Frustrations!!

Unlike my Grandmother, I had a good art teacher
at school - Audrey Henderson - and one of her
many pieces of fantastic advice was 'collect collect
collect everything. This object to the left, taken from the beach
was fascinating, and if you look closely you can see the spangled
web inside each little compartment. I'm still new to sewing
and learning what is and isn't possible to depict on fabric, particularly
fabric which is for newbie sewers, which is forces you to be quite geometric.
I tried, and pretty much failed to recreate the organic randomness of the pattern
on the fabric (see below).








This was another shape which mesmorised me, a longtail boat, particularly
when swooshing through the water.
This was a regular mode of transport for us in Thailand, this boat is
filled with our students, undergoing guide training. We
were about to go on a tour of their village.

There's a real vibrancy about long tails, their shape demands good balance
from those it carries, and many Thais would happily skip around the
edge as we approached the piers.
The angle is the nightmare in this shape - the boat rises up and out of the water.


These are two failed attempts which drove me crazy - my first realisation that
sewing might mean becoming friendly with graph paper. Aaarg.
I want to be artistic not systematic!















This was a little bit more successful, although I haven't
tried it out on anyone who doesn't know what a longtail boat is...

One project I would like to do is a sampler filled with motifs that remind
me of our time in Thailand, and designed around the shape of the
market and eateries in the main town.

Samplers and traditional blackwork fills do not inspire me hugely, but
the notion of keeping a record of stitches and memories does.
I can see how a sampler could be a record of a time or experience,
and I hope to create my own using this motif, and others - fruit carts, ants, frogs,
etc.
Like Audrey said - collect, collect collect!