365 Challenge Rebooted

In the sidebar of my blog there is a "I'm making something 365" badge. Hmmm ... I was. Life happened. Perfectionism happened. Creativity stopped happening. The 365 creative challenge is simply to make something creative every day for a year. To help, Noah put together a book with 365 ideas. The problem was, I started adding rules. Naturally, it all got to hard, so I quit.

This year I rebooted. My 'rules' are simple -
- design a quilt, or other sewing project, every day
- by design I mean - scribble, describe, stick-figure type drawing, full blown pattern. It really doesn't matter - just something on paper. I do not have to intend to ever develop the idea. I do not have to intend to actually make the object. I just have to put something on paper in response to the prompts given in Noah's book
- use the book as an point of inspiration only. If it suggests building something out of clay, I don't have to actually use clay - as in, get my hands dirty sort of clay. I just use the word 'clay' to give my thoughts a direction.

I did really well in January. Then I had to go back to work. Carting my sketch book on the train every day was just that little extra weight I didn't want to carry. I've gotten a little slack and side-tracked.  I'm still working out how to overcome that. And that's okay because life as a recovering perfectionist is about recovery every day.

At the moment, I have nearly 50 designs/scrawls/scribbles. Some of them I know I'll never ever make. Some of them I have made in the past - which was one of my 'rules'. Past creations were allowable. They're my creative effort (I rarely follow someone else's pattern, preferring to make my own glorious mistakes and triumphs). There are few that I really want to make. There are a few that really inspire me.

Just a couple for your amusement:

Day 31: Make a path for people to follow and invite people to try it out.

 One of my more structured designs. I actually was aiming for paths that cross over and under each other. But I got sidetracked by trying to make my blocks simple half-square-triangles. I probably won't be making this one.

Day 21: Write a 10 word love story. Illustrate it.

The Teen wants me to make this one :-) It's a long story, but essentially, not long after we first met, in the midst of any apology that was supposed to involve bunches of flowers, husband-to-be offered to buy me a bunch of carrots instead. Tip for all the males out there: when you're apologising for something - try to keep your mind on the apologies, and not the conversation being conducted by the person sitting next to you! The 10 word love story is, "He asked me out with carrots. I eventually said yes."

Day 18: Work with the things you find in your car

This is an example of my rule to use the book as inspiration only and not the 'rules'. We were road-tripping, so instead of using 'inside the car', I chose to use outside the car.

Day 2: What's your favourite animal? Use it as your inspiration.

I have a number of favourite animals, but I do love fairy wrens. This is planned a set of placemats, which I am thinking of making at some point. The plan would be to deliberately make them all different. There are seven species, so more than enough to do a different one on each placemat.

One of the interesting things I've found about this challenge is the attitude of other people. Although I'm currently struggling to form a habit that sticks, I am determined to complete all 365 designs even if not in a single calendar year.

I happened to mention what I was doing to a quilting storekeeper (thankfully, not a local store). She all but scoffed, "Well, good luck with that!" And let me say - it was not a positive, uplifting wishing of luck! I was a little taken aback. She didn't know me from Adam (or Eve). For all she knew I could have already been a well-established designer. And whether I am or not, and I'm not, that's beside the point. It was pretty flipping rude for her discredit my ambition. I don't care who you are. I don't care what the dream is. Don't allow anyone - ANYONE - to pull it apart. And don't do it to anyone else.

There a great line in M*A*S*H, where Col Potter says, "If I had a horse who thought he was Man O' War, I probably wouldn't want to dissuade him. If you get my drift?" (probably badly paraphrased) His point was - if we dream bigger than we can achieve, we will achieve bigger than if we don't dream. (Of course, Frank Burns didn't get it ;-) )

Dream big, and "phft" to all the naysayers.

Owl Sculpture/Bird Bath

I recently had a query about the progress of my owl sculpture (Owl). The owl progressed so far on Day 1 and then sat ignored in the garage for months. I was side-tracked by other things, but mainly I was deterred because of the amount dust the carving produces. Finally, I decided, if I wasn't going to "finish" the sculpture, I should just use it. I'm happy to say, the local birds don't realise it's supposed to be more 3D than it is.

