tag:dreamwidth.org,2013-05-18:2019318The Story of the Beast With Those Four Dirty PawsMintyMinty2013-08-01T17:09:40Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2013-05-18:2019318:1080Quilt Making Part Four2013-08-01T17:09:40Z2013-08-01T17:09:40Zaccomplishedpublic2The top of my quilt is finished!<br /><br /><a href="http://s366.photobucket.com/user/mintywolf/media/Quilting/frontsmall_zpsce9d9683.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo104/mintywolf/Quilting/frontsmall_zpsce9d9683.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo frontsmall_zpsce9d9683.jpg" /></a><br /><br />I still need to do the backing, quilting, and binding but I guess this was the hard part? This is my first one so I don't know how difficult the rest of the steps are going to be.<br /><br />In the whirlwind of quilting this weekend and the days leading up to it, though, my sisters' birthday kind of got overlooked and I felt bad about that. Well, we celebrated it, but I was sewing and my mom and granddad were busy making dinner and we forgot to hang the birthday flag by the mailbox. I forgot to text them a happy birthday on their actual birthday. And Katy was sad that there was no birthday cake because Laura requested birthday pie because she didn't want a store-bought cake; she said she only likes the cakes that I make, and she didn't want to ask me to bake one because she knew I wouldn't have time. :( So yesterday when I knew they were coming over for dinner I made emergency remedial cupcakes.<br /><br />Of course all of this means I have gotten NO work done on Guardian in more than a week, which is really making me itchy. I don't know why I feel this project is so important, because it probably really isn't, but whenever I have to put it aside to work on something else I get anxious about it. I feel like I'm running headlong towards some invisible deadline. And I get stressed out about how long I've planned it to be and afraid of running out of time.<br /><br />In my very first vague ideas I only envisioned it to be about ten pages long (a milestone I just passed), covering Lulu's first pilgrimage and ending with her arrival on Besaid, and only take me a few weeks to do. And then I was like NO ALL THE WAY TO ZANARKAND FINAL AEON GO!!!<br /><br />A year later I haven't gotten nearly as far as I had hoped I would be but it is coming along. Not as quickly as I had hoped, because I discovered that drawing sequential full-page, full-colour comics is HARD. I really don't know why that was the format I decided to go with. I never really considered for it to be anything other than a graphic novel, even though I'd never drawn one before and had very little experience with comics at all. I mean, I could have written a novel-length fanfiction with chapter header illustrations as was my usual medium. That would have been a lot easier and made a lot more sense. But I literally woke up one day and started writing out the script for this thing that I had not planned to do and now here it is and I can't let it go.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mintywolf&ditemid=1080" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-05-18:2019318:883Quilt Making Part Three2013-07-28T03:21:16Z2013-07-28T03:21:16Ztiredpublic0Well, Quiltpocalypse Weekend is upon us! Things actually went a lot more smoothly than expected, but then again, I was expecting chaos. I got six blocks done today, which leaves me only three more to go. (And then I have to do the backing, and binding, and then the actual quilting itself.)<br /><br /><a href="http://s366.photobucket.com/user/mintywolf/media/Quilting/9blockssmall_zps9e6f3825.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo104/mintywolf/Quilting/9blockssmall_zps9e6f3825.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 9blockssmall_zps9e6f3825.jpg" /></a><br /><br />My sisters actually finished the fronts of their quilts today:<br /><br /><a href="http://s366.photobucket.com/user/mintywolf/media/Quilting/Katysmall_zpsef96a0fa.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo104/mintywolf/Quilting/Katysmall_zpsef96a0fa.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo Katysmall_zpsef96a0fa.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://s366.photobucket.com/user/mintywolf/media/Quilting/Laurasmall_zpsdd17b7d5.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo104/mintywolf/Quilting/Laurasmall_zpsdd17b7d5.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo Laurasmall_zpsdd17b7d5.jpg" /></a><br /><br />(Seen here with miscellaneous pets.)<br /><br />At some point we ended up in a conversation about "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and about how it is basically about him being mopey because he is getting old and disillusioned and women don't pay him much attention anymore. (Probably, one of my sisters posited, because he is no longer a hot young stud and, being English, has bad teeth. This on top of the early twentieth-century casual misogyny and racism, it's no wonder the ladies in the room prefer to come and go, talking of Michelangelo.) But it has some nice imagery.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mintywolf&ditemid=883" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-05-18:2019318:736Quilt Making Part Two2013-07-25T21:15:08Z2013-07-25T21:37:34Zstressedpublic0Well I got three blocks done, and then I ran out of thread. :/ Apparently I am terrible at gauging how much thread there is on a spool and I keep thinking "There's plenty here!" until the spool itself is visible. So my options now are order new thread and wait for it to arrive, or use lavender thread, which I don't really want to do in case it shows through, but it is the only other colour I have that is close to matching and cotton. (I have been instructed never to use polyester thread for quilting.) I'm annoyed that I didn't think to pick up more thread at the quilt shop.<br /><br /><a href="http://s366.photobucket.com/user/mintywolf/media/Quilting/IMG_0027_zpsca514fcd.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo104/mintywolf/Quilting/IMG_0027_zpsca514fcd.jpg" border="0" alt="3 stars photo IMG_0027_zpsca514fcd.jpg" /></a><br /><br />The first one came out fine; it was actually on the second one that I started screwing things up in every possible way. I had a feeling that the star points would be the fiddliest bits, but you would be surprised at how many different ways I could manage to fumble over such simple directions as "Mark diagonal lines on the small squares. Sew them to the small rectangles. Cut off the corners." Made more embarrassing by the fact that the reason I messed it up was because I was distracted thinking about Pokemon.<br /><br />However, despite my comprehensive list of mistakes, I never made the same one twice. Which is actually the same thing my driver's ed teacher said to me in high school in an effort to be encouraging. (Incidentally, I still don't have a driver's license.)<br /><br />I must say though that I am really enjoying working with small pieces and straight lines, even though fitting them together is a precise process and takes some concentration. (Meaning you cannot be at the time thinking about Pokemon, or which Pokemon certain Final Fantasy characters would be if they were Pokemon, btw Auron is totally Arcanine.) It's a nice change from the big irregular pieces I'm used to from making clothes or the tiny curves from making dolls and doll clothes. I was intimidated by quilting at first but I am finding it to be a LOT easier than dollmaking.<br /><br />But I suppose I'm not going to get as much of a head start as I had hoped before the Great Quilt Weekend (of Doom) descends upon us. It took me several days to get as far as I did, counting the time it took to press, measure, and cut the fabric and lay out the squares. I don't know how in the <i>world</i> my mother is expecting that we'll have three individual finished quilts by the end of the weekend.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mintywolf&ditemid=736" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2013-05-18:2019318:316Quilt Making Part One2013-07-22T22:29:11Z2013-07-22T22:29:11Zbusypublic0So, I'm making a quilt. This is a thing that I am really doing. <br /><br />A few weeks ago while my grandparents were visiting, one of my sisters asked my grandmother, who is an experienced quilter, for help making a duvet cover for her bed in her new apartment. I offered to contribute my sewing machine in case they needed an extra one, but suddenly my mother jumped all over this and thought <i>wouldn't it be great</i> if me and my sisters all made a quilt together with Mom-mom. Not working together on one quilt, as I was hoping she was getting at, but ALL THREE OF US each making a separate quilt. Three projects, in one house, on one weekend.<br /><br />Now, I've always wanted to make a quilt, and I think this is a lovely idea in theory, but in practice I think it's going to be a huge stressful mess. I offered to help either of my sisters with their projects, since I have both a sewing machine and experience with it, but my mom got angry and accused me of not wanting to build my own memories with my grandmother. Then she started guilting me about it, stressing how much of a "memory-building experience" this would be and also how my grandmother is not going to be around forever, because the women of my family have raised passive-aggression and guilt tripping to an art form.<br /><br />Unable to convince her that I <i>do</i> want to make a quilt and some memories with my grandmother, just <i>not at the same time and with the same sewing machine as everyone else</i>, I picked out some fabric and now I am making a quilt. I did get permission to get a head start, so I am trying to get as much done as I can before the Great Quilting Weekend (this weekend) arrives so I at least have the hang of it by then.<br /><br />I got all the pieces cut out a few weeks ago but put it on hold to finish <a href="http://dippywerewolf.deviantart.com/art/Tewi-Inaba-Doll-385634340">this</a> and <a href="http://dippywerewolf.deviantart.com/art/Guardian-Page-10-386909249">this</a>, in an effort to cut down my number of ongoing major projects. Today I laid out and planned all the squares, a process my grandmother calls "auditioning".<br /><br /><a href="http://s366.photobucket.com/user/mintywolf/media/Quilting/IMG_0013small_zpse7834d6a.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i366.photobucket.com/albums/oo104/mintywolf/Quilting/IMG_0013small_zpse7834d6a.jpg" border="0" alt="layout photo IMG_0013small_zpse7834d6a.jpg" /></a><br /><br />You can get a vague idea of what it's going to look like in the end. The pattern is called "Lucky Stars," which you probably can't tell right now, but the small triangle pieces are going to be the star points. Getting all the blocks organized - making sure that I didn't repeat a pattern in each square, trying not to have too many solid pieces or pieces with distinctive patterns or polka dots or what have you close together, getting the right colour balance - was very puzzly.<br /><br />And then I had to pick them all up because I can't keep them laid out on my bed, haha. I took several pictures so hopefully I will be able to put them back together as perfectly as I had them laid out.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=mintywolf&ditemid=316" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments