A tale of two ideas

Today's post is a tale of two lines of thought unexpectedly coming together - in a fashion not at all planned but suddenly seeming to be the right thing to do - and maybe it's the benefit of putting things aside and into the sub-conscious when you're not sure what you should do ...

Sometime last autumn, I completed a small group of weaving experiments, making strips of my own cloth into which I stitched with the now familiar wandering lines to represent patterns in landscape. Since then I've gone off in a slightly different direction and weaving has been temporarily left alone.

Recently, I've been edging myself towards working in 3D. This morning, at my local art group, I played with shapes and the use of Möbius strips (sorry this link gets very mathematical!). It's a fun shape and I had seen it in C. June Barnes' lovely book Exploring Dimension in Quilt Art.

I played with strips of paper in different sizes and lengths and the shapes produced seemed to have a link to my thoughts about landscape and wandering lines ...

I then came home and looked at my woven strips, twisted one and produced this little form about 5" high ...

It's a tight little form, very different from the Möbius strips I made this morning or those shown in June Barnes' book but I liked the gentle contrast between the two surfaces of the weaving so I stitched it to hold it in place. Suddenly the back wasn't just the reverse but had a validity all its own and offered a pleasing contrast.

I will post the other strip when it's sewn in place ... and later this week the paper form I made this morning - a maquette for a very different piece, though I think its origins will be recognisable ...