Workspace But Lacking Mojo

After years of shed life it is exciting to have a workspace with electricity, so I can use my sewing machine and iron, and leave things out to offer inspiration. There is still a lot of organising to do but my creative mojo has deserted me. I thought I would be chomping at the bit to get stuck into something but instead I have to drag myself kicking and screaming to my worktable to even switch on my machine, and my brain seems empty of any creative ideas. So the only way to kick start any sort of flow is to just do anything- just do something other than unpacking and moving things around the house. I have been working on my traveller's blanket "One Earth" but after several years of hand stitching and nothing else I actually want to be doing some other things as well, and get into a work flow again.

So the blanket grows slowly. There is still time to enroll for the on-line course which starts next week on 17 October. Just email me if you would like more information.

So yesterday I decided enough is enough of this non-creative stasis- so after  several hours of distracting procrastination activities I sat myself down at my kitchen table and did something I have not done in a long time, which was to paint papers for transfer printing onto lutradur ( polyester non-woven). I  had, until my return to Australia, been thinking about things from the sea and I love sea urchins. Maybe it is because of all those little circles- it just seems somehow a perfect shape. So I painted some urchins. The beauty of transfer printing is that  you can often print up to three of the painted image. I used some different back ground colours and also put different coloured fabrics behind the printed lutradur. So it has me vaguely excited- I am wondering if I should paint a whole sea scene?

With a bit of stitching it will look quite different. But I still had not turned on my machine! So I dragged myself to my work desk and turned on the machine- whilst finding another lot of diversionary procrastination tactics- like fluffing around trying to find just the right fabric when any fabric would have done. The other day whilst tidying I had found a little olive tree I had stitched about nine years ago. Trees to me symbolise the need for us to be aware that the natural world is a finite resource- chop down a tree and often in the case of olive trees, you are chopping down hundreds of years of history. I know sometimes it is necessary but surely we can plant a tree elsewhere to make up for the loss. I look at the urban sprawl and notice that blocks of land are much smaller ( about half the size they used to be or smaller) to accommodate ever larger houses that leave little room for anything green let alone trees. In fact I am a little shocked by the size of some houses and how badly they are insulated- bigger is definitely not better. And then the energy they must use- water, electricity, heating , cooling.....

Anyway so I thought I would just stitch another olive tree, just to sit at the desk and sewing machine to actually do something!

The first photos is the tree I did about 9 years ago and it was done on hand woven khadi. This meant of course I had to stitch this new tree on khadi too and  I wanted it on dark blue but could not find  the fabric- so it ended up on this grey blue fabric with little sprinklings of terracotta all using 30 weight Aurifil Mako threads.