Happy, happy

Last week at our SAQA retreat I planned for my portion of the Show and Tell session by writing a brief description of what interests me, and on the flip side, what definitely does not interest me. I then read the major points aloud before I showed four pieces of my work.

I took that approach for a couple of reasons. I wanted a good way to introduce myself to people who I had not encountered before. But I also wanted to remind myself of the direction I am going. When surrounded by talented people it is easy to be swayed and to go off on a tangent: "Maybe if I do that I'll be better than I am." The opposite almost always turns out to be the case. By reiterating my interests I hoped to inoculate myself against those feelings.

I am delighted that it seems to have worked. I did not come home with any itch to try a new technique or use different colours or revamp my approach to generating ideas. I have an idea for the all-Canadian SAQA show which is entirely consistent with everything that I said both works and doesn't work for me. I have sampled and found that I am getting the exact effect I want. I need to purchase a couple of batiks and have found the perfect colours online. Even browsing the fabric options didn't make me waver.

Here's a couple of photos of the first sample. Kona cotton stitched to felt (at two different spacings to test which I like best), shrunk, sandwiched with batik by stitching around slightly oversized template on freezer paper, top layer removed.

I love the effect. The photo doesn't show it but in real life the coloured letters are clearly behind the surface and, in fact, can not be seen when viewed from an angle.

200th post draw: Only one person directly commented on the blog after my 200th post. Four others sent me notes directly. I put all five names in a hat this morning and drew out Judith's. Congratulations, Judith. I'll be in touch about choosing yarn and a pattern for your gift.