The King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1

This year, I decided to use the Neutral Milk Hotel record In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as a starting point for some work. I was thinking about the Journal Quilt Project and how I'd like to try something similar. My start has been a little.. unsure, I guess.

There are eleven songs on the album, and I will focus on one song per month as my image/narrative resource. I'm not trying to totally decode the songwriter's [Jeff Mangum is his name] original intentions, or even really follow what I know he meant (via interviews and other research). This record means a lot of different things and takes me to a lot of different places mentally. It is crooked landscapes, half-smiles, stale bread, worry, ache, beautiful magic.. I have a huge mental list of things I associate here. It is impossible to explain. I put it on in my car and I can't take the CD out for the next three weeks. If I make it to my destination while the last song is on, I have to wait until it is over before I can get out.

Anyway. For everything it means to me, like I said, not a great start.
I only managed to eke out a handful of drawings, and most were very cartoony/prototypical. So. engh. (Some are here.)

One I did like was this:



So I redid it with my machine on some linen I dyed grey.



Details:




It's very similar in style to my Pop Shirt project (which remains woefully unfinished and in limbo, and Evan is going to hit me) - it's the same fabric (dyed different colors), black embroidery (this is machine, pop shirt was by hand).. It makes me want to revisit that plan and just take a big piece of fabric and cover it with drawings. I loooooove doing this type of thing..


Things learned:
-Feet are hard to stitch.
-Figure out a better way to stabilize.
-Spend less time thinking and more time just DOING.

I don't really know what to do with it now. January's over, and I am going to follow my rules and move on. If I do something I really like for the next month and finish early, maybe I'll revisit. Maybe it'll wait til December. Just a little drawing..

Diversion: SPARKLEHAMSTER.

Last year I got some Angelina Fibers and was doing some tests re using them with molds. The other day I came across a small pile of cut-off bits and scraps, and immediately had to iron them all together into one big sheet. Then I sewed a little hamster on it.



Since then I cut it into a little rectangle. Bill asked me to just satin stitch up the edges and give it to him so he can hang it somewhere. Hahaha.

A second bag.

I made the second version of the pleatness bag. It features corduroy with the metric system print and two different cottons I dyed in green and orange.



The fabrics here are much stronger than the ones I used in the other bag. I also added interfacing to the liner pieces for even more strength. It has been keeping its shape well. The original tutorial gives no seam allowances and skips over some other measurements that would have been helpful, so I just kind of went with what I had. It also never mentions any kind of trimming or anything.. I dunno. This time at least the top fit together.. it's STILL not entirely correct, but it's leagues ahead of the other one, since that one ended up not even closing! Oh, and I did a WAY better job of pleating this time.





I really wanted to make the liner out of all the same green cotton, but I just didn't have a big enough piece. I'd picked up the orange to do the pockets, but it ended up also being the bottom and the short sides. I like my pen holder! Dozens of pens and markers are always floating around my bags.. It was great when I was carrying a backpack, but now it just makes me look crazy. Haha.

There are still some things I need to fix, but overall I am pretty happy with this bag and have used it most of this week.