Life choices: Validated.

My mum said to me a few weeks ago (I think it was when I was churning out the adorbs halloween animal ears) "why can't you and your father use your powers for good instead of evil?"

However, all my life choices were validated when ABC local radio's Stan Thompson said that he was particularly impressed by my dinosaur dog costume, as worn by Graham in the local Christmas Pageant on Saturday.

Admittedly, in all the photos it looks like there's a stuffed toy dinosaur trying to hump him. I'm gunna say that it's my retaliation for all those times when he's humped my leg. Powers For Evil!

Anyway, The Bedrock Kids float won the "encouragement award" and made it into the paper. There were 5 copies of The Border Watch in our kitchen tonight when I got home... one on each of the 4 tables, and one in my hand as I walked in.

Honestly, encouraging us isn't that good of an idea. With no encouragement at all my father built a four-bike-powered Flintstones car on a whim and I managed to design, draft and construct a perfect doggie-dino costume in an evening. Admittedly, I did need a bit of encouragement to help with the kids costumes, but that was because mum assembled them and then wanted me to sew the spots and triangles on them. And she always wanted me to do it in the mid-morning, instead of at 2am like I normally would.

And she's got the nerve to call me evil. I think it's not only my father that I get that from...

Straya...

So today was Australia day. Yay for a day off work and/or double time pay for all my fellow Aussies who didn't already have the day off anyway, and for everyone else, especially those of us who aren't really listeners of TripleJ, well, the sun was shining, so that was good.

Today I decided that I wasn't gunna push myself to sew, because my mojo's still up in Adelaide somewhere, I think, and I was hoping that maybe by not pushing it, I'd just somehow spontaneously feel like finishing off the sunset quilt.

It didn't work. I downloaded about 40GB of TV shows, sorted all my hardrives, installed every useful piece of software I could think of onto the new computer, went down the river, hung up some "slow down" signs cause it's boat like a dickhead season down there and I helped my Dad reinforce the jetty (which is falling apart because everyone's boating too fast and their wake is bashing our houseboat against the jetty.) Yay for power tools.

Speaking of Dad and the new computer, guess who's the most excited about it? Not the Mum whose birthday it's for, or the little sister who also gets listed as a recipient, but the completely computer illiterate dad, who is nagging every day for me to set it up in the longe already. He likes to have all the photos as a screensaver (basically making it into a 20" digital frame) and plans on "learning the internet" now that the screen's big enough for him to see it all on.

The other thing I did today: set it to create a restore point Every. Single. Day. Quilts are tougher to accidentally destroy, but they won't stream youtube videos for me.

And on a completely random note, I strongly advise NOT eating an entire bag of Columbines in an afternoon. My tummy hurts, but at least my bin is pretty, from all the wrappers.

Lessons. And also fish.

Remember a few weeks ago when I said that deconstructing items of clothing was a much better alternative to just plain old constructing them?

Yeah, I didn't, which is why I spent tonight sewing three different versions of a dress, none of which was quite right, before giving up and taking the slightly saggy bodice off of a dress I bought on ebay about a month ago, leaving me with a lovely hot pink silk skirt, which, when worn quite high over the same long singlet dress I was going to wear under the lace dress I was trying to make tonight, with a wide belt, looks excellent. Yay.

The other thing I learned tonight was that sewing with lace is a fantastic way to realise your fingernails are quite chipped. And that lifting up slimy, spiky, prone-to-crumbling rocks on the banks of the river in pursuit of the crabs that live underneath them is a surefire way to quite badly chip your fingernails.

The things I do for tiny delicious fish, and also to get my dad to stop nagging at me to come to the boat for the next couple of months.

Post-market post cause dad ruined my early night.

Total amount sold - $19. One baby gym bag and one monster. Helen did slightly better, scoring a whopping $24 in sales, but I think she bought about $100 in stuff from other stallholders so that kinda cancels it out. I didn't buy anything at the market, but after it was finished I went to spotlight for some cushion inserts, and bought $20 of fabric too, but that was 3 metres, so its okay. And I spent twice that on KFC tonight, and I've still got no idea why I had to pay. I only et the potato and gravy.

