Finished with fish

I only accomplished one thing in the sewing room this week, but that’s enough. Here is my Progressive fish quilt:

 

I might call this Fish ‘N Cat

The binding was chosen from fabric I could reach, but I think it works well.

I haven’t found my notes on the quilt yet, but it is possible that the top was started twenty years ago. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I was waiting for the perfect quilting pattern to come along. In the last two decades I’ve finally learned that perfect doesn’t exist. I’ve also learned enough about machine quilting that I’m pleased with the outcome.

Here is a detail:

I still have the label and sleeve to make, but since I’ve got to show it at Challenge next week, I know the quilt won’t be waiting another twenty years to be called done. Time now for my happy dance.

Another New Start

One of the great things about having the kids come home to visit is that I have to clear out all the crap I put in their rooms. My husband would prefer that I simply stop putting stuff in their rooms, but we all know that isn’t going to happen. Both kids are visiting this month but at different times so I have had a chance to clear out one room at a time.

Lately I’ve been keeping the fabric for the prison program in the kids’ rooms. I managed to get all the stuff out of our daughter’s room. Some of it was even sorted and moved in plastic bins to the garage.

Most of it wasn’t.

 

The stuffed dog is guarding the fabric, not growling at it.

If the universe smiles on me, I’ll get a chance to sort at least some of this between the time our daughter leaves and our son arrives. I’ve made a bit of a start:

I’ve been going through the fabric faster than I thought I would, and the quilt guild has offered to store new donations of fabric for the program. With any luck, by the time the kids are back at Christmas, they’ll both have tidy rooms. Yes, believing this will happen is about the same as believing in Santa Claus, but Christmas is the time for miracles, yes?

 

Breathing Space

The week came and went, and so did I. I went into the sewing room and tidied up one pile every day. It didn’t matter how small the pile was in the beginning as long as it was gone by the end. This is what I gained:

By sorting and consolidating fabrics for my prison program, then shifting the bins from one place to another, I carved out a little breathing space in the corner. There is still fabric in both upstairs bedrooms, the downstairs bedroom, under the piano and in the garage, but I can get to the fabric in the sewing room so I’ll be able to use it in kits more easily. That will make it easier to swap out empty(ish) bins from the sewing room with full bins from other places.

Along with the sorting of fabrics, I also forced myself to cut the scraps. I hate cutting scraps almost as much as I hate sorting socks. That means I delay the chore as long as possible, and that is why the stack of cut squares looks like this:

Last of all, I said goodbye to an old friend.

I have used this tote bag to haul patterns and kits to my prison quilting class for nearly twenty years. It is one of the first tote bags I ever made. I had always thought we would retire together, but age is catching up with both of us:

While there are plenty of products (most resembling spackling compounds) available to hide my fraying edges, this situation is terminal. I sent the bag to tote bag heaven and brought out another from my near-inexhaustible supply. The new bag is bigger, stronger, and will be of great use but I’ll always remember the original fondly. In the end, I hope that I am remembered equally as fondly when I go to tote bag heaven.

In Chaos There Is Opportunity

The best thing about taking classes is the new project. The worst thing about taking classes is the new project. I had a project going, brought a project back from Santa Fe, and discovered upon my return that a project I thought I could delay until July needs to be done now. No wonder my creative space looks like this:

While staring at the piles and wondering where to start, I decided to begin with what doesn’t work. Turns out what doesn’t work most is the great idea I had for stacking bins of cut squares.

There isn’t room to move the bins around. I suppose I should have realized there will never be room to move things around, but there’s nothing like experience to help you recognize a mistake when you make it again. So, on to Plan B. Pause for dramatic effect – and . . . nothing.

While waiting for Plan B to make its way into my consciousness, I scanned the piles once again:

and again:

Still no plan. Ah, well. This is what life comes to sometimes – fall down six times, get up seven. In the next week I will choose a corner every day, and pick up what’s in that corner. It’s going to be a long week, but in chaos there is opportunity.

Silk and Santa Fe

Trees and science fiction – must be Art Quilt Santa Fe. Betty Busby was the teacher this year. Her award-winning quilts are fabulous, as was her four-day workshop. She had us painting on silk, which I have done before without much success. This time was different. Betty encouraged us to relax and let the fabric and the paint take us on a journey. Once I let go of my expectations and allowed the end product be a surprise, I had a blast.

