Okay, kinda a little bit dead.

Remember back in MAY when I said I was gunna make quilts?

I procrastinated. 

Remember how I said they had to be in America by September? 

It is September.

Now, these fuckers have 1200 pieces per top. I'm gunna blame my procrastination on the fact that my laptop was in a truly terrible state*, and noone wants to try designing on something that takes 5 minutes to open a file in photoshop. I’d designed the first one, and got a top made, but the other two just weren’t working (though I ordered some fabrics based the requirements of a design I didn’t love, in a fit of misguided optimism) and I slogged through attempts with about 6 different reference pictures to no avail. But then I got a new laptop, and I could use photoshop again, and make the designs work. I ordered more fabrics, and some spoonflower labels before that, and waited. 

When the labels didn’t arrive on their due date (the 26^th of last month), I worried. Then a couple of days before the solids were due to arrive (I was hoping for the 5^th), with the labels still nowhere to be seen, I discovered I had my due date wrong. Not only was the post office not giving me what I needed, but I’d fucked up all on my own too. They needed the quilts by the 19^th, not the 26^th. 

On the one hand, I accepted my fate. Got over it. It wasn’t possible. No more worry. I agreed to work an extra shift that weekend after all. I made plans to go out and get drunk afterwards.

On the other hand, the universe had had my back on this one thing – Spotlight happening to have the one exact shade I had incorrectly ordered. So it came down to: if the solids got here by that Friday, and I could organise some kind of express courier to get them halfway around the world in a week, it would be possible. Not necessarily a good idea, but a doable thing. A thing that I could do. Possibly.

The fabric came that Friday. I still had a full quilt top and a half to do, as well as making the backings and doing the actual quilting for all 3. I timed my steps along the way:

Cutting:                      3 hours

Sorting:                      4 hours

Chaining:                    4 hours

Pressing:                    2 hours

Pinning:                      2 hours

Sewing Rows:             4 hours

Pressing blocks:          1 hour

Assembling:               1 hours

Backing:                     2 hours

Basting:                     .5 hours

Quilting:                     4 hours

Binding:                     3 hours

And even considering what I already had done, I worked on these for over 60 hours in the past 10 days. I cancelled on the going out and getting drunk thing, but I still worked 36 hours too. Oh, and uni, though I gotta confess I did the summaries I had to and ignored the rest. And...

Tomorrow I need to get up really early and call the DHL people and find out who I need to drop the box off to so that they can send it for me. Like, 7am early. The kind of early I’ve been going to sleep at (cause you don’t do secret projects in the middle of the day).

The nice man on the phone when I rang to check on Friday said that if they got it Monday afternoon, it would get to Dallas by Thursday. That’s the goal.  

*To be fair, I spilled hot chocolate on it.

And it's over...

As of 10 hours from now (8 hours of which will be spent sleeping) my holidays are over. Sad times, though, admittedly, considering it was only 5 days off, short times too.

I've spent most of the last 5 days sewing costumes for Halloween, from a whole heap of ears:

To a truly bitchin' Red Riding Hood cloak, that I don't even get to wear because I agreed to do it for Chantelle.

And a cow print onsie that's given me a lot of trouble because it's for someone who's a completely different size to me. And that doesn't matter with animal ears or badass crepe georgette (why did I pick that fabric? It was horrible to work with) cloaks. But on me, the crotch is almost down to my knees, and the legs are waaay too long, which stopped me from putting feet on it like she wanted. I've put some buttonholes at the ends of the legs though, so I can make her some button on feet later.

And a half dozen boring black capes that I'll probably insist management wear, since I like the idea that they can be the villains of the piece. I'm still going with being a cool cat. Brittni (who we often call Britta) is going to be one too, so I think that means that halfway through the shift I need to get myself some white wings and a halo and be the cool cat that had too many drugs.

Hopefully I'll meet some more Community fans in the process. The world needs more cool cats.

Oh My God!

I used a ruler and a rotary cutter and a mat to cut up some actual quilting cotton today. Granted, it was two rectangles to make a pencil case for Maddy, that I said I was gunna make 3 days ago, but whatever. This is a massive achievement.

Pattern Progress

I think a big part of why I don't like to pay much for patterns is that before long I have completely mutated the pattern into something else. I'll start with the pattern, redraft every piece over the course of a version or two, and end up with something completely different from what I bought.

Today I decided that I'd have a go at making the jacket without a lining. Spotlight has put all their polar fleece down by half price so I got 4 metres of black husky at $3 a metre, and the pattern changing began. Step one - merge a couple of pieces. The front as back are both comprised of two bits, and since it's draping instead of fitted I decided to make the front all one piece. And since it's draping down, I decided I'd raise the front hemline and give it a bigger collar too, so it had more to drape, but not as far to drape it.