To create the bird bath, I put a heavy duty stake in the ground, with about 6 inches of so showing above the ground. I drilled a matching hole in the centre of the bottom face of the block. This prevents wind or over enthusiastic birds (or the neighbour's cat :-( ) knocking the bath over.

On the top face, I drilled a similar hole. The bath is large plant pot saucer, with a central drainage hole. A large bolt sits through the hole and into the top of the owl. The bolt is silasticed (plastic glue for sealing water-tight) to the saucer.

Showing a few chips and bumps due to neglect in the garage - one of the reasons I decided he needed to be used in the garden, finished or not.

In this photo you can just make out the blob of silastic around the central bolt, holding the saucer to the top and creating a water-tight bird bath.

The locals like my owl

Creativity Journal - Day 23 (Recycle)

Already a day behind on my new plan to post every day and I haven't even started! Oh well. Life is what it is.

According to the dates on the photos, I completed this challenge at the beginning of September. It's now almost the beginning of October. I have been creative in between, just not as disciplined or structured as I would like. I believe creativity begets creativity; that is, the more creative you are, the more creative you become. Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, one must be activity seeking after it.

For this challenge I yet again abandoned my word and sewing themes. Although, there is a tenuous sewing connection.

I took a soft-drink bottle (soda/pop if you must) from the recycle box and cut the bottom off.

The edges are quite sharp, so I poked holes at even intervals around the top edge of the bottom. I blanket stitched with some scrap wool, and then wove more wool into the stitching. This creates a handy 'tub' for my desk.

The top half I cut into a spiral. To ensure an even spiral I marked the bottle in quarters. On one 'side', from the cut edge to the lid, mark every inch; turn the bottle a quarter and mark every 3/4 inch mark; turn another quarter and mark every 1/2 inch mark; turn the final quarter and mark every 1/4 inch mark. Starting at the side with the one inch marks, cut from the bottom edge to the first 1/4 inch mark, through to the first 1/2 inch mark, and then the first 3/4 inch mark. Continue cutting until you reach near the top.

The first bottle I cut was left undecorated:

The second one I decorated with Sharpies:

Their purpose? Don't really have one. I have them hanging in the garden at the moment. They just create movement and small flashes of light when the sun hit them.

I have continued to experiment with using soft drink bottles for containers though. They're free (if you're drinking the contents anyway), disposable if you find something better later, and really, really useful.

Bottom of a bigger bottle, not yet edged. It's a great size for chucking pins at while I'm sewing.

In this tray (a brand new, never-been-used, kitty litter tray, because it was the perfect size for my desk):

• the bottom of a 2l milk bottle, 
• a larger (1.25l) bottle cut in half for my scissors and rotary cutters
• a smaller (1l) bottle cut in half for my rulers.

I have found that cutting through the centre of the bottom is really hard. For the smaller bottle, with the rulers, I didn't bother.

I have also seen pictures of bottles with just a piece cut out of one side. These are used standing up for pencils and the like.

Creativity Journal - Day 21 (Story)

Write a ten-word love story. Bonus: Illustrate it!

Woohoo. Three weeks complete. And it's only taken me seven to get here. Today's was fairly easy. Ten words isn't a lot but if you add illustration you can say just about anything. My first thoughts were of the opening few minutes of the film "Up" - no words, lots of love story. And my next thought was a video that several people have posted on FB over the past few days. And so I offer these ten words:

She was beautiful, loyal, and smart, and loved him completely.

Creativity Journal - Day 20 (Clay)

Buy or make some clay (see instructions on page 238) and then use it like you never have before.

What's this? Two posts in one day? The boats have been sitting around for a couple of days and I've been mulling over the clay adventure. My thoughts went:

- "Use it like you never have before" - that's the easy bit. I haven't used clay since high school, so really anything would count as a new experience.
- Clay and fabric don't really mix. I could make some sort of patchwork pattern on clay. But what would I use it for? That becomes clutter.
- Clay and words might work. But again, what would I use it for? More clutter.
- What I really want is some sculptures in the garden. Hmmm, where does one get that much clay? Maybe I could change the rules and work with something other than clay.
- Let's see ... plaster doesn't last in the weather.
- Concrete? Need a mould. Hmm, too difficult.
- Ah, hebel. Hebel is a lightweight aerated concrete sold in blocks or panels. For some reason I remember someone telling me about it years ago.

So, the plan became research hebel, buy hebel, carve hebel. I've never carved anything other than the occasional roast dinner, so it could be an interesting adventure. I started, where everyone starts all projects these days, my friend, Google. There are some beautiful hebel sculptures. There are some weird ones too, but lots of a lovely stuff I wouldn't mind having in my garden.

Bunnings, which sells the stuff, even tells you how to make sculptures with it.

I 'pinned' a few I thought were doable. I quickly realised that intricate, interwoven abstracts probably weren't a good place for a complete novice to start. This swan really appealed, but I think even this would be stretching it for a first attempt. I could just see me managing to snap the neck in two.

As I thought about 'releasing the angel inside' (apparently a quote by Michelangelo) I got a bit bug-eyed about the whole enterprise. Although hebel is quite cheap as a sculpture material ($10 for a 600x200x200mm block), I didn't want to end up with a huge block of masonry that like a pile a rubble (or was a pile of rubble). Although, if my pile looked like this ...

I did see a number of owls I liked (they're mainly the ones I ended up pinning). Owls are quite trendy at the moment, but I've always loved owls (and frogmouths). A couple of sculptures that I pinned were very stylised and I realised I could keep it quite simple and still create an impression of an owl.  

I started sketching. I don't do 3D very well. I get tangled in the corners and the angles. I've tried to work out Google Sketch Up, but it just frustrates me. I started back at the beginning of high school tech drawing - a flat image of each side.

I decided to keep the hebel essentially rectangular, with some rounding off on the edges so I could use it as a bird bath stand. The wings and beak will be etched into the stone. The eye saucers will be etched in with the eyes either left raised, or if I stuff it up, painted in, or glow in the dark stones :-)

You may notice from my tenses, that I haven't actually carved this yet. No, because again the 'completely don't know what I'm doing' struck. And here's the irony of this challenge. I decided not to use clay. I decided to sculpt something out of hebel. I decided I need to make a model of my intended sculpture and clay is to most logical choice of material. So, in the end, I did use clay. (No idea what I'm going to do with my owl, but I'm sure he won't be clutter.)

Front view

Side view

Rear view

Size

Having now made my prototype, I will go ahead and buy a hebel block to play with. Still might end up a pile of rubble, but at least now I know what sort of look I'm aiming for and that it does actually work in 3D. Hebel will have one slight advantage. I can mark it up with a pencil, instead of working 'freehand'.

Creativity Journal - Day 19 (floating)

Create something that floats on water. (It doesn't have to be a boat.)

I was thinking about this challenge last week, while sitting in my car in the car wash. All the water around obviously went with the floating theme. I tried to work out how to fold an origami boat with my receipt but failed miserably. I just ended up with a piece of paper with dozens of criss-crossed folder lines.

All the emotional dramas of being unemployment (or well under-employed) got in the way of life last week and I never quite got around to researching my origami. I finally did it the other night, and finally now I'm posting the results.

I won't post the instructions, mainly because there's lots of resources on the web already. I'll just send you to the two sites I used.

The first site was for a simple sail boat - Origami-Instructions.com.

One comment: I used my receipts and I found that the 'sail' must remain taller than the sides when you're folding. That is, when you get the instruction "Now fold each edge of the paper upwards as shown.  Use your fingers to open up into a hat!  You can stop at the hat, or continue on to the boat." the centre points must be above the edges you are folding up. Using receipts, which a long and thin, I sometimes had to fold in the extra length.

The second site was for a long thin boat. I thought this style would work better for my receipts, particularly the family grocery bill. The site I found was origami.wonderhowto.com.

