can’t. There’s definitely a war going on in my brain at the moment. Trying to process stuff and weed out the crap so I can face the rest of the school year. Calmly. Mindfully. And keep the balance. What I’m doing now is not really balance…but I need to swing back to let the work stuff in so it doesn’t bury me later. So probably FIND a balance first. Like I haven’t been working on that for the last 20 years…

Keep Calm and Hermit On

I often go into hermit mode on breaks from school. I’ll go days barely leaving the house. Yesterday I left twice, both for things that were already on my calendar. I don’t actually have anything for today, but I’m going to walk the dog. Next week is a swathe of unscheduled days. I know I need to grade stuff, clean stuff, trim stuff, but I also need to clear my head, make it possible to go back to school in a little over a week and survive the rest of the school year without totally losing it. I need some calm and patience. My counselor says I need to fill myself back up, and she’s right. More importantly, I need to do a better job of that on the weekends through the end of the school year. Problem is there are so many to-do’s and other things that get in the way of the filling-up.

Anyway, yesterday was hermit mode. I worked on art-related things for over 6 hours, about 4 of those hours on the small quilt I’m putting together, which just so you know is supposed to be 16 x 24″ finished. That’s way smaller than I usually work, and it’s been difficult ironing it together, because tiny pieces are fussy. But it’s a good place for my brain to be at the moment. Clearing shit out inside the head, even though I can’t seem to get it together on the outside the head part.

I had these ironed the other day, but they were in the bin, because a couple of them aren’t attached to anything, and I was waiting on the cloud until I got the legs in.

There were some other free-floating pieces I did yesterday…

And then I started on the legs of the central figure, so the clouds went back in. That damn tree is a pain in the butt…

It’s always in the way.

This is a tiny uterus with an even tinier eyeball in it.

The torso came together. The girl’s knife is because she cooks…not because she wants to hurt things, although at the moment, that’s probably a toss up.

I think that’s when I went to counseling…then the store, came back and went to my quilt class. More on that below. After class and cooking food, I started on the upper torso, which was a little fussy.

Overlapping shit…then on to the head and hair, which I did separate from the torso at first.

Then once I had all the main pieces in, I ironed it to the torso.

There’s a few more things to go on there, like the face for instance, and the missing hand. I was too tired to deal with them last night though. Faces are complicated and they hold the strength of the figure…the expression is important. And on something this small, I didn’t want to fuck it up. So I went to bed with my book instead. Today I’ll get the rest done, I’m hoping. I should be doing other things, but I can’t get my head there. Maybe tomorrow.

On Wednesday night, I was in a bar at a music thing, so I drew. Desert plants were definitely on my mind. Not sure about the rest.

Those big heads are still in my brain, percolating. And a new Earth Mother drew part of itself in my head last night. I guess I should put it on paper. I feel a need to just make some stuff for a while without a deadline attached to it. I didn’t have anything portable on the current quilt to take to class, but I had three drawings I’d copied, one of which I wanted to do next, so I numbered all three of them.

They each came out at about 400 pieces…

They’re all about 17 x 21″ inches, so smaller than what I normally do. I’m in the mood to just bang out some smaller pieces (not as complicated as the one I’m doing right now). So maybe that’s my pre-summer project. And I can draw another Earth Mother in between and aim to do her over the summer.

Although there are shows that are talking to me, and I should consider them. Their deadlines are later in the year, though, and right now my brain hurts. So I’ll deal with these, I think. At least the first one. I’ll see where I’m at once I finish it.

That one reminds me of one I gave away. Unfortunately.

OK, so I’m going to walk the dog this morning, even though it’s a later start than I wanted, because I need to clear my head. Cobwebs. Shitty crap in there. Then I’m going to come back and spend at least an hour on taxes. The taxes I should have done a month ago, maybe more. Then I can do art. Or maybe I should set a yard or house goal as well. Sheesh. Too much in one day. I really just want to iron the damn quilt down. And continue to Keep Calm and Hermit On.

