Lisa and the Convoluted, Hazy, No Good, Very Mediocre Process

A book (Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst) 

comes to mind when I write this blog post...

So my process in a nutshell 

(ha! My mother always annoyingly says "to make a long story short" and it is not ever short!)

After a weekend (September 17-19) wandering the streets of Manhattan 

and drooling over the architecture there...

I thought that somehow, I could incorporate my love of these old buildings

 into our latest challenge...

And I even blogged about it early on

(September 24th to be exact!) 

and I was happy with my first rubber stamp...

so I made a bunch more...

And then, I painted on fabric paper 

(sorry no photos taken of the strips of tissue paper being glued onto muslin)...

and I even bought a bunch of colored zippers...

At this point, things were going swell 

though it was getting a little hard to move about in my small sewing room at home...

and it got worse...

which was okay because, I moved most of my messy stuff into a studio on October 1...

along with two other fiber art friends...

so there was painting, and cleaning, and  moving for days...

followed by a trip up to my hometown of Ottawa (including my first speeding ticket---ever!)

to hang out with family while my dad had some surgery on Oct 6,

but I did return to my project, 

stamping on my painted paper fabric....

adding some free motion-stitched lines and some zippers....

 

which was put on the back burner while I prepared for and attended 

 a reception with our fiber art group's exhibit and presentation (October 10-11)

in Old Forge NY...

 

eventually my sewing room became unbearably messy, 

 so I cleaned...

and now that it was clean,

why not start another project that was in my head? because I don't have enough going on...

and take another weekend off 

to go to the Sheep and Wool Festival (October 17-19) with friends....

I mean,

don't we all need another craft and project for distraction????

by then the zippers had been separated and sewn to make a fire escape...

but there was another hiatus to enjoy a glorious weekend 

(now it's already November 7-9) of mindfulness 

(ironically defined as a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment) 

and yoga at Kripalu with my sister-in-law...

and then spending a couple of days photographing the snow...

and ice that befell us...

which looked pretty but now is all gone and 

we were fortunate to be far enough from the snow belt of Buffalo...

and all of a sudden,

it is November 23rd...

and my project that now measures 26.6" x 22"

no longer seems so exciting, mediocre at best,

has been set aside as a... 

"yeah that seemed like a good idea at first but now longer interests me so much"

kind of project!

I could have just dropped out of this challenge

(it would have probably saved you a bit of time with all the reading!)

but I figured it was worth showing everyone that

not all projects end like we had anticipated

and the process often has a tangled textile history!

Open to Change

Open.

So many different ways to interpret this.  As someone who likes to experiment, and my "creations" don't always match my original plans and expectations, I really have to be open to change!

 

 

In a recent workshop day with Catherine Nicholls, we were experimenting, (or more correctly playing!)  with pen and ink.  This is something that I have absolutely no experience with, but oh what a great day it was!  We had some fun with playing with dots - lots of fun in fact!  (more about that in a future post on my blog)

 

 

and eventually, we reached the point where we were to paint cherry blossoms using Inktense pencils, washes and shading.  The fun with this is that it is so unpredictable as to what you will get.

I am no artist.  It soon became apparent that I was not creating a cherry blossom in any way shape or form!

 

 

decidedly not cherry blossom like

 

Much more tulip like.  I was open to this, and worked with what was presented, adding some shading with pencil crayons and dots.  Some faux trapunto, some dense quilting (whaaaaattt?!) and my end result

 

This is an example of what I like about creating - being open to what is revealing itself as you progress and being open to change to take a project in a completely different direction!

You never know what comes next!

 

Thank you Gina, I really enjoyed this theme!

 

Janet

Finished size 16" x 16"
Wholecloth, painted, pen & inked, traputoed and quilted,
Superior Bottomline thread top and bottom

 

Not quite...

My piece has really taken a lot longer than it should have and although I'm revealing, it really isn't finished.

Light and Shade

It is based on a photo by Jorg Reuter which is creative commons here.  Obviously, it is about balancing rocks which we talked about recently, and appears to be a very popular hobby! 
I sketched and sketched and came up with this.

Obviously this is not the right shape for our challenges and then I hit upon including light and shade in the background and widening it. I traced my sketch onto muslin (just the lines and dots, not all the black).
Then I sandwiched it and free machined most of the lines in black thread (That was a lot of lines).
Then I painted the background in acrylic (next time I will use fabric paint as it is very hard to stich through acrylic although the lumiere is so gorgeous....)
I coloured the stones and shells with watercolour pencils and a brush.
Then the time consuming part, which is not finished began.  I wanted to hand stitch all over it as it is so flat and I wanted more texture.

I tend to embroider by thread, lol.  I will start with one thread and when that thread is finished, I go to a different coloured thread and a different area and so on.  Stops me getting bored.
In the first pic, I have basically finished the bottom rock, but I haven't touched the background here.
In the second picture, I have done some work on the lower stone and have done some background stitching.  Still need to do some black back the other way,
On the shell, I have only stitched some highlights and a strand of pink.
I find that I am beginning to like this style, with thread sketching, painting and hand embroidery, only I need to make sure I have more time for the hand stitching, as I always underestimate how long it will take.
Anyhow, even though I am in no way finished this piece, I really like it (wow, first time for everything!) and am going to take my time and enjoy the stitching process whilst I think about the next challenge.
Too much talk, sorry.