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Raggy Rugs and Raggy Thoughts


I'm having one of those weeks where nothing is going quite according to plan..  The good ideas are there but I'm not managing to execute them them in quite the way I envisage in my head!

It started with some very sumptuous looking cushions I found in a posh magazine which I thought "oh yes I can emulate them - in fact I can IMPROVE them" ha ha ... In my defense I want to say I am writing a report about being confident so I am being extremely enthusiastic and practicing confidence in large quantities... what I really need is patience and a steady hand or at least some one else with a restraining order!!

So back to the cushion... basically it had fancy sides and I thought yes I can do fancy sides!! I decided to see if I could follow through my concept idea and incorporate traditional and fancy - a bit rough and ready and with that thought, started a sample for raggy rug type sides for my own version of a posh cushion - how to refine raggy rugging?  still not sure - still working on it!!  The problem with raggy rugs is exactly that they are raggy and they fray - I've made a fun colourful sample - battled to pipe round the edge to tidy it up and everything we have been near is covered in bits of frayed cotton not exactly sumptuous!!

I'm not giving up - I shall investigate non fraying fabric and continue to have a little play - the texture is really nice both on the front and the back.. its not a wasted effort as I think I might scan the back in and use it somewhere.


The raggy rug remains a project in the working out period... meanwhile back at the Hartlepool ranch better known as The Northern School of Art we had a very inspiring (if a little intimidating) session on how to do hand rendered repeats - and my week continued to go slightly awry.... the tutor made it look so easy - I even rolled my eyes a couple of times -more fool me - after a skillful demonstration with clear instructions I put my very best patient mode on and set to - in the first instance really excited and enthusiastic - that lasted about an hour......  I had a little moan and then a wander and was inspired by another students work which being a bit further down the project looked tidier and made my current feeble effort look like it might improve on the next stage.... ha ha hah!!!

Basically I don't have the patience, precision, or currently the skill to make this work- doesn't mean I wont keep trying but I spent many frustrating hours placing and tracing and making endless corrections to my every grubbier tracing - finally covered in graphite and silently weeping I tried to convert the tracing to a final drawing.  


I knew what I wanted it to look like and it came nowhere near!  and I realise I need to PRACTICE!! but... its sooooooo time consuming and the end result was fairly dreadful - no really dreadful!!! somehow I had misplaced everything - time to start again but first several gins and an break doing something I feel confident in.  

This, surprisingly, was repeat designs on Photoshop - minor panic when somehow I managed to loose all the tools down the side but staying calm I eventually recovered them... more silent weeping ... and I have made a reasonable start to some digital repeats - using my line drawings I have copied them and then cut them up and rearranged them to make some very abstract patterns I have managed to make some nice repeat backgrounds - more to follow - watch this space... So in the end the week is not lost - just part of  a frustrated creative experience!!

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