Skip to main content

Next Project

I'm probably going to do one more slow-stitched project before I think about doing anything for the holidays; I want to do an homage piece to Jane Eyre, one of my favorite books. I started with a rummage through this basket of all the hand-dyed and vintage fabics I've saved.

I narrowed down the choices for the background fabric to these two hand-dyed pieces. To audition them, I simply put my project elements on top of the fabric to see how everything works together.

This fabric, which is an organically dyed old Kitchen Aid linen towel, seems at first glance to me to be a bit too light for my theme.

My other choice is very Gothic; the organically dyed synthetic. A bit too dark, though, as it seemed to swallow up the colors of my elements.

The contrast between both of my background fabric choices made me think, too. Is Jane Eyre really that dark of a story to me? Mostly of it is pretty dismal and dreary. But when I first read the novel as a girl I felt a strong affinity for Jane and how no matter what happened to her -- even being abused and losing her best friend -- she never gave up hope.

Hope is light, not dark. Hope is lovely, not dreary. That's why I chose the lighter piece for my project.

The more I look at my materials, the more confident I am that I made the right choice -- even if it doesn't make sense to anyone but me.

I'll keep looking at everything for another day or so, and maybe make some sketches, and then get started.

Labels:

Comments

nightsmusic said…
Interested to see how you lay it all out. :)
November 8, 2021 at 7:43 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...
1 comment
Read more

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.
Post a Comment
Read more

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.
2 comments
Read more