A Completed Endeavor

I'm going to make it a habit to post the little projects I'm working on here, mostly because that holds me to actually finishing them. My endeavors are not all work related, after all. 


As stated before,  I possess a list of projects (as Clockwork Lemon puts it, my "Things I would rather be doing than studying"-- procrastination is a strong motivator, in its own way.) So here's one I've actually finished. Excuse the quality of the pictures -- my camera has mysteriously disappeared, but I refuse to let it deter me.


Endeavor 1:


What can you do with a quarter yard of chiffon?

I picked this up for the first project, but it was far too pretty to throw away when it got reduced to scraps, so I just kept making and making. So over the next few days I'm going to share just what you can to do use up the little bits. 


Project 1: Sandal Update


I bought these sandals on a Payless clearance for a Renaissance Faire outfit, but haven't been able to apply them practically to my wardrobe. So i devised a plan to bring them back into the fold before they met the Goodwill bag. I had inspiration, however, I can no longer find the picture responsible...

But here are the sandals at the start... lacking a little personality for my taste.

First, cut three-inch long strips to the length you want your ties. These will make 1 1/2 inch ties, which were about as thick as I could get away with and still make it through the holes in my sandals. (I used a double length of the fabric, so four strips in total) 

Next, sew the strips together along one end.

Then, iron the strips in half, with the seam on the outside. (I did this incorrectly in the above photo, in other words....) 

Then you sew up the raw edges to form a tube.

To finish it off, turn the tube inside out, and tie knots in the ends. You can also turn the ends to the inside and topstich across the end, but I kind of like the unfinished edge. Replace the old lacings, and congratulations. You've started to finish off your scraps. Its a long and arduous journey, I know.  

And here is the finished product, modeled by my lovely feet...

And as for the leftovers, well, you're going to have to tune in to find out. 

Gold Star to anyone else who bears the "burden" of a quilting mother.

Coming of age

I debugged an overlock machine today!

It kept coming unthreaded after I did, but by darn I rethreaded it.

This machine has the most temperamental nature. Don't you think it has a downright sulky air about it? (Keep in mind, this judgement is coming from someone whose history with technology is checkered at best, infamous at worst.)

And then I chased my senile dog (I have a senile dog and a slightly fiendish-but-lovable dog) around the house three times. She likes to play what I call the chase game. She runs and she seems fascinated that I follow her. I guess it's the simple things.

So even though I didn't work today, I sewed approximately two pairs of pants, fitted the bodice of a dress (which I hope to put up soon!), ran errands, debugged a Serger, and chased my dog around the house three times. It's the simple things.

Gold star to anyone with the patience to debug an overlock machine.

Productivity

I'm going to talk about it a lot here. 

Not just productivity in the fusty, clock-punching, market gains type way, but the productivity we  wage against laziness and procrastination. In my case, this productivity relates to my ever-growing list of projects. 

I'm a notorious project-starter. I get inspired, sketch it down, plan it all out, buy fabric and pattern and notions and bundle it all neatly up in a bag....and then it sits there. This behavior was exacerbated by my busy college lifestyle of one-scant-too-many commitments. The neatly categorized projects got put away, until my idea of creative productivity was tackling the task of organizing and charting them in a way that the time commitment could be measured against the priority and I could, theoretically, get through them. 

And then I had a job. And the job payed! What a novel idea! After years of doing lots of work only for the learning value and because of the rewards of volunteerism, I got measurable compensation. While I love knowledge (and I don't mean that ironically -- yes, I was one of THOSE students), and while I loved working for our school's band program, there is something sweet about the independence a paycheck can give. And the pile stayed, categorized, charted, and listed, there as me and my job embarked on our glorious honeymoon. 

But then, I realized the joy of creative productivity. It started small, with me wrapping up a few details. Then, one day, I started AND finished a project. And it was glorious, and rewarding, and I had a free something nice to add to my closet. 

And I realized I could work and earn my money, but I could also  craft and de-stress -- that it too, was a worthy pursuit. With that in mind, I will not just be charting my job in this blog, but also displaying my projects. Because if I commit to posting projects, I'll get them done -- but more about that later. 

Gold Star to anyone else who has a chart of their crafting projects. Feel free to share your ways of controlling the chaos in the comments!

What do you do with a BA in English?

What is my life going to be?

Frankly I’ve no idea. The concept is both wonderful and terrifying. But for now it involves dealing with not being in college (a far greater adjustment than going to college in the first place), dealing with the need to earn money, and a whole new type of self-discipline.

Four years of college, and plenty of knowledge…

I took a class called “writing in a changing world,” and the professor admitted he had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but that persuasive writing was important, so he was going to teach that for the whole semester. That pretty much sums up my undergrad career.

My major, by the way, was called “Professional Writing,” a subset of written communication. When I tell people this, I get responses from “oh, so you want to write novels,” to “ummm so what do you do with that?” I most often get the latter, though it's really neither. While I took creative writing classes, I mostly specialized in journalism, PR writing, and types of writing people have never heard of and are difficult to explain, like technical and rhetorical writing.

Every step of my education involved some sort of discouragement.  Not on behalf of my teachers, but on behalf of the world at large. Papers and big magazines are in trouble, as people turn to the internet for free alternatives, book publishing  is thrown into flux by ebooks, and freelance writers and editors are becoming ever-more-competitive. 

However, armed with an optimistically stubborn streak, a rather schizophrenic portfolio, and a blog, I am forging ahead anyway. 

Here, I will document my adjustment to a non-academic life, my successes and mistakes in working in this uncertain world, and my efforts to take on my ever-growing list of creative endeavors. 

This shall be interesting… Down the rabbit hole I go.


Gold Star to whoever gets the title reference :)