Mixed Media Mayhem - In Stitches

Documented Life Week of May 9 - Theme - Texture

Art Challenge:  Stitching

Journal Prompt:  "All that I'm after is life full of laughter."

Considering the Documented Life Project theme for May 9, texture through stitching, and the prompt of "a life full of laughter" I pondered how I could use these challenges to document a contemporary event in my life.  To begin I followed my usual pattern of diving through stash or product to see what speaks to me.  In my wicker trunk of fabric snippets, I found a crazy quilt square I had made by hand in an Art Chix gathering where we learned quilting methods and practiced our embroidery stitches.  Of no use to me except as a memory, the quilt piece became the ideal centerpiece for this entry.  Thinking about our meeting at Liza'a house working together sharing fabric swatches and helping each other recall our basic stitches of the sampler, I was struck again by the warm camaraderie and non-judgmental support provided by this group of women artists who gather monthly to create art.  The friendship provided by members of this group provide me a life full of laughter - keeping me stitches.

To set the stage for the crazy quilt I used the most favorite tool, a credit card, to scrape black acrylic paint over the two pages and auditioned the placement of the quilt.  Once I had determined to leave the quilt whole, it was obviously out of balance so I glued some trimmings to the left hand page.

To tell the story I adhered some dyed, ripped tags with journaling and wrote around the edges with a white gel pen.  I let my stitches be the detail on page 2.