Ironing It Out…

Back to avoiding all the shit I’m supposed to do over break (yardwork, housework, financial aid)…I’m in art brain mode. Why? Because I started ironing and an image started to appear and now that’s all I want to do is stare at it and make it come together. For hours. Fuck the rest of it. Seriously don’t want to deal with anything else. Bad. Bad Kathy.

So the one thing with this quilt is that normally I would have enlarged it 250%. But it can’t be enlarged for this show. It has to be fucking tiny. So it’s taking longer to iron because I’m dealing with these utterly teensy weensy pieces.

The tree is upside down because in real life it’s upside down. I have two right-side-up figures and one upside-down figure. I’m sure at some point the girlchild will complain that she is upside down in this piece and I will explain to her that she was the second child and she came out backwards and that’s why. Then she’ll complain about being naked in the quilt, but that’s what happens when your mom is a quilt artist and does nudes. So there.

See…the pieces are mostly tiny. In fact, some are so tiny that I’m not cutting them out until it’s time to iron them down, because I would just lose them.

This is about 180 pieces ironed. I still need to do the rest of her arm. The moon to her left with the clouds, it’s done. So are the things below the tree. They’re in the bin, waiting to be ironed down to the background.

That’s about three hours of work. Not a small amount. So it took 3 hours to iron less than 200 pieces. I’m figuring 12 hours total. She doesn’t really have a yin/yang tattoo, but she does have a scar from back surgery.

Girlchild got out of her increasingly nasty dorm situation yesterday, finally…a relief to all of us. Still trying to clean up loose ends on that, but hopefully it will be done and behind us soon. And hopefully I can force my brain to do some work soon too…besides ironing. Right now though? Right now I’m going to iron for a while. It’s my meditation. Clears my mind. Lets it process. Sometimes that’s what I need, more than I need a clean house and a weeded front yard. I know some people don’t understand that, but honestly, I’m at an age where I just really don’t care about that. Cronedom, here I come!

Just the Wings…

Some days it feels like I am just getting by until I can go back to whatever art project I am working on. I get through school and errands and exercise, except I really enjoy exercise, and then I get through cooking and eating and paperwork (is it paperwork if it’s on the computer?) or the technological equivalent, and then I look at the clock and calculate how much time there is left in the day for artmaking. I really wish it didn’t always start after 10 PM. Especially when daylight savings is already kicking my butt. The night owl self wants to stay up an hour later, but the morning self reminds me I have to teach 155 7th graders tomorrow and patience is one of those things that wears thin with little sleep. It already wears thin on project weeks. Gone are the days of scantrons and multiple-choice tests (well, they’re SUPPOSED to be gone…some teachers still use them), which means more work on both sides. Kids want me to give them all the answers. Then they get mad when they calculate their BMI as part of this project (yup. I brought in a scale) and realize they are classified as obese. Or that they have a higher risk for heart disease because of their gender or their race. Or that the parent who smokes around them is increasing their risk as well. Yeah. Well. Welcome to critical thinking.

So what little patience I have gets fully used up by 3:30 and then I’m supposed to do tutorial after school…unpaid tutorial, I might add, and I’m doing it today because of that project that’s due, but what I really want to do is come home and finish ironing. Well, that’s not all I want to do. Tonight is a little different, but it’s OK. It will get done.

This is a messy pile. I don’t like messy piles, but even if I straighten it all up before I start, this is what it ends up looking like…

I had a lot of little fussy things to iron last night: a cat, some hair, a uterus, lungs, a jellyfish.

I actually had myself convinced at some point that I would have no problem finishing the ironing last night, but then it was after midnight and I stood there staring at this pile…

Totally exhausted and still completely undecided as to what color(s) the wings should be. And that’s all that’s left. The damn wings. Hard to make decisions at that hour. So I packed everything up, turned off the iron, peed the dog, and walked down the hallway toward the sweet comfy bed, and the solution popped into my head.

