Memory Lane: New Title

quick update while I write the artist statement/ bios that were due weeks ago!

Found the most perfect bed ever!! Thank you Craiger - you are the bestest person/ teacher ever!!

Now, the issue of naming that always comes up for me.  It's not my favourite part.  Sometimes when I know a name for a piece, I just know it.  If I don't though, it's a struggle.

Was going to "Memory Lane" with this piece, then as I wrote my artist statement realized my other piece was called "Ghost of a Memory" and my statements all talk about memory.  Too much memory (which, incidently is not an issue I have in real life - not enough memory is more my thing!).

So, brainstorming with K-unit as we speak, via facebook.
Possibles: For Your Eyes Only (although it's fairly James Bond-y), 4 ur eyes 2c, write back soon, comforting thoughts, remember us?...

something to do with memory, friendships, reflection, comfort, dreams, lying in bed, teenage yearnings, fading memories,

"Fading Friendships"?

Do you realize what just happened? You all just got front row seats to my brainstorming session.  Think I have something to work with here.  "Remember Us" or "Write Back Soon".   K-unit agrees.  Now it's just time to make a decisions (not my strong suit!).  Will keep you all in suspense!

Memory Lane... Is the End in Sight?

yyyyyeeeesssss.....  so it's a 1 am finish.  Or is it?

Here's a very first hand look into the creative world.  I am within MOMENTS of finishing this piece.  I've go the whole top sewn together, the overlay is laid out, pinned on, I love it.  I spent the last 2 hours putting together the backing, laying it out, pinning it up and around the edges of my blanket.  The only step left is zipping it through my sewing machine (and oh yes, I do zip) BUT I found the most absolute perfect blue broadcloth for my backing.  It's exactly what I've seen in my head for the last month or two.

And... here's what happens when you're making:
Perfect?  In my head yes.  In reality, no, not so much. 

What does this mean?  I'm not spending 4 months on something to take the easy but not perfect road out in the last hour.  So, I'll bring it to school tomorrow, set up my installation, then re-do the whole backing over the weekend.  Yaaay (is my sarcasm coming through there?)

I'll try some muslin, some tea stained muslin, and i'll try blotchily tea staining this blue fabric then decide what works best.

Friginoo.

Now I'm off to bed.

(It's just too new, and clean looking.  See??)

Memory Lane Pressure

So.... for those of you paying attention and biting your nails in anticipation: will she finish it? won't she?? I am officiall at T-minus-minus 12.5 hours into completion.  Meaning ya... it was supposed to be done at 10 am this morning.  But no worries, will be done for tomorrow (please dear goodness, let it be done for tomorrow!)

Anyway, no time to write a lengthy post (you lucky dogs you!) but the top part is all sewn up, with maybe a few changes to do when it's all done.  Now i'm sewing together the innards (had to Franken-innards it because I realized I couldn't rip apart my old blanket (read my second to last post to know what I'm talking about. no time to jump break it!) so I took some cotton batting I had that was too long & narrow, and am piecing it to make it fit.  Then the backing goes on.  I'm figuring I'll be done by 2am.  Anyone wanna make any wagers?

Here's a coupla pics of the progress so far!

Memory Lane Snag

It happened.
No, my bed didn't explode, taking my quilt with it, but because (I'm convinced) I said everything was going well the apartment gnomes decided to take off with my thread (or I misplaced it, or it rolled off my bed, whatever).  So, now what do I do?  I can go on in a different colour or tear my bedroom apart.  I was using the pink from my other grad piece, and the pink just worked so well with this one, but I suppose I could grab a blue or a beige. Or put together everything else and wait until tomorrow to buy more thread to sew it tomorrow night (officially 1 day late).  Blurgh.  Dunno what I'll do, but I swear, once I get a little ways in with sewing with a new colour, I'll find the one I want right in front of me.  This is not a new occurance.  I will sip a tea and ponder.

Update: After tea, starting supper, then some polite asking/ begging of the apartment Gnomes to bring me back my thread/ help me find it, it was found.  On the other side of my floor....

I'm glad too, the pink really does work best I think. 

Memory Lane

"Memory Lane" a possible new title for my second grad piece (thank you K-Unit for inspiring it!)

I'm down to my last 14 hours or so before we need to start setting up our show.  I'm still down one bed, but no worries, Craiger has a stand-in for me, and then hopefully I'll be able to get what I need on the weekend.

I am furiously sewing away, and thanks to my good friends C-Dubs & K-Unit have the fabric I need to back the piece (something I forgot about until a couple days ago) but alas (how often does one get to use THAT word in a sentence? love it!)  forgot to pick up batting for the inside while I was uptown and so have decided to tear apart a bigger blanket I made last year and use it's insides.  Franken-blanket may be a more fitting name for this piece!

I've been taking pics all the way through the process of this piece, but don't really have time right now to do a bunch of posts.  Will probably do that in the next week or so, once it's done.  For now though, I leave you with some pics of the hand sewing process, which to be honest, is going a lot smoother than I thought I would.  (Now, because I said that, my bed will explode or something taking the piece with it...)

More tea and chocolate will get me through me (lucky for me, David's Tea has many tea with chocolate IN them!).

hope you enjoy the pics!

Also, business plan update: Got it all printed and handed in to Craiger yesterday.  All 40 pages of it.  Have fun reading Craig!

I forgot my pincushions (all 3 of em) in the living room.  Rather than just get up and get one, this is how I roll.  Also - included all these pics cause close up I imagine this is what a forest made of pins would look like.

Forest made of pins gets a stiff breeze?

Seriously, if these pins were huge, and this were a forest, wouldn't you traipse through it? And yes, my brain is an original and scary place to live.  Pray you never have to traipse through it!

AH-HA!

YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!  DONE DONE DONE done done done done!!!!!

After two (or was it three?) weeks of sitting in a computer time warp, being cranky and going cross-eyed I have finally finished my business plan/summary thesis/ mentorship report thingy!  Wahhooo!

Ok ok, so it's not ENTIRELY done, but essentially is.  I just have to print out my intro & cash flow report, burn my power point onto 6 cds, photocopy my press from this year, and then make six copies of everything, and hand it in to Craiger tomorrow morning.

Lessons learned?  Maybe I should be a little less confident in my leave-it-till-the-last-minute-and-do-it-the-night-before-it'd-due-and-still-do-a-good-job abilities (apparently that left with my early twenties).  Also, it's generally a good idea to go over an assignment and get clarification early on, rather than emailing my prof every 2 hours the week something's due and then claiming my brain's about to explode.  Who knew?

At any rate, it's almost done.  Mechanical shark thingy, consider yourself slayed! Or slain? Slew?  (That little comment right there was a tipping off of my hat to anyone who read YESTERDAY'S post.  If you haven't, now you have to cause you're curiuos, sucka!)

One more raging cloud rhinocerous (yep, yesterday's post) left to go!  I've got basically 2 days to finish my last grad piece, find a bed frame for installation, and then get 'er into the gallery Wednesday.  So, I'm off to salute myself with a beer (better not forget to burn cds though) and then put a couple more hours into my grad piece, then off to bed, and tomorrow's another day.  It is, isn't it?

I'm a Crafts Person, and so I drink Craft Beer.  Thank you Picaroons for making such wonderful drinks!

Mason jars: not just for tea.



This beer is Man's Best Friend. Yes, yes it is.



Grad Show & Mock Installation

Once again, I got called out for neglecting my blog.  Fair enough.  I've been devoting all my time to business plan writing, with very short creative stints in between, but I HAVE been photodocumenting these creative breaks.  I should I suppose also be taking blogging breaks, but don't want my blog to turn into a rant abt business writing.

HOWEVER, I should also not be neglecting it - so I'm going to try and do some short posts with pics, to keep everyone abreast of what's going on.  We're all gearing up for our grad show which is charging toward us like the Rhinocerous from James and the Giant Peach (one of my fav movies!) or maybe dragging us toward it like the giant mechanical shark thingy.  [Also - I would really like for the results of those links to be huge and daunting when you click on them, but alas, they're pretty small.  Feel free to make them larger yourself somehow, then stare into them if you want to REALLY know how I'm feeling. Bonus points if you do!]  As a result, we have all this writing to do, but also we have to hang out grad show (that's supposed to happen Wednesday & Thursday of this week), which means all grad pieces need to be done (yikers!), and of course I still need to find a wire frame day bed type cot thingy for my istallation, cause WHY would I try and make my installation straight forward? common!

Anywho, since there was a show up in the gallery, and we needed to try and sort out the space (we essentially have 6 different shows going up in one small space.  Honestly, I think it's going to be the coolest ever!) so we spent a morning setting up mock installations in the drawing room, that vaguely outlined our space, then measured everything and went down to the gallery to see if stuff would fit.

I'll be honest here  - I was skeptical as to the usefulness of this exercise (sorry Craiger!) but after doing it, it really really did help, and help us to get an idea of how much space we'll each occupy, and how to make it work in our gallery.  Well played Craig, well played.

Below are some pics of our faux installations (would have been more, but then my camera died).

The branch with the fabric hanging off it are a mock installation of one of my pieces (not my actual work), to see how much space it would take up, whether my hanging works or not, and what relation it should have to my other piece (represented by Craiger's army cot). In the background are ReBecca's mock pieces.

My branch & cot, and in the background are Michelle's nekked Judies.  Sassy ladies!

Another angle of Michelle's and My work.

Having no idea what ReBecca is up to for grad work, I was quite intrigued by her set up.  You can also just see some of Faye's work in the background.