Upcycled Cloth Collective is a Facebook group started by Melaine Brummer . Last November she asked us to put to words to what upcycling meant to us and The Words Project was born. The project intrigued me but the words I would put to my work alluded me.
In February, I recived notice from GoDaddy that one of my websites needed to be renewed. Remnants of Therapy is the name my husband and I came up with for a fabric/craft store, also know as creative reuse, that would keep those items out of landfills. At that point I knew those would be my words, but I not entirely sure how I was going to incorporate them in a piece no bigger than 30cm x30cm.
I'm fascinated with denim right now and it's many uses and my recent discovery that leather is not that hard to sew. So I knew those 2 elements would have to be worked into my piece. I also love hexagons and have drawers and drawers of small pieces of scrap fabric, so a hex quilt was another definite I wanted to include. I find many, many pieces of lace and trim in thrift and that was the last part that came into play to finish out my 4 corners. On top if that, my brain insisted that much of that had to be hand stitched.
With the May 1st deadline looming and the constant buz that my life is, I set out to get this done over the final weekend. At last, with 3 hours to go I set about hand stitching all the elements that had not been previously machine stitched on the denim. In all I have 8-9 hours of physical work in this piece and countless mental hours.