Here A Leaf, There A Leaf ...

Hello again Internet People!  I think I finally have all the background pieces laid out for the Monumental basket project.   Everything is pinned in place and the stems and branches have been trimmed to fit.  Now if I can just get my husband to build me a frame to hold it all I can get started sewing it all down.  

In order to make sure everything went on straight and stayed where it should be I wrapped the fabric around a couple pieces of foam core board and taped it snugly to the back.  I did all the sewing on the basket and the handle while it was taped to the boards.  I don't want to do the rest of it that way because it is a pain in the ass, so I did finally break down last night and ask my husband to build me a frame to work on.  

As ridiculous as it may be, I hate asking my husband for help with things like this.  I really shouldn't, he is usually pretty happy to help me with whatever I want to do, but he is so busy all the time and I hate to bother him.  I have been trying for almost two weeks to figure out how to make the frame myself without bothering him, but I don't have the parts to work with and I have no way to get them without his help.  So when he told me last night that he was headed for the hardware store today I took my chance and finally asked.

While I am waiting for my new frame to be built I still have plenty of flowers to put together so they will be ready to apply when I get that far.  The flowers all go on top so they are the last things to be applied.                                                                   

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures.  They are the same view, but the first one has a light shining directly on it which washed out the colors of the leaves, but it is more true to the color of the background.  In the second picture the background is washed out and the leaves are a little more true to their colors, still kinda washed out, but not as bad..                                      

The skinny dark green stems that are on top of everything, they are for the Crocuses and the Grape Hyacinth, I will pull them back off when I start sewing and put them on last, just before the flower heads go on, and they will be trimmed down to fit when I get that far. 

For now, I think I have finally figured out how I can assemble the rest of flowers before attaching them to the background, so I am going to go work on that for a while and see how it works.  If I am successful I will have more pictures to share tomorrow.  If I am not successful, I will come back tomorrow and cry.  I am probably kidding on that last part.

Until next time ...                 

                          

            

Its All About The Leaves

Hello again Internet People!  

Well, now that I have sat here for 5 minutes staring at those words I suppose I better start typing something or I am going to be here all damn day. Its not even that I don't have something to write about (that never stops me), I just can't figure out what I want to write about today.  

The basket project is coming along nicely.  I got the sides of the basket and 3/4's of the handle sewn down.  Of course after I got most of the way around the handle I figured out that I wanted some leaves poking out the sides behind the handle, so I ripped the stitches back out on the parts where the leaves will go.  I made leaves for the Eranthis and the Pansies and now I am trying to lay the leaves all out to determine where everybody is going to end up.  I ended up rearranging the flowers, again.  I am not sure why I spent so much time drawing up a design plan in the first place since I am changing it every step of the way, but it does give me a reference point.  Having the drawings of the flowers to look at while I arrange the pieces is certainly helpful anyway.                                    

                                              

Once I get all the leaves arranged maybe I will take another picture to share with all of you.  Once I start sewing them down there won't be very many more design changes, small additions I am sure, but no more major changes.  So I am trying very hard to get everything as close to perfect as I can.  I spent three hours placing and replacing leaves last night, and I am still not even close to being done.  Considering that I am only working with a couple dozen leaves at this point I would have to say I am probably obsessing a little tiny bit on this, but that is what I do best after all.

Until next time ...

 
                                                      

Preliminary Picture

Hello again Internet People!  I am here to put in my time at the keyboard before I get to spend the rest of the day obsessing on my project.  I am in the middle of sewing the handle on along the first edge and I cannot wait to get back to work!  I did some more re-designing after yesterday's realization about the handle redesign, only three of the branches will actually go in front of the handle.  I think I have figured out how to stabilize them so that they can stand out from the quilt without flopping around, I just have to work out the details.

Before I started sewing stuff down I spent two days laying parts out and just staring at them for a while.  Trying to establish a feel for what goes where and when.  Hopefully, I have a pretty good working plan now from which to proceed.  I did take a picture to share with you.  Please keep in mind that at this point nothing is sewn down, it is all just laying there in its approximate position to give me a feel for how it will all come together.

                   

 The basket really is straight on the fabric, my picture is crooked.  

I went rounds with my husband the other day over that piece of green fabric I put across the bottom third of the basket.  I was trying to get him to tell me it was a great idea and that it would look awesome, but he didn't quite understand the concept yet so he didn't like it at all.  Once it is all finished you won't see anything except tiny spots of green behind the other leaves and flowers.  I was trying to explain to him the impossibility of placing individual leaves behind everything to cover the background, not that it is too much work, but that it creates too many layers.  I must have spent two damn hours trying to get him to understand what I was trying to do so he would tell me how great the idea was.  He never did.  Damn him.  Oh well, I have convinced myself that it is a great idea, and he just doesn't know shit.  Its working for me so far.

Now that I have updated all of you on my progress I think I am going to go make some more.  Until next time ...

                                 

Making Progress

Hello again Lovely Internet People!  Mother had an awesome weekend and she is starting off the new week feeling mighty fine.  Well, other than all the freakin aches and pains, but those are normal, I usually just ignore those.  

