The Real Work?

Two different people said two different things, yesterday.  One asked what I made.  The other said that she was concentrating her limited energy on things that were really important.  The combination made me wonder...what is the real work?  Where am I going with all of this?  I've been easing back into textile work, making a quilt here, as a gift, finishing a UFO there....but it doesn't feel like 'real' work.  With that in mind, I sat down and stitched this.  It's called 'Flow'. 

The pink in the image is not real; it's reflecting my cutting mat, through the two layers of lightweight Lutradur which make up two sides of the 'sandwich'; the 'filling' is scrap threads from my friend Clare's loom.  Just before the ME, I was starting to put work together for a possible book, called 'Constructed Cloth'.  I have no desire to weave; too precise and repetitive for me, doesn't suit my personality.  I do, however, being a control freak, wish to have a hand in every stage of the making process, and it turns out that it's not enough to dye the cloth, hence this small piece. 

Here's a detail of the stitch.  I started out experimenting; when I've made this type of constructed cloth before, I focused on circles, just as you can see at the top of the piece.  The middle section of this piece has long curving lines with occasional circles in it.  Overall, it made me think of a river, hence the title, and I added circles top and bottom, to suggest pebble-covered banks.

I then trimmed off the excess, roughly, to see what it looks like.  Not entirely convinced that worked.... I've put it on a dark fabric to let you see it properly.  The colour of the piece comes entirely from the threads sandwiched between the white lutradur layers, very delicate.  I may hit it with a heat gun to expose some of the threads, which would give areas with slightly stronger colour,   It's very small; roughly 11" by 4"; it would actually make a really pretty purse, perhaps that's the answer.

It may not be all that successful, but it does help to defiine what the real work is... intense stitch, transparency, experimentation.  At least it leads to an interesting life.  Incidentally, there's a bit about constructed cloth here; apparently not one of my better days.

It Seemed Like...

a good idea at the time.  I make stuff, that people like, admire, enthuse about.  So I would sell it, and offer workshops, and go to quilt shows and teach classes, and write books.  That way, I could make some money to cover the cost of making the stuff that people like, admire etc...  Seemed reasonable.

Sadly, however reasonable it was, it didn't work.  Other than the books, I've not managed to do much in the way of selling, either stuff or workshops.  It's hard to come to any conclusion other than, people don't actually want to buy what I offer.  So, I'm going to stop.  I've just withdrawn from the last few quilt shows I had planned to do; I can't afford the inevitable financial loss that I would make by doing them.  It's great to meet people and show people stuff, but at the end of the day, I have to eat, too.  I'll keep on my Etsy shop, for the books and such, but probably gradually fade that out too, though I do have more books in my head.

As for the work, well... I have no choice but to continue.  I'll still pop up here from time to time to show you what I'm up to.  But I'm tired of beating myself up by constantly offering things that nobody seems to want.  Some people would say I just didn't work hard enough; that's possible. Others might say the work is Just Too Weird; that's also possible.  But it's what I do, and who I am.  I tried; I failed. Now I get to Move Swiftly On.

A very great thank you to everyone who has bought stuff, been encouraging, told me I'm inspirational, all that nice stuff.  I really appreciated it, and appreciate it still.

Whine, Whine, Whine...

...and it's not the whine of a buzz saw (see previous post...).  I've got the flu.  Nope, not man flu, even though I did get it from my husband, who believes in share and share alike...  The real, achy, coughing, sneezing flu.  Bleh.

For once, I'm practicing what I preach.  I'm tucked up in bed, with a cat at my side, feeling marginally better than yesterday, playing silly games on Facebook and sleeping a lot.  When I'm sleeping, I'm dreaming of hats, and weddings, and friends.  This is not a bad way to dream...  I'm leaving the hanging of our exhibition to Jill and Clare, and may not even make it to tomorrow night's opening.  This is not like me.  But I'm of the view that pushing myself to get up and out of bed is just so much wasted energy.  Better to keep it for getting better.  Health, in my book, comes before productivity, and marketing, and all those things... if I'm not well, I'm not well. 

That's not always the case when I'm depressed, though.  Over the years, I've come to realise that getting up and going for a walk, or to make something, will help to lift the depression, rather than make it worse.  Physical illness needs lots of rest.  Depression tells you it needs lots of rest, but if you can persuade it to shut up for five minutes, enough time to get engrossed in making or writing something, then often you feel refreshed and A Whole Lot Better.  It's a balancing act.  If it doesn't work after ten or fifteen minutes, I go for a nap.  There are worse things to do with ones time. 

Be kind to yourself, is what I'm trying to say, here.  Even when it feels as if you're being cruel, initially, like forcing yourself to work.  It may not fix everything...it may not even help anything... but it's always worth a try.

Buzz, Buzz, Buzz...

said the very busy bee...(that's me).  I've been doing a lot, but not sharing it here... partly it's to be seen on the Spunbond Sensations!  blog.  Partly, it's to do with hats...not the making of them, but the work behind the scenes in promoting them...  Add into that, facilitating a creativity support group on Facebook, and starting a new blog on creativity as well... and it's pretty hectic.

Myrtle♥Rose are bringing our exhibition, Blossomings, to @The Gallery, Dereham (in the Memorial Hall) for the first two weeks in October, so if you have always wanted to have full permission to try on a LOT of hats and fascinators, not to mention hairbands and ornaments, that would be a golden opportunity!  As well as the hats, Jill Arnold and I will be showing textile art that relates to the theme in one way or another. Contact me with your email address, if you would like an invite to the Preview (I'll be making cupcakes for that one...).

I also wrote a profile of my work so far, in the new UK Art Quilters blog, .  The blog is an offshoot of a Facebook group.  Writing this was a very interesting exercise, and has made me think a lot about the direction my work has been taking over the last few years.  I'll write more about that another time, I think, when I'm clearer in my own mind about it.  It is a theme I return to constantly on this blog.  It's really important to me to make work with meaning; going back and looking at what I've made, there are several threads that run through my work, all of them meaningful to me, some for obvious reasons, some not so obvious.  I'd like to settle down into some serious work, and focus properly on it, rather than spreading myself thin over a lot of work that isn't quite so meaningful for me.  If you see what I mean...

I made a not so deliberate mistake in the UK Art Quilters Blog; I said I would show an abstract garden quilt...and then forgot all about it... oops!  So here is 'Green Girl In The Garden', one of my favourite Lutradur quilts.  The 'Green Girl' in the title refers to a textile doll I made several years ago... she had a triangular head and odd shaped body... this 'Green Girl' has a triangular body and a round head... but they relate, nonetheless!