Tag: Sewing

Posted in anxiety, Brady, Emotions, Fabric, Photography

Filling the Bucket

Posted on by debthumanblog

There’s something weird growing on my arm. It changed colors. It grew larger. The border is erratic. The thing is scaly. All the stuff that indicates cancer. I saw the dermatologist. He said it wasn’t melanoma, the most dangerous skin cancer. He did a biopsy. I will have to wait at least a week for the pathology report to find out what this thing is.

In the meantime, I find myself making a bucket list. There are two trips I want to take. One is to New York City to shop at Mood. I want to fondle fancy fabric and buy the kinds of fabric I’ve never worked with. The second is a Hawaiian cruise. I’d like to spend a couple extra days and see Volcanos National Park. I want to see flowers and green in the winter. I want to swim in the ocean again. I will take Brady on both trips. I will have to have some forms filled out by the vet for the Hawaii trip.

My iPad is from 2017. It still works, but it does’t have all the bells and whistles the new iPad Pro has. I ordered one this morning from the campus bookstore. Along with educational pricing, I get a free iPencil. I need a more powerful drawing program in order to design more fabric. I also need to work on the second novel. I’m at the point where stuff gets written only to get pruned.

I have a few bra kits in my sewing room. I need to sew them. I need to sew slacks to wear to school. I’ve got a free pattern from Mood and need to make a muslin.

I am frozen. I’m finding it hard to get going on projects.

I still have photography. I got my first SLR for Valentine’s Day 1980. I took that camera everywhere and shot everything. I got my latest DSLR for Valentine’s Day 2020. I take the camera everywhere and shoot everything.

I did some landscape/outdoor photography today. I’m able to walk farther and stand longer although I still have limitations.

Fall in southern New Mexico doesn’t look like fall in New York. Instead of reds, yellows, oranges just before the leaves fall, we get green. We don’t get rain in the spring; we get rain in the summer. This is one of the wildflowers that grow and bloom this time of year.

These are chocolate flowers. You can’t eat them, but they smell like the finest chocolate. Because it’s cooler, I could take this shot after lunch. In the summer, the flowers go to seed within a few hours.

This is one of the desert sage growing in my yard. The shrub is triggered to bloom when there’s sufficient humidity. The bushes will bloom several times during the summer. The flowers only last a. couple days and then the ground is purple.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

My online shop, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

Posted in Embroidery machine, Fabric, Fiber, Sewing

Auditioning Fabric

Posted on by debthumanblog

Sometimes, and this is one of those times, I need to look at fabric for a day or so before I decide if the fabric will work for what I want to make. What I want to make is bras. I just finished one made from cream super simplex with brown accents and cream colored lace. I’d take a photo, but there’s no way to arrange the bra so you could see all of it and I’m not about to model it. You’ll have to use your imagination. The bra fabric and lace came from Bra Builders https://www.brabuilders.com. I had asked for a spool of matching thread. They sent brown thread. So my cream colored bra has brown top stitching. If I were to do this again, and I might because there’s fabric and lace left over, I’d use cream colored thread.

I made free standing lace on my embroidery machine. I’ve checked to make sure the lace will fit on the top of the bra cup. Now, I just need the perfect fabric, and I’m not in the mood for white.

I like the fabric, but I don’t know if I like it with the lace. There’s stabilizer around the lace because I haven’t washed it off yet. It is easier to sew down the lace if I don’t wash out the water soluble stabilizer. The first time I wash the bra, the stabilizer will be gone.

I’m leaning towards this one. The fabric is more green than it shows in the photo.

I’ve had another sale from my Spoonflower shop. You can find my shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

I’ve been having fun designing fabric.

Start here:

Play a bit to get this:

Play a bit more:

And finally:

My online store, Deb Thuman Art is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Posted in Depression, Fiber, Peripheral neuropathy, Photography, Quilts

Art Heals

Posted on by debthumanblog

I’m having a peripheral neuropathy flareup. One of the sure antidotes to the pain is to make art. I had a major depressive episode Monday, and saw the beginnings of a quilt in my head. Or maybe it’s the beginnings of a painting. I’m not entirely sure. I thought about how bipolar disorder, or any DSM-V label, separates the person with the illness from the rest of the world. Like the time I listened to a woman clearly old enough to know better talk trash about someone who had bipolar disorder. When I told her I have bipolar disorder, she literally backed away from me. Gotta watch out for those mental illness cooties.

I dug out my box of fabric and started auditioning fabric for this quilt.

This usually takes a long time. Today was not usually. Today, the fabrics jumped out of the box and insisted on being put together. I was careful about values. How many times have quilters gotten out fabrics and then realized every fabric was a medium value. The red is medium bordering on dark, but I didn’t find a fabric I liked better.

Start here:

End here.

I”ve been playing around with moon shots lately. We’ve had partially cloudy skies and I wanted to get some of the cloud feeling into the shot. The shot, without any editing, is the top photo. I shoot in RAW rather than JPEG. Current thinking is that because modern sensors are so much more sensitive, there’s no need for RAW. RAW files are huge and take up a whole lot of room on the hard drive or the external storage. I don’t use the cloud. I don’t trust the security and someone dumping child pornography into your cloud account can net you many years in a federal prison. Worse, because cloud users don’t own the cloud, the feds don’t need users’ permission to run barefoot through all the person has stored. Because the user doesn’t own the cloud, the user’s standing to contest the warrant or warrentless search is likely nil. Translation: if the feds find child pornography in your area of the cloud, you’re screwed.

The RAW advantage is the sensor records far more detail than JPEG. That advantage is critical when doing nature photography and you have only what nature has given you to work with. When I adjusted the exposure, the background was revealed. The photo is a whole lot more intriguing than the sky was when I took the original shot.

I’ve been playing around with photos in editing with the intention of using the final photo to design fabric. Lately, my Spoonflower shop has gotten a lot of traffic and I’ve had some sales. You can find my designs here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

I am linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Posted in Photography, Sewing

No Kings and Other Things

Posted on by debthumanblog

I wanted to go to the No Kings demonstration yesterday. I planned on it. I didn’t go.

I’m still doing rehab following a broken foot. I can only stand for so long or walk so far without a walker. Because the demonstration was in a park, I’d have to be pushing a walker over grass. That’s not easy. It meant if there had been any sort of problem and I needed to leave in a hurry, or out run a bullet, I couldn’t. I still planned on going. I had wanted to photograph the demonstration. I got up, looked at the air quality index, and realized I needed to stay home. The air quality was solidly in the poor range.

Our poor air quality, which has been going on for several days, is because of two wildfires in the Gila Wilderness. The fires are more than 200 miles west of us so we are in no danger from the fires. All the crud in the air from the fires is blithely floating by my house. This is causing an allergic reaction.

This is what I saw the other night. Looks pretty, right?

Tweaking the photo in editing shows what the camera “saw”. Those vivid blues are courtesy of air pollution from the fires.

I saw photos of the local No Kings demonstration this morning. There were more people than I expected. There was someone with a “Free Palestine” sign. Apparently this person is utterly ignorant of Israel’s history. Israel left Gaza in 2005. In 2006, led by hatred, the people of Gaza voted Hamas into power.

Another person was wearing a keffiheh. The only reason for anyone in this country to wear such a thing is to advertise the wearer’s hatred of Jews.

I’m now glad I stayed home.

I’m slowly recovering from the broken foot and have been able to do some photography outside.

The Dona Ana Mountains about a half hour after sunrise.

The view from my backyard a half hour after sunrise. Yes, I know there’s a dead yucca spike smack in the middle of the shot. Yes, I know it shouldn’t be there.

This was taken about an hour before sunset last night. I liked how the light was on the cactus.

This is what a cactus dying from thirst looks like. Note the tiny tuna developing on the cactus pad. There were incredibly few blooms in the desert this spring. We had less than half the average amount of rain last year. When the annual rainfall is about 10 inches, missing half of it is disastrous. Monsoon season – don’t laugh that’s what it’s called here – started June 1. Since then, we’ve had less than a half inch of rain.

I had made a couple pairs of pajama bottoms from knit fabric I got at JoAnn’s. The fabric had an incredibly short lifespan and developed holes faster than I could patch them. That’s what happens with cheap fabric. I hit a sale at Mood and bought cotton knit for three pairs of pajama bottoms. I started on one pair yesterday.

This is for the pair that’s in progress.

A future pair.

The other future pair.

Because fabric from Mood is so often wider than what I could get from JoAnn’s, I’m discovering I can make gym shorts and pajama bottoms from the fabric. I need gym shorts as well as pajamas.

I’ve had more sales from my Spoonflower shop, https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

My on-line store where I sell my art, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

Posted in Abstract Art, Child abuse, Judiasm

Trying to figure out what’s next

Posted on by debthumanblog

Some people wear their heart on their sleeve. I wear my heart on my art. I know what I want to say, but I haven’t figured out how I want to say it although I have some ideas.

I have my grandmother’s candlesticks. We always had candles on the table for holiday dinners. My family came from Dittersdorf, East Prussia cleverly disguised as German Lutherans. It took a lot of research, 120 years, and pure dumb luck discovering my grandmother’s bad German was Yiddish to see past the disguise. It wasn’t safe to be openly Jewish when my great-great-grandparents arrived in America although Jewish traditions were kept. Sort of. Cleaning had to be done on Friday and only on Friday. When I was little, we didn’t go anywhere on Saturday. And lit candles had to be on the table for holiday dinners. Jim’s family was different. On the rare occasions there were candles, they weren’t lit. We lost sight of who we are and what we believe since 1888 when my great-great-grandparents arrived in America. But we’ve kept our traditions. Now, I keep our faith and I don’t hide the fact I’m Jewish even though being openly Jewish right now is dangerous. This piece could work as either a quilt or a painting.

This is about child abuse and how I would hide from my mother and The Drunk. I would like it to be on three levels. Blue on the bottom, gray in the middle and green on the top. After the inauguration in 2017, I was so angry, I made a quilt featuring a life-size, nearly anatomically correct, 3-d depiction of a vulva – complete with a Swarovski crystal for the clitoris. It was quite the challenge to figure out how to sew it onto the quilt and then to actually sew it onto the quilt. I don’t think I want to try a 3-d quilt again. I’m not sure this would work as a flat quilt.

It could be a painting. I’d need Jim to make the “canvas” out of wood and float the gray and green levels. My painting teacher would like to see more work where Jim helps me fashion the “canvas.”

Eventually, I’ll get it all figured out.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: https://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/2025/01/american-art-and-portraiture-on-off.html

My store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman