Back on track - again

I feel I may have lost the plot over the past week.

It may be because I'm getting slightly twitchy about this - my name is up, but so far no pictures.  But it's there.  Which means I really have to start getting some work together.  And therein lies the problem.

When I finished my machine embroidery diploma in 2009, my tutor and I both agreed that a personal style was beginning to emerge. 

I've spent the last 18 months trying to find it again. 

Trying to grasp it and get a hold of what it could be feels like trying to grab hold of sand slipping through my fingers.

I know some may feel that having a defined "style" may be rather limiting, but right now I think I need limits: I've been faffing around and playing for too long.  The problem with doing City & Guilds is that over the years you try EVERYTHING and so when starting a new project I could use ANY material in ANY method and the result is that I feel permanently STUCK!! 

Following yet another Google search for "finding personal style" I found some advice to:

Take one subject

Take one (limited) colour palette

Take one medium/method

Repeat

And you basically do this for as long as it takes.  Obviously the more you do, the quicker something starts to emerge.

I woke up on Monday and knew it had to be "plants", specifically "leaf".  And after several weeks too many faffing about with glue and paint, I'm back to stitching strips of fabric together.  Something that has always worked.  I liked the leaf sample I did a few weeks back on collage fabric/paper, so I incorporated the sheer applique with the strips - new twist.  And I found a new and better way of adding papers without using paste and emulsion and varnish...

Here are a couple of first attempts:

They are only tiny, but I feel that I'm home again.

I'm not a "slap any old thing down and keep the loose ends showing and call it art" sort of person, so why was I trying to be? 

I'm a bit of a neat freak.  I like lines.

Well, I say neat, just don't look at my desk at the moment.  Or my ironing* pile.

* We never iron clothes.  Something has gone badly wrong if someone has to get the ironing board out.  We use the "sedimentary" method of getting our clothes flat - ie. we stack them neatly folded in the airing cupboard and let gravity and time do their magic.  Sometimes, and today is such a time, the pile threatens to topple over, and clean socks and pants have to be "mined".  We feel so deeply attached to this method of dealing with our laundry that one of us even wrote a poem about it.

Stuck

I had a free morning.

I ordered a veg box, planned the meals for the coming week and ordered the groceries.

I baked some bread (and didn't follow my own directions, opting to try the hot baking sheet method - nice bread, shame about the teatowel).

I Googled no knead bread, trying to find a way to stop the dough sticking to the teatowel.  Flour and more flour is the answer.

Then what.  Do some embroidery...something for me....

I finished a beaded cord to wrap around my chicken wire chimney.  Wasn't sure I liked it. 

Someone phoned to talk to me about the Art Trail in July.  I think I'm signed up.  Better do something then.... what?

So I emptied a box file and found all these things.  And hadn't got a clue what to do next.

I quite like these, made on holiday last year:

and I don't suppose they need anything else doing to them.

I'm not sure what I can do with these pieces of muslin/collage/tissue but I like them:

The pink bit along the bottom is left over from a bookcover I made from the same stuff. I painted the collage with acrylic wax then stitched all over it with free machining and fancy pants automatic stitches. Shame it was over year ago.

At least there's an obvious colour theme, and it all looks quite nice on my table.

But now what?

I honestly haven't a clue.