miscellany

this week in addition to getting almost all of the pieces cut out i had some additional stuff i had to get done in the studio.  ethan's work jeans were on their last leg, i.e. i didn't want to patch the holes anymore, so we went up to mood and got some denim and i made him a new pair of jeans.  i've made major leaps in my learning how to make jeans since the first pair i did earlier this year.

it's about that time of year that it's getting cooler and we got some new fabric from yoder's when we were back in indiana, so i'm going to make a couple new shirts and a new pair of jeans for me soon.  i'm going to do a couple clothing posts, and go into more detail,  a little later on.

also, my cousin is getting married and she requested a special gift from me.  in lieu of a traditional sign-in book at the wedding she wanted a tree where everyone could sign their name on a leaf.  so it was off to the art supply store to get some paper, and time to dust off those painting skills.  i did it in watercolor and colored pencil as i thought this would look nice, be the easiest thing for people to write on,  and not be too crazy to make on my end.

and last but not least, the announcement cards for a show that i'm in arrived!  the people at the rocky mountain quilt museum are hosting the traveling exhibit: "stars! a study of 19th century star quilts by the american quilt study group" and thought it would be interesting to do a show of contemporary star quilts to run concurrently.  great idea! and they asked me to be in it!  i'll be showing phobos, so if you're in the boulder, colorado area october 31-january 21, check it out!

new bookshelves

those of you who know me IRL know that i'm a bit of a "jack of all trades/master of none" type of guy.  i've been making my own furniture since college and have worked in woodshops and made furniture for friends here and there for about 10 years now.  ethan is a reader which means we've got lots of books.  in the hallway we had a mixture of a bookshelf left by an old roommate, one given by a friend when she was moving and a couple that i had made previously.  it always looked like a mess, so it was time for new ones.

the timing of making furniture is key for me.  i've been waiting about a month to do it.  because i don't have access to a woodshop, i make all the furniture on the patio which means the stars have to align to give me good weather during the days that i have off from work.  finally it happened last week.

i've been working at a vintage furniture shop called repop where they sell lots of mid-century modern tables and credenzas, chairs, etc, and i think the aesthetic is rubbing off a little bit.  i grew up with my dad making furniture and he was really influenced by minimal shaker design, so i've always been drawn to that, but i thought i'd take some tips from the 50's this time.

here's the plans for the new bookshelves including the book dimensions, wood list, and cut list.  i'm making 2 of them.

day 1&2: get the wood, make all the cuts and glue up anything that needs gluing.  the sides are made from 1"x12"x8' pine boards.  everything's pine because it's cheap and readily available.  the bottoms of the shelves are a little wider than 12", so i had to glue on a little bit more wood to accommodate the larger books we have.  on day 2 it rained, but luckily i could just continue gluing everything inside.

day 3: once all the boards that were glued together are dry, everything needs to be sanded down.  after that, everything gets screwed together.  i decided to just leave the screws exposed, because hiding them (or covering them with wood putty and sanding them flush) would add an extra day to the whole process.

next comes the stain.  even though most of the other cabinets in our place are lighter finishes, ethan and i like the look of darker stained wood.

day 4:  when the stain has dried overnight it's time for the polyurethane.  i use an acrylic based poly because it dries in a couple of hours which means you can put on more coats in a shorter amount of time, and it stinks less than the oil based stuff.  i usually like to get at least 3 coats of poly on, but 2 will do for these guys.  here's some details of the shelves.  they taper slightly from the top to the bottom with a slight ledge in the center.  i put legs on them because i love the way nice minimal legs gives the furniture a more streamlined look.  i just went to the hardware store and bought 6" plumbers pipe and flanges that screw into the underside.  (i ran out of stain, so the undersides didn't get stained)

and there we go!  i left them outdoors for a couple more days because even though it's acrylic poly, they still smell like shit for a while.  it's hard to get a good angle because they're in a narrow hallway, but here's the front of one and a little piece of the second one.  (nice photobomb from george!)

it's cuttin' time

so, i know i've said before that my opaque projector is my secret weapon when it comes to quilting tools, but i do have a few more tricks up my sleeve.

