Resolution Time
It’s resolution time. Personally, I gave up making New Year’s resolutions many years back. Some years I have chosen a word or phrase to guide my year. Other years, like this one, I am selecting a way to navigate my life, particularly my studio life. I plan on minimizing waste. Studio supplies seem to propagate overnight. It’s time to embrace not only stash control, but trash control.
Thread Painting Sue
I am drawn to producing mixed technique work, particularly combining appliqué, piecing and thread painting. Sue is my largest work produced this way. How does my resolution jive with Sue? I plan on finishing it. This is a simple way to avoid waste. Don’t let a project turn into a UFO (unfinished object). I confess this gets easier to commit to the more years of studio practice I have.
One hurdle I am working on with Sue, is dealing with the extreme highlights and shadows in the image. It takes courage to trust my gut as I fill in different areas with thread. This is when that resolution comes in handy. No UFOs. It also helps to step back from the work. Highlights and shadows naturally “resolve” themselves with distance.
Rainbow Scrap Challenge
When I am not working on Sue, I am working on my 2024 Rainbow Scrap Challenge quilt. I am sewing the “dark blue” blocks now. Would you believe 50 blocks include dark blue?
Only 4 of the 50 blocks have blue in both the string triangles. The remaining 46 blocks are half blue and half one of the other “rainbow” colors. I realized that string triangles may be a great scrap buster, but they also produce a lot of waste. I needed to find a better way to piece the triangles, one that doesn’t involve trimming all those small triangles extending beyond the block. Success. All my blue scraps are now HSSPT (half square string pieced triangles) and no small triangles hit the wastepaper basket. How’s that for meeting my resolution?
I’m linking up to the following posts:
