I Know You Know It…

Apparently I like to pick out fabrics…or my mood finally switched on to art mode. Either way, even though I spent a good two hours yesterday arguing with the girlchild by text about whether she had taken my shoes or not or whether I was in the right to demand that my shoes be returned to my house (ah, the wonder of divorce), and then we weren’t speaking to each other for the next 2 1/2 hours, somehow all that shit worked out and I managed to do some grading and make some art.

Actually, first of all, this is a drawing from Saturday…

Which needs a redraw. I like the hands. I like the belly and crotch area. I need the head further down. I’ll try again. I also went to an art event Saturday night, but I’ll have to deal with that in a later post…too many photos for a Monday morning.

I had mostly cleaned in here Thursday night (yes, I know it doesn’t look clean, but what do you know?)…

And set up for ironing, did a tiny bit, but then succumbed to cranky exhaustion.

So last night, I managed to avoid both, and made it through all of the first 100 and second 100 pieces…

There they are laid out by 10s. Very exciting, no? Yes, I’m a little obsessive sometimes. But look at what I can do with it!

Basically, last night I ironed everything together up until the bathtub…here’s the ginkgo tree…

Some of those browns are just shreds of skinny pieces because I’ve cut so many tree branches out of them.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…not much color.

There was a dog on a rug, a cat, a ginkgo tree, a pile of clothes, and a pair of shoes.

Next stop? The bathtub. Which might be a bit difficult. I need big pieces for that. Here’s everything I’ve ironed so far…

I got to piece 229. On this quilt, that’s almost halfway done…which is good, because my brain is realizing I have to get another relatively big one done by mid-July? Ish? And that is closer than it appears in that mirror.

I also started revamping my LinkedIn page to include my editing and proofreading experience, which is old, but still useful. I’m debating joining a couple of groups that might get me work, but school is still hanging over me. My car went into the shop, though, and between it and my house insurance, the next month is going to be ugly…which is a problem, because I don’t get paid over the summer. So I need to get some focus on…realizing I don’t know how to edit electronically (well, I can mark up in Word), and might have to take some courses to figure that shit out. Anyway. I try to worry about the smaller stuff, one bit at a time. College crap. Getting the boychild home crap. Getting through state testing crap.

I aired out the boychild’s room and rewashed his bedding, realized we were still short a pillow and his fitted sheet no longer fit. Elastic with issues…so I made a run to Target for another pillow and a fitted sheet. Set all that up, so he at least has somewhere to sleep. He can work on cleaning the rest of it when he gets home. Asked the girlchild to clean the bathroom, and she tried to blame part of the mess on her brother, who hasn’t been home since January 19. It’s gonna be a fun summer! I know you know it.

More drawing. More art. I was commenting that I find it hard to draw specifically about the relationship I have with my daughter. I can draw about motherhood in general and the stress that goes with it. Earth Mother shows up a lot in my work. But when I try to parse out how the two of us work and why it drives me bonkers sometimes, I just can’t make a picture about it. I can only hope she has a really nice roommate in her dorm who doesn’t kick her out after three months.

It’s OK. I know her worst behavior gets saved up for me. OK. Apparently I have to go to work. Damn paying-the-bills job. And please don’t tell me you want teachers to love their jobs…there isn’t a single teacher out there who loves state testing, and most of us are trashed by the last 6 weeks of school.

Speaking of trashed, I dropped my favorite mug yesterday…

Dammit. I made it myself. I made another one at the same time, but I’m apparently not allowed to have it back. And the other large mug I had sprung a leak. So I’m fussing around with a tiny mug, checking Groupon for the next coupon for the ceramic painting place.

OK, off to my day, if only to figure out all the ways I have screwed up already. Love Mondays.

I Just Don’t Know

This damn piece is giving me angst. It shouldn’t. That’s what I’m told anyway. Wish someone would tell my art brain to get over the shit that bugs it so I could settle into my own existence. Apparently not an option. But maybe that’s why I make so much art…because I never settle into myself. I’m always questioning what I’m doing and how it makes me feel and whether it was good enough. Good enough for what, I don’t know. But that questioning, I don’t know that it’s abnormal in someone who creates all the time. Maybe that’s the difference between me and the people who did art in college and occasionally do something crafty, but they don’t stay up until after midnight every night making some piece that won’t get into any shows because it’s too in your face.

I just don’t know.

