Trials

I finished stitching together the components I had prepped. Time to see what I’ve got.

I’m not ignoring the Ukrainian crisis. It’s hard to know what to write. I feel like I’m blanketing it, stitching it in, along with everything else that’s happening. I’m thinking about what Jude wrote today “Everything is all mixed up. Changing. In pieces. And we try to hold it together.” I’m intentionally making things up out of pieces, scrambling them, rearranging them, stitching them together. Just going, in a way, but with the satisfaction of feeling in control of the outcome. I can piece together this little world to my liking. A small going in awful days, yes.

Here’s my first layout. Big enough to be quite a large throw. 80″ high x 39″ wide, tall and skinny. I’d need something to fill in the spaces and some kind of border. I threw down some light cloths, silk and cotton, that I have available to see if I like the colors. I think I’d probably dye them, maybe with onion skin.

A more compact layout would be smaller, but with less extra needed. It could still be made larger with a hefty border. 58″ high x 45″ wide. It’s kind of exciting to look at, but everything seems jammed up. It’s tempting to sew all these together and call it done, but I want to try adding some “white space” – neutral places to highlight the imagery better.

I laid out the squares over some of the supplementary cloth to simulate the look of some light neutral squares. A rule emerged – there will be no dismantling of any strips. So it had to be at least 78″ high and 45″ wide. I like the paired four-patches and the more staggered arrangement. The large squares needed to complete the design are nicely divisible by 8.” I could calculate that I’d need sixteen more of them at this size. But it’s too narrow. I like the way this one looks though. The pairing has me interested.

One more try. Shortened by one four-patch row, so 70″ x 45″. I like the dimensions better. I had to insert one strip going horizontally, which is asymmetrical but I need some odd interesting shapes to make it less boring to finish. I think I’ll try to draw this one out on graph paper to figure out what else I need to make. I like looking at it. I’ll have to pick it all up off the floor to be able to walk through the room, but I have the photos.