The operative word here is had…
So I’m heading out of town in exactly 10 days. The pressure is on. I am reasonably sure I have enough time to accomplish everything I had set out to do, and prep everything I needed to prep by the deadline, which is actually well before the 10 days, since everything for the workshops must get shipped out at least a week in advance. Travel time to the pacific northwest. From NJ.
Plus I wanted to finish the run of scarves so I could take a couple with me.
Four down and one more to go!
So if I am able to get everything I need to for the workshops ready to go, and shipped out, and all the stupid computer work I have to do as well, that will give me a week to do something fun.
Everything is printed and bound…
Everything is cut and packaged… (I actually hired someone to help)
So I’m in good shape right?
See there is this exhibit I want to enter. The deadline is May 1st. But I’m leaving on the 24th. So my deadline is much earlier since whatever I want to enter, I actually haven’t made yet. And so it has to be made and then photographed and then images culled and uploaded, you get the idea…
The exhibit has different categories, of course clothing is one of them. Since this is an annual exhibit I already sent them for the exhibit last year all the cool stuff I did from two years ago, took a couple of awards, and last year was so god awful busy that I didn’t make any new work I would want to exhibit. But I have yardage. I have some pretty cool yardage. And yardage is also a category. It isn’t my preference to enter yardage, obviously I like to make garments and to me yardage is just a vehicle. Not an end product.
But I had a plan.
I have this tartan I wove last December, which I’ve showed in the blog already.
And I have these absolutely gorgeous three caviar leather lambskins, in a plum brown. The photos from my cell phone can’t nearly do it justice. I thought they would be splendid together.
I searched through patterns and came up with this idea of creating a trench with leather side panels, welts, collar and underarms. I did a quick layout and I think it can work. I had it all planned out. I even found a yard of gorgeous raw silk that would give me bias and pocket linings, since I hadn’t planned to line the coat. I cut the pattern out and am ready to test in muslin.
Then my sister came to visit last night. This sister lives a couple hours away from me, and last visited me for Thanksgiving. She happened to be in the area for a gardening event. She is big into gardening and floral design, but knows nothing about weaving, or fibers, can’t knit and doesn’t want to, and knows just enough to run up a hem on the sewing machine.
So I brought her into the studio to show her the current crop of yardage, ending with my pièce de résistance, the tartan and the leather.
First I showed her the yardage that just came off the loom. This is the handdyed raw silk twill with the bamboo weft. I have about 5 yards.
Then I showed her the handdyed ikat warp I pulled off the loom a month or two ago. She loved that one.
Then I showed her the tartan. She sort of shrugged and said, “Eh, it’s OK”. I was crushed.
Then I showed her the leather.
She picked up the leather and put it with the ikat and said, “No, it needs to go with that one.”
Damn. She was right.
I was crushed…
And the raw silk fabric, that was pretty obvious it had to go with the raw silk twill with the bamboo weft.
And so, I had a plan, and my lovely opinionated sister shot it down and she was absolutely right, though now I have no plan as to what I can do with this yardage before I leave on the 24th.
I rooted through my stash a bit more and found a little under a yard of gorgeous camel, the perfect color for the tartan. Not sure if there is enough to still do the trench. But I found this gorgeous fabric on the shelf I could possibly use as a lining.
The problem is here that I need more time to mull all this over. I can just enter the yardage and either it will get in or it won’t. It isn’t what I had hoped, but I love all three pieces and I love the course correction and now have to let everything age just a bit more…
It will all be good in the end. You just can’t rush genius…
Stay tuned…