After running 17 errands in the morning, I was able to pick up my newly cleaned and tuned machine and I pieced the background. I also decided I didn’t feel like cleaning the entryway floor to lay it out. I thought the piece would be pretty easy to lay out, because it’s basically one large piece that’s all ironed together. If I had to place a bunch of smaller pieces and make them all fit together, I would have done it on the bigger floor space.

So here…it’s a little crowded, yes.

Couldn’t even get it flat. Oh well.

I laid it out anyway. Sometimes I’m kinda stubborn.

I tacked it down on the floor (this might be why my floor is dying…I do in fact iron on it.)…just enough to get it up on the ironing board, where I did the 30 seconds with steam thing that makes it stick better…enough that I can stitch it down.

And then the water droplets had to be placed…and I hung it up…

This thing is big…59″w x 66″ h. I thought 4 hours to stitch it down was probably an underestimate…but I did start yesterday…

And everything went fine for the first hour or so, and then I don’t know what happened. Something broke threadwise and I pulled everything out and tried to restart the stitching, and then spent probably 45 minutes fucking with my machine, cleaning stuff out, resetting it, turning it off and saying abracadabra over it, swearing and assuming I would have to take it back today to get fixed and I would never get done. Thread was tying itself up in huge fucked-up knots that somehow translated to shit in my head. Love that. Art brain. Get out of that hole. And then it magically started working again. And I spent an hour restitching all the crap it had fucked over. I’m sure it wasn’t really magic. I did something and that fixed it. But I don’t know what that something was.

When I finished restitching, honestly I didn’t have it in me to keep going. I was just depressed and frustrated with the whole thing. And with life in general. So I walked away and tried to sleep (ha!). Yeah. That was kind of a failure too.

Fucking Pandora is in pretty perky mode. I want to punch it. Where’s my screaming angry young men when I need them?

Seriously, though, I’m fighting a lot of stress about well everything I think. I’m about to crawl into a ball and lock all the doors (probably not realistic considering girlchild lives here half time…apparently) and not come out until I have to…which might be sometime around April 13. I’m sure there’s some people expecting me to show up before that, but I don’t know if I can handle that. Dammit, I unlocked the front door. The Golden Retriever is now here, lying on my floor. It’s harder to be depressed with a Golden around.

I’m trying to decide whether to stitch for a while (I might not stop) or to go to the gym first. I really should go to the gym. I have a social thing tonight. For a hermit who is feeling overwhelmed and antisocial, that seems problematic. Because otherwise I would go to the gym tonight. I like it when it’s quiet there. During the day is not so quiet.

This song was in my head too much yesterday…not sure why.

Not even sure I like it. Certainly can’t watch the video without getting sick to my stomach. Maybe just the lyric “I don’t know what I believe.” Maybe that’s all I’m hanging on to today. Trying not to think about all the crap I need to do. Trying not to think about that pit in the floor that’s screeching at me. Need to meditate more.

OK. Pandora has figured out I’m feeling depressed and is now playing depressing music. I’m not sure that’s helpful, Pandora. Really, you need a better formula.

She’s in One Piece…

I didn’t get as far yesterday as I wanted to…as usual. My machine is also still in the shop, so that sucks. Hopefully it’ll be done today, because I can’t finish the ironing. I need to see the background together before I can iron the whole thing down.

I started with the hair…

Then got the full face ironed together…this was the water section, so there’s a jellyfish, some regular made-up fish (Kathy-style), and a shell. Oh, and a starfish on her face…

Then I did the sun on top of her head…

I debated ironing the whole thing together now or fitting the pieces together on the background. It is easier to just deal with one piece though, especially if it can be ironed down to the pressing sheet, because then I can stretch pieces to make them fit if needed…which is what this one needed. So here’s the head ironed to central torso…

While I was working on this, a duck love triangle was working itself out in my pool. This is an annual event. The duck couple has been visiting every day, but today an extra male showed up and there was some significant drama for a bit until this point.

I kept working. Here is ironing the upper section to the lower torso…

Which also needed some adjustment, but overall, everything fit together fairly well. Here’s the whole thing rolled up…

For storage until I can get the background ready to go.

I’m sitting at the vet with the tiny-bladdered cat for her followup. I don’t want to spend an hour here, but it seems that is always the case. I need to go buy batting and hopefully pick up my sewing machine so I can get this thing to the next stage. I might have to do a college-visit trip next week, which is going to seriously mess up my schedule for everything I needed to get done over break (much like last year). Sigh. I don’t know why I make plans…it seems life conspires against me.

