28 August 2010

On the design wall today

In this case the design wall is the floor. I was looking for some black fabric to back the piece from the CQ summer school workshop, and shook out a folded piece of wool. Out flew the bits of pinkish fabric, which had been dyed with some very old black dye solution, as an experiment - well obviously it was an experiment that didn't work - the dye solution was just too old. I'd folded the big piece, machined across it a bit with flimsy thread, and torn it open, so that bits of the thread were left loose and ragged. Another piece got randomly zigzagged. You can just about see those in the photo.The "pink" fabric was intended for a piece with the working title Speech Marks. I'd just done a workshop with Dorothy Caldwell, so this was two years ago, and was exploring mark-making on little bits of fabric, like those in the photo. I'm still carrying around little bits of fabric, with a black backing/border, and doing "marks" when I have a moment ... now I have quite a collection of these "speech marks". I pulled out a few that looked good with the pink colour. The bit of batik fabric also seemed congenial for the piece, and had turned up during my CUTS earlier in the week and happened to be lying about. It's got this far in about 2 minutes, and started out as a complete accident. The challenge is to take it on to something that looks intentional. (There is definitely a concept behind it, so that's ok!)

There they lie - two unfinished projects, one a complete surprise, mellowing on the "design wall" and getting in my way as I step around them to get to the ironing board. I'm off to the weekend studio and will revisit them on return on Monday morning.

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