grey

yep. feeling pretty much like this pile.

Winter.

Winter, I am so done with you. You and your cold and wet and grey skies and no sun. And cold. Did I mention cold? You are such a drag.

All I want to do is stay in bed. Sleep. Or stay in bed and read. Or stay in bed and watch movies online for hours, both hands tucked under my laptop to stay warm, a cat curled between my legs.

Sigh. The no sunlight is the worst though. The no sunlight is the supreme motherf*cker.

worst

mammo shoot. good times.

At the job I used to have, the one I was laid off from 2 months ago, one of my many, many responsibilities included art-directing photo shoots.

These were not glamorous shoots. The images we made were going to be used in healthcare publications. Ever get a newsletter from your local hospital or your healthcare plan? The sort with health "tips" and heart-healthy recipes, etc.? That's the sort of thing I'm talking about here. Often our clients wanted a (very) specific population represented doing a fairly specific thing. For example, a Hmong American woman in her early 50s receiving a flu shot. Or an African-American man in his early 30s applying lip balm outside in a snowy environment. Stuff you couldn't find on a stock site.

One of the last shoots I did was for a line of brochures we were updating. These brochures contained post surgical patient information. Like, after a hip replacement, how to safely get on and off a toilet without injuring yourself. Important information, of course, but not exactly the sort of thing I pictured myself doing in art school. Anyway, so after a full day's work shooting multiple models demonstrating how to get on and off a toilet, in and out of a chair, in and out of a hospital bed, how to walk with a walker, walk up and down stairs, up and down a curb, etc., I asked the photographer (a woman who worked primarily in fashion, but had recently picked up other sorts of jobs due to the economy) if this was her worst job ever. She demurred, of course, but what else was she going to say? I was her client. I pressed her a bit - "Really, photographing some dude in a hospital gown and socks squatting over a toilet isn't the worst job you've ever had? Then tell me what's worse!"

She paused for a second, and then said, quietly - "Quilts. Photographing quilts all day is worse."

Seriously. That's what she said.
Blahahahahahahaa!

process

I am in the process of making a quilt for my dear grandsquid, Lily. I've been thinking about this quilt for many months.

Miss Lily on her rug.

The rug under her pouf in the photo above is now in her bedroom - it was a birthday gift from us a year or so ago. I've thought that the quilt I make should work with the rug somehow, meet it on it's own pretty bold terms. I am using a screenshot from the Urban Outfitters website as a reference, but the colors aren't quite right on it - it's more vivid in person.

I'd considered and discarded a bunch of block patterns before landing on a simpler, improvisational design, with the quilt (below) serving as inspiration:

found on tumblr/pinterest

My first go slapping fabric on the flannel wall looked like this:

Which I kinda liked, but when I returned to it after being away for awhile, I was less sure about it. So I decided to play around a bit more with the fabrics I'd pulled and came up with this:

I decided to do a twin size rather than a square, and to make it a series of fractured stripes. I felt like this was close enough to start sewing, knowing that it would change during the process of stitching.

Here it is with the left half sewn - I'm still a little unsold on the right half - specifically the top part. I'm considering getting rid of the solid red block and replacing it with a small red print that would make that column a more consistent block. I'm itching to get it done, but know it would be better to just sit on it a day or two to get some perspective. More to come...

Quilt Archive

I have a bunch of photos of my quilts on flickr.
At some point I'll figure out how to create a link on the sidebar for this. Sigh.