Left the cat…she wouldn’t pee and I persuaded the vet to let me leave her there for a few hours. I wanted to be stitching down yesterday! Oh well…let’s see what I can get done today…at least she’s in one piece.

I Need That Right Now…

I’m getting close to done, which is good, because I’m expecting to be able to pick up my sewing machine today, and I’d like to be stitching things down today, although that would mean not doing much else, so I might have to rethink that plan. I’ve been trying to grade a little every other day and to do some yardwork every day or so, and clean some part of the house every day, although my brain just wants to get the art done…it’s worried that I won’t get this quilt far enough along by the end of break, and the reality is, I probably won’t, because stuff will get in the way, but I’m trying. I’m always trying. Part of why I write here is because it forces me to be accountable to myself, to say every day, what the fuck did you get done? What art did you make? And if you didn’t make art, what’s your excuse? Is it a good one (spending time with people is a good one)? Or is it lame (sat on the couch all day and stared at a television)? I don’t usually do that, just to be clear. But I could iron for 10 hours in a day and I don’t, because other stuff just happens. So if I only get two hours in, that’s the same amount I would do if I were teaching…and I’m not…

Anyway, yesterday was pretty good. I cleaned, I did yardwork, and I ironed for 4 hours…starting up in the torso…sunflowers on the shoulder and the arm…

Then added the heron wing, which is quite pretty (and hopefully will still be pretty on the background I picked)…

The heron body is there too, as part of the arm, ending in the head below.

I often have snakes in my quilts…couldn’t leave it out this time…

Although I ironed it separately and then set it aside, because it was in the way. I do try to iron the pieces in numerical order…it’s just easier that way than having multiple boxes out at a time. I had made dinner earlier, because I had some time in the middle of the afternoon where I didn’t feel like ironing yet, and it was lasagna, so I could premake it and refrigerate it. I’m trying to be really efficient with foodmaking right now. Froze a dinner’s worth of it for next week or the following week, when we’re both back in school, plus made enough for two dinners this week. I seem to think this stuff through better when I’m not actually teaching, unfortunately. It’s all practice for next year, when I hope to cook a meal on a Sunday and freeze it so I can have it all month, interspersed with other Sunday meals I freeze. Or something. Some attempt to be healthy and not eat the same thing every night, and admit that cooking for just one person every night is tiring.

Then I ironed the bird in the torso…

Tons of feather pieces between the two of them. Then I added the cat on the right side and a piece of the snake on top…

It got a little complicated in here. I added the rest of the snake and the heart, and then the right arm is a fox, which turned out well…

Although I had misplaced part of his eye, apparently. Never found it. Just cut a new one.

The next two sections had complicated overlapping leaves and roots on a flesh background. With the roots, I just lifted the pressing sheet and put them approximately where they belonged…

But with the leaves, I ironed them together separately and then laid them out on the background. It was too complicated to not be able to see the pattern and try to iron it at the same time.

I did the same thing on the leaves on the right breast…then ironed the bird and snake down on top of it, where they belonged…

The last step was the grassy area growing on the right shoulder…and there’s the whole torso…

That’s almost 9 hours so far.

It looks a little chaotic without the head on top. And it definitely will need outlining to define some of the areas. I think the whole thing will read as a body, though, especially with the head. I really want to see it all together today at some point, so even though I have stuff planned (gym, more yardwork, book club for a book I read over a year ago and I’m really just going because I haven’t been since December and I feel out of touch), my goal today is to get it all ironed down and at least ready for stitching down. That part should only take 4 or 5 hours, then another couple hours to pinbaste, although that reminds me…I’m not sure I have a big enough piece of batting for this thing. I should check that today.

Everything else right now is stressful. It’s nice to come in here and iron and not have to deal with drama about colleges or health issues or worry about money or taxes or school. It’s peaceful working on this quilt. There’s the problem-solving of trying to get all the pieces to fit together right. It’s very methodical, laying the pieces out numerically, looking at the pattern, fitting them together, ironing them down, seeing the image come together. Apparently I need that right now. Which is good.

Still Gonna Make It…

I did iron yesterday…I also went prom-dress shopping, something I never did growing up (I wore my aunt’s prom dress to my prom). Wow. That was blingy hell. Blingy expensive hell…like more than I paid for my wedding dress hell. And the girlchild doesn’t want bling. So I could have done without all that, but I managed to come home and iron for a while, then eat with my parents, then iron some more before my body told me it really was tired and could we go to bed, and then it didn’t want to sleep.

