Design Progress Report

Hello again Internet People!  Happy President's Day to those of you in the U.S.  And Happy whatever holiday it is today in Canada for anyone who happens to be there.  I know it is a holiday in Canada today, I just don't remember what it is about.  

I never did make it so far as to start sewing yesterday, but I think I will have better luck with that today.  After I logged outta here I started tracing templates onto fabric and then cutting them out.  I am still cutting.  All done tracing, for now, but lots more cutting out to do.  I also need to make more bias strips out of brown fabrics for the tree branches, I have plenty of green stems made, so of course I had to design a project which uses primarily brown ones.

I actually drew out a few extra flowers while I was at it.  I am thinking I might add a couple more Crocuses and another (smaller) Grape Hyacinth instead of moving the pansies to the left.  I have also decided to make the primrose flowers (the little heart shaped petal ones) 3-D and put a couple of leaves behind them.  I still have to figure out how to design a leaf pattern for the pansies, they have jagged edges on pointy spears, not the easiest thing to recreate in cotton fabric, but they will need some kind of greenery behind them and little skinny Daffodil leaves are not going to cut it.

So, now I am filling up dozens of little plastic containers and zip-lock baggies, separating all the different flower parts and pieces.  I tell you what, one of the neatest things I have found to use to keep myself organized are those little plastic tubs that they package lunch meat in.  I have dozens of the darn things and I NEED dozens more!  They are just the right size for so many damn things.  I have 6 of them filled with safety pins, for pinning quilts with, and I can usually pin two twin quilts, or one queen-sized quilt from each box.  

I have always been a re-user type of person, being poor kinda mandates that anyway, but I would be the same no matter how much money I had.  I am always trying to figure out ways to turn trash into treasures, not in the crafty, make a snowman out of a bleach jug way, but more in the creative, use the cottage cheese container lid as a paint mixing tray or for stencil plastic way.  A great percentage of my creative tools have been hijacked from their original intended purposes and re-imagined into something completely different.  I prefer them that way.

Well, if I am ever going to get to do any sewing again I better get outta here and get to work.  I am sure I will return again soon (hopefully tomorrow even) to beguile you all with more of my rambling nonsense, but until then ...

                          

 

Unveiling The First "Monumental" Design

Hello again Internet People!  Well, it ain't perfect, but it is good the fuck enough.  So here is a photo of my design plan for the first Flower Basket art quilt : 

Not too bad for someone who cannot draw!  The paper is 18" x 24".  I started with a piece of foam core board which I marked with a 2 1/4" grid.  I used my big, four foot level to mark out the lines and it just happens to be 2 1/4" thick, so it made a good grid to work from.  As I mentioned yesterday I drew the basket out first and then laid another piece of paper over it and traced it through.  Then I took the templates for the pattern pieces and traced them into the pattern.  The basket and the branches were the only things drawn "freehand" (I did use rulers, a straight one and a bendy one, but no templates).

The bare sticks are flowering branches and they will have leaves and flowers on them in the finished design, but after drawing them in on the one branch (the Mexican Orange Blossom - upper right) I decided it was unnecessary to draw them all in at this time.  The lollypop looking things are just the centers of the Jonquils and Daffodils, the petals are 3-D and drawing them in was just too distracting.  You can kind of see what I mean if you look at the three circles at the lower left, those are the Eranthis, I tried drawing the petals in lightly for them and it is just messy looking.

After staring at it for a while last night I have decided to flip the Pansies on the right with the Grape Hyacinth on the left.  I don't want to try to re-draw either of them, so I am just making a mental note for that change.  There will also be a pile of Forget-me-nots in the lower left corner, beside the basket, which I didn't draw in yet.  

So today I get to trace out a whole bunch more circles for more of those teeny tiny yo-yos, I need 30 purple-blue ones for the hyacinth, plus however freaking many white ones I need for the Lily of the Valley.  Then there are all the petals for all the flat flowers, I haven't even started on any of those.  Oh, and I still have to go find my basket fabric which is outside somewhere.  I have some ideas I want to play with for the basket fabric, fortunately I have like four yards of the stuff, so there is lots of it to fuck up before I figure out what I am doing.  I was thinking of maybe trying some discharge dyeing on parts of it, so the basket itself is a lighter shade than the handle and the trim.  I have never done any of that before so I am not sure what it will turn out like, but I have plenty to work with so there is no harm in trying it out.

