Finding the Muse #9 Sorting your stuff

Artwork by Queen's Ink  in Savage Mill MD

Isn't that something? It appeals to me for several reasons. It's a female face, it's like a line drawing, lots of color with black and white, and not the least of which, it's 3-d.

Last week a friend of mine was in town and called me for a visit. We met at Savage Mill for shopping, lunch and laughs. More on an upcoming post, and it's full of color!

For today's post on Finding the Muse... when your inspiration well is low, it's a fine activity to go into the studio and sort or clean up. Just going through your supplies will make you want to stop and make something! (if only to avoid cleaning up)

I was sorting through some old purchases, you know, putting new fabric in the wash and looking through my loot, wondering where I was going to store all the new stuff when I came across some scraps a friend gave me. I put them in a mesh bag to wash with the other new fabric. When it came out I saw she had given me about 140 colorful 2" squares.

Stop the presses! Well, go ahead and press them, but then I stopped the cleaning/sorting process, swiped off a section of my cutting table and started to play.

 Oh I arranged, and imagined lots of different patterns with them before deciding to sew them together into a table runner. After they were laid out, I mistakenly thought they were not interesting enough. Silly.

So I cut out about 30 solid black two inch squares and imagined a wave running through the piece...

 Not quite content with that, I added in some side waves too, then stitched the gadzillion little seams together.
I'm happy to report most of the corners matched.

Oy!

The pressing of seams took a moment.

As per usual a couple got twisted, and then I saw this...

Wha???

How in the world did that happen? Or how didn't I notice it while sewing it? Then I had to UN-SEAM it and replace it.

That done, I thought, wow, this runner is tiny. About 9" by 22"

Then, again as per usual, I hated it. I started trying to add borders... which made the studio an even bigger mess...

Then I remembered the piece of musical fabric left over from my Husband's dance vest... hmmm the runner  does remind me of piano keys... Let's try it. After all I already tried twenty other combinations.

Which leads me to the rule, doesn't matter how small or unimportant a piece is, one can dither over it.

This is what I think I'm going to do with it. Note: the wave turned into some kind of double wave.
Notice how much the whole thing looks like the first inspirational photo at the top?

So my point is, if you don't feel inspired, feel like you want to sew but can't think of what to make, go into your happy place (sewing room) and sort stuff.

If you keep it clean all the time... well... I just can't imagine doing that but I know people who do. If you are a tidy sort, then maybe you just have to look through your carefully-tidy,  put-away-supplies til you get inspired to finish one of those UFO's. If you are one of those who have no UFO's, well, what are you doing listening to me?!!?  The rest of my Peeps out there with messy studios and piles of unfinished projects... do you find you get inspired to sew by cleaning up?

Other Finding the Muse posts HERE