Bug Mugs

So a Boston-based bicycle shop owner commissioned me to make some mugs - to try to sell in said shop. Coffee mugs in a bicycle shop? I could work with this: Their team mascot is the cockroach, every time I've watched a race or looked at pictures the cyclists are covered in mud...

The result is something I would never drink out of. The style and aesthetic are (shall we say) unpalatable.

They sold out within hours of being posted on the shop's blog. Wow.

Have I found my niche?

Solicited?

My pottery has become a feature on my brother's blog.

A teapot!

Really, daylight would do it more justice. I should've waited till morning to take the pictures.

It's a beautiful reptilian green with darker specs in it. The inside is painted bright yellow, and at the openings it mixed to make a lovely blue drip.

So many years of wheel throw, and finally I have my first homemade teapot! I can't wait to give it to someone special.

Quilting in Progress

I am piecing my first ever quilt! It's monotonous... not quite like wheel throw, where I can put on my headphones and tune out the world, letting the clay tell me what to do: what it wants to become. I can sit back and let it spin, or I can dive in and close my eyes while my hands do the work.

Not so with sewing.
I have to concentrate the entire time. I have to have a plan so I can tell the machine what to do, and I have to guide the pieces. I am a mathematical person, and I am somewhat of a perfectionist, so really I don't mind the precision. But at the same time my perfectionism poses a problem. I know that an eighth-inch mistake won't matter in the big picture, until I make one on every piece. Then I will end up with one crooked quilt! (Some might call that artistic, but I'd rather get it right.)

In pottery, mistakes turn out to be the best pieces. I'm not so sure in quilting. I don't want to allow myself any mistakes, if I can help it.

The interesting thing is I take pleasure from the tedium of ironing, piecing, sewing, ironing again, checking, and - let's be realistic - ripping seams apart. It is definitely a learning process. As I said before, I was never any good at sewing - so I'm not a bit surprised. Or frustrated.
Yet.


Here are some lessons I have learned thus far:

1. I need a bigger work space.
2. Accurate measurement is important. Straight cuts are too.
3. It's better if you measure accurately and cut precisely on your first try. Otherwise, you waste a lot of time - and a lot of fabric.
4. If you don't measure correctly the first time, you might run out of fabric. Driving back to the store in the snow is a drag.
5. It is not easy to stitch in a straight line.
6. The stitch ripper is a wonderful invention.
7. A quarter inch seam is not very big.
8. The stitch ripper is a wonderful invention.
9. Pins don't always do what they are designed to do.
10. The stitch ripper is a wonderful invention.
11. Some of my fabrics are woven more tightly than others... maybe I should have prewashed everything. The quilting books suggest that.
12. Different weaves travel through sewing machines at different speeds.
13. The stitch ripper is a wonderful invention.
14. Fabric scraps and threads can make a big pile of trash.
15. I need a bigger work space.