I think my biggest challenge at the moment is going to be transferring the placement lines for the basket from the paper to the base fabric.  Its too damn big to fit on my light box that's for sure!  I have a couple of windows that are big enough, but they are a pain in the ass to reach because there is furniture in front of them.  Oh well, I will find a way, I always do.

For now I think I will go get to tracing circles onto fabric so I can get back to sewing again.  I have spent the better part of a week developing the pattern and haven't had the time to sew, so now that it is done, I do.  And I am.  Until next time:

                                       

Designing And Re-Designing

Hello again Internet People!  After some further research I have started over on my design plan.  It turns out that the wood sorrel that looked so cute in the bottom corner doesn't actually bloom until June.  And there were some other design flaws that I decided would be easier to correct if I just started from scratch.  Fortunately, for once in my life, I actually thought ahead on this project.  When I drew out the original basket I knew I would have more than a few false starts on this project, and as I said I may want to do more than one basket, so I just taped another piece of paper over the top and traced it thru.  So when I decided to change the design, I just took off the top piece of paper and rolled it up for later, and then taped a new piece down on top.  

This time I went thru my big flower book and marked all of the flowers that bloom from February thru April with an orange sticky bookmark, then went thru and made a new list of the flowers I thought I could reproduce.  Now I am trying to arrange them all in the basket.  It struck me yesterday that perhaps a class in flower arranging might have been a little less pointless than I had originally thought, but I think I am doing okay anyway.  I drew in a background lattice of what will be flowering branches (cherry, peach, and Mexican orange blossoms, along with a few sprigs of pussy willows), and started adding the flowers again last night.  I have an Amaryllis, a Grape Hyacinth, and two revised tulips along with the Lily of the Valley and those little yellow flowers I talked about yesterday (they are called Eranthis, or Winter Aconite, by the way) all put back in and I am working on redesigning the daffodil and jonquils to put them back in next.  I decided my original ones were way too big, so I am shrinking them to fit in with the scale of the other flowers.  I am sure the scale is going to be off for some of these, but I am trying my best to keep them all in line. 

It occurred to me yesterday that this would probably be a lot easier if I had waited a month or so to work out this design plan.  Then most of these damn flowers will be blooming in my own yard so that I could take better pictures and have models to work out the scale from.  This is one of the many drawbacks of my obsessions, I cannot wait.  Its okay though, I am having a grand time and that is the most important thing.  If I can manage to hang on to this obsession long enough to complete it I might just have a beautiful picture when I am done, and as long as I think it is beautiful, then it will all be worth while.          

                             

At any rate I am not getting any further with my design while I am sitting here typing so I think I am going to sign outta here again and get back to work.  Have a great weekend!  Until next time ...

                   

Its Friday, and I am Fried!

Hello again Internet People!  Its been a busy couple of days here at Mother's house, and it shows no sign of getting any less busy any time soon.  I am hard at work trying to draw up a design plan for my "Monumental" project, but I haven't gotten very far yet.  I have compiled lists of which flowers bloom when, and their relative sizes so that I can put them together more realistically .  I have decided upon making a basket of flowers, well actually, I think it is going to end up being several baskets, but I am starting with one.  The first one will be a basket of Spring flowers.  So far I have a daffodil,  a Lily, two tulips, two jonquils, some Lily-of-the-Valley, some wood sorrel, three primroses, and three of something else I can't remember the name of, cute little yellow flowers (not crocus, these are smaller than that).  I will shoot a picture of the design at some point to share with all of you, but I don't have time today.  I have been having some issues with trying to lay it all out since some of the flowers are 3-D they will sit atop of other things that are flat to the background.  So I have a lot of places where the lines are over top of each other and it looks like a freakin mess, but I am hoping I will be able to remember what goes where.  I should write it down somewhere, but I probably won't.