Yeah. That’s how it works. If you make art every day, even on the days when there is no inspiration and nothing strikes your fancy, and all you’re doing is picking up fabric and moving it around or drawing godawful things in your sketchbook, or even just stitching something down because it needs to be stitched and you don’t feel like being more creative than that…if you do all that, then your brain gets in the habit of solving those creative problems while you’re too tired to even consider them. My brain figures shit out while I’m doing the dishes, while I’m driving to work or on errands, while I’m standing in a line. I let it wander and it does. It wanders until the answer is just there.

This is not an instantaneous thing. You have to work at it. I make so much work because I work at it. It seems so easy now, but there’s almost thirty years of practice in there, some years better than others. More intensely now than ten years ago. In fact, that might be my greatest fear about getting old is that I’ll lose that. I won’t have art every day. So when I talk about getting old, there’s a few things I want: I don’t want to be that old lady with the cane or the walker. I want to be the one who’s still hiking the mountains. She may have poles and she may go slowly, but she’s still moving. I want to make art every day. In fact, I will have worked my butt off for years and I deserve to retire and make art every day. No, I don’t know what that looks like yet. I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to afford to retire, but whatever. Those aren’t the only things I want, but they are two of the most important.

With that, I guess at least I know what color I’ll be ironing tonight…just the wings…and then I’ll be ready for the next step on this project. Time to cut out all those little tiny pieces. Way better than stressing out about school.

Sustenance

Deep breaths. It’s only 5 days, 1 major project, 1 unit of study, 2 parent meetings, and 1 field trip away from Spring Break. You Can Do This. Seriously, though, Friday was a bitch. So was Friday night and most of Saturday. I didn’t get anything done at all except art, because that was all I could handle. So that’s what I did. Friday night I drew…

I have a few ideas rolling around in my head, so I messed with one of them…

The cats kept me company…they don’t really like each other, so this is as close as they get.

No, that heating pad is not on. I guess it’s possible it had residual heat on Friday night, because my neck was still a mess. It’s better now.

Then I went into the studio and tried to iron a bit…

Exhaustion took over at some point. I got up the next morning, made my post-it list for the weekend (this is becoming a disturbing habit), and stared at it for a while. Then I ironed fabric instead…these are the flesh fabrics…

I needed to cross something off the post-it, so I went and picked up the dog from my ex’s house (soccer tournament) and walked her about 3 miles. She was very excited to see me. I brought her back here and she lolled around on the floor for the rest of the day. And I kept picking fabrics…

Honestly, most of this piece is the three figures, so lots of fleshy bits. At the end of Saturday, I had this stuff left to iron…

Basically everything that wasn’t flesh. Notice I still have all those loose bits of fusible web on that blue lid over there. Honestly, it hasn’t been that bad finding the missing pieces. I’ve only had to redraw a few.

At the end of Saturday’s 5-hour ironing binge (yeah, you read that right…I only got two things crossed off the damn post-it list and one was walk the dog)…this is how much I had ironed down.

I went to watch a band play. The waitress really liked this one…

The sitting at the table part is a piece of another drawing in my head. I think I’m going to try that one in a bigger sketchbook.

And this one…

Three drawings in 25 hours…not bad.

Sunday was busy. I crossed two more things off the post-it list and did a bunch of stuff for school that wasn’t even on the post-it. Plus the grocery shopping and crap around the house and cooking for the week. And I graded. Shocking. But I tried to stay away from it most of the weekend. I want to be sort of caught up for vacation…which is actually impossible, because see above…one major assignment and one unit due this week. It will take a long time to grade those. Oh well.

But later Sunday night, I got started again…slowly. This is ironing a tea set. You know. Like you do.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far in a remarkably messy pile.

And here is the dog…still lolling around at my feet. She groans if I step over her.

