So here are the naked quilts I finished this weekend. How long do you think it will take me to bind them all so that they aren't naked any more? I'm not neurotic. I'm NOT! I'm NOT! I'm NOT!!!!!
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So, I've been nursing a serious quilting hangover this week.... Over the weekend hubby and I (mostly Dave) tweaked the thread path on my Gammill. I DON'T CARE HOW GHETTO IT LOOKS, IT WORKS!!!!! As a result of my newly functional machine, I did 7 quilts on the long arm over the weekend. SEVEN. I'll take pictures as soon as I wack out the two that I needed by tonight.
I have had a 4 inch week....which makes me REALLY question my sanity. What is a 4 inch week? It's when the thread on my long arm breaks every 4 inches...every day. For the entire 2 hours that I have allotted to quilting. Every day. Did I mention, Every DAY !?!! What kept me quilting? In the cold damp basement when I would stitch...break! Set it up, then stitch....break! For two hours a day? Last week, I talked about creating a playlist of music on YouTube that made me feel happy... present... And entertained. Most days this week, I streamed more music while I was long arming. I also played with my sewing philosophies while I worked. Was this determination to accomplish something a by product of my musician/quilter outlook? (of course!) Was it healthy? (so long as I kept my Zen attitude and didn't get cranky and frustrated) Would I have been better served by the artist/quilter attitude (possibly, probably, but my feelings of guilt may have overshadowed the benefits of that world view....more on that later) Did my stubborn determination allow me to make slow, but measurable progress? (absolutely!) By Friday night, I was so far behind on my weekly goals that I pulled out the big guns...the down and out guarantee that I would put in a LONG, productive session on the long arm. I invited my husband to join me. He reads, plays darts, pushes our kid on the swing...he WOULD play pool if I hadn't covered the table in batting...His presence in the basement makes it "hang out time" instead of a solo adventure/inner battle. The other benefit of having hubby around is that he has less tolerance for thread breaks than I do. So, when this: happens, he starts to look stuff up on the internet. After some digging, he found a way to change the thread path just above the needle. And suddenly, I had a new machine! In the last 90 minutes of quilting, I accomplished twice as much as I had all week! Do you mind if I unpack this a little bit? The first question I have to ask myself, "Would I have been better served by throwing an artistic hissy fit at the beginning of the week?" The answer is, of course, complicated. If I could have gotten hubby's help on Monday night, it would have been worth it to indulge in a temper tantrum at the beginning of the week. BUT. There was no wiggle room in his schedule until last night. By using my dogged tenacity to keep working, I still managed to finish one quilt and complete most of the next quilt. It was slow going, and it was hard won, BUT I DID IT MYSELF. And that sense of accomplishment is...satisfying. And now, my newly happy, totally reborn gammill is waiting for me! Ta Ta, I'm off to sew, my friends! Just a side note: nothing was going to keep ME from sewing this week!
I spent this evening sewing random width strips of fabric together for an Evelyn Sloppy quilt. Before I started, my work station was festooned with strips, more or less sorted by length, in a fluffy, stringy riot of color. It was organized, with my palate at my finger tips, but it LOOKED messy and chaotic. By the end of the evening, I had sewed away the raucous mess, trimmed the pieces, put away the leftover strips, and laid out the next step in the project. Check out my work station, now! Of course, I am enjoying piecing Soooo much today, because I should really be using the long arm, all day, every day this week in preparation for meeting with my mentor....
I've never had much patience for the angsty, struggling artist mentality, but I have been considering it today.
At the end of my undergrad degree, I crammed almost all of the class requirements for my art minor into one semester. I came from a music background, and suddenly, I had a schedule full of freshman art major classes. And I was a stranger in a foreign land because the culture was SO different. I went from spending time with musicians who had a very clear sense of responsibility for WORKING on their art for a set number of hours every day(even if they didn't actually meet their own expectations), to being surrounded by a group of students who would putter and putz their way through class because they 'worked better at home' or didn't do their homework because they 'weren't in the right mood to create.' What a shift in world view! When I first encountered this attitude, I thought it was a freshman-thing... A superiority world view, left over from being a big fish in the little pond of high school. I expected my art professors to be like my music professors, I expected that the freshmen would be taught to produce a steady volume of ever-improving work. Perhaps the professors let their grading system give the feedback on this permisive culture of internally inspired production....but I don't think so. This seems to have been the accepted belief system in the art world. When I approached my art exercises as a musician, there were quite ripples throughout the art department. To a musician, practice means that you work on the same set of skills in the same way, 5-7 times a day, for a week. At the end of the week, you present all of your work for critique, highlighting your best success as proof of your increase in skill. For larger projects, you spend your allotted time, every day, working on one aspect of the larger goal. Hopefully, at the end of the deadline, you've spent enough time on your art, your work, your music, to produce a piece that meets the standards of excellence. If you fail to meet your intended outcome, the fault is in the amount of time that you spent on preparation, or in your strategic approach to your work. Obviously, my approach to practicing (the norm in the music department) was something bizarre, but note worthy to the art professors. So, I'm not done thinking about this idea yet, but for today, I would like to know.... When it comes to quilting, are you an artist or a musician? So, tonight, I snuck in to a new guild....this time by invitation. What a different atmosphere! I was welcomed by all, offered membership immediately, nobody minded that I brought my 6 year old....like the prodigal son, I was welcomed with open arms and fatted calf Unfortunately, on my way to the meeting, my sewing room was attacked by deranged squirrels. On a bender. With tnt. I feel like I've missed a great party....
