I Am the Vine, You Are the Branches

I started this blog to journal my ongoing work — and it has been harder than I thought. When I work, I crawl into my head (so to speak) and forget about everything else. My mother, a painter herself, used to talk about it — so perhaps I have inherited this from her.

I spent most of last year working on portraits in single colorways — very instructive — but I have found a desire for lots of color and knew that I needed to take a break and do something more freeing. I happened to have a drawing on my design wall that has been there for a couple of years — and over that time, several people have seen it — and many of those people have recently inquired as to why I have done nothing with it.

When my children returned to school in August, I made the design larger and transferred it to vinyl. There are other ways to do this, but I find that fusing with this method allows a lot of spontaneity.  Before I could really start, though, I had to have a color palette:

I went through my fabric stash and laid it out on my cutting table.  I covered most of it — so that I have had to push it around in order to make templates from the design I have underneath it. Also, as I have been working, I have started pulling more and more fabric from my stash — my hidden goal may be to use a small piece of everything — but I love the flow of the color through the piece.

This is what it looked like  September 6th:

and this is what it looked like this morning:

I have started on the left most branch and am about halfway down. It is fascinating to see it develop.  When I am done, I plan to applique black onto the background — and I may discharge the black — I haven’t definitely decided yet.