Harry Potter Quilt - FINALLY DONE!!!

My Harry Potter Quilt is FINALLY done and it’s perfect. I really could not be happier with it. It looks like something that might be hanging in the Gryffindor common room, which, dorky as that is, makes me super happy. 

Here are some of my favorite photos, if you want to see more check out my flickr site http://www.flickr.com/photos/beantownembroidery/

Now the question is... what should the theme of my next quilt be? I’m taking suggestions!

PS - I think it bears mentioning that, as with basically all of my accomplishments in the last 26 years, this could not have been done without my saintly mother. In this case, I mailed my almost completed quilt across country to California and she attached the backing and binding... because she is wonderful and I am lazy. Thanks Mom. 

I love this. 

Things I'm never going to do again: free hand embroider deer.

Seriously.

this car is also on my "never again" list

although... that car might is probably the best thing I've ever done

I'm pretty terrible at life... Merry Christmas

It’s been said that if you want something done, give it to the busiest person in the office. This is the sort of cross stitch clique that I hate… but I have to admit it’s true. The first 6 months of my year were crazy busy at work; we’re talking lost weekends, long nights and one particularly memorable all nighter that just happened to coincide with my birthday. Humph. But then, thanks to the ebb and flow glory that is litigation, all of a sudden, my work disappeared and I was left with absolutely nothing to do. I mean, literally nothing. During the first week I kept busy by organizing my office. Then I started pestering my coworkers for projects. Now I just stare at my screens and count backwards from 480 minutes.

For the record, I am not complaining. Not at all. I greatly prefer this to trying to answer hundreds of emails, be in 5 places at once and just generally meet unrealistic expectations… but I marvel at how lazy being “not busy” has made me, and it’s not just at work. The lazy monster has infiltrated every aspect of my life. I know I’m capable of working a long week then coming home and accomplishing great things. Ok, great is probably a bit of a stretch, but I’m capable of coming home after a 14 hour day and doing dishes, going to the grocery store, making progress in whatever book I’m reading, maintaining my etsy site, etc.  But now that my work days have morphed in eight hour long sporkle binges, I seem to have lost the ability to do anything else. Honestly the only  things I’ve managed to do in the last three weeks are gain an unnatural obsession with the bachelorette and attract a cruel (but brief) stomach bug. That’s it. I don’t know where the time goes.

I think the issue is that when I’m busy I plan my whole day with lists and calendar reminders which keep me focused and on task, but for precisely this reason, I REALLY resent lists and calendars, and when I’m not busy I forego them. Without structure and pressure I lose all motivation and forget that I have to pick up my dry cleaning/go to the grocery store/leave the house. As a result I find myself still in my PJs at 6pm on a Sunday, halfway through a veronica mars marathon and eating take out. It’s becoming a problem.

Anyway. This was all my roundabout way of explaining why I haven’t done any promotion for my Christmas in July sale. I got the idea in June (when I was still busy) but had lapsed into my vegetative state by July so I didn't follow through. Now July is almost over so this might be pointless... but here’s the deal, I’m offering 20% off any of my Christmas items (ornaments, stationary, jewelry) during the month of July (or until I remember to deactivate the coupon code, which will probably be around October). The code is Christmas. Swing by my etsy site and check it out!

In the meantime, I’m moving on to season 3 of V Mars.

Post Title To Be Decided On Later

Well, this should hardly come as a surprise, but I am a champion procrastinator. I’m pretty good about big things like bills or potentially life threatening maladies, but for anything less important than a LAST NOTICE cable bill or a truly alarming freckle I’m hopeless. I try to excuse my procrastination by pretending my time is super valuable and thus shouldn’t be wasted on things I don’t feel like doing... but no one falls for it. It’s laziness pure and simple and, when combined with my own unique set of neurosis, it yields some interesting results.  For example, on four separate occasions I have bought new sheets rather than wash the ones I own. This isn’t nearly as wasteful as it sounds because I almost always end up cannibalizing an extra (clean) sheet when I run out of base fabric for whatever project I’m working on, but it’s still pretty pathetic. 

Anyway, the point of all this is to explain why I haven’t listed anything new on etsy for quite some time. It’s not that I haven’t made anything... making things is fun... listing them is not. I therefore have QUITE the backlog. This is less than half of it... meh. 

Dogs, Dragons and my Harry Potter Quilt

I’ve gotten lots of great suggestions for my harry potter quilt, which I really appreciate. Two of the most common have been dragons (Norbert(a), Hungarian Horntail, etc.) and Fluffy the three headed dog. Unfortunately, if I cant draw it, I can’t embroider it... and after 5 months of trying, I’m finally ready to admit that I cannot draw a three headed dog. 

