WGO

 

I got my second Covid-19 vaccination on Thursday morning. They moved the site to an empty department store in a local mall. 

 Somebody clearly has a sense of humor, as I found this mannequin (above) all decked out with a mask, hard hat, face mask, and gloves. This gal is holding a syringe and flowers. I particularly liked the way this mannequin is "dressed." Note the collar, pocket with pen, and belt.

UNLIKE the first time, however, the second dose kinda knocked me for a loop. I had a slight headache at the back of my head, and the next day I woke up feeling sore all over my body and a general fuzziness in my head. My boss told me to take it easy and spend the day on the couch, resting. I was also told to drink a lot of fluids. My Noom diet has me drinking (and tracking) five glasses of water a day, so that part was pretty easy.

Speaking of Noom, I have so far lost 17.5 pounds. Like most people, I had gained weight during the pandemic, but I am proud to say all that weight, plus more, is gone.

Megan's quilt arrived in Australia four days after I shipped it. It took a day to get through Customs, and was then directed to a local FedEx facility, where it has sat for three days. The scheduled delivery date is March 30, three more days away. It's nice knowing where it is, and that it is safe, but I'm having a hell of a time being patient.

I decided to get a jigsaw puzzle. I loved doing them as a kid with my family, and I thought it might be fun to fiddle with as a way to relax at night. When it arrived I realized I didn't have a place to put it, so I ordered a puzzle board.

This one is big enough for the finished puzzle and all the pieces. It has four drawers that slide in and out, and a thick cover to set over it when not in use. It's really nifty, and the best part is that the whole thing slides right under my couch when not in use.

I really should have paid more attention when I ordered the puzzle though. I chose what I thought was the prettiest puzzle, but it really is a hard one. I'm not going to give up though. I'll figure it out.

I Do Not Have Rocks In My Head!!!

I really hate it when I can't figure something out. I love to figure things out. Sometimes things just jump out at me and I can see them right away.  There's a particular puzzle a coworker showed me a few years ago. The letters of the alphabet were arranged in a particular way and the thing you had to figure out was where the letter Z was supposed to go. My coworker said I couldn't Google the answer or ask a kid. He must have had a hard time figuring it out. I looked at it, drew my fingertip across the line of letters and got it in less than three seconds. My coworker stood up and walked away, shaking his head. Now please bear in mind there are things I truly suck at, but I keep those under wraps (duh.)

By the way, when I solve a puzzle, I often say to myself "It's nice to know I don't have rocks in my head." (meaning my brain works.)

So it really pissed me off when I kept cutting blocks and was only able to use half of them, and I couldn't seem to get a handle on what was going on.

Well, I have figured it out!

Remember the other day when I showed this photo (above) and said you needed all four of those blocks? I was wrong. Each of the four is different, as you can see above. I have labelled them in the drawing below.

If you want to do the flip-flip-flip thing, which is what I am trying to do...

You need HALF the blocks above. But not the half you think! You need blocks TWO and FOUR (or One and Three, but you can't interchange them).  So when I created this layout above...

I had all these pieces left over (on the right). This perfectly matches what I have in the studio, where I have a ton of these fabric triangles strewn all over the floor.

Now go back to that first diagram and look at where blocks TWO and FOUR are located.

YUP! There ain't no easy (or efficient) way to cut those out. I finally figured out why I kept having trouble and ended up with blocks that were backwards or upside down. (It's how you orient your fabric before you make your first cut.)

The only way you can use all four blocks together is if you do something that doesn't do the flip flip flip, and instead arrange some blocks so the stripes go across each other like this. Or of course you could arrange them arbitrarily, and sixteen million other things, but I was trying to figure out why this damn thing wasn't behaving the way I expected it to. (Translation: I wanted it to flip flip flip on command.)

Now truth be told, my version on the design wall is even more complicated because I don't just have FOUR block variations, I have EIGHT. Remember, some strip pairs have BUSY DARKS and some have BUSY LIGHTS.

Maybe I DO have rocks in my head!!!

Yup, you're gonna be seeing a lot of this in the next few weeks. I can already tell there is more than one of these flipping things in my future.

Yes, It's Ugly.

Yes, It's ugly.

There.

I said it.

This is the result of the most recent tinkering. I haven't cut more fabric yet.

Did you think I didn't know? Did you think I couldn't tell?

Did you think, "Oh look, she's human. She screwed up." 

Did you wonder "HOW is she gonna make this look good?"

Did you think, "Even she can't redeem THIS?"

(And before you tell me it might not be THAT BAD, the answer is, yeah, I know that too. But "Good Enough" has never been my working motto, and this sure as hell won't be an exception to that.)

Would you believe me if I said I can agree to most of them? Because I know I can fix it. How do I know?

Well, see, I went to Art School and I studied design and color, so I know the rules. I've been sewing for over 50 years and I made my first quilt over 40 years ago. So I kinda have experience. I've been there, and I've done that. I have been getting myself into and out of creative pickles for years, so this one isn't going to stop me.

And I live for this sh*t stuff. There's nothing more I like than a puzzle, and this is nothing more than a big creative puzzle.

So let's look at the stuff I don't like.

This is a detail of the very first picture in yesterday's post. What I don't like are the way the dark bars connect from the yellow to the pink and into the blue. And right next to that, the violet and blue bars do the same thing.