This afternoon I bummed about on the couch till 5, went and picked up Maddy, et far less than $40 worth of KFC and decided it was time for bed. An hour later, my father decided it wasn't and that I needed to wake up and help do the dishes, because it's fine for him to sleep from 12 till 3 every afternoon, but going to bed at 7... oooh no. And now I'm awake, in bed, and my arm hurts cause I'm typing on the touchscreen keypad while lying down. Still, it's easier than using the real keyboard while lying down.

Happy Anniversary, Mum and Dad.

Once again, as it so often does lately, real life got in the way of sewing. But today for a change, as well as the usual deros dragging me to the gym, we went out for a lovely dinner to celebrate Mum and Dad's 27th wedding anniversary.

27 years is very impressive. I'm 23 and I haven't even kept an imaginary friend that long, let alone any real friends. The idea of having spent an amount of time longer than my whole life so far with the one person seems amazing - my best friends I've known for less than two years. And although I've got some friends from 10 years ago on facebook, I don't actually talk to any of them. It makes me a bit sad.

Even though past experience tells me I probably won't be, I really hope I'm still friends in 27 years with the friends I've got now. These are the first friends I've ever had where I feel like I'm storing my feelings and thoughts inside someone's brain other than mine. As someone who's always been very self reliant, it's an interesting feeling, but I'm rolling with it. Tomorrow, we are going out so they can form some opinions on shoes for me, and then we're making ourselves fish and chips and some jelly shots. It should be excellent.

But it won't get any sewing done.

PS. I'm gunna go with the squareish shaped quilt. More because it will make a nicer picnic rug shape than any other sensible reason, especially since I don't really have picnics. Maybe I will, once I have the quilt. I like the idea of picnics.

Liar.

This lying about the gym thing is getting hard. But I am a surprisingly good liar, and last night's reason for skipping the gym (sitting on Meagan's floor talking about the finances of a small trucking operation) worked fine as a cover when I got home at 2.30 this morning to find my Dad in the kitchen. And my Mum not home, because she'd taken Becky into the hospital to get drugs because her wisdom teeth are coming through.

So there you go, another talent to add to my list. Quiltmath, fabric buying excuses, lying.

Speaking of quiltmath, I'm quite looking forward to this last shelf getting put in, because then I can unload all my fabrics, take a photo (because really, they'll be good for all of a day) and then I can start getting inspired. I haven't done any quilting in what feels like months, and I miss it. I know there's a serious lot of seriously nice fabrics out in those tubs, and I wanna start working my way through it, so I can tell myself I can buy some more.

Home

Eventually, statistically, I will leave a ball with a memory card full of funny, cute photos from which I can pick the ones where I look the best, delicately photoshop them so they become even better, and plaster them all over this blog and facebook.

This was not that ball. But since quantum physics says that everything than can happen, should happen, it's only a matter of time. Despite taking two cameras and 7 batteries, There's really only one photo of me from the whole weekend. And it was taken this afternoon. At the Murray Bridge shopping centre. On Casey's phone.

Hair in piggietails because there was quite a lot of alcohol flying through the air over the dancefloor last night, and it was so horrible and matted that I couldn't get it into a single ponytail. You may note too that I don't look like a promo girl for the new Smurfs movie. This is a nice change. I did have some red smudges on my cheek but it swisspered off.

It was a fantastic evening, but it's even more fantastic to be home. Mum* and I went into IKEA while the girls stayed at recovery, and we headed home about 3, only to find out, an hour or so into the drive, that one of our friend's brothers had put his keys in the van for safekeeping, and completely failed to mention it as we were leaving. So it was an extra 2 hours on the trip for that, and then Casey decided that what she really needed was soda water, and do you think we could find any? Thus the trip to the shopping centre, and really, there was noone else about, how could we resist? We'd saved a horse by riding cowboys, and then we decided to ride the horses too.

Other random info:
We had the lanyards out, everyone liked them, but noone got around to trying them out.

Fuel consumption (for the swift) was 7.8L/100km on the way up, but only 6.2 on the way home. I'm going to tell people that the rate of alcohol consumption was at a similar rate, but I'm just saying shit to be funny.
I was trying for three trips to KFC in the one day but after lunch in Adelaide and afternoon tea in Murray Bridge (the first time through) we got back into the mount at 10.05 - they close at 10pm :(
I feel so much better now that I've had a shower. It's like magic.


