A decision (or two)

I don't know why I only ever get the urge to clean my room in the middle of the night, but I'd like to say this: the sun gets up waaaay to early. It's light outside. That's not okay with me. I think in future I should be consulted.

Anyway. It's 6am. It's been a long day/night (though clearly not long enough?) so it feels like a long time ago when I picked what to wear tomorrow (tonight?).

The skirt was a dress that had a bodice for someone boobier than me, so I just chopped it off. The top is what I mad a couple of weeks ago for the fluro party and ended up wearing for about 20 minutes with a pair of jeans, before taking it off in favour of rednecking it in a white tank top. I need to sort out some shoes, but I figure I'll just go buy a cheap pair from Kmart.

Because it is already after 5am, and there are still tumblrs that need to be read...

Today there was sunshine. It was terribly strange, but then, I have barely talked for 11 days now, so my very existence has started to go a bit weird. I find myself regularly going and laying in odd places, staring at the light fittings or the bit where the door meets the roof, just because, as a person who is made up of words, and who has no words, life is weird. Also, did I mention it's 5.30am? Just as well I have no voice and got my shift replaced for tomorrow.

Back to the point, it was sunny today, and I went into work late (they'll let you be in charge with no voice, but not actually serve the customers) so I had time to go out and take some pretty pictures.

This quilt is so unlike all my other quilts that I almost love it the most, because it's so unashamed to let it's freak flag fly.

This is the holiday quilt, hand quilted by me, while I was high on the glue fumes from spray basting together, in a motel room in Adelaide, the layers of pre-pieced plaid, pink polar fleece (batting) and wool coating (backing). And I hand sewed on the binding too, which is actually woven polyester tape.

This is the Carried Away Miniquilt. Some point soon I want to re-do this in the solids I originally designed this to be in, and as a nine-patch.

The block itself is what I came up with for the GenQ block design competition, and since the magazine is out now, I think I can do my excited squeally they picked it!

This is the original colours. I only had enough to make this one block, which got turned into a cushion, which was promptly stolen by Casey, and then by Maddy. I also made a really hideous one, in a selection of other new DS fabrics, that I tentatively titled when bad things happen to good fabrics.

Naturally, one of the girls at worth thought it was kinda funky when I showed her the photo, so I've quilted it ready to eventually turn it into a cushion for her.

Whoops

Time flies when you're drafting patterns.

Some lovely wool blend coat fabric on clearance, an old jacket cut up for a pattern and high hopes for a drapey collar I haven't quite worked out yet, and suddenly it's after 6am :/

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.

Oopsies.

Even though I've done it for all bar about 5 of my days on earth, clearly I still need more practice at this whole "going to bed" shtick.

Possibly reading the entire episode guide to Game of Thrones on wikipedia wasn't the best idea at 4am, but it was still quicker than watching it all. Since each season covers one book, I think reading the books would be quicker than watching it: I can read an unfamiliar 400 page novel in about 4 hours, whereas it would take me 10 to watch ithe first season.

Anyway, before I got distracted I (thankfully) got some stuff done.

Target had 40% of pillows today, so I bought myself a new one. It was referred to as "dual core" and I use a dual core. Actually, I use 3 dual cores - desktop, laptop and phone are all dual-core, but in the pillow's case (pun not intended) it means that there's a foam bit in the middle of the regular fluffy bit. I wanted to make it a pillowcase, but, after getting out a half dozen fabrics and then deciding against them all, I got to work on the next bag, with a zip and interfacing.

This is without vita wheats, and all I used was some non-woven 1600F on the lining. It was a bugger to turn out though, but I didn't have to hand sew it, because I cleverly recessed the zip over the top of the turning hole.

I lined it in the same beige ripstop as the outer of the other bag is made from, since I think a lighter coloured lining makes things easier to find.

That done, I auditioned some more fabrics, came to the conclusion that I really ought to use a whole yard, because having white on the back would look weird, and put all my choices to that point back on the shelf. I read an old Reader's Digest for a bit, resewed the armholes on Casey's shirt (she likes sleeveless workshirts, but they're hard to find, so I have to cut down long-sleeved shirts for her), ate some pineapple and finally admitted to myself that If I was going to go to bed tonight, I needed to get a pillowcase sorted out. I'm not ashamed to admit, I drool in my sleep a little bit.

