After taping together 38 pages of a pattern and cutting out the pieces, I discovered I had printed out, taped and cut out the wrong pattern. I printed out the right pattern, but can’t make myself tape all the pages together and cut out more pattern pieces.
We’ve got some wild weather blowing in. Maybe. Sometimes, we get weird looking sky only to have clear blue a half hour later.
Having a coupon and about $43 in commissions, I decided to print out some fabric and proof some designs. 42 new designs are in my Spoonflower shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
This piece will be a healing quilt. This is near Rushford Lake where so many hurtful memories reside. I buried the ghosts here. Several years back, I had a vision where I saw my spirit dance. My spirit was iridescent and dancing in the woods. I’ve got some chiffon that would be good for a dancing spirit applique. I’ll have to play with this a bit.
I need to make something to wear when I pose nude for the art department. Something that’s easy to slip on and off between sessions. I found a dress pattern that will work, and this is the fabric – one of my designs – for one dress. The other dress will be a batik of sorts. I’ve got some PDF linen/cotton blend that’s dying for some fancy dyeing.
Just created this design today. I think it’s going to make interesting fabric.
As I write this, I’m awaiting the results of my covid-19 test. Jim called Thursday morning and said his work study student called in sick and it might be strep throat. There’s an overlap between strep throat and covid-19.The phone call triggered a massive anxiety attack. I was scheduled to model on Thursday, but the class got cancelled. Covid-19 has to be taken seriously. Covid-19 kills.
The first appointment I could get for a Covid-19 test was yesterday, Saturday, morning. The PRC test is the most accurate, but there’s no way to know how long it will take to get the results and I’m scheduled to model on Tuesday. I need the results before Tuesday morning. The least accurate test results are theoretically available in an hour. I chose the Rapid Response test. Although it’s not as accurate as the PRC test, I can get the results in 24 hours. Except I can’t It’s been 27 hours and I don’t have results. I’m scared. Although I was vaccinated in March, it’s possible, albeit unlikely, to have a breakthrough infection. The vaccine gives me the best chance of staying out of the hospital and living. I waited in line for 45 minutes to get tested. I had to stick a swab as far up my nose as I could and move the swab around. It felt weird and I kept wanting to sneeze. I have no symptoms but that doesn’t mean the test will be negative. It’s possible to be asymptomatic and shedding virus for several days before having symptoms. I’m still having that massive anxiety attack.
The best way for me to stay calm is to make art. I have lots, and lots, and lots, of beads. And now I have seven new necklaces. I haven’t decided if they will go in my store or if I’ll take them to the farmers and craft market to sell. I also haven’t figured out a price for each necklace. Prices are based on time, cost of materials, multiplied by the number of times I have to swear at the beads and adding the square of the number of times I have to go on a search and recovery mission to retrieve the beads I dropped on the floor.
I’ve been working with my dwindling supply of Swarovski crystals. Someone at Swarovski decided to dump the bead line and concentrate on unimaginative jewelry, tacky knickknacks and rhinestone cellphone covers. That’s it. There are no other products. Then one of the honchos stated the bead line should have been dumped years ago. It’s a horrible insult being told the honcho considers me not worth the trouble regardless of how many beads I buy.
I’ve also got a good supply of semi-precious stones.
The blue beads at the center of the necklace are K2. The stones are granite – an igneous mineral. What makes these granite stones special is they come from the base of K2 – the second tallest mountain in the world. The mine is in a remote spot so the beads are expensive.
Carved amazonite in the center.
Dumorterite, mosaic shell, and shell pears. Shell pearls are made from ground up shell and compressed into spheres. Nicer than glass pearls but not as expensive as cultured pearls.
I like ladder pendants and this one is lepidolite. I like this shade of purple and I like the sparkles in the stones.
Smoky quartz and rutilated quartz, tiger eye, assorted other semi-precious stones.
