She loves blue, and has just recently published her first book, called Maya and the Book of Everything. She has had the cover art for a couple of months and the background is a lovely shade of blue, which she now thinks of as, 'Maya blue.' It is the colour of the first piece above--at least that is where I ended up, but the thinking was going on for months before Maya blue was even a thing!
We had a small quilted wall hanging that needed refreshing, as one of the embellishments had faded. One summer day, I took that bit off, along with some beads. I was deciding what I might want to do with it when I decided to rummage around in the sea glass, shells and pottery bits. I ended up with a sort of collage. I quite liked it. As I was poking through the pottery shard collection, I noticed one that had a red design of a castle on a white background and where it was broken left the castle image almost intact. I decided that one should be the focal point of its own small piece, so I stitched that up and liked it, too. So did Laurie, so I filed this information away and made a note to myself to be on the lookout for blue bits. I had one or two pieces that I could use in a pinch, if no more turned up, but I kept my fingers crossed for just the right piece.
Lo and behold, one day in August we were wandering the beach and picking up stuff and there it was--white with the blue bird design. As soon as it hit my hand, I said, 'There's Laurie's piece of pottery.' I brought it home with the rest, washed it, let it dry, and set it aside. Then the thinking began. How exactly would I use it? What would be the best way to secure it, especially given that there is a bit of a curve to the piece and it does not lie flat? I left this to percolate in my brain and every once in a while I would think of another possibility. Months passed. Ideas came and went. One night, I had the thought that I could sort of sit it on a small piece of driftwood to give it more stability. I tried that out the next day and it seemed like it would work, but I still had to decide on how to make the background. I concluded that needle felting would be the best thing. I sat down with my roving and needles and stabbed, stabbed, stabbed--and then decided that it wasn't right. I set that piece aside.
Different roving and more stabbing ensued. Then it was lunchtime. After lunch, I was still not happy, but, since I'd been chewing and thinking at the same time, I realised that I was complicating things too much. I wanted the found objects to be the focal points so I should keep it abstract and very blue. In fact, by then I had been introduced to Maya blue and recognised it as the same colour as the waters of Lough Foyle on some sunny summer days. Back to stabbing with Maya blue/Lough Foyle blue roving with a bit of white to indicate the motion of the water, which is what carried the embellishments to shore and left them there for me to find.
When I had my piece of felt, I backed it with acid free watercolour paper for stability, since the embellishments were a little heavy. I sewed them on through the felt and the paper, starting with the wee piece of driftwood before adding the pottery shard. Then as I looked at it, I felt it needed a little something else, so I poked around in the glass until I found pieces that were the right size and shape and I sewed those on. I added another piece of watercolour paper over the first piece on the back, which gave me a place to date it and added another layer for me to sew through when adding a small hanger. That is a piece of something that I found on a walk at some time. I pick up bits like that, wash them and save them to use for things like this.
In the end, this ended up being something completely different than what I thought it would be when I first started thinking about it. That's part of the fun of the creative process!
The shell ornament was another thing that I'd tried out in the summer. After I made a similar one for myself, but in purple, I kept my eyes open for more holey shells that are thick enough not to shatter. As it happens, when I found the one I used for the ornament above, I dropped it onto the concrete footpath as I was coming back from the rocky beach. I didn't mean to drop it, but since I did, and it was unharmed, I figured it could handle being posted across the pond! And it did!
Happy Maya blue Christmas, Laurie 😉
2 comments:
Briljant!
Thank you :-)
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