Oct 32 min read

Whirlpool

The studio has moved and now I can begin to work on all the ideas that have been floating around in my head for the past 2 months.

I have about 5 different techniques that I will be working on and creating written tutorials and video tutorials for them.

The first is one that I have been thinking about for a few months. Leaving it and coming back to it in my mind repeatedly. There were some technical aspects of it that I could not work out and from experience when I leave it alone my mind eventually works the problem out.

It is one thing to create and sew patchwork art, and a completely different thing to teach a technique. If I were just creating I wouldn't have to show anybody all of my steps and could fenangle some of them. When teaching a technique the steps have to be clear and they have to work in order for someone else to be able to create the piece.

I could see the technique in my head but every time I sat down at the machine and began to sew, something wasn't working. So I left it and told myself that I would get back to it after moving the studio.

This morning, I woke up and I saw it. The technique, as clear as day. I had obviously, as I often do, worked it out in my sleep. A patchwork whirlpool.

So today I sketched 2 different versions .

The first one very structured, which is not my usual mode of working.

And the second more freehand and flowing

I began filling in the blank areas

filling in the blank areas in the pencil sketch of the whirlpool

and then went to my collection of colored pencils to find the colors that i "saw".

I always create a colored pencil sketch of what I see in my head before choosing fabrics and beginning to sew. Drawing the design also helps me to "feel" the way that the fabrics will work in the project.

I have a limited supply of pencil crayons and won't buy anymore until these are gone so I have to be creative.