Back again

Unfortunately, I've been plagued with health issues over the last few weeks, and have spent very little time in the studio.  My DH and I got down there today when I asked him to help me re-organize some threads.  Worked well, but in doing so we found a box of smaller show pieces that we hadn't  seen in 4-5 years.  We went through it, salvaged what beads and buttons we could, and then cut the pieces up. I now have another 5 gallon pail of garbage. But, I did save one piece for myself.  I loved it when I made it, and can now keep it.  We also found quite a few patterns of older pieces.  These will never be used, and I have no idea why I kept them.  Being paper, they are now in the re-cycling bin.

The down side of this, is that the need for more culling has become very obvious.  I really don't imagine that I'll ever use the many, many colours of cotton thread that I've squirreled away.  I'm using Superior threads almost exclusively now, along with some rayon embroidery threads that I find work very well for thread painting.
And beads!  Whatever am I going to do with all the beads?  But I will go through them.  I have many small plastic bags, and can bag them up and off to the thrift store, if no other option comes up.

And having said all this, today I ordered almost $150.00 of thread this morning, off the internet.

Reduced to this!!

Over the past few weeks, I've been plagued with back problems, and have barely been able to spend more than a few minutes at a time in my studio.  I've also been bored almost to tears with the limits on my activity. But--my hands have actually been almost itchy to hold a needle and fondle fabric.  Finally I had enough and sought some small hand sewing project that I could use to ease my "cabin fever".  I ended up making yo-yo's.  I have no idea if or when they might be used, but I enjoyed every minute of it.  Yes, that's a quarter beside them.  They really are quite small.

In the Saddle Again

The piece mentioned in my last post was a large, hand dyed mandala.  I ended up trimming the edge, and then cutting long pieces of all four sides, until I had the center square down to about 19" on each side.  There were four long narrow pieces that I played with a bit, until I had three of them joined, into a long narrow piece about 15" by 23".  These all sat for awhile, while I thought about it.

This morning, I leaf printed everything except the center square.  For that, I had bought some special thread to use with a programmed stitch to create a large spiral out from the center. I got it all sketched out on paper, and took a good look, said to myself "Crap!", and put the whole thing aside for future consideration.

Here are the edge pieces with their leaf prints.  I used white acrylic paint plus textile medium, for the main piece, and then orange and black Seta-Color on the smaller pieces.

This main piece was planned.  I will FMQ the leaves, and then put a wide machine satin stitch vertically to cover the joins.  I'm comfortable with that plan.  Sort of weird, but I like it at this point.

Now, with these pieces, I was more or less, just fooling around, but now I'm considering joining them together, somehow, to produce a larger, possibly marketable piece.  Considering that, I somewhat regret using the two different colours of paint for the leaves, but there will be nothing lost in trying it out.  Who knows?  I may end up with a bunch of "mug rugs", for which I have no use whatsoever. 

Well, talk about wasting time

Today I was working on a piece for the shows I'm committed to this fall.  Since I was just doing background machine quilting, my mind was free to wander and contemplate that evil little voice in my brain that keeps telling me that my work is crap.  Determined to ignore that voice, I worked on the piece all day, with a suspicion in my mind that it really wasn't working.  I considered various ways I could possibly change it to make it more pleasing, or marketable. None of the possibilities really sounded workable to me, but I carried on, morning, afternoon and evening, until all the machine quilting was done.  Knowing the problems with Frixion pens, (I had marked the piece with them, several months ago,) as soon as it was finished, I ironed it.  Yep, white marks, even though I had tried to keep the marks at a minimum.  Well, now to figure how where I go from here.

Second thoughts

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to show pictures of Tall Grass Prairie, to a friend whose opinion I trust.  She was very polite about  minutiae, but I could see she wasn't terribly impressed.   This sort of confirmed some reservations I had about the piece. The only way I can describe my concern is to say that it's very austere, and the design somewhat simple for the size of the piece.  I know that it is quite a bit larger than my comfort zone, which is quite happy working at about 12 by 12.  

While we are constantly told to stretch ourselves in our art, in order to grow creatively, I have to wonder if this applies to artists who are  at the end of their careers, as it does to those much as those younger.  The lady I spoke with yesterday talked about reaching a point where you are free to do whatever you want.  This would give me pleasure, but I also think it might give me permission to become lazy, and spend my time doing nothing but charity quilts, where I don't have to think, just to truck along with my sewing machine.  That's when I sometimes get "into the zone".  Very relaxing, but how satisfying--in the long run??

Tall Grass Prairie finished.

Here are the official pictures.