once all of the paper pieces are cut out the next step is to trace them all onto their respective fabrics.  because all the pieces are crazy shapes and most are going onto grided plaid fabrics, tracing them would normally be a nightmare.  but, i've found that simple contact paper is indispensable.  what i do is just cut a piece about a foot and a half long, peel off the paper backing and tape it down to my table with the sticky side up.  (it totally looks like i only have 3 finger in this photo!)

that way i can lay the fabric onto that and trace the pieces without the fabric constantly warping and moving around on me.  it keeps the pattern on the fabric straight, evens out any wrinkles, and gives a nice flat surface to trace on.

depending on the shade of the fabric i use either a black or white washable fabric pencil.  these work the best for me.  i've used the blue washable markers, but the tips wear down easily, can be hard to see on certain colors and patterns, and the ink runs out pretty fast.

once everything's traced on the fabric i start cutting the pieces out.  to get the seam allowance i just eyeball about a quarter of an inch.  it would be crazy if i tried to draw on seam allowances for all the pieces.  because the lines are drawn on and usually easy to match up when i'm sewing the pieces together, as long as i have some fabric on the edges it doesn't matter if it's exactly 1/4".

my other other secret weapon is my pinking shears.  normally for concave curves in sewing you have to cut a bunch of notches so that when you press it the seams will lay flat and the fabric on the wrong side doesn't bunch up.  again, because of the volume of pieces that i'm cutting out i had to figure out a better way.  i've found that if i just hit all the concave edges with the pinking shears right up to the line it allows the fabric enough give to lay flat when it's pressed.  it's like adding tons of notches with one stroke of cutting.

so here's all the red pieces cut out and ready to go.  now onto the 415 other pieces that need to be cut out.  (like i said, this is not my favorite part)

atlantis attic

doing the quilts the way i do, thrift shops are vital.  atlantis attic  is the main thrift shop i go to.  it used to be on s1st and marcy as atlantis basement, but moved a few years ago.  this is place is so big it has (usually) become my one stop shop for all the fabric i need.

the place is cavernous and has basically anything you might need x20 which is great when you go in needing to match a color of fabric to the color of the gases surrounding a nebula.

there's tons of rows of button down shirts (my medium of choice) and it seems like every time i go in there they've moved half of them to a different section of the store.

of course, they've also got t-shirts, sweaters, shoes, belts, anything else you're likely to find at a thrift store, but men's button down shirts are my main focus.

the prices are pretty average for the neighborhood.  shirts go for between $7 and $10, pants from around $10 to $15.  i don't really use the heavier pants fabric in the quilts, but i was using them a lot when i was making bike hats for b's bikes.

luke haynes stopped by my studio the other day and we bro'd out about quilting for a while.  he's based on the west coast and he was telling me about a goodwill near where he lives where you can buy clothes by the pound.  amazing.  so jealous.  takes me back to high school where at the value village you could buy clothes for a buck or two.  ah, the good old days.

pieces

after the pattern is color coded i go through all of the fabric i already have and see what matches up.  although it seems like i don't have that much (this image is my whole shirt stash) this bunch has lasted me for most of the quilts with only a few additions for each quilt.  sometimes i'll need a color (or shirt) for just one or two pieces.  if you look at the detail shots of all the quilts you'll actually see the same shirts being used throughout.

side note:  i had to do a wide shot here to include one of my prized possessions: the classic queen II album.  side note to my side note:  monday 9/5 was freddy for a day.  i was woefully unaware of this (especially since queen is my favorite band).  every year on freddy mercury's birthday people all around the world don fake mustaches and freddy inspired costumes!!! uh, YES!  i'll be better prepared for next year!

anyway, the more and more quilts i do i find i need less and less new fabric.  for this quilt i actually only needed 3 new shirts (i am always on the look out for more black shirts, so i don't really count those).  one of the colors i needed was the dark orange for the backs of the energy collectors.  i had some left over fabric from the original quilt, and low and behold, i actually found the same shirt!  it helps when you  are using shirts from gap and american eagle and big brands because you can usually find multiples.

once i get the shirts home i take all the new shirts apart.  this image isn't to scale, but you can see that you actually get quite a bit of fabric out of just one shirt.  i love xxl shirts the best obviously.  the cuffs and collars come off as do any pockets.  if the yoke is big enough i'll save it, but usually they're too small.

now that i'm making my own clothes more often, i've started saving all the buttons off the shirts too.  ethan especially likes it when i get the black wool naval shirts because he can steal all the cool buttons with anchors on them for his shirts.

