Pretty small

It's been a while since I stitched anything.

So, I thought, "be kind to yourself... start up again with something small."

HA!

Stenciled, on hand dyed cloth

Textile. © CatherineV. Bainbridge 2013

Pattern emerging

Textile. © CatherineV. Bainbridge 201313

Reverse side

Textile. © CatherineV. Bainbridge 2013

Half way

Textile. © CatherineV. Bainbridge 2013

Detail

Textile. © CatherineV. Bainbridge 2013

In spite of having an "active" area of just 14 x 8 cms, this little cloth has already swallowed several hours and made my fingers sore.

Currently looking just like a quilt designed for a contemporary doll's house, I'm convinced it wouldn't have taken me that much longer to stitch a full scale version ;)

Thinking small pouches.

???

Strange new symbol

I rushed home at the end of work, determined to use the couple of free hours I knew I was going to have - Nilo is spending the weekend with his father, and the man was fishing - doing something creative. I had been thinking all day about the wings from my previous post.

I blew up some very small sections of different parts of the image. Above is just one example of these. This one really captured my imagination. Very rapidly, and before any notions of perfection could establish, [that happens alot to me, it cripples creativity, does that happen to you too?], I scratched out what I saw as the essence of the form.

Inventing a strange new symbol.

  Nothing fussy. A scrap of tracing paper. and a broken fine line pen, to scratch out a possible repeat pattern.

Dragged into Photoshop with some block color added. The lines from my sketch were not strong enough for the paint can tool to distinguish the seperate fields, so it limited the areas where I could vary the color. Which maybe helped to stop me from over-complicating the whole thing! I was really pleased with this as the start of something . Feels like something that I can call mine. Fits with earlier efforts, that might be described as bold. Has a rawness about it that I find pleasing. 

What is this strange new symbol? 

And can I translate it into cloth and stitch?...

I think this was possible today because Morna has a big heart!