When Creativity Takes a Detour You Pretty Much Have to Follow It No Matter How Unhappy the Pirate Gets

 

It isn't like I don't have a plan. I do. Actually, I have some very detailed lists of what I need to get done before the next show. HOWEVER.... I needed to make a pirate doll. Because, Pirates. I mean seriously. Who doesn't NEED a pirate doll. Which of course has taken the better part of the last two weeks as my pirate needed clothes and I didn't have any in his size. But then.... Olive... I don't know why I HAD to make the first olive....

But once I did and I shared it with some friends. Well, I had to find a giant martini glass for her to swim in.

And then, well it was an olive in a martini glass, it needed a toothpick. But it was pretty angry about that.

And I shared that with some more friends. And well, I HAD to turn the whole thing in to a plushie pun. So now the olive is holding a heart instead of trying to remove the toothpick.

And so I have three new plushie denizens and the pirate still has a mullet and is getting pretty angry about that. Fortunately, I haven't made his sword yet or we would have real trouble.

And that list of things that I need to get done before the next show.... Well it is a pretty list and is has a few things checked off. It is what it is. And if you are at my next show looking for a monkey or a new fish to add to your collection... well you can blame a bit of a creative detour.

 Happy National Creativity Day.  The WaggonsWest Traveling Chicken and Monster Show is all about bring creative and letting your imagination run wild.  

Celebrate the magic of creativity by coloring your own DIY Denizen.  You can use the included water color paint then wash and do it all again.  Or you can follow the instructions and make a permanent masterpiece.  

DIY Denizens include the dinosaur, a fox, the moon, a bird, a bunny, a fox and a wee small pig.  What other Denizen would you like to see as a DIY?  Let me know in the comments.  

 #CreativityDay #ArtLife #Inspiration #ColorYourWorld #DIY #waggonswest #travelingchicken #travelingchickenandmonstershow #makerlife #plushie #dinosaur #watercolor #paint

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

 

 

Sometimes, one of the hardest things to do is decide which path to follow. I decided to make an olive. It has silly little legs. I laugh every time I think about it because I imagine all of the olives in the Mr's martini bottle of them sprouting little legs and running around all crazy as soon as the fridge light goes out.

I posted a picture of Little Miss Oliveea on Lettuce Craft, a friendly, supportive community I've been a part of for a long time. In the comments section, it occurred to me that I have almost a complete, old school relish tray. I have carrots, pickles and now olives. All I am missing is celery, radish roses and a little glass pitcher of poppy seed dressing. And as is it's wont, my tiny little mind decided I needed to make celery. 

I started sketching. Now to fit into my vision of vegetables running around all crazy in the dark, the celery needs to be kawaii with silly little legs. That is, it is best served as the top sketch from this page in my sketchbook. But oh.... that face on little Mr Celery number two is just so hard to resist.

So now, I have to make a choice, because I don't have a lot of time to make both. Which one do you want to see first?

Of course, I still have no idea how the leaves at the top are going to work but I am sure it will come to me eventually.

 

 

Best in Class, Textiles! Wow.

I was pleased to attend the Montevallo Arts Fest in Montevallo, Alabama. It was a lovely setting with lovely people. Lots of denizens went home with their forever friends. At the end of the day, I was presented with this Best in Class Textiles ribbon. What an honor. Thank you! 

 

This is not something that normally happens to me. I am usually the "one of these things is not like the others" in the lineup of artist booths. The Spud's first question was, were you the only one No. There were about a dozen fiber artists in this show. Probably about 10% of the total which is pretty typical for fiber and textile. The thing that gets crazy is that textile can include everything for clothing to fabric dyeing to leather working to bag making to quilting to needle felting to fabric collage to knitting to amigurumi and much more. So it is has to be hard for the judges to make apples to ramen comparisons. At any rate, I greatly appreciate the honor.

 

 

Maker Life: Yetis, Patterns and Pins

 

Sometimes, I'm organized and I manage to keep my patterns in fancy labeled folders, most of my pins are in the pin box (except for the ones that inevitably escape and land under the Mr's foot) and my clips are in their fancy pickle dish. Because, if I don't use my fancy pickle dish for clips, when will it ever see the light of day? Maybe I need to get out a fancy trinket box for the pins so that they want to stay home and stop roaming.

At any rate, no matter how organized I might manage to appear on the internet, that insane fuzzy fabric the Yetis insist on flies EVERYWHERE! It is like sand on a beach. It ends up in places that are unimaginable. So the thing you don't see is the vacuum cleaner sitting next to me that I try to run like one of those fancy bags on a sander. Hey! Someone needs to invent that. Scissors with a fuzz collector.

PQ 16.1 Cryptids Uncle

This is where I gave up on my first challenge piece for Project Quilting Season 16.  I didn't really give up.  I just decided that I was not going to be able to get it finished in the time allotted while staying true to the vision.  I did not want to compromise on what I think is going to be a really cool quilt.

Not a lot of story here.  I just started drawing, digitizing and stitching cryptids.  I actually drew 12 of them and digitized 11.  I only stitched out 9.  (Unicorns are hard).  I kept stealing cryptid ideas from Challenge quilt chat.  Anything was easier than that elusive unicorn.  

I know the rough sketch of the Very Shy Monster who lives under the bed and collects happiness to save for a gloomy day doesn't exactly look like the sketch.  I figure turnabout is fair play.  I can't ever draw what I see in my head.  SO it is only reasonable that I can make what I sketch in fabric.

A Very Shy Monster.  No bed.  No zipper.  But I might start making tote bags with him on them.  Anyone want one?

Nessie.  Just a bit of her.  Because, unlike the shy monsters who will jump out and hug you if they like you, Nessie is camera shy.  

So camera shy that by the time I got her in focus, all I could see what a bit of her tail.

Cthulu.  Again just a glimpse as he swam out of sight.

CT is a lot more steam punk than I knew,

The Nine Tailed Fox.

Yeah, I'm not crazy about the fabric either but I had to use stash and I am woefully lacking in brown and orange and anything else that looks like fox,

 

PQ 16.2 Uncle v2 Unfinished, Unironed, Untrimmed, Unispired 'Umbre' Quilt

You know that sinking feeling when you've spent the entire week knowing that you were absolutely NOT going to make a quilt for week 2? When even the fleeting notion of a bookmark of last resort is too much to contemplate? When you are completely uninspired by the challenge (sorry Trisha Priewe Frankland )? When your only glimmer of a fun project is shot down in the chat and is probably beyond the contents of your scrap bin?

And yet...

There you are. Standing in Hobby Lobby trying to buy buttons at 3 o'clock Friday afternoon. When three bolts of fabric start screaming at at you at the top of their little linty lungs. It is hard. But you turn your back trying to find the proper size buttons. But you realize they aren't shouting. They are singing. (Poorly, because they only have little linty lungs after all.). You can just make out the words. It is something like, "We can show you a quilt. Show you fabric by fabric. Just find us two pretty friends...".

And there it is. A fully formed image in your mind. A quilt you can make in your sleep. And you don't even have to calculate yardage. Except it is Friday. Afternoon. And you have obligations all day and evening on Saturday.

Yeah. Sucks to be me. I present to you the Unfinished, unironed, untrimmed, uninspired 'Umbre' quilt. 44*64. Made from absolutely nothing in my stash in hours squeezed out of a rock, turnip and a hard place.

But it is at least a flimsy so I can't call it a UFO by my standards.

 

By the way... look at those corners!  And I wasn't really trying that hard.  Guess measuring carefully and practicing your seam allowances is a good thing.  

Oh, and I know, one of those two friends turned out to be a mean girl. But Hobby Lobby closes at 8 so whatcha gonna do?

 

PQ 15.6 A Busy Bee Week

I knew when I saw the challenge that there was no way I was going to actually finish my project this time.  I love Irish Chain quilts.  I have made several.  They are probably pretty close to my favorite block.  I really wanted to try making a double or a triple Irish chain. I pulled the fabric for one.  But good sense got in the way of a grand plan.  

So I grabbed this busy bee fabric that the Mr made me buy a whole bolt of.  And I grabbed my favorite white solid that I buy by the bolt and I used my handy strip ruler to cut it all out.  I discovered... OK... I finally completely convinced myself that my ruler with attached cutter is finally crap and must be replaced.  So I used the strip ruler for cutting the whole thing.  Even with the nerve-wracking make the folds perfectly parallel or it with smile... and not in a good way...  it worked great.  

I know from my long experience as a bench scientist that if you use a different instrument you introduce a variable and can get a different result.  Imagine... that works in quilting too.  Use the same ruler in all directions.  Use the same thread.  Use the same sewing machine.  AND your corners actually will meet mostly.  This is the squarest neatest quilt I've managed to make.

 

I DID completely finish piecing the entire top.  It is 70 x 98.  However, there is a LOT of white space and very little time.  The quilting is really going to stand out on this one.  So I decided to wait until I have the time to do it right.  

 

Thus I present you the pillow coozie of last resort.  One of the leftover blocks with an envelope back and a machine stitched binding  

It is 14 x 14 inches.  Imagine it with a pillow form. 

And that is the end of the first season I have finished all 6 projects in a very long time.  Thank you Kim and Trish for a wonderful, motivating season. 

PQ 15.5 Very Shy Wearables

I seem to go out of my way to find a way to break the RULZ or at least interpret them as uniquely as possible.  That means that over the years, in addition to coozies of last resort, I have also made wearables.  Typically shirts that I upcycle into something I actually want to wear.  

So when I saw the prompt for this week's challenge, I said "Trish.  Seriously!?!"  Literally.  I said that.  To her.  She said the best way to break the rulz was to follow them since the rulz said to break them.  

