Oh gosh you guys, I had such a hard time focussing these past couple of days. I was feeling better - well enough to take Tyler for a walk and well enough to spend some time in the studio - but not well enough to work on the shirt piece - which is so massive that it takes quite a lot of physical wrestling to work with it.
So I pulled some of my favourite green scraps, and started putting them together in fused layers of vaguely floral origin - I had an ephemeral idea that I would do a green on green floral fantasy kind of thing, accented with white hand drawings (inspired by
Alisa Burke's sugar skulls) but after I'd fused two or three flowers together, this "Uh... what are you doing" vibe started happening, so I put all that stuff away.
And then, I guess because I had florals on my mind and because I came across my disperse dye papers the other day when I was looking for something else, I decided that I'd make a disperse dye flora piece. Cuz that's, you know, really different that the other thing, and much more like what I usually do! *insert eye roll here*
I got this far and then that same "Girl, what are you doing?" feeling started creeping up on me.
Pause. Reset.
I'm supposed to be making stuff that furthers my goals as a would-be artist.
After seeing the recent fiber art show and picking up a copy of International Quilt Festival Magazine, I realized that being accepted into fine art shows is one thing (and it's an amazingly great thing!); but to be accepted into fiber art shows, I need to brush up on the craft of the work, and not only focus on the art. I have been practicing my finishing techniques as a result; but I realized my quilting could use some brushing up too.
When I look at my older work, I see my stitches were a uneven, and though I love the modern look of a piece with an envelope closing which is why I use them - I realized that an envelope closing could make me a bit lazy, and some of my backs were starting to look decidedly gnarly.
And with that in mind, I decided to work on a piece whose purpose was to improve my quilting.
Maybe deciding to do that with a high pile plush silk velvet background wasn't the easiest way to do that, but having to go over each individual element two and three times in order for it to show up in the pile means I just have to be that much more precise with my quilting.
And that can't be a bad thing, right? :)
More on Wednesday....
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