When I updated the operating system for my MacBook Pro, the update played hell with my email accounts. I’m now unable to access my Facebook account. Facebook has no tech support. No support chat. No number to call. It appears Zuckerberg is too busy selling ads to dubious and sometimes fraudulent advertisers to consider the people who use Facebook.
I think I’ve finally processed my reactions and emotions from September 11, 2001. I couldn’t express my feelings at the time and my reactions seemed to be about a week behind everyone else’s reactions. As they were recovering, I was starting to feel something other than numb. This year, I read everything I could find abut 9/11. I cried. I watched documentaries. I cried. I felt the edge of fury. I felt the edge of outrage. Maybe someday I’ll be able to feel the fury and outrage in their entirety. I’ve healed to the extent I’m able to heal right nowI’m having flashbacks of the crap that happened to me as I grew up. As I raised myself and three siblings and listened to my drunken, violent, narcissistic mother tell me I was lazy and selfish. If I were gone for a bit, I’d come home and be told by her how peaceful it was while I was gone. I hate that woman although I haven’t felt the extent of my hatred for her. PTSD is an emotional landmine and there’s no telling when a trigger will step on one of those landmines. I rarely cry anymore when I have a flashback. I used to cry uncontrollably when the flashbacks first started 49 years ago. Now, the flashbacks are a nuisance. Unwelcome. A pain in the emotional ass. I’ve given up thinking I’ll ever be free of PTSD. It gets tolerable – I can’t remember the last time I had a nightmare – but PTSD never gets gone.
Armed with a coupon and about $43 Spoon Dollars I put together a 42 cheater square yard featuring the best 42 designs from what I’ve been creating lately. I also splurged on five yards of fabric to make myself a dress that will double as a robe when I model nude. I will be the best dressed nude model in the art department. But only if my test results are negative.
That’s a question Tim Gunn asked on a Project Runway show several years back. I thought about his question when I looked at photos of the Met Gala red carpet. Pretty? Maybe a few. Silly? Lots of them. Unflattering? Lots and lots of them. Downright ugly? Lots and lots and lots of them.
It’s not my age or my weight that makes me hate nearly all of the outfits. Most of these dresses would look ugly on anyone. Why would any woman want to wear a see-through outfit that showed off her breasts and pubic bone (I assume she shaved before dressing)? Why would any woman want to wear a dress designed to allow one or both breasts to fall out the front or sides in the event she sneezes? Why would any woman want to wear a dress that covered less than pasties and a g-string would cover? Why would any woman wear expensive attire that makes her look like a cheap hooker?
Not much was original. So many dresses by assorted designers featured a bra for a cropped top, a bare midriff, a skirt that plunged at the front of the waist. Yawn.
These dresses are supposed to be art. Some art, and my art especially, is dark or a kick in the gut. These dresses aren’t art. Making a woman look ugly isn’t art. Making a woman look like a cheap hooker isn’t art. Art can push the boundaries. Art can make us think. These dresses are sexist, misogynous crap.
I’m told that see-through outfits have been a “thing” on runways for a couple years. Time to get that “thing” off the runway and into the trash. Just because some designer sends a dress down the runway doesn’t make the dress art or pretty or flattering. We’ve let designers take over our clothes. We’ve let designers tell us what to wear. We’ve let designers get away with designing for anorexic models. We’ve let designers tell us that a size 12 is for fat women. We’ve been doing this for so long, we no longer know what a healthy female body looks like. We’ve bought into this nonsense for so long that nearly every woman thinks she’s fat – even women with less than 15% body fat. According to designers, if we can’t see your ribs and hipbones protruding from your skinny body, you’re fat. According to HealthLine, having 21-24% body fat is healthy.
Many years ago, Ms Magazine had an article entitled: Fat Is A Feminist Issue. What was true then, is true now. Women unite! Take back your body image! Take back your clothes! Take back control.
So. Eat sensibly. Exercise sensibly. Reject the notion that anorexic is pretty. Reject ugly, unflattering clothes. Reject the notion that if it’s not see-through showing your breasts and your crotch, it’s not fashion. Reject the notion that pretty means having to worry about one of your breasts falling out of your clothing if you sneeze. Take back your power.
