So I stayed up too late. Not all night, but even this morning was just troubled sleep and I couldn’t fall asleep last night, despite the late hour. My brain’s in overtime. Overload. Overwhelmed. Just over. But I wanted to finish the ironing…I started with the eyeball tree growing out of her head…
And then the other two faces got done. That was it, really. A hundred pieces or so in that space.
Then I ironed her legs onto the torso…I’d kept them separate. At this point, I started pulling the arms and heads up off the teflon sheet.
Then I looked at the clock. It was that in-between time…in between when I might go to bed and when I should go to bed, and my brain just wanted to be done. So I grabbed one of the two fabrics I’d picked for this quilt and ironed her down…
That was fast. Well. 12 hours and 45 minutes total. Not uber fast really. I’m hoping to start stitching down tonight, but I have two meetings tonight, so that might be too much hoping. Finish stitch down tomorrow night, sandwich and pinbaste Friday night and start quilting. I think I might actually make this deadline. Which is good, because there’s another one right behind it. Aack. I did have something I wanted to do next, but it won’t work for this next exhibit. Luckily, it only needs to be mostly done by the end of March and there’s a Spring Break in there. I might go into overload schoolwise before I get there though. Speaking of. Need to go there and do stuff.
I so wanted to be done with the ironing yesterday. I ironed pieces quite happily for 4 hours until I realized I needed to go to bed, although honestly, with the amount of sleep I got, it would have made more sense to stay up another hour or so. I’m 10 hours in, but I’m not done. I did have a 3-day weekend, but it doesn’t feel like I got a day’s more of work in. I’m not sure where it all went, but it did. Errands. Stupid little stuff. I only crossed two things off the post-it note weekend list. That doesn’t feel good.
So keep making art. That feels good. And another tight deadline just popped up after this one, so I need to get moving.
On Saturday, after finishing a bunch of errands and other crap, I started on the torso.
That was easy, so I started torturing myself with hands and arms.
The arms all were drawn basically the same, so I got into a rhythm of ironing them down, knowing what piece came next. They were tiny pieces though.
Each arm/hand has something about it…sometimes two things. One thing near or in the hand, like the needle and thread, and one thing on the arm…although some don’t have both.
I think that’s where I stopped on Saturday. Not sure…wait, I only had two arms on Saturday.
Then Sunday, I kept doing arms, but I didn’t start until almost 10 PM. Dealt with grades and school stuff. Not sure where most of the day went. I think I even took a nap. Crazy, huh? Things I would never do on Sunday during the school year without Monday as a holiday for catching up.
By the end of Sunday, I had 7 arms of 10.
The pieces on this quilt are tiny. That’s what happens when you draw most of it to size. Well. That’s what happens when I draw most of it to size. You might be smarter than I am.
See that iPhone? Yeah. Too small. Tiny pieces.
Hearts with wings. One thing that’s interesting about looking at them on the white teflon sheet is that they will end up on a dark background, so it will all look very different.
When I drew the flying hearts, I squished them in too tightly, so when I traced them, I made sure the one that was originally UNDER a hand had all its parts so I can move them around and make them fit better.
So Monday I started on the upper torso, which had a lot of little pieces.
And the last set of arms finally. As I was picking fabrics, I was trying to make sure I (1) used the same fabrics on each side for each set of arms (not an easy task) and (2) each set of arms was layered so the darkest fabrics were used on the arms that were furthest back. For flesh fabrics, I usually do a run of 7 fabrics…this quilt had 11 I think. Or 13. Something like that.
Oh yeah. And a rocket ship. Plus the inevitable dog I picked up on Monday.
Calli is my daughter’s dog. She travels between the two houses while her mom’s gone because I’m home more and Calli’s lonely, but she really likes her grandpa more than me. He lets her do stuff I don’t do. So she escapes my yard. During the week, I drive her to his house every day, and on the weekend, she gets to stay with him. Crazy really.
I started on the head…well one of the heads…last night. I usually iron the eyes as a separate unit so I can place them on the head and make sure they’re not crooked.
There she is! Except there’s stuff growing out of that head and there are two more heads on the side.
