There Is No Art Without Heart: From Scraps to Cloth

Sometimes, while going through our lives, we use portions of this and that much like whole cloth where pieces not used end up in our scrap bag. One of the greatest things that we learn through art is that we can take these scraps, good and bad, and stitch them together to make a whole new cloth that we can, then, reuse in most positive ways. For instance, you can take a totally negative experience such as the last post (represented here by tea stained muslin), surround it by a much loved leftover piece of vintage tea towel, border it with a delightful scrap of red ticking and embellish it with a length of checked ribbon a friend purchased for you from a great Japanese store, enhanced with another length of vintage red rick-rack from yet another friend and VOILA...you have a whole new piece of wonderful cloth from which to imagine and shape new works of art. Sort of like combining that awful negative cloth (experience) with some humble and/or beloved scraps (friends and patterns) and end up with yet another rich resource for you to first enjoy, then, contemplate, then, turn into something even more special. And while the original cloth may now have 'disappeared', the energy of the whole still remains within the pieces that you choose to create from it.

So, from this whole cloth created, I decided to cut out the images to represent the true meaning of an evil experience to befall me. Thus I deleted the negative aspect (previous post) of the cloth by combining it with the wonderful scraps detailed above (support, love and understanding from my friends and readers of the previous blog) and cut out some wonderful hearts, of which it would not take a collge degree to figure out the design significance/incentive of the shapes I chose. Already I have begun to embellish them as you can see from the photo, but the best is yet to come...what fabulous creations will this combination eventually lead to: small pillows, stuffed, wall hangings, dad-burned clothespin bags.... What would you make from such heartbreak in fabric turned into incentive whole cloth? That's exactly what my question was to myself, which has garnered itself to these 'heart'felt interpretations. I will share the end results with you so all will know that possibilites exist even when someone or something tries to hand you negative 'cloth'. Hugs....