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Monday, October 24, 2005

Wot, no planning? Day 1

First of all, it took me until 5pm to realise that all the things I 'had to do' were just a means of putting off going into my work room.

By the time I got there I had already decided to use a bundle of batiks I bought at FOQ earlier this year. When I unrolled them I realised that the strips were quite long so the first thing I did was to cut each piece into three, so I now have three identical groups of three fabrics to experiment with, each roughly a foot (30cm) square.

I also knew that I wanted to cut into each layer revealing some of what was beneath. (Who said 'No planning'???) The first thing I did was to pull out a fourth darker fabric, which I then tried to mark, as soon as this failed I pulled out a piece of paper to start marking things out on. Oops no - this is what I always do!

For some reason I then decided that burnt edges might be interesting, a quick test told me that I was right but also that I didn't have the time to do this safely!!! So I started to cut into the fabric with just a few rough marks to define the limits of each cut. It took a while and a bit of bodging with one hole that seemed too large but some time later I've got:
















The colours are a bit off - what looks like red on my monitor is much pinker in real life.

So, my thought so far - it wasn't as painful as I'd thought but I've got too much space between the cut outs (and I don't want to add any more) and I haven't really considered the impact of the quilting. Both of these things could have just as well happened if I'd drawn this out first. As I've worked I've been thinking of titles - that doesn't normally happen, and although it is still evolving I'm on 'Glimmers of childhood' at the moment. Tomorrow is another day!

2 comments:

Felicity Grace said...

I like this title Linda. My memory is not great so the word glimmers suggests something shimmering and not so tangible, exactly like the fragments I remember.

Just to take you out of your comfort zone (VBG) I've tagged you - sorry !

Olga Norris said...

Pauline Burbidge draws on fabric with her scissors, cutting shapes of what she sees in a free way - mostly water. So, planning, and not-planning together. The results are dynamic.

It never ceases to amaze me how one thing leads to another. I shall be interested to see how your piece develops.