Sometimes (2 postings in 1)

9-21-11- Music makes sewing difficult. LOL! My playlist last night had me dancing around and feeling pretty darn good. 1st up was a CD titled Brain Waves by Warner Bros. Records and not a retail CD. This CD actually had a mix of music and most of the music was done by coverbands, I think. I know not all the songs on there were performed by the original artist. Doesn't matter, several of the songs on there had me shaking mah bootay!! Nothing like dancing around the ironing board with a hot steam spurting iron in your hand while the cats think your A. trying to play with them using the iron's cord or B. trying to scare the crap out of them when you forget that the water in the iron can come out if you turn it over. Poor Guinness, he got the water. I was trying to unplug the iron and bent over and he came to investigate at the same time. He wasn't to happy and gave me the glare.
2nd CD up is The Cure -Mixed Up . 3rd CD up Mechanical Animals- Marilyn Manson .

Sometimes kids can disrupt the sewing. Sadly my good mood was totally ruined thanks to my 17yr old daughter who decided to disobey the long standing rule of when it's dark you come inside unless your outside with adults or a mixed group of kids. We don't live in a neighborhood that it's safe to be a female outside after dark. She decided that last night was buck the system. I was livid. I went from happy to brain boiling. May the powers that be give me strength not to plant my foot permanently in her backside. I happen to like both of my feet, most of the time, they help me stand up straight, I think. ;)

I tried to get back into a better mood but it was ruined. I had to force myself to finish cutting out the pattern I started on last night. I bought the pattern at walmart about a month ago for .97 cents. The pattern is Simplicity's new line called Sew Simple and I'm making this 1969 Sew Simple Misses' Top. I also bought this pattern1967 Sew Simple Misses' Pants. The numbers are the pattern number not a year. LOL! I plan on making the pants after I make the top. There are several patterns from this line that I would like to make. The only thing I managed to get accomplished was cutting out the 4 pattern pieces, ironing them flat and pinning them to the fabric. I just did a general cut out of the patterns and will go back to clean them up for marking the pattern points and sewing lines. This is the fabric that i'm making my shirt from.




9-22-11 UPDATE:: Yesterday evening was productive. I still wasn't in a good mood from the day before events. She acts like nothing happend and I should just go on my merry way and not discipline her for anything. Grrr.. right now I feel like i'm in a precarious situation and not even sure how I got here.
Anyways last nights playlist consisted of
Sawdust-Pentaphobe
Mechanical Animals-Marilyn Manson
Lest we Forget-Marilyn Manson
Holy Wood-Marilyn Manson
Downward Spiral-NIN(nine inch nails)


Last night I worked on getting all the pattern Pieces cut cleanly and some of the general points marked. I still have to go back and mark pleats, points and sewing lines, which should get done tonight and crossing fingers, maybe even start sewing. I even got to use my little pattern weights I made. Usually I work with this sewing table set up. I don't have a lot of room for a dedicated sewing table so I had to figure out something. My cats think that me on the floor with fabric is play time. It's bad enough they jump up grabbing my fabric when I do this little setup. Yes it can be a bit annoying and cause me to wanna wring their furry necks but at the same time, when they aren't being pests, I truly enjoy their company. I have 7 cats but only 2 of them are infuriating pests, Gwen and Guinness, mostly Gwen. LOL!

This is what happened when I tried to do cutting on the floor. As you can see it's Guinness and Gwen.





I love this pic of Gwen


I didn't really feel like setting up all that stuff for a smaller section of fabric. I got the bright idea to just put 2 of my TV trays together, that's long enough to fit the pattern pieces. I encountered 1 problem, the gap between the tables. The TV trays kinda have this wavy edge to them instead of straight. I first thought to use my small rotary cutting mat, but it didn't give a smooth surface because it didn't cover both tables. I then remembered I still had some posterboard stuff left over from hubby's discarded christmas idea. The posterboard fit perfectly over both the tables. Now I had a nice clean flat surface to work with and bonus, i could leave the pattern on the posterboard and just turn the posterboard to suit me in doing the trimming of the pieces. I'm such a genius. I make it work cause i'm poor and i'm broke and don't have a lot of room. I see myself using the smaller set up more often, except for the bigger projects. The posterboard even has grid lines on one side. I think I will mark off the inches on one of them and make it a sewing ruler of sorts.

I stopped by walmart to see if they still had some of the material left i'm using on this shirt, nope, atleast that's what I thought. I did find one, shoved in the back, missing it's paper with the scan bar. When I bought the fabric a few weeks back there were several of these 2yd cuts left. I feel very fortunate to have found that very last one. I wish I had a few hundred dollars to spend, i'd buy up several of those 2yd cuts that Wal-mart has, lovely prints in greens, browns and pinks, reds, just so many I want.

Slow Progress

Not sure what to write other than I HATE MY DEPRESSION! I hate the stress that occurs daily in my life and spend hours daydreaming about a vacation away from my husband and teenage daughter and sometimes the cats are also included in that daydream. Honestly, I prefer my kitties to my family right now.

I have not finished that apron. I had planned on finishing this 2 weekends ago, well it didn't happen and last weekend, same thing. I had plenty of time, just no mojo. Sigh, I think what has made it bad is that something just wasn't feeling right and made things just seem so off. I did get the pockets finished and they are ready to be sewn on. I also finished the straps and attached them as well as the ruffle. When I got ready to put the pockets on, that's when it really hit me that something just wasn't right. Somehow, and this probably happened because at the time I cut this out, freehand, I was using the carpeted floor as my table. I did not cut identical sides, one of the sides was about 3/4 inches off. I found this out when I finally folded it, after all that work too. I was just gonna forget about it and not bother to try and fix it but the more I looked at the more it said FIX ME! So I ripped out the edging in the area that need to be cut down and trimmed to match the other side, marked the new sewing line and that's as far as I've gotten. I think I may sit down tonight and get this done, might take me a whole 30 min to an hour to make the change sew it, reattach the edging and maybe change the strap so that's adjustable instead of one size fits all. Crossing fingers.

I was going to post a picture of the pockets by themself but it seems I haven't downloaded them and they are not on my camera, I must have accidentally deleted them, crap. I do have a couple of pics that kinda show the pockets.

This is my kitty Guinness, he loves getting up on my sewing table and hanging out when I get up to get something. Here he is holding down the apron when I was attaching the ruffle.


This is him holding down my handmade seem presser and in this pic you can see one of the pockets are done minus the strawberry button.


Here's his close up. He's spoiled rotten.


This photo shows the apron all sewn up except for the pockets. The pockets have their strawberry buttons attached and I was trying to place them. I'm sure you can see what I mean by the "OFFness" I was talking about in this pic.



Here is a little throw pillow that i've been meaning to make for a sometime now. I've had the pillow and the material but just didn't get around to it until about 2 weeks ago, just before all my mojo ran out the door and left me hanging with unfinished work. I've had this material for years, probably since the late 90's. It's a heavy knit and I still have probably about 4yds of it left, I think I bought like 5yds of it when I got it and it's 60 inches wide.
Front:

Back:


So this has been the extent of my creativity the last few weeks. I hang my head in shame because the ideas don't stop just my mojo. I have noticed that when I do manage to blog and complain that I haven't finished something it helps just a bit to tweek me some to get something done as long as it's not to complex. Complexity lately melts my brain into mush.

Just a jolt

Well it seems that I've recieved a bigger jolt of creativity than I had thought. YIPPEEEE FOR ME! Some of my readers know that i've been dealing with a major slump the past few years. This has been the longest and hardest slump I've gone through in a really long time. There are many factors that haven't helped in getting me out of this but I have hope and look forward to another year. Around the end of the year, christmas holiday, I get a little more inspiration to create, mostly gifts though. So here is a few things I'm working on at the moment.

Necklace- Sterling silver, fresh water pearls and black czech faceted briolettes.



Close-up


Cute little angel earrings- sterling silver and faceted czech glass rounds



Here are my girls, Kitty (aka Fat cat) and Lira (aka Brat cat). This is one of their more quieter moments. Kitty had been cleaning Lira.

Update

Well, I can't say that there has been much creating going on lately. I started this blog in hopes that it would help inspire me some to create so that I can share. I feel like I failed that idea miserably at this point but I'm not giving up.

Today I got an email from SassyArtGoddess about the annual beaded face swap. I joined the swap the very 1st year (2005) and haven't done one since. 2006 was a rough year, lots of stuff going on about this time that year. 2007 well, not much going on and I really didn't feel that I could even accomplish a piece, things were that off. Things are still off but I have the perfect face in mind and know just about which beads I will be using to accent it. I will pull that stuff out tonight and get it ready.

The custom pendant I was asked to make is driving me nuts. The design in my head works but it seems that I don't have the right materials for it (sigh). I've been wracking my brain about the problem I'm having and I think I may have figured it out. One, I'm not used to working with different metals like brass. I'm used to working in sterling and silver colored wire mostly and maybe a wee bit of copper or copper cored wire. I would have loved to do the piece in 14k gold-filled but that's just a wee bit out of the budget. Two, this depression that is just hanging around like a noose is extremely frustrating. Today I bought a couple of things off etsy that I think will work better than what is trying to happen in my head. I also think the design change will also make the lady happy. I found some lovely glass cabs in a sunny color that I'll wrap in brass or copper, haven't yet decided which wire I'll use. The change in idea seems to fit better than whatever direction I was trying to go. She wanted something sturdy because she's hard on jewelry.

I think I've realized why the funk just keeps hanging around, time for change. My first step is to quit smoking and I think I'm making great progress. I've had 2 cigerettes in the past week and I haven't bought anymore nor do I plan to. I know I can do this, I went 4 days without one and haven't had to many issues. LOL! Wish me the best of luck.

I also have a few pic updates of Lira our newest edition to the family. She's growing up so quickly. She's not nearly as skittish as she was the first month we had her. She has picked up my other cat, Kitty, and her behaviors. I can't go to the bathroom without them both at the door, Lira terrorizing Kitty. I can't go into the kitchen without Lira wanting my attention. She lets me know when she doesn't have any water or food. It's funny Lira tries to hide the food when I put it into their bowl. Lira also thinks that making the bed is play time and attacks my hands and feet. She seems to think that it's my job to pay attention to her even though she's supposed to be my daughter's responsibility. So here she is:

Lira and Kitty lying next to each other.


Lira and Kitty waiting for me to give them some attention. Lira sure is growing fast.

Hiatus

I just keep poppin in and out. I have come across some romance novels that have completely taken over most of my waking, non-involved with something time. There are like 16 books to this series and I've read 4 so far. So in the spirit of books and reading, I got tired of using whatever was handy to mark my place.

I took some of the 18g silver filled wire and began to shape it, willy nilly. I found some base metal chain and a mix of a few beads and attached them to the end of the chain. Here is the result:



Close up of dangles:



Though I like my bookmark, it's a bit flimsy. I need to use a heavier gauge wire, maybe something like 14g, maybe even 16g might work. I have found that with the silver filed wire, the bigger the piece the flimsier the wire seems. Smaller pieces it's pretty sturdy after a little bit of hammering and it doesn't take to much strength to start to flatten the wire.


I also have some cute pictures of my funny kitties and guinea pig to share.

Lira hanging out with Oscar in his cage.




Lira and my fat cat, Kitty, playing. Lira loves to launch herself at Kitty. It's so funny watching them play. I got several shots but the camera batteries were running low. I need to throw them back on the charger again. Man, they just seem to have no life to them, the batteries that is and they are pretty new.