UFOs and Comfort Projects

In times of anxiety, I find myself cleaning – not just the usual dust and vacuum, but wholesale take-things-apart-and-put-them-back-together.

In this mode, I’ve found a bunch of UFOs– unfinished objects – in my studio that I have taken great pleasure in completing.
There’s a superb asymmetrical tunic I knitted from “I Knitted My Way” by Teresa Dair, which now has side seams and can actually be worn. (Surprisingly despite my “lockdown diet” it still fits me!)
There’s another tunic (hmmm I see a trend emerging) in hand-dyed linen that I’ve finally finished sewing.
And then there are these three darling little cushions, made from prints that I did so many years ago after a class with textile artist and printmaker, Susan Mathews.

three darling little cushions

I used her technique of tearing a piece of A4 paper into strips and using them to print different colours through a silk screen to make a background. Then I etched a currawong into a piece of foam and printed him on top of the backgrounds. Then it looked too stripey to me, so I used seed stitch in a variety of complementary colours to break up the stripes a bit and add some more texture.

Finally this week, I managed to sew backs onto the fronts and stuff them, so they are now nesting peacefully in a beautiful lacquered tray I bought in Cambodia long after I had started these little birdies. And I am resting peacefully knowing I’ve decimated the UFO bucket in my studio.

I hope they fly away to new homes soon, and bring as much pleasure to new guardians as they have brought to me over the past (six? seven?) years.

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