Life's bumpy road
It is 4 weeks since I restarted my 100 (week) day challenge and time for an update. After completing 40 days I decided to take a two week break – family stuff plus Festival of Quilts made it pretty impossible to hit my target of spending two hours every week day evening working on small art. I was, and still am, absolutely determined to keep going however it has not been an easy 4 weeks.
Life has thrown the Higgins family a couple of curve balls. On Day 41 I left my day job. There was always a risk that it wouldn’t work out but it was still disappointing and frustrating. Having been made redundant the previous year I had made sure that I could afford to be out of work again. But the thought of looking for another job was depressing and left me feeling very sorry for myself. Then on Day 44 we learnt that my mother-in-law was seriously ill. Which put the lack of day job into perspective. Now being ‘between jobs’ is a good thing – we are able to visit nearly every day and support my father-in-law as he cares for Joan at home. People who know me will know that I don’t do ‘nursing’ but I can bake cakes, make brews, hold hands and taxi people around. And help my husband spend as much time as possible with his mum.
Being ‘between jobs’ (so much nicer than being ‘unemployed’) means more time in the studio, at least in theory. In practice, it has been really hard some days to drag myself the 30 feet from our back door to the studio but my 100 (week) day challenge is a good motivator. I will admit that some sessions have been in the morning rather than the evening but getting into the studio is good for me. It is my space, it calms me. And I am incredibly lucky to have it. So here is my update:
- Day 41: 2 hours - started to stretch the Canal Street pieces over canvas.
- Day 42: 2 hours
- Day 43: 2 hours
- Day 44: 3 hours ... all spent finishing and photographing the 20 Canal Street pieces.
- Day 45: 2 hours - stitching Kilns 5.
- Day 46: 3 hours - finished Kilns 5 and fused the background for Kilns 6
- Day 47: 2 hours - stitched Kilns 6.
- Day 48: 2 hours - trimmed and added facing strips to the 6 Kilns pieces.
- Day 49: nope, just too sad.
- Day 50: 2.5 hours - stretched the 6 Kilns pieces over canvas and photographed.
- Day 51: 3 hours - added accent stitching to the Bold Colliery pieces.
- Day 52: 1.75 hours - finished and photographed the 8 Bold Colliery pieces. These will be put in conventional frames at a later date.
- Day 53: 2 hours - getting fabrics ready to make a series of 12 x 12 inch pieces based on the Gas Works in Salford.
- Day 54: 2 hours - adding bondaweb to fabrics and cutting into lots and lots of 1 x 3 inch 'brickettes'.
- Day 55: 1 hour - preparing the backings ready to build my background 'walls'.
- Day 56: 1.25 hours - started fusing my walls.
- Day 57: 1.5 hours
- Day 58: 1.5 hours ... both spent fusing walls.
- Day 59: nope, emergency taxi service instead.
- Day 60: 3.5 hours - finished building walls, I have enough for 18 pieces of small art.