Eventually I discovered a doubling up of this fabric, which I once used as my handbag for a while, so I figured I could miraculously use it while having it remain in my stash (because frankly, isn't that what we always want?) and so I went for it.

Then I completely forgot to go to bed anyway. Thank god I don't work Fridays :)

Saggy Bag.

I had planned on having myself a nice little rant tonight, but after catching up on the last week or so of TV (and I completely forgot I have a binding to hand-sew) and making that zipless test bag, I've tired myself out and I need to go to bed instead of getting angry.

However, here is the bag as it turned out, with no interfacing, no zip and a belt bought for $2 from the salvos for a strap.

It's a bit lackluster, though I shoved an empty box of vita-wheats* into it to get an idea of what it would be like if it had stuff in it, and it made a big improvement.

Since these are really mainly meant to be test/display bags for people to pick what fabrics they want, I'm leaning towards doing half with and half without. But I love the belts as straps thing.

*because I use boxes of vita-wheats for all sorts of things.

The Next Generation....

Tonight, I couldn't be bothered doing real sewing, so I watched a lot of youtube videos and cut out some more monsters instead, only now I have a blister on my right index knuckle from the scissors. Ow.

To which the correct response* is "shit story, needs more dragons."

And while I don't have more dragons, I do have this.

Maddy's first ever quilt. It's only little - they're 10 cm squares from the hundreds I still had left over from the very first quilt I made, but no matter. I pulled out the other good-condition machine the other night for her to use without the foot (just turning the crank by hand) and she'd made herself a couple of simple shape cushions with my help that night. Today though we got up after our 6am hometime arrival from our spontaneous country music festival adventurising to find she had made a freaking awesome SpongeBob, without a pattern, out of some of the felt we bought at Spotlight on Friday.

Unfortunately, I think Mum's hidden it to keep forever and ever, so I don't have a photo.

With that I concluded that she was probably grown up enough to start using a foot pedal, but the one I used to use was still broken, so we had to send Dad out to fix it.  And then we had to gaffa tape a pencil sharpener underneath it so that it woudn't go above a certain speed.

And no matter how insistent I was that we maybe just piece some cushion covers first, she wanted to do a quilt, so I haggled it down to a little blankie that we could use as a mat or for one of her toys. It seemed like a lot of hassle to iron out our seams, and I also figured it would be an easier bodge job for me at the end if they weren't, so we chain pieced it in it's entirety and just pressed the seams to one side. And since I hate having to bind stuff that I've sacrificed my good fabrics and many many hours to, I just put the backing on right sides in and told her to sew around it, and we'd leave this one without any batting.

It was at this point that the kids from next door came over and asked if she'd like to go out and play, and therefore it was also at this point that she became a real quilter.

Because it's not finished, and is therefore her first real WiP.

*This is a response to pretty mych anything in our house.

Bugger.

Remember when I said yesterday that it was a bad idea to try do any big sewing projects in the same week as a BnS ball?

I kinda forgot is was my sister's birthday this weekend.

Well, not really forgot. I know it's on Sunday, but my brain didn't really reconcile the fact that it was her birthday this sunday with the fact that it's her BIRTHDAY on SUNDAY.

My brain is dumb sometimes.

Anyway, I remembered remembered this morning and so I figured I'd better get on it. I haven't actually made Casey a quilt yet because she has an amazing ability to be both very picky AND very vague - she's always very specific about what she does and doesn't like in what you're doing, but then she'll go "Can you just make me (insert whatever here)... I don't care what colour/fabric/width/shape..."

So where does one go with that? Well, I've started with the back, which is the two yards of half-naked-cowboy fabric, added an altered version of what I was planning on doing as a top to test my new back arrangement and sacrificed to the cause a quite nice collection of solid Konas in the green to purple section of the spectrum.

The colours in this photo are all wrong. The purples are way darker and those yellows are actually greens.

