More poetical inspiration...

Today's poem by William Wordsworth has such wonderful imagery I wanted to share it. I hope it inspires your art.

A Whirl-Blast from Behind The Hill 

A Whirl-Blast from behind the hill 
Rushed o'er the wood with startling sound; 
Then--all at once the air was still, 
And showers of hailstones pattered round. 
Where leafless oaks towered high above, 
I sat within an undergrove 
Of tallest hollies, tall and green; 
A fairer bower was never seen. 
From year to year the spacious floor 
With withered leaves is covered o'er, 
And all the year the bower is green. 
But see! where'er the hailstones drop 
The withered leaves all skip and hop; 
There's not a breeze--no breath of air-- 
Yet here, and there, and everywhere 
Along the floor, beneath the shade 
By those embowering hollies made, 
The leaves in myriads jump and spring, 
As if with pipes and music rare 
Some Robin Good-fellow were there, 
And all those leaves, in festive glee, 
Were dancing to the minstrelsy. 

William Wordsworth 

photo by Bella Fortuna

Above is a photo by one of my facebook friends, Bella Fortuna. She takes amazing photos of nature. I keep telling her she should send her stuff in to National Geographic. Her photos of insects are so perfect! I keep thinking I'll make an art quilt of them one day. She took a picture of a dragonfly that almost looks like it has a little smile. And she captures birds most beautifully. I just thought this pic of a lagoon would work well with Wordsworth's poetry. 

I made a label for Lillian's baby blanket, since we'll be presenting it to her tomorrow - yay! I started out trying to embroider it, but my skills aren't up to snuff on that. I got out my pink acrylic ink and painted it. I can paint much better than embroider, at least for now.

I have to stitch it on, obviously, but this is what I have so far. Later today I'll post some progress/process photos from the Grandmother's Flower Garden. I needed to replenish my supply of hexagons. I had many cut and all the freezer paper was cut, but still needed to be ironed on (which I did last night) and I started basting the pieces. I'll take some photos so you can see how that goes. 

For now, have a beautiful day! If it's sunny where you are, go get some vitamin D. Take pictures, take notes, get your creative juices flowing!

A couple more things...

I took a picture of the variegated ribbon yarns I used for the batik tie quilt. They don't show up in the photo of the quilt enough for you to see what they look like. The colors really blend in, which is cool, and what I wanted, but I thought you might enjoy seeing how they actually look.

I also completed the "1/2" flower (#9) from the other day and finished the 10th!

Gee, it looks like it either has a teensy little stem or a tampon. I should really think of those things when I take pix for this blog. Oh, well.

I'm back home after spending a few days with my mom and tomorrow morning I hit the ground running, so I wanted to make sure I posted these before I forgot. I have an action-packed day ahead. First, a morning appointment with my waxing artiste (my friend, Angela the Aesthetician, is going to rip all the unwanted hair off my face), then a 2 o'clock photo shoot with Nathan Yungerberg, photog to the stars, and in the evening, I'm auditioning for a production of Cabaret. I've already played Sally Bowles - almost 10 years ago! - so I think Fraulein Kost will be a nice, small, low-impact role. Unless, of course, the director would like to do some non-traditional casting and put me in as the Emcee. Ha! (What? I could do it.)

Oh, yeah! This Tuesday I'll (finally) meet little Lillian and give her the baby blanket. Pictures for sure! I'm soopy citers! Yay!

Summer inspiration

I am a fan of poetry, I'll freely admit that. I wasn't always a fan of reading poetry, but I've written an awful lot of awful poetry in my day. About a year ago I started designing art quilts based on the poetry of John Keats. I plan on embroidering Frank Loesser's lyrics to the song, "Anywhere I Wander" to the quilt I'm making for my niece's baby. 

Today, in my email, I received the following poem (I get daily poems from poetry.com). It's one I hadn't known before, and true poetry mavins will probably tsk-tsk that. To be fair I really didn't start actively reading poetry until the last three or four years, so I'm still a relative virgin. 

Anyway, I thought, since it's officially summer and sometimes the change of seasons brings a need for inspiration, I would share this one. Hopefully it'll inspire you do go outside in the sun and enjoy the day! Or maybe it'll inspire something creative and artistic, which is what it did to me. Great. Another idea in my head. I wish I had Dumbledore's pensieve for all my ideas. It does get a bit cramped in there...

Summer Sun 

Great is the sun, and wide he goes 
Through empty heaven with repose; 
And in the blue and glowing days 
More thick than rain he showers his rays. 

Though closer still the blinds we pull 
To keep the shady parlour cool, 
Yet he will find a chink or two 
To slip his golden fingers through. 

The dusty attic spider-clad 
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad; 
And through the broken edge of tiles 
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles. 

Meantime his golden face around 
He bares to all the garden ground, 
And sheds a warm and glittering look 
Among the ivy's inmost nook. 

Above the hills, along the blue, 
Round the bright air with footing true, 
To please the child, to paint the rose, 
The gardener of the World, he goes. 

Robert Louis Stevenson 

Grandma's Flower Garden

I now have 8 1/2 hexagon flowers. I'm not working consistently on them, but in the evenings after the boys are in bed, sometimes during the day while a movie is on. Now that I know better what I'm doing, it's going pretty quickly. I took some pictures this morning of what I have so far.

Here are the first blooms of the "garden". I had to use the platter under the brown ones so you could see them. 

The basting threads will remain until the whole top is put together. I also haven't taken the time to press them yet, since they're traveling with me in a ziploc bag. For the most part, they're maintaining their shape via the freezer paper I'm using for stabilizer.

It's odd how the colors are different from pic to pic. I didn't really notice it until I looked at the table in the background. The photo on top (the blue flower) is most true. These were taken on my phone. I'm rarely happy with those pix. But, hey, it's serviceable and it's what I've got. It's also the easiest way to get the pix online.

Now that I'm looking at the two directly above, I'm thinking I should have put more thought into how I was laying out the pieces. I've been literally picking them up and stitching them together. I've put them in sets of petals and centers and safety pinned them in their little flower groups, but that's as far as the "planning" has gone. Anyway, in the bottom photo, there are three petals where the stripes are going the same way and the other three are haphazard.  If I'm feeling extra ambitious when all the flowers are completed, I'll go back and fix this (and any others there will most likely be as I'm looking at these, and knowing how I am about such things).

Again, the ones with the blue petals seem to come out with the truest color.

The green one above is "in progress".

Here's the backside of one. I chose freezer paper, since it's a really inexpensive alternative to specially made fabric stabilizers and is available in most grocery stores. It's also temporary. If you're unfamiliar with it, it has one waxy side, which can be ironed on to the wrong side of your fabric, stabilizing it for sewing. Once your seam allowances are basted, it'll stay in place, even when the wax is no longer holding. The wax is minimal enough that it doesn't leave a residue, and if you get it in the wrong position, it is easily removed and relocated. Once the quilt top is complete, I'll remove all the basting stitches and the papers.

To make the paper hexes, I read how one quilter had her husband make a CAD drawing of hexagons put together like a honeycomb. Then she'd tape her freezer paper to a regular sheet of printer paper and send it through the printer and cut out the pieces. Since my husband is not a CAD draftsman, I tried making a jpeg from some hexagon images I found online, but in order to get the right size, I had to futz around with the scale and I ended up using a lot of ink. The dimensions on the screen just didn't match what came out on the paper. I did get a few to work, but, frankly, it was a huge pain in the @$$, between the cutting and the taping and the this and the that, and the schmachta... so I scrapped that idea. Instead, I used one of my nested hexagon templates which was about 1/4 inch smaller than the size of the fabric pieces and good ol' Sharpie pen to draw on a nice, large sheet of the freezer paper. Cutting them out was a breeze, and, dare I say it, kind of fun! 

I used the pages I had printed with the wrong size hexes (just on regular paper, I didn't want to waste the freezer paper while I was messing with the sizes) for trying out color combinations. Yes, I have a huge crayon selection. Don't judge.

It's a bit blurry, but here's a close up of the one I'm currently working on. The white threads are the basting stitches and the pink lines are the connecting stitches. I'm stitching them in the same way I learned from the quilter with the drafting husband. The stitches are pretty wee, but I want this sucker to last forever, so it can be passed down for generations. This is also why I may not actually take the time to undo the one that has the brown stripes. Those teensy stitches won't be fun to take out.

I'm starting to run out of the original set of fabric hexes I purchased in a kit. I thought about getting another kit, since I really hated the idea of cutting out all those fabric hexes, but then I thought, no, I don't want this to just be made from some kit. I'll suck it up and cut out more hexes. I got some fat quarters that went pretty well with the fabric in the kit, used one of the kit pieces to make a template, since they are a different size from any in my set of nested hexagon templates. In fact, I used one of the cardboard pieces from a fat quarter packet to make the template. I now have enough for the quilt without it looking like it came from a kit. It'll have my personal stamp on it now. Frankly, I only chose the kit I got because I wanted to try to put together hexes by hand. I had a trip to go on and wanted something creative to take along, but I didn't have enough time to cut out a ton of pieces before we left. It's just a lucky break that my niece is having a baby girl and I can actually pass it along. Knowing that makes this process so much more fun, and has given me the impetus to be even more creative with it and git 'er done. 

Miss America...

There she is, folks! Technically not a quilt because I did the "quilting" with ties, but it is the first full-size project I've completed since I started this whole quilting thing, so a major accomplishment in my book. <grin>

Another one bites the dust! Hey, hey!

Cacophony of Cups is done!
 I have to get my phone charged up so I can take a pic of it, but it is all done and ready to go home with Laura, our babysitter. She's a really neat kid (young woman) and has been our sitter for about 5 years.
I completed another hexagon flower and started another. I now have 7 whole flowers and the 8th has all of its petals but they need to be attached to each other now. I'm trying to decide if I'd like to stitch them all together like the kit had them done or to put a border between the flowers to differentiate them from one another. I'm not sure I liked it the other way.
You'd think I'd have liked it, since I like busy designs, but I feel it made the quilt sort of confusing. I think when a shape has more than four sides, it gets to be a bit much visually. If they had been all put together singly, maybe it wouldn't have seemed so odd to me, but the designer put them together as flowers then stitched the flowers to one another.
Actually, I have an idea. I'm going to look up the lyrics to Anywhere I Wander, since that's what I've decided to call this one, and I'm going to stitch them along the "paths" between the flowers.

Anywhere I wander, anywhere I roam
Till I'm in the arms of my darling again
My heart will find no home
Anywhere I wander, anywhere I roam
Her arms were warm as they welcomed me
Her eyes were a fire bright
And then I knew that my path must be
Through the ever haunted night
Anywhere I wander, anywhere I roam
Till I'm in the arms of my darling again
My heart will find no home
Anywhere I wander, anywhere I roam
Her voice was oh such a soft caress
Of love it gently told
And in her smile was the tenderness
I may never more behold
Anywhere I wander, anywhere I roam
Till I'm in the arms of my darling again
My heart will find no home
Anywhere I wander, anywhere I roam

Love it. I think that'll be nice for a Grandmother's Flower Garden baby blanket. The song was written by Frank Loesser. Back in the time when the song was written, your darling could've been your sweetheart, yes, but also your mother. I think I'm looking forward to this little girl. Still kinda wish she was a boy, but it's not my kid, so... Yeah. I think I'll spoil her a little.

Needles!!!!!

Mom has needles (not to be confused with measles)! I can finish the Cacophony of Cups aka the batik! Hopefully I won't also need my pliers. I brought them along, but they sure are a pain in the patootie. Then I'll run it through the dryer to give it a nice finish.

Also, between last night and this morning I've finished another hex flower and I'm about 2/3 through another. My niece is expecting a girl, so perhaps that's even more of an impetus for getting the flower garden done. (I was really hoping for a boy, but, oh well.) She's due in November, so that should give me ample time to work on it. As long as I take it with me wherever I go. THAT'S IT! There's my name for it: Anywhere I Wander. It's a song from Danny Kaye's movie, Hans Christian Anderson. Perfect for a baby quilt.