Anyway. It’s on vacation. It doesn’t like going to bed early on vacation.

I started by laying the first 100 pieces out…they’re all pretty good sized pieces…

It didn’t look like much at first…

I put the drawing on the ironing board under an ironing sheet…I have two huge sheets and a number of smaller ones. If I can keep the cats away from them, they don’t get damaged (a couple of my cats like(d) to chew on this stuff).

The big stuff at the bottom went pretty fast…

I call this section Earth, Wind, and Fire.

The wind is pretty light in color, so it’s hard to see on the sheet…but the background of the quilt is a dark blue, so that will be much different looking.

Then I started the acacia trees…

All of a sudden, we’re into the teensy-weensy stuff. This is the 100s…check out how much smaller they are.

So they take longer to iron. Those are all elephant pieces…and that took me a while, ironing the three elephants.

Some of the smaller pieces I don’t cut out until I get to this stage, so I don’t lose them…like eyeballs and knee wrinkles. Outlining the elephants when I quilt will really help the detail pop out.

Here they are incorporated into what had been done so far…

I’m well into the 200s now. There’s an apple tree to the right with tiny stems and tiny leaves and tiny apples…so you know what I’ll be doing today. None of the stems are cut out yet…so I’ll be cutting as I iron those. I have a nasty woman-part appointment this morning (one of those where you take pain meds before you even leave the house), so hopefully I won’t be in too much pain this afternoon, and I’ll be able to iron. I’m hoping to get this whole thing ironed together by sometime tomorrow. My sewing machine goes in today for its annual (I really should put that in quotes, because it’s so not annual) cleaning. I can’t pick it up until Wednesday, but it would be nice to be ready to be stitching down on Wednesday.

That said, I do have other stuff to work on…I finished cutting out all the pieces for the second recycled piece last night too…

I was too tired to stand and iron, but not tired enough to go to bed and sleep, so I cut stuff out. So I can iron it down as well before I get the machine. And I could even start tracing the next big quilt if I wanted to. I’d have to go enlarge it and tape it together and number it, but that’s all OK. I have free time for that. Yes, I have a list of chores and errands and have-tos as well, but I’m trying not to dwell too much on that. A little a day…today I’m going to start the FAFSA for the boychild and maybe his taxes…and Cornell’s financial aid stuff. I’m worried about next year’s expenses. Really worried. But hey, whatever. I’ll get by. I usually do.

Meanwhile, I toldja I’d be making art. I’m actually excited to see what this one will look like. I’m excited about the recycled one too…even though I think it will fade a bit into the background, because I’m kind of OK with that idea. We’ll see. By tonight, I should be up into the heron arm and whatever’s past that on the numbering (can’t remember). Lots of feathers and petals, from what I remember. Lots of things that overlap each other, which can be a pain in the butt. But that’s how I made this drawing work…no nudity, no politics, no violence. And no, there’s no guarantee it’ll get in. As usual. Still gonna make it.

Dropping Balls…

What I woke up to (after someone shoved my sticky door open, making a horrible noise and giving me an adrenaline rush that made it impossible to go back to sleep): girlchild has been sick. Apparently that sick included a sore throat (a fact she did not share with me yesterday), which partially explains her swollen face and neck at 11 PM last night when she went to bed. Her dad is on doctor duty, once he finds her insurance card (minor issue). I think it’s strep. Yay! The elderly cat, who is decidedly not elderly when she wants to bitchslap a younger cat who might be in her territory, is apparently bleeding intestinally, and insists on walking around the house, dripping blood everywhere. I can’t get a sub this late. I’m hoping my mom can handle the cat. But who knows?

I’m personally praying to the Goddess of the Mother to keep me from strep, because I don’t have the time or energy for that shit right now.

SIGH. My students told me yesterday that all of us teachers were cranky and had no senses of humor at the moment. I refrained from telling them how close we are to Spring Break, because if I admit that it’s a week and a half away to THEM, they will stop working completely. As it is, I still have about 80% of them on task…for now. They’re right, though. I am cranky. I’m not getting recharged. I’m feeling distant and disconnected from everything and whether there’s hormones involved or not, it’s just fucking with me. I think I need a massage in a hot tub. With cheesecake.

I should be ecstatic somewhere in my head. Why? I finished ironing last night. Whoo! (OK, that was a faked WHOO, but if you fake it, apparently you can make it. I don’t actually believe that, because it’s never worked for me.). And I guess I am somewhat relieved…maybe.

