Words.

Is it possible that we have a finite amount of words per day? Wednesday nights after work we usually go to maccas for girl chats and two hours of lots and lots of words has left me all out. I'm struggling to think full sentences, let alone write them. It's taken me 25 minutes to get this far. But it's nice to chat. It seems like a worthwhile use of my words.

It's really quite obvious...

Had noone ever realised before me that you can patchwork in a pocket? Surely I can't be the first, but I couldn't find anyone else having done it. It's really quite obvious now - I wonder why noone has before. Maybe other people can be bothered doing those nice inside out ones that you just sew on flat, but they'd always annoyed me.

The pockets are 10 cm wide with one centimetre of sticky-outey-ness and 1.5cm of space between the top of the pocket and the flap. The handles are sewn into the seams just like the pieces for the pockets are.

Anyway, tonight, I got home, read the new Top Gear magazine for a bit, got to my laptop, was gunna get into a pretty hardcore Bejewelled sesh and may brain went "um, if you don't mind, I've worked out a pocket for you to try. Could you test it now please, before I forget?"

Magnet clasps because I remembered where I put them when I bought them this time. You can kinda see the point where the bits join together in the middle.

My brain is really really polite. And smart too. It worked out sizes, and angles, and where to put the magnet clasps. I'm not sure when it did all this, since all I had to do tonight was cut and iron and sew, but it all works. Unfortunately, my brain let me pick the fabric. And I went with some less than stellar quality stripey cotton that I got from the Salvos over a year ago. That was made in Brazil. That I am loving the look of in real life, but which, bad news for the blogosphere, doesn't really show up my lovely pockets in the photos.

I pieced it all together across first - the piece that is the back of the pockets means it's thickest coming off of them, so I pressed all my seams away from the pockets and sewed just to the sides of the seams so they'll stay flat. Then I did the same with the top and bottom bits - on the top one I put the tops of the pockets and the straps into the seams.

I really should do up a proper tutorial for these bags. They are the bomb, and endlessly customisable, and really quite easy, for all that they take forever. It would be a good excuse to make lots and lots of them. With all sorts of different pockets. And one with no pockets, that can be quilted, and is way quicker and easier. But not as cool as this will be.

The back of the pockets - the gap between the two pockets was 2 cm and I use 1cm seams when I'm making bags, which is why you can't see a gap. Extra stitching to secure the handles can be seen at the top.

Of course, this is still just one side of the outside of a bag. And I* came up with an idea for revised end pockets a few days ago, which I might try tomorrow.

Except it's Wednesday. Which means it's maccas night (it's a work thing) and I won't get home till after midnight.

I'm feeling glad I have the weekend off.

*If it appears in my consciousness fully formed without me having actively worked on it, it was my brain, not me. If I'm sitting, looking at previous versions of the bag and discussing with a friend how I could make them better, it was me.

Random Letters Night.

Dear ebay, If it won't cover even my teeny tiny arse, it isn't a dress, and it should'nt come up when I type in the word "dress".

Dear ebay, you know what I really hate? I really hate 60 repeats of exactly the same freaking listing.

Dear fly, you know what I really hate? You.

Dear donuts, I love you forever and ever and ever this much. No, even more than that.

Dear v key, it's really annoying how you're being a poobum and not working most of the time and I have to keep going back and putting "v"s into every "eery"

Dear milk, I wish I could trust you in the same way I trust water, but I don't. You'e been sitting there for a half hour now, I need to pour you down the sink and replace you. But thankyou for tasting good with my donuts.

Dear whoever came up with calling a one-piece bathing suit a "monokini" - I hope you die a slow and painful death.

Dear sliced chicken meat, I hope you weren't old and yucky, and that my tummy is hurting now from the two big glasses of apple juice making it too full and not from you being off.

Dear nose, it's times like this I wish you worked.

Dear apple fabric I picked for my next bag, you are very pretty. But I'm struggling to think of a good way to make your 2 inch directional print look good without having to lose chunks of it into seams.

Dear leg, please stop being itchy.

Dear electric blanket, you do for my whole body what chocolate donuts do for my tongue. I love you too.

Dear Taylor Swift (the car, not the person), I promise I will get you petrol tomorrow.

Me = Da Bomb.

Just for future reference, if, one day, any of you turn your computers on the be greeted with a blank desktop, with no icons or taskbar across the bottom, message me. Cause I am the bomb at fixing that shit :)

Meagan told me the other day that it was happening on her laptop. I knew it was just that explorer wasn't booting and Steven said if I booted it once it should just keep booting itself. Except last night when I had a go at fixing it, the damn thing wasn't there. Explorer, not the laptop. I really really struggle to fix laptops that have suddenly ceased to exist. And, admittedly, I did struggle for a while tonight to try and boot a program that had ceased to exist. But, because I am awesome, I found a seed of it in the registry, planted it, grew it into a mature program, ran it, and got it fixed*. Round of applause for me, since I didn't even have to use an illegal copy.

I did however fail to get it to connect to my wireless internet. Which is a massive shame, because if I had been able to, I would have gotten access to her facebook page and posted naughty things on her wall.


*They were all metaphors, because saying I went to regedit and re-exported the explorer.exe key makes even less sense. I do like the idea of breeding programs though. If we cross-bred Bejewelled with Bubble Breaker I think I would probably have to give up quilting and my social lives and just sit and play it all day.

Awww, pretty.

This social life thing sure gets in the way of blogging. Buuut... I did manage to squish 5 minutes out of my busy schedule* to iron and photograph the new quilt top properly - sans borders, since I'm still not sure about them.

The better photo was one in the shade anyway - the wind put dark shadows in all the sunlit (at a severe 4.30pm angle) ones.

 

But I couldn't help but take some artsy lit-from-behind ones too.