My sister is so excited. She has a lot of step-grandchildren, but this is the first time one of her own kids is having a baby. It's pretty rad. I'll have another grandniece! My brother's daughter has a little girl about the same age as my youngest. Boy, is she a punkin! She's a little bit of a drama queen (must come from my side of the family) who loves ballet and princesses. Very girly girl. We have a picture of our matching shoes from Christmas. Well, our matching slippers. Black sequin ballet slippers. If I was at home I could post it. Maybe next post. I should make something for her, too! OMG! I've got a list a mile long! 

I also have to make those other two my mom commissioned. Also for baby girls. I wonder if any of my friends are having boys? I wanna make something with trucks on it. Or motorcycles. Hmmm... I wonder what I have at home I could use for two little girl quilts? I know I must have something. Or, mom could pick out the fabric. Most of the stuff I have at home has been assigned to a project. That will... someday... get done...

Sew close!

I found some ribbon yarn that was left over from a scarf my mom made for me a while back. There are two variegated color ways, bright primaries and bright secondaries, so I'm using them to make the tie quilting on the batik. I'm about 2/3 of the way done. I broke my needle. 

Okay, I wasn't using quite the right needle, but it was working just fine until it broke. I've been through 4 more needles since it died and I haven't even been through a whole row of ties.  Now, these needles didn't break, they were just not the right size. One was too fat, one's eye was two small and started to tear at the yarn, and the other two just didn't feel right. Somewhere in my "collection" (some might call it a "heap") is an old Sucret's lozenge metal box filled with really sturdy needles left over from my grandma and grandpa (he was a carpet layer) which would be really sweet to find right about now. I've been using a needle nose pliers to get them through the quilt. That is what ultimately broke the first one. I had a little too much torque on it.

One the other hand, my sitter came over yesterday and was chatting me up about the quilt (she wants me to teach her how to sew) and I asked her if she'd like to have it for her birthday next week. She was super excited about that. She just graduated high school and is getting her own apartment (she's really got it together), so she wants to have it for curling up and watching tv in her new place. Yay! It has a home! Also, I had it on my lap as I was sewing up the opening the other evening and it was so toasty! The air conditioner was blowing right on me and I didn't even mind. 

Today my boys and I are leaving to go stay with my mom for a couple of days and help her with a couple of household projects she really shouldn't do by herself. I plan on taking the batik along to finish and I'll take the hex project along as well. I almost have another flower done. I had no idea how painstakingly slow that would be. It seems quick as I'm doing the hand sewing, but that's alllll an illuuuusion.  

Here's another fun wrench to throw into my routine: I have been diagnosed with Adult ADHD. Not that this is a surprize. It's more of a confirmation of what we already knew. This is serving to make me even more determined to finish projects and not just let them sit around and languish in the dungeon, and to keep this blog going. Seriously, this is the most I've ever blogged. I must've found something I actually want to write about. Huh. Go figger. I'm going to start my medication later today and we'll see how that goes. I face it with hope and trepidation.  

Also, don't forget about my Autism fundraising! Go to http://www.cafepress.com/harriet07 and purchase and Harriet t-shirt in the month of June and the profits will go to Autism research! (See post from June 1st for more information)

Scrappy McScrapperton aka More, more, more...

How do you like it? How do you like it?

I like it when I'm busy. I also, apparently, like it when my quilts are busy. Like this top I just finished, which I shall call Scrappy McScrapperton.

It was inspired by a few things. First of all, the scrap quilts that my grandma made. Second, a similar quilt top I found in a magazine. Which I promptly lost, so I can't add a pic of that one. Third, recent research suggests that all those pastel baby things we get for newborns, can't actually be seen very well by babies. They develop a sense of contrast first, black and white is best, then the spectrum of colors begins to be processed. Geometric shapes are easier to see than fuzzy blobs, but they eventually register by the time baby is about a year old. 

