Inspiration turned on its head

Oh Pinterest … I love you? I hate you? I have a funny relationship with Pinterest. Every day I get their emails saying things like: “Ana, we thought you’d like this”, “You have a good eye!” ” Look what we found for you!” Have you ever received one of their emails? And down the rabbit hole you go … clicking and imagining. Clicking and dreaming. Clicking and being inspired. Clicking and being overwhelmed with ideas. Too many ideas. Too much stimuli. Too much.

But, do I stop clicking on the links? Noooooooo! Nope. Of course not. I have to say that I do delete some. I open them up, look at the images, and if nothing catches my attention, off it goes into the bin. But, more often than not, something does catch my attention and off I go.

That was the case last Monday, when one image brought me to a different one that caught my attention. I went exploring this artist’s page and found a treasure of wonderful work. Her name is Sandra Palmer Ciolino. I invite you to go visit her website. Below is the piece that caught my attention: simple and effective. I thought: “I can do this with my red fabrics”.

It’s really exciting when you find inspiration and feel the energy of a new design coming up. So out came my red fabrics – which luckily where all piled on the table next to me as I’ve been using them lately, and off I went. Cut simple curves, sew; cut simple curve, sew. Rinse and repeat until I had a piece I liked. I squared it off and it went on the design wall.

Ok. I’m happy with it. Base is done. Now to add the blocks with the crosses.

I opened a Powerpoint presentation, pasted the image above on it and started to design the blocks. But, I had a thought. You see? If I did that, I would be copying her design. And it brought to mind that I DID NOT want to copy her design. I wanted to make my own. MY design. MY artwork. NOT a copy of someone else’s. It was good to use her piece as a starting point. But come on! I can do better than that. So what to do next?

You know me. I looove circles. I don’t know where that comes from, or why my fascination with circles and circular things, but there it is. I love circles! So … could I incorporate a circle somewhere in the design? Maybe half a circle. Or how about an oval?

The advantage of working on PowerPoint (to me) is that I can try different things very quickly and have an idea of how they would work out in the piece. So that’s what I did. Made an oval, made it black, placed it where I wanted it and … voilà!

I added three strips to the left. OK, I liked that. Duplicated the slide (always duplicate the slide before making changes, so you can go back to it if you need to), and started adding the blocks. Once that was done, I tried a few different things. I added the other half of the oval to the left side, mirror image.

Mmmmhhhh … not so sure about this. What happens if I take out the blocks, and place the left side of the oval against the strips of fabric? What to do next? I kept playing on Powerpoint, adding strips and “fabrics” until I had a design I liked.

Getting closer. While that was happening on the screen, I was going back to my piece. I created the oval by drawing it on a large piece of paper; then I and placed it on the piece to see if I liked it. I decided it needed to be larger, so I cut the oval in two down the centre and added a strip of paper, taped in place. Now I had a good idea of what the oval would look like before actually doing it. I took a photo of it.

Once happy with the size, I took a piece of freezer paper long enough to accommodate the oval, folded it in half shiny sides together and drew the oval on the paper side. I cut it out and cut it in half lengthwise. I found a piece of black fabric I liked that was large enough for it, and cut the oval out. Once again, I folded the fabric in half and placed the oval on the fold, moved it in about 3/8″ (seam allowance), pinned and cut the oval out of the fabric. Opened the fabric up and cut it in half lengthwise. Now I had two halves of the oval.

To prepare the pieces to appliqué, I took the freezer paper and the fabric to the ironing board, placed the fabric wrong side up on the ironing board, the freezer paper on top – shiny side up – leaving a 1/4″ seam allowance on the curved side and with the tip of the iron, turned the seam allowance over the freezer paper. The heat of the iron “glues” the fabric to the shiny side of the freezer paper. Once that was done, I placed the piece on the fabric and pinned in place.

To appliqué it by machine, I used a black thread, and a tiny zig zag stitch. Between 1 and 2 for width and about a 2 for length (on my Bernina). The zig zag is wide enough to catch the fabric, keeping the needle on the edge of the black. I then turned the work over and trimmed the extra fabric (red curves) leaving a 1/4″ seam allowance. Next, I added the three strips of fabric to the left. One black and two red.

I chose a piece of grunge fabric by Moda for the left side of the oval and repeated the exercise. I kept adding on PowerPoint and then on the fabric until I was happy with the results. For the set of strips on the left hand side, I used the piece I took from the back of the black oval (the one on the striped landscape), trimmed the edge even and added more fabrics to achieve the length needed. Nothing goes to waste.

But what about my circles? I wanted to see if I could place circles anywhere. Back to PowerPoint to create a strip of circles. Changed the colour to black and placed it on the image. Back to work with fabric. I cut a strip of black grunge and found a cardboard template of a circle I had made for something else – 7″ in diameter.

I fused WonderUnder to the wrong side of the black grunge strip, marked the centre horizontally and vertically and placed the first circle in the intersection so it would be centred. Then drew 2 circles on top and two below – 1″ apart. Carefully, using an X-acto knife with a new blade, I cut the circles out. Now I have 5 black circles I can use somewhere else :). The image below is the one I created in PowerPoint.

Here’s the final piece as it stands today. I had added a black strip of fabric between the red with the oval and the curved piece on the left, but I did not like it. The black bits on the strips I used for the curved pieces made it look like a ladder, so I cut it out. I’m happy with it now.

What do you think? Quite a bit different from where I started, right? But it’s all mine. My design. My colours. My fabrics. My ideas. I am pleased with it. It made me think of Japan for some reason. I guess it’s because of the reds?

Ugh! This is a long one. When I talked about it during my Wednesday live, I couldn’t show the steps I took in PowerPoint to arrive at the final design, and promised I would write about it with photos so you could see it. I hope you enjoyed seeing the process.

Before I let you go, a reminder that his coming Saturday, March 16th, I’m teaching a class on collagraphy and the gelli plate. Fantastic textures and lots of ideas to use with your own shapes. Four hour class where we’ll spend time making collagraphs and then using them in the gelli plate, plus layers and other ideas. Check it out here. Also, check the rest of the classes set for March and April. And if there’s anything you’d like to see that’s not posted right now, leave a comment.

As usual, thanks for ready. Until I write again, keep making!

Ana