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Monday 28 February 2022

Re-making The Sandwiches

Learning curves and challenges are a part of life and for the most part they're good... except when they're not. For the past few weeks, rejection has been coming at me in all kinds of ways and I can only conclude that there's a lesson to learn - one that I haven't already learned - a lesson at a higher level - because rejection has been hanging around in one form or another for most of my life.

It was a trigger in the melt down that led to the middle of the night studio purge and I have to say while the melt down wasn't fun, the purge was a good thing. The switch to painting has been engaging in the way that I wish I'd started sooner even as I acknowledge that we only start when the time is right. For me, now is finally the right time.

Although all that I knew about design came with me into this new medium, I'm still surprised to see visible progress in such a short time. Yesterday, I was talking to my friend who is learning drawing and water colour painting and she said the same thing. It reinforces my point that we learn to do by doing and that a little bit each day is all it takes to build skills over time. 

Finding and staying with the right thing is what I'm praying for heading toward my birthday. I've tried a lot of new and different directions over the past decade and going forward into the next one, I want to be focused. Thinking about that while researching mixed media sculpture and debating the textile component of the upcoming retreat, I know I do not want to go in either of those directions. I want to continue to sew basic clothing while learning to sew increasingly more creative clothing while learning about painting and being open to revisiting my decision around painting on fabric. I quit. I might un-quit. 

Honesty is one of my core values so I hate when I say that I'm going to do X and then say that I'm never going to do X again, only to say that well, actually, yes, I'm going to do X again after all. It feels like I'm falling apart in public so the lesson may be to never say never because reality is that we make those decisions in the moment to the best of our ability with the information we have and when that information changes and our abilities shift, the decision may as well.

I hadn't realized how invasive rejection was in my life to the point that it was keeping me from pursuing teaching. I love teaching and I would love to teach again, in real life, beyond the blog, so I'm being open and putting it out to the universe. I will stop protecting myself from rejection by saying I don't want to teach or that it can't happen for this or that reason and we'll see what actually happens. For now, I'll focus on learning what I want to learn without being pulled away by shiny objects. No sculpture shaped shiny object. No textile art shaped shiny object. Clothes. Creative clothing. Abstract painting. Maybe on fabric.





To that end, I remade the sandwiches using light and dark denim scraps with the idea that they could become part of the coat I'm planning to make in the clothing portion of the retreat. It'll allow me to combine learning from both instructors in a way that works for me without the wall art overtone. 





I peeled off the light/dark cotton squares from the batting and substituted light/dark denim squares. The dark ones are from two men's shirts and a pair of jeans. The light ones are the reverse side of one of the men's shirts, a fabric remnant, and fragments collaged together. In some, you can see the seams. I like the potential of these and I know that if they don't become part of a garment, they can become a bag. 





On Saturday, I talked to Diane (one of the instructors) about how could I best prepare for her part of the workshop and after our discussion started making parts. Above left, these are serged strips made by serging the fabric and cutting beside the stitching. The pile at right is serger slices, the little strips that get cut off when you're serging a seam. I'll use both of these piles to create fragmented fabrics. 





The pieces above are made from serging together strips with the seams on the wrong side and top stitching on the right side. They are starts that may or may not end up in the finished coat partly because they might not work out and partly because I'm taking enough denim scraps for more than one garment and it could be that I change directions. I want to leave room for magic to happen. I do like that I'm sticking to a tight palette and the freedom that boundary creates.





THIS is the learning that I really want to bring home from the retreat. Diane's fabric from fabric has fascinated me since the first time I attended in 2012. I've done a lot of patchwork but what she does is more than ordinary patchwork. It's vibrant. It doesn't lay flat and is instead composed of curving and flowing lines and a combination of bias and straight edges. I'll work on doing better at the retreat and then come home and practice and make it my own because not only do I want that energy and flow for my own work, it's also the type of class I'd love to teach. This type of patchwork has the components of mystery I enjoy with the journey of the unknown and it uses scraps, reduces waste, incorporates refashioning, and maximizes remnants as well as other attributes that are both creatively challenging and good for the earth. 

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - feeling focused

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