Losing my Muse!

I've lost my Muse.....hopefully only temporarily. Such a frustrating experience, to go into my sewing room with no ideas or inspiration as to what I'm going to do!! I think I'm suffering from some sort of "overload". All those photographs and sketches I produced at Dungeness, and then going to the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, and trying to remember all the wonderful art quilts I saw there has just fried my brain!!

Fortunately, I think I may have discovered an antidote to all this frantic "input". I've recently been following a blog called spiritcloth.com which is all about a much more meditative and thoughtful approach to stitch and art cloth. Obviously a far slower technique to what I'm used to, but I've produced a couple of pieces of work that have given me a surprising feeling of satisfaction. I don't think that they have necessarily been that successful as stand alone art works, but they have calmed my mind and helped to quell that feeling of panic. One piece has been produced as a possible entry for a challenge that I'm hoping to take part in, so for that reason I'm only showing a small part of it. The challenge is to produce a small quiltlet entitled "Childhood Memories", and I have to say that using this slower, meditative approach has  been really helpful. A very personal memory map, and something that seemed to evolve as I slowly stitched and "remembered".

This second piece was inspired by the view from my sewing room window, all the lush greens in our garden and beyond. I just picked small bits of fabric from my "bits" box, and then hand stitched them down, allowing their shapes and patterns to dictate how and where I stitched.  Hopefully this slower pace of working will give my Muse a chance to recover and return, with a fully charged battery!!!