Altered Artwear: That Goodwill Tunic

Remember the tunic I bought from Goodwill and then dyed and started stitching? See it here.
I think I may have finished it. But then, I’ve thought several times I might have finished it, and then I’d do something else to it.
Here’s what I’m beginning to suspect:  I think perhaps I get myself into a really labor-intensive altered artwear project in part to avoid working on any other kind of project. You know? I love altering clothing I’m going to wear. In fact, that’s the only kind of clothing I work on any more:  stuff that I, personally, intend to wear. I don’t do it to sell or to show or to send off to anyone. Been there, done that, spent way, way too much time and effort. I love knowing that other people have and wear my stuff. I love that, thinking about artwear leaving here and going on travels, having another life. I love to think that, someday, I may be walking down the street in some little town and see one of my skirts walking toward me. I’d squeal so loudly you’d hear me where you live. Really.
People look at this stuff and say, “Gee, you could sell that.” No, I could not. Let’s figure $20 an hour, which is low for handwork. Let’s guess that I spent 20 hours on this. I spent a lot more, but I wasn’t working Fast & Furious (that would be “quickly and furiously,” if we’re going with the actual adverbs).
So, conservatively, I’d have to sell this for $500.
Yeah. That’s going to happen.
The kind of work I like to do—slow, intricate hand stitching—is not the kind of work that’s going to sell, not unless I just get tired of it and offer it for a fraction of what I put into it. And that would be silly:  it’s what I’m doing with the things I put in my Etsy shop. There’s nothing in there that’s priced at what it would be if I did this professionally and figured the time I spent on it. I wouldn’t pay that amount, and I don’t expect anyone else to, either.
And that’s what I think keeps me from working on the journal quilt pages:  I love doing them, but what am I going to do WITH them when I finish them? Sure, I’ve sold some, but only after I’ve had them a while and have realized I need to move them out to make room for more (my wall is pretty much covered with them, and there’s no place else to put them, and I’m  NOT  going to put stuff in storage), and so I put some low price on them and hope they find a new home.
I’d like to look at this in another way. I’d like to think I can make the things I want to make and then offer them for sale, and they will sell for a price that would encourage me to make more. I don’t believe that is possible, not doing what I’m doing.
Hence, the hours and hours and hours on artwear.
And related stuff—stuff I make for no other reason than just making it.
This week I did this:

The chair is one I got for $5 at a garage sale. I took the seat off and recovered it. Garf loved this chair. He slept in it and, of course, marked it. So when I cleaned the porch last week, I took the seat off again, scrubbed the chair with soapy water and bleach (like I did everything else that had been on the porch—2.5 hours of scrubbing things with soapy water and bleach) and then bought new foam rubber, cut it to size, and dug around in the FE until I found this heavy cotton I’d tossed in with a batch of purple. I love how the paint goes with the dye. I love that—it wasn’t a deliberate match.
It’s not the best upholstery job—the corners are wonky. But the seat is screwed in place, so it’s sturdy. Eventually it will fade and get wet, and if the base holds up, I’ll take off the seat and do it all over again. For now, it makes me happy. I tossed a bright turquoise rug over the back after I took the photo.
Anyway, that’s the tunic earlier this week.
Here it is today. The front:

The back:

Detail:



Remember? It was a pale tangerine. #2.49
I dyed it. The red and yellow thread was 100% polyester—aieeeee! So it didn’t take color, and I had to figure out what colors to use that would work with it. Lots of stitching, and then lots of beading. I finished the purple beads yesterday afternoon and tried it on, and damn if I hadn’t gotten one side WAY more thickly beaded than the other—I worked from one front panel around the back to the other, and in the process I did what I usually do:  work progressively more anal-retentively and keep adding more and more and MORE beads as I go. So today I had to re-bead the other front panel. And then I did the centers of all the flowers, since the beaded panels were visually a lot heavier than the stitched flowers.
Am I done? I don’t know. Part of me wants to move on to a wall piece that’s about 85% finished. I could finish it, but I’ve already decided that, if I do finish it, I want to put it in the Etsy shop. That makes me all itchy, thinking about that. If I’m going to put it in there, do I really want to do all the handwork I plan to do? And if I don’t do all that, will I feel it’s not finished? (yes.) If I do, then will I be able to price it accordingly, according to all the work I did? (no.)
What if, on the other hand, I avoided that by just going on with this tunic? I think of how cool it would look with stitching and beads along the hem and the edges of the sleeves and around the buttonholes and on the top edge of the pocket and around the collar. Wouldn’t that be fabulous?  And what if I copied the flower pattern, enlarging it into a huge piece on the middle of the back? I tell myself not even to go there:  beading on the back would be really uncomfortable to wear.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. The EGE is no help—I was nattering on about this to him while we were sitting out on the (newly scrubbed) front porch, drinking icy frappaccinos and trying to stay cool, since it’s 103 today and I refuse to turn on the air condition IN THE SAME WEEK the heater was on. Goodlordalmighty. I don’t turn the ac on until June. I don’t know how that’s going to work, though, as we go to Dallas next weekend and, when the cats are here alone, they can’t do the elaborate Natural Cooling thing I do to keep the house bearable:  this morning, when it was cool and foggy (yes!  amazing!) outside, I opened all the windows and turned on all 7 ceiling fans. Yes:  seven. No, our house is not that big. The only rooms that don’t have ceiling fans are the two bathrooms and the sewing studio, which has my fabulous chandelier (you remember that one:  the el cheapo one I bought and then loaded up with prisms and beads). Then, late in the morning when it heats up outside, I shut all the windows except those out here in the studio office—I can’t bear to have those shut unless I have to. The front part of the house stays relatively cool. Well, not to y’all:  normal people would walk in and go, “Gah! It feels like you’re roasting meat in here!” We all like a warm house, though, so even the cats can tolerate it:  they lie around on the floor with their legs in the air. If they ever started to pant, I’d have to give in. But in the summer when the ac IS on, they sometimes get cold and have to curl up together. Sheesh.
Anyway: so The EGE was no help, saying, “You enjoy doing it, so you should do it.” It’s a fabulous attitude, and one I try to share. My brain, on the other hand, finds this impossible. It likes for Everything to Have a Purpose. “Enjoyment” does not qualify, not to it.
Well. A long, rambling post that was supposed to be about this Goodwill Tunic but turned into what? A musing about The Purpose of Making Things?
Here’s another porch photo.

Cynjon Noah [omigod:  go there right this minute and meet Sparky. Be prepared to go, Awwwwww. Cute!”] sent me this fabulous fabric a while back. It’s wonderful, covered with amazing stitching. I put it over the back of a chair until I knew what to do with it, and then yesterday I realized that it would work perfectly with one of my favorite chairs. I put the dyed cotton rug over the part where I actually sit, to protect the fabric. I love this—it makes me happy to look at it. Thanks again, Cynjon!
And here’s something else that makes me happy:

It’s a big shell, a little larger than my hand, that my parents used as an ashtray. It was one of the few familiar objects from when I was a kid. It was always filled with ashes—they both smoked constantly—and was ugly. At some point they quit using it—maybe my mother used it until she finally quit; I don’t know. I don’t know how I got it—whether she gave it to me years ago or whether it was something I found when we cleaned out her house. I think the latter. Scrubbed and ash-free, it’s beautiful:

Anyway, it’s absolutely perfect for beading. It holds a lot of beads and fits comfortably in my lap or, if I’m slouching, on my stomach. It makes me happy to use it. You can see the faint burn marks on the rim. I wonder where it came from-- Did they buy it? Or did they find it themselves? Who knows? I’ll never know, so I can imagine any number of stories.
Now it’s just after 8 p.m. It’s 102, which is a little warm to go for another walk. But I need to do yoga before dinner, so I’d better haul my sweaty (yes! I sweated! Whoa.) self up and go find some shoes. I’m not complaining:  I’d rather it be 102 than 65 any day.