I had a little bit of difficulty following the end of the video. I sometimes think these sort of instructional videos would be best done with the video over the person's shoulder. That way, non-spatial people like myself, aren't trying to tie our brains into knots working out which way around things go. The main thing that I missed at the end is that the very last step, after all the folding is complete (from about 1:47 in the video) actually involves turning the entire boat inside out.

If you look closely in this photo, you'll notice that my long boat is not very secure - because I didn't turn it inside out. I was watching the video on my phone and just couldn't make it out.

The next day I tried again, watching it on a bigger screen, with a some what squarer piece of paper.

I refolded my original receipt boat and tried them all out in the water. Result - some receipts make great boats because the paper is waxy; others are very thin and take on water quite quickly.

The wonderful thing about both these boats is that they only involve about five or six sets of folds (and the magical turn inside trick for the long boat). They're really easy to learn and memorise. I can see it being a useful "magical aunty" sort of trick for visits to parks and ponds - IF you put all your 'dead' boats in the bin so they don't feed birds :-(

Not fabric related, although I was thinking so stiff serviettes could be folded into the long boat for cutlery sets at a dinner party. Not word related, although I used printed paper. But definitely not clutter creating, because I used paper destined for the bin.

Linked to Noah

Noah Scalin, the author of the Creativity Journal, has blogged my meagre efforts on "Make Something 365 & Get Unstuck." Even though I wrote and submitted the copy, does this mean I'm famous ;-)

It does mean I'm inspired to keep going. Who knows who might be watching now!

Noah's post: http://makesomething365.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/an-ordinary-life.html

I've got some boats coming up later today. Kind of fitting really - boats and Noah ;-)

Creativity Journal - Day 18 (Car)

Work with the things you find in your car (or a friend's car if you don't have one).

Until last October, like the vast majority of people around the world, I had never owned a brand new car. I am now the proud owner of a lovely, new, shiny, blue car. With "SMF" in the number plate, naturally it is called 'Smurf'.

When we got married we had an OLD car; a car so old, and so big, and so heavy that steering it in reverse to get out of our curved driveway used to put my back out. Then we bought an almost new car. It was so beautiful. Little did we know that it would subjected to the indignities of a baby and toddler.

I know people who say, "Oh, we'll buy a new car before we have children." My advice, buy an old car. Wait until the children are older - old enough to have their own car is probably okay - and then buy a new car. Children, particularly babies and toddlers, are fond of decorating with food - at all stages of digestion. "Oh," they say, "We won't allow food in our car." Older and wiser parents smile and nod and allow them to continue in their fantasy. When you get stuck somewhere longer than expected and home is a long way away, the 'no food in the car' rule quickly becomes irrelevant, compared to the screaming toddler. And, besides, unlike the drunken friends of your youth, you cannot yell at a baby to hang their head out the window before they spew.

Yes, our lovely, near new car went through all those indignities. And several Nullarbor crossings. The Nullarbor is difficult for people who have never travelled it to comprehend. Our trips were normally from Perth to Melbourne (or return). That's a trip of about 3,500 km, or just under 2,200 miles. I work out that's the equivalent of driving from California to Fort Wayne (it's mentioned in a MASH episode). However, about 1,200 km (745 miles) of that is nothing. This is not Europe nothing or America nothing, this is Australia nothing. In that stretch there are no cities, no towns, no villages, no hamlets, no houses. The best you come across is a petrol station, with a greasy eats. You stop at every single petrol station; a, because you need petrol and b, because you need something different to look at for 10 minutes. How people survive and live out there, I'll never know. I love the bush, but this part of the world takes it to the extreme. By the way, I work out that's about the equivalent of Las Vegas to Denver.

I did have another car. It was even older. It was old when I started driving; it was really old by the time I owned it. I loved it. It went like rocket. It was definitely a lady car and it was going through menopause. It leaked, it had hot flashes (the air-conditioning was long gone), and the stereo consisted of AM radio (no modern fandangled technology for this ol' girl). A small car, on the freeway, without airconditioning, travelling next to B-doubles is no fun. Any car that leaks when it rains is no fun. It was a fun car to drive though.

