Plastic Pinhead - Project #1

Do you have guilt about plastic bags? Do you think about how many times you spent the 99 cents to buy fabric bags to bring with you into the market and then forget them countless times in the car, in the kitchen or even in the cart you bought groceries in? Do you ever feel like a plastic bag? No, of course you don't. That is a ridiculous lyric. I think plastic bags are weighing on all of our consciences - right up there with nuclear war and starving babies. And I know you feel like I do. I don't want to throw my guilt bags out now because I took them home when I shouldn't have and I would rather have them here than in the landfill killing baby otters or something. What should I do with them?

Pinterest has helped me see some uses for these bags which are starting to grow like tribbles around here.

Some more advanced solutions include a long, involved braided project that will eventually become a basket and a bag made of bags!

I also came across more than a few versions of ways to store those annoying plastic bags from the grocery stores.  

Some followers on the site shared this link to RealSimple and their idea for reusing tissue boxes for storing your bags and this site from The Daily Buzz using old cleaning wipes containers, but there were two issues with these methods that didn't seem to work for my needs.

#1- Grocery bags are bigger than what those containers would hold. 

So, I thought I'd upgrade the holding container to something more appropriate for my needs, an issue that in comparison to their solution looked like brown plastic hoarding.

Ain't no tissue box gonna hold that!

 Enter my solution:

A box that held kitty litter

But there was something else bothering me.....

Problem #2 - After putting my plastic baggies in here, how could I fish them out after the first one, perched charmingly at the lip of the box, was taken?

Then, it hit me.

Do this to the ends of each bag:

Don't you love the pants?

 Make sure to pull here so they stay connected when you pull them out of the box.

Now, do this for all your bags. Once you have a giant chain of bags created, roll them up. It's important to fold them in half, folding the bottom of the "bag" part up to the handle part and then roll them like a sleeping bag or a fruit roll-up, whichever sounds more fun to you.



Now it's time for the box!!!

Reminder: I am not a craft-mama retro-blog guru and my pictures are real, so they are filled with "character" and what some more focused people would call "sloppiness", but at the end of the day this is a box that is holding used grocery bags, not a masterpiece featured in Martha's Kitchen. Although, if some craft-mama guru or Martha herself would like to do this and make it not look like a third grader's Mother's Day gift, please do. :D

So, first, I painted the box:

And then I realized it was streaky and ugly.

So, I got my stash of National Geographic magazines and remembered how many thousands of projects Pinterest had that utilized maps. There are at least 6 free maps for every year of magazines from NG.

This one is of Africa.

I stuck it on there and then wrapped it like a gift.

I learned an important lesson:

GESSO IS NOT GLUE

and it made everything bubble with "character".

So, if your baggie box is going to be featured in public view, use paint, wrap it like a birthday gift with wrapping paper or just brown paper from paper bags, or newspaper or decoupage it with the RIGHT supplies. All of these things would have made this a "reminder" free post. :)

 Next cut a door out in the back so you can "load" your baggie box. Make sure it's big enough for the roll of bags you have.

Look at all that character!

 Thread your first baggie through the lip where the litter used to come out from and there you go!

and they keep going...and going....

In the end, I did think about the practicality of this project and thought that it wouldn't appeal to everyone.

For instance, the amount of time retrieving old bags is usually less than the amount of time collecting old bags or else there wouldn't be an old bag stockpile like so many of us have. This logic would then make linking all the bags and then rolling them and then putting them in the box not a likely practice (unless you have kids you want to keep busy while you make dinner), so the trouble I went through to create the system has gone to waste in these peoples' eyes, but the box in itself is still larger than a tissue box and you could just use the back end where you cut the door out to stow and retrieve bags. This would be the way I would use the box if I weren't hellbent on solving the issue of dispensing.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my thrown together improvements and the attempt to do more than "pin".  I'll be back with more experiments from the boards.

:D

"Would you look right here for me?" *

Clearing the canvas. A remodel is required and reinvention looming. Will it last? There's no way to know. You just have to birth the newest rendition and hope that it is a better version of you and not a tenth generation a la Multiplicity. To ink or to crayons, let the new writer emerge.


*Men in Black (1997)

Not a Quilt Post. (of course)

This satirical piece is called

Mocking Horse Winner

There's money to be made at the race

to the top.

"There must be more learning gains!"

"There must be more learning gains!"

They were found dead, slumped over their testing packets

Pencils in hands

Their epitaphs bubbled in completely.

~I.G.

..."And now for something completely different"

It's not that I have given up or that I have employed the exacto blade in ways not intended for its use or even that this post is going to be a big blog of excuses, it's just that I had to go back to work this week. Work comes with a 4 am run, an hour commute and overtime. Sometimes it comes with extra work as a means for secondary income.

No worries, though. The thread is still running through my veins. I can't look down at the tile in my classroom and not see mini quilts and block combinations. I even found a stray rectangle of swirled fabric in my purse the other day and looked away longingly with a forlorn smile when I doted upon the summer I spent with the quilt. I have no new pictures of products to show and I have scrolled through the site and found that the pictures are getting boring and repetitive. To breakup some of that here are a series of products I found in Wal-Mart to break up the monotony:

Zote: The Racist Soap!




Who wants prissy dew anyway? Taste the Lightning!


How can we make cheese more healthy?


Baby Granny! I can't wait to change those diapers!


Who says sausages are sexual?



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So, I have proved that the blog is not dead. Maybe it's a little anemic from neglect, but certainly not dead. As soon as I have a moment to sew, you'll know.

Honor Roll

The blogging pace has slowed down a bit, I know, and so has the quilting. The summer is winding down as well which is one of the reasons for the hold up. In a week I will be back in the midst of chaos and the saving grace and sanity-glue of it all may well be this activity. When things get out of control in life, the best thing to have is a completable to task to focus on. In the past these tasks have been knitting, needlepoint, trash novels and even video games (I am down for ANY quest) because they can be completed and done without the frustration of too much circumstance and other people's issues.

The progress is slow, but steady. With every completed block, things line up more and more. It's like watching the ice caps melt. One millimeter at a time. My mother says to include the misshapen blocks in the quilt as a testament to progress and proof of the homeade-ness of this piece. I wasn't going to because I would like to believe that I have some kind of secret unparalleled talent and I am perfect, but she may be right. Owning the actual proof of progress would be an incredible thing - especially if I decide to keep doing this. I can look at the equivalent of my kindergarten refrigerator masterpiece and compare it to my college thesis and feel like there has been an incredible transformation.

I know I wanted to include some kind of metaphor in this post about things in life lining up like the squares of each block, but I just can't formulate the rest of that thought. So, there ya go.

Here are my refrigerator-worthy blocks:

Kindergarten -
Notice how the right line is fragmented at the top.

1st grade-
Considerably less fragmenting on the upper right-hand line!!

How did I do it? Lots and lots of spray starch!

I constructed those two blocks in the same day and it felt good to see that things were lining up. I started a third one, but when it gets to be midnight my eye-hand coordination lobe fails completely. In the past, staying up late to do this has left me nothing but unusable scraps, shoddy math and instances of quilt pieces being stitched to the sleeves of my pajamas.

Today, however, is another day brimming with coffee. To the sewing machine....

Project Cut-Away

As you know in quilting, one day you're perfectly cut and the next day you're not.

I don't know if there are gremlins coming in and slicing things askew while I sleep or if I am letting my astigmatism do all the measuring, but it seems that no matter how much I try, there are still squares that come out uneven.

I decided the other day to not let those uneven or askew squares make it into my block. I suspect the problems I am having are coming from them. Because I had been watching the marathons of Project Runway while I struggled through this, I was inspired.


After looking closely at the squares I cut for the next block, I could see instantly that the problem was most rampant in the squares made of two quarter triangles and one half triangle.
Here are some testimonies from the contestants:

"Shoo- Ya'll can't handle my diversity. I didn't come here
to make friends. I am too refined and sophisticated. You'll
see. Ima be jus' fine. Just because you can't sew
don't mean I ain't gorgeous. Bya, ya'll. I am going to a
quilt that can handle me."

"I can't believe I made the cut. I just hope I can measure up and not fray from the stress. This is all I ever wanted. I was cut for this quilt!"

Looking back at the above, maybe cheese wasn't the way to go with this post, but oh well. What is done is done.
Moving on...

I looked at the pattern again and saw that these quarter triangles were perhaps a skill for the more advanced. They weren't integral to the pattern either. They ended up making to alternating strips under the main pattern and added appeal, but didn't define the pattern as a whole.
So, I re-engineered the pattern and make all the quarter triangles into half triangles.


I thought I could speed sew these and be done, but speed sewing is also another skill I haven't mastered. I'd say 3 out of 4 squares from each batch measured up, but there was always that one that was slightly off.

I did them all individually, obsessing over each part and I mastered about 2 rows!!

There are slight alignment issues, but it is way more accurate than any other one I have done before. I was high on the accomplishment and should have stopped at this point, but I didn't. I spent the next 2 hours trying to patch together the 3rd row and line it up with these two. It would not align! I suspect one of the ousted contestants snuck back into the mix and is ruining the straight-edge contestants. Needless to say, I haven't gone back to the third row in almost two days. I will, though, soon.....after intense therapy for the emotional scars.

The Day Of Do-Overs: Aligning the Stars

I think I left off on the last post trying to perfect the very complicated block pattern that I have chosen. My innate stubbornness has not let me throw in the towel on this. I understand that the pattern is advanced, but I have no problem trying and trying and developing new skills to achieve the desired look. I may end up with only a pillowcase at the end of this whole thing. I am burning up material like a crazy person. There have been a few things that I have been thinking about since I started this very difficult quilt. Let me get through some of them:

Mommy

My mom has been the greatest resource so far. She keeps almost everything and has always had a special space in her stuff for the crafter's life she has always wanted. I suspect if we won the Powerball, she'd just do art projects and crafts for the rest of her life. (Don't worry, Mom. If I win I'll make sure you have a house in the mountains just for your art and bunny rabbits.) Because of her ability to hang on to things I was able to keep the $14.00 in my bank account for another week.

The first thing she gave me was a sewing machine that had been calibrated!

So seductive...

In the morning, it looks just as sexy:



She also gave me a real, live ironing board. I had committed a huge crafters no-no when I padded the cutting mat with some towels and decided to iron on it. Now you can hang ten on the waves.


I am sure this will not do any good for the accuracy issues I am having. I do have a mini-mat though and I will use this.
Mom also had spray starch and a seam ripper, which I will now give a name to since it has become the one item that has saved crafters all over the world time and time again. Seam Ripper, you are now called "Superman".

SUPERMAN


Mom also suggested that I pin the corners together to eliminate the unevenness. We'll get to the results of the advice I was given at the end.

I was now excited to get back to work once acquiring all the shiny new supplies.


The Sayers of Nay

Obviously, sewing/quilting is not the area in which I excel. People always tell me to write more. Believe it or not, this blog was once hilarious. You can read for yourself on the left side of the screen by clicking on any of the links under "Best of Ann". However, for me to be funny, I have to be especially mad. Since 2009 I have found better ways to vent my anger than my blog. Some would call this abuse. I call it teaching. My blog doesn't come back five years later and thank me for being an inspiration. However, with the newfound impulse to make a quilt I found it necessary to write. Part of the reason is because my Facebook friends did not want a long-winded explanation of my failure to make it with a few yards of fabric. So, here it is. With pictures!

One of my closest friends replied to my status update with a link to Bed,Bath &Beyond. She also wanted to know if I drank Metamucil while quilting. My boyfriend, who is the loudest voice that I should start writing again, told me that I was feeling old because I was spending my days trying to get this quilt correct. Although, when I wanted to re-think the whole pattern, he slyly threw the "you never finish anything" guilt trip at me. I beat him up in my thoughts before marching over to the pattern and declaring war on its inaccurate name, "Chinese Puzzle (Easy)". EASY?!

The next day I told him I started the blog up and was writing entries about the quilt. He still hasn't read it. I tried to explain that writing isn't just something you do. It's the product of other things. If there are no pressing matters or desires to share things, why write? I have no urge to re-hash my day at work when I get home. I don't follow sports and I have a hard enough time finding ways to grade other people's writing to even start some of my own. I thought I would write fiction one day, but you still have to be selling a message or creating some kind of mystery or puzzle with a clear resolution to do that. You have to love your characters and want to play God of the universe if you aren't trying to hold a mirror up to it. I guess that need is quelled in my own classroom(universe).

Either way, writing about quilting is not writing about sewing machines. It's documenting the overcoming of a challenge. Fact or fiction, this is what makes for entertaining stuff whether you are writing it or reading it. So, here, in this blog you will witness either the success or the failure of one person who has a questionably psychotic drive to get one task done correctly: to sew fabric together to make one bigger piece of fabric!

The Issues

Yesterday I had cut and pressed and sewed on the new machine. The squares were much more accurate than my other attempts (with the exception of 3). Three squares didn't want to line up. Oh, I should mention that I did more math to be able to cut everything down more so I could have the best chances of being accurate this time - now that I was only focusing on one big block at a time instead of just cutting in bulk.

I watched some more videos of professionals and someone said that instead of rows, try making squares - this way lining up one block at a time will be easier.

This is where I started, with the 4 in the middle

I tried:


And tried and tried. I am posting the pics because they all look the same.

Then, I thought of the advice my mom said about pining the corners and I couldn't get the pin to stay, so I made a little stitch in the back to hold the mark. I looked GREAT!!!


See how lined up they are! I thought I did it until I sewed it.



Superman then lectured me on how this is how the last Superman lost this pointy part.

I cut away about three hours today to only find that everything is still not working. Am I still cutting inaccurate squares? How do accurate squares turn into inaccurate triangles? How do accurate triangles make for bad blocks? How much more OCD can I get before making one block takes an entire week?
I went to the Almighty Web for more solutions, but what do you even properly call this problem? I looked up "mismatched squares", "block assembly", etc. I know with search engines it's all about the terminology. My mother suggested I take a class. What nerve! I have the Internet and it is free. A class? With real humans? Does she even know who I am?

Anyway, I sense it is time for coffee and to relax before attempting this whole thing again!

Size matters

This morning I went to visit my mom. She showed me a picture of a quilt she made at a younger age than me. It was pristine - adding to my shame.

We talked about the possible causes for the drunken/blind person squares I was producing. We agreed that the kink was the stacking of fabric for the sake of rotary cutting in bulk. When you cut more than 2 layers, you risk slight imperfections in the layers. Here you can see what I mean. It may look slight, but when this rectangle needs to be turned into a square and then into a triangle and all those cuts are stacked, havoc can ensue.

I spent last night looking at some videos from the pros. The Missouri Quilting Company makes quilting look SO simple, which didn't add to my self esteem. In addition, I could see that my under 100$ Wal-Mart bought sewing machine was the jalopy next to the Ferrari of sewing machines these pros were using.

The solution I came upon for the botchy squares was to re-size the blocks. So, instead of a 12" block, I'll end up with something like a 10 or 11 inch block. It may shrink the center, but I can make up for it in border or I may have to settle for a full/twin-sized quilt.

I think part of the experience of learning is to be flexible and understand that sometimes mistakes are made, but they don't have to ruin everything. Changing the plan to adjust to new information or new strategies is a great quality to have. I am not disappointed that the quilt will not be queen sized. At the end of the day, I'll be doing cartwheels if it looks good and doesn't burst into flames when you use it.

Let's see if mom's advice helps. (It usually does)

Like toilet paper

So, instead of creating an entirely new blog to "litter the blogosphere" with, I am just going to add my new project to this old vehicle for sarcasm.

The young, bitter blogger has transformed into a elderly cat lady. It seems I have found harmony and have decided to disrupt that calm with the endeavor of quilting.

You may believe that this pastime is reserved for grannies and the feeble-minded, pack-rat hoarders of the backwoods, but I have discovered that this task is the marriage between extreme OCD, architecture, mathematical genius and incredible dexterity.

I thought I knew something about quilting because a while ago, I spent an entire year quilting my uncle's old concert tees together .

As you can see, there is nothing really uniform about the segments - I kind of just sewed everything together and hoped for the best - after backing every single shirt with jersey so they would all stretch the same.
It's been a few years now and the scars have healed over. I thought that a reasonable project I could do was do make the real deal. I was armed with a book my mother bought me and a pattern I liked. There are a lot of rules on quilterschache.com about stealing stuff - so I am telling you now, the block I am using comes from that site - click the link.

The first thing I learned in my journey was that I am still bad at math despite cramming for the GRE many years ago. Figuring out how much fabric I needed was difficult because of the way fabric is sold and because I did not use equations mixed with tangrams to get my numbers. I basically winged it - and had to go back to Jo Ann's three times. The last time I needed more fabric I was so embarrassed that I ordered it online. I don't know how many times I can tell the cutting lady that I suck at this sort of thing. The book AND the site afford you many tools to use to figure out how much you'll need, so of course, I estimated.

Anyway, step 1 was to cut.

After more math and heartbreak, I figured out that I would need 49 blocks to make a queen sized quilt. That meant cutting 98 strips of some fabric - for each color...one of them twice. They keep advising that you are exact, but fabric isn't exactly wood - it stretches and it behaves weird and sometimes I am like 1/8th off and it is no good. This is where the OCD can really be an advantage.

Oh, and before you ask, I am not hand-quilting. As it is, this will take me 6 months. I do know someone who did hand-quilt her own, but she is crazy. I can't tell if it was from quilting or if she was that way before...

So, four days later, I have all my pieces cut. Now comes the sewing. I immediately wasted a few squares on retarded things like sewing them on the wrong side or matching them up incorrectly. Once I got everything straight, it was midnight and I wasn't going to bed until 1 block of 49 was finished.


It was finished ...but disappointing.
As you can clearly see, things are mismatched and not aligned.

The back wasn't looking too hot either.


So,after a good night's rest, a LOT of coffee, a hot iron and my most stubborn qualities all riled up, I tried again.

I did these things differently:

I ironed everything
I cut uneven sides down to match before sewing
I made my 1/4 inch seam as scant as I could (that's craftspeak for I sewed along at a little less than 1/4 inch.)
I ironed, trimmed and measured before assembling the blocks into rows and then again before putting the rows together. The slight puckering you will see below is due to too much ironing and no starch. I will adjust for the next one.
So, here's the 2nd block.

There are still slight misalignments, but not as bad as the one before. This block also has the correct shape overall. (YAY!)
Here is the back:
I decided not to split the seams here. It was easier this way, but I am not sure if it is correct. It may account for the slight puckering. Either way, I am MUCH more pleased with the second block of 49!

At the very end, it should look like this according to quilterscache.com

If you have any tips, please share. I will incorporate them into the next block and you can see your own help hard at work.

See you on the next block.

"Too Much Blood in my Caffeine System"

I made the mistake of taking my brother to breakfast today. It was a botched obligation I traded in for some more time to spend on the couch with my lover. With full intentions of making it up to Scotty by way of Taco Bell, I made the arrangements for feeding him after work. When we got in the car, I, all of a sudden, had a hankering for eggs, bacon and those either burnt or frozen potatoes from The Pancake House around the block. Sure, it's expensive, the service sucks and my brother orders their most expensive meal PLUS extra sides every time be go, but I keep returning for the same reason every one returns there: they simply have the greatest coffee on earth. In fact, they have a banner with a giant golden lion sipping coffee on it. That lion is the caffeine equivalent to the Hypnotoad(all glory to...) One cup in and she offers me another. "Yes", I practically beg her through tears of immediate regret. But, oh, it is so the best thing ever. It also washes down the burnt potatoes quite well.

Fast forward 5 hours later and I am wishing I went for that 3 mile run I meant to get in before it got dark, right before I picked up my mail and spent three hours reading the National Geographic that arrived, and before I started watching Glee. Now it is too late to run, but my mind is springing. I have a fuckTON of reading to do so I don't fudge the details on the novel I am teaching, but I'd much rather kill zombies and behead the conjurer mage who guards the treasure at the back of the cave I am exploring in the game on my xbox I am in love with. I would also love to clean and make things smell pretty while formulating the most innovative and effective method for teaching vocabulary this side of Marzano. Wow. I feel/sound like my sister. Someone needs to make sure my pupils aren't floating in the whites of my eyes because I have strained them too much while explaining these things to you. Someone make sure I am not doing it right now.