Here’s what’s left to iron. Two sets of wings…I don’t know what color to make them. Should they be the same? Different? Bright? Dull? Earthy? I just don’t know. There’s a set of lungs and a uterus in there too. And her hair, which involves some seawater, a jellyfish, a starfish, and some other fish.

Here’s what’s in the box as of last night.

I’ve been ironing for almost 9 hours. Almost all this weekend. Yeah. I wasn’t really in the mood to Real Life it this weekend. Art. It’s what’s for dinner. Actually, no, bacon/leek risotto was for dinner and it was quite good. But art is my late-night snack, my dessert, my sustenance.

Which Parent Will You Be?

Neck is still messed up. Call to chiropractor today. Same with the pool. Whatever. I survived yesterday with about 300 people saying or singing happy birthday to me. I think 6th period was the most melodic AND in tune. Fourth period was just screechy and although 8th period was a nice volume, they only knew three notes.

I sat through a union meeting and drew this…

I have two drawings in my head that are Big Heads (way bigger than this…the sketchbook is probably 6×9″). Need to find time for that.

Then a quiet evening with pizza, Walking Dead, and my sofa companions, some more needy and some more verbal than others. Then I did the dishes and put the dishwasher stuff away, wrote an email to my union people about what happened at the meeting, moved a bookshelf (17 other pieces of furniture had to move first), and finished putting fabric away. While I was doing that, I remembered Amanda Palmer had posted on Facebook about a new song, a serious song, not a last-minute plinking of the ukelele (not that I mind those), and I scrolled through until I found it…listening to the song, I read the story behind it, which is sad, of course. But this part got me…photo of babe in suitcase while she tries to finish writing a song all night. Being an artist AND being a mom…two of the hardest jobs to juggle at the same time.

And I like that…“you are either going to be the person who stayed up and wrote the song, or you’re going to be the person who went to bed and didn’t write the song.” I don’t care about the boring fucking parent side, but I guess I was always the one who stayed up and made the art. Who made it despite parenthood and divorce and all the other crap. I think that’s the artist’s drive, the one that woke me up around 2 AM with this vision of a drawing in my head. Anyway, the song is good…see link below for the story and the song. I read it while I listened, which I think is the best way to do it.

Amanda Palmer: Machete

So in the light of being that person, the one who stays up late to have her other artistic life, here’s what I did after 10 PM last night. First of all, the damn Wonder Under is being an asshole. Here are all the released pieces.

So when I’m ironing, if a piece doesn’t have the web on it, I do this kindergarten-level pattern matching. It has a pointy bit here, it’s long and skinny there, and I try to match them up. If I can’t, I trace a new one. It is a rancid pain in the ass. It’s like an online intelligence test.

Here’s the first 100 laid out.

I honestly didn’t get far, through the 50s and into the 60s I believe. Tiny little pieces and a tired little brain. But I started and that’s what matters. Now I have a plan for the next few nights. This is one of my favorite parts of the quiltmaking process, picking out the fabrics. The piece isn’t even colored in my brain. I just stare at the drawing and imagine it in a variety of colors as I’m picking stuff.

It’s a little crazy actually. The background is on the left. The stuff I’ve used so far is on the right. This drawing is small enough that right now I have it just sitting on the ironing board. Easier to see what’s what, cuz that’s some tiny-ass pieces.

I got to a stopping point and was trying to straighten other stuff up in the studio, when I realized I had a piece of dowel that would work for the SAQA auction piece I bought last year and hadn’t hung yet. I cut the dowel, stuck eyebolts in, and then realized it was REALLY tight. The sleeve was tight against the piece…making the dowel bulge out…

It’s hard to see in this picture, but look on the left, where you can see the bulge of the dowel. I hate that. I always leave room in my sleeves so that won’t happen.

So I ripped the bottom edge of the sleeve and repinned it.

And then I’ll sew it down where it belongs. So I can hang it up with all the other art that needs to get hung up.

Wow. Tired. Sore. But looking forward to that late night tonight when I can hang with the fabric again.