Wednesday 24 September 2014

New term, new beginnings

I've always loved September.  I love the slightly faded, washed out blue of the sky first thing in the morning. I love the crispness of the grass and the beauty of spider's webs illuminated with dew.  I love the growing richness of the colours of nature as the burnt, frazzled look of summer gives way to golds, oranges, reds and deep browns.  I love the warmth of the sun in September but knowing that it is perfectly acceptable to have soup for lunch as it's actually Autumn.  I got married in September.  When I lived on the other side of the world, the shifting of the seasons was one of the hardest things to acclimatise to.

To me, September means a new school year - a new pencil case, with sharp pencils and shoes that took a few weeks to feel comfortable.  I loved school but what I particularly loved was the possibilities of the start of a new school year.  New exercise books with no scribbles, no mistakes, no slighly dog eared corners, just endless possibilities of learning and creating new things.  Now I'm a parent, I still get the same feelings of excitement and anticipation in September and now I'm back in the northern hemisphere I am no longer confused by the lack of autumn and I'm able to delight in brand new parent teacher communication notebooks.

This year feels especially exciting as I'm embarking on a challenge of my own - to make something every week for the next year using only the fabric I have hoarded in my work room.
It seemed like a good idea to start with a photo - if nothing else it means I can assess exactly *how much* fabric we're talking about here...

This is what my corner of the attic normally looks like.  A bit messy, and with some toy related detritus adding to the chaos (my attic space doubles up as the playroom - it varies from the odd jigsaw piece to full scale scalextric with integral marble run and enclosed Sylvanian family village)


You can see the two full laundry bins, and the two big IKEA storage bags under the table?  There's another two of those on the other side... behind the carrier bag of scraps... the drawers are also full... and there's a rucksack in there which is full to busting of rugby shirts that my husband has accumulated over the last 20 years, which we have transported around the world and he refuses to throw out.  So I got it all out...

And this was it... about two foot deep and four foot square.  I reckon that should keep me busy for a bit.