Peace and Quiet, Day 3

My wandering family is due home shortly, so I've been tidying up the mess I've made of my office this weekend in my creative frenzy. What a lovely, peaceful bubble of time I've had. I'm eager to see husband and child and hear about their adventures (they've been in Sacramento, touring the capital and zoo and visiting family members) but gosh, the break has been fun.

So...those fun split squiggles have spawned a bunch of differerent projects and even more ideas. Yikes -- a series! I'm having so much fun with these.

Project #1 in the line started with my stitching black around the split squiggles. Immediately this had the effect of boxing in the spontaneous, free effect of the squiggle itself I was loving, so I decided to cut this one short and complete the idea in a small form.



This result is okay, I think. Not great, but it provided a fun exercise for me in taking something one direction and just exploring without worrying about greatness. I suspect machine quilting can perk this up a fair amount, so I'll get back to that another day.

Doing that made me realize that what I love about these squiggles IS the irregularity and spontaneity...and those nice messy painty edges get cut off if I try to piece them into something (at least this batch-- maybe I'll paint some spaced further apart so I can play with the piecing thing further). I decided I even like the messy edges of the black bits separating the halves... So here is the layout for the next piece, which will be on a field of solid white.



The best thing about this process for me is that I've just let myself play --something I don't ordinarily let myself do -- to explore "what happens if I do THIS to THAT." I have little bits that are already the seeds of future experiments. And I couldn't resist breaking out the tjanting to draw up another sheet of squiggles on the last piece of print cloth in my cupboard.

I've got so many ideas to explore...Gee, think I can talk R and C into going away next weekend?!