So that was at 11:55 PM last night and I knew I had to leave for school early (in fact, in about 5 minutes), and there were at least another 100 pieces to iron. So an hour, maybe more. I guess that’s tonight. Sigh. I wanted to be stitching down last night. It’s OK. I probably won’t get to that tonight though and tomorrow night is busy. So maybe Thursday night stitching down, Friday night pinbasting and starting to quilt. Time’s a runnin’ through my fingers here. That said, technically I still have three weeks. Barely. And it needs to be photographed. Minor issue.
OK, need to go to school. Tired, not enough sleep, still cranky. Aargh. I did fight the crank last night. Was absolutely fine for the four hours I was ironing. Keep that in mind. Grading papers makes me cranky. Making art does not. Making art does, however, make my brain wired and unable to fall asleep for hours. Whoops.
I didn’t get any art done yesterday. It happens. I’m pretty good about doing something most days, but I didn’t have the energy to stand and iron at 10 last night. Strangely. And this morning…this morning, I’ve written out the weekend post-it note and it’s a bit ugly. Why oh why. And it’s supposed to be 90 degrees tomorrow. A stark contrast to the girlchild’s photos from Friday morning…
Meanwhile, I’m considering putting my pale winter legs in shorts. I haven’t been outside yet. I’m in hermit mode. My post-it note sent my brain into an overwhelmed frenzy. And I have a 3-day weekend to deal with all of it. What does it mean that the only thing I really want to do is iron the damn quilt together? Oh yeah. It means I’m an artist and an overworked teacher. Fucking A.
We did decide that it’s my fault my co-teacher hasn’t given birth yet. I haven’t finished the binding. I got side-tracked and never finished. So that’s what I did when I got home late last night…worked on that.
But did I finish? No I did not. So she still can’t give birth. Bad Kathy.
And then I walk in the studio this morning and there’s the next batch of 100 pieces laid out with the bins on top that keep the cats from lying on the pieces and messing them up and walking off with piece number 117 stuck to their tail. This has happened. Most of the weird shit I do is because of experience.
So I really just want to ignore the post-it. But I can’t. Too responsible. Maybe. Certainly some of the things on the post-it make me want to put my head in a hole. None of it is easy. It’s all a pain in the butt. I didn’t even put the standard stuff on there, like laundry or groceries. Or sleep. I did put grade stuff on there. Ugh. So tired of that. Taking a break this week from tutorial and detention at school. I’m burnt out. Funny because school admin was just talking about how my team goes above and beyond to deal with parents and support our kids, and I’m going to totally blow it off this week. Maybe the next as well. I’m going to blow it off until I can stand to do it again. Just to clarify, I don’t get paid to stay after school. And it’s not in my contract. So I’m just going to work to contract (sort of…because you know I’ll come home and work) until I can be a better teacher again.
I can’t even think straight this morning…can’t pick one of the things on the post-it and do it. Too much fluff in my head. Alphabetical order maybe. Or just crumple that bastard up and start ironing.
Sometimes it’s so easy to come home and blow off school. I had my monthly stitching meeting, where I embroidered bird parts, birds I may never finish, although that part doesn’t really matter. I embroider because I like it and it’s relaxing. And not everything I do has to be art.
Then I came home and made art…even though some student emailed me about her missing assignment that she turned in last week and I haven’t graded it yet (I actually have time this weekend set aside to deal with the pile of late work, which is always a pain in my butt). I totally ignored her. She’ll get an answer today, no worries, but I might explain that if she turns work in two months late, I don’t feel any real urgency to grade it. Maybe I should take two months to grade it?
Oh yeah, I need that 3-day weekend, let me tell you. Even if I will spend a chunk of it working.
Sorting all the fabric the night before was smart, because it made it really easy to start ironing last night. I started with the rug and the stuff on it…
Here’s where I work…Kitten supervising. Looking at this makes me think I should spend some time cleaning up the desk, and that is true…because taxes and financial aid need to be done soon and I will need to get through all that paper to do that. Not really looking forward to that.
Oh yeah. The obligatory Nida crotch shot. The thing is, if you’re going to do nudes, you have to work pretty hard to never show an open crotch shot (and this one isn’t done, by the way). So many male-created female nudes have these lovely lines and fluid motion, but she’s never just sitting there…and if she’s sitting down, legs crossed, dammit. There’s a vulva. And why we’re scared of it? I don’t know. To me it refers to childbirth, to creation, to sexual pleasure, to where we all came out (except those C-section kids). The path we all traveled into existence in the free world. Why are we scared of that? Why does that offend? Why do people FREAK OUT at a crotch shot?