 

I made some significant progress on the "Monumental" basket project and actually started laying out pieces on the background fabric to arrange them.  The end result is not going to look very much like the picture I drew I am afraid.  Because of the fact that I traced around templates to place the flowers in the drawing, the ones in the drawing are all much larger than the actual flowers I am placing.  And I have decided to move the bottoms of most of the branches away from where I had originally placed them, the tops will end up in pretty much the same places but the angles of the branches will change.

I had just laid everything out on my bed yesterday morning to start putting it together and the phone rang.  My eldest son, who had told me the last time we talked that they would not be coming down to visit this weekend, was calling to say they were on their way!  "On your way where?"  Was my first thought.  Once I realized he meant they were coming here, my second thought was, "damn, I have to clean the fucking house today after all."  I told him I wasn't going to do it, they would just have to deal with the fact that my house was a mess.  He grew up with me, he should be used to it.  But as soon as I hung up the phone, my husband and I were cleaning.  So, now we have a clean house again, and we had a very nice visit with the #1 son and our future daughter-in-law. 

Oh, I almost forgot, I did figure out how to transfer the major placement lines for the design from the picture to the fabric.  It was warm enough outside yesterday for me to open the front door and tape them up on the glass of the storm door.  I only transferred the lines for the basket, its handle, and the tops of the branches where they pass over or under the handle because that is all I really want to be stuck with from the original design.  

Last night I came up with a plan to fill the basket handle with a length of clothesline, I think it is going to look really cool.  I changed my mind about discharging the basket fabric, but I am going to pad the basket more than the rest of the quilt so it will have some dimension to it.  And the trim on the basket will be padded even more, possibly around the clothesline, I haven't decide yet.  (The technique is called Trapunto if anyone is interested.)  I did cut out a basket and the batting for it, but it is just a little too small so I will probably end up starting over on that.  Shit.  I just realized that if I cord the handle it will fuck up the branches that were going to be on top of it, unless they leave the quilt entirely.  I will have to do some more thinking on that to figure out how I want to deal with those.

I will work on pressing out branches and re-cutting and placing the basket today, and maybe I will take some pictures to share with all of you tomorrow.  It still takes a bit of imagination to "see" how parts of it will work, but I think it will be mostly understandable.  I think it is looking fuckin awesome, but I may be a little tiny bit prejudiced.

Until next time ...

Do NOT Touch Me!

Hello again Internet People!  I am here a little earlier than usual today and I am still not sure why.  I woke up at 7 a.m., and actually got out of bed.  This is not something that I would normally do.  Usually I would just roll over and try to go back to sleep for another hour, but I was wide awake and there was no more sleeping to be had so I got up, did my morning Facebook and email stuff and now I am here, trying desperately to figure out what the fuck I am going to write about today.

Now before anyone tries to give me a ration of shit for sleeping in everyday you should probably know that I don't get to bed until close to midnight each night, and then I have to wait for my husband to go to sleep so I can turn off the TV before I can even attempt it.  Most nights I don't get to sleep until 1 or 2 in the morning, and then I wake up every hour or so, all night long.  So, getting up at 8 a.m. isn't really as bad as it sounds.  Cut me some slack, K?

I suppose its kind of funny that I hate eating because it takes too much time out of my day, but I really do enjoy sleeping.  It might take up a lot of time and it may not be very productive, but I really do love sleeping.  Maybe it is because I have been sleep deprived for most of my life, but then I have been food deprived just as long so I am not sure.  The only thing I don't like about sleeping is being touched.  Do NOT touch me while I am sleeping.  I have kicked the cat across the room more times than I can count because she tries to lay on my legs when I am sleeping.  No she didn't really go across the room! I couldn't kick that hard from under that many blankets even if I tried!  I did however give my husband a fat lip one night.  I did NOT mean to!  I was asleep!  He was warned not to touch me, he never listens.  Fortunately he does learn, so he doesn't touch me anymore when I am sleeping, at least not on purpose.

My Grandpa was way worse than I am.  I remember when I was a kid Grandma always made sure us Grandkids knew to never touch Grandpa when he was sleeping.  He would wake up swinging if you touched him.  If you hollered at him from across the room he was fine, but get within five feet and you were taking your own life into your hands.  We always assumed Grandpa was that way as a result of his service during WWII, but I am not so sure anymore.  I have never been in combat.

Well, I reckon I ought to get to work on something.  I am not getting anything done sitting here typing.  Except the laundry.  I already stripped the bed and I am on the second load of laundry for the day, so I will have accomplished something today, even if I don't do anything else.  But that's not possible, there is always "else" to be done, and I better get to doing it or it won't get done.  I will be back again soon with more rambling nonsense, until then  ...

Caption courtesy of my 10 year old son

Too Much of a Good Thing

Hello again Internet People!  I find myself swimming aimlessly around in my head again today and I must say I am getting a little tired of it.  I have been having a new problem while working on my "Monumental" project and it is starting to really bother me.  Apparently I am developing some sort of arthritis or something in my knuckles of my right hand.  The first knuckle on the first two fingers, they are both swollen and they fucking hurt like the dickens!  The dents and holes in my finger tips have nothing on this, this is painful!  I suppose a normal person would just take a break from the hand sewing for a while and give them a rest, but we all know I am not a normal person.