Not yet actually assembled, but I got the math done, the colours picked, the fabric cut and the blocks sewn in 5 hours, so I'm happy to stop now.

If it looks like a bit of an off shape, it is - since I'm making this top as something to have on the other side of the back, which is what's actually featured, it's the same size as the back, ie long and skinny. 105x175 is what I've mathed to, which is about 42x70 for those of you that think imperial. I considered shortening it to make it a bit more or a normal ratio, but one of the girls at work pointed out that a long quilt can go across the knees of two people, so I took that as a decent reason not to chop it up.

It'd be a shame to lose any more hunky man-ness than I need to.

In related news, and in celebration of Harrow BnS being only 3 days away, this video made me laugh.

Merry Christmas.

I got everything finished on time, even though I didn't get out of work on time (a saturday when you have to do all the sunday jobs? Too confusing.)

And so it is, officially, in my time zone at least, Christmas. 3 hours in.

Santa has been, though I still have to wait 5 hours to find out what I got in addition to an RAA roadside assist membership and some hopefully-bitchin new headphones. They cost six times my usual headphones so one would hope they are six times better, though they're probably just 6 times more likely to get lost.

I hope everyone has a good one, whether they've still got a whole day to wait or just a few stolen hours of shut-eye.

I think I might get away with not sewing for a whole day now. Yay!

Yay!

5am, we meet again....

Yeah, I'm not good at this whole "going to bed" thing. Buuuuuut.....

Faced, sewn, stuffed and ready to hand-sew closed tomorrow. My favourite is the pale blue one at the right. He has really long arms, so you can fold (knot) them and he looks really gangsta.

Here we go again...

Because I am a sucker.

I couldn't even find my old patterns, let along the half dozen half-faced monsters I know are somewhere. Lucky I posted all the patterns on here a while ago - look under the tutorial label if you're wanting it.

Spotlight didn't have any opaque white fabric paint, so I've had to sew on a layer of felt with a layer of white quilting cotton fused over the top - that's the only combo that properly covers the prints underneath, and doesn't pill like the felt does on it's own. Fortunately, without actually practicing or doing it all that often, I suddenly got quite good at raw edge machine applique. Yay me.

But my vision's starting to go blurry from staring intently at a turning circle of white and my bobbin ran out. And if an empty bobbin isn't a sign to stop for the night, I don't know what is. Maybe the fact that it's a quarter to five. That works too.

Yawn.

I'm so tired I may have passed, about 45 minutes ago, into that land where you're basically drunk, only it's better, because there's noone around to tell things to, no drinks to spill, and it's cheaper, and you wont feel as terrible in the morning, and you're not feeling like throwing up (unless you've only eaten cheese for the last 8 hours) and you actually achieved quite a lot.

It's so much better in fact that one could consider making it their favourite thing for friday, except that, well, it's not actually a nice feeling at all.

Instead, my actual favourite thing is going to be those pencil cases made out of zips. Now for the record, I think they're a stupid idea. They were cute and twee when it was only crafters making them, and yes, the one that zippers around and around forever was a very cool variation on it when it first came out, but now that you can get terribly made ones at all the cheap shops they, for the most part, really annoy me. But... on the other hand, as someone who uses a lot of zips, they're handy. While honestly I'd much rather just be able to buy a metre of bright orange size 7 zipper, I understand that it's a niche market, and am therefore kinda glad to see a frankly silly looking phone pouch made out of exactly that for $3 at Neds. Sure it means a 5 minute job with the quickunpick, but the people in the sweatshops have kindly set their machines to the longest stitch length, so it's not like it's hard work. And while Lincraft have size 3 pulls you can buy, they don't have size 7, so a pencil case for $4 which gets me 12 zipper pulls is not too bad a price. I don't have a use for the 12 brightly coloured 15cm lengths of zipper they came off of yet, but I'm working on that bit.

Other good stuff:

Furnishings fabric. We forget about it with all the pretty quilting fabrics at our disposal, but they have some really nice yarn-dyed stuff.

Electric blanket. It doesn't matter that it's summer. I'm using it.