One of my art friends said something at the opening about where are ya gonna go to see crotches just Wide Open in front of a lot of college students? A Nida exhibit. OK. So there we are. And it’s not porn. I’ve been accused of that too. Why is the vulva porn? None of my work shows pornographic sex or even sex for that matter. Very few penises even, and certainly not used in a pornographic matter. The plain existence of the vulva is porn? Really? When we deal with it every day? It brings periods, delivers babies, gives pleasure, excretes pee? This is porn? That’s pretty utilitarian if you ask me. Nothing to fuss about.
Same with breasts. Hey! There’s gonna be breasts in this quilt too! Breasts are for babies. Yeah, they also apparently stimulate male brains and are good for a number of nerve endings and fill out bras (not a good thing in my book), but we can live without them. And they aren’t evil. Seeing a breast shouldn’t cause paroxysms of outrage. Appreciation for the human form…understanding that when the figure is nude in art, there’s fewer clues about their status, their upbringing, their culture. It’s more about all humans, all women. It’s universal. Even by choosing skin color, hair color, eye color…those already color a viewer’s perception. And you want me to add clothing? I’ve never been a fan of drawing clothing. It’s too fussy. I like bodies and their parts. Always have. Assuming the body is transparent and what’s inside is clearly visible. The systems that make us go, that also can kill us. Way more interesting than pants or a skirt.
So yeah. That’s why the whole nude thing. You’d never ask a white male painter about why he paints nudes. You wouldn’t.
So that’s what I got done yesterday, about 100 pieces. It took longer than I thought it did. Not sure why.
Torso next. Then 10 arms. Gonna take a while to get through all of those. Yes, 10 arms. Gonna ask me about that too? Well hang on. Wait until all the other stuff is on there and then you can tell me what the quilt is about. Universal theme, I think. At least to a large chunk of the population.
I love reading spam sometimes just for the crazy phraseology that pops up. I’m good at making up words. I had a student tell me she was going to use “legitimous” from here on out, not realizing that “legit” was short for “legitimate.” I made her look it up. But legitimous is kind of a cool word. I’m sure “knowhow” should be hyphenated, but I really think hyphens are lame most of the time. Must be my German genes…just SQUISH all those words together into one! Anyway, the title is from spam. They came to my blog to get the fastidious knowhow and I know how to provide it. Fastidiously. Legitimously. Uh huh.
Still trying to lift the mood. Ugh. I think I’m getting sick too, which figures. Whatever. I had someone contact me today about a job I applied for in early November. I need the money. I have other work that I’m doing tonight that should turn into some money at some point. So that’s good.
Last night, I just wanted to finish the ironing part…sometimes everything just takes too freaking long. Anyway, it took about another hour…longer than I thought it would. Ten hours and 45 minutes total. I think I estimated 10 hours, though, so that’s not too bad. All the fussy little bits took longer than I thought they would. Here’s the 89 fabrics that went into this quilt…
Not much blue or yellow, only one orange in the whole thing. Lots of flesh in reality. All the other colors are used in relatively small pieces.
I started trimming last Sunday at my fiber group meeting…and then I went to quilt class last night (people! socializing! not being a hermit!) and cut things out for another two hours…
And I cut for another half an hour after this, so there’s more done than that, but not a lot. Based on the last big quilt, it will take me about 9 hours to get through it all, and that means I won’t be done until after the weekend, I think. I have boatloads of grading to do on top of the work. I have not been super efficient this week. So I make myself look at the calendar and try to visualize finishing this quilt. Is this the halfway point? Not based on other quilts. If it were fully trimmed, that’s about halfway. And I only have 4 weeks left, and that’s if the photographer can do it the weekend before.
Nah. I don’t know if I can finish it in time. Oh well. OK. So I have lots to do and I don’t feel well. Moving on with my fastidious knowhow. Like I do.
I’m definitely plodding along…not getting a shitload of anything done, not ever getting to the end of any project, whether grading or quilting, not finishing anything. Not accomplishing much. Except I did. Everything’s just slow. I’m slow. My brain is slow. My mood is dank. All I really wanted to do last night was draw, but I didn’t know what I wanted to draw. Just wanted to lose myself in it. No such luck. Too many things I want done and I’m not getting any of them done. Not motivated. Tired. Moody as hell.