My Grandma Louise made scrap quilts. She typically used a 9-patch, but I saw a quilt in a magazine (seriously, where did that thing go?!) that made squares within squares. It also had sashing, but I opted to just put the blocks together without it. When my sister's kids were little we'd put my quilt from Grandma Louise on the floor for them to play on. My nephew in particular, enjoyed discovering matching squares throughout the quilt; a bit like the game of Memory, but without the cards being flipped over. Hey, when you're 1 1/2 that's about all you can manage.

So, I put together a bunch of fat quarters with different colors, shapes, and varying degrees of contrast, cut them into strips 2 1/2 inches and 4 inches wide. I didn't worry about the length because I didn't have any idea which ones I was going to use where, though I did have some which were shorter and longer and I made squares of each size. I also used a couple of scraps left over from another quilt. They weren't the right size, but I just worked with them as they were. 

As far as putting the blocks together, it was an exercise in improvisation. I'd pick a center piece, (some were squares, others were rectangles. I like variety.) and then I'd put together the pieces going around the center piece in much the same fashion as you would for a log cabin block, only without the triangular color separation. I trimmed the length of the strips as I went around to square them off. I also didn't want the blocks to be perfectly square. They're 11" x 12". Sometimes, because of the trimming, in order to get the right size, I'd have to add an extra strip to one end. I just played around and had fun.

Once I had 20 blocks, I laid them out and played around with placement, following my instincts with regard to the way the colors made my eyes bounce from one part of it to the next. I also decided I wanted 5 more blocks. It's meant to go on the floor to let your kids play around on it, rather than cover a specific size of bed, but I wanted it to be just a skosch bigger than it was at 20 blocks.

I still have a ton of scraps left over, so I can make similar ones, or pillows. Or something completely different. 

Some of those fabrics were used in Lillian's baby quilt. I took what was left, added some solid batiks and had enough for a twin sized bed runner. Or, as I like to call them, Tootsie Toasters. 

It was pretty windy when I took this one, so I put some rocks on the corners to hold it down. Also, there's some schmutz on the camera lens. I'm just going to pretend it's a fancy schmancy artistic filter, 'kay? I may even have enough of the hot pink flannel I used for the back of Lillian's quilt to back this. I haven't checked yet. What? I've been busy.

Also, today is my little guy's 6th birthday. He's busy playing with his presents, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to add these photos and blog.

Happy birthday, Li'l Pootie Boo!

Batiki-tiki-tiki Room!

This past weekend, between my kids starting summer vaycay, four performances, the audition workshop, striking (tearing down) the set after the last performance, Tony Awards (Theatre Super Bowl) and mom coming up to visit, I not only pressed the backing for the batik, I finished it. I also sandwiched the backing and batting to the front so it's ready for the tie quilting process. 

Unfortunately, my camera is acting up (or down, depending on how you look at it). I have a feeling the boys got into it and changed the settings so that, instead of the pix going onto the memory card, they're in the internal memory of my camera, and I have no clue where my little cord is to connect my camera to the computer to upload them. Horrors! I hate using my phone for these pix. They aren't as clear. I got some really nice shots of it, too, because it's a nice, sunny day. If I drag that blanket out to the deck one more time, my neighbors are gonna start talkin'! LOL I don't know what about, but I have some odd neighbors. However, if they started saying stuff like, "Hey! She makes pretty quilts. We should buy one..." I think I'll take it out one more time and use both the reset camera and the darn phone...

Yay! It's working!

Wouldn't this be lovely under yer buns for a picnic in the park?

The back is just as pretty!

One thing I should mention was that, as I was cutting the back for the batik, I realized I had under guess-timated the amount of fabric I needed. I was cutting out the triangles and was suddenly aware that I was only going to get 3 full triangles! Crappy McCrapperton! I was just about to kick myself when I thought, well, perhaps I could sew together the two end pieces to make the fourth triangle. It worked. I wasn't going to be too upset about the seam because I'm using up all the fabric, rather than having these two big end pieces. I do have quite a bit left over because I didn't need to use the entire width of the fabric, but I have plans. Oh, yes, I have plans...

Anyway, the batik is nearly finished! Yay! Two quilts in one week! Huzzah!

Poop. Now what am I going to do?

