draped piece, front

I picked up one of the welded forms today. It looks good. Steve is really figuring out how to craft these crazy forms.

I’ve been a little nervous about how to move forward. I’m stepping outside of my process and having to figure things out all over again. Usually I’m working with two-dimensional patterns that become three-dimensional when I join them together, much like a dress pattern. Now I’m creating a skin to cover a skeleton.

Life has been very full lately: we’ve been doing a small remodel to our house for the past six weeks.  And this week my daughter’s pet guinea pig got sick. Both of those things came to a end today. Our contractor finished the job, took his tools, and moved out. Yay! And I had to have our sweet little guinea pig, Oreo, put to sleep. Very sad.

So between going to Home Depot to get cabinet door pulls and going to the vet there wasn’t much time for the studio. I did squeeze in an hour, though. I had to drop off the steel form and figured, while I was there, I’d iron some of my new dyed fabrics. With a few extra minutes I started considering which fabrics went together for the new pieces.

As I was laying them out I realized I could drape them over the form and look at them in three dimensions instead of two. What a revelation! I felt like I was on Project Runway.

I was quickly able to drape fabrics over the form and use binder clips to hold them. Usually, choosing fabrics is a laborious process of smoothing the fabrics out on the table, framing them with paper outlines, climbing on a stool to see them from above, then folding them up to try a different combination. This was so fast and so much easier. I decided on my fabrics in a few minutes instead of hours!

It was an encouraging start. Maybe I’ll be actually get these new pieces done before the holidays, after all.

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