I did iron. I thought I might finish. I might have finished if it had been any other night where I felt motivated and awake and competent. But in the end, the last few pieces (OK, there are probably 50 pieces left) just kicked my butt. I’m 9 1/2 hours in and there’s probably 30 minutes left. I really could have done that last night. Well, last night I didn’t think I could, so there we are.
Here’s everything that’s been ironed so far…
But I’m looking at that dark piece on top and thinking it might not show up on the background…I’ll have to figure that out. Maybe. Maybe not right this second. But when I’m ironing it together, you better bet I’ll be thinking…shit…I wish I’d dealt with that already.
Here’s everything I’ve used so far…lots of bits and pieces really, since the flesh is the main part of the quilt.
I should finish it tonight, but that depends on so many factors. I can’t predict the mood or how the other shit I need to do will fall out. Last night I had some technology stuff to do and the computer was just a bitch. So was my iPad and my school computer kept crashing apps, so it was altogether a frustrating day in the world of computers. Although I suspect that the latter are because they need to be replaced. My iPad mini is a first generation and it regularly tells me it is full and I delete stuff but now it’s getting cranky and slow too. I don’t know what to do about that. There’s no money to replace that. The school computer is older and was old when they bought them, honestly…I don’t know how much more time it has, or even if its problems are its age or the age of all the infrastructure around it and on it…fairly sure we need to update some of the apps we use beyond regular releases…like you know, pay some money out…things schools don’t do.
I did two things for myself yesterday, trying to improve my mood. The first was go to the gym. I liked that. Should do more of it. The second was go fabric shopping…notionally, I needed that pink there for the binding of the baby quilt (which I did not sew on last night because I did not feel like it, but will hopefully come home and do tonight because I am a good girl)…and I bought two possible backgrounds for the quilt I’m working on now…
But there’s something relaxing about walking through the fabrics, letting your eye wander, and waiting for something new to catch your eye.
And I realized I don’t know what I’ll be working on next. I need more work for shows, because I don’t have enough for all the shows I want to enter at the moment. Too many things are traveling for too long. I’m regretting one of them…because it could be in better shows than the ones I agreed to as replacement to the ones where the shipment didn’t get there. And another sold, which is not a bad problem to have, but it was only in one show before it sold and it was one of the big time-consuming pieces from last year, so that’s made me short quilts as well. I saw a drawing I did last year for a smaller quilt and think I might do that before committing to the next big one, but then again, Spring Break is coming and that’s a good time to make a big quilt. So we’ll see. I haven’t even drawn the next big one…I have the idea, but it’s nowhere near being on paper. And with the current mood, it’s hard to know if I’ll be able to draw it. Right now, I think it would be sad and angry drawings, which isn’t a bad thing…it’s just not what I saw for that quilt.
Sigh. This mood sucks. I’m doing the shit I’m supposed to do to kick it. So kick, asshole.
Sigh. All the feels. Hormones abound. Frustration at work. I do well when I’m distracted from all that, when I can push all the detritus from work and life and house and taxes and work, did I mention work? Push it all into a pile of unfolded laundry in the dark dank corner of my brain where it deserves to live. I’ll fold it later. I’ll handle each piece later, pull it out, dust it off, fold it up, put it in the cupboard where it belongs. Apparently my version of mindfulness equates to doing the laundry. It’s not a bad metaphor. Clean it, wash it, dry it, put it away. Takes a while to do it properly, but the clothes are warm at the end and you don’t mind handling them as much as when they were smelly and dirty.
That’s a lot of philosophy for a Wednesday morning. But if my brain is going to force me to remake my existence every time the kids come home and leave again, every time there’s shit at school (thanks for the observation yesterday, dear principal…hope you understand Punnett squares now), every time my personal life isn’t going the way I want it to, well then…I’m going to have to control it somehow…and maybe visualizing laundry is the best way for now. It’s something we do all the time…every week, things need washing. It’s a lifetime of laundry. Sometimes it’s only your laundry and sometimes you’re doing everyone else’s while you’re in there.
