Sisters and Friends
Chapter 20
Learning Curve
"Are we nuts or what?" Annie mused, stroking Fiona's soft gray and white fur as the cat purred happily in her lap.
Quinn sighed, throwing the empty bottle of eyedrops into the trash. "Of course. But you're not as crazy as I am."
"You're doing great, from what I can see," Annie stood, gathering the cat in her arms, and walked over to the renderings pinned to Quinn's bedroom wall. "It's a lot easier to work in here without all that pink."
"I miss my Mac," grumbled Quinn. "This laptop is so ugly."
"Haroun's right, though," laughed Annie. "You really should run your CAD software in a native environment. "But if you want, you can have your Pro back. Macs are pretty cool."
"No, I gave it to you. You can have this stupid thing too, as far as I'm concerned. It's a lot faster, I'll admit that, but it's depressing."
"Looks aren't everything," Annie smirked.
"I know." But I'd like to think I'd still like him even if he weren't cute.
"Isn't Haroun coming this weekend?" Annie smiled, noticing the photo that Quinn was trying not to be so obvious about staring at.
"Yeah, and I get him after he fixes my parent's computers, phones, and DVRs."
"And my computer."
"You suck, Nichols," Quinn laughed, throwing a wadded up sketch at her. "What a way to spend a summer."
"Remember, we do the Smithsonian right after summer session is over."
"Which gives me two weeks to get ready for Raft."
"It's gonna be crowded at Daria's place."
"I'm not shacking up with him."
"But you want to," Annie teased.
He's the first guy I've felt this strongly about. What if he gets over me? When I had that crush on David, it was like a slap upside the head, but that's when I realized that I needed to grow the hell up. And I've started to.
But Haroun? Why do I fret about him? What am I afraid of?
Quinn shook her head slowly. God, I'm more like Daria than I thought. Even Annie is moving to Boston one term later than I am, just like Jane. But at least I can afford a decent place on my own. I'm staying in Daria's office at their place just until I can find something for Annie and I.
I'm even looking forward to spending the few days of a real summer vacation at a freaking museum. What the hell happened to me?
Quinn studied the wall of rough pencil sketches and the near photo quality images that were paired up. She had arranged her work chronologically, from left to right, and she agreed with Annie. She had greatly improved over the summer. Rhinoceros, a 3D software package, was a good intro to design on the computer for her.
To her surprise, she had learned that her ability to visualize in her head what a quick pencil sketch could be in three dimensions was not something everyone could do. She had always made rudimentary sketches of things she was interested in, like clothes. A few quick lines in the margins of a notebook was a kind of shorthand for her, captured the motion and drape of clothing. Fabric, after all, was a surface in free space, curving in three dimensions even though it was really just a distorted flat sheet.
From there, it was a simple step to understanding how those surfaces she so easily visualized in her head could be seen as volumes, and those volumes like solid objects.
"Think about it, Quinn," Daria had told her one night over the phone. "You had 'cute' down to a science. You didn't need those stupid magazines to tell you what looked good, but they just told you what everyone else in your world was going to imitate."
Her sister was right. She did have an aesthetic sensibility; she just never realized that it wasn't universal. Daria did too, but she used it to different ends. Quinn smiled. Her sister had dressed the way she did at first to just irritate her, but quickly noticed how it made excellent interpersonal armor.
"Very cool, Red," Jane nodded approvingly as Quinn proudly showed off her new pair of sunglasses.
They were cool.
She had started with an oversize pair of generic sport glasses, recutting the shape of the lenses using a computerized machine at the school shop. Working in Rhinocerous, she created a 3D virtual model of the frames she wanted to mount the lenses into on her laptop.
Using a 3D printer at the school's tech lab, she turned her design into a physical object, using a slightly flexible plastic polymer that was sturdy enough to make the sunglass frames actually usable. Annie helped her refine the prototype, and a weekend of work with supplies from a car painting supply company resulted in a pair of sunglasses that looked like it had come off a factory assembly line.
And she, Quinn Morgendorffer, had designed and made them. Of course, they were far from perfect-she had elected to leave out the hinges that would allow the temple pieces to fold, since she felt that the prototyping material would not be strong enough to hold the tiny metal hinges. So much to learn. They still got her an A in the studio sculpture class, which she had repurposed to learn how to actually give her design ideas physical form.
"Hey, I like those earrings, Jane," Quinn said.
"I made these," Jane smiled.
"What fabrication method did you use? No, wait, let me guess," Quinn studied them carefully. "Hand tooled hard jewelry wax patterns, Investment cast in gold?"
"Nah," Jane laughed. "Like I could afford gold."
"Are they resin cast in a silicone mold? How else would you deal with those undercuts?"
"Silicone molds are expensive, Red."
"Then how did you get that complex, almost filigreed surface?
Jane smiled serenely. "Hot glue and macaroni, sprayed with gold paint."
Quinn was speechless for a moment. She had killed herself making the sunglasses, which, okay, were beautiful, but here Jane had created something equally cool in maybe ten minutes.
She burst out laughing. "Jane, you rock!" No wonder she and Daria got along so well. Both of them were creative beings, each following their own path. She herself was a comparative late starter, but the two older women and her best friend Annie believed in her. And so did Haroun.
Turning over the new sunglasses in her hands, she began to understand that they were right.
A/N: Quinn's sunglasses could actually be made as described with the current generation of Maker tools- the 3D printer described can be made at home from a kit, although one big enough to print her sunglasses would be one of the larger ones that you'd find in a school shop. Likewise, small inexpensive 3 axis CNC routers that could recut the lenses of sport glasses have been around for years.
Would her sunglasses actually be that perfect? Of course not, but she hasn't yet developed that critical eye that would let her see the minute flaws. It is certain, though, that it is indeed within her abilities to make something like this, and yes, it would be a rush to hold something like that in your own hands.