I did manage to finish about 3/4 of the blossoms for the Grape Hyacinth flowers yesterday.  They are so damn cute!  I am really looking forward to putting this whole thing together, I just hope my hands survive!

I have been doing more research on other people's work and what it really looks like up close, and I have to say I am not doing nearly as badly as I thought I was.  I mentioned a while back that my poor eyesight requires me to get extremely close and personal with my work, which magnifies every little imperfection, even the imaginary ones.  I never looked at other people's work that closely before, but I have started doing so now.  It turns out that my work is at least as good as theirs is, sometimes even better!  I have one book on hand applique where the stitching in the pictures looks like what I did when I was 12!  Maybe I am not doing so bad after all.

In other news, I have been debating starting a new project.  No, not another sewing project, a writing project this time.  I am still deciding where and how I want to go about it.  I thought about making another new Blog just for this project, but we have seen how well I do at keeping up with the other Blogs I already have, so I am not so sure about that idea.  I suppose I will probably just tag it as a special feature here on this Blog, for now at least.  The project will be called "Tales from Camp Purgatory" and it will be a slightly fictionalized accounting of my time "off the grid".  I can't do a completely factual story because there are a lot of details I don't really remember all that well, and I really do not want to deal with my ex-husband sticking his hand out for a piece of my pie, which I guarantee he would do if he thought he could get away with it.  So, while it may be loosely based on actual events, the names and details will be altered to protect me from the guilty.  

Now all I have to do is find a few more hours in the day to get to work on it.  Perhaps I will start devoting part of one day a week to it, or perhaps I will decide it is still just too fucking painful to relive, not really sure yet.  I think there are some valuable lessons to be shared, and I know there are some funny as fuck stories that you all will enjoy immensely, but it was also a very painful time in my life, so cut me some slack if I can't get very far with it yet.  I am doin' the best I can with what I have to work with here.                                   

In the meantime I guess I will get back to sewing and see how much pain I can tolerate today. Until next time:

Why Lie?

Hello again Internet People!  It is a grey, windy, dreary looking day outside today and I am just sitting here on my bed trying to figure out what to write about today.  Progress is being made on the "Monumental" project.  Last night I figured out how I am going to color the petals for the Jonquils and the fabric for the pussy willows, so I will probably be doing that later today.  

But I didn't want to write another boring update post, we need some more excitement around here!  There must be something more interesting than fabric flowers to talk about, but I am hard pressed to figure out what that is at the moment.  

I was watching (well, I was listening to) a show on TV a few weeks ago about how people like to lie on the internet.  It was a 20/20 or Nightline type show exposing all these people who had made up stories about themselves (or others) and spread them around the internet looking for attention or even money.  I just do not understand those people.  

I have mentioned before I think that I have always seen the internet as the only place I was really free to be honest, it the only place where I do not have to hide who I am and what I really believe.  I don't understand the attraction of lying on the internet.  So you manage to fool people who had no way of knowing any better, does that make you special or something?  I just don't get it.

My life had been fucked-up enough that I don't need to make up stories I guess.  And, although it was extremely important to me as a child to be the center of attention, I outgrew that a couple of decades ago.  Now I would rather blend in with crowd, I don't like being noticed.  I guess there must be part of me that still craves attention, since I am here writing this Blog for the whole world to see, but I still don't try very hard to get it noticed either.  And I rarely talk about anything all that personal, or even interesting.  There is a reason or that.  As much as I would love to have hundreds of followers, I would hate to have hundreds of followers.  Too much pressure, too many expectations, and too great a risk of somebody telling me that they don't like me.

I reckon that is the biggest fear I have.  Because I am being honest and truthfully myself, when people slam what I have to say, they are slamming me.  And I do totally take every fucking bit of it personally.  I know I shouldn't, and I have been working very hard at not doing it, but I still do.  Everything is personal to me.  

The one thing that stuck with me the most about that show was when they went through a list of warning signs to look for to show that someone is making the shit up.  Like an unbelievably high amount of bad things happening in their life, repeatedly and for a very long time without stopping. Unfortunately, that is MY life!  I have had times where it was literally one pile of shit after another being dumped into my life, so much so that if I hadn't been living it, I never would have believed it either.  It all fucking happened though, if I was going to make shit up it would be a whole lot more fun than the crap I have had to deal with, that's for damn sure! 

I guess we should feel sorry for those people who do feel the need to make up shit to post on the internet.  What a very sad life they must have if the only way they think they can get people to care about them is to lie.  I can't even comprehend the level of sadness that those people must live with every day, and I suffered from severe, chronic depression for a quarter of a century!

I cannot promise you that I will always make sense, or that I will always have something important to tell you, but I can give you a 100% money back guarantee that I will never lie to you. Not on purpose anyway.  I might occasionally misrepresent my position on something, but that is a matter of not finding the correct words at the time, it is never about deception!  I might bore you. I might irritate you. I might even offend you.  But I will never lie to you.  Please don't lie to me (unless you are telling me how wonderful you think I am, I can take those lies all day, any day!).

Until next time ...