In the Habit

For the last month or so, I've been using every spare minute to finish my large piece (see previous post), and even though it's now finished, I found myself in the habit of going into my workshop area and doing a little something every day. Of course, I did take it a bit slower, read a couple of books, watched some TV (the new season of the next Food Network star has started!), even napped a little this week, but I dove right into my next two projects (yes, you read that right - two!). I think I was able to work more quickly than I have in the past because in the previous project I became used to just doing, not thinking. I hope I can keep up this momentum!

In planning the previous project, I bought several sheer and metallic aqua fabrics that I thought I might use as overlays to suggest water. I ended up not using them, partly because of the time crunch, but also because I felt they would've obscured all the interesting textures and details I worked so hard on. I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get to play with all those fun sheers and see what effects I could create, so I decided to use them for my next two projects. The one above will be for our next FANE show in September, so it needs to be finished over the summer. We had a group member serve as a guest curator and she came up with the size and theme requirements for our show. The size is 9" x 20"- interesting and different - and it can be hung either vertically or horizontally. She also decided each piece should be predominantly one color and that the color name be mentioned in the title of the piece.

To explore this idea, I took a long piece of cheesecloth that I had painted with watered-down acrylic paints in the spring, and cut it to about 24" (I always like to have more than enough!). I cut those sheer aqua fabrics into strips about an inch wide, threaded them on a large needle, and wove them in and out of the painted cheesecloth. Right now it's all just laying loose on top of another piece of aqua fabric, but I intend to position it into waves and use both hand and machine stitching to hold it all together. I may do some beading on it as well, as I also have a pretty good collection of beads in this color.

While I was playing with that, I started thinking that maybe I should consider creating something for the SAQA auction, which would need to be completed by July 2. That piece has a size requirement of 10-12" square, so I thought I might use some of the same fabrics but in another way. For this piece, I started with a square piece of pale blue fabric and layered wavy strips of the sheers over it to look like water. At the bottom is a soft piece of a tweed-like fabric in peach tones, to resemble sand. I added some hand stitching to this too, to give it more texture and obscure the straight lines a little (you may have to click on the photo to enlarge it to see that detail). There's also a tiny seashell in the lower right corner.
Anyway, it's obviously a seascape and I'm happy with the effects of the layering of the sheers. In person, I feel it really conveys the sense of being by the seaside. Maybe this will be the start of a series (I've got yards of those sheer aqua fabrics!). Once again, I'm a little disappointed with how it looks in the photo compared to how it looks in person. One of my goals for the year is to invest in lighting or some other means of getting better photos. I still need to work on that one...