I Love Play Days

How often do we give ourselves time to play? I know I rarely do. If there is a new technique I want to try I first work out a date that the whole project will be finished, then I work out all the steps along the way and give them dates to be completed by, and then and only then do I start.

At the end of July I had finished all the commitments I had undertaken at the beginning of the year. There were no more shows to prepare for, large workshops had been completed. I decided that August was going to be a NO DEADLINE month.

Projects that have fired my imagination have remained dateless. I have sketched, created, painted and played some more.

I have been transferring paint to felt using Viseoflex. The instruction I read were great however until I have a go myself I'm never really sure. I wasn't really sure how thick the paint needed to be, if the colour of the felt mattered, what sorts of fabric would adhere etc. I basically slapped paint over lots of different coloured felt.

This photo is the painted Viseoflex. The gold I painted on undiluted and quite thickly. The black was thinned. The felt was beige.

The second photo is the Viseoflex face down on the felt. I have already transferred the colour. I was waiting to peel off the paper backing.

The last photo is after I have adhered the fabric pieces. This beige piece I used tiles of Silk Paper. On some of the other felt pieces I used netting, chiffon, silk tops. I generally experimented.

Now the next step is using a soldering iron to mark the felt and/or to cut shapes out. I haven't attempted that yet. I'll post some photos when I do.

Another benefit of chilling out has been that a couple of stitchery ideas that have been floating around have finally made it to paper. One has actually been stitched. Twice in fact.

The other is pretty much ready to go. This idea first came to me a cross stitch design. I knew that a cross stitch would be a long time in the designing stage before I could start to sell it. I then thought the same idea would work as a niave stitchery. Its taken ages to actually get down on paper. Last Saturday something just clicked. In next to no time I had stitchery design on paper.

Then I hit a small snag. The design was a fraction too large for the scanner bed. And I mean a fraction. I knew there was no way that I could rescale it and keep it the same. I had to wait until today to reduce it via a photocopier. I asked Laura to choose the colours. We prefer different colours and I thought this would be a fun way to try something new for me. I can already see the design completed in creative stitches as well.

I think August should be a NO DEADLINE month every year!