Day Three and I get even more Behind
Japanese Magnolia
I got a late start this morning, choosing to have a hot
breakfast instead of a to-go bag. Most of the other students have arrived
before me and are busily sewing away. Immediately I feel very much behind but I
start out sewing. Half way through the morning, a severe storm alert was issued
for heavy thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. We headed for the basement but
amazingly some people were very casual about the entire process and one person
wished for bad weather as an interesting experience. Definitely, not me!
Rain off and on most of the day made breathing more than a
bit difficult at times but I managed to get most of the first set of 15 fabrics
sewn. Then we were assigned five companion fabrics, ten more fabrics using
print and maybe some plaids or something, and then five or six more—I don’t remember now. I just
wrote all the directions down and chose to just not think about them until I
was actually sewing them. Some people get all their fabrics done and I am in
awe. I’m not the slowest person in the class but neither am I the fastest. I
found myself wondering what would happen if I repeated the directions for a
first fabric again using different colors or proportions and then what would
happen if I made a large number of them and used just one set in a piece. And
what would happen if I used an extremely limited palate? OF course, I could do
the entire exercise in black and white or blue and ecru or….. But I still had
all those assigned fabrics left to sew!
Most of my fabrics pleased me, some were just dog-ugly but
in the past, some of my yuckiest and poorest samples were the ones that made
the piece work.
I decided to quit when I began thinking why am
I going to all this work to sew in a tiny bit of fabric when I could more
easily top-stitch a piece of perle cotton in the color I want or just insert a
tiny piece of folded fabric with a lot less work and headache but just as much
thinking. And then I sewed parts of the
strips together requiring ripping. It was time to quit!
An early night tonight along with some Prednisone will
undoubtedly improve my outlook tomorrow.
Sylvia Weir Art 