hey look at this thing i made: XIII

So

*deep breath*

where were we then?

I have this vicious cycle. I will, for whatever reason, get it in my head to write something. Depending how that goes maybe I write more. This will go on for awhile before I write something that I think is just god awful. When that happens I come to the conclusion I'm a terrible writer and stop writing....until I get it in my head to write something again.

I think I've talked before on here about how I'm incapable of objectively judging any aspect of myself. It's probably more accurate to say that something just reallllllly needs to stand out for it to be apparent to me. In my writing this tends to mean I'll only acknowledge if something was especially good or especially terrible. That's probably the same reason I very rarely ever go back and read the things I write. Anyways, there's that.

Speaking of quirky character traits! I'm often (well, not as much anymore) oblivious to how my life experience differs from other peoples. An example I brought up the other day was how I didn't know for however long that a woman keeping her maiden name ISN'T normal. Since my mom did, I just assumed that was SOP, cause really, why wouldn't it be?

Another example, which seems more insane to have ever actually thought, is quilting. I had had it in my head that it was just a thing mothers did and they passed it on to their children. I really thought that that was the only way people learned how to quilt. Now, I didn't go around espousing this belief, but I held it in my head and I can remember the time, because we were sitting in the living room (or sun room? I have no idea what they call it) and my sister was talking about some sort of quilting program at a college. BOOM. Shattered my world.

I like to think this isn't as insane, since I did know other people whose moms quilted. Plus my grandma quilted to some extent and my aunt quilts quite a bit. In fact, they're having a quilt show! Sisters choice quilt show, is, I believe, the official title. Sisters choice eh? Psh, I can tell where I'M not wanted.

(gratuitous futurama quote)

Well screw them, I'll have my own quilt show, with blackjack and hookers, in fact, forget the quilt show!

Some of you might be quick to point out that I don't know how to quilt, which, would certainly inhibit my ability to enter a quilt show. Really though, when has not knowing how to do something ever stopped me before? Of course it probably wasn't realistic to think I could teach myself to quilt AND successfully make a quilt worth showing. The eureka moment came when I was reading an email from my uncle where he mentioned barn quilts, which is a thing I guess. Apparently all you really need to do is a make a thing and then attach quilt to the end and you can call it a, whatever, quilt. Stained glass quilt it is then.

To try and replicate the look of a quilt, I decided to make a bunch of blocks using the standard copper foil assembly method that all my other projects had featured, but then those would be assembled into the final piece using came (the stuff I used as a border on the last few). This would allow me to make the images in a way I was used to, but the rigidity of the came would allow for a cleaner looking finished product, more resembling a quilt.

I downloaded the program Electronic Quilt 5 (apparently it's very outdated) which served pretty well to help me rough out a concept. I decided to do a day and night theme.

Because of the way the program works I couldn't design the three blank squares (clouds and a tail to the comet) which tragically left them up to my drawering skills. The only thing really worth noting about this is how difficult the comet was to design for some reason. I for the life of me could not figure how to break up the circle to make it look like that. I ended up having to get out the ole sketchbook and draw it to see how it's supposed to look (for reference, all blocks are designed separately, so I couldn't just draw through all three squares on the screen).

The grid drawing there was to help me visualize how much came I needed to order.

I ended up going about this differently than most projects. Instead of doing all the steps in order, I made each block individually and pieced them together as I went.

It was interesting for me because I hadn't finished the entire design before starting on it, so the top half ended up being finished long before the rest. Anyways it came out like this:

I like it. Let's go quadrant by quadrant!

The sun was the first part that I designed. The general concept behind the piece as a whole was that each section of six squares would have one four block image and then two smaller things. I mentioned above that I couldn't draw the clouds in the EQ5 program. What I ended up doing was taking a circle (a teflon tape container to be specific) and then tracing it in an overlapping pattern. The sun was the first part of the piece finished and the clouds were just about the last thing finished.

The constellation power rankings looks like this:

1. Orion

2. The Big Dipper

3. All other constellations are for shit.

That would end up being a problem (more on that later). I had a similar problem drawing the moon that I had with the comet. Here it was a problem with getting the crescent shaped exactly how I wanted, not too bad tho.

The original plan called for a comet with two constellations underneath it. Then I consulted the constellation power rankings. Then I wept. Then I spent some time trying to come up with a different space thing I could stick down there. Then I said fuck it, I'm putting grass down there. I wasn't too happy about it, but I did like the idea of making it line up with the day (let's just jump to that).

The original plan was for this to be a sunflower. That was not practical so I ended up going with this tree. Originally the top four blocks were going to be the bottom four with no grass. I was going to do some birds for the top two blocks. I'd drawn them out and I felt it looked good, but this was at the same time I couldn't figure out what to do with the bottom night quadrant. When the best thing I could come up with was grass, I just went with it. I had wanted to do an animal on the grass and then it would be awake in one and asleep in the other. I had drawn that out as well when I remembered that these blocks are a little less than six inches on a side and it wasn't realistic to do the detail I could create on the computer in real life.

If you're wondering why there are lines coming out of the bottom of the leaves, it's because Hobby Lobby hates me. I had bought that blue glass there at the start of the project and for something like two months they couldn't stock more. The other stained glass store I goto didn't have any either and I wasn't going to try and order some. I don't throw out any glass scraps. If I deem a piece too small to be of future use, it goes in a bin. I ended up being so desperate, I put on the leather gloves and dug through there for every tiny scrap of that blue I could find. I ended up finding enough, but only if I cut those rectangles up into more bite size pieces.

Aside from that, I really was quite happy with how it all turned out. Which brings us to the quilt show.

I had neither the knowledge of how to find hookers nor the inclination to partake in services offered.

As far as the blackjack I had hired a guy to come over and deal. Everything was going great till I got dealt eights with the dealer showing six. I split of course and they each got dealt eights so I split again. Each of those got a three, so I doubled down winding up with two twenties, a nineteen and a seventeen. Dealer flips a ten, hits a five. I lost a thousand dollars on that hand and flipped the table.

This meant I had to find some other entries for my quilt show.

I said (and this is literally a word for word quote):

"Isn't that just colored paper stapled to a piece of wood?"

Bad idea. That guy was fucking pissed. We ended up going at it, but he had what I believe is referred to as a glass jaw.

I was ready to throw the guy out, cause I mean, that's a fucking taco bell wrapper. It occurred to me though that this would almost certainly be popular with the B/Nate Dogg set, so I went with it.

And then there was me. All in all a good day and I was glad to be a part of it.