I had cataract surgery in my right eye. The left eye gets a new lens on October 29. In the meantime, I’m not seeing in stereo. I’m severely nearsighted, so the difference between my eyes now is huge. Jim took the right lens out of an older pair of bifocals so I can sort of see in stereo.
I’ve been trying to work on the messenger bag prototype, but I can’t work on it for very long before everything is a blur. I don’t have the ability to insert a zipper when I can’t see clearly. The prototype will have three outside pockets and two inside pockets. Eventually, I’ll figure out how to do a recessed zipper and make the “real” messenger bag. I’m thinking of using one of my fabric designs for the “real” bag.
Spoonflower has a 20% off sale and I had $30+ in Spoon Dollars – my commission for designs I’ve sold. I picked out 84 designs to proof. Including tax and shipping I only spent $5.39. The proofs should be ready in a couple weeks, and I’ll be able to get the designs into my shop. My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
I’m not that confident in my ability to do photography at the moment, so I’ve been working on fabric designs. Usually, I start with a photo I’ve taken and then manipulate the photo. This time, I’m starting with a black photo and playing around with editing. I’m using PhotoScape X. Most of the program is free. I think I paid a one-time charge of $40 to unlock everything. There’s a version for both Mac and Windows.
I’ve used light leaks, bokeh, nature, extras, and overlays to create the following.
I use Fill a Yard to proof my designs. I’m hoping to get 42 designs that I like to Fill a Yard before the sale expires. I can’t sell my designs until I proof them.
I finally reached a point where my vision problems were bad enough that I needed cataract surgery. Yesterday, I had my right eye fixed. Today, the fuzziness has disappeared, and I can see better with the fixed eye than I can with the other eye even with my glasses. Now, I get to learn how to function with my eyes radically different. I’m starting to see a difference in color between my eyes. So many people I know who have had cataract surgery said the cataracts had given the world a yellow cast. When I look at the world through my left eye, the world has a warm cast. When I look at the world through my left eye, the world has a cool cast.
Being an artist makes the bumps in life easier to navigate. I had the surgery done in Albuquerque which meant spending most of the day in the car. We left about 2:30 AM. Brady slept most of the trip. I had to be at the surgery center at 6:20 AM. My followup visit was at 1:30 PM. Between appointments, we went to a park. After some experimenting, I found a new use for a cloth mask.
Next, I had to deal with bright sun.
Yo, ho, ho. I’ll take the bottle of rum, but not the parrot. I was told to wear a blouse with buttons down the front. So I borrowed one of the shirts I made for Jim.
When we came back from having breakfast this morning, I noticed this growing in the front yard.
I looked around a bit more, and found this growing.
I tried sewing a messenger bag, but had to give up after a couple hours because I couldn’t see. My other eye gets fixed 10/29. It’s going to be a long three weeks. I’m trying to type this with a pair of reader glasses. I put cloth over the left lens and I’m only seeing with my right eye. I’m not sure this setup is an improvement. For my next experiment, Jim removed the right lens from an old pair of glasses. At least I can see in stereo as long as I don’t need to see anything close up.
Garments are made in southeast Asia and workers are paid less than minimum wage and only a fraction of what workers in the US would be paid. None of the cost saving has been passed on to the consumer.
I’d like to tell you that I sew because I’m appalled by how garment workers are treated. I am appalled, but that isn’t why I sew.
Why do I sew? It’s not to save money because fabric hasn’t been cheap for a very long time. Quality fabric is expensive. Cheap fabric from stores such as Walmart isn’t worth buying.
I sew because I don’t want my clothes to look like everyone else’s clothes. I sew because I like to sew. I sew because the entire world disappears when I’m making art. I sew because I love color and detest that Panetone imposes colors of the year on us. I’m a grownup; I can choose colors all by myself. I sew because I love dying and manipulating fabric. I sew because I like designing fabric and love having fabric no one else has.