 

Meet the Very Shy Monsters Who Live Under the Bed.  They are one of the many types of denizens of the WaggonsWestTraveling Chicken and Monster Show.  They are very shy.  But the part of their story that I do know is that they collect glimmers of happiness and save it for a gloomy day.  (I will write their story as soon as they tell me the rest of it.  In the meantime, if you are interested, you can read about some of the other denizens in books 1,2 and 4 of the Traveling Chicken and Monster Show Adventure Series.)

Visitors to the TCMS often ask if the monsters are backpacks, bags, pajama pillows or tooth fairy pillows.  They do have small pockets, they have to have somewhere to hold all that happiness, but they are not really suitable for bags.  I've been meaning to try and prototype a Very Shy Monster bag so I took this week as an opportunity to do so.  

For a first draft this one isn't too bad.  I did a simple bookbag style just to see how it was going to be to work with the fleece and a lining.  The lining in this is an old tablecloth.  Unfortunately, I only had a satin ribbon of a suitable color for the strap so that isn't too sturdy on this one.  And I didn't add a zipper or any sort of closure.  The next version will have bigger eyes, snaps and a real strap.  But I am happy with it for now.  

 

PQ 15.4 Time Enough 2

This little quilt is reprise of a swap quilt I made a bajillion years ago.  I was so excited that the original ended up in the collection of one of the big name quilters in the group.  But I have also been kind of sad that I had give it away.  So I tried again.  It isn't the same.  They never are.

I had to work quickly because I don't have much time this week.  So this quilt does break the prime directive.... Make it structurally sound.  This one is even on the edge for the art quilt exemption.  The background is scraps randomly stuck to embroidery stabilizer.  I intended to tear it away but there were some pretty thin seams and a few tiny holes.  So rather than try an patch or beef it up, I decided to leave the stabilizer attached.  

 

It is echo quilted.  I added fast finish triangles to the corners to hang it.  The lace is scraps from other projects... many ones done for or as a result of Project Quilting.  

PQ 15.3 Inside Out: Showing What Should Be Hidden

 

This week's project doesn't count because I technically started it ahead of time.  It is a pair of jeans whose distress was moving far enough north to start causing me distress.  So I ripped out the side seam.  Did some structural repairs and then left them on my mending pile.  For a bit.

I used the darning stitch on my machine to put reinforced stitches at the apex of the worst tears.  Basically any spot the looked like it was going to continue tearing got a hefty patch of stitches.

 Then I pinned some fancy cotton scraps behind the distressed bits.  I probably should have used scrap denim but getting it to lay flat and and be stable took forever and I didn't want to do it all over again.  So it is what it is.

Then I used a zigzag stitch to secure the fabric to the back of the jeans.  Well, actually I had to wait a week while my machine went off to visit Mike at the machine spa.  I think it got cranky about stitching in weird directions on heavy denim.  But Mike was able to save her.  (Although he did happen to say that a 15 year old machine with TWENTY FOUR MILLION embroidery stitches that he couldn't get parts for was probably getting a bit past her prime.  When I mentioned I had a second one I was hoping he could keep alive for me he said it was good I had one for parts.  I wanted to cry.)

Then I forgot to take a bunch of pictures but I basically used all the pretty scraps I have been saving and patched it.  Randomly.  Poorly.  No rhyme or reason.  Well, we can get fancy and call it raw edge applique but that is probably giving it more credit than I deserve.  

No matter.  I stitched the side seam back up.  Inartfully draped it on the door and took a picture.  Voila!  Patched pants.  

And it qualifies for theme because if you knew my mother, you would certainly know that this is the part of patching a pair jeans that should be kept hidden from view with tiny small stitches. 

Project Quilting 15.2 Kansas Sky

So, I've been known to complain about the challenges that dear Trish comes up with each week during Project Quilting.  This week, was no exception.  The headline on the challenge was colors of the sky.  Immediately, I was thrilled.  I have a pent up desire to make a blue and white quilt.  I was going to do it.  YAY!  It would even be a traditional quilt.  No stretching the rules at all.  

But then, I read the fine print.  No blue.  Harumph!!!  I openly declared that I was going to make a quilt that was puke green Kansas tornado sky.  That seemed to strike a chord.  Down in the comments, Robyn Wimmer said "Don't forget the flying monkeys."

Oooooooo......  I got it! I'm going to make a monkey quilt!  You might think that the background color is a pretty jungle green.  However, it includes that puke green Kansas tornado sky.

 

I didn't have any puke green, or the appropriate shades of brown in my stash.  So I ended up getting the proper colors of grunge fabric.  It has a frankenbatting stitched together from scraps.  Remarkably the backing is a VERY old piece of flannel from my stash.  I mean very old.  It is at least 10 years old and probably a whole lot more than that.  

Because it is basically a baby quilt, I decided to tie it with embroidery floss rather than FMQ.  I rounded the corners (it has been a while since I've done that).  It finished at 40 x 40".P