As with last year’s workshops, I planned to use my projects for my tree series. We started with our backgrounds. Betty had us painting from light to dark vertically. I painted a sunbeam filtering through a forest.

Next we made patterns. I sketched out a tree trunk with branches, then Betty enlarged it with a computer resizing program. The design is printed out in separate sheets, and taped together.

We cut our designs out of Remay, which we had also painted in a light-to-dark gradation, and fused them to the surface.

I’m not certain what I’ll do for borders, but I left my options open by leaving the tree branches loose over the edge of the silk.

We also worked with paint sticks. Here is a cedar I painted on a scrap of satin. The trunk is a line of copper paint stick.

I promised you sci fi, and here it is:

We painted another piece of silk in a circular gradation from light to dark. The idea was to fuse a single organic image graded from dark to light on top of the silk. By this time, however, my silk was chattering away and made sure I could see it was a galaxy. And it wanted space ships. Pink and blue space ships.

Who am I to argue with the galaxy?

Permission to Wander

A couple of weeks ago I went to a local art gallery to see an exhibit of quilts. The exhibit was smaller than I expected and I had almost an hour before I had to be at a meeting. Not enough time to go home and do something useful, but still too much to squander.

Or was it? I gave myself permission to wander downtown, had a delightful time, and was in a much more receptive state when I finally arrived at my meeting.

That got me thinking about my sewing room, and whether I give myself permission to wander in there often enough. I am constantly collecting materials to inspire ideas -

and supplies -

 

and embellishments -

but when I go in the room I’m there to work. Work implies progress, and progress implies having something to show for my time. Whether it’s a new quilt or a tidied shelf, I want to be able to prove that I haven’t squandered the day.

And yet . . . is flipping through the art books really squandering the day? Is pulling out the drawers and letting my fabric and embellishments inspire me wasting time? If I have the luxury of a day to think, to absorb, to wonder, don’t I owe it to myself as an artist to enjoy it?

 

 

 

Fish

The latest Challenge assignment will again give me a chance to finish a UFO, and again it is a Progressive Party project.

The quilt began its journey as a bordered rectangle of fish fabric. By the end it had blossomed into a fish tank on a book shelf. I was so pleased with it that I set it aside until I had the perfect quilting design for it.

Finished laughing, have you? Of course the perfect quilting pattern never revealed itself, and the darling little fish tank languished in one corner or another for more years than I care to admit. Then came the Challenge assignment – Fish. That’s all, just Fish. I can do anything I want as long as I can somehow relate it to the word Fish. I decided it was time to finish this quilt.

Which isn’t to say I couldn’t have done a brand new fish quilt. I have a sewing room full of fishy things.

One might ask why I have so many fish-related items. I can’t honestly tell you. I don’t eat fish and I prefer dogs as pets, but show me some fish fabric and it’s like putting a 5-lb box of chocolates in front of me. I start drooling, and before you know it my little hand is reaching out to snatch something. Occasionally I make something from my fish fabric -

- but for the most part I just keep adding to the collection. I can only hope that the integrity of the space-time continuum won’t be compromised if I actually use up my pile of fish fabrics.

Music and other merriments

Last year I cleared a space for a small CD player on a shelf. I never got the CD player, and the space was filled with other stuff. This year, my husband suggested I use our daughter’s old music machine, which is something of a tank. I tried to find a place for it, but wasn’t making progress. The light bulb went off over my husband’s head and he bought me an early Mother’s Day present.

My very own machine!

The gift has benefited me in many ways. First, I can easily have music in my work space. Technically, I’ve had the capacity to bring music to the sewing room by (a) singing, (b) remembering the correct order to use the various remotes to get the various little black boxes to switch over to the speakers in my sewing room, or (c) remembering the proper command to get the music on our computer playing. Option (a) works sometimes, when I remember the words. Option (b) never worked well, and it also meant I had to go to the family room to change the cd. Option (c) worked once and then my husband rewrote the code, and it meant that I had to remember the actual name of the piece I wanted to hear rather than the way I usually do, which is by album cover (“it’s on the cd with the red background and the dog in the corner”).