I’m also tweaking the pattern. I like having zippered pockets in my purses. So I’m adding zippered pockets. I like to have an outside pocket for my keys and another outside pocket for my cellphone. I like an inside pocket to house my passport and emergency psych meds. Another inside pocket will hold one of the pens Jim made for me and my checkbook. I also like having a recessed zipper at the top of my purse.
Before we moved to New Mexico, Jim worked for a high end furniture factory. Employees could buy leftover upholstery fabric for $1 a yard. This was fabric that originally cost $70 a yard. It’s heavy duty upholstery fabric and perfect for purses and bags. The current messenger bag in progress will be the prototype. I’ll make final tweaks and then make a perfect-for-me messenger bag.
I’ve been designing fabric. A few start to finish photos….
Here’s what I did with a photo of the seed pod on a red yucca that’s in my yard.
Seed pods on barrel cacti are edible although I’ve never eaten one.
I had seen a photo in Threads magazine of a garment made from fabric that was pastel squares.
Dead cactus pads, dead agave leaves, dead plants all can be turned into interesting fabric.
Sometimes, instead of an editing progression starting with the original and ending when I can’t make another good design from that fabric, I’ll take an original photo, edit, revert to original, edit, revert to original and so on until there’s nothing more I can do with the photo. That’s what happened with this shot.
Not every photo gets turned into fabric – just the ones that I find are intriguing. Eventually, I’ll proof designs and put them into my Spoonflower shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
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.
I joined Seamwork a few weeks back because I got a dandy deal and I liked a number of the patterns. One pattern is for a long, v-neck pullover dress. I’ll be modeling for the art department at New Mexico State University this semester and I’ll need some sort of cover-up for when I model nude. Yep. I’m a geriatric nude model. The dress pattern would make a perfect cover up. I’ve been toying with ideas. Do I want to do color blocking? If so, I need to start figuring out what kind of shibori pattern I want and start dyeing fabric. Or I could do batik. Or I could order one of the fabrics I designed in my Spoonflower shop https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman. Or I could sit here with indecision growing all around me.
I thought I had found my favorite shorts pattern, but I was wrong. It’s a pattern from several pounds ago. Seamwork has a shorts pattern that’s close to my favorite pattern. I have some old sheets that we no longer use that would be good for making a muslin. I got as far as printing out the pattern. I haven’t taped the pieces together. I haven’t measured me. I haven’t gotten out an old sheet.
I signed up for a Seamwork class and made a disconcerting discovery. I don’t have a clothing style. I also don’t want to have a clothing style. I don’t like what’s on the market. I don’t like anything I’ve seen on Pinterest or Instagram. I’m overweight and clothes shown on the covers of sewing patterns or on Instagram and Pinterest are modeled by anorexic women. No idea what these clothes would look like on me. Patterns for “plus size” women usually look like a tent with an elastic waistband. Um, no.
I’ve started getting jewelry ready to sell at the local farmers market. I’d planned on setting up in November when it’s cooler and everyone is looking for Christmas presents. Unfortunately, the self-centered, selfish people who refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask have caused a surge of covid cases. There’s now a waiting list for an ICU bed in all of New Mexico. I don’t know if I’ll want to set up at the farmers market. Selling my art is nice. Dying because some people don’t take this virus seriously is not nice. My online store, Deb Thuman Art, http://www.DebThumanArt.com has a generous supply of jewelry and fiber art for sale.
Having been cleared to have cataract surgery, I called the specialist in Albuquerque in early July and got an appointment for October 1. I’ll keep the appointment, but I can’t imagine elective surgery being scheduled before next summer. With the ICU beds filled, the hospitals full of covid cases, elective surgery can’t be done safely. Meanwhile, I’m having problems seeing especially seeing up close. I am beyond angry at the self-centered, selfish people who insist on not being vaccinated or wearing a mask.
Brady ate dental floss yesterday. Dental floss can be deadly. We gently squirted hydrogen peroxide down her throat to make her throw up. After she threw up, I had to take a stick and fish in her vomit until I found the dental floss. It was a terrifying hour before the crisis was over.