We took the kids to the Planetarium last night to watch a show.  That was a lot of fun!  I have never been to one before, so it was a great new experience for all of us.  Of course it cut into my design time so I didn't make very much progress yesterday.  And today looks to be even less productive.

Oh, I wanted to update you all on something else I said a few days ago.  I mentioned that I had learned that I was doing applique "wrong" all these years, well, I was wrong, again.  I found the old book that I used to learn from in the first place, and it shows it being done just the way I have been doing it.  I guess, like most things, everyone has their own way of doing things, and whatever works for you is probably as "right" as it needs to be.  I can see where the way I have been doing it would be better for something that is not going to be backed and quilted, but when the back doesn't show at all it is not so important for it to look good. 

Well, I need to get out of here and go help my husband for a few hours so I guess this is all I have time for today.  Hopefully things will calm down tomorrow and I will work on a better post for all of you when it does.  Until then, ...

                           

                                         

                                              

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere!

Hello again Internet People!   Happy Wednesday! Yesterday ended up being a pretty productive day despite all of my efforts to the contrary, and I am hoping for more of the same today.  After a few hours of searching I managed to find some vintage Millinery books with flower making instructions, there are 5 total that I found that I would like to have, and one that I have managed to get so far.  I am pretty sure they are all in the public domain, now I just have to see where I can download them from without having to pay some ridiculous price.  If the original author is not being compensated I don't like to pay very much for a book.  I have no trouble paying a ridiculous price IF the author is getting their share, but I sell public domain books and I don't charge outrageous prices for them.  We even put massive collections together and sell them for way less than some of these folks are trying to get for each freakin book!  

So, I decided that if I can't get the old patterns for free, I will just have to make my own.  A few years back I bought a bunch of flower gardening books when I was going through that phase, and it turns out they are filled with pictures of flowers.  Who'da thunk?  And, not only do they have pictures, but they even have all the information on growth patterns and sizes and everything.  So, now I am re-thinking the design of this "Monumental" project I am working on.  My original thought had been a large basket of flowers, but I had given up on that idea, now I am reconsidering.  I mentioned before that I didn't want to have to think hard enough to make this a "realistic" picture, but maybe I do after all.  I want to see how "realistic" looking I can make at least some of the flowers.  Some of the ones I have already made are total fantasy flowers, they do not exist in nature, but I don't necessarily have to use those on the same project, nor do I have to make ALL of the flowers in this project be realistic, it is supposed to be art after all, right?

I will keep thinking on this.  Today I am working up a list of flowers that I think I can produce reasonable replicas of.  Once I figure out what I have to work with maybe I can work out a functional design plan.  I am starting to get to the point where I have enough parts and pieces to get started on the actual project so I really need to figure out what the hell the project is going to be!

Before I log outta here I did want to share one other little "duh" moment I had this week.  I have made no secret of the fact that I am fucking weird, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.  All of my life I have had this thing about threading needles.  I have always had to do it the hard way, there was something of a "pride" factor involved I think.  I was "proud" of the fact that I always threaded the needle myself, with no external aids.  Well, I got over that this week.  I went out and dug my little "Abe Lincoln" wire needle threader out of the sewing box it has sat in, unused, for the last 35 years, and I put it to work for me.  My gawd it makes life SO much easier!  I don't think I will ever attempt to thread another needle without one again.  Well, not by choice anyway.  So, the next time someone tells you that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, you can let them know that the dog can teach itself anything it wants to learn, at any age.  This old bitch has proven that to be true!

That's about all I have to offer you for today.  Until next time ...

                       

                                          

Learning To Sew

 Hello again Internet People!  I almost didn't come here to write today. I am just not feeling it today.  I would much rather be spending my time and energies on sewing rather than writing, but since I am trying to make this Blog a regular feature in my life, here I am.

I mentioned in passing the other day that I have been doing a lot of reading mixed in with all this sewing.  What I did not mention was what I was reading.  They are all sewing books of one kind or another.  And I actually did learn somethings that I thought I should share with all of you.  I have told you all before that I am completely self-taught when it comes to sewing (well most things actually, but especially sewing).  I have never taken a class, I think my Mom showed me how to thread a needle and tie a knot, but beyond that I have had to figure it all out on my own.  And it turns out I have been doing some things backwards for a very long time!  