Another benefit is that not only will I keep that little shelf from getting buried under fabric, I will also keep the area in front of it clear so I can kneel down and get the cd in and out of the machine.

As a side note, I have been amused to discover that while I’ve been listening to bagpipes exclusively for the last three weeks when I run errands and play music in the car, in the sewing room I have only put only piano (Ludovico Einaudi, to be precise) and early vocal music (Gregorian chant, French songs from the 1100s). I’m not sure what this says about my state of mind when I’m on the road, although I have noticed that I skip the ballads and go straight to the battle marches.

The last benefit was that the fabric that was piled on the little shelf belonged to a project that I wanted to get done for Challenge group. And I did:

Aunt Sukey's Butterfly

This is also a Progressive Party project. The other ladies made all the Aunt Sukey’s Choice blocks and I did the butterfly. They thought that was cheating and it probably was, so I tried to make up for it with the quilting:

I leave you with a picture of some of my Easter decorations:

My kids may be too big for Easter egg hunts, but I can still put one on for myself. The hunting part comes when I have to put them away – I don’t always remember all the nooks and crannies where I set them on display!

Twilight of the Thread

I gave myself permission to get rid of thread this week. Some of my thread is very old, some of it was meant for techniques that I don’t use, and some of it has been waiting for a special project that will never come. The old stuff I threw away – it’s stressful enough during an election year without trying to keep smiling when my thread breaks. I boxed up some of the rest – I’ll give it one more chance, in case I use those techniques in the next six months, then it goes to a good home. The special thread that I won’t ever use is going to my friendship groups in hopes of finding someone who will appreciate it.

The thread that was left went into two small-ish cases that I can keep by my sewing machine:

It may not be the most elegant solution, but it really works for me. I used to keep thread in a couple of small chests on the shelves that would often get blocked in by other stuff. Also, the thread would hide in the drawers – yes, I know the drawers are small, but thread is sneaky – which is why I have six spools of red.

Next came the embroidery floss. I have been finishing up cross-stitch kits that I acquired so long ago I no longer remember whether I bought them, was given them, or found them on the doorstep. While I felt a sense of accomplishment when the last stitch was crossed, I also felt a sense of oppression when I saw how much floss was left. I decided I would make small things for my brother’s soon-to-arrive grandchildren:

 

Boat on a bib

 

Bird on a bib

 

Booties with gull and shrimp

With what was left from the leftover embroidery floss (and an extra skein of purple) I decided to experiment with a tote bag:

My first attempt at a purple and black rose didn’t quite work, but that’s okay. The embroidery floss served its purpose, even if it is now living in my trash can instead of on the tote bag. Using the free stuff instead of the good stuff let me experiment, which helps me learn and grow. Now I’ll keep going until I create the rose that I want – and I’ve cleaned out one more pile in the sewing room!

BSOs and UFOs

I felt guilty about clutter this week, perhaps because I admitted sweeping stuff into a box so I could quilt. Since I didn’t have a complete idea for the quilting pattern anyway, when I got to the part where a little more thinking was required I multi-tasked and sorted out the box while I mulled over what to do next. This is the result:

You can see the floor!

The ideal quilt pattern still hadn’t presented itself, so I continued to sort. It was at this point that I realized how much of my life is ruled by BSOs (bright shiny objects) and UFOs (unfinished objects). In clearing out some of the clutter on the sewing table, I found these:

These are celtic-themed stamps and some glittery ink. I bought the set long enough ago that I can’t remember any of the details. I think it was at the Caledonian Club Scottish Games, and I suspect I had an idea for a project. I know my little hand stuffed them into my shopping basket because the ink is shiny and the designs are cool. I also know that the reason they were hiding under a pile is that I had another UFO with a more pressing deadline to finish before I could start the project that required stamping. Then they got buried. The good news is I still have an idea for a project that could require those stamps.

I sorted a few more things and ran across this:

This is an ornament that I bought because it is shiny. And a bear. And shiny. The good news here is Christmas is scheduled for this December again so I will be able to put it on the tree. Perhaps by then the ideal quilting pattern for my mosaic tile quilt will make itself known and I can scratch one more UFO off the list.