Yeah. I know. Rambling on. But my brain is a mess and I don’t know if it’s all the emotional stuff or perimenopausal brain. I knew I had bought more cheese last night and I was ransacking the fridge for it, blaming the boychild, maybe he ate it all (it was a lot of cheese…seems unlikely), maybe he took it to his dad’s, maybe I never bought it, maybe I threw it out. I was tossing shit out of the fridge because it was all the stuff from when the kids were here and it hadn’t been fully cleaned out and I was getting really frustrated and had found a cheese alternative (just another kind of cheese, nothing drastic) and then I looked in the fridge and there it was. Big. Orange. Just sitting there. Right in full sight. Like what the fuck is that matter with my brain that it couldn’t see that? I know I looked right there about 10 times. What the fuck?
It’s really…what’s the right word? Not annoying, more than that. Not frightening, well, maybe a little, because where is my brain? Disheartening? Depressing? I don’t know. I need my brain to work well. And it’s not.
So that’s where I was last night when I started ironing. Not necessarily in a particularly good place, but knowing that spending some time ironing would make me feel better. Because it always does. And that’s why I do it. I don’t need meds…I need to commune with fabric.
I worked for about an hour…got the heart and all the arteries done, did a tree with some stuff on it, teeth! I did teeth! Little bits and pieces of stuff. All the detritus (there’s that word again) of the body and the stuff in the air around her. A cloud. Some thunderbolts. A yin/yang sign. Nipples. Just one little piece at a time. Stare at it, figure out what it is, what color it should be. Put Netflix on to calm the part of my brain that’s still trying to figure out how the cheese disappeared and reappeared right before my eyes without my noticing.
Here’s the pile of fabric now. It’s a bit messy.
I didn’t feel like straightening it up. Here’s what’s left to iron…not much. Hair, some lungs, an iPhone. The normal shit.
And the pile that needs to be cut out. Hopefully by Saturday.
I can lose myself in all that and be OK. At least there’s that. The rest will come.
Aaargh. Grades are (almost) done. They will be done after I go to school, deal with a parent meeting, go on duty (I should get a pass…I’m the only teacher who showed up in my section yesterday morning), deal with a fire drill in my homeroom, take attendance, and prep for the rest of the day. THEN I can finish grades. And maybe pee. Fuck you, world.
Boychild apparently made it to school, although he forgot to tell his mom he’d actually arrived, so of course, in true momma fashion, I worried. Woke up at 5 AM and texted him again. Doofus.
I’m in a mood. Hopefully I’ll fall out of it. I barely ironed anything last night…like maybe 20 pieces…
I was tired. It was 11:30 by then and I was just doing it because I wanted to say I’d done some of it. Tonight I can do more. I wrote two tests last night and I finished grades and I don’t even remember…oh yeah I do! The dog. So the dog has been on her normal travel schedule with the kids home, but yesterday, my ex had said he didn’t think she could escape where he did all the work, so I should leave her in the yard. And I worried about her getting out all day, which was legit, because I got home, and a muddy, tangled, matted Golden Retriever was lying in front of the garage, waiting for me.
So I bathed her last night. The water was dark brown the first run through. It was loads of fun. I don’t recommend it. So then I had to partially clean the bathroom. And do laundry. Like 6 towels.
I also finished quilting this and trimmed it. She goes out on leave today and I wanted it done so she could take it, but then I looked at the binding fabric I’d picked…
And it doesn’t work. I then went searching through my stash, and I didn’t have enough of anything that would work, so I need binding fabric. I don’t suppose I could persuade her to stay one more day? Yeah. I didn’t think so. It’s OK. It’s not like she’s going anywhere.
Shitty day. Shitty mood. More art tonight. Less work. Less bullshit. Less worry. Less moodiness. All the things.
Well the boychild finally made it out of here…knock on wood, because his plane hasn’t left yet. I’m gonna miss him and his sister. But they both made Dean’s List…so I’m proud of them. And I will figure my shit out and find a mental balance with them gone. Probably not today though. Today, honestly, I’m just gonna hold it together long enough to get through the school day. Which I am officially NOT doing right now. Holding it together that is. I do have a job that distracts me from emotional crap, so that should help.
Saturday…it was a challenge. But I finished grading the assignment from hell…and have a post-it reminding me never ever to assign that again. It’s not worth my sanity and the kids don’t take it seriously. So I’m kind of in this Fuck ‘Em mode…which may be the most healthy thing I’ve thought about school for the last two months. Grades are due tomorrow. I haven’t even started them. It’s OK. It won’t take long.