*It seems that a lot of you are mums and so I have to ask you this: Would you drive 400km with your daughters and some of their friends just to drop them off somewhere and spend the night alone? Would you, the next morning, take one of those daughters on a 150km round trip into the city to buy some furniture, putting up with her having a chuck into the tub that last night contained the dozen or so jelly shots she'd consumed (which actually caused the chuck) and then take her to KFC because all that would make her feel better was potato and gravy? And would you then drive the van home so the other daughter could keep on drinking? If you answered yes to all of these questions, you're as awesome as my Mum is. Congratulations. It's not easy.

Oh well...

I'm terribly sorry, but I don't have a stunning work Christmas show top to show you all. Casey had to go hang out with her boyfriend so she couldn't come to spotlight with me, but she suggested I try for "VE Commodore Green"

If I had a Commodore, it would be a VT, not a VE. But if I had a VE, it would be a ute. And it would be green. VE Commodore Green. But unfortunately "Atomic Metallic" (as it's called) isn't a colour that features heavily in the fabrics available from Spotlight. It isn't even available in a mid-weight, let alone a satin. So I've picked a half dozen other greens, pretty much every green-y satin-y fabric that was on clearance, but I haven't even turned my machine on today.

Instead I did ALL my Christmas shopping, which, silly me, including an all in one remote I decided to get for my Dad, but which I obviously had to program, because he's a bit useless with technology, and if I didn't I'd pretty much just be giving him a lump of plastic with confusing instructions*. Fortunately it all went well, unfortunately Mum sent me in to get another two and made me program them as well. So they're being used already, and it's one less Christmas present for Dad. At least Mum paid for the other two.

Then I got an urge to make chocolate almond clusters. So I did. And then I wanted second tea (it was about 11pm by this point and that's a good time for second tea), so I cooked a bag of fish. We usually eat it the day it's caught and Dad gives away the rest, but it was still nice at two days old. I suppose people buy it from the shops older, but I'm still worried that it's too old. It's not like it's been out of the fridge or anything, but still. It just seems weird. Like... buying a cat.

...Anyway...

I've got a late start tomorrow so I can make progress before that. Yay progress.

*in twelve languages

A very long day...

Here was the plan. Casey, who is always up early because she starts work at 7am most days and has a body clock that suits this, was going to drop my car off at our Grandfather's workshop at 8am, where his mechanic would take the muffler off before leaving for a job at 8.10. Mum would then pick Casey and the detached muffler up at 8.30 after she'd dropped Maddy off at school, bringing them home so Dad could weld a patch over the crack. then, later in the day, I would go in with Mum and the fixed muffler bits, we'd put it all back together and everything would be Hunky Dory, which, coincidentally, is also a rather nice fabric range from Moda.

Here's what happened. Casey was ready to leave at 5 to 8 when Dad finds out that Casey's taking BJ in, he randomly spits it and says I have to take it in, So I get woken at 2 to 8 and told that I have to take my car in, and that it needs to be there in the next two minutes.

For the record, legally, it's about a 12 minute drive. Today, so I could have a screaming hissy fit at Dad if I got done for speeding, I did it in about 9. This of course led Murphy's law to cause me to NOT get done for speeding, so it's kinda win/win.

I get there about quarter past 8, having not brushed my teeth, which made me cross. It takes Peter a bit longer than expected, and I hope whoever's tractor it was that he was going to fix wasn't in a hurry, because I don't think he left till about 9.30. But we went home, with the holey muffler, and I washed my hair, which I'd been putting off because I knew it would get all fluffy. It used to not matter, because I used to always wear it up, but Ive had it down since getting it cut, which has been nice, but, sure enough, nasty fluffy, and no time to straighten it because...

Since Dad has welded up the muffler, how about I clean his gutters for him so he can hook up his new water tank? This took 3 hours, in the freezing cold. I'm not kidding when I say that two of my fingers went numb and still are. The tips of the middle and ring ringers on my right hand. Actually, it's not really numb, it's kindof more like pins and needles without any pins or needles. But it's really really annoying. 

Then it was time to reattachthe muffler, and then it was time to have a snack (KFC) and the it was time to go to the quilt night that I thought was last week.

To be honest, I think I preferred last week. The first quilt you see going in is a log cabin, which Helen and I discuss our dislike of on a regular basis. And moreover it was a Christmas log cabin... A pointlessly time consuming design of quilt in a theme that renders it unusable for 11 months of the year. And it was mainly middle aged women and what appeared to be their angry mother-in-laws, and they had sold out of the bamboo batting I'm liking at the moment, so I stocked up on cozy cotton off the roll instead, which was actually a bit cheaper, so that's good. And then I got out of there, and went to the pub for a little bit, because Casey and Steph had decided to go early, but when everyone else got there for dinner I realised I wasn't feeling it, mainly because I didn't know half the people who'd turned up, so I came home.

