Week 42! I can almost see the finish line, just 10 more to go – what will I do with myself when it’s all finished, have no fear there are plans in place to keep me occupied.
Now it’s late’ish on Sunday evening and I had planned to have a bath and get an early night following a busy weekend, and produce my blog tomorrow morning. However somehow this didn’t feel right, I’m in the mind set of getting each week done within the 7 days and I can’t let you down when I’m so near the end. So, it’s been a long and very busy weekend however I’m going to write this week’s blog and please forgive me for any waffle…. I may have even already lost you…
The ‘Tiggy Rawling’ Make, a marvelous mix of fun and mess and some less than wonderful sewing skills on my part. I’d attended one of Tiggy’s workshops prior to working at the Mill and I remember being struck by her talent for teaching, her relaxed attitude and enthusiasm for experimentation.
I’ve been working at Walford Mill for over 5 years now and Tiggy is a regular visitor, tutor and great supporter, it’s always lovely when she pop’s in to the office and tells us of her latest adventures in India, for some reason Michael Palin springs to mind… not sure why.
Tiggy is a wonderful textile artist, with a great attention to time and detail in her work. She hand dyes her own fabrics and produces quilts and other items, using embellishments from India. The results are quite beautiful and a far cry from my very limited sewing skills.
So this week, I had a little go. Originally I’d decided to keep it simple and Indigo dye a scarf, however it just happened that the week before I’d been fretting about the Autumn Forage Festival I was attending at Arne to promote the Mill and how much creative equipment I could physically fit in my little car. So after tossing around various ideas when I should have been sleeping I decided I would work on my ‘Tiggy’ piece during the festival, finishing it by the end of the day – the Saturday of week 42.
I’d arranged to go to Tiggy’s house and do some dyeing on the Monday, so I rolled up armed with an old coat, some felt and the all important cake for break time. I had the idea to dye the coat and then create embellishment with dyed felt which I would add to the surface during the Forage Festival. We prepared the Indigo Vat, dipping the coat 4 times in total to get a good colour. I used procion dyes on my felt and some threads for the stitching – it was a fantastic mix of yellows and blues. The cake was tasty as well!
Following our session I went home and created some blue and yellow buttons in my aluminium to replace the old plastic ones that were originally on the coat.
So, on Saturday I loaded my car and headed out to Arne. It did seem a bit strange to be stitching a coat during a festival that was promoting wildlife and bushcraft and I felt a little out of place, however the response from people was really quite lovely, it turned out to be a great promotion for the Make 52 project as well as the exhibition next year and I had some wonderful and valuable interest from a wide variety of people.
It’s true my sewing skills are less than average, you could say they have a ‘rustic’ quality. However let’s not pick too many holes, you can still get your arms down the sleeves and do up the buttons. The coat has it’s own felt ‘swarm’, of course, there needed to be some kind of wildlife link in there somewhere, and I had a really lovely day.
A successful and enjoyable Week 42, using some new mediums and some of my more limited skills. Tiggy provided some great inspiration and ideas for my coat and I had a lovely afternoon in her studio getting messy, what more could you ask.
Next week, I’ll be doing a live art piece for ‘The Monochronium’, an exhibition at the Lighthouse in Poole, exploring words, music and illustration, arranged and led by artist and friend Hazel Evans. I will be creating a ‘spontaneous’ piece of work during 3 hours whilst sat on a plinth, this Thursday 28th 5-8pm, please come along and watch us all in action.
Walford Mill Crafts 