When I finished grading, I ran a million errands, and then walked in here…
This is where I wanted to be all day long. Notice it’s dark. Yeah. It was like 6 PM. I was pretty crankballs by then. Yeah. It’s a mess. I might clean it up when I finish this quilt. Depends.
I knew with the figure being most of this quilt, and with 10 arms that sit behind each other, I was going to need a larger range than normal. So I sat on the ground with the pink bins and my phone flashlight (it’s dark down there…need to install fairy lights or something) and picked a run of 13…plus lip colors off to the right and finger- and toenail color above.
I didn’t use all of them in the end. I used 11. And I added two purples. So it took me 2 hours and 40 minutes just to find each flesh piece and decide what fabric it was supposed to be. And I tried to match pairs of arms on each side, but I don’t know if I was successful.
The flesh pieces ranged from the 0-100 box to the 900 box. So I went through all of them. As I did that, I set aside the non-flesh pieces…the heart, veins, lungs, rocket ship, hair, eyebrows, etc. Two uteri even. Lots of eyeballs. So this below is what I still have left to do.
Then I started ironing all those pieces down to the fabric I’d chosen…here’s number 5 in the range.
Yup. That’s a lot of pieces. Some arms, some fingers and toes, and ribcage parts. That funny bone that sticks out on your foot that probably has a name. I went and looked it up. It’s complicated. You can Google it yourself.
Ironing it all took my Saturday art time to 4 hours plus. Ahhhh. You could hear my brain sigh from there, couldn’t you? Because I was in a dark and angry place over school. And art saved the day. Put my brain back in a decent place.
Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far.
And I tried to get them to fit in the box once I’d ironed them, but the flesh pieces were too big to fold into there.
I have no idea how many pieces are left. I think I’ve got 6 1/2 hours in, so maybe another 3 or 4? Just a guess really.
I was at a meeting yesterday and started cutting stuff out. It’s only an hour so far.
But it’s a start. And it’s something to do this week…less than 5 weeks to finish this quilt. Finish ironing pieces by tomorrow night? I have a baby quilt to finish tonight if I can pull it off, plus grades. I tried to finish the baby quilt last night and got everything quilted except the border. I started that and the thread kept getting caught on the spool and doing stupid things, so I quit. I’ll try again tonight. Maybe it will behave better. And if I can be a good girl and get a bunch of the grades done at school today, then I’ll be ironing later? Maybe. Maybe not. Then trim them all by the weekend? It would be nice if I could start ironing it together Saturday, because I actually have time.
Shit. I might actually finish it in time. Don’t hold your breath though.
One of the things that came out of the depression I went into July 2013 was that I had a really hard time listening to music. For a good year, huge swaths of my musical library caused me to weep interminably, which really sucked, because I love music. Always have. All types. I’m a total music slut, although the majority of rap, hip hop, and country are outside my music love arena. So usually when I trace Wonder Under, pick fabrics, and cut stuff out, I watch TV…mostly Netflix but increasingly Amazon Prime Video as well, and some stuff on the Tivo, when I’m in the other room. I watch that when I’m ironing the whole thing together too. But when I’m quilting or stitching stuff down, I always used to listen to music…in the early days, to my iTunes, but now mostly Pandora, which is just one HUGE channel of Kathy’s music and everything she likes. I love my Pandora. At the gym, when I’m hiking by myself, when I’m quilting, whatever.
And I couldn’t listen. Because the 80s were reminiscent and the 90s too and then the 00s and fuck me, there was very little that I could listen to. And trying to quilt a million miles an hour while crying was just a recipe for disaster. I did it a lot though. And then I switched to putting on bad TV, or TV I didn’t care too much about, while I was sewing, because it was dialogue and it was easier to take than music. It didn’t trigger anything. I guess music ties into some very deep emotional places in my brain. TV just distracts it. And I needed the distraction. But TV isn’t ideal for quilting and sewing things down, because you’re meant to watch it, and I can’t watch two things WELL at the same time (notice how I didn’t say I couldn’t watch two things at the same time…I am a middle-school teacher. I regularly watch 36+ things at the same time.).