Last night, I ironed a bunch of leaves and grass and blue hair (her hair is the water) and these are the jellyfish parts…

And I also did goldfish and the sun…

Those are sun parts. I used oranges for the goldfish.

It got later and later and I got more tired and I kept thinking, “Really, you should be grading. Why are you being so irresponsible?” Fuck that shit. Iron away baby. By the end of the evening, this is what the fabric pile looked like…

I don’t keep them all neat while I’m working…I just clean it up each night so I can see it all again. While I’m working, I pile. But there’s more yellows in there and obviously the blues are there and I had to add another orange friend (it’s not really orange…it just has a lot of orange in it), plus some purple for the jellyfish, and some pinks for the shell that’s in there, and I don’t remember what else…oh, more green. Because there’s never enough fucking green.

SIGH. It’s done. It took 13 1/2 hours, much longer than I thought it would. I don’t know why. Whatever.

It also took 103 fabrics…

Which is a lot. Looks very colorful…not sure what it will look like in real life. The larger pieces are more toned down…well, mostly.

And here’s my next task (minus the doctor thing and the vet thing and the sore throat/bloody anus thing, and then there’s the pool motor, which yeah, I don’t know, I’m just running water in there and praying)…cutting all of them out.

That’s probably another 11 hours or so. Twelve? Fuck, why do I even estimate? No, seriously. Probably twelve. I’ll commit to that. If I do two hours a night (ha!), that’ll be 6 days. Except I won’t do that every night. But I only need it done by a week from Saturday. Earlier is fine. Then I can do the other recycled one. Then my first task of Spring Break (besides cleaning house and trimming the damn bougainvillea and finding some semblance of my happy) will be to iron it all together, so when my sewing machine gets out of its annual cleaning appointment, I can start stitching it down.

SIGH. I know. I said that already. In 18 minutes, I can start calling doctor, vet, and mom. Oh yeah, and going to work. At the same time. I’m sure there’s some ball I’m dropping today. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m fairly sure I dropped it.

A Sliver of a Place…

Eleven hours plus…I really wanted to just throw sleep to the wind last night, ignore the fact that my job requires you to be ON at all times and being asleep is not an option, and finish ironing. I am that close. Maybe another hour or so. But I was tired. Huh. Stupid body. What do you mean, you want to sleep? You suck at it. Yes, practice makes perfect, but you’ve been attempting this for 48 years now and obviously you just don’t have a talent for it (seriously, as a kid, I didn’t sleep well either). Just give it up.

Mom brain realizes it’s only Tuesday and I have to survive three more days of school, and lack of sleep makes me cranky, and I’m already cranky with the kids because they think grades are magical things that I bestow upon them, and if they have an F, it’s because I did not bestow upon them something better. It’s never that they just didn’t do the work. It’s on me.

So that was part of the frustration of yesterday that dragged me home behind my car and made me too tired to stand at around 11 PM.

OK, yes, I know. Many people go to bed WELL before 11 PM. It’s a perfectly reasonable bedtime. But when you know you could finish the monster task you’re on by 1 AM? Sigh. Well, obviously I was tired. Annoyingly, I’m still tired this morning, even though I have an extra hour of sleep under my belt. Hopefully I’ll finish tonight (the ironing. Not the sleep).

Last night, I ironed a fox and some thorns and some clouds and lightning. Honestly, it wasn’t much. I added some browns for variety…

There’s some orangey browns for the fox too. But everything else was already in the boxes. The browns on the left, I didn’t put them away because I need them to hold up against the greens I haven’t yet picked for the leaves that grow on the brown branches (hello convoluted sentence). That’s where my brain balked, because I have multiple overlapping leaves, so I will need a run of greens and I was just too tired to contemplate it. It’s probably a good idea I didn’t, because my brain is sort of offline at the moment. Or there’s too many things in it. Hard to say which. Needless to say, I have a cut on my finger from cooking brainless last night, I’ve forgotten more than I’ve remembered, and my eyes are still at half mast.

It’s no fun to be annoyed by one’s own existence. I need to clean house, trim the bougainvillea so people can park in the driveway, clean up around the pool, fix the kitchen window screen, cut a piece of glass, buy a frame, hang some art, clean up, put the suitcase in the garage, dammit. How hard is that? The answer is that it all seems to take up so much time and I only have a few things I want to spend time on at the moment, and none of them involves a mop or clippers.

