I do want to share with you the 12 ” square I recently made for the SAQA squares online reverse auction later this year, details of  which will be found on www.saqa.com .

The funds raised are used to help fund the wide array 0f services this lively organisation provides to its membership around the world: there’s a huge variety of informational, promotional and exhibition activities and opportunities, many on-line, all of which raise public awareness of the art form and inform collectors and critics alike.

And the second reason I like to do one of these is that it always gives me a bit of a push, a nudge to try something new or newish, solve a technical problem perhaps,  in a small format – not exactly like a ‘sample’  since each square is a finished resolved work, but on a much smaller scale than I usually work.  It encourages me to tackle something  technically problematic prehaps.  Not that I don’t do that kind of thing on a larger piece if needs arise – I do tend to slide home dust flying when a deadline looms, flying by the seat of my pants so to speak.  

If you have been paying attention to my latest work, this one is like several recent works  (“Tracks ” series) in which I have taken perfectly good nylon organza and after construction atttacked it with a burning tool – for example my Quilt National’09 piece, “Timetracks 7”  blogged 22nd may.  The base of this square however is leather rather than fabric – and in this case I particularly wanted to solve the hanging sleeve thing.   Machine sewing with leather is all very well, but sew it wrong and you leave a line of holes,  and in something like this, anyway, did I want a life of machine stitching across the leather but under the organza, but maybe visible, anyway?  I did work out one way, and have since thought of a totally different but better way to do it, and will do so on a larger work, probably not for the show I have opening this tuesday though ……which brings me to the procrastination – my latest work, in the Ebb&Flow series is currently being quilted –  I’ve had some dinner and watched a movie with DH and so I will go on upstairs right now to do another spell of quilting – at this stage it’s still do-able for hanging monday afternoon ….day after tomorrow !