When you have a day job, and you’re an artist, it’s all about being disciplined in taking baby steps to get things done. It is so bleeping frustrating–because any artist would rather go full hog into the art making rather than having to hack away at something for just an hour–but progress does happen with daily measured steps.
So, this week I managed to staple and glue together some cedar stretcher bars for my (finally) completely machine quilted paper/silk lamination, I finished quilting this week during several episodes of the Daily Show. The bars will go UNDER the piece….
…and I’ll staple the 4-layer piece to the back.
Below, you can see the top layer (silk/paper fabric), the second layer (yellow cotton to add color in the background) and 2 layers of cotton flannel (the “batting”, I picked flannel because it will be exposed on the back and you can see the quilting lines on it nicely). I think I will trim the bottom layer of flannel to the exact dimensions of the stretcher bars so there will be less bulk when I staple around the corners.
Here’s the machine quilting up close; not always totally even, sometimes I forget to drop my feed dogs and my free-motion is bit uneven. I can’t believe I am that absent-minded, but I don’t think the quilting looks terrible as a result. I’m sure a quilt-show quilting judge would cringe….but for me, it’s OK. Plus, you can’t really pull out too many stitches on this type of work; once the top is needle-punched, the holes show.
Here’s the quilting on the back:
Also this week, my art quilting pal Mary Vaneckee came by with a 21 yard roll of 9 inch wide blue mesh fabric for making thermofax screens; I’ve blogged before (here)about the ancient thermal copier I found on craigslist, and I’m finally getting around to using it. We split the cost on the mesh; here’s my 30 feet, it’s blue, and it set me back $100. I better get some good screen printed fabric out it!
Anyway. Once the piece above is stapled to stretcher bars, I’ll pull out my newly acquired mitre trimmer and try making a simple frame.
That will likely be my next post!
I used to work like that too and it made me feel crazy sometimes. But every once in a while I would have a sunny afternoon on a day off and my child would be off somewhere… Hours to pull stuff out of my brain!
Now I have time to work and lots more stuff to do in order to have that time. Balance is a verb. Just read Linda Mathews thoughts on that. My house is a mess though.
btw, I often will park it and quilt while watching Jon Stewart. Love that guy!