I’m in the 700s, smack dab in the middle of them…

Although there are some 600s shoved off to the side…mostly roots and grassy bits that I haven’t dealt with yet, and then all the leaves, I think. Then all the big stuff on the bottom is up in her hair…so yeah, I am nearly done. It’s hair and some facial details (lips, eyes) that are not flesh tones, and then the sun on her head and that’s it.

Dammit. Why didn’t I just finish it off last night (you were too tired). Fucking limited hours in the day.

Ah yes. I’m in a mood. An artistic mood. One that tromps all over all the other moods. Except they’re still there. I’m still fighting that low-level depression that messes with sleep and happiness and contentment. I think one of the things that makes me keep creating is that I’m never satisfied…that when I finish one, it’s not enough. It doesn’t fill up an empty inside me, so I have to make another one. No, that wasn’t The One…and there will never be a The One, guys…I know that…there will never be A Piece that makes me think, OH! That was it. You don’t have to make any more art. You’re done. You did it. That was The One. Fuck that. I keep making because it’s NOT the one. Because there’s still something to be said. Because I couldn’t put it all in one piece. Because that one said This and I still need to say That.

AARGH. It was a frustrating day yesterday and I’m still carrying all that inside me. Maybe if I’d stayed up and not slept and finished, it would be OK. Or maybe I would still be frustrated. And fucking tired. Wait. I am tired.

Here’s the bin of stuff to be cut out…it’s going to be very exciting over the next week watching that pile get smaller and smaller…

OK. Not really. I mean it’s slightly more exciting than watching paint dry, and sure, I get through a ton of stuff on my Tivo, but it’s not thrilling to watch or write about. But then the FOLLOWING week, I’ll be ironing it together, and that surely IS exciting. Plus it will be Spring Break, and Goddess knows I need that at the moment, even if it will be hours and hours of no one being around. There is no making my brain happy. Make art, which mostly has to happen in this solitary place, but you still need people…but not the ones that cause drama and scream at you. There’s a sliver of a place in there where I can exist and be content…if my brain lets me.

Never Really Done…

Sometimes I can be really damn efficient…like when I’m not sick and when a bunch of drama isn’t stalking me (have I mentioned that colleges have started notifying and the girlchild is a mess?). Yesterday was in fact one of those days. I picked up my quilt from the photographer after a science meeting, came home and graded an entire stack of crap, made dinner from scratch, exercised, and ironed for two hours. Well done, woman, well done.

I’m 9 1/2 hours in…so this sucker is taking much longer than I thought it would. I was obviously dreaming things though, because the last big quilt had about the same number of pieces and it took 12 hours to iron to fabrics…and I’m guessing that’s how long this one will take as well.

I ironed some sunflowers and this is a snake…

My snakes are usually green…I’m not sure why, seeing as how all the snakes locally are mostly shades of brown. That wouldn’t have worked on this quilt, though, because the snake goes all the way across her chest (not political or violent!) and crosses a wide variety of leaves, branches, a cat, and a heart…so it had to contrast with all that (and it does…surely it does). I always think of this kids’ book that is somewhere in the house (OK, I just googled “kid book snake turns yellow to green” and got the title)…Verdi.

Verdi is a python who doesn’t want to be green (young pythons are yellow). ANYWAY. Know that I am always thinking of that snake when I put them in quilts, apparently…or at least his coloring.

I ironed a bird next…more feathers…

I decided to keep it in the brown range, because it sits behind and under a bunch of stuff, and I didn’t want it to overwhelm…although that beak is a bit bright! I was having some major orange issues last night. It took 20 minutes to deal with orange and try to find something that would work. I don’t know why. My orange drawer is really unsatisfying at the moment. Designers go through different color stages. I got some really good yellows and off-whites last time, but the orange drawer needs help.

After that, I ironed a cat and a heart, but I didn’t photograph them. I wasn’t going to go that far, but it was just a few more pieces! Really! (Now you know how I stay up so late.) I finished the 500s and laid out the 600s, so I have a little less than 300 pieces to go…well over halfway, which is good.

