Thoughts from the bike ride

Yesterday Jim and I went out on the bikes, commencing a get-fit campaign before our Lands End-John O'Groats ride in June.  We did 20 miles, on a bitter cold day, and I came home feeling very virtuous, having had some profound thoughts about my creative work.  I think that with the increasing light levels in February, my mood is lifting and I am able to think more positively about my work. 

I had decided to draw a lot from now on.  Any domestic object will do, rather than sticking to a specific theme.  I am going to stop agonising over whether my artwork is "good enough", or whether I am varying my style enough (as advised in art classes in Perth), but just "get on and draw in my own style".  Then once I have a whole sketchbook-ful (or more), look back and select the ones I like.   At that stage, I can start to consider whether to use them singly or in repeated pattern (ie only one stage of angst at a time!).   After that, I decided how to use them - as furnishing fabric, lining, as a base unit for further manipulation eg needle felting, patchwork etc.  Allow the fabric to tell me how to use it.  I thought about how a fabric designer (Tom Stevens?) at last year's New Designers had used some beautiful printed silk, that I would never have thought of embellishing, needle-felted with silk noil, and produced a wonderful boucle effect. But I need to start with stage one. 

I have also been looking at the book Textile Designers at the Cutting Edge, and been inspired by how contributors have used different patterns, changed the colourways to completely alter the design, then used the fabric in interesting ways.  Specifically one designer had used a quirky hand drawn image of people as a lining print for a jacket, and the head showed when the jacket was on the hanger.  Applying this principle to furnishing fabric - what would happen if you used a printed lining for plain curtains? For example, for me to use my marmalade making designs, I could do bright orange plain curtains, with hand drawn marmalade making imagery on the lining.  Or if a throw, lined with printed fabric, just showed a tiny edge of the brightly coloured backing.  I like pattern and often I want to put too much pattern in a room.  But it would make sense to select which areas need a plain fabric, and be able to still use prints in less obvious areas.

I think these ideas appeal to me, because I am still railing against being seen as a middle class, middle aged woman.  I am much happier to feel like, and be seen as mildly eccentric in what I do and what I make, rather than to be pedestrian, which has so bothered me recently.