I love thread painting, and few years ago I had printed out a photo of Jack the Pumpkin King (from the movie 'The Nightmare Before Christmas') on printable canvas. I fused it to timtex and spent a few weeks painting it with various threads. I loved every minute of it.
Once I was done sewing, I set it aside trying to figure out exactly what I wanted to do with it. I didn't want to add it to a quilt, nor did I want to frame it and hide the stitches behind a piece of glass. So, it sat on my cutting table while I thought about it.
Then, last Halloween I came across this lace fabric with bats in it and an idea was born!
I stitched the lace to purple faux suede fabric, and then sewed it around the edges of the thread painting.
Then I waited until DH had to work late, and I snuck into his wood shop (he doesn't like me to use power tools unsupervised. If anyone knows first hand what a klutz I am...it's him). I rummaged through his scrap wood pile (he hoards wood, like I hoard fabric). I found four pieces that were the same width and thickness. I helped myself to the power tools and cut them down so that they were all the same length. (go girl power!) I glued and clamped my freshly cut wood making a frame. I let it dry over-nite. I was pretty proud of myself.
The next night I eagerly drove home from work excited to finally finish up this project. I wrapped the fabric around the frame and used my staple gun to staple it in place.
The wood was very thick, so the staples didn't go all the way in. I ended up using a hammer to pound them down. I used lots of staples so that I wouldn't have to worry about them coming out.
Once I flipped it over I realized my mistake. I hadn't tacked down each side of the fabric first - I just started wrapping the fabric on one side and went around the frame clock wise. The entire thing had shifