Completed: 4th Terminus quilt

The quilt is done and has been out of the house for over a week. Success.

This is the first quilt I have "finished" the quilting for and put through the wash. Yikes, what a heart attack! I was not prepared for the state it came out of the wash in and almost burst into tears. Turns out A) quilt batting holds a fuck ton of water and B) light colored fabric is SUPER transparent when wet. Thankfully one of SF's little mini October heat waves helped shed the water and the fabric returned to it's opaque state upon drying. Those first couple moments though... All the track stitching was done in red and while I clipped the threads, I didn't trim them back as short as I should have. Which meant that veins of red creeped out from the tracks when it was wet and all the character portraits had spider webs of black thread behind them.

I'm shocked to say the quilting process was rather fun. And this is the first time I've abandoned the use of a frame and just quilted in my lap. Would not do so for the primary stitching lines that holds everything in place (yay for having a quilt frame for that!!) but for the "filler" stitching, it worked well. While I continue to swear that "the next time" I'm shipping the damn thing off to be machine quilted by professionals, I do find it to be quite appealing to add custom stitches specific to the quilt design. Used masking tape to help guide the lines, and that proved to be very useful. Have also used masking tape to guide applique sewing (because I suck at pinning), so that stuff is turning out to be a vital to have on hand.

The back of the quilt was more complicated than it needed to be/should have been. For some reason I thought "Wow, this is waaaay too nerdy looking! It needs a stealth mode where you can flip it over and it doesn't look so... silly." So I did some minor slap-dash squares in a variety of fabrics. The rushed sewing job (and non-cotton fabric types) meant that it didn't lay perfectly flat, which became most noticeable when the quilting chased down all those wrinkles and pinned them in place. Oh well. This will be yet another flaw lost in the sea of detailed-stuff-going-on. On the up side, the station stitching clearly shows through the back of the quilt which I find to be quite fetching. Makes the effort of hand stitching such details more worth it.

And now, don't make fun of me, I'll confess I've started a sample square as a proof-of-concept for next quilt*... Poor Adam was a bit sad to see the 4T one leave- it's one of the few I've made that was large enough to cover him. So we talked a bit and kicked around a very Adam-specific idea that I'm pretty excited about. And again it's overly complex, very specific, will take forever, and will probably require hand quilting... I'm so excited!!

* I have not forgotten that I've plans for another 4T quilt for another individual! But that one actually requires the game to end before I can start on it so this one is... like... an exceptionally complicated palate cleanser...

You can check out more photos over at the Flickr album.

4th Terminus Quilt aka Decision Fatigue

While snapshots of quilt progress have littered my Tumblr and it pops up frequently in conversations about what I'm doing, I apparently failed to blog about it here. Given that I finally started the quilting part this last week, I figure now's a good time to do so.

The project has been percolating in my brain for a while, not sure exactly how long. There were many motivators/reasons behind it:

• I was on the prowl for a new quilt project. I apparently need a very personal, focused reason to work on one (the Scrabble Board quilt and Pythagorean Theorem quilt remain unfinished- not abandoned but decidedly low low low priority)
• Nate said the game was going to end this year and I thought it was worth commemorating
• I've known about Spoonflower since 2008 and have just been waiting for the perfect project to come along so that I could try them out
• I love generating artwork for the games I play
• I've long desired to have more practice/reason to embroider phrases. My font is kinda' ugly, but whatever. Still learning, practice makes perfect.

Looking back over posts and emails, the timeline looks approximately like this:

• Late 2014, I get it into my head to do a 4T quilt featuring the transit map and the character silhouettes I've drawn
• Jan 21st 2015, pestered Nate till we got a revised/blessed/final take on the transit map. Posted to Tumblr.
• Early February 2015, pulled both Suko & Nate into the project for feedback/input. Good decision.
• Late March 2015, started designing first pair of custom prints. Posted to Tumblr
• Mid April 2015, designed final pair of prints.
• Late April 2015, decided to undertake the task of embroidering every chapter title for boarder. Posted to Tumblr.
• May 3rd 2015, first test yard of fabric arrives. So strange to see digital content brought into reality. Posted to Tumblr.
• May 28th 2015, bulk fabric order arrives! So much pretty, all of my choosing! Posted to Tumblr.
• May 31st 2015, cut and sewed the blocks together. Then settled into the long slog of embroidering all the chapter titles. Posted to Tumblr.
• July 29th, 2015, buckled down and did pile of work, most notably sewing down the transit line. Posted to Tumblr.
• August 21st 2015, finished back, slapped some batting between the piece, and started quilting! Verified that, yes, my stupid bulky quilting frame is actually exceptionally awesome/useful. Posted to Tumblr.

It has been a fun and educational process. It also has been extremely exhausting. Every fucking step along the way has been a decision point. Which fabric color to pair with each chapter title? Which color tones to use for the prints so they are visible but not too attention-grabbing? Which shade of red? Which shade of purple? How wide to make the lines? Which characters will stand next to each other? Which chapter titles will surround them?

This number of decisions and their continuous nature (as opposed to all being resolved at the start) differs greatly from my (admittedly little) quilting experience so far. Now that I'm onto the quilting bit, it feels as if a weight has been lifted. There are very few decisions left. Before me now is just the clear, uncomplicated work of stitching along lines that I have already decided upon. I remain happy, but am glad to have finally clear the worst of it.

The take aways from the project so far:

• Let it go. Just decide on something. Something is better than nothing.
• Spoonflower is great! Higher contrast produces better results.
• Wash away fabric pens were kinda' a let down. Wound up using mostly white charcoal art pencil to outline most my text
• Rotary cutters FTW. We already knew that. Never hurts to repeat great advice though. I finally upgraded to a super-large cutting mat. I feel like a grownup.
• Always buy more solid colored fabric than they think you'll need. It never hurts to have too much and it hurts A LOT to not have enough.
• I don't like the long-stitch/split stitch font I chose for my chapter titles. Next time I want a smaller back stitch for my text. (something to keep in mind for the Pythagorean Theorem quilt)
• I invested in those plasic perfect circles for my station dot applique. No regrets. They didn't turn out perfect, but that's my fault I think. Next time I need a smaller running stitch when basting around the edge, for the gather.
• Adam is a good sport for letting me litter so many craft supplies about the house for this, for so long. The drying rack has been in the TV room for several months now with the chapter titles and fabric prints draped over it.
• Learning how to make repeating patterns in Photoshop makes me happy.

It's just... really, really exciting to have an idea in my head spool out so damn slowly and yet stay as I envisioned it. It's just a collage quilt, but it's a project I'm proud of. Few endeavors strain and stretch my creativity in so many different ways, it's a feeling I highly value.

Worken' on things

If I try hard, I might be able to finish this quilt before Thanksgiving, keeping it under a year of work. Am excited to try the idea of laying down masking tape as guide lines when I get to the actual quilting portion.

Been seeing a lot of people lately, doing a lot of things. This is good. Behind me is pizza, soap making, pretzel making, dinner cooking, and gaming. Ahead of me is archery, gaming, and hopefully more dinner cooking. I have finally cooked a meal with meat, I feel so proud of myself. Want to try it again. Thanks, Hannibal, for showing me the way!

Got a lot of things going on at work. I hope this is a good thing. Learning more things. Working a bit on things that I actually use daily in my not-work life. Trying to be a good person and actually follow through with quality documentation and faster email responses. It's hard. Being lazy is way easier. Shout-out to my awesome manager who leads via good example on those fronts.

One of the problems about work going well though is that it makes side code projects hard to do. I've been really wanting to work with WebGL but can't seem to find the energy after a day of work-- and weekends are meant to be spent entirely outside, in my opinion. I got a Cardboard headset from unofficialcardboard.com and haven't yet made something for it.

So instead of coding I've been finding myself drawing a lot. The morning doodles have decreased in number due to poor sleep... but on the other hand, when I do doodle half the time I've got crazy dream inspiration. Drawing while on a flight remains solid as well-- I made some progress trying to draw the character Hayley on a recent short flight. Dr Sketchy's this month also went quite well.

The 4th Terminus game has been going quite well. Playing Monster Hearts was interesting. Winning at Tigris & Euphrates and losing at Glass Road was fun and makes me sad that we don't play more board games.

March marched by...

Sheesh, March 26th already? And only 55 minutes of it left... Been a busy month. First I went to Iceland. But only for three and a half days. Then I came back. My summary: "Imagine Hawaii. Then take a butter knife and scrape off all the dirt and plants and stuff. Then cover it with snow. That's what I felt Iceland looked like."

I switched teams at work. I am now officially on the API team at Rdio. My brain already feels happier. Am still learning what this new position means for me overall, but at least I'm getting the chance to learn iOS and Android. And writing in so many different languages that are NOT JavaScript. My brain! My brain, it rejoices!

Then I went to Lumi Island for a weekend with Adam (and Adam's friend & his girlfriend). It's always sad visiting Seattle when there's good weather because I get all sad about having left... No Internet access while out there so I brought some yarn.

Now I'm hanging out at home while Adam is in Seattle for a bit. Realized that I, an oh-shit-how-is-this-possible 30 year old, am still scared of the dark and monsters in the dark at times... There was a possum outside last night upsetting the cat who upset me and everything was horrible. And I was scared of the dark. Luckily I have a machete so I could take some comfort in that... Duck does not have a machete and expressed his upset by vomiting. A lot. A little bit on my craft supplies in the TV room that are strewn about. There are few joys when the boyfriend is absent, but craft supplies EVERYWHERE is definitely one of them. (until cat vomit) On a whim, I bought an Oculus Rift dev kit what will ship "some time around July". Am excited.

Another Academie of Magic session took place- in particular my character Olivia's finale. Tears, destruction, guilt, regret, wrath. Just how I like my character arcs to end. Really wish I had a sketch ready to post from that session... Spent this evening cleaning up my basement craft-room & finishing up new green monster instead... So many interest, so little time!

Soon I will fly to Illinois for a long weekend to represent Rdio at HackIllinois.

Clearly I need to post more frequently to avoid these types of long list-y posts.... I apologize.

Finding Time

The year is almost over. I appreciate the time I've had recently to spend with my family, friends, crafts, and by myself.

It seems like nearly every day this month had some scheduled activity. Hopefully I'll feel like writing more about it later.

Just wanted to share a fun shot from this afternoon. Sitting in a sunny front room, listening to some great music* and sewing whatever the heck I felt like sewing.

My two current [active] projects are Elodie from the game Long Live The Queen and the scrap fabric quilt planned since Thanksgiving. Turns out my mother made me an amazing quilt for Christmas out of most of the fabric I was scrapping!

I spent all Monday sipping tea, sniffling due to a cold, and cutting 2.5" x 2.5" squares. It was fabulously calming after such a hectic month. When my mother got home from work both eyebrows rose rather dramatically and she asked if I "saw anything I liked". This is amusing because I knew she had made aprons for both my sisters and my sister's roommate. I assumed perhaps I might have been getting an apron too. HA! I love that when the youngest sister arrived home she bee-lined to the fabric pile I was working with. "Wow! Am I getting something? This looks like my kind of fabric!" she exclaimed right away, picking out the crumpled backing fabric for her apron. It was this horrid print of off-white/vaguely yellow cotton with light blue stripes on it. Very prairie kitchen-esque. It's amusing to know what you love and to find out that others know it too. For the record, the quilt's colors are spot on for me. Muted browns and blues, rusty reds, a pinch of gold, and a dash of black.

Other things to cover soon: Christmas cookie swap! Top books & music from this year. Recently watched movie reviews. Shareable code from my last work hackday.

* Apparently everything Lorde does is amazing.

Also listened to: http://asoftmurmur.com/?v=051500000503

Not-Work at Work

Work, the location, should be somewhere you enjoy going. I find working at home to be too distracting (or rather, distraction to be too accessible) but a dull workspace makes me depressed. You can't control your coworkers (for good or bad) but as long as you don't work for crazy dictators *coughcoughAcuituscoughcough* you can make your space into what you need it. And I need it to be "interesting".

One of my coworkers was super awesome and ordered a box of 36 mixed succulents from Amazon. He then distributed one to each member of the team and then other random awesome devs around the office. This made me happy. My friend Suko was awesome and used her Google-fu to sleuth out that the plant I got was a gasteria disticha.

It took me some time, but I eventually pulled together a teacup monster to house my new little green companion. I've named it Gretel after a book character I'm currently enjoying. Turns out Dremeling through cups is a bitch. Had to break it up over the course of several nights, so horrible was the sound and so tedious the grind/cooldown cycle. The legs didn't really turn out the way I wanted-- initially had hoped for a more realistic clay/resin type of leg... but I had to settle since I'm actually quite bad at sculpture. I'm not that dissatisfied with how these turned out. Adam pointed out they were rather elephant like, which makes me smile. I still have 2 more teacups so I might take another stab at it...eventually. Once my ears stop bleeding- ugh.

Another thing I do at work some times that makes me happy is bake. I think I've mentioned we have a fantastic oven there. Nice little well-stocked kitchen as well. The Friday before my vacation (you know, the day when it's near impossible to focus on work) I baked some bread at work that I made from scratch. In the office. Working somewhere that allows for such sillyness makes me extremely happy. I didn't waste *too* much time doing it and those who sampled the results seemed very pleased. It was one of the best loafs I've made in a long time.

I chopped up some strawberries and mixed them in with a normal batch of bread... which resulted in ridiculously wet dough. It was quite difficult to work with, I had to keep adding flour, and took over half an hour to work into a reasonable state. After its first rise (which went perfectly) I spread it out, laid down more slices of strawberries, honey, and M&Ms, then rolled it up. Pushed it into a bread tin, waited for the second rise (also nice), and then into the oven. So good. SO GOOD.

Coding with the aroma of baked goods filling the office is a good way to spend an afternoon.

Yay

Fun with work

I finally finished a new little monster. His mouth is a binder clip, one of those large ones, and he looks quite dashing on my desk. He holds several of my business cards for me for easy access. I have business cards now because I went to FluentConf! Network network network!

I enjoyed the conference and the people I met there. Not sure if it quite lines up with where I am right now, technical skill wise... But I worry that a more advanced conference might leave me in the dust. Makes me miss college a little.

Enjoyed hearing about things that are coming down the road (ECMAScript 6, Data Parallelism) and some things that are here right now (Content Security Policy, some programming concepts). Esprima is magic. Paul Irish is a stupidly good speaker. There were lots of women attending and presenting.

Dr. Sketchy's this week was fun but I was totally not in the right mental space for it. Not a single scan-worthy sketch. I was rocken' my doodles of the speakers at the conference though. I only failed to sketch two of the sessions I attended. You can see the full set here

Tomorrow is my second Hack Day at work and I'm excited. Am not certain which little project I'm going to do, perhaps several. There's a nice oven at work with which I've baked bread and cookies so far. Someone else used the stovetop to make delicious... somethings. The sense of community cooking fosters is extremely pleasant. I'm hoping to bring more dough in tomorrow.

Tomorrow is also Friday Tie-Day.

Scattered Focus

I keep starting things and then not quite finishing them. Or not doing that great of job if I get close enough to pretend to be done. I can't tell if it's the result of this general anxiety I've been feeling recently or the cause of it. Let's start with the positive and work my way down. Made some not-horrible bread recently and shared it at work. I let it raise too long and it sort of deflated a bit. I also didn't make as much as I had wished. Alas. Anyway- I called it Vdio Bread because it shares the color scheme of our recent product at work. The black is from the ever wonderful squid ink and the yellow from turmeric which was an interesting and new (to me) flavor. I also threw in a handful of other things but in the end the overall flavor was very mild. I wished both the color and the zing of the flavors was a bit stronger.

My sister gifted me this rad raptor particle board "skeleton" thing. I've never assembled one of them before (Adam comments he did a number of them in his youth) and it was a lot of fun. Hard not to be somewhat downed by following a pre-fab thing though... if only I had my scroll saw here! I'm hoping to put it in the back yard and entice my pea sproutlings to grow up/around it. Sadly my sproutlings have sprouted and passed their peek. Am really not in my gardening grove this year, despite my wishes.

The dino bones reminded me of my sister and spurred me on to finally make use of the scraps from her Christmas quilt. I came up one square short and made the most of it. I'm saddened that it took me all of an afternoon to do this piece work and that several days later it still sits in my basement, with no backing. We have company coming in two weekends so hopefully it'll be done by then to spruce up the basement, where they are staying. My first basement guests! (sister Lindsey doesn't count)

One of the reasons I'm having difficulty focusing is probably in part due the fantastic weather. It has been super nice lately (though today, Tuesday, the streak has been broken). This weekend I finally figured out how to mesh my desire to craft and my desire to enjoy the outdoors. Here you can see my diversions in the sun- the hammock, my camera tripod, and my sewing machine. All happily inhabiting our fantastic private back porch.

The tripod is because I've got a nagging urge to do some animation. Why? I don't know. I'm doing sewing projects, gardening projects, cooking projects... clearly what I need now is something else shinny to distract me. I'm not even good/trained at animating so why I think I should even try is beyond me.

Aaaaaanyway, I picked up some velum paper from Office Max and found that my hole punch made perfectly sized holes for some bullet casings I possess. (finding that out was an odd adventure through the basement). With the paper cut down and the casings in place it makes for a perfect flip book that can be reshuffled as needed. My Eadweard Muybridge: The Human and Animal Locomotion Photographs book also proved key to the process. And by key, I mean I basically copied one of the sets directly.