When I first started sewing I started with hand embroidery. One of the things I learned was that it is very important that the back of the work looks neat and tidy, not a mass of jumbled threads and crap.  When I graduated to hand applique, I kept the same mind set.  So when I sew a piece down, I would do the traveling forward inside the folded edge of the piece I was attaching, the only thing that shows on the back is a tiny catch stitch.  Apparently, this is fucking wrong.  Completely freakin backwards of the "correct way" to do it, where you only catch a tiny piece on the piece you are attaching and travel under the background piece.  Now that I understand how it is "supposed" to be done, I think I am going to have even more fun with it.  The "right" way looks a whole lot easier than my way.

The funny thing about this is that usually my way is easier than the "right way".  There are a lot of things that I don't do the way the "experts" say they are supposed to be done, in pretty much all aspects of my life, but especially in sewing. 

Here is another interesting little tid bit of information that I learned: when hand sewing apparently the goal is about 8 stitches to the inch.  Consistency in stitch size is the most important goal, but all the "experts" in my books say 8 stitches to the inch is good.  Well, it turns out I do 12 stitches to the inch, and pretty damn consistently too.  I had never really paid attention before, but I started wondering last night so I measured off an inch on a handful of the petals I stitched yesterday, and every one of them inches had 12 stitches within it.  I am pretty freakin impressed with myself on that one.

I learned something else too that I wanted to share with all of you, but for the life of me I cannot remember what the hell it was at the moment.  I know it was related to hand sewing, and it was pretty exciting, but I have no fucking clue what it was!  Oh well, it will come back to me eventually and I will tell you when it does.  In the mean time, now that I have put in some time here I am going to go get to sewing.  I'll try to be more entertaining next time.  Until then ...

                       

                                  

                              

Its Monday, Again ...

Hello again Internet People!  I spent the entire afternoon yesterday pressing and cutting and pressing some more.  I now have dozens of stems pre-pressed and ready for use.  Since I cut all of the bias strips from fat quarters all of my stems are pretty short pieces, I took the shortest ones and just folded those directly in half.  The longer ones I folded in from both sides, in thirds, like a commercial bias binding.  It turns out I have a real knack for folding bias binding, which came in real handy.  

I also pressed out all of the leaves and flower petals that I had completed so far and I cut up a whole bunch of other fat quarters of various colors to use for more flowers and flower petals.  I didn't do very much sewing yesterday, by the time I was done cutting and pressing I was in too much pain to concentrate for very long.  I did put together the petals for one flower, but that was as far as I got.   I think I need to design some more flowers that are not 3-dimensional to balance out the design, but I am still a long ways off from worrying about that.  I probably should try to come up with an actual design first.  Its times like these that I really wish I could fucking draw!  It would be so helpful to be able to sketch out a design plan to work from.  Oh well, I guess that would probably take some of the adventure out of the process anyway.

Oh, by the way, I just remembered, I misspoke the other day and I wanted to clear something up.  The whole eating issue thing, I said I gave up on the idea of eating every two hours because it was leading me to "obsess" over food.  That was the Wrong word!  The word I was looking for was "fixate".  I make this distinction for a reason.  To me, I have come to see my obsessions as a good thing, they are fun (when I can keep them under control).  Fixations are bad.  Fixations lead to depression and all sorts of bad thoughts and feelings.  I don't like fixations.  So, fixating on food is not a good thing for me, I spent so much energy trying to make sure I stuck to the schedule that I ended up actually eating less than I would have otherwise, and I felt worse about eating less.  That is not going to help, at all.  So, no more fixating, I just need to eat.  And on that note, I hit 98 pounds last night!  Yeah!  I am finally back to being the original "98 pound weakling" that was my claim to fame for so many years.

And now, to celebrate this minor accomplishment, I am going to go make some flowers.  I will talk at you all again next time.  Until then, ...