After dinner last night, I finally grabbed some studio time. It's not that I haven't been working since the holidays. I have. A lot. I've been working on (in alphabetical order, not necessarily in this order) art marketing, web design and writing my how-to book.
At my studio, I worked on my monthly 12 x 12 x 12 series, which is my first time incorporating a zipper with monoprinted construction fences.
I picked out fabric to use with the zipper, got my sewing machine out, went to sew the zipper to the fabric, and I had a brain cramp. I couldn't remember how to sew a zipper. I was trying not to get frustrated, because I've been sewing since I was 12 years old, which is a long, long time, and then I realized the reason I couldn't remember how to sew a zipper was because I only had one piece of fabric with no seam and you need a seam to sew a zipper. (How was that for a run on sentence?!?)
I didn't want to lose any of the pattern of my fabric in a seam, so I decided that instead of sewing a zipper the traditional way with a seam, I'd cut the fabric down the middle (sort of) and sew each piece to the zipper instead of sewing the zipper to the fabric. It worked great.
I also mounted fabric on the 12" x 12" board so it could dry before the next step.
Because I can be impatient in the studio, like when waiting for things to dry, I gently laid the fabric with the zipper on the damp board, to start thinking about placement and how the fabric below it will show through, something I want to have happen. Sorry about the blurry picture above. I didn't realize it was as I was documenting it.
The next step is to mount the zipper fabric on the dry board, the next time I'm at my studio. I can't wait to do it!
After this start, I have a ton of ideas. I'll probably use the left over zipper fabric from January for my February piece, trying something totally different with the same piece of fabric, before I jump into working on much, much bigger boards for a new series.
When the January piece is finished, hopefully soon but definitely before the end of the month, I'll post a picture of it here and on my website.