here's the final pile of fabric that i'll be using for v838 v2 with the matched up color coding.  (click on any image to enlarge)

next up is cutting up the pattern.  this seems so simple (and it's definitely not hard work) but for some reason i still don't understand why this always takes like 3 hours!

and here we go.  this is all of the pieces separated into their respective color coded piles.  turns out there's approx. 420 pieces (dude).  plus, there'll be more with all of the ships that i'll applique on later.  next up is tracing all the pieces onto the fabric and cutting everything out.  (i.e. the WORST part).

new flag

"hurricane" irene left the nyc metropolitan area relatively unscathed, except when i went out the next morning she had taken a big chunk of my flag with her.  it was getting to be about time for a new flag anyway, so here we go.

this time i wanted to try a couple of things differently.  i had been using broadcloth from the fabric barn that was a cotton rayon blend, and i wanted to try it with 100% cotton.  also, as the flags age (i have 4) and tatter, they tend to tatter in a straight line or at a slight curve--never jagged like the pirate flags in the movies, so i decided to cut the black fabric on the bias as an experiment to see how it will fray.

this time i'm also doing the seams a little differently.  i don't know what this seam is called, but i learned it when making jeans--it's the same seam that runs along the inside of your pant legs.  you just press down a little bit on each piece and fold them under each other.  it takes a little bit of work, but the result is a nice clean finish.

i always add a strip of cotton duck canvas along the edge to give it a little rigidity and to help stabilize the grommets.

bam!  here's the finished flag.  one of the older ones is hanging on the wall in my studio, so i just took a wider shot to show you the contrast.  (they're actually the same size--the perspective is weird).

i've had my own pirate flag up at every place i've lived since college in chicago.  i was working for a theater company at the time and i had someone in the costume department make it for me.  in the original one the design was actually flipped.  i found this old slide from back then with photos of me and the flag claiming municipal buildings around chicago as my own.

i love having my own flag (this confuses a lot of people) and always encourage people to make their own.

making the pattern part II

once the basic parts are projected onto the brown paper i start adding in detail.  the rough grid shape i projected onto the paper was just to get the perspective lines for the energy panels, they're actually going to be octagonal.  next, i add on the energy storage containers on the back of each panel (the circles) and add in explosions and draw in the lines to connect the panels--which i'm going to do with embroidery.

because perspective plays a big role in this overall image i'm going to try to play that up in the ships themselves.  basically there'll be small ships  centering around the top right  part of the energy collectors (the area furthest away from the viewer), and a medium sized ships throughout most of the rest of the image.  after i added in all of those guys i still needed some ships that were much closer to the viewer to emphasize the perspective, so i made a couple big ones.

when i'm happy with the way the overall pattern is shaping up i trace over all the pencil lines in sharpie to make them permanent and easier to see.  the next step is to start to color code all of the different pieces. i don't really have any fabrics in mind at this point, i'm just trying to focus on all the gradations of colors that i'm going to need in the end.

thought i'd just throw in this shot of what my table looks like during this whole process.  i should really buy stock in crayola.

once everything is color coded i go in and divide all of the big chunks up into smaller pieces for ease in fabric conservation and construction, then i number all of the pieces.  the numbering isn't necessarily to actually count the pieces, but for two other reasons.  i divide the whole pattern into quarters.  in section A i start at 1 and number until the end.  in section B i start at 200.  section C at 300, etc.  this helps so that after everything is cut out and i'm putting the pieces back into their respective section piles i know that if the number starts with 3 it goes in the C pile, and i don't have to stop and think if piece 264 goes in A or B.  don't know if that makes sense, but it helps me out a lot.  the numbering also helps when i'm reassembling the "puzzle", like numbers will be together and i don't have to constantly keep referring to the pattern.

 so, here's the final pattern for attack on the v838 energy collectors V2.  (click to enlarge)  i'm pretty excited about it.  i think just v838 is going to be hand quilted and the rest machine done.  the medium sized and small ships and the circles on the backs of the energy panels are going to be appliqued on.  i've been watching a lot of embroidery videos because i really want to do a lot of detail work with embroidery on this one.

last, but not least, here's the key for all of the marker colors.  now i'll go through all the fabric i have and match things up and head out to the thrift store to fill in the gaps.