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Wednesday 2 February 2022

The 100 Day Button Project

Having gone full out all last week, I treated Monday and Tuesday like the weekend, slept in and moved slow. Today, it's back to normal. The black sweater is coming along. There was a blip in my numbers and I had to reknit one of the fronts... again. I think I've got it right now. And, I've started sewing the workshop wardrobe with pajamas. They're a good warm-up and I need some. 




Pajamas are something I've sewn endless times over the years. I'm sure I could literally sew them in my sleep. One of the things that becomes harder to find the longer you've been a maker is something fresh. Something you've never done before or at least rarely done before. While working on the exhibit, I explored something new, mold making using fresh flowers, leaves and stems, and used up an entire mold making kit in the search for exactly the right impression which...





... came along by accident. I removed this little rose from a pin wanting to use the back and realized it had the definition and depth needed for a good mold. By that time, I'd done enough experiments to know and it did indeed work perfect. My best success with mold making was with items that were hard with clean lines and defined textures or shapes... like this rose... like buttons. Things that were shallow or soft didn't work nearly as well. 





The advantage of making your own mold is complete originality but I don't think it's always necessary to reinvent the wheel. What's more important is using what you've molded in an original way. The flower mold above right has become such a favourite that I bought another one over the weekend, just in case,  like a T & T pattern. I bought the leaf one at the same time knowing I'd get far better results with it than with the molds I'd made on my own. That good tools are important to successful creativity is something I've learned over the years. There's no point trying to make something work that doesn't. It's far better to find another way forward. 





This is the bracelet I mentioned in the last post, the one that didn't want to co-operate. Having bought the leaf mold, I'm able to move forward on one of the ideas. I'm using the scraps from this week's button projects to fill in the gaps so there's the original peach strings and then latte coloured shapes and then grey granite shapes. Today will add something new. Right now, it looks like a hot mess and we'll see where it goes. Paint will unify the design. 





Above are the second group of button molds I ordered and when I received them, I was much more hopeful than the first time. That set had very skinny posts that weren't going to work at all with polymer and were better suited to resin. I've started testing these and had some success with the octagon on Monday but not so much with the large circles yesterday. 





While resin would flow around the posts, polymer has to be pressed into the mold and it deformed the posts no matter what angle I worked from. I even cut the posts out of one mold to see if I could work with it that way and it wasn't much better. Frustrating... and part of the learning curve. I ended up cutting three large circles with a cookie cutter and I'm waiting until the complete button kit that I ordered arrives to drill the holes. It contains templates for accurately marking the holes. While I don't want the buttons to look manufactured, I do want them to look neat and professionally done. I'll get a lot of practice over the next 100 days. 

A project like the 100 day project is typically about one (or more) of three things - play, practice, or production. It can also be about pressure trying to live up to an imaginary bar and putting unnecessary expectations on yourself. Realistically, if you are further along on your goal today than you were yesterday, that is good and enough. 

What if we simply played? While it may come easy to kids, I have found as an adult that playing can be really hard work but thankfully, I am getting better at it. In fact, it's a faster and far more effective way to the same end. When I'm playing, I'm having fun. When something is fun, I want to do it more often and so I get more practice. When I practice over and over, it creates things and when the thing I'm practicing is how to make buttons, it produces buttons. Lots of buttons. On Monday, there were fourteen smaller ones and yesterday, three larger ones. Imagine after a 100 days! 

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - when I weighed on Sunday, I'd lost twenty pounds. It's a lovely milestone. 

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