She’s faster than a speeding shutter. She’s chomping on an unimaginative toy I made for her. She demolished a toy and I grabbed the squeaker before she could eat it. I put the squeaker into this toy, but the squeaker doesn’t squeak. It just clicks. This is good; that squeaker was obnoxious.
I’ve been doing a bit of photography. We’ve had a lot of rain for a desert in the past few weeks. The light when there’s a storm blowing in makes for interesting, albeit frustrating, photography. Do I keep the photo dark which reflects what I see? Do I tinker in editing to make everything artificially bright?
I’ve been experimenting with evaluative and spot metering. After seeing the shots on my laptop, I decided that I’ll stick to evaluative metering. I seem to be getting better color that way.
Bipolar disorder sucks. Near as I can tell, I’m having a mixed episode – both manic and depressed simultaneously. My responses to things are enlarged. I’m depressed and am having problems shaking the depression. The PTSD, which is likely driving this mixed episode, has taken a miserable turn. While I still have flashbacks about growing up in a house run by a violent, drunken narcissist and her violent drunken husband, the flashbacks are no longer debilitating but they are still a nuisance. Now, I’m having flashbacks about working for the public defender department. There was a lot of trauma in that job. I moved from western New York to southern New Mexico by myself. Jim stayed in New York to sell the house. I didn’t know anyone in New Mexico. My supervisor refused to talk to me for two days when I arrived. That should have been a serious warning sign but I wanted that job so I stayed in New Mexico. Nine years later, I had to sue the department because of discrimination based on my age. I had a boss who was, to put it gently, a raving, screaming lunatic. I had 11 jobs in one year because he was trying to force me to quit. I stuck around because I wasn’t going to let anyone screw me out of my pension. Just writing this has unearthed miserable memories. I retired when I got pushed once too often. Within two weeks of retiring, I no longer had back pain and I didn’t need medication to sleep. Within six months, I no longer needed medication to control my blood pressure.
Brady is now five months old and she either has the doggy version of the terrible twos or the doggy version of oppositional defiant disorder. At least she seems to understand that she needs to pee and poop outside rather than on the kitchen floor. Now that I’ve given up on trying to confine Brady to the kitchen, she and the cats are having peace talks. The talks aren’t going well. I’m staying out of the discussion.
I’ve gotten some new, exciting beads and haven’t been able to work with them. The one time Brady snuck into the sewing room where I make clothes, quilts and jewelry, she picked up a discarded scrap of fabric and proceeded to chew on it. It’s not that she could hurt the scrap, it’s that the scrap could get stuck in her throat. Although I’m home all day, creating has to wait until the weekend when Jim can occupy Brady.
Three years ago, we flew to Buffalo, NY. In part to see a quilt show, in part to see friends, in part to give me the opportunity to bury the ghosts. We went to Rushford Lake where so much misery happened to me. I found a nice spot and buried the ghosts. Several years back, I took an acting class taught be someone who understood visions and intuition. During one class, I saw my spirit dancing in the woods. My spirit was an iridescent figure. I’ve been wanting to turn that vision into a quilt. I will be having Spoonflower print up one of the photos from that trip. Now to figure out how to make an iridescent figure and to show the figure dancing. I’ve got some chiffon that might work. I’ll have to play around with this idea some more.
When things got unbearable, I’d take a walk. Here’s where my walk would start.
Here’s where I buried the ghosts.
My birthday is Sunday and major life events happen around my birthday. I started college the week after my 25th birthday and started law school on my 38th birthday. For the first time in I forget how long, I can eat whatever I want and drink whatever I want on my birthday. For a few years, I would either have a crown pop off or a tooth break. We’ll be going to Starbucks for my free birthday drink. I’m going to be baking a pineapple upside down cake and making croissants for my birthday. I’m also planning on going to Walgreens to get a flu shot. If I get my flu shot around the time of my birthday each year, I don’t have to worry about forgetting to get the shot.
Brady barks non-stop if I put her in her crate and leave the room. So I took her into the bathroom with me so I could take a shower. While she had fun trying to drink water from the shower spray, she didn’t like it when I gave her a little squirt. She tried to wipe off the water with her paws.
