Playtime Progress

My friend Vivien has a point, with her comment on my last post:  if I keep working with the level of detail I used in the first two components, it will take me until May to get the whole thing finished!  So in the interest of time (as well as recycling and experimentation), I decided to try another approach.  When I've made multiple small pieces before, as for swaps, I've made a large piece (painted, stamped, stitched, whatever) and then cut it up into smaller pieces.  I thought I might have to do most of these components in that way, then do some with more detail and individuality, the way I did with the first two.  

So I dug around in my box of white fabric and found these 12"x18" jacquard placemats I put in there several years ago when I was cleaning out table linens I didn't really use.  I like the floral texture that's woven into the fabric and thought it might be nice altered in some way.  I used Dy-na-flow acrylic paints by Jacquard (which are concentrated and act a lot like inks) to add bits of color here and there, then stamped with a swirl stamp I made from craft foam.  I like the results so far, but may fuse some bits of fabric onto it before I layer it, stitch it, and cut it up.  I have 6 or 8 placemats, so I'll do something similar for the back of this section.

Over the weekend, I played with some more weaving of fabric strips, this time in shades of brown.  This might possibly be a component in one of my Fiberfall strings, if I stick with the Earth, Air, and Water themes.

Even though these seem like small steps and hardly worth blogging about, at least I've been getting down into my creative space for a short time almost daily for the last week, to putter around, doodle, clean up, do some mending, or work on something like the above.  It's only the first week of the year, but so far, so good!  How has your first week of 2016 been?