Monday, July 10, 2017

Making some progress

I spent several hours on my piece today. I have discovered that I need to move away from my work from time to time. Actually, Kathryn Harmer Fox noted it when I did a workshop with her earlier in the year. It was quite helpful to have my process actually clarified like that. It is not necessarily a good or bad thing, just something to be aware of. And to take note of, so that I CAN move away when the need arises.

I did some sewing yesterday and then put the work sitting in another room so I could see it in passing - which gives me the opportunity to see it in another context.


It turned out to be a much fiddlier exercise that I had planned. I am doing collage but some of the pieces are tiny. And ... I didn't use any pins - at all. I am rather amazed at myself about that. But there would have been a forest of pins to work with. Actually, I did use a few at first but I could tell that that was going to be unworkable. So I just laid it out and sewed. Some pieces moved a bit but not enough to worry about. 



Today I sewed some more. I am gradually embedding the fabric - as Kathryn described the process. As I haven't really done much since that workshop, I am relearning things as I go. So the process that I began with has morphed a bit as I remember more, and as the piece develops.

I have played with the image online, without a lot of thought about how I would lay it out and sew it.
It is coming along. I had to stop yesterday because I was thinking 'How do I know when to stop?"
Today I realised that I still had a lot more to do and that stopping was not on the agenda yet.

But now I am at a stage where stopping is within sight - I think. So I have decided to leave it for today, put it back where I will see it randomly, not in the studio, and will have to time to work on it a bit more tomorrow.
I suspect I am still not really going to know when to stop. I just will.

I am not sure if I am glad that I did the more abstract image, with its rather strange colours, or not. But it is what it is - as I seemed to hear people say a lot last year (mainly about football teams, of all things).

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