Do you remember the old wives tales about canning while you have your period? I've heard people reminisce about disasters in the kitchen, being chased out of the kitchen by their grandmothers, and others that insist that there is no correlation, whatsoever. However, if sewing on my long arm today was any indication, I would have to agree... I spent 2 hours making ONE pass across my quilt. I did it....but, oh....the determination it took! Check out the picture of my hard won progress below! So, how did I keep myself motivated when it felt like the whole world was trying to halt my progress and block my goals? I made myself a playlist of music on YouTube. I started with a few songs that I like, but don't own, but quickly wound up playing "match that mood" across some pretty diverse genres, and eventually, morphed into a reflection of my mood, and who I am today. So, what started as an uphill battle turned into a space of self love because I was singing, and quilting, and connecting with me while I "arted". Want to gain an understanding of who I am from a shared cultural experience? Check out my playlist....And maybe even share yours....? Music: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbh_-dYSr8Y2r8KrtQVgJMtEEGMYiOtaw
I awoke this morning, at least an hour before I wanted to, to the sound of my dog gagging and retching in prequel to ralphing all over my carpet. I leaped from my warm,cozy, sun-drenched bed to sprint downstairs and let the dog out to sort out his digestive tract on his own. The cats began their morning chorus, "Feed us, or we'll puke, too....meow...." Ungluing my contacts from my eyelids as best as possible, I more or less dumped canned food on their plates, let the dog in, plunked down his breakfast, and shuffled back to bed. Could I fall asleep? No, of course not.But neither could I drag my butt out of bed. Even to make coffee.
Eventually, my morning officially began. Coffee. More cookies than wise. Breakfast for my kid. The "morning" routine before I put my kid on the bus at noon, and then....my time to sew. Except for Netflix. And my nook. And video games. And my sunny bedroom with three napping cats.... And so, I asked myself what the 2%ers would do... You know, the top 2% of our culture who make 80% of the world's wealth. I asked myself, did I want to be one of those people who are selling their long arm on Craig's list because they thought they were going to start a business...and then didn't? So, what do millionaires do to increase their productivity ? They work out. They plan their day. They listen to personal development materials. They get FIRED UP. Hmmm.... I could use to get fired up before quilting, IT'S COLD in my basement. So, I grabbed my iPod cued up with The 5 AM Miracle, my fitbit, and I walked for 45 minutes. Hello, to my quilting friends! How have you all been? Have you been sewing away merrily? Or have you been seduced away from your looming quilt deadlines,like me? I have been on the go, and the one thing...Okay, TWO things that I have not been able to do is finish bindings, and concentrate on applique. Now, I have made progress on finishing up the bindings, because I had a minor panic attack (not really, but you know what I mean) when I went to put away my 31 YARDS of new backing. There was nowhere to set it that didn't already have a project, just waiting for a few hours of attention. I took stock of my sewing room, and decided that I could spend one hour, at some point, on the following day, to finish my current top. (yup.... it was one hour from completion and spread over every flat surface.) Fast forward to the next morning, and I put in my hour as soon as I finished my daily walk. Huh. That was easy. So, before I left my sewing room, I tucked the finished top onto the stack of tops, added the scraps to my scrap pile that was waiting to be carved up, and layed out my next project...the binding... Just before bed that night, I asked myself, "what will make this job FEEL quicker?" And since sitting down at the sewing machine,right away, makes me more inclined to sew, I took 10 minutes to carve up the 2 yards of binding fabric I had purchased (the week BEFORE the 31 yards of backing), count out the number of strips that this quilt would need, put the leftovers away in the binding draw, and prepare the binding for this quilt. Can you guess what happened the next morning? I put the binding on this quilt, because all I had to do was sit down and sew!
What started out as a chore had transformed into a piece of low-hanging fruit because I took small,easy steps to make the whole job FEEL quicker, easier, and less...huge. Folding up that finished quilt and admiring the empty space in my sewing room gave me an endorphin rush. No kidding! And with that little, tiny high, I looked around my sewing room and wondered if there was any other low-hanging fruit, lurking.... What project is throwing your sewing space into chaos? Are there any baby steps that you can take, right now, to diminish the enormity of that task? |
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