Very occasionally I get to write one of these posts about when a piece of work just goes amazingly well. This is one of those occasions. It feels like I just turn up and provide the hands but the universe does the rest.
This small piece of work is part of a series I am making after my visit to the wonderful Shore Cottage Studio I have already mentioned. I collected some inspirational pieces on the beach and then did some mark making and then dyed some fabric and thread, including making some pieces in the microwave using very ordinary dylon. I have already blogged about using straight stitches on one piece, inspired by the striations on the beach pebbles. This piece was inspired by the feathers I collected with Sue:
I knew that I wanted to do something on feathers and I had bought a sizzix dye machine dye of the feather shape in preparation, but this morning I went to my work table and had completed the piece in about an hour. It just fell together. I found the background fabric which is a lovely piece of pure Scottish wool in my pile of samples bought by weight round the corner from me in a curtain maker’s shop, I found exactly the right sized piece of cotton bump to work as the padding, and I found the black Mettler quilting thread sitting on top of the tub of threads I use most often. I threaded up the machine, got it ready for free machining and off I went. I did make a sample, which I do more often now, but that went really well and I was off:
I was a bit worried that I have made so many leaves over the years that I would do that rather than feathers, but it seemed to work. The secret there was just to do it, not to think, just run the machine fast and get on with it:
The very dark and more navy blue pieces are bought fabric. Mine is the more grey and less densely coloured pieces like the horizontal feather in the above pictures, but the bought fabric blended really well and allowed me to make a bigger piece.
I think you could argue that using the sizzix machine is cheating, but I think that the creativity bit comes in with how you use it, how you cut the fabric, and how you stitch it. Plus it speeds up the process that you can experiment and do the what if? stage much more quickly.
I did hand cut some feathers as can be seen in the above sketchbook pages, but as the sizzix will cut bondaweb, I intend to use it and cut out the drudgery. For information, I have the Bit Shot Sizzix Plus:
I had it for Christmas last year and have really enjoyed using it.
But the point of the post is to record one of those small projects when everything goes really well and when it is a delight to make, and when I experience what Deming and William Morris describe as joy in work. I don’t think we take enough time to enjoy what we have made with our hands. I think we think it’s in some way conceited, but I really think we should.
