Halfway There

I'd like to say that once I had selected a course of action, my plan would have gone smoothly.  Not so, but perhaps that is characteristic of plans in general.  Anyway, here's what I wanted to do and what really happened:

Plan: I had the lampwork bead I loved, so I selected some 30 year old wool to work a fabric page.   Actual:  I completed the knitted page as planned and gently felted it to remove some of the stitch definition.  Since I don't feel I've made a complete transition to fabric from fiber, I wanted to retain some of the knit definition.  Plus, I wanted to give the page some stability - knitted fabric is floppy.

Plan:  I wanted to embellish the page, and had bought, in addition to the lampwork bead, two bags of glass seed beads and some fabric to back the page.  Actual:  The lampwork bead and the coordinating seed beads were definitely not a go.  The lampwork bead was too heavy for the knitted fabric, even though it was felted to give it more body.  The two colors of seed beads were not enough to carry off a design on the page.  And I didn't know what design I wanted to embellish.

Plan: No design ideas for the page.  Actual:  I spent three nights drawing out geometric and floral designs and scouring books for apt quotations.  I have a small volume called "Art and Fear".  A very good text for "artists" like me.  One of the chapters addresses all the reasons why artists don't produce work.  One of them is fear of pretending.  I read that section several times before I decided an appropriate phrase might be "Fear of pretending I am what I am not."

Plan: use the materials on hand.  Actual:  One of the seed beads I purchased for the project was in my opinion perfect to use for the saying.  The bead was almost the same color as the background page, but stood out just enough so that a reader could make out the phrase.  And it expressed perfectly how I felt in both words and color.  When I'm afraid, I want to fade into the background and not be noticed.  I want the challenge or whatever I'm afraid of to go away.

Anyway, here is the page as it stands at this point (forgive me for not rotating the photos):

(Note:  The holes in the fabric on either side of "Fear" were intentional.  I inserted them in case I wanted to put the page in the fabric book I started last month.)

Plan:  Use the fabulous fabric I purchased at my local quilt shop to coordinate with the lampwork bead as the backing for the page.  Actual:  When the page was worked to the stage it is at now, the fabric was much too lively.  So, I went to the fabric store in the capitol right across from my office building to search for something else.  The store is in the artsy district and they always have the most embellished, outrageous-in-a-good-way fabrics.   And sure enough I found the neatest fabric.  It is an embroidered  taffeta.

Here is the wrong side of the fabric.

The right side has furry fuschias!  Perfect!!!

Plan: Back the page with the fabric and fussy-cut some of the fuschias to embellish the empty spots on the felted page.   Actual:  I hope to work on completing the page this weekend and maybe surf the Web to see what everyone else is doing on this month's challenge.  I haven't visited sites for almost two months now, so it would be good to get back into the community of TIF-fers and see what's going on.