My Book

Hello!

The school year is now officially underway, which of course means that my brain is just about bubbling with equations and monomers and the Civil War and the present tense of Spanish verbs. I have never really been overwhelmed by school, because I genuinely like learning and gaining new knowledge. However, this year, we are three weeks in and there are days where I feel like I'm drowning in school-work, which is never good. So, last week, I decided to start a new, on-going project that would have no deadline and would serve no purpose other than to distract me from school and to give me an accessible creative outlet for the days where it all gets to be too much.

This is My Book, or My Book of Inspiration and Happy Thoughts. Basically, it's going to be a compilation of things that make me happy. For the outside cover, I took pages from a book of poetry I bought for $0.75 at the library (if you ever need books for a project, hit up your library they always have books for sale for really, really cheap) and used Mod Podge to glue them to the book's front and back cover. There are a few air bubbles, but really it isn't that bad and the Mod Podge also acts as a varnish so it's all nice and polished. 

For the inside cover I cut out a road map and glued it on to hide the mess of the book pages. 

I found a bunch of pictures that I've liked over the last few months on Tumblr, printed them out and made a collage across the two first few pages.They're pretty and they make me happy, so they fit. Over time I think I'll also add pictures of myself, my friends and family. I'm also going to have poems and quotes written in. The page after this one has the list of my recent music obsession, which I will link you at the end of this. 

If you want a fun, stress-relieving project, I suggest this. It was inspired by my journal for art class (yes, I'm finally taking an art class and it's amazing). You can get an 8.5x11 notebook at a local arts and crafts store for about $10 and everything else is either printed or thrifted, so it really doesn't cost much. The best part is that there are no rules and no deadline, it's basically a visual brain dump. It's a lot of fun. 

I hope you have a great week!

Here is the link to my music love: http://8tracks.com/deadsoulsx/look-how-the-autumn-leaves-fall

I'm back in the game

Hello!

How have you all been this summer?

I know I was gone away for a (really really) long time, but now I'm back and the good news is that I have had time to make a lot of cool things that I'm super excited to share with you guys.

The first is a huge project that I gave myself a stupidly short amount of time to do, but as it was a gift for a (relatively) newborn baby, I had a deadline.

I made a whole baby quilt. In about two weeks.

I didn't think it would be such a huge project (because I'm naive and also because I've never made a quilt before) but boy was I wrong. Wow, this was such a huge thing to get through.

Picking the fabric is obviously the first step and being the unorganized sewer that I am, I only had a vague idea of what I wanted. I knew it was going to be for a girl, so I thought "pink", but then I thought "I don't want to indulge the stereotypes that all presents for girls must be pink, so maybe gray" and then I realized that pink and gray is one of my favorite color combinations and hey, there you go, that's my color scheme. Then my mom and I started looking for fabric, which was a challenge in itself because it's surprisingly difficult to find gray fabric that is cute enough for a baby and pinks that are all in the same tone. Then we found elephants and I was sold, so the official theme for this blanket is pink, gray and elephants.

The actual sewing process was not hard so much as time consuming, it's all straight lines but when you have a quilt that's going to be nine squares by eleven, it takes a while. I'm still amazed I didn't mess up in the pattern. I actually based it off a quilt my mom made me when I was a baby. 

The batting was a battle, which I won, but it was all twisted and pulled and didn't fall into place correctly, but the mistake isn't visible so how much of a mistake is it really?

So it turned out kind of massive, and I can't really say the process went smoothly because I did spend a while pulling out stitches and then sewing things back up, but the result was, if I do say so myself, quite nice. I'm very proud of it, but I'm not sure I'll be making another quilt anytime soon. I'd never made one and I wanted to, now I have and I'm good. 

What really matters is that the gift was well-received (which it was) and that it will be put to good use (as you can see by this little cutie, it already has!). I'd say she's pretty happy with it, wouldn't you?

Hope you all had a fantastic summer and I look forward to sharing more projects with you this year!

- Blue Cat