Where I did this.

Which, technically, is the back. The front being the much more boring:

Which was done yesterday, and which looks a bit nasty at that scale, but the fabric that looks a bit of a mustard green on the screen is actually a very nice blend of greens and purples, and I do still love the front. It's the back that really impresses though, in real life as well as photo size, which annoys me for quite a few reasons.

First, I had planned to quilt to the front. That worked great for the bubble and squeak quilt, which had it's random piecing at diagonals so the quilt grid intersected it. But the back of this one is roughly on the horisontal/vertical lines of the front, whihc means that the quilting will not only be wonky, but will feel, to my OCD eyes, to be a little unsafe, with it's 8cm empty bits. Meaning I might have to do it on the diagonal, or, if I still follow the front blocks, something more substantial than just either side of the seams.

Second, It took about twice as long as the front. The front was a string, iron, string, iron, string, iron, pin, etc job, but this was just whatever bit I was up to next. I did the medium sized bit of wonky piecing first, but it ended up tiny, so then I did the big bit, then there wasn't much fabric left. But I'd bought these fabrics both times I shopped on fabric.com, because the second time they were out for $2.50 per yard. Of the blue and pink, its only the bottom right blue corner and the top right crazy pieced corner that came from the second yards. Of the green, it's one strip, and then I plan on using that for the binding as well.

Third problem was, I find I struggle to sew strips. I don't know why, whether it's that if it's a long pieced bit I will pin it whereas with a single piece of fabric I wont... All I know is, there's some really shoddy sewing on the back of this thing. One of the crazy bits has a blue seam that I'm a bit worried about, and I was gunna put a bit of iron on sticky stuff under it, but then once I'd got it all smoothed out (because my split seams acted like little bitches on this thing, closing up as I tried to put it straight on the batting) I couldn't find where it was and, since it's been a long day, I gave up.

Finally, accurate cutting gets harder the bigger the piece gets. Following the cut lines makes my head hurt, especially over the hexagon design. Which doesn't point in a consistent direction either. Which is another annoyance. They all face the same way on the front.

But still, it's very nice, on both sides, and that back is probably the last interesting thing I get to do for a week or so, since now it's time to get started on Mama Jan's quilt. Thankfully it's pretty much all cut, as my rotary blade is very blunt, and I haven't made any progress on either cleaning my room or finding where my spare ones are.

Time to call it a night...

I was so right about the guy on Law and Order. I'm just awesome that way.

Got some more done on Dad's quilt - the blocks have been paired and the pairs have been pinned together to sew into strips tomorrow.

What a nice looking pile.

Here's the bits all out on the floor right before I pinned it.

The angle is horrible because it's quite a bit longer than what I usually make is, and I couldn't fit it any other way.

If I have one criticism of this quilt, it's that I didn't choose fabrics with enough definition.The plain colour sketch of this quilt looks really vibrant, with the thinner bits making the big bits pop, but the design is a bit lost in the similarities between the fabrics. It's a complaint I've made about a lot of quilts in books, and it's something I've so far not had trouble with, but I think it's mainly because of the line I'm using - trying to keep with the fish theme, especially this style of fish theme, left me with really limited choices. It looks better on the angle, when your eye is following the lines the pattern makes, but still.

We are our own harshest critics.

A small sense of achievement.

Casey decided she wanted to fall asleep on my bed tonight so I had to stay out in the lounge getting stuff done. I'm still not feeling it, which is why I had to push myself to 2/3rds of the cutting.

Dad's quilt, obviously, that being the one that's currently top of the list. All the skinny lines are cut (7.5 x 21.5cm to make a 6 x 20cm stripe) as well as the green backed fishes (15.5 x 21.5 to make 14 x 20cm block) leaving the fishes on light and dark blue still to be cut.

The main difficulty with the fish is that half need to face one way and half the other. I couldn't quite manage to do it with the contrast fabrics, since 13 is not a number that divides well and there was no way to make the bits fit without at least one of them having a weird seam. But I have 3 times as much of the fish fabrics, even though technically I only need twice as much.

