You And Me Baby, We're Stuck Like Glue!

Remember that song?  Stuck Like Glue by Sugarland? (If you click here you can see it)

I sure hope you had a great Fourth of July Celebration.  Frank is sitting in the living room with his work all around him, watching the great PBS Special A Capitol Fourth.  I think that is the name of it.  He loves it, I can take it or leave it.  I go in to watch some of the country  ones and Neil Diamond.  The rest I don't even recognize.  He LOVES it!

But, back to the glue.  A designer friend of mine asked me to test drive a pattern for her.  It involved a purse frame and glue.  Not a good combination for me.  It was wracked with pitfalls the entire way.

First I gathered my fabrics, I needed 5 so I decided on a Mardi Gras theme.  Nice, I had some great colors and a mask fabric.  I cut out the pieces.  But for some reason I cut about half of them WRONG.

I know why, I had a series of migraines the day before and the day of the cutting.  So, luckily I had mucho gobblets of fabrico.  So the next day I cut out the correct sized pieces.  They went together nicely but there was a twist to the construction I had never seen before.  Not hard, just done in a different way.

I lived through that and got everything turned out and correct and all.  I was ready to put the purse frame on it.  For a long time I have wanted to put a purse together that had a frame on it so this was going to be exciting.  I searched for three days for that stupid frame.  In the three days, I wrapped up and put away all the fabric I had purchased at the quilt shop 50% and 60% sale, all the fabric I got on the Houston Shop Hop and all the fabric I have torn out of the shelves and tossed in a big pile after using a piece of them.  Oh and all the scraps I have tossed in the basket waiting to be cut up and filed in their respective boxes were all cut up and filed away even.

I am telling you, I did some serious cleaning up to find that purse frame.   And that stupid purse frame never showed up.

So I walk in tonight to work on something and there is the unfinished purse staring me in the face.  Needing to be done so I can do a critique for the designer friend.  And I can't STILL can't find the frame.  I was deciding what to do, when I looked up.

I'll be a purple nosed pig with pink polka dot toenails......there it was.  Staring me right back in the eyes.  Stupid purse frame.  I'll bet it was hiding all along and just came out at to lay in the open like that to make ME think I was the stupid one.

So I found the directions again, and the glue.  And the frame and the purse. At the last second I decided to take some toothpicks along with me to attempt to distribute the glue in the tiny track of the frame.  At Frank's recommendation I was using this glue from the rotating machinery industry that is a strong industrial strength formula that will hold a car to a steel I-Beam at 35 feet in the air while a team of elephants and bulldozers pull in the opposite direction.  This glue had POTENTIAL!

And a good thing too, because the glue was coming out of the tube very very very very fast......all over the place.  I grabbed the small piece of plastic bag the frame came in and put it under the project to keep the industrial strength glue with huge potential to glue the Grand Canyon shut back together again from getting all over my cutting board.  Why was I using that stupid glue in the sewing room and not outside in the work shed?

I realized the fabric was not going to go into the tiny slot in the frame easily.  It was going to take a fight.  So far, I was not glued to anything major, but it was still early in the program.  I found my small screwdriver for one of the machines and began to push the fabric into the frame channel.  It was sort of working.  Sort of not working.  But I was committed by now so I was pushing hard.

I got one half of one side in and tried to move to the other side.  I realized that my finger was now glued to the middle of the frame.  And I had glue on my palm starting to run down my arm.  I managed to turn the piece over and start to push the fabric in the other half of the one side I was working on.

By now I realized I had glued the screwdriver to my fingers.  At least it was in the position I needed it to push the fabric in the frame channel.  I had extricated my fingers but had nothing with which to wipe the excess glue from the purse frame.  Yet.

So I flipped the purse over and thought I was adding LESS glue to the other side's channel, but by the time I got the glue added it was still coming out of the tube again.  I quickly put the top on, and glued the tube to the side of my hand.  I had no time to get it off.  I looked at Hugeaux the Grand-Dog whom we are baby sitting because of the scary fireworks, and he had a piece of paper glued to his ear.  How did THAT happen?


I used my Edward Scissorhand Screwdriver Fingers to push the fabric of the other side into the channel of the other side.  This time I picked up three large headed pins on my forearm.  My left cheek itched but I was too afraid of gluing my finger to my face to scratch it.   

The purse is resting upside down, probably gluing itself to my cutting board as we speak.  I was thinking I needed a new cutting board anyway, you know.

I really like the pattern.  And I want to make another one.  If nothing else to prove to the world that I am not a total ditz.  But I will need the screwdriver off my fingers and stuck to the rotary cutter before I can cut the fabric incorrectly.

glen:  you and me baby, we are stuck like glue...........