Multitasking Projects

When I was working in my profession, multitasking was an essential skill for success. While working with dozens of technical professionals across multiple projects with several different computer systems, operating systems, programming languages and systems to contend with, multitasking was the only constant. It's what I've always done. It's what I still do. Even though now I am spending most of my time on hobby activities I will switch between multiple projects in any given day. From the outside it may look unfocused and haphazard but I make forward progress in most things over time. My craft spaces are well organized and I can switch between projects easily and it works out well because I can accomplish more than one thing at a time, there is no wasted time. For example, some artwork and collage work required breaks in time to allow for drying or pressing.  I can sew or work on digital art during those breaks. I also get tired hunched over a sewing machine too long or my hands hurt after hand quilting too long or I get tired standing over my art table too long. Switching from one task to another let's me keep working on projects but allows me to choose what I feel up to doing that day or hour. 

The downside is that when I try to write a post about what I have been doing it is always about multiple things. Because that is what I have been doing in a week, heck even in a day. But the secondary upside is it is more like cross training. Work I do in designing quilts may give me an idea for a collage, a collage may end up as a book cover, bookbinding may spark an idea for Fabric design or a quilted piece may end up as a book cover.

This is my current round up of activities:

A new indigo butterfly fabric repeat print. I created new flower shapes in the ArtRage app on my iPad, pulled all the elements in a little tighter, filled the blank space more with flower elements and increased the number of butterflies. I like this one and it has given me ideas for using other iPad apps to create the basic elements of another fabric design. 

My first little book and what am I doing wrong? It's still cute. Everyone who sees it likes it. But there is a problem. See the little ribbon. I didn't plan on putting that on the book. I had to add it to hold the little book closed. It kept popping open. I put it under heavy weight for a day, even hammered the bound edge some, but the top cover keeps popping up. I don't know if it's my binding technique, the weight of the binding string I used, the size of the signatures, or something else. So I decided to do a few experiments to eliminate possibilities. First I rebound it with different size string.  What you see here is the second binding. That helped some but didn't solve the problem. Rather than remake this one a dozen times I made several little books with simple cardboard covers varying the signature page count and string size. This is just one of many I've made and I still have not completely resolved the problem but the smaller the string size I use the less the problem becomes. 

This is terrible, I took it apart and did it over.

 This is better but still popping up some.

 Finally, this one is lying almost flat.

 The next set of little books are even smaller.

Purple scraps collage. Remember that pile of scraps from a previous post? Well, this is the beginning of something.  I still don't know what yet but these are some initial collages of some of the scraps I saved and they are sure to be scanned and then cut up and used some other way.

Digital Collage of Fabric and Paper Collages

Tarot card bags. One crochet with a cotton and silk blend yarn and  the second is a scrap patchwork bag that is lightly padded.

 Front and back.

Color test fabric and new geometric pattern. More color testing of Spoonflower cotton fabric and I'm working on a design for a multicolor geometric print.

One yard multicolor test print.

 

 My favorite colors and what I'm working on a design for.

Color codes.