Some Surprises

I did a little multi-tasking this weekend. The older I get, the less my desire to do this; my mind only wants to focus on one thing at a time and I don't blame it. However, there was motorcycle racing to watch, and the hours of qualifying don't require total concentration. I decided this was a good time to take apart a couple of silk ties.

This is the tie that's been on the water wall forever, the one I want to use in the next quilt in the series. Its pattern just naturally looks like water flowing to me and its colors look to work with the background batik I wanted to use. As one would expect, there is a "right" and a "wrong" side. Oh! The paler side might be the answer to portraying the foamy nature of fountain water. Hadn't considered that option before.

But the real surprise was what lurked inside the second tie, the one that might do something interesting in inserts as breaking ripples in a lake scene. I still can't figure out how that very different shaded square pattern is part of the weave of the squares on the front side. Holding it up as it shows on the bias, it too gives an abstracted sense of movement and flow.

Yet another surprise awaited me with this tie. If you've ever taken a tie apart, you know that a heavy woven interfacing like the one on the right in the above photo is used to give the tie body and keep it from stretching and twisting out of shape since tie fabric is always cut on the bias. When I first started taking ties apart, I was tempted to keep this part, but quickly decided that was taking my keep and recycle tendencies too far. Into the trash it goes. But the interfacing in this tie, seen on the left, is very different from any I've seen used in ties. It is soft with no visible weave, very much like some thin cotton battings I've used. The tag said this tie was totally hand sewn (I can attest to that, using a heavy silk thread) and indicated it was made in China. I'm so curious about this and am keeping it.

The wheels have been turning, making me eager to keep working in my water series sketchbook, and it was time to add some reference photos of the quilt I want to work out next. I added three views of the "Boy with a Dolphin" Fountain, the sculpture being by David Wynne, which is tucked in the Children's Garden on the Mayo Clinic campus. (There's a lovely story behind his inspiration if you follow the link.) Actually, I couldn't have cared less about that sculpture; I was focused on those steps and the way the water tumbled down them.

So after the ties were taken apart, I turned to the sketchbook to work a bit on my fuzzy initial ideas for the quilt. Turns out, multi-tasking by listening to the commentators while drawing lines actually helped move ideas along, a way of distracting the left brain that had kept balking at how to get going on this. The final sketch was a small eureka moment which I may not have gotten to without fiddling with the previous ideas. And boy, do I like that dotted line paper! Now if I can get the tie fabric to do what my inner vision is seeing it doing. Yes, eventually one has to put aside pencil and paper and start working with the real thing.

One last surprise that day: while I was checking the background batik hanging on the water wall to see just how much was there (that's it on the left), I noticed these pieces of paper pinned next to it. Are you familiar with the expression "nose blind" as in for whatever reason, you get so used to an odor in a room that you stop smelling it, even if it is unpleasant? Well, this is the equivalent, only I guess you would call it "eye blind". I know I put these up there long ago because I had no place else for them at the time, and I didn't want to forget about them. And yet I had, with them right in plain sight. I was surprised when I spotted them, more surprised when I leaned in to read them. The first refers to working in a series:

"Working in a series is really about what stays the same - and what changes."

Shelly Stokes

The other has some phrases I ran across that so beautifully and interestingly describe water images (the underlines are mine):

"the lovely inattentive water"

"...stare at water which is already elsewhere

in a scrapwork of flashes and glittery flutters

And regular waves of apparently motionless motion."

from Another Westminster Bridge by Alice Oswald

Easy for YOU to say, Alice, harder for me to work out visually in fabric and thread!