When hubby was given a car as part of his work package I had to decide whether to keep my rocket or the family car. Sad to say, but comfort (and music) won the day and I reluctantly parted with my car. And I regretted it. Although my car leaked and was hot, it went. Our family car was slowly dying and becoming more and more unreliable. Although I am the child of two motor mechanics, I do not do greasy hands and I haven't a clue where to start looking when something goes wrong. Being stranded on the side of the freeway on a 36°C day is no fun.

Last year we decided we could afford to upgrade. And the new car is mine (at least, that's what the rego says). And being a brand new car I do try to keep it tidy ... well ... tidier. The sole contents of my car were - two jackets, three lolly wrappers, one water bottle. The glove box contains wet wipes, first aid kit, sewing kit (naturally). The back door cup holders have cups and some picnic cutlery. Now, I'm sure if I thought really hard I could have turned all that into something. However, I'm also sure it would have been classified as 'clutter'. (Theme 3: create no clutter.)

However, I was inspired to clean my car. I don't do it very often. I vacuumed and toyed with the idea of making patterns on my carpets. I wiped the insides and all the windows. And then I took my car to the car wash place. And I took photos. They're not wonderful, or outstanding, or even amazing. But I had fun actually "looking" at the water and soap as it played on my windscreen. Not fabric related, not word related (unless you count all those words up there), but also not clutter.

Creativity Journal - Day 8 Update (book)

Transform an old book into something new by cutting, folding, gluing, and so on.

I finished this challenge a couple of weeks ago, I just forgot to post about it. I finally overcame my hesitation (paranoia) about cutting up or destroying a book. I will confess going to two op shops before I found the 'right' book. I didn't even really know what I wanted to do with it, and still I couldn't choose a book. "Too plain, too fancy, too many pictures, too many photos." Sigh!

Finally I found a book that was a good mix of words and photos. In the end - I didn't use any of the photos at all. Still, I've saved them, I'm sure they'll come in handy for something. One day.

I found a poster on Pinterest that I really liked.

I wanted to make my own version; something uniquely ours rather than a copy. Knowing I planned on working with cut outs, I designed it in Excel using bold fonts, no thin line fonts. I used Excel because it allows for limitless page size.

I had already bought a canvas. I didn't buy a square canvas, because it wouldn't work in the space I was planning to use. My canvas is twice as long as it high, so although I was using the above layout as a guide, I had to think about my own design elements. Once I decided on what words were going on what lines, I used Word Art to allow me to drag the words bigger, higher, wider (or smaller, shorter, narrower) in the space I wanted.

The fonts I used are:

• Rockwell Extra Bold (twice)
• Cooper Black
• Berlin Sans FB Demi
• Franklin Gothic Heavy
• Arial Black

When I finally had a design that met the Teen's approval (my art critic) I printed out the lettering. I rough cut each letter, laid it over the section of the book's page I wanted to use and then cut through both layers with a craft knife. Much easier than cutting out the letters, drawing the letters onto the page, then cutting out the page.

My letters all cut out and ready to go. I considered cutting out the pictures from the book somehow to make a collage background for the canvas. I decided that it would be too busy and not the look I was hoping for. In the end I squirted rows of green and white paint on to my canvas and just sort of smoshed them about with a brush.

The end result was quite evenly coloured, but it has a hint of variation. Because the paint ended up quite thick, I used it to 'glue' the letters down. Sadly, that means not guide lines and my letters are little wonkier in placement than I would like. If I did it again, I lay out my lettering before I painted the canvas and draw faint guide lines to get a more even layout. Everything should be moved down just slightly; the 'most' is supposed to tuck into the 'h' of 'house' - not sit over the top of it; and the 'share' line has a slight slope, but these things are hard to remember when you're working on the fly.

Apologies for the poor quality picture. I think I must have taken it in the afternoon, when the sun comes through the window behind this opening.

Creativity Journal - Day 17 (Eyes)

Make something inspired by and/or that goes over an eye (yours or someone else's).

Day 17 was another day of 'trials and errors'. This challenge inspired me to consider making sleep masks for sale. I wanted something a little different to that available online. Ebay had a couple of version that people make. I didn't simply want to be a copy cat. I thought what I could do is put the expensive embroidery machine to some use. I do use it, just not as much as its price tag warrants. Here is a record of my trials:

The lovely curly-cued and decorated 'S' I wanted to use was too big for a sleep mask. I shrunk it about half in my embroidery program. In theory, the density of stitches should adapt accordingly. In practice, they just get shorter.

I wanted to use a satin-like fabric. A, because I have some, and B, because it has a nice texture on the face. As you can see, I didn't even get part way through the first trial stitch-out. The thread breakages got to me and I realised it was going to pucker and pull the fabric dreadfully.

I tested it on calico (one of my tea stains from Day 13) to see whether it was just the fabric or not. Not. And then the fun began. I've done some really basic editing of embroidery files: merged letters to make monograms, deleted some sections I didn't want on an image. I ended up spending three days working on this one file. Embroidery files are a little like clipart. There's a 'dot' at every point where you want a stitch. It's not simply a matter of drawing a shape and colouring it in. Every single thread is drawn, aligned, and 'dotted'.

In this attempt, the three densest sections - the top curl, end curl, and lower curve - have been 'thinned out'. Each of these sections is a series of lines in one direction then back. I took out every second line, which meant I had a series of lines all running in the same direction. In a drawing this obviously is a non-issue, when you're stitching the end of one line has be the start of the next OR you have to be prepared to deal with 'jump stitches'. A jump stitch is a loose stitch, which you cut off when the stitching is finished. The less jump stitches the better. When I grasp the issue of the jump stitches, the answer was fairly straight forward. You simply reverse the stitch direction on every second line; reverting the entire section to 'one direction and back'.

Although this stitch-out is flatter, it's still got a fair bit of pull and pucker. The issue, of course, is all the curly-cues. They are all double-stitched - out to the end and back again. At full size the double stitching isn't a problem; at the half size they were too weighty. I thought it would be easy enough to set them all to single stitch and deal with some jump stitches.

Alas, as you can see if you compare the curly-cues on the above photo with the one before it, it didn't work. I think (although I'm not 100% sure) what happens is, if jump stitches are too short, they just become regular stitches. Hence, the loss of pretty, defined curly-cues and the addition of ... well ... mess.

After playing for hours and hours and hours with these darn curly-cues, I decided - smeg it. I don't need them. I deleted them. Eeek, aaak, disaster. The tails of the curly-cues link the three other sections; the two narrowest sections of the 'S' are curly-cue tails. More hours, and hours, and hours of grabbing and dragging little dots on my screen. Lots of false starts, lots of "smeg it, forget it, no I can't", finally:

Ah, yes. Certainly not as a pretty as the original, but it worked on calico at the reduced scale. Would it work on my satin-like fabric? I did some research into stitching onto slippery fabrics. One website, Crafty Stitcher, recommended two layers of Solvy (a dissolvable, plastic sort of stuff). I wasn't sure if that was two layers underneath, so I went with sandwiching the fabric between the two layers. I got as far as top-stitching my completed sleep mask when I noticed disaster:

The embroidery had 'cut' the fabric, and not just in one place. Sigh. Still, I hadn't spent three days editing the pattern and trialling a half dozen samples to quit now! Oh, no. I decided to try iron on interfacing on the back of my satin-like fabric. And it seems to have worked.

My first mask I sewed right-sides together and then turned in the right way. This one (I was pretty over the whole thing by this point), I sewed wrong-sides together, satin-stitched around the edge and trimmed away the excess. I didn't like it at first, but the satin-stitching is growing on me. The back is soft black polar fleece. The elastic should be black. I wasn't really thinking beyond the embroidery by this point.

I have learnt a lot about machine embroidery designing and that I probably don't want to make enough of these to sell them, but if you'd really like one just leave a comment with your preferred colours (fabric and thread) and I'll get back to you.