Sure, this generates heaps of scraps, but I don't mind. I'll feel better if they all face the same way, and I have enough to do it.

I also came up with a nice little story for the fishes. But first, there's a reason for a story.

Dad was shitfaced last night but fortunately everyone else was still up too and he couldn't really focus on upsetting any particular one of us (except Maddy, who was cross that he wouldn't shut up and let her sleep. It's a school night.) The only problem he could pick up on with what I've been up to lately was that the fish on the fabric didn't look scared enough. Any fish in or around his boat, he felt, should have a look of terror on their faces, because he would be coming to get them.

The Odyessea fishes on the other hand, are happy (well, expressionless but prettily patterned) so I've decided that they are the souls of all the fish he's already caught, in a fishy heaven.

Yes I know I don't believe in the ideas of souls or heaven or any kind of afterlife for that matter, but how the hell was I gunna make some cartoon fish look scared huh?

In other news, fabric in the mail day.

I had had a good feeling it was gunna be today.

I've got a US$45 cart waiting at fabric.com, half of which is more of the Nutmeg Autumn fabric that I got in that bundle, and there's still that money in the paypal account (believe it or not, I haven't actually been doing much internet spending, what with all the real world spending I've had to do) and in the past I've gone with a rule about not buying more through an unknown channel until the first lot is here, which it is. So I could get it, and wait a month (this lot took 34 days) for it to get here.

Or I could get something else that would get here a bit quicker.

Sorry...

But I'm still not feeling it. It's too cold, too wet, too miserable, and my bedroom is too messy and my cats too psychotic for me to really achieve much in the way of sewing.

My stubby holders are still just little piles of fabric, there's still clothes on and around my sewing machine that need to be organised/washed/put away, and even if I was feeling motivated enough to sew, I'm not feeling motivated enough to clean.

To make myself feel better though I got the designing done for the boat quilt, because silly me has decided that I can get it done in time for Father's Day. That said, I'm going for uber-easy (2 pieces per 20cm), and we all agreed that it would be better to do it as a quilt cover than as an actual quilt, since it's a boat, and therefore too freaking cold to use a little thin piece of bamboo to keep yourself warm. Good news is this means that instead of having to wrangle a big bit of wadding through the machine, I can just in the ditch it onto another piece of fabric. Bad news is it means I have to do buttons or press studs for the closure.

Here's the design as a plain colour concept.

And here it is with the fabric, although as ever the patterns aren't to scale.

There will actually be about 10 fish in each big block. The final size is about 1.4mx2.2m. Ish. Each square is mathed at about 20cm, and I have a seriously boofy single bed quilt that's 145x215 that they can use for it.

What's more, because I went seriously overboard on my fabric buying, there should be enough for some pillowcases and a couch throw too. And that should get me out of having to get him anything for Christmas.

Progress report - 4am.

The purple quilt isn't finished, but I'm hoping the quilting is.

I planned to quilt across the seams and leave it at that but the top is a bit loose on a couple of the rows.

So, as per usual, I've done a square and chucked it in the wash with my work clothes and the fabric I'm using as binding for the Make Life baby quilt. Hopefully it will boof up, reassuring me that the quilting I've done already is enough (please please please) and I don't have to do some more across the blocks.

Also, even though I said I wasn't gunna, I made a start on the Make Life quilt. It's up to what I've referred to as quarter blocks since doing the retro star quilt, because each one was one quarter of the star block. So really, all I've done is reassemble my cutting from this evening, giving me the 48 blocks to arrange into a quilt, to match one of the patterns or otherwise.

I did a test to see if the staggered design would work with the blocks being the same colour on both sides 

It does.

I also had a play with a scattered design too.

Which also works. So I figure I'll be having a play around with the real thing tomorrow at some point.

Speaking of tomorrow, dad seems insistent that he will be getting me up at 9. I've put up with this whole "don't do stuff late at night" shit for the weekdays, but it's not applying tomorrow. It's a Saturday morning. If I had said I was going to be out till 3 partying, he would be actively encouraging me. Hell, he goes out and gets shitfaced 3 nights a week, so what the fuck is so bad about me being considerate, and only taking up the whole living room once everyone has gone to bed? Would he rather me be spraying fumey basting spray when Maddy is in there? When food is being cooked? Would he rather me fighting with Mum and Casey over bench space so I can have some room to press my seams, while they spread out cooking?