Here’s everything I’ve used so far…

I added a lot of off-whites, browns, a few greens and yellows, some orange last night. I do reuse colors throughout the quilt, so one of the reds from elsewhere was used in the heart, and two of the browns from the ground were used in the bird. The cat’s eyes came from the acacia trees in the elephant section. Simple stuff like that. It’s a lot of fabrics though…and notice, I’ve added almost no blue…just the gray blue in the heron. No worries…the hair is the ocean, so there will be bright turquoises up there to support the water-loving animals. Really, I’ve finished most of the torso…I just have a little grassy knoll on her shoulder to do (grass and roots)…then we’re up in the hair. Hopefully I have some big enough gray/white pieces for the clouds. We’ll see.

Here’s the pile waiting to be cut out…

The box is getting full. I might need to graduate into a bigger box. I have quilt class Thursday, so I will definitely be cutting pieces out starting then. Wait. Apparently I don’t have quilt class Thursday. Huh. So much for that plan. I need to be done cutting by the end of next week. Cutting doesn’t take as much time as ironing. I lied. On the last quilt, it took 11 1/2 hours. So whatever. Marathon cutting sessions in my future. I have a soccer tournament this weekend. Maybe I can persuade girlchild to drive while I cut. Or I can sit in Starbucks and cut for hours in between games (can you say ugh?). I actually want to grade papers so I can have as little as possible to do over Spring Break. Of course, I always say that and it never really works out that way.

Progress…I’m getting there. Closer to done. For some definition of the word done, that is, because with art, I am never really done.

Ironing Like a Beast…

Sometimes stuff pisses me off.

I know you’re shocked by that.

But when it does, I do what my counselor always tells me: take care of yourself. Do something nice for yourself. Now with a normal female, that might mean a pedicure or shopping for a new skirt or chocolate. Eh. I make art. So when life conspired to punch me in the face yesterday, and I was sitting there, grading shit, still grading shit, always grading shit, hands shaking, so angry and upset and frustrated that I was about to cry, I took a deep breath, set a line for the end of the feeling and grading of shit, and decided to make art for most of last night.

Well, except, I also needed to sleep. So I did that too.

I kicked some ironing ass last night. But before I did, I started sorting all the recycled pieces from Mariah’s quilts for the second piece in Diverted Destruction 8, which opens June 27 in Los Angeles, by the way. I figure I’m going to need them grouped together instead of piled on the floor in the living room if I ever want to make a quilt out of them. Here’s pink sorted and purple piled…

And here I am working on the green.

Blue is mostly done. I did it while I had pneumonia. Sitting on the floor was doable then. So I have a few more colors to sort, and then I’m done with that. It’s overwhelming to sort these, so it’s better if I just do a little each day. I don’t have very much of most colors, so that makes it more difficult…lots of squares and triangles and strips…but that’s what this show is about. How do we take stuff that normally would get tossed out or put aside, and then turn it into art.

THEN I started ironing like a beast…this is all the flesh in the Ventura quilt…

There isn’t much, because remember? No nudity, no politics, no violence. So she’s mostly covered. Her face and hands show, and her shoulders. And there’s bits of flesh showing behind things. But that’s it. So to iron the flesh colors, I had to pull pieces from the 300s, which is where I’m at, all the way through the 700s. So now I don’t know how far I am, except that I have 7 hours in. When did that happen?

And then I pulled fabrics for the great blue heron that makes up her left arm…

Grays and blues, but the blue in the wings had to show up on the background, so that was a challenge. So now it has some purple in it. I’m OK with that. The idea of the heron will be there. And I picked some really interesting wing-feather fabric. Had to fussy cut the bits I wanted, because it goes all over the place into pink and I didn’t want that. Much. There’s some turquoise in there too. I left a little of that.

Anyway, so that got me to the end of the 300s, but half that wing was in the 400s (all the pieces from 435-485, basically…who numbered this thing?), so again, no idea how far along I am, but maybe have something over 500 pieces ironed? Maybe halfway? It doesn’t look like halfway, but what do I know? It must be halfway. I spent 2 1/2 hours ironing last night and then had a very hard time stopping. Made myself stop. Still tired this morning though…here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…

You can see the fleshy run and the heron is all on the left. Next up is sunflowers I think…and then a cat? Or the heart. Not sure. Yes, she’s covered in plants and flowers, but there’s still a giant anatomical heart. This is all for a show where I have to jury in, by the way. So I might not get in. And I will only have one entry, because every single other piece I have has nudity, politics, or violence (or all three) in it. Sigh.

Here’s pieces ready to be cut out…filling up the box.

Two weeks until Spring Break…and I’m still on schedule. Miraculous.

