Here I am a few days on from the so-called dilemma. Feeling silly because it wasn’t really a dilemma at all. Being that “woman in a hurry” I’d gone off half-cocked. OF COURSE there wasn’t really a choice between the conceptual and the aesthetic. I would never have made the skirt into a piece that only looked nice and didn’t fit with my train of thought. And OF COURSE I couldn’t bring myself to make a piece that didn’t fit the aesthetic either. So, as the comments suggested… OF COURSE I had to just wait and see, do a bit more thinking, look at it and play with it. You’d think I would know things like this by now wouldn’t you? Apparently not. Each new piece of work throws up a puzzle that I agonise over, forgetting that the whole agonising thing has happened before, and it works out in the end.
Perhaps by writing it here… Oh… hang on… done that before… nothing seems to change does it?
Thanks to those who told me to wait a while and keep the faith, that an answer would present itself all in good time.
Anyway…
A not-quite perfect mend is I think the answer. Stitching the gingham into place, so that from a short distance away the pattern is uninterrupted, the eye undisturbed, but when you get up close you can see the scar, see that beautiful frayed edge. When I pinned it together over the patch, I discovered the cut-out wasn’t as large as I had first thought, and was in fact not a haphazard scoop of fabric, but a perfectly drawn and cut circle. I felt this was most satisfactory. A perfect hole. And as such, it has an echo from the tweed jacket’s holes. Another hole to shine a light through.
A friend volunteers in a charity clothing bank… she got me the tweed jackets… She has become my “spotter” and this week gave me a bag of stuff to look through that she said wouldn’t be used… I need to have a closer inspection, but from the initial peek in the bag it all looks very respectable… and there’s even a pair of size 6 brown patent shoes that are horrendously respectable! All I need is the skirt and I’ll have the whole outfit.
*shudder*