Kidding! I have lots of stuff to do. I've been working on the hand-sewing of the hexagon Grandma's Flower Garden in drips and drabs. I thought I had done so much work on it, but I'll be dipped! I only have 5 completed flowers! This is definitely NOT one of those instant gratification projects. But I imagine it'll be pretty satisfying when it does get done. 

Another project I should really tackle is making a new cushion for my porch swing. Just sayin'.

My mom has "commissioned" me to make two baby quilts for some new girls in town. The granddaughter of the pastor from the church where I grew up and my sister's step-daughter's baby girl. I'm kinda hoping my niece has a boy. So much less drama. Even when they're on the spectrum. I'm all the drama I can handle!

finis for real!

I did it! I finished the baby quilt for Lillian. I decided to bind it with regular satin blanket binding, because that seemed so "blankie" to me. However, it is black satin, so it's an elegant blankie.

I didn't get the batiks pressed like I'd wanted to, but I don't mind. Don't know if I'll get them done today, either. I may. But today I'm taking the boys to Madagascar 3. I've got my priorities straight.

finis!

Okay, not exactly finis. I need to bind the baby quilt, but the quilting part is done! Yay! I was thinking of using some of the left over flannel from the backing to make a ruffle, but I really should've attached that before I did any quilting, so I set aside the ruffled strip I made. I'll put it on the ends of the bed runner I made from the other scraps!

So, tomorrow, between my son's doctor appointment and my other errands, I'll go pick up some bias tape and I'll finish that sucker off in the evening! Then I'll take pix. And then I'll arrange to meet up with Laurel so I can give it to her and meet baby Lillian. I'm so excited that I've actually finished a quilt. Yeah, okay, a little baby quilt, but it's done! Almost. So close.

I'm a quilter, not just a topper!

Now I'm going to go press the batiks I picked up to make the backing for the batik top I made a while back. They're neutral colors to balance the brightness of the top. I got two different ones. Basically I'm going to make a giant block in the same style as the blocks of the top. I think I'll not quilt this one, but tie it. That's all my grandma ever did was tie quilts. I have a ton of yarn in my workshop in a bajillion colors, so I can have a lot of fun putting that one together! The only thing my grandma had that I don't have is saw horses. She rigged her quilts on them with clamps in order to do the tying. I'll just have to jury rig my own contraption, I guess. Between my husband, the boys and myself, I ought to be able to put something together that'll work.

I'm so happy I got this done. My fibromyalgia was acting up yesterday, so I didn't get down to the machine like I had wanted. I'm still a bit sore and tired from the flare up, but I pushed through it to get the quilt done. I'm on a roll! Nothing is worse than being on a roll and having to stop for something stupid like fibro flare ups.

Hard on myself...

I've been working on the baby blanket for my friend and I began quilting it yesterday. I have one square in the quilt that is all white, so I thought, Wouldn't it be cute to write her name when I'm quilting? Fortunately, her name is Lillian, so it's got a lot of loops. I didn't have quite as good a grasp on it as I'd hoped, and it didn't come out like I wanted. It was too small, wasn't at the right angle (I hadn't been able to find my water soluble pen to write it out first, so it was totally free-hand) and I felt like a dip for even trying it. Then I thought, well, just fill up the square with some more squiggles and blend it in more than making it a feature. That worked! Well, I think it did.

At least I can live with it. Even though I won't actually be the one living with it. You know what I mean.

Anyway, I got that all sorted out when all of a sudden, my tension got all wonky. I tried all sorts of things. I even tried simply stitching over where it was loopy. Then I discovered that somewhere along the line, my thread got taken off the back hook of the line. Hmmm... That's not the technical term for it, but I'm not sure what it's really called. The very first thing I hook my thread around when I'm threading the machine. That's where it got pulled off. I didn't realize, because it didn't really look any different and was still stitching, however sloppily. 

Waaayyyyll, crap. Now I'd done it. This is when my rather unfortunate brain chemistry chirps in and starts telling me all sorts of nasty things, like, "You're an idiot. What made you think you could attempt this? It's just one more thing for you to fail at." No really. She likes to go off the deep end. I should give her a nasty name. Like Chick the Stick. Just so you know it's my evil twin talking down at me, not me. Because she tends to have way worse grammar than I. 