Computer mouse. As a dedicated laptop user, and also a touchscreen aficionado, I've never really used them. But mum's laptop, with it's oddly clingy touchpad and screen that just sits there no matter how much you prod it really benefits from the presence of the little red mouse.

Multitasking. Tonight I worked for about 10 hours on 8 projects, flitting from one to another when I got bored. None of them got finished, but I made a lot of progress on most of them.

Pin magnets. Actually, any magnets, since all you need to do to make a magnet a pin magnet is throw a pin at it - a handy fact if you're lazy like me.

Shopping for clothes in the kids section. Trackies for $8, thanks. Undies for $2, ta muchly. 

Totally being a trendsetter in the adults section. Remember these?

 

 I went into cotton-on today and found these:

Theirs have a blue ribbon and slightly smaller check, oh, and they cost twenty bucks! I paid $4 for a metre of the fabric and made 2 pairs, bringing me to my final fave,

Bargains. This might be 30 years old, but for 99c it's got some damn good stuff in in.

Though to be honest, that tennis outfit isn't one of them...

And relax...

Some days you achieve a lot, some days you don't. Sometimes this lack of achievement makes you cross, other days you're like, meh, whatever.

Today was the latter on both accounts. Well, work was a madhouse, what with the EFTPOS machines of half the country (apparently) being down and all the transactions taking twice as long and all the staff having nervous breakdowns and all the customers swearing at me, and maybe that's why I didn't do anything today. Because Casey told me that it had happened, so I bummed about in the afternoon knowing that later in the evening was going to be shit, then after it was over I was just worn out and couldn't be arsed.

Either way, today I sewed about 6 inches - I'm taking up a dress for a friend and wanted to make sure my machine could get a nice edge on the chiffon before I got a bit scissor-happy. I think it's going to be fine, but it's not needed till next Saturday, so I'm in no rush.

Quilting again.

I don't normally stop halfway through a quilt, but it's late, and I'm tired, so I'll make an exception.

It's way pinker than it looks - this is just a terrible photo taken at 3am in my kitchen with my phone.

I'm really liking how it's turning out though. It took me ages to get started, what with a trip into town, some time spent playing with our new vacuum sealer that arrived in the mail and much, much food consumption, and then when I did get started on the cutting, Casey came and demanded the kitchen. And if it took me a while to get going the first time... well, I'll put it this way - I watched the Graham Norton show and then a bit of Conan O'Brien and then a bit of Letterman too and then I watched Question Time for a bit, because the TV guide on the screen said QI was going to be on after it, but not at what time, and eventually I got sick of it and turned it off and started quilting.

It's coming together fairly quickly, mainly I think thanks to those nice big 43cm squares there. The 6cm cornerstones are a bit of a bitch though, and I cut eight too few white strips. It's okay, I had plenty more white, so they're cut ready for tomorrow.

Ow.

I can't walk. I can't sit down. I can't bend over. It's horrible.

Yesterday morning my parents went and got a couple of loads of firewood. Which means yesterday afternoon we had to unload a couple of loads of firewood. And since everyone else is scared of any height more than two foot above ground, I was the one on the back of the ute picking the bits up and passing them on. 45 solid minutes of lunging one way to pick up a log, and then lunging the other to pass it to Dad at the other end. And today, my thighs don't work. They just burn.

I had been thinking about doing some work on the Snack quilt. But that would involve walking, and sitting down, and bending over, and, worst of all, squatting. I don't have a design board, I have the lounge room floor. So quilting is out of the question.

To bed for a Bejewelled marathon it is then...

Peh...

I am in the weirdest mood. Noone felt like backing it up so I've read a book, watched a couple of episodes of Johnathan Creek and pressed my HSTs. And ate about half my body weight in peppermint chocolate, sliced chicken and boiled eggs.

Frankly, I'm epically bored. I'm not entirely sure, but having had the potential for tonight to have been a big one, the fact that it isn't has kinda gotten in the way of actually achieving anything. I suppose I'm moping.

Happens to the best of us.

Mornings.

