March challenge…

details… in a moment… a fragment to time… in a blink of an eye…

these are all expressions that came to mind after reading SharonB’s March challenge… I’ve gone with… ‘in blink of an eye’… I’ve doodled with eyes in a journal and this seemed the time to use some of those sketches…

‘mind like a sieve’…

whenever I thought about the February take it further challenge the expression ‘mind like a sieve’ just kept popping up… so that’s going to be my starting point… I’ve got some fabric that I picked up on the beach… it’s full of holes… so seemed just right for this project…

so the plan was to make a pillow cover…but while out yesterday I found, in a charity shop, a pack of two black pillow covers… so I encouraged the fabric into two pieces… so now have double the work…! will I ever learn to work small…

I intend to quilt the cover with coloured thread into which I will stitch words / expressions of the things I’ve forgotten / or simple things that passed me by completely and of course the expression… ‘mind like a sieve’…

the weather has had a hand in picking these colours…

while pondering the Feb. challenge I’ve continued to work on Jan. woven cloth…

 can you tell it’s cold outside…

 it’s a bit chill inside too…

couldn’t even get out to do the afternoon school run… so plenty of time to sew…

time to ponder… and contemplate… trusting to the process and enjoying the making… I’m begin to think like this in other areas of my life too… not just my ’slow cloth story’…

well Sharon’s next challenge is posted…

Sharon has set my mind whirling with February’s challenge…

I’m already to start stitching… in my head…

I’m wondering if I can use this as a base… maybe I’d better sleep on it and see how it all looks in the morning…

the first seams…

stitches have been added… the first seam done… it came together with

simple running stitches…

while the second demanded more sophisticated treatment…

first the stitches had to follow the weave in the fabric… then the velvet wanted more than running stitch… so a few French knots crept in…

here you can see the first two seams stitched…

it certainly is easier to stitch without the pins in… I’ve not counted the number of seams left to stitch… but this is one Tifc that is not going to be finished by the end of January…

the process of stitching is giving me time to ponder… to contemplate… ( meditate even… something I’ve tried to do in the past with very little success… ) getting enjoyment out of the making of this woven cloth, without a final product in mind, really is relaxing… this ’slow cloth’ approach is just great… so it seems…. ‘it’s the journey, not the destination’… therefore… it’s the process not the finished article that’s important… well that’s what it feels like at the moment…

just a few stitches…

to help hold the woven cloth together… I’ve attached the woven cloth to a piece of upholstery fabric to give it some stability and a little stiffness so that I have something to stitch into…

big stitches on the back… but only little ones on the front…

as I’m not sure if I’m going to leave them in… or maybe I will cover them with other stitches… I’ve had great fun with the ’seams’… as I said in an earlier post I had only pinned the fabric strips together… so to join them I’ve cut slits in one fabric and fed the other one into the first fabric…

(did that make sense? hopefully you can see what I mean in the pictures)

where the join occurred under another strip I cut a slit in that too and fed both ends through…

I feel that I’m now ready to start to tell the cloth’s story… certainly a few stitches will be used… maybe a few of my doorways will be added… but I’m coming to the conclusion that the next take it further challenge will be posted before I’ve finished this one… unless I get a lot of stitching time…

taking on a life of it’s own…

while I was sorting / ironing my fabric things just seemed to start happening… several of the pieces of fabric had already been torn into strips…

so it just seemed natural to work with strips of fabric… I joined some together… soon having quite a large pile… all this seemed to happen with very little thought on my part… you could say that the fabric decided what it wanted to be…

 

the strips were only pinned together… but without any sewing happening first… the fabric strips just seemed to say ‘weave me’ … so that’s what I did… this was a completely different way of working for me… normally I would have drawn a design out first on paper… measured everything carefully then cut and sewn everything together pressing the seams as I went…

but as you can see… I have a woven piece of cloth… uneven… both in terms of size of strips and colour and tonal value… if I’d followed my normal way of working I would be re-weaving this so that the colours would be ‘better’ spaced I would have spend hours arranging things… but this time I just let the cloth ‘do it’…

I ended up with some wonderful combinations… so thanks Sharon B for the take it further challenge… and thanks Jude for your what if’s… I feel that maybe this slow cloth is starting to evolve into a story cloth as it certainly took on a life of it’s own in it’s early development…

selecting the fabric…

didn’t know I had so much fabric in these colours… this selection was made in the dark so maybe I’d better wait for daylight before I make the final selection…