Forgotten - Fabric pumpkins

I forgot a project.  I can't believe I forgot.

Perhaps because it wasn't something I did solely by myself.

Perhaps because I got the idea, and the fabric, so long ago, and then it sat there, year after year, waiting for the chance to become alive.

Anyway,  here's what I did.  I made pumpkins.  I made four large felt pumpkins.  I had bought the fabric when a local fabric store went out of business.  It was one of those sales where, at first, everything is 10% off, then 20%, and so on.  When it got to the fifty, sixty, and seventy percent reduction, I was lured in by the sale-fabric fumes, and  purchased a number of items, most of which I have entirely forgotten about.

The five or six yards of bright orange and yellow felt that I had bought to make pumpkins lived in a laundry basket in the bottom of the closet in the craft/sewing room for lo-these-many-years, and I finally got it out, cut out wedges, sewed them together, and, wow, pumpkins.

Each pumpkin is made up of eight wedges, and each wedge needed to be about four times longer than it was wide.  And each wedge needed to taper at each end to a point, with a forty-five degree angle at the top, (8 times 45 = 360), although I have to admit I didn't figure that out until I had all the pieces cut out, and sewed together, and it was a bit wonky on the top and bottom where the eight wedges met.  But what pumpkin is perfectly formed anyway.

I managed to think it through, and leave one seam unsewn for most of it's length, just sewing at the very tippy top and very tippy bottom.  Then I sewed on buttons, and made loops for button holes, so that the pumpkins could be stuffed with old plastic bags, old clothing, smaller sofa pillows, blankets, or whatever there is lying around the house.  After Halloween, the pumpkins are then unstuffed, and stored until the next year perfectly flat, and not taking up nearly as much room as they would have stuffed.

I figured my four and six year old grandsons would be delighted to play with these pumpkins.  That was, as I said before, a number of years ago, and it turns out that thirteen and fifteen year old grandsons are not nearly as excited by stuffing pumpkins with whatever they could find, adding faces with smaller pieces of felt, and organizing a display of these pumpkins.

Fortunately, (for me at least) seven year old grandsons are still interested in such items.  One out of three isn't bad.

[Aside.  This is one of the reasons it is so frustrating to not get around to doing things that I want to do.  Children grow.  I won't be able to make a dinosaur sweater for a five-year-old, or cute bunny slippers for a toddler, etc.  On the other hand, there are always great-grandchildren.  Better get started right NOW.  The next ten or twenty years are apt to slip by as fast as the last ten, and I'll be late again.]

Pumpkins, one with sad face on left, and one with monster face on right.  Sign says,
"Now he's worried because his friend's in jail."  In the picture below, sign had changed it to,
"Now he's not worried because his friend's not in jail."

Hope your pumpkins are stuffed with love all year round.

Halfway Point Report

Halfway report.

Projects:  25 (not too off track)  Blog posts: 18 (way behind)

Project update:

13-24:  Twelve Fabric postcards.  4" by 6" pictures created with fabric ironed onto other fabric.   The first four or five were just one or two fabric motifs, cut out and ironed onto a background fabric.  Then I got going, and really did some planning, organizing, embellishing, and finishing, to make a little work of art (or work of craft- I'm not sure how artistic they are, even now.)

25:  Quilt top with floral pieced curves.  I call this one "Learning Curve".  I saw a picture from a national quilt show, and liked the quilt except for the colors.  "How did the artist DO that?" I asked myself.  Perhaps, I wondered, if you take six fat quarters, cut them just so (curved), shuffle and sew them back together, then cut them again (more curves), reshuffle, and again sew together, you (I mean me, of course, as I am talking to myself) could get something like that.  So I tried it.  And I learned.  Don't cut the pieces all the same size.  Don't shuffle four or five piles in order, and one of them out of order. And, for heavens sake, DO NOT iron the pieces while they are cut apart in step five as it will distort the shapes.  And this is clearly NOT the way the original quilt was made.  But I like it.

The piece is wonky.  My grandson agreed with my assessment, that the individual blocks needed frames.  I put on frames  (sashing) for each block as I sewed the blocks together, added a couple of borders (all with stash fabrics, double bonus points) and am ready to get out batting and backing and quilt it.

I like it!

I still don't know if it is "art" or "quality" or just a fun thing to throw over one's knees on a cold day, but that's fine, isn't it.

Postscript.  In a previous post, I discussed blockage, and asked myself why I wasn't able to get on with a particular quilt.  I am happy to say that I did get the borders on, I created a backing, I layered the backing and batting, and I am quilting it.  Ah, this is the fun part.  And the light at the end of the tunnel is very bright.

Blog Post Update:

Don't bother to read further, dear reader.  You will be bored.

I think podcasters who apologize about being too busy to podcast are silly.  I want to write to them (many of the podcasts I have read have had an apologetic episode about their busy lives, and why they didn't podcast), and say, "It's okay, dearie.  We like to hear from you, and if it is important enough, you'll podcast.  We'll understand, and - for most podcasts - we'll miss you, but get on with the podcast.  Skip the apologies, okay!"

The blog posts have not been kept up to date, since I haven't known what to say.  I have been struggling with "what is art", "do I care",  "what exactly do I want to do with the rest of my life (which starts today, amazingly), and have not wanted to turn this into a complaint-fest or "woe is me" blog.

I'll start with the last item.  Is my goal to become a known artist, to make money with art, or to just fool around and fill in time until I die?   What am I trying to accomplish?  and why?  What does it all mean!!.  You have probably heard by now that it takes 10,000 hours (or five years of full time work, at 40 hours per week 50 weeks a year) to become an expert.  I could become an expert quilt-maker, an expert knitter, an expert spinner, an expert designer, or some other expert.   Do I want to become an expert?  Is that even my goal, or do I want to dabble in lots of things, make postcards, quilt quilts, spin some yarn, knit hats and cardigans, bake cookies, work crossword puzzles (any maybe learn to create them), dye fiber, take classes, visit some cool museums, walk in the woods, live in England for a month, well, the list goes on and on (and onnnnnnnnnn).  Or do I want to become an expert in one area, and dabble in the other things in my spare time?

And do I have to decide now?

I haven't decided.  I haven't even decided if I need to decide right now.

As to whether I care, I have been thinking about it enough to respond, apparently I do.  And here's why.  I am having trouble with organizing my day so that I feel that I am completing what needs to be done.  Without deadlines, without the threat of losing my job, without a schedule imposed from without, suddenly "someday" is now, or could be.  "Someday" I want to knit hats for the grandchildren, someday I want to visit all fifty states, someday I want to learn to spin nettle.  Picking one thing to work on this hour (or minute) means I can't be doing something else in that same hour or minute, though.

See, all of this is so obvious, does it really need to be said.?  At least in this blog.  Aren't you, dear reader, bored silly by now?

I will continue anyway.  You don't have to continue reading.  Check in next blog entry to see if I have resolved anything, or gone off in an entirely different direction.

Anyway, if I spend a day in my pj's, curled up on the couch working crosswords, and napping in midafternoon, at bedtime I am apt tell myself. "Self,  you have really wasted today.  Do better tomorrow."  It doesn't take many days like this (about .7 if you want the truth) to get myself really upset and cross with myself.  "You could have been working on that quilt," I yell mentally, "You could have cleaned up the garage.  You could have dyed that yellow yarn.  You could have made bread, and soup, and planted a garden, knitted a sweater, and GOT SOMETHING DONE."

I'm not very good at defending myself against this inner critic, since she is absolutely correct.  And it's not even that I didn't want to do those things.  I did.   I do.  But those other choices involved  throwing off the blanket that covers my legs, getting up off the couch, finding my shoes or slippers (one of which has wondered off in search of adventure), organizing my thoughts to plan the steps I need to take. . . . Oh, that's the problem, or one of them.  I am busy solving crossword puzzles, and a five letter word for minds is nagging at me, leaving little brainpower for thinking of what needs to be done with what and where.  Just deciding what items in my vast to-do list are the most important right now, takes (FILL IN HERE).

Here is what I am doing.

1)  Each week I note the five most important items to accomplish this week. (works moderately well if I do it)
2)  I've started leaving the current project in a state of readiness to begin the next step when i must quit for the day.  (too soon to tell)
3)  There is no three.  There must be other things I can do.

I think, maybe, once this year is over, I will take a class in art.  All those big universities with large art departments must surely have a professor or two who knows what art is, and how to recognize it.

So I hope you find yourself with very few unanswered questions, and lots of finished things to enjoy.