The polar fleece worked pretty well, I just sewed each seam twice, about 3mm apart, and then trimmed close to the second one. Did a really basic folded hem - these are just test runs for wearing on daggy days around the house, so they're far from prefect. But I did a decent job, since even though they're just tests, they still take a whole lot of time and effort, and I can still use them even in their imperfection.


The original design (and this changed one) had a seam for the collar on the front edge in the middle of the drape. I didn't love that, so on the next run I decided to make the front and the collar one piece, meaning that the side front piece had to return. I tried making the back one piece instead but ended up adding some darts once it was finished anyway. I like the drape of this one much better, but I also raised the back where the collar is, and I forgot to lower the shoulder to compensate. I've changed the pattern piece, and added the darts to the piece for the back, so I should have a perfect version tomorrow.

I envy those people who can re-cut their own work to get it to hang right, but I'm not one of those people. Still, for $12 I got two jackets and enough left over to make most of a third, plus, knowledge!

PS, if it is perfect, I'm gunna make about a dozen of them for myself. This polar fleece is comfy and super warm.

ZOMG!

Not only did I finish quilting AND bind the quilt I was working on last night, I also improv pieced another whole quilt top!

It's mainly a bundle of 30cm cuts of Groove from Robert Kaufman that I got for $10 a metre at Stitch and Knit a while back, with another Kaufman (Iota) and a stripe that I bought the other week in Adelaide thrown in. I decided that what I didn't want to do was stand around for 2 hours ironing and cutting all my bits, making me bored with the project before I'd even started, so I cut a half dozen 10cm squares from each fabric, as well as a 7cm and a 10cm strip, and a few random other rectangles. And then I sewed, and sewed, and ironed, and sewed, and cut some more bits, and sewed some more, ironed and trimmed a little, and sewed and kept on going till there was a quilt top there.

Actually, I lie, about halfway through I stopped and got KFC. There was nothing else to eat.

Anyway, it's about 110 by 140, judging solely on the 33cm lino squares underneath. I've no idea what to back it with, nothing in the stash is suitable which is a shame, and even once it is backed I've no idea how to quilt it.

Still, it was a nice different thing to do to (hopefully) kick start me into sewing again.

Finding the bright side in the dark.

I've found the best thing about laryngitis. It's going out into the kitchen, in the middle of the night, wearing headphones, not turning any lights on, having a groove in the dark, singing along at the top of your lungs to your mp3 player.

No-one can hear you! It's brilliant! It's like being home alone, but, we'll I'd say it happens less rarely, but this is the first time I've ever had laryngitis, whereas I've been home alone plenty of times, so there goes that theory. Oh well, it happened tonight, and I was loving it sick. That's the important thing.

Anyway, before I was being Bruce Springsteen, I actually got a little bit of quilting done, just boring wavy lines, but yay progress. Until the bobbin ran out, and I stopped. Because clearly, my sewing machine wanted me to.

Blah Blah Basting

The problem with basting is that, much like being sick, it's boring and uninteresting and no-one cares.

Still, it's the first crafting I've done in ages, with the exception of the statistical anomaly that was the holiday quilt, and I figure it's a good place to start. Spotlight had 30% off today so I got myself some batting, and a 108cm wide quilt can handily be backed by a single width of quilt fabric. Of course, I have no idea how I'm going to quilt it, since it's a very odd design that really needs an all-over free motioning, but, um, I still can't do that. I even gave it another quick try today, and I've got the shapes down pat, and my stitches don't vary too much in length, but the tension on the back is still utterly utterly horrible, and I'm still too cheap or lazy or both to get it serviced. I might end up doing wavy lines in both directions à la the pavement quilts, since that looks like an all-over while actually being a side to side, but, baby steps.

And on the voice thing, it's baby steps on that too. I have some vowel sounds. This is progress. I'd probably make more progress if I didn't keep going in to work, but they keep guilt-tripping me. Tonight I did reversion - basically taking down all the old specials tickets so new ones can go up tomorrow. I answered any customer queries with obscure hand gestures and interpretative dance. I hope one of them was a mystery shopper, because I'd love to read their review of my silent service.

Too Much?

How close to the end of a project will you stop? An hour of work left? Half an hour?

Of course, it's hard to know how long something's actually going to take. I have rounded (by about a centimetre) the last corner on the binding. I started it in the middle so there's probably less than 50cm to go, but I'm not sure how long it would actually take. And I'm ready for bed, so it can wait. It's not like I can't do it anywhere, right? Wasn't that the whole point?

