Living This Creative Life

I have two favorite quotes. The first one is by Emile Zola, "If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I would tell you that I came to live out loud". I don't know who the second one is by, but it goes like this, "If you're not living on the edge then you might as well jump". Both of these sentiments sum up my personal philosophy of this experience we call life on earth. Enjoy!

Tuesday, June 4, 2013


Art Every Day, Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Good Evening,
Today's piece is a nice reminder for me that sometimes things end up not being anything like you thought they might.  Now those of you who know me well, know that I do very little pre-planning, but this one sort of takes the cake.
I thought that I would stitch a scant white grid on a piece of black linen using erratic spacing and crooked lines then I planned to top it with some long thin triangles of fabric that would interact with each other and use up some of the small bits of last weeks hand painted fabrics.  But, bad product got the best of me.  I was out of black batting, but had some cheap black felt so I thought I'd use it.  As I began stitching the white grid, I started to get some puckering in the areas with no stitching - the cheap ass felt was stretching as I man-handled it.  So, plan B, I thought instead of adding some appliques, I'd stitch some big swirls in and around the center of the piece where the puckering was bad.  Well, of course, that just made it worse.  
Well, I can't handle a puckery piece of work, so I stitched more grid on top using the three colors of thread from the swirls.  So now, the swirls are physically sitting between the white grid on the bottom and the colored grid on the top. It's almost like there stuck in a Madras plaid.

It was fun and I've learned my lesson about cheap product,
Till tomorrow,
Heather 

1 comment:

me said...

What you described and what I am able to see are different, probably because of the light on my computer this time of day. I will have to look again in the morning.

As of right now, I can't see too many of the plaid colored lines that are going through the swirls, likely because many of the lines match the swirls themselves. So the swirls don't really look caught to me, they still look to be on top of the grid. They are very solid and bold and hold their own against the plaid well, as far as I can see.

It's too bad that you had the issue with the felt, but very good that you were able to "be the boss, applesauce"! lol It's obvious that despite your beginning issues, you won :)

I quite like the look of this. I love the placement of the swirls, I think the plaid holds them up nicely. It has the look of a chalk board almost, with the grayish look of the felt in the back, and because you used slight tints of the primary colors with the white.

Had I not known it wasn't your intention to do the piece this way, I wouldn't have guessed. It's quite a tribute to your problem solving skills to be able to make such an interesting piece when things went awry so early on!

And you have maybe saved some of us from some unnecessary frustration in the future as well, by reminding us about product and the importance of working through things when faced with unforeseen issues in our work.