This year for my birthday my lovely mother-in-law gave me a great gift which helped supplement my sewing kit quite well: a pair of heavy-duty fabric shears, a bunch of thread, muslin and interfacing. This meant, of course that I had to organizse my sewing basket to make room for my new goodies - and given that organizing is one of my very favorite things to do, it made for a great late morning activity. Once I got it all sorted out, I was feeling very inspired to get some sewing done. So I spent the greater part of the afternoon and early evening knocking together some pillows for our dining room chairs. For the interior pillows, I cut up some old pillow cases and sewed to size; I filled them with a bit of left-over polyfibre fill I had laying around from a previous project. I didn't have enough for four pillows, so I tore apart an old couch cushion, robbed it of its insides and stuffed it into my new pillows. For the outer cover, I used gray felt fabric I picked up from a recent charity shop for a great price. The designs came from an old bit of IKEA fabric which used to make up the shell of the recently dessimated couch cusion. This was probably my first big sewing project in several years and I have to say I'm quite happy with the result. I think I could really get into this whole sewing thing you know!
My friend, Adelaide (a textile artist), and I are currently working on a collaborative "pairing" project. It works like this: we send each other found objects from our studio - we're not meant to think about it too much, just quickly pick something based on gut instinct; then we respond to what the other has sent to us, by altering it in some fashion or placing it a new environment. Then, we send our "responses" back to each other, we each respond again, and repeat the process until we finally achieve a finished piece of work. We're in stage 1. And this is what I've come up with so far - it's early days and just the start, so be kind in your judgements. I'm really excited to see where this journey takes us!