Here’s a chair that Kitten has destroyed…

And now inhabits. I’m not fixing it until she’s gone. There’s no point, unless I use bulletproof fabric…and I’m not even sure that would stand up to Kitten claws.

Luckily, she leaves my fabric stash alone.

Not Thinking Too Hard…

I brought home 119 science packets last night, the last unit we completed. I had already graded 21 of them at school, one small class’ worth, but I really need to finish the rest over the weekend. Funny, this is the smallest number of students I have ever had (maxed out at 190 one year), but I still can’t balance the grading. You take a weekend off or you schedule it so everything is due at once, and all of a sudden, there’s an avalanche. I just started my 14th year of teaching, and I still can’t find a best practice on that part of the job.

So I sat there for about three hours…and I got through 68 of them. The pile on the right is done…

The pile on the left is still staring at me…balefully. I watched a bunch of TV to drag me through it, and I got faster and faster (which is why sometimes it’s better to just bully through and do ALL of it at once, because once you’re on a roll, you DO get faster and faster). I stopped and made dinner in the middle (girlchild blew me off for yet another Friday night…whatever), and at around 10 PM, I quit. I have my smallest class and my largest class left. It’s easier to grade the good students, because everything is there, complete, and in order. The ones that kill me are the kids who don’t put anything in order and put random stuff in there (one kid stapled a field trip permission slip in there…guess it made it look more full). Sigh. Worst part of my job…well, besides navigating politics and administrators.

Anyway. I was exhausted by then, but in true Kathy fashion, I don’t ever let that stop me from making art. OK. Sometimes I do. But not last night. Just grading all night and not doing something for me makes me cranky. So I dragged myself into the office and looked at what was next to be ironed. And remembered I needed to do a label for the quilt that sold, so I did that first. By the way, the second Catching Cancer is available, if anyone’s interested…

It’s 10 1/2″ w x 12 3/4″ h, $140. Let me know.

And then I started looking at elephant pieces. Teensy weensy wrinkles and eyeballs and lots of gray gray gray, which can be blue-ish or yellow-ish or brown-ish. Grays annoy me. I use them all the time. I love gray. But it drives me nuts. If I were really anal-retentive obsessive compulsive, all my grays would be sorted by their base color and I wouldn’t have to search all through a million bins trying to find the RIGHT gray (I never have the RIGHT gray. I am always buying more gray). So I needed a run of 7 fabrics for the elephants, because they are standing in front of each other, so you have to think about that.

Well, YOU don’t. I do.

There’s only three elephants, but they take up about 100 pieces of Wonder Under…

And I had to add fabrics for eyes and tusks. Here they are all laid out. The old Wonder Under is releasing like crazy. The new stuff is fucking awesome. It doesn’t release and the paper comes off like a dream. The only issue I’m having is that my iron is getting stuff stuck to it from the old Wonder Under, and I can’t get it clean enough, and that is having an issue with the paper of the new Wonder Under, which is really plasticky. I didn’t read the instructions (ha! never do…), so maybe I need to reduce the heat. Or clean my iron better.

It took about an hour to iron all the elephant pieces down…

The next thing on the ironing list is an apple tree with the tiniest pieces ever…because some crazy woman thought that was a good idea. Then I move onto HUGE pieces of body parts and bird wings. I might need to go gray/white shopping. Seriously. There’s a huge heron wing in there, so I have to figure out what color that is. Blue gray? Maybe?

Underneath my feet while I iron…

She was very tired. So was I at the end of it…girlchild came home way too late (apparently clocks are so passé). By then, I was sitting again (so tired yesterday…couldn’t stand to stand and iron for long), working on the binding, which has to get done today, so I can get it photographed tomorrow. Boom! Then I need to start the other recycled piece.

It’s good to be finishing these and moving on. I’m not enjoying the Have-To’s on the quilt front as much as I enjoy the Want-To’s, but those Have-To’s get into shows, and right now, with my rejection rate on the stuff I LIKE to make, if I’m going to be in shows, I have to cater a bit to whatever the hell it is they think they want. I can’t try to figure out why the stuff I really want to make, the stuff I enjoy, why it’s not getting into shows…unless it’s an invitational, so they don’t see it beforehand. I just have to move on and try to balance the stuff I really like with the stuff I need to make for whatever reason…paying the bills, participating in a group show. It is what it is. And I do actually think this Ventura quilt will be cool in the end…even though I really had to fight my own inclinations to get it drawn.

All right…I’m sewing that damn binding on now. Obviously I am Thinking Too Hard.