You know what I’m doing right now? Listening to music AND sewing. Ha! Fuck you brain. Finally beat it. How many months. Fuck. Don’t even count. Just say thank you. Now REM’s Everybody Hurts will still kick my ass, my perimenopausal brain’s ass, and make me sob like a motherfucker, but that’s fucking NORMAL. I’m OK with that. I can listen to all the other stuff and sing along and get up and dance sometimes, because that’s what music is supposed to do to you, thank you very much, and if I cry occasionally because it’s a really sad song…there’s another Amanda Palmer one that kicks my ass…The Bed Song.
But see, that shit’s normal. It’s OK to have a song or two that rips your heart out. It’s not OK when it’s 90% of what you’re listening to.
I got my music back bitches. 2015. It’s all good from here on out. Seriously. I feel really good about that.
So yesterday I had a plan to go to the gym and then come back and do quilty things, but I have to be honest. The quilty things were screaming at me, so I ended up just doing that all day, and ignoring everything else. Yup. Again. Because sometimes that’s how I roll. This morning, I still have the same plan, but I’m actually going to go to the gym. Really. I am. First I have to pay out a shitload of money to the kids’ colleges, but then I can go relax by beating myself up on a bunch of machines. I’m OK with that. It feels good.
So what did I get done yesterday? A lot. First I ironed the whole thing down onto the background…I had a couple of dark blues lying around that I bought a while ago for this quilt or for something else. I like dark blue for backgrounds, so it’s never a waste. I liked this one, a batik…
When I started ironing, I put the bathtub with the figure in it on first, but then remembered not to iron the edges down because there was stuff that had to go under. Well, I mostly remembered. I didn’t iron heavy at this stage, but this is the new plasticky Wonder Under…it came up, but it wasn’t happy about it.
It didn’t take long to get it all ironed down. And I don’t know what I was looking at yesterday, but my times were completely off. It took 10 hours and 54 minutes to iron the whole thing together and down onto a backing. Not bad.
I always keep the trash from trimming the fabric until I finish ironing, in case a piece is in there. But then I often forget to look in there for any missing pieces. There were a few. They were small. I recut them. No biggie.
Then I started stitching down. Because I was committed at that point. I was fairly sure I could finish the stitch down yesterday…
Midnight really wanted to sit on this. In fact, once I turned around because the boychild was helping me figure out why the damn computer backup wasn’t working, and there she was, plopped right in the middle of it. Damn cat.
More stitch down. I went fast. I sew like I’m driving a sportscar. I started sewing before I learned to drive. You might say one prepared me for the other.
When we left for dinner, I wrapped it up around the machine like this so the cats couldn’t sit on it.
The back is sometimes even more interesting than the front. I look at the back to try to find all the places I missed…I missed quite a few this time, but I fixed them all. So hopefully that was it. I hate fixing them later, because I have to change thread. Annoying. Changing bobbins and changing thread. That reminds me…I need to go thread shopping today. I don’t think I have enough and I don’t want to run out on a holiday. Except maybe JoAnns is open tomorrow. Interesting. They close early tonight but are open tomorrow. OK. Keeping that in mind. I have a spool and a partial of the color I want.
So that was after dinner, but it was still early (by my clock). So. Hell. I’m all in. I have to clean the floor before I can lay a quilt out (too many muddy feet tromping through there), so I do that. Then I go hunting for a backing…end up using the rest of what I used on the front. I have other stuff I’d rather use, but batiks tend to be wider from selvage to selvage, and I didn’t want to piece it…this size fits perfectly on a batik that’s about 44″ wide…the image is about 34″ wide. I love not piecing (so stop making monstrously huge quilts, woman). Laid it out on the floor, yelled at one cat who tried to use it as a slip-n-slide…
And pinbasted her.
It took less than an hour to do that. And the stitch down was only 3 1/2 hours. Speedy. I’m guessing the quilting will be 11-12 hours though. I’m hoping to start today, maybe get in 3 or 4 hours (which means I need to get my butt in gear and get outta here). Yes, I have plans tonight. Sheesh. They’re really complicated, involving food and champagne and movies on a TV probably. And my sketchbook. Because if you can’t quilt your way into the new year, you should draw your way into it, right?
Anyway. It’s in progress. My goal is to have it done, binding on (dammit, I don’t have binding, do I?) by Sunday, so I can sew the binding down at my meeting that afternoon. We’ll see. That’s a lot. The boychild’s birthday is in the middle of that too. Sigh. And I wanted to hike. Balance! Sheesh.
