Make A Plan
I make plans. I excel at making plans. “Failure to plan is planning to fail” is a mantra that reinforces the importance of planning. However, and this is also key, staying flexible to allow Plan A to be overruled by Plan B and Plan B by Plan C is equally important. I suspect my posts read as though I come up with Plan A and stick to it. False. I am constantly adjusting, modifying and tweaking my plans. There are times when no adjustment is necessary. Experience is a great teacher to avoid plan redos and tweaking.
Follow the Plan
I do have a plan for how to go from the original image of Lola in the Linen Cabinet to a 12″ x 12″ finished piece to submit as my SAQA Benefit Auction piece this year. Step one is to crop the image from a rectangle to a square with the focus tightening on Lola. Done. The image now measures 15″ x 15″. This leaves a 1.5″ border to allow for natural shrinkage and some wiggle room to select the best 12″ x 12″ final cropping of the piece.
Perhaps it is more apropos to say keep the plan loose, than actually break or redo the plan. I like to create a blueprint or pattern for my work in EQ 8. One of the advantages of using this program is I can import and trace an image. The tracing is very rudimentary, but close enough. Best of all I can print the tracing and piecing lines to size, or if I want to go from 15″ x 15″ to say 23″ x 23″ EQ 8 handles all the math and pattern adjustment behind the scenes.
Here’s the Plan
I will be thread painting Lola, as I have for previous Lola pieces. I further cropped the 15″ x 15″ image to zero in on Lola. This image is 8″ x 8″. This is where planning is crucial. It is the perfect size to print on a standard (if you live in the US) 8.5″ x 11″ fabric sheet designed to go through my copier. I use EQ Inkjet Fabric Sheets.
Tempting as it is to launch right into the studio part of creating art versus jumping from computer program to computer program cropping this and printing that, having a plan is that ounce of prevention needed to makes sure my studio time isn’t spent realizing Lola is too big, too small or I won’t end up with a 12″ x 12″ quilt. Bet it saves on experimental (wasted) fabric and thread, too.
Rainbow Scrap Challenge
There are two purple in How Does Your Garden Grow. I am super excited to have finished both my iris blocks this week. My plan is to use the rest of if it is April it is time to work on purple month making the supporting stems and finishing the “iris” section. Will I stick to this plan? Who knows. I have some pretty compelling other projects vying for my attention.
I’m linking up to the following posts:
