of socks and fishnets...

Inspiration: “The circus is a jealous wench. Indeed that is an understatement. She is a ravening hag who sucks your vitality as a vampire drinks blood – who kills the brightest stars in her crown and will allow no private life for those who serve her; wrecking their homes, ruining their bodies, and destroying the happiness of their loved ones by her insatiable demands. She is all of these things, and yet, I love her as I love nothing else on earth.” ― Henry Ringling North


This project has a way of contradicting me at every turn.  This week was a stressful one for our little family.  We were waiting on someone else to make a deadline.  We had done everything we could and we just had to wait.  It was infuriating.  I may have shed a few tears and ‘googled’ anxiety attack.

In the midst of this, I decided to get back to the quilt.  It has been giving me long hours of mindfully present bliss and that was just what I needed.  Except the quilt didn’t get that memo.

As stated last week, I was moving on to the circus section of my tshirt collection.  Last week I dove into my research box (literally a file box labelled "PhD Research" filled with papers and scraps and such) looking for something and discovered a few more usable textiles.  They were a bit musty by virtue of the state of the research box but I suddenly had an idea.  I would turn these into an appliqué.

You may remember (because it was only last week) that I previously shied away from appliqué as I had no idea how it might work.  And, to be honest, I didn’t want to break my stride of ‘competent’ sewing.  But this week my mind was a bit frazzled and apparently that meant I was ready to tackle a little appliqué action.


I started with two socks/arm warmers.  This was a dancer’s trick I introduced to the circus when I strained my arm learning to mount an elephant.  At the time I told everyone the injury was from mounting the spare tire on the bracket on backend of my motorhome.  I’m sure they believed me.  Who wouldn’t believe that story?  I mean it’s not like they all watched me flail about and bang into Lisa’s (the elephant) head about ten times the day before.  Of course is was from the tire.

I digress.

The socks weren’t going to work as tubes so I sliced them open, stitched down the wonky heel bits and sewed them together to create a wonky square.  Easy.

The plan then was to appliqué part of my showgirl tights to this square.  However, the square was a bit…wonky…as I said, so I decided to mount the square on a larger piece and then tackle the fishnet appliqué.

This is where the stress of the week started to show.
 
Remember last week I made that cute little square with the hole?  It went so well and looked so good I decided to try that technique again.  Not only was it easy but it would add some visual interest.  You know, link some pieces together?  Because there isn’t enough going on in this quilt, I need a little fancy machine work to up the visual interest.
 
These seams went so wrong, I’m almost embarrassed to show you.  But I’m stuck with them, so you are too.
 
I’m blaming the textile itself.  Socks are not meant to go through the machine with fancy stitches.  There is no other explanation.  I mean I did have one eye on the clock and the other on the phone, but I’m sure that has no bearing on the mess that is this square.

I ran the first length and the pins kept getting caught in the foot and then pulled along creating weird gaps in stitches and bunches in fabric.  The next length I tried less pins thinking that was the problem.  Still a disaster.  The last length I went back to lots of pins but tried a feeding technique using both hands (which is probably what I should be doing every time).  Slightly better result.  I can’t remember what I did for the last length.  I think at that point I just wanted to be done with it.

The square was done.  It was a calamity, but it was done.  Now came the task of adding the tights.  I had a lot of ideas about creating some more ‘visual interest’ but in the end it was all I could do to just finish this bit.  
Initially, I wanted the tights to include a portion of repaired fishnet, but as anyone who has worn these knows, they always rip (and so are repaired) at the crouch and I really didn’t have the mental capability to figure out how to get that section tactfully onto the square.  I went with a portion of waistband which created its own issue.

 

It took me close to an hour to stitch that band of fishnet.


And that was when I declared myself done for the day.  This one square took as much time as last week’s entire block.  Too much stress, very little mindful, present bliss.

Roll up next week for the concluding story of the circus block.