Making room

The week before Easter was spent making a duty visit. I was so glad that I'd made room in the suitcase for wools and hooks - making this little bag for my sister was one of the few pleasures of the time away.

Front...

I've left the flowers for her to sew on...or not.

And back...

Since getting home I've made some progress on her rug, having found  more pink and more teal fabrics in charity shops while away.

Front...the legs aren't showing well, I might have to redo them in a brighter blue.

 

and back...which do I like more???

Bleaching a T-shirt to get a speckled effect in the beak and the bit the bird is standing on..a hummock?

Could it be that my sister likes pink and turquoise?

A little progress has also been made on the patchwork this week. Having drawn out a plan, I tried out my block pattern for size, just to make sure....

...and in those in-between moments (waiting for the kettle to boil, on the way to bed) have started cutting out the pieces.

Now I just need to re-find the website on which there were the perfect plain black and red fabrics (yes, of course I made a note of it ...I wish!)

Over the course of the past few weeks I've been moving my work space out of the kitchen to the room my son built upstairs...it's still not fully sorted and arranged but I started work in there the other day. I see amazing, custom-built studio spaces on Pinterest (always unbelievably tidy) - mine is plasterboard and plywood, gaps around the windows are plugged with paper towel - but corny as it may sound, it is a dream realised.

There are of course pros and cons. I'm used to having everything in easy reach - tools, tape, glue etc. and I now need to duplicate some things so I'm not needing to run upstairs twenty times a day...but that's no big thing. Working away from the living space means I'm more focused, and having a much bigger room is already resulting in my thinking in terms of bigger pieces. The move has also meant that I went through everything (well overdue) and have thrown away a lot of stuff....but some has been just too difficult to let go of, even though I KNOW it won't be used again.

At the end of May I'm to take part in another 'FORM' exhibition and because this year there will be an indoor room, the plan is to submit some work in paper.
I've found that ideas come in layers, so to speak..what I call 'First Thoughts/ Second Thoughts etc. The first thoughts are often obvious and superficial, but a necessary part of the process...rarely shared with anyone. At this point they are like butterflies not fully emerged - fragile and vulnerable.

I'm reading a book by Emma O'Toole, in which she puts forward the idea that being a woman is mostly about performance...that we learn to 'act' our gender (isn't that also true for men?) and one of the ideas I'm working on is based on this....so these are the maquettes of the first thoughts...

The body works for me, but the theatre is too obvious..

Not sure about this either...

Too obscure? although I like the shape.... and what is it saying?

It may change drastically...or may not be made at all as a finished piece.

The other idea started a while ago as a moon-shaped boat with figures in it, so I began playing...it started as male figures...

 ...but by the next morning it had changed, and become "The Forgotten; Remembered"...the idea of the women who had been there too - at all the battles, the voyages, the migrations - but whose part is rarely mentioned in history books.

I may decide it's been done before, especially after looking up the work of John Behan. Maybe there isn't room for more figures in ships...