Admittedly, I did kinda want to have washed it before I took it to Stonies, not just to (hopefully) crinkle it nicely, but mainly to get rid of the glue residue. When Casey and Jess got here tonight, the first thing they did was whinge that the room smelled a bit funny. I had meant to leave the window open today while I went shopping, but I forgot.

Nice little segue there: Shopping! Today I did a whole lotta op-shops, and thank god for my GPS. Yesterday I got from Parafield (mid north east) to Marion (mid south west) with no GPS, just to prove to myself that I could, but today I happily went wherever it told me too. I had to start in Port Adelaide since Dad needed me to get something for him from there, and I'd worked out a route that got me most of the stores down the west side of the city, all about 10 minutes or less apart. There was one I couldn't find, but I also found two surprise bonus St Vinnies stores and a Red Cross one too.

After 5pm I went to Rundle Mall because late night shopping in the city is on a Friday. And I bought some more stuff. A whole lot of it is basics - a half dozen each of bras, singlets and tees, to go with the four coats I've bought op-shopping, two ballgowns to stash (in January, for a friend's 18th, we're all wearing ballgowns to Dirty Shads, and these were $3 each, so the fact that they're to big for me was irrelevant) two kids rugby jumpers on end of season clearance, two long sleeve tops,  six printed tees, a checked shirt and a white jacket.

And the same shirt dress three times in two colours, because I really like it and it was only $10, and two handbags, and some DVDs, a few fat quarters, and a bit more booze too.

Because, like singlets, socks and fabric, you can never have too much booze.

Days of Somethingorother.

So today was apparently International Yarn day, but since Google didn't have a doodle for it, I'm not sure how serious it is. But Spotlight had yarn on special to celebrate, so I decided to go with it, and do something that had been worrying me for a while - crocheting an Escher-esque scarf with a twist so I could loop it twice.

As for why it was a worry - well, I was pretty sure that doing it would create a black hole that would swallow the earth. I'm not sure why I thought this, and thankfully it didn't happen (because that would be toats awkward) but I'd been holding off on trying it out for a little while because of it.

Frankly, I think I still prefer my super duper long brushed yarn dyed checks. And since yarn is in the name, I'm set.

After midnight I decided I'd quilt the top I made last night - it's pretty small, about 85x105cm, so it didn't take long. I haven't done a great job - the fabrics just didn't want to stretch taught over the batting, but I've already explained to Meagan that this is a using quilt, not a good one.

And I used a cheater fabric for the back - actually the top was pieced to match the cheater fabric, which Meagan picked way before having Thomas.

I've trimmed it down and cut my binding strips, but it's not actual finished. It's the international day of yarn, not miracles.

I've had a fairly big day:

I bought some fabric.

Half price, and then another $40 off of a $100 spend meant this $200 pile cost me $60

I bound a quilt.

I realised last night that it's easier to try out tricky stuff If you use boring stuff as a run up. I'd already made the binding, so it just needed attaching.

And I finished piecing the math quilt.

I quilted it too, but it didn't photograph well.

I also did some other shopping, ate quite a lot of food, had some spontaneous visitors, took about 1000 photos (I'm gunna write up properly how I do my binding) and, as I said above, I've quilted the math quiltlet - just boring, evenly spaced vertical lines. I've cut the remaining rainbow fabric into strips to bind it, and a bit of fabric to make a hanging tube.

I'm pretty happy with my efforts.

O ooh Hungover. (ish)

Do other people spend a really long time online looking at fabric, finding a few things you like, looking at lots of sellers (between ebay, etsy and actual online fabric shops) trying to find one that has everything you want at a decent price, opening up dozens of tabs, on two computers, before realising that to get everything you need, you'd have to buy from 3 different people, who'll each charge you $17 postage, even though you only want a couple of packs of charm squares from each of them, and it's all too hard, so you just exit all of it?

Anyway, yes, today I was hungover. I stayed at a friend's, we walked back to our cars about lunchtime, and I was feeling pretty okay. I said goodbye, got into my car, and immediately, the hangover hit. That hardly seems fair now does it? I can only assume that my body was sucking it up in the unfamiliar settings, and then as soon as it felt safe and at home (because my car is my second home) if felt compelled to point out that it was just pretending. I came home, watched a documentary on the South Sydney Rabbitohs, because the remote was simply too far away, and moved to my bed when people complained that I was hogging the couch. Apart from getting up to eat dinner, I haven't really moved, just bolstered myself up with many, many pillows, and watched many, many action movies.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is the last day of April, so unless I get some binding done tomorrow night, the April Finishathon actually only got two UFOs F'd, since the Lattice quilt doesn't count. But those two were just quilt tops, which got full pieced backs, quilted and bound. I also finished piecing the top of the Sashed-9-Patch, and made a back for and got half the quilting done on the Falling Leaves quilt. So I guess I'm pretty happy with it.

Yay Me.

Although my day didn't go exactly as planned, I can comfortably say that I've had just 1 hour's sleep in the past 36, but I got a quilt finished, and a bit of handsewing done, and my clothes in the wash.

Pride.

The plan had been to sew the lattice quilt till 5.30am (my estimated finishing time, and I was only 10 minutes short), go to the dawn service down in Pt Mac, be home by about 8ish, bind the other quilt, have 4 hours of sleep while they crinklified themselves in the washing machine and the dryer, and go see Meagan and let her pick her favourite.

This of course got derailed when we got invited to an Aunt's for breakfast after the service. And then straight after breakfast, she brought out some booze. And board games. And card games.

We planned to leave at 10. We planned to leave at 12. We planned to leave at 2, and actually succeeded. But I hadn't finished either quilt at this point, so I was a teensy bit relieved when Meagan messaged to say she and Clayton were having a spontaneous afternoon roadtrip.

I tried to do the final row of stitching on the binding, bit I realised after about 10cm (and this was on the machine) that I couldn't concentrate enough. I had something to eat, I fartarsed on the computer, I moved piles of stuff from the floor to the bed and back again. Eventually I gave up, set my timer for an hour, and had a nap.

After I woke up I did the final stitch down of the binding and put it in the wash. I watched a few new episodes of TV, and I finally got the black wholecloth quilt and started to sew it. I sewed while I watched for about an hour and a half, and I'm maybe 2/3rds of the way along one side. Black on black is hard to sew, and there's a reason I use the machine. If I didn't, this certainly wouldn't be finished.

I don't think it counts as a finish in the finishathon though, since I only started it last Friday.

Still, 5 day turnaround. Again, pride.

Happy Birthday Meagan

So 20 years ago today, my best friend was born. I would have been 4 at the time, so my main concerns would have been (probably) playdough and/or brightly coloured paint. I know that at some point at kindy we did the thing where you get really watery paint and blow it around the page with a straw, because I blew out all my oxygen, got very dizzy, and had to lie down.

That's not the point though. Even though Meagan thinks I'm clever because I made her a bag and fixed her computer, her current WIP is an actual human being, and unlike me, she can't do much procrastinating on it - It'll be here in about 3 weeks, though I know she'd rather it sooner.

I, on the other hand, am still ferociously procrastinating, having not actually finished her birthday present.

But the back's all pieced, and I've very neatly basted the entire thing with perfectly regular spacing, so I can do nice neat waves.

In my defence, strips always take longer than you think they will. I think she feels the same way about babies.

How dull.

Today, because it was on special, and there was only one there, and I am a sucker for either of those and both was making my nearly wet myself, I bought a new keyboard and mouse combo.

The new ones are the untethered ones.

No-one in the house knows though, and Casey has expressed a preference toward the corded kind (they're harder to lose) so naturally, I'm gunna wait till she's on the computer next and start moving the mouse counter to what she is. I'm mean like that sometimes.

I really only mention it because, despite a couple of hours hard work, this is all I have to show tonight.

One day, hopefully soon, it will become 8 satchel bags. The flaps are, for the most part, quilting fabrics, and I've already picked the one that I will either be keeping for myself or re-making. The body of the bag is cotton ripstop, which was $3 a metre at spotlight, and I still have to decide whether or not to add a zip - I want to, since I like zips, and they aren't even that much extra effort really, but I'm torn between the idea of having them be library bags (which is what they're really meant to be, for little kids who might not be able to handle a zip) or actual grown-up satchel bags (except that, even though they're fully lined, they don't have any interfacing, so the shape and stability of a proper bag just isn't there)

I think that instead of doing every step of all of them in unison, I might have to make one in it's entirety tomorrow night to get a better idea of the finished weight of one before I decide to add a zip.

I'm also using belts that I bought at op-shops around town as the straps on half of them, so we'll need to see how that turns out too.

First Finish of the Finishathon!

It's been a pretty good day. I got some good packages in the mail: vintage flannels and peeled cows from etsy, and a massive stack from Hancocks, which also included this:

After spending an hour or so cooing over it and making imaginary bundles in my head, I got to finally quilting the Green Pavement quilt. I wont lie, it was dull, slow and unfun. But 2.5 hours of quilting, 45 minutes of pinning, 30 minutes of handsewing the corners and 30 minutes machining the binding down and it's all done.