I am sooo not a morning person. I wish I was, because I do like dawn, and I think it can be a magical time of day, when noone's awake and there's interesting light and time moves a bit weirdly. But really, I'm only ever up at that time of the morning when something interesting is going on, like I'm going on holiday, and it's much more likely and also much worse that I should have to be up at a mundane hour of the morning like 8 or 9am.

This happened today. My hatred of mornings is well known by my colleagues, and because of it I'm never rostered before lunchtime, but we've agreed that if they've called everyone else, and I'm their last option, I will say yes. And there's a bit of a bug going around Woolies at the moment, and I got called. They were kind enough to call at 8, and since I was meant to be working my usual shift of 2.30 till 10.30, I tried to haggle an 11am start, since that would mean that whichever schoolkid worked till close could do 7 till 10.30 and then they wouldn't need a teabreak* but it's hard to haggle at 8am when you're still pretty much asleep, which is why I had to start at 10.

It was horrible. Really really horrible. I'm very happy with my bodyclock, for all that everybody else thinks it's whacked, and I really don't know how everybody else does it. My parent's have been informed that if anybody calls for me tomorrow morning, I'm dead, and will continue to be dead until 2.30, when I'll be at work. That should suffice. Any more than one morning a week would probably kill me.

*Which may seem mean, but it's very annoying to have to give someone a teabreak at 8.30 when there's only one other checkout chick, so they try to roster 3.5 hour shifts at night.

I... what... yeah... um... nah, dunno.

I fell asleep 3 times today. Normally I never sleep during the day, but I got up earlyish (10) because Bob and Esther were at our house for the morning, and proceeded to fall asleep on the floor. And then on the couch. And then on my bed.

Clearly, I'm not pulling up very well after the weekend.

Actually, that's an understatement. I'm struggling to think two coherent thoughts in a row*. Still, there was some happiness to be found in the bag of raspberry twists we bought on the way home in Meningie.

And this was really the only nice photo I took all weekend.

All the others had drunk people spoiling the view. Often with their pants down. I put those ones on facebook instead.


*It's taken me over an hour to write this post.

Epilogue

I'm home.

I'd forgotten how much I loved my toilet. Sooo much better than a portapotty.

I may love my skinny jeans but after a weekend of looking bitchin in them and my boots, I'm loving wearing trackies right now.

I'm loving the decision we made to not unpack the car. Not that half the stuff is home anyway - the boys we met up there managed to blow up the engine in their ute so we had to bring them home, leaving our swags, half my clothes and two of the eskies up there with the ute. They orgainsed another ute and a car trailer and are already on their way back up there to tow it home, but we are quite happy here in showered and in bed.

It was a good weekend. After the little bit of rain while we waited to get in, it cleared right up. We were at the top of a hill and had an amazing view of the lights of Adelaide a long way away. There was a boy called Lushy, a great many Cruisers, dancing till my feet hurt (even though I was in my comfy boots) and my hands are still blue. Fingernails - the dye gets stuck in the cuticles. But I don't know why I always end up blue. There's so many other pretty colours.

Sigh.

For the first time in a while, I have gotten home and really, really not felt like crafting. It could be because I worked a really long day, it could be because I'm on the verge of projects instead of coming to the end of them, it could be that I ate too much chocolate in the car on the way home and when I would normally be finishing up on the laptop and getting into making something, I came down from my sugar high and now I can't get up. Normally when I'm not sewing I'm wishing I was but tonight I've just felt like going to bed. I feel a bit bad, since I have so many projects I should be working on (three more backs to make and quilt, and one that just needs quilting) and I've gone and bought more fabric ($60 for 9 yards from fabricshack.com is, in my opinion, irresponsibly cheap. How am I supposed to afford chocolate with that tempting (and ensnaring) me?)

And, because I can't help myself, quilts #51, 52, 53 and 54 have already been planned, and bought for. My brain needs to slow down, or my body needs to catch up.

The really annoying thig is - you know how hard it is to not buy fabrics? It's even harder than that to not write down and draw up and do all the math for any vauge quilting notion that comes into my head.

Put simply, I'm screwed*.

*Unless they get human cloning sorted ASAP, because that's about the only thing that's gunna help me out. A long lost identical twin could work too.