If I had a scanner and a little more confidence, I would show you some of my attempts. But I don’t have either so you’ll just have to take my word that I can’t draw a realistic, believable I mean, passable three headed dog. Unsurprisingly, the problem is the three heads. I can’t seem to fit them all in without making the dogs shoulders huge or the heads tiny... either way it's totally disproportionate. The only other option is to give the dog three long necks, which allow me to draw heads that match the size of the body... but then the necks are the problem. They make Fluffy look like greyhound from Chernobyl.

So my quilt won’t have a three headed dog... but it will have a dragon! 

Here are some updated photos. I’ve finally sewn the panels together, should be done soonish. 

There be dragon.

Those are supposed to be footprints... please tell me they look like footprints

All together now!

Cinco de Mayo... where procrastination meets Mothers Day sales

Happy Cinco de Mayo. One hundred and fiftyish years ago there was an improbable Mexican victory over the French... or something. Where I live this somewhat vague event is commemorated by half-off tequila shots and really bad margaritas.

Tequila and I have never been great friends, so I’m celebrating by doing laundry and cleaning the grout in my bathroom. Or, I should say, I’m celebrating by doing laundry, editing all of my Etsy listings to mention my Mothers Day sale and planning to clean the grout in my bathroom. Cause, really, the planning is the hard part right? Maybe I'll plan today and clean tomorrow... 

This is much more exciting than how I spent Cinco de Mayo last year. On May 5th 2011 I was working 20 hour days, looking back on two and a half months of suitcase living, prepping for a trial* and spontaneously busting into tears of frustration and overwork, so my lackluster plans for today are actually a huge improvement. 

That said... I’m still having trouble motivating myself to clean the grout. 

It really needs it... It’s practically sentient... Skynet would probably be really interested in my shower tiles... 

*sigh*

Anyway, 20% off storewide! http://www.etsy.com/shop/BeanTownEmbroidery?ref=pr_shop_more&view_type=list

* I should mention, I wasn’t on trial myself; I’m a paralegal. 

Harry Potter Quilt Progress

Two posts in one day, I really am back. Also... I’ve got a massive to do list for the long weekend which I’m avoiding, so suddenly new blog posts seem very appealing. Anyone want to take two months worth of clothes to the dry cleaner for me? Anyone? No one? Sigh..

Anyway, I’m still working on my Harry Potter quilt... I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it once it’s finished (there are only so many quilts you can hang in our apartment before it starts to creep people out and worry your roommates) but in the meantime it’s a fun way to strengthen my embroidery skills.

It amazes me that the things I thought would be super difficult, like the Weasley’s car, turned out to be fairly simple, while the things I thought would be easy are barely recognizable. No one knows what Fudge’s lime green bowler hat is supposed to be, the most common guess is VW bug. I thought the color would tip everyone off but it just seems to confuse them. Along the same lines, my potion bottles all look like snowmen, no matter what color I outline them in. Oh well.

I’m posting some of my favorite photos below but there is so much going on it was impossible to capture everything. For a full gallery of photos please see my flickr link 

http://www.flickr.com//photos/beantownembroidery/

It's been awhile..

I’m back.

Work has been monstrous lately, also I’ve discovered Downton Abbey.. either of those things are enough to turn me into an antisocial asshole but the combination has made me a real recluse.

Anyway, I’m finally up to date on Downton and work has decided to subside at least momentarily, so I’m back. I added a few pieces of jewelry to my etsy site this afternoon, I don’t know if they’ll be popular, but I had so much fun making them I don’t really care if they sell.

I’m also still working on my Harry Potter quilt, photos to follow. I think it’ll be finished soon!

Burgundy and brown are probably my favorite colors to work with so of course I love this one... though lavender seems to be the most popular color in my shop, so the one above is also a favorite..

Destined to be left unfinished... Harry Potter Quilt!

I have a problem with large projects... I can’t stop starting them but I almost never finish them... this is why my etsy shop features so many small pieces of jewelry but nothing on a larger scale. In my life I think I’ve only finished two big projects on my own and both were quilts. I say “on my own” because so much of my crafting experience is working on shared projects with my mom/sisters/aunt/grandma. Those projects don’t have a much higher rate of completion, but since there are always at least four people involved it’s easy to blame it on someone else.

Anyway, neither of my two “success stories” really count. The first was a school project which I’d committed to donating to a charity auction so I really had no choice but to finish it... and I did so in the most half assed way imaginable. I never added hanging loops so to this day the man who bought it (who was, incidentally, my baby sisters kindergarten teacher) has it push pinned to a wall in his house. The other is a real masterpiece of a quilt which I truly love, but which I was a little over committed to while making. After six months of what can only be described as a manic embroidery binge, I was sick of the thing and decided to just slap it together and never work on it again. The result currently hangs in our entry way and gets lots of compliments... but I can’t help noticing the terrible construction every time I walk by it.