He whinges when I take up the floorspace for basting. And he whinges when I stay up late so I'm not in anyone's way.

But he doesn't whinge about the fact that Becky owes him, me and mum HUGE sums of money. Or the fact that Casey spends as much on alcohol and nights out with her friends as I do on fabric.

Staying up late on a Friday night to get shit done. It's not the worst crime in the world.

Looking forward...

I've almost finished the quilting for the blue/green quilt, and, unusually, I'm already looking to the next one.

Thus far, I've pretty much just pushed myself to get to the end of whatever quilt I'm doing and then, once it's finished, taken a while to get stuck into the next one. The design part is the hardest part for me, because it's all most people see. Noone's going to notice that there's a point that doesn't line up, or that the waves on one row of quilting are longer than the ones next to them. They'll look at it and go "why did you decide on snot as a colour scheme?"

Because it's a quilt for me, and I fucking like it, okay?

This time however, with 12 lines of wavy quilting left to do before I get stuck into binding it, I'm starting to think about my next project.

There's 3 main options.

Mama Jan's quilt. Needs to be done eventually, and is all neatly cut and bagged ready to go. But it's going to be very dull piecing, and then we get to trying to fit the panel, and then there's quilting it, which will be a first in that I'm using an actual quilt as the wadding, which is waaay thicker than even the wool I've used in the past. and I still haven't worked out how I'm going to quilt the panel.

Helen's Baby's quilt. This is the one I'm doing with the make Life fabrics, which are all washed and sitting safely in a ziplock bag. I've got 12 fabrics, so it's gunna be smaller than what I've been doing lately, which is 15. And 12 might be too big. I might ask Helen on Saturday how big she thinks she want, whether a little thing would be more practical for a newborn or she'd rather something bigger for when it gets a bit bigger. So it's a hold on that one, even more so because I'm still waiting on the fabric I will use as either the backing or the binding, depending on how big it's gunna be. I've no idea how long it is till she has it either. Must ask that too.

Tickertape test quilt. I bought 5 metres of white flannelette at lincraft's half price thingie, and even though I need to use a couple for a warm underskirt for a ballgown, That leaves me with enough to make a mini tickertape quilt with the rest at double thickness. I think I'd like to make a special thing for the trip to Longernong, which is in about 2 weeks. I'm thinking I might piece some of my collection of 10cm squares together and cut them into a longhorn for the middle, and then tickertape around it, though I'm not sure if that's completely not in the spirit and I should tickertape the longhorns in 1 colour and the rest in another, so it's more subtle. This is my favourite option, as it's new and interesting, but that could change in a couple of days.

Still nothing in the mail today, and I'm starting to get a bit despondent, even though I know that there's 25 metres making its way to me in a big arse box, as well as a bundle of soiree, and another box with 10 meteres in it which, like I assumed, was all in one box, and which should be shipped fairly shortly as it was paid for this morning. It ended up coming to US$38, which is a bit cheaper than I recall it being (somewhere in the $50s I think) so that's good, but not good enough to warrant doing it as often as I would obviously have liked to. I think it comes out to around AU$6.90 per yard, which is good, but not magical. Oh well, it's probably for the best. Also on their way, though I'm not expecting them soon, are 2 pouches for the boat quilt, though I'm not sure that I can be arsed making it for him now. He's being a jerk about Babycat, and no amount of broken glasses apparently are going to change that.

Day off tomorrow and I'm planning on spending a goodly deal of it in town, away from home, trying not to spend too many moneys as the big tax cheque still isn't here. I need to send the camera back to the lady, hopefully pick up many goodies at the post office, spend some more time talking to Vodafone's computer before being randomly disconnected, and... something else... I cant really remember what.

Dunno.

And now it's attacking it's mother. Again...

The blue/green quilt top is all finished, and next up it's designing and piecing the back before I get to my big freak out about the quilting. I have decided, for no obvious reason, that I would like to free motion this one. I'm sure that I could talk myself out of it without too much effort, but I would need an alternative. I want:

-evenly spaced quilting
-no big gaps (aiming for not more than 2" apart)
-no/very few line crossovers

Stippling remains the obvious choice, but thus far, I have sucked. I am a regular person, (in that I like regularity, not that I am normal,) and I struggle with the forced aimlessness of a meandering line. Ive downloaded a whole heap of examples, and I'm considering printing them out and pinning them on, but it seems like an awfully large amount of work.

What I really should do is come up with some sort of practice piece that I could work on, but I struggle to develop skills on practice pieces. I tend to not bother trying to hard, because it doesn't matter anyway. The only way for me to learn how to do something is to actually do it, for real, with the expensive fabrics on the almost completed projects.

And, for obvious reasons, I don't want to do that. Practices so far have yielded many sharp corners and stitches of varying lengths, as my free motion foot seems quite light, almost as if it's a bit too high up after the nice firm pressure of the regular foot. I just feel much more confident when the fabric is being fed through for me, and that means my normal foot, and that means the gorgeous wave stitch. I could probably come up with some kind of big, nestled wave thing done in it, that might look nice. Maybe if I did say 6 of them in a grid across the whole thing, something like this...


That's 3 lengths of stitching, and the little wave stitch on my machine will make it look less structured than it is. The only problem will be the sheer amount of turning I will have to do.

Oh well. Baby steps.

In other news, I just spent $60 on mainly Odyssea fabrics on eBay, to do a quilt for my dad's new boat. Quilt Bribery - it's my way of getting to keep Babycat. Though I'm not sure why I want to, as it's taken fully fifteen minutes to type this last paragraph due to the vicious furball sitting on the keys and attacking my fingers.

Ungrateful little shit.

Why nothing was sewn tonight...

While our parents are away enjoying the lovely Queensland weather, there has been three early20s girls living in this house, including a compulsive cook. Thus...

DISHES!!!

This is pretty much every glass (most are already in the sink here) plate, bowl, frypan, saucepan and mug in the house. In the middle is a bowl full of cutlery. And this on the week I'm going fast-food free.

The compulsive cook is also a compulsive nail biter, so she's not really fond of doing dishes (is anyone?) The deal was, I'd do them if she chopped some wood (I weigh 44kg, it's not my fault I cant do it) and lit the fire before I got home, and by the time I'd done all the necessary internetting, it was 1am. The perfect time to do the dishes. The perfect time to do anything, really.


Unfortunately, I got a bit low after the second load (first load, glasses, 2nd load, flat plates) so I stopped for some freshly grated parmesan.


And then, obviously, I had to wash the plate. Again.


And there was no delicious soft drink left in the fridge :( So I had some lettuce.


I like lettuce :)


In other news, I have changed my preferred super power, from copy and paste to the full photoshop suite. Copy and paste gives me access to endless supplies of money, coke and fabric ( cause once you have one you can replicate it as much as you need) but I need that bandaid tool in the real world. Copy and paste will not get rid of the pimple that has appeared the day before I'm due to meet my future husband.

And just for the record I'd use my copy and paste powers for good too, stopping in at the blood bank and organ donor warehouses once a week to boost their stocks. I'm a giver. But not of my own blood. They wont let me, cause I'm not fat enough.

Been feevin...

In spite of all the big plans, my list of achievements for today doesn't quite match expectations...

Prewashing didn't get done.

Baby quilt got some progress made, but not quite enough, cause I had to go...

FEEVIN!

I was expecting it would be terrible, stuck in a car with a drunken dad and the bad sister, but the good sister had been drinking in town, so we went and picked her up before we went out, and we stopped at the pub on the way, and I drank a cruiser.

Now, for the most part I don't drink. I can, and occasionally do, and have been known to consume up to 17 drinks in a single night, but that's just the thing. As soon as I stop, I'm pretty much done. I get a headache after the second one, and if I stop then, I immediately get sleepy. What I need to do, if I'm drinking, is consume at least 4 in the first hour or so, then at least 1 an hour after that. For me, there's no such thing as just a couple, or a casual drink. Go hard or go home, that's pretty much the family motto, and most of the time, I'd rather go home. I've usually got prewashing to not-do.

But tonight, I had a cruiser, and enjoyed our pointless little trip, and now I'm going to break what I think is the main rule of the bitchy stitcher, which is don't drink and quilt.

I got it all lined up before we left, so really I'm just going to be running it through the machine, and I think it should be okay... Certainly wont get finished, but my 20cm squares will be back together, then its just turning them into 40cm squares, then joining them into a quilt top.

I made the pillow top as a practice first, and it looks quite nice, though I ironed the seams to one side, which I don't normally do, just to see how it would go... I wont be doing it again. I split my seams. It's just better.