Of course, the other problem is that I didn't get cast in the last of several shows I auditioned for. I got cast in the one non-paying gig I auditioned for, which is way cool, because I'll be working with a really great director and I really wanted the role, but I'd also really like to get paid for what I, frankly, love most and am best at doing. I deserve that paycheck. Hence the severity of the down talk.

Back to the quilt... I was terrified at the prospect of trying to remove the stitches. I'm relatively new to the quilting aspect of this process and I've only ever done free hand. I've also only ever done stuff that's pretty small. Yes, even a baby quilt is huge by comparison. I also don't have a machine specifically for quilting. It doesn't have a particularly long arm, so I have to really make adjustments for that. So, my stitches aren't terribly even and some of them get pretty tight. BLARGH! 

So, thoroughly disgusted with myself, I cut the blanket free and brought it upstairs to sit in my recliner under the good light and try to remove my mess. I must have had quite a look on my face, because my hubby looked really worried. I just muttered about how awful I am and he did his level best to be supportive and soothing. I'm not easy to live with, I grant him that. He has the patience of a saint. More so, probably. 

I started picking away at the threads from the front side because I thought it'd be easier than trying to work with the flannel backing. Then I flipped it over, just to see what kind of a mess I'd made on the back side. It turned out that, since the tension had gone so loose on the top thread, even the tight stitches were easily plucked if I simply made a few slices with my seam ripper. It wasn't an easy task, by any means, but it certainly wasn't as dreadful as I had anticipated. Sure I have a few needle scars, but those will work themselves out in the wash. I did leave it alone for the rest of the evening to let myself cool off and just separate from it for a while, but I'm going to get back to it once I've gotten the boys home from school today. 

I guess the whole point of this entry is to remind you that, even when you make a mistake, whether it's stupid, honest, or both, don't be so hard on yourself. Take a break. You made need only a few minutes or maybe you'll need to really separate yourself from it and move on to the next thing. But don't beat yourself up over it. And if you just can't help it and start to put yourself down, give your evil twin a name (a really awful name) and tell him/her to SHUT UP.

Also, don't forget to check out my Spoonflower shop and the cafepress shop I linked in my previous entry to help kids with autism in June and July. Or just go shopping. I have lots of designs in both places.

Happy Harriet

A few years ago (2007) I was rocking my youngest son, and this little character came into my head. Her name is Harriet.

Hello!  My name is Harriet I've lots of things to say! I have got a different mood For each and every day! There are days when I am happy and days when I am mad and tho' I may get pouty I'm never, EVER sad! I'm naughty and I'm innocent (it cannot be my fault!) There are days I'm just plain loopy, Should be locked up in a vault! If you are emotional But don't know what to say, Get a different T-shirt For each and every day! Harriet(C) is the creation and property of Tracie Hodgdon   tracie@tracie-d-mo.com

I knew she was just a little scribble of a character, sort of like the "Little Miss" characters, only even more childlike. I started a little cafepress shop back then, but never really promoted it, because I've been a little backward about coming forward when it's something like this. No. Really.
Anyway, yesterday I was working on some designs for my Spoonflower shop (http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/tequila_diamonds - see what I did there?) and came across Harriet in some of my old art files. I knew I had to bring her back when my older son, walked in and said, "Hey! I remember her. That's Harriet!" He was only about 4 when I created her, so that's something. So, here's the link to Harriet's shop where you can meet her in her many moods (there are 7, so you could, indeed, have one for each day of the week). She's pretty darned cute, if I do say so myself. Naughty Harriet is my personal fave, natch.

http://www.cafepress.com/harriet07

Also, coming out in July, I will have a collection of Happy Harriet fabrics on Spoonflower. Any profits made from the sale of Harriet fabrics on Spoonflower in the month of July and t-shirts on cafepress in the month of June will go to the National Autism Association, in honor of my wonderful, brilliant son, who is on the spectrum.