Jim cut a piece of foam and I made a pillow cover so Brady has a lovely, new bed….that she refuses to lie on. The cover is made from heavy duty upholstery fabric. I pre-washed the fabric in hot water and put it in the dryer. If it’s going to shrink, I want it to shrink before I sew. The pillow cover has to be machine washable.
I went through computer hell yesterday. First, I tried to hook up a Brother printer. Per the box, it works with Mac. Except it doesn’t. Turns out, Brother hasn’t bothered to keep up with Mac OS updates and the only Macs that it will work on are at least three updates ago. Next, I tried hooking up a Canon that’s supposed to work with Mac. Except it doesn’t. Jim is dealing with the university book store to see if it will work with a cable or in the alternative, what do they have that works with the latest OS update for Mac. All I need is a printer that prints color as well as B&W, and will scan a document. I don’t need, and am not going to pay $200+ for options I’ll never use. So far, I’ve brought home two overpriced doorstops.
I don’t handle frustration well and was screaming (literally) at the inscrutable instructions. Would it kill manufacturers to put some words with those schematic drawings? Canon claims to have 24/7 customer service. It doesn’t. It claims to have a chat function. It doesn’t. I don’t know how to handle situations like this. I don’t want to be screaming at instructions. I did take three klonopin, but it didn’t help. I’m at the point where if I have to try to hook up yet another printer and can’t, I’ll gladly scream (literally) at a customer service rep. If a company puts out useless products, the customer service people deserve what they get. I’ll be discussing calming techniques with my psychologist.
I had never tried binder clips, but after having miserable experience after miserable experience sewing binding on quilts, I bought binder clips. I like them. Not only do that make binding a quilt a stress-free event, they also work better than pins at holding two pieces of heavy fabric together.
After having FMQ misery, I wrote to Superior Thread and asked for help. I bought the needles recommended on the website – 90/14 topstitch. That sort of helped, but the real solution was to use a different quilting foot. Pfaff makes a sensor automatic quilting foot and a spring quilting foot. Superior threads work best with the spring quilting foot.
After five years of making dark quilts about suicide, isolation, sexual assault, and depression, I’m trying to find a happy design I can live with.
I model for the art department and I always pay attention to the critiques because I learn so much from them. One critique was for an assignment to use gray scale for a still life. That got me thinking. We ordinarily think of dark, smaller objects farther away, and lighter, larger objects closer. But what if that were reversed?
I sat down with my sketch book and tried to find something that appealed to me. I like this idea, but I don’t like this sketch. If I changed the shapes into people…..that could be an interesting social commentary.
Usually, the larger objects are in front to show they are closer, but what happens if I put the larger objects in the back? I like this idea as well. I don’t like the sketch.
Right idea, wrong shapes.
Still not right. I’m going to have to give this a rest for a while. Maybe I’m just not ready to leave darkness.
Meanwhile….the cactus are blooming.
The clumps are maybe 10 feet apart, but the colors are different.
I’m not sure when this happened. Used to be, my quilts were pictorial. Now, they are emotional. Apparently, I haven’t been in a happy emotional place in more than four years. During those years, my quilts were about suicide, frustration with neurologists who refused to listen to me, isolation, depression and sexual assault.
Fury.
It’s hard to get everything in one photo. The quilt says: If you touch this without my permission, I will break your fucking arm.
Suicide.
Depression.
Isolation.
Mass shooting.
My quilts went from having beads, buttons, couched fancy threads to unadorned, stark quilts. The one exception is the quilt I made for human physiology.
Lots of beads and lots of whimsy on that quilt. The quilt is about my biology journey starting as an undergrad in 1977 and continuing during the last fall semester.
One happy quilt didn’t stave off a massive, all-encompassing depressive episode that left me so desperate, I considered electric shock treatments which I know are barbaric. During the last three years, my writing has become increasingly depressing. I write about suicide. I write impassioned pieces, which will never be shared while I’m alive, that are an attempt to calm the emotional roiling inside me. I write about the frustrations of having a mental illness in a world that still stigmatizes mental illness – an attitude that should have been dumped at the end of the Dark Ages.
