Piece of Cake

Ugh. Mornings. Not a fan. Too many disturbances last night. It’s fine for puppy. He just naps all day. Me? Not so much. I bully through it, sometimes more or less irritated than others. Really, I know the kids will be asking when I’m going to grade everything, and here’s what’s up with that. I didn’t grade shit this weekend. I quilted like a madwoman. I did 14 hours of art stuff instead of grading. Yup. And I’m not done, but I’m where I wanted to be, perhaps a bit further. So that’s good. But I still have grading to do. And I’m not sure how I’ll tell them that.

I started by pinbasting Friday night and then quilting. I quilted Saturday afternoon as well, although when I started, I found this living thing curled up inside the quilt ball I’d put on the sewing machine…

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Um cat. Move.

I did outlining for hours…hoping to finish it on Saturday, but I had somewhere to be at a specific time, so I had to stop short of that mark…

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I really didn’t have much left…half a face, I think. Part of the sun. Her hair.

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So I’m watching the clock and thinking, “I’ll just finish this up.” Yeah. No. Sometimes you just have to stop and get where you’re going.

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Sunday, I got all the errands and have-to’s done, and then finished up the sun etc. pretty quickly. On Saturday, I’d been smart and bought the background thread. Then Sunday, before I even started this, I went and bought the binding fabric, so I’d be ready. I knew I had a 2-hour staff meeting today and wouldn’t make it to the store before it closed. They used to have one late day a week, but no longer.

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Quilting the background didn’t take as long as I thought it would…I think I stopped sometime just after this to make dinner…

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And came back to Kitten trying to sit all over the quilt again.

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She’s not very patient with me. Total quilt time was just over 10 hours.

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Not bad. But I managed to fold the backing up into the quilting. I did not cut all that out. I trimmed the quilt and then was lucky that it fit under the binding. Don’t do more work if you don’t have to.

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I laid it out again for trimming (fast-moving dog)…

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Then sewed on binding and sleeves, top and bottom.

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Then pinned it all back. Then it was after midnight. Kitten doesn’t want to sit on it when it has pins in it, strangely.

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But that’s further than I thought I would get. All of a sudden, it’s going to be a piece of cake to get it to the photographer Friday. Only two weeks later than I thought it should be done.

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Interesting that I got more done on it while teaching than I did with a week off school…although there was other stuff messing with me that week. I guess it’s easier to be efficient when I don’t have any time. Now I need to start drawing the next one.

This came up over the weekend…back to the world of nonexistent penises. There’s the quilt that started that whole mess. Actually, it wasn’t the quilt that started it…it was one person and then one organization that claims it supports art and creativity. My ass. This article is in Textile Fibre Forum, their latest issue.

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Thanks to Tanya for writing me up again. I should stay out of trouble for a while so she has time to make a quilt or two.

OK, so tonight I’m grading stuff AND sewing down a binding. Maybe I’ll finish…maybe not. There’s a lot of binding on this one. It’s a relief to almost be done, though, that’s for sure.

You Won’t Find a Penis at AQS Grand Rapids…

Oh my. Oh dear. Censorship again folks…except this time, I’m being censored for something that’s not even there.

The SAQA exhibition folks were good enough to let me know that a viewer at AQS Grand Rapids, Michigan, had complained about a penis in one of my quilts at the show and AQS was planning on pulling the quilt. (It’s already shown in Phoenix, AZ; Daytona Beach, FL; Lancaster, PA; and Paducah, KY, as part of the AQS QuiltWeek circuit).

So some person objected to my quilt and couldn’t just walk by, moving on to the next quilt (which is what I do when another Sunbonnet Sue shows its ugly head…I don’t call Fox News…I don’t pitch a fit and refuse to ever come back to another show.)…they had to demand it get pulled from the show.

OK. Um. But there’s no penis in that quilt. Seriously. There isn’t. There’s boobs and uteri and even a woman giving birth, but there’s no penis. None. I swear. I really don’t do a lot of penises and they’re bloody obvious when I do.

The quilt is I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket (did she think the life jacket was a condom? Because it wasn’t. It really was a life jacket. And there isn’t a life jacket in the quilt either, just to confuse things even more.) and it’s part of SAQA’s People and Portraits exhibit, which has been traveling for years and through more cities than I can count. And she didn’t object to the 5-inch vulva in the quilt next to it, Fully Medicated.

Oh don’t worry…I’ll give you a nice big picture so you can do a Where’s Waldo and find Waldo’s penis for me. Because it’s not in there.