I mean, really, six months of piecing, embroidering and beading and I couldn't be bothered to make sure the corners all met in the same place? My grandmother saw the completed quilt and said "well, there have to be some mistakes or no one would believe you made it yourself..." I choose to take that as a compliment.

So, it is with this truly abysmal record that I leap enthusiastically into my next big project, a Harry Potter quilt! I got the idea when I started noticing that “harry potter quilt” was one of my etsy shops most popular search terms, despite the fact that I’ve never made anything remotely resembling a harry potter quilt.

I then started thinking of all the fun Harry Potteresque things I’d love to embroider and decided to give it a try. My crafting budget has grown to some pretty alarming levels, so I was determined to only use the fabric and supplies I already had... this has been surprisingly difficult.

The first challenge was deciding what colors to use. I wanted to use the only colors of the Hogwarts houses (red, gold, green, silver, yellow, black, blue and.... bronze/brown/grey) but I may have fudged a bit. First off, the Ravenclaw colors are hard to pin down. I think it’s pretty clear that they’re blue and bronze, but I didn’t have any bronze fabric and anyway, the movies show the colors as blue and grey. I decided to use both brown and grey since the grey could also be considered Slytherin Silver... which I was in short supply of. I also noticed that my Gryffindor gold and Hufflepuff yellow were almost the same color... and chose not to dwell on it.

I’ve got nine squares pieced together and have been embroidering them with whatever random harry potter objects and quotes come to mind... though I’m starting to run out of ideas... suggestions?

New Jewelry

Just added new jewelry to Etsy!

This design with lots of small flowers has proved pretty popular. I should make more like this but with multiple colors and such tiny stitches the back gets pretty messy and it's hard to keep the tension right... I'll have to work on it though because I LOVE the way this came out.

Also kind of in love with this red one. I've been putting large multilayered flowers on a lot of things lately and they all come out different... I'm a fan.

Quarter Life Christmas Projects

So, it’s not technically December yet, but I’m already really excited for Christmas. Maybe it’s because the only way to enter my office building is by walking through a mall, the stores of which started decorating for Christmas round about July... but I really feel like it should BE here already. Actually, I can't fairly blame it on the stores... I've always been like this.

When I was little I would usually channel my impatience by watching A Muppet Christmas Carol on repeat, devouring my mothers cranberry bread, and orchestrating the decoration of our tree and house with fascist zeal (white lights only, all ornaments need my approval, anything made with popsicle sticks or corn flakes is strictly forbidden and will probably be thrown away when you’re not looking). I don’t know how my family put up with me. This was when I lived in Phoenix, a place with winters so mild a frozen puddle could actually attract a crowd. That kind of weather makes for wonderful retirement living but somewhat lackluster holidays.

Now I finally live in a city with real winters (though apparently not this year) but my usual modes of Christmas preparation are no longer available. For one thing, I can’t find the Muppet Christmas Carol on DVD anywhere, for another, my apartment has no room for a Christmas tree and my very poorly behaved cat would make short work of any decorations I tried to put up. To make matters worse, I can’t bake. After a series of heartbreaking results and one small fire, I’ve stopped trying. Mom, if you’re reading this please feel free to send me some cranberry bread... also my roommate devoured those candycane cookies you sent last year... just a thought.

Anyway, this is all a very roundabout way of saying that as part of my thoroughly disappointing journey into adulthood I’ve finally come to terms with the need for new holiday traditions. So tonight I’m watching Game of Thrones, sipping wine, and making Christmas ornaments. Not exactly a scene from Normal Rockwell... but it’s a start.

I got the idea for the ornaments from a little Christmas wreath I embroidered this summer. It was on too small a piece of fabric to really do anything with but it was so pretty I didn’t want to just put it in a box and forget about it, so I turned it into an ornament.

For some reason, even when a sew a perfect circle, the edges of the ornament look lopsided... thats why I added the braided trim. It’s a patch... but I think it’s kind of pretty and have added it even to my non circular ornaments.

Anyway, I hope these ornaments will become tradition for me. I really do love making them and it’s nice to think that maybe they’ll turn into cherished keepsakes for someone. In the meantime, does anyone know where I can get a copy of Muppet Christmas Carol? Game of Thrones is great.. but I need something with a happy ending and something tells me this isn’t it...

PS- Mom, in exchange for the cranberry bread I’ll send you a few ornaments... sorry about all those ones I secretly threw away years ago. I know you wanted to keep that cornflake wreath I made in kindergarten but trust me, you’re better off without it. These are so much prettier.