Bead Journal Project for January...

Wishing on a Blue Moon

This year, rather than working from a theme, I am journaling about whatever feels important to me in each particular month. The month of January began with the occurrence of a "blue moon" on New Year's Eve. This moon seemed to effect quite a few of us in some sort of profound way or another. An airline pilot friend wrote an amazing story about his flight that night. It seemed I really had no other choice in the matter - I too, must journal about this event.

What does it mean to witness such a phenomenon? Why does it effect us so? I stood in the dark for a long time on that eve.  It was icy cold.  Trees and shrubs had dropped all their leaves and seed pods hung in silhouette from stark, dormant branches. I have always been in love with the dark, never having fear, not even as a child so for me, this night sky was a velvet cloak, a large comfortable mantle of stars.  And I let it cover me while that giant blue moon took all my wishes right up to the heavens...  

The piece is about 7 1/2" square, give or take. I'm going to attach each page to an 8" square backing (as yet to be determined.)  I've chosen a square format this year for a couple of reasons.  One is to purposely break my attachment to rectangles and two, is to force myself to deconstruct the resist dyed Merino felts in order to reassemble them into something entirely different. Some background on the felts I'll be using can be found here. This piece is a combination of two felts cut & sewn together.  You can click on any photo to view it a bit larger.

Aside from figuring out how to combine a mix of textiles, one of my biggest challenges was deciding how much of the felt should show and how much I could cover up with beads & stitches while still maintaining a feeling of balance. I wrestled with that A LOT.  I have decided to hold onto the mantra "it doesn't have to be perfect" while I continue to figure that one out.

New things I'm discovering this time around:

how much I like rough edges, selvages, and my preference for piecing together irregular shapes

while keeping all those uneven edges...

...how much fun it is to try combining different textiles

 and then add stitching...

...how rewarding it is to learn from others,

like how I learned from Jude at Spirit Cloth

about turning down a corner to reveal its better side...

...and then there's just how far sheer determination can take you

when you've got your mind set on using that teal-colored wool vest!

A couple other notes: the piecing together was hugely difficult for me, so constructing the base on which to bead took the most amount of time - oodles of time. I never thought I'd be able to say that the beading was the easy part! In addition, I totally enjoyed learning to needle felt, couching yarn and I really, really loved stitching, way more than I would have imagined.

So there it is - finished at last!