Dark subjects started appearing in my work in 2007. I was going through hell at work – a hell caused by a lunatic supervisor who kept trying to force me to quit. Around that time, I started making dark ceramic art. Bowls with words written on them: I’m a nice person, why don’t they like me? If I stay small and quiet, maybe they won’t hit me. A ceramics classmate looked at the bowls, said they were pretty. Then she looked at what was written on the bowls. And walked away.
Self-portrait ceramic sculpture entitled: Fuck You, I’m Still Alive. Complete with bullet holes.
I tell people that art is a snapshot of a tiny piece of the artist at the time the art was created. Depression, isolation and suicide don’t seem to be tiny pieces of me. I knew that depression was a constant emotion while I was growing up. I didn’t realize, because I chose not to look, how overwhelming depression is now.
I tell people that I frequently don’t understand what I’m feeling until the feelings come out of my hands. When are those feelings going to be happy again? Or were those feelings never happy?
I’ve been working on the depression quilt. I’ve quilted the middle, but haven’t decided how to quilt the border. I thought about meandering, but I want something different from the middle. I want to show depression surrounded by no depression. I want something more open, but I haven’t figured out what. I designed this quilt while I was having an all-encompassing depression that would not go away.
My grandmother always had very little money. She sewed her clothes because when she was growing up, home sewing was far more economical than buying ready to wear. My grandmother was good at spelling and won every spelling bee. For one spelling bee, the prize was a length of pink gingham fabric. My grandmother took the fabric home. She spread out newspaper and drafted a pattern. She made a dress from the gingham, and entered the dress in the Erie County Fair. She won first prize – $3. At the time, that was a week’s wages for a woman.
She never threw away leftover fabric. Instead, she rolled the leftovers into a fat roll and tied the roll shut with a scrap of fabric. Ribbon was precious, and she never used a ribbon for fabric rolls. She used to save the cardboard that trim was wrapped around. The cardboard was used as a template for quilt pieces.
We’ve had rain in the desert and there’s enough humidity to trigger desert sage blooms. I played around with aperture. I did a bit with my macro lens as well.
No idea what I was trying to get here, but I like the effect.
I think there’s a drop of nectar at the end of the pistol.
I may try to design fabric with this one.
This isn’t an easy bush to photograph. If I get back far enough to shoot the entire bush, there’s an ugly background. If I use my macro lens, it’s hard to have a subject. The flowers are in bunches and, short of plucking a flower, there’s no way to get a single flower.
In other earth-shattering news…… I had an odd feeling that I needed to check the credit card statement. I check the statements before I pay the bill, but I rarely check the charges in the middle of the billing cycle. Turns out someone has been using my credit card to pay for meals, Starbucks, Lyft and who knows what else for the last month. Jim called the bank, our card was immediately cancelled, and they will send us new cards. Eventually. First, we were told that it would take 8-10 business days to get the cards. We objected to that and the cards, which we haven’t gotten, have been expedited. Meanwhile, Consumer Cellular billed my credit card for the regular monthly bill. I’ve been paying Consumer Cellular like this for about 2 years. Because this is a recurring charge, the bank allowed the charge.
I would dearly love to sit down with this thief after I’ve been off my meds for about a week. Bipolar disorder does come in handy from time to time.
To avoid having this misery happen again, I’m looking into VPN. There are several apps, and I’ve no idea how to tell what I need. Actually, I know what I need. I need to have a 12-year-old kid on retainer to help me with these technical things.
I’ve been manipulating photos and designing fabric.
First, start with a photo. This is part of the mat outside the sliding glass door.
Next, play around.
The editing program I use is PhotoScape X. Much of the program is free. For a one-time payment of $40, the entire program is unlocked.
Once I’m finished playing with the photo, I upload to Spoonflower and play around until I get a design that repeats in a pleasing way. I have to proof my designs before I can sell them, and I’m about ready to have another 42 designs proofed. After that, the designs go into my Spoonflower shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
Deb's Art 