I’ve been sewing. My underwear is starting to get shabby, so I made some panties. This one is made from fabric I designed.
These are from commercial fabrics.
I’ll be modeling for the art department, and I need some sort of cover-up for when I model nude. I got a great deal for a Seamwork membership and I’ve downloaded the pattern for the Micha dress. Very simple, straight forward, and I can pull it on over my head. I’m working on deciding if I want to order fabric I designed for this dress or if I want to make the dress out of a linen blend fabric I have and dye the dress. If I dye the dress, I can play with shibori, batik, ombre, or plain, solid dye. Ombre might be fun. I had thought about doing color blocking, but decided against that. What I had in mind had seams on the diagonal – perfect for stretching in all the wrong directions. There will be photos once I finish the dress….which won’t be until I figure out what fabric I want.
I’ve been working on fabric designs. I saw an interesting geometric print in the current issue of Threads. I don’t want to make a copy of the design, but I do want to use the ideas in that design. So far, I haven’t come up with anything that is what I want although I did come up with some interesting designs.
I took Brady out last night and looked up. I saw a gorgeous sliver of a moon and what I think is Venus. I tried to get both into a photo, but that wasn’t successful. I did get one nice shot of just the moon. Ideally, I would have gotten out the 150-600mm lens and the tripod, but I knew I couldn’t get both objects into one shot with that lens. I kept the 18-400mm lens on the camera. I’ve been wanting to get a moon sliver shot. I’ve plenty of full moon shots, but this is the first sliver shot.
I played around with the moon shot to make fabric designs. Here’s the progression.
There are memorable, momentous moments in my life.
The day JFK was shot.
The day Nixon announced the end to the Vietnam war.
Watching the signing of the documents ending the Vietnam war, seeing the oversized, oval table that had been the subject of squabbling, and hearing the church bells ringing.
The day the Twin Towers fell.
The day I pissed off a TSA woman and have never since been able to get on a plane without first being felt up by a TSA person. That’s when I decided to refuse to wear a bra when I fly.
My 60th birthday when I realized my life is finite.
Such an odd collection.
There are things I remember, but weren’t momentous.
The day I got married. That was the culmination of me being in the middle of a war between my mother and mother-in-law. I should have eloped. For a wedding gift, my mother gave me an old ironing board with a ripped cover.
The day I graduated from college with two degrees – journalism and biology. That was the day my mother refused to come to commencement.
The day I discovered I was adopted and felt as if I had been slammed into a brick wall. The entire front of me hurt. Even my toes.
The day I was accepted into law school and wondered why a rejection letter would start with the word congratulations. It took a few minutes to realize I had been accepted and not rejected.
The day I graduated from law school and wore a pair of pink flamingo earrings for commencement. I didn’t want anyone to think I was taking graduation too seriously.
The four days when I was admitted to practice law:
New York – I remember Judge Denman’s stirring words after I was admitted: Call the next case. A man sitting in the row behind me tapped me on the shoulder and congratulated me.
Federal District Court.
Supreme Court of the United States – when I discovered William Rhenquist was charming and Sandra Day O’Connor actually could shut up.
New Mexico.
The three times I argued before the New Mexico Supreme Court. The third time, Judge Chavez addressed me by my first name and I realized I had made a major impression on the Court and hoped it was a good impression.
There is one, nagging, bad memory. The day the Twin Towers fell. When I came to work the next day, my coworkers asked me if I knew anyone who had died. I wondered why they thought I was so cold that I would come to work the day after someone I knew got blown up by a terrorist. My emotional responses were about a week behind everyone I knew. A juvenile client saw my law school diploma, realized I’m from New York and asked about the towers. I had to maintain composure while crying inside. While I abhor the loss of life, I’m not sorry that twin architectural monstrosities were obliterated.
As I have every other year, I’ll be skipping the ceremonies, cannon firings, speeches, and flag flying.
Deb's Art 