Textile arts

Well, I'm incapable of sewing a straight line (either by hand or with Grell the sewing machine), but I am capable of whipping a carpet bag accordion case out of my butt two days before I have to leave.

(By the way, yesterday's existential panic attack has finally passed. Whew. That was a stressful 24 hours.)

I went to JoAnn (again) and bought some clearance upholstery fabric that reminds me of Mary Poppins's carpet bag. I'm now in the process of assembling the pieces, filling in the batting, and attaching the old cello case strap to make the accordion carryonable. It's a majestic sort of a carpet bag - there's even a piece of a Cheerios box in there. Anyway, I'm in a bit of a panic over the new sewing machine thing. When I left New York last semester, I was forced to abandon several of my worldly possessions when they wouldn't fit into the storage unit I'm sharing with three other people (granted, most of the stuff is mine. Approximately 65% of it.) Included in the rejects was my tattered blue comforter, which will be sorely missed by all except Kelsey, who reacted to its loss by remarking "Good. It was ugly." Luckily, I have been working on a patchwork quilt, so I decided to finish the quilt this summer and take it with me to school in the fall.

Summer's nearly gone, and I leave for Manhattan in 2 1/2 days. I still have to finish the quilt, finish the carpet bag, and hopefully whip up some kind of petticoat from this great white fabric we found at Wall Mart. This is just textiles. I have the rest of my business, too. Cleaning and packing. It stresses me out to think about it.

A Diversion:

While at JoAnn, I also got a strip of fake fur for the secret plushie factory. This was brought on by Polly, who, when I was stressing about how to best craft Prototype Plushie L's hair, exclaimed, "The problem with L is that his hair behaves more like fur than hair!" Well, Polly, I got some fur. Prototype Plushie's feet may be of vastly different sizes; his torso may be oddly shaped because I forgot to increase for the butt; he may be severely pigeontoed; but this is why he is called Prototype Plushie L instead of simply Plushie L. By the end of the day, Prototype will have the softest, most sensually styled fur hair that any plushie has ever known.