Brain Lint

Quilts, quilts, quilts!

duien — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 21:37:35 +0000

I’ve officially started my first quilting project. I’ve had an idea of the type of design I wanted for quite a while but I’ve had trouble getting it quite right. I was trying to base it off the layout from the “Split rail fence” quilt square but couldn’t get what I wanted. Then suddenly, on Saturday, the idea just sprung fully-formed into my head. I knew the pattern I wanted. The scan from my sketchbook shows a few evolutions of the idea, from the rouge original sketch to a more tightly laid out design. After that, I recreated the design in OmniGraffle and played around with different color combinations. I scanned in my fabrics and dropped them into the design to get an idea of the scale and whether the colors would work together. The hardest part was figuring out how to translate my design into easy-to-assemble squares. I did that in OmniGraffle too. I looked at the design and started isolating blocks that could be easily sewn and then adding on. The only change I had to make for assembly was to build the large squares out of four small squares and it turned into small and extremely easy to assemble blocks well suited for quick piecing. You can see a diagram of how they’re assembled on the sketch page. After that, I made a few squares. They turned out great! I went out today to get some more fabric and a rotary cutter so I can start making more pieces. I only found two of the fabrics this time. Hopefully I’ll find the other one at another JoAnns. Luckily, the ones I got were the green and blue, so I can work on assembling the center parts of the squares and add the orange or another fabric once I get that.

Negative chair

duien — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 21:36:22 +0000

Negative space drawing of a moulded plastic chair. I did this while Nathan and I were visiting Pat's cabin last summer. I seem to have given up on the top and the legs.

Chaco contour

duien — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 20:40:36 +0000

One day it struck me that my chacos would make a really nice contour drawing subject. I did this semi-blind. I didn’t look at the paper while I was drawing a line, but I did look when I moved my pen. I think it turned out pretty neat.

Bike seat

duien — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 20:32:25 +0000

This is a drawing I did of my bike seat for an everyday matters challenge.

I have a kitten

duien — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 15:26:59 +0000

Antdot

Three weeks ago, Nathan and I got a kitten. He’s cute, although I guess with kittens that isn’t really news. I have a bunch of photos of him up on Flickr in the Antdot photo set. More to come as I take more pictures.

Moleskine Labeling

duien — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 03:53:00 +0000

I’m a moleskine addict. I have a lot. I think it’s in double-digits now. And I’m tired of not being able to tell them apart. I tried labeling one with my label-maker once but it just wasn’t right. I have stickers on my sketchbook so it’s easy to find that one, but the rest are still all to similar.

Well, I finally came up with the solution. I’m painting them. I have a bunch of acrylic paint and I have plain black surfaces that need to be told apart. I decided to paint one I don’t use much first so I wouldn’t be upset if I didn’t like how it turned out. I started out with only a vague idea of the design I was going for and let it evolve. And I love it. I don’t really feel like painting more tonight, but once I have some more ideas of how to decorate the others, I’m going to town. I can’t wait.

Compass Legs

duien — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 02:08:23 +0000

It was a slow night at work tonight, and I was fooling around with a compass we had behind the counter. It’s was one of the ones that, for unknown reasons, can bend in the middle of each leg. As I was playing with it, I realized that it looked like legs. I immediately fell in love with the idea, and want to use it in a piece of some kind. The guy I was working with suggested that I draw it, so I did. First I laid it on the sketchbook and traced it, then went in a cleaned it up and went over it in pen.