Making Artistic Lemonade

Here in the Seattle area, we had a torrential rain last week.  Normally our rain is a soft misty thing but this was a gully washer.  (Yes, I lived in Austin, Texas for several years and I know what I'm talking about here.)  One result of this rain was a leak in the roof over my home studio last Thursday night.  This has meant basically shutting down my wet studio where I do marbling and dye painting.  Since I had decided to spend this month creating fabric to use in making a new series, I was at first hugely disappointed and dismayed.

Then, my glass half-full self came roaring back and I decided to make lemonade, artistically speaking.  I have just finished the piece below titled "Keep Swimming" and doesn't that just seem fitting somehow.

So, instead of making the fabric to work on my big piece idea right now, I am shifting my to-do list around a bit, and going with the fishes.

This piece brought some serious stitching back into my work.  My Dancer series was mostly collage with little stitching.  This piece has satin stitched lines around the different sections of fabric on the fish and some light stitching on the kelp.  I find I'm enjoying working this way again.  Since my big piece idea also includes some fish, well that's what I'll be working on next.  To totally mangle the cliche, I'm making fish lemonade!