Having another go

I had a good old rummage through stash and found these two bags of offcuts from wedding dresses, which I bought for the regal sum of 2 Pounds Sterling per bag from a mate at West of England Lace Club, years ago. They are mostly silk or satin with some machine lace.

I had a fun morning dropping silk paints onto the wet piles, then folding them up to dry. This results in blotchy uneven colour mixes, which is what I wanted...

before I could start a collage which I stitched down onto plain calico.

This collage makes me think of summer, regatta, sails in the distance, beach, in a sort of cubist take on that bayscape. What I was really thinking was geology - I have a picture in my head of rocks by the beach in beige and blues, and I have some lovely little shells I want to use along with beads to create this image, but it's just not coming out of my hands - I got this instead. I'm not complaining - I can't wait to play with this image and embellish it with stitch, bead, shell.

What I like about this collage is the fact that it's made from scraps of wedding dresses - are those people still married? Where are they now? How was their special day? What are their stories?

Then I read Comment 66 on the June TIF Challenge and checked out the blog, and there were photos very similar to the ones at the top of this post, and a similar story about using wedding dress scraps - I wonder if she got them from the same person? Except she made a beautiful Cinderella dress. It's this synchronicity that I love so much in doing this challenge - people may start with the same design brief and even similar materials, but finish with wildly different pieces.

Here are a couple of pix of the old "Halles" (covered markets, usually for fishmonger, butcher, delicatessan, cheese merchants) in the Bastide St. Louis, that have recently been renovated. They made one section into an art gallery for sculptures and I think it's been wonderfully done, showing the charpente (the beams holding the roof) and the columns, and best of all - it's FREE! We took a shortcut through it to go to the butcher. There was also a marching band in the fruit & veg part of the market in the Place Carnot.
Had lunch at this little restaurant beside the river Aude, looking across to the Medieval City of Carcassonne. I feel back to my blissful self. Must get stitching now.