I find it amazing how time after time I need to enact ideas to see if they work or not.
The fabric actually has to be screenprinted or the colours crocheted together in order for
me to see if it's what I want. I love that I can look at something (anything) and know
instantly whether it 'works' but I'd equally love to be able to conceptualise in my mind
and 'know' that way too. The thing that frustrates me about this process is that it makes
for an abundance of waste if I can't find a way to make ideas work.
When it does come together, though, it's do-a-little-jig time. Sorry if this is totally
boring for you but it's meaningful for me to document my process on this fabric.
It started with an idea. I had an old block I'd carved last year and I wanted to create a
kind of funky check by lining up the diagonals in the pattern... I soon realised that I
could only get them to line up in one direction, but I kind of liked this bit of wonk...
I sewed lines to try and make the 'check-ness' of it more formalised and it really
didn't work (sorry - no pics of this), so I unpicked all of this and started thinking about
ways to make the design more cohesive, finally deciding to overprint in another colour...
This was okay, but it still didn't have something that punctuated it or drew it together.
I thought about more overprinting in a different pattern but then was wildly distracted
by a fluoro floss find online and started plotting a bit of embroidery on the piece,
starting with some black thread just to see if it might work...
The black was fun but I could see it wasn't going to work on the whole piece, so
when the floss arrived I set to work and found myself doing my favourite stitch at
the moment. I have no idea what it's called but I think of it as a skeleton stitch
because it looks like I've just boned a fish and laid out it's skeleton flat ;)
I've done about five of them so far. I'm going to do alternate diagonal lines with
the embroidery and see how that looks alone. If it needs a bit more interest or
contrast I might do some black thread detail on the other diagonals.
Do you play with your pieces like this? Do you have to re-work things until they
come together? I often think that if I was better at designing my blocks I
wouldn't need to fuss around like this... but then maybe this very process is
building on that body of knowledge that will all come together in my mind one
day and I'll be able to design without the need for all this fussing ;)
Hope it's a lovely (Father's Day) weekend for you... I'm hoping we'll be able to
all together :)