Anyway, the sky to the east is starting to lighten, so it's probably bedtime.


*Okay, so I sat on the couch for 3 hours watching Bring It On: All or Nothing, ironed it in the last 15 minutes of the movie and barely scraped in the last bit of sunlight hitting the clothesline. Honestly, the sheer volume of adverts that the digital channels put in their midday movies is staggering - I probably could have downloaded it and watched it in it's entirety in less time than it took to watch it on the telly. The social bit came after, and meant I didn't get home till 6am.

Maybe, Possibly, Yeah...

Have any of you ever been too drunk to do a post? No, probably not. Nonetheless, even though I may be now, while I was still sober I got my quilt top finished, and my favourite things are interfacing (the unsung hero of the bag making world), Meagan and Anna (see last weeks FTF post) and the lyric "A replay of last nights events roll through my mind, except a scene or two erased by sweet red wine" from Calling Baton Rouge by Garth Brooks.

Really, what more does a girl need?

I don't know...

I don't know why, but when I get to the point where a quilt is in four or five quite large pieces, I loose all motivation to finish it off. I don't know if it's because of all the pinning, or the difficulties involved in having a small ironing board and a large quilt, or what it is. I tried distracting myself by doing some maths for a revised gym bag but it didn't work. With maybe 20 minutes of sewing to go, I have given up for the night.

Good thing I have tomorrow off.

Woohoo!

It's not finished, but the blocks are. And so long as the blocks are finished, I can plop them all out on the floor to get an idea of how it will look.

I need to actually put some effort into where each colour goes, I kinda just plopped these wherever. But it's nice to remember that at the end of all these seams will, eventually, one day, be a quilt.

I split my border seams even though it makes for a small but very thick lump. I just feel better about it. It took me an hour and a half to get them all done, pushed way back by the fact that Anna and I went to maccas after work and didn't leave till 12.30. Still, it gave me my facebook status for the evening: I wish "steam the shit out of it" was the solution to all of life's problems, instead of just the ones related to quilting.  

So what if I can't fix everyone's problems. I can press a damn good seam, and for tonight, that just might be enough.

I may have started to hyperventilate there...

The more I work on this quilt, the less sure I am of how the hell I'm actually gunna quilt it. And I really want it quilted as soon as I've finished piecing it - it's taken me too long already and I just want to wash it and be able to start using it.

I'm kinda wondering it there's some weird kind of balance between this quilt and my first one, which came about so effortlessly. This time last year, I was really getting into the stride of that quilt - come Sunday it will be a year since I completed it. That quilt happened really easily - unsurprising really since it was made by taking a massive pile of random 10cm squares and arranging them by eye on the kitchen table. I straight line quilted it in the ditch in one direction and folded the backing around to make a border. Nice and easy.

This one though, I'm not sure how I'm gunna do it. My tendency to go over every seam is overkill when they're going in 4 directions, but covering only two directions doesn't seem like enough.

I may have to send it off. I've never done that before. I don't like the idea of having to trust someone else to do justice to something I've put so much effort into. And will the lady at the quilt shop be okay with me saying "just a boring all over stipple, please"? And do I need to add extra to the front? Give it a border or something? Can I still do a pieced back? Will she get cross that some of my points are shoddy? How much will it cost me? Will she mind that all the fabrics are from Spotlight and not from her? Will she think I'm a sheep for using the DS fabrics? Will I embarrass myself even more by saying "yes, but even weirder, they're in the Joann's colourway" forever marking myself as a sad sorry loser with no life?

...

Just had to go look at my bag for a bit, remember how awesome I am. I feel a bit better now.

Back to the quilt, the good bits of it at least, the border pieces have all been cut and the short bits have been sewn on. Tomorrow night I shall sew on the long bits, Thursday night I shall piece it all together and on Friday, my day off, I shall take it and the brown one to Helen's to show her, because I've been too busy with work and trying to deal with actually having a social life* to visit, even though it makes me sad. Also, I haven't really had much to show off.

Maybe having no life wasn't so bad after all.

*in direct contrast to what you would expect of someone who knows which DS fabrics were released in which country, even though she doesn't really care about it and thinks that the internet's obsession with the designer in question does little more than make them look like sheep. Why can't my brain learn and retain useful things, like basic html? I'm sick of having to google whether it's or afterward. (I think it's the first one)

I have a Gym Bag!

 It's big, and square, and it matches my handbag.

I probably claim about once a month that this, that or the other has made my life complete. I'm about to do it again. This bag makes my life complete. It has a rainbow tie dyed lining too.

It even has pockets inside.

Okay, so I only put pockets inside so that I could say "It even has pockets inside!" but that's beside the point.

It's not quite finished - I need to go over the inside seams with a zigzag. But I said I would stop at 5am, so I have.

I could have made this bag a lot easier. It arrived in my brain fully formed, with cutting instructions and a clever way to set the zip so it was really easy. I have done absolutely no hand sewing on this whatsoever. But my brain said there was an easy way, that would  waste about a 45 by 30cm square of fabric, or a hard way, that would let me use that fabric to make two little outside pockets at either end. I don't really need the little pockets (the inside ones work for the easy way and the hard way) but I figured I may as well put in the extra effort.

I'm a sucker like that.

But basically, it's just one of those little boxy pouches, scaled up to 40cm long, 25cm wide and 30cm high, with some straps and pockets. But instead of starting with a rectangle and cutting little bits out, I got lots of exactly the right sized rectangles and put them all together. And by using zipper by the metre, and sewing it in in two bits and then putting the pulls on after it was all sewn in, I got rid of all the usual zipper hassles.

I've also just realised that I never blogged the yellow star pillow in the background. I made it with some of the charm squares Shay gave me. There's a half done blue one about somewhere too, I must finish that.