And We Shall March

The Dread Cthulhu Pincushion Has His War Paint On

In Progress

Those involved with the soft launch know what this is...

Coolness! The Woman Who Plays The Lieutenant That Happens To Be The Longest-Running Black Character On Television Also Quilts!

I'll have to tell Dad. (Yeah. Like he'll care about the quilting part...)

My first quilt was for Zoe Jackson , as a gift, 'cause I was broke. That's how I started. Then, [for] opening-night gifts, I'd use remnant fabric and make "valuable bags" with cast members' names on them. When I was struggling, it was a way to give gifts that weren't costly. I still make them.

Related.

Walking The Line Between Profoundly Irritating And Ever So Cute

That's the corset I'm currently building he's curled upon. I walk into the kitchen to top off the riesling, I'm gone for less than 45 seconds, I return to a cat who has teleported from who knows where and settled into a nap. This is why all textile ingredient lists around here include "and cat hair."

I Don't Know About *Your* Undead Army ...

but my Zombies of Debt are ready to roll!

Thing is, I was supposed to shred the $8 suit from the thrift store, purchased just for this event, to make it more zombie-like. But it turns out this thing fits like a mofo. And it was EIGHT DOLLARS. And it's PURPLE. What with the difficulty I have finding pants that fit, there's no way in hell I'm gonna harm this fabulous outfit!

More, later. Inspiration for our group is here. Or click here and watch some videos, or here's an article to read, chosen at random.

Irish Double Chain Block - Now With More Blackitude

While my consultant and I try to figure out where this week's pre-loaded WeHo entries have vanished to, how about a post that was going to go up week after next to fill space?

Here's what the double Irish chain block looks like when executed in two types of mudcloth and white corduroy (from the Vintage Mom Cloth stash). Also, I reversed the traditional dark/light approach:

Blocks created out of one-inch squares, my preferred size. No-prize if you can spot the huge, glaring error! Any quilter familiar with this block will spot it in seconds. Other people either don't notice or think it was a 'creative decision'.

Even though it was done on the machine it took about 1.5 months to finish. This shot was taken after the piece had been squared off and before I started the long hell of binding. This is not a blanket or anything, but the front panel for a project I call The Needlessly Complex Skirt. There are 28 blocks for the front panel, 32 for the back. Who says quilt blocks can only be used for blankets? That's just stupid. I mean, how many blankets does one person need?

Piled on the table are some of the blocks for the back panel. I can't make the rest of them until I find more mudcloth close in color and pattern to the dark brown. (I ran out for reasons I can't quite remember right now.) A downside to working with mudcloth is each piece is individually crafted, so when it's gone you can't just dash to the garment district and pull more from the bolt. I've put the alert out to my two primary crack dealers, so I'm confident  something will turn up eventually. I hope it is sooner than later.

This shot might give you an idea of why I prefer to quilt by hand, even though it takes much longer:

Or not, if you don't quilt. Trust me, it's a pain in the ass to do the actual quilting on the machine. Even though this piece has no batting, it's just the top and the backing, it's still difficult to fiddle it through the machine.

No Glue Gun Girl post is complete without shot of Cuddle Kitty in the way:

WeHo Book Fair Weekend Interlude - Now With More Cat

Here's a picture from the stash when I was working on a prototype of one of the flowers. I often whip up prototypes on the machine before executing the block by hand, just to make sure it works. That's a hard-learned lesson from several times in the distant past when it finally hit me that just because a block looks fantabulous when cut out from construction paper doesn't mean it will work in cloth. Paper does not unravel and wrinkle as paper does. You don't have to remember to cut paper on the bias. Paper, unlike cloth, has no weight, meaning you don't have to match weights when matching pieces of paper.

Because no version of this flower looked good once done (to me) it's safe to post because it's not in the final piece.

As usual Cuddle Kitty started off at the end of Fredi's extender and slowly inched himself closer until he was as much in the way as possible.

What I have to put up with, let me tell you. I still don't understand *why* he does this. I kinda get why he pulls the same stunt when I'm at the computer, but Fredi is making noise, things are moving, I am often cursing up a storm, he's had his tail accidentally stitched into something more than once, he gets shoved onto the floor or occasionally picked up and thrown across the room, and STILL he gets all up into everything.

And yet, so cute!

Developing.

WeHo Book Fair Saturday Interlude - Chastising The Bees

Lazy bees!

Get off your asses!

It took a while to sew those teeny strips together, but totally worth it.

Developing.

The Most Unhelpful Cat In The Universe

It just hit me that before I can roll the other thing out I should test to make sure this works.

From many several weeks ago, when I was transferring the prototype doodle into the base template in order to get the final measurements and such down. I don't think I quite captured his air of Cuddle Kitty's sense of Sullen in this pic, taken after an hour or so of me shoving him out of my way. He was attempting to nap. FINALLY he got up and stalked off, making with the Angry Tail Twitch. He jumped up on Fredi, sprawled out and whined for a good 45 mins.

Developing.

It' worked! Woo!

From where you sit, nothing big just happened. From where I sit, it was something huge! (Infrastructure stuff.)  Let us celebrate by showing off the base, which I think I finished two months ago, but don't hold me to that.

Pictures That Amuse

This picture amuses a friend who thinks that once again I've taken a tool designed to do one function and adapted it for another. But I am firmly convinced the device I have Grass attached to, which was a cast-off from one of my brethren in Ives I snatched up immediately, was created to do the sort of thing I'm using it for.

For context, it's attached to the wooden thing in the middle of the picture below. I still don't know what this thing is called, but it has instantly replaced those damned embroidery hoops I hated with a huge stompy hate.

This next picture amuses me, mainly because I didn't notice what was up on the screen when I snapped it. I was trying to get a good pic of the Grass edges, to show what it looks like once the two edges are tacked down with teeny 'x' stitches and then a pin is used to rip out some of the threads to get a cool raggedy look.

Developing.