27 November 2017

That Monday feeling

Some weeks don't get off to a good start - last week my son's car was rear-butted by a truck and he spent most of the day in A&E, making sure his passenger's "sore neck" got seen to. The car is a write-off but both of them are ok.

My false start this week is totally insignificant compared to that. What's a bit of confusion and timewasting, in comparison to life and limb? 

Even before making coffee I somehow - somehow! - got involved in sorting the bag of scraps that called to me at the Wanstead quilt event on Saturday ... so I unpacked the "treasure" and sorted by colour and purpose...
various little bits - and the doggies that "called to me"

Not sure I'd ever sew anything with brown, but the pale colour and the dark green and a little more red could rescue this

No, not really, not even as a pot holder! ("Life is short...")

pale hand-dyes and strips of yellowy greens (bluey greens are in another heap)
 Then you come to the residuals - fabrics that passeth all understanding -
This exercise brings it home to me that it's time to Freecycle some fabrics and other craft items that no longer interest me. Much as I love a rummage through a scrap bag, I just don't want to rescue scraps any more.

But I do want to use that little doggie scrap in something, for a xmas present.

Back to the moment - the collection of scraps is still spread on my worktable, and another collection has come to light -
Seaglass, or rather, riverglass, and pottery dug up from T&G's garden. And that lovely rounded brick - how long does it take the water to shape it?

Another project for my list is to gather together all my seaglass and pottery bits, some of them very small, and decide what to do with them. Probably not a mosaic! 

Whenever I find a new one, especially a printed pottery shard, I have a vision of drawing it - at large scale - but by the time it gets home and drawing materials are at hand, the vision has faded. Either there's something more urgent to do, or it doesn't seem important any more. And yet the urge keeps on coming back, with each newly found shard. Maybe it's just an excuse for adding to the collection?

1 comment:

magsramsay said...

Scraps give me permission to play - sometimes usefully as a 'textile sketch' but more often as a form of procrastination , putting off starting something larger.
I keep collecting stones and shells and did go though a stage of recording these' small treasures ' and even started scaling up but that didn't last long. Perhaps the answer is to draw them quickly on the spot then leave them there and work from the memory of it