Five Fish

 

This wasn't how I expected this day to go, but it went off in a good direction.

Last spring, a friend asked me to do a wall hanging for her daughter's Christmas gift, incorporating about twenty or more of her daughter's swim suits from synchronized swimming.  We all know that Christmas is past, but I hope she will grant me grace.

It took a long time to figure out how this might work.  The swim suits certainly weren't the cotton fabrics I usually use, and there were sequins and other trims involved.  You'll see later how the finished project evolved, but today we'll just look at this one fish.

I decided to cut the swim suits into fish shapes - even cutting up those suits took a little courage, plus I couldn't be sure that my plan would actually work.

Before I got sick, I had come as far as having the fish cut out and pinned haphazardly to the base.  My plan for today was to arrange those fish into a good arrangement.

But I realized that I really, really wanted to see if sewing them on the background would actually work.  In rehab, with this unfinished project on my mind, I'd ordered glue sticks (plus fabric paints) because I know that the slippery fish would shift if they weren't glued down.

So, I turned on my long-neglected quilter, glued down a fish, and stitched around the edges.  And did the same for four more fish.

It worked - and now one of my goals for the week is to get all those fish stabilized and sewn down.

It felt so good to actually be doing something creative.  Time just slowed down.