Kathy Nida 72

It’s one thing to be censored because of nudity. I don’t agree with that either, but at least it’s not uncommon. It’s another thing to be censored for something that’s not even there. So Michigan, I’m sorry, but if you go to the show and you wanted to see my quilt, you should tell management…since that’s how I got pulled. Someone complained to management and said they’d never come back to an AQS show. And we don’t know if I’ll be allowed to have this piece in QuiltWeek at Chattanooga or Des Moines, so that’s still up in the air. So if you’re planning on going to those shows, you might want to let them know you’re expecting to see my quilt. I’m not going to tell you not to go if they don’t show it. Just tell them you’re not happy about it.

I’m disappointed in AQS’ response. Maybe you are too. Here’s a link to the people in charge of AQS in general…I don’t know who made the decision at the show, but these are the people on high. I’m waiting until they make a decision on the next two shows before I write them. Someone said something to me about this being a quilt show, so I can’t expect art sensibilities…well if that’s the case, AQS needs to stop having art quilt exhibits at their shows or have a clear policy on subject matter (I checked their current show entry forms and there is nothing about that). Plus show me where on my quilt is the thing that the woman imagined was there. Because they took her word over mine. And there is no penis in the damn quilt.

It’s frustrating. I don’t fit in the quilt world because I do art. I don’t fit in the art world because I do quilts. Thanks to Martha Sielman (the author of the book People and Portraits) and SAQA for trying to stand up for my work. Shame on AQS for caving to imaginary issues.

My work was recently in an article about censorship, written by Tanya Brown, in Textile Fibre Forum Issue 122. I’m not the only one being censored.

The Light…

Amusing that I last posted about blurry, because now my camera won’t take anything BUT blurry pictures (it’s not me…it’s the technology). Frustrating. I kill cameras quickly. I don’t even think it’s a year old, so I’ll chase down the warranty and see what I can do. Meanwhile, the phone takes OK pictures, so I can use that.

There are four days of school left. I have 700 things left to do in four days, but I’m sure it will be OK. Most of my grades are done…which is good, because they’re due tomorrow. I finished printing all the certificates. I still have a field trip today, teaching tomorrow and most of the next day, an award ceremony, and that hellish last day when we have our kids for just over 3 hours with nothing real to do.

I worked my butt off yesterday getting stuff done because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel…the vacation light. The light of no more grading. Of no more lesson plans. Of no more trying to get all the tech to work and the kids to behave. Such a relief this year. OK. Probably every year I feel this way; I just forget it until it’s upon me.

One of my quilts is in an article in Textile Fibre Forum…

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An article by Tanya Brown on Censorship in Art…with my One Paycheck nice and big in the front…

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Of course, this picture is blurry. My fault. It’s a good article, especially for those who make abstract or less in-your-face art (although I don’t consider nudity “in your face”)…if you don’t realize this is happening because it doesn’t happen to you. Certainly the notion of ART in the quilt world is still troubled. Hopefully that will change over time.

I finished tracing Wonder Under last night for the new big quilt…

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Just over 19 hours to trace…I think I thought it would be 20 hours, so not a bad guess. There are 6 yards of Wonder Under that now need to be trimmed. The last two pieces had lots of big pieces on them from the hair and the sun. In fact, I don’t think I filled all of the last piece. So I’ll start cutting out tonight. I wanted to be done cutting out “by the time I got out of school”. Well technically my last day is Friday, but it usually only takes me about 20 minutes to check out…so we’ll see. I’m figuring 15 hours to cut the pieces out, so that’s a lot to do this week, but I am mostly done with school crap…so that will help. Being able to come home and do NOTHING that is school-related…that is bliss. Seriously. I can’t even tell you.

I started working on Owl 3.0 as well…a commission pulled from the most recent drawing. There’s an owl on the left side, under a rib and a Fallopian tube. I drew the whole thing out and numbered it.

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It’s 102 pieces, which is not bad. A lot of them will be the same color, so it won’t take long to pick fabrics and iron. I’m going to start tracing it tonight before I put the light table top back on.

Puppy was deeply asleep while I graded yesterday. I guess he got tired out on Saturday and Sunday morning.

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We are up to three dogs for the week. We were a little worried because my parents’ dog, Katie (on the right), had been bullying Simba when we visited on Sunday, but they’ve been fine…

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Calli is the alpha dog (well, behind the humans). Simba is a spaz and the older dogs school him. Katie is kind of a freak sometimes, but they’ve been doing well with three adults to entertain them.

So yeah, not the most relaxing week, but it helps to see into the future, where sleep happens and reading books and shee-it. I keep dreaming of the same stuff. No Jamaican beaches and fruity cocktails. Just don’t make me get up early and teach for a few weeks. Please.