I did a foldover for this one, since the backing was not only on point, but I like it better than the front. I'd cut the wadding to an inch bigger around than the top was because I wanted a wide border, and just folded and pinned it to the width that covered the edge of the top. I was telling myself that I was being artistic and organic, but better adjectives probably would have been haphazard and lazy. Still, I really like it, especially from the back. The lack of an edge, both of the design and of the binding, is something I've decided I am a big fan of.

Hopefully I comes out of the washing machine still looking nice.

Question:

When the back of your quilt has more pieces than the front of your quilt, are you doing it all wrong?

Apart from the solid (Prima Natural Unseeded - I stocked up on 10metres today because it was 40% off) there's only one fabric in there that's not from a DS line - the one in the bottom right corner of the back and also near the top middle is from the Flourish line I made Kelsey's quilt from.

This back is for the Green Pavement quilt, and I'm hoping I can manage a fold over bindng for this one, because it's starting to dawn on me how very, very many bindings I need to do.

Got ahead of myself again...

I'll be honest - I'm not a fan of sashing. It's a lot of extra effort for not much extra, and also, if feels a lot like binding.

Still, it can make a simple design a bit more interesting. Make a sashed 9 patch, and then make it dissappear, with a bit of extra sashing, and you've got a very lazy leadlight style quilt, unless you use white for the sashing, in which case it doesn't look like leadlight at all.

By my standards, it's big. 165cm each way, which I know isn't that big by other people's standards, but it's still too big to quilt doing wavy lines on my little old machine. It was on my finish list, but I'm actually seriously considering getting it properly quilted. If I could free motion I'd do that, but for that I'd need to send my machine off to get serviced, and, you know, learn how to free motion, and then get confident enought to do a big project, so maybe I'll just pay the lady at Stitch and Knit $90 and tell her to do whatever. I'd be happy with a stipple really.

Everything.

Tonight, I didn't go to the gym, because a pimple has formed behind my right ear, and I wear those headphones that clip over your ears, so, um, ouch. It's a nice change though, usually my problem with going to the gym is that my feet hurt.

And did I use my early night home to get much much sewing done? Well, no.

Falling Pinwheels is half quilted.

Though not very well. Still, better than nothing, and lets just say I meant to make it that wrinkly in places.

And you can't see it so much from the front - darker fabrics and all that.

I'm finding it interesting too how I very much prefer rock or party music when I'm quilting as opposed to slower, more ballady stuff. Lady Gaga, Pink, Selena Gomez, Matchbox Twenty and even a bit of LMFAO.

Oh, and this song.



This is my new favourite anything everything song.

Woah.

Since today was my short day (where I start at 5.30 instead of 2) I not only had time to finish the quilting of the pink pavement quilt, I also went out to the shed and got some other unfinished quilt tops out to have a go at getting some more work done on them.

Remember this quilt top? June 5 last year, apparently, so it's been waiting nearly 10 months for any more work to be done on it.

Now it has a back. It's neither stunning nor revolutionary, but I didn't buy anything for it and that's what's important. I did have to go and buy a spool of brown cotton to quilt it with, but I don't think that counts.

I've decided to quilt it in diagonal wavy lines, which may just be the stupidest decision I've ever made. Diagonal lines are way way harder than straight ones - the against-the-grain cut shifts and stretches more, the weight of the rest of the quilt doesn't sit well on the sewing table and there always seems to be too much quilt and not enough throat to the machine. Still, I am making progress on something that's been sitting around for a while, and that feels good, especially when I realise how many unfinished quilts I actually have.

The ones with the pink scribble aren't crossed out because they're done - they're the ones I'm going to try to make progress on before I start another quilt, but I didn't have a real highlighter. The fact that I have 18 unfinished quilts means though that I have finished 50 quilts, which I didn't even notice as it was happening.

Looking through the full list too, there's a few that I have absolutely no idea of the location of - both unfinished ones and completed ones. maybe over easter I'll have a ferret around and see if I can find them.

Quilting

The problem I think with quilting (the bit where you sew the three layers together) is that you can be at it for hours with nothing really to show. And you get sore shoulders.

This is the first time I've done wavy lines in both directions, and apart from a couple of little bunches at the seams (that should pretty much vanish once it's washed and crinkly) it's going okay. I don't think I pulled the back taught enough though, as it's a bit baggier than usual. Still, I did at at 4am, so I'm not entirely surpried - 3am is usually my stop-sewing time.

Hopefully the two-direction quilting will make it super crinkly. It's getting colder now, and since crinkly looks warmer (it doesn't matter whether or not it actually is) I'm thinking the crinky the better.