I actually LIKE the flip-flip-flip of the light and dark values, and the way the diagonals make this thing look like the blinking lights on a marquee. It's VERY ENERGETIC, and that's a Positive way of looking at it. Some people think IT'S TOO BUSY, which is a Negative way of looking at it. My friend Allison says her eyes go cuckoo when she looks at some of my quilts. I actually wrote to her yesterday and apologized for what I was doing to her.  "SUCH A PAL!" she wrote back. "I've been looking at the pics with squinty eyes."

Actually, in this case it really is TOO MUCH, and I have to calm it down a bit. But I won't shut that flip-flip-flip down entirely, because that's one of the things I like best about this design.

This is from the second photo in yesterday's post. I made the picture smallish so you could see it on your screen without having to scroll up and down. There is way too much dark clumped here. If you're a regular reader you know I go harping on and on about distributing your values (lights and darks) throughout a quilt. This version has too many darks on the right side. But look again, The top right diamond has the darks on the right, and the lower one has them on the left. If you look at it the right way, you can see a wave effect, or a backwards S curve. In this particular quilt, I do not want to emphasize that shape, but this is a perfect example of a goof gone good. Had I not MADE that mistake I would never have SEEN that shape. That's the kind of thing I will file away for later use. It's why making mistakes can often be a very good thing, because they make you see stuff that you wouldn't see otherwise.

This was at the very bottom of the last picture in yesterday's post, and IN THEORY there's nothing wrong with it. The light fabric in the purple/swirl purple block is placed correctly. HOWEVER, because that swirly purple is a darker VALUE than the light around it (and it is actually an EQUAL value to the blue right next to it), this fabric pair fails in this quilt.

This presents an interesting conundrum. If I make ALL the fabric pairs with a very high contrast of light and dark, then the flip flip flip will look like FLIP FLIP FLIP, Allison will go cuckoo, and it will just be too much too look at. (Although I think the so-called design concept of "giving the eye a place to rest" is a bunch of malarkey. But that's a different discussion....)

However is is precisely this that makes this current iteration of the design fail. There is too much high-contrast and it isn't evenly distributed to move your eye around in a pleasing way.

And THIS doesn't do me any favors either. In real life, it's a very pretty combination, but up on the design wall if looks greyish, and muddy.  Gotta go.

So what have we learned? That in order to rescue this quilt, I have to tame the FLIP FLIP FLIP by reducing the number of blocks with a strong LIGHT/DARK contrast, distribute the values better overall and remove the blocks with a limited contrast in each pair. I also have to add more color. There is too much cream and white. But remember, this whole thing started because I was getting stuff out of my stash I wasn't happy with.

Like I said to Julie before I went to bed last night, "Can you imagine this quilt with fabrics I actually love?"

And right there, bingo, X marks the spot, is the biggest reason for the failure of this version. I am not really being true to myself. How can I make a quilt a magnificent symphony if I'm using fabrics that don't sing?

The UFO Question

I get asked a lot of questions. Some of them are fairly predictable (how do you store your fabric? (where I can see it); how much do you buy? (half yard cuts); what kind of iron do you use? (Sharp, and I use steam); do you wash your fabric before you use it? (always); how many quilts do you work on at one time? (My favorite answer: I can only have one lover at a time.)

The Holiday Quilt is away being quilted.

But one question puzzles me. "Do you have any UFO's?" (Un-Finished Objects)

It's puzzling because I tell everybody I only work on one at a time. So why ask?

Finally I figured out that it wasn't unfinished quilts folks were asking about (and I do not consider a quilt that is waiting to be quilted as a UFO), it was ABANDONED quilts. Do I have any abandoned and unfinished quilts hiding away in a drawer or bag somewhere?

this wasn't working

Answer: NO!

Getting rid of the white mini diamonds was the solution.

Why not?

Because when I am working on a quilt, I have made a commitment. If the idea is worth it, and I am stuck, I am going to figure out what's wrong with it, and fix it.

I don't care how long it takes. I don't care how much fabric it takes. I don't care how messy the studio gets. If I have set myself up with a creative problem (which is what making quilts for me is all about), then I am going to solve it.

I don't stuff it in a drawer where I can't see it, because if I can't see it, it doesn't exist. I'm going to leave my work in progress up on the design wall where I can look at it. I'm going to check it out when I get out of the shower in the morning, or while I am brushing my hair before I go to bed.

I -want- the thing to haunt me. I -want- the thing to stay at the forefront of my thoughts. I -want- to be thinking about it on the drive to work in the morning. I -want- to be able to look at it and think about it when I -can't- work on it. It makes me think harder. It makes me push through the roadblocks and the trite, easy, predictable solutions to find something unique and interesting.

Remember, if you're working from a pattern, somebody else has made the design decisions for you. If you're working from a kit, somebody else has solved your color problem. I start from ground zero.

I don't have a complete plan when I get started. I have only a partial plan. I have a basic idea of the color I want, but I'm not usually married to it. I don't always know how big the quilt will be or what proportions it will be. I certainly don't know what fabrics I'll use. I don't know how long it will take, or if my idea will work or not. I don't even care if I don't use fabrics I bought for it. I don't care if I have to buy more fabric.

None of those things frighten me.

Instead they exhilarate me. Because there's nothing I love more than to crack that nut of a puzzle, turn it on its head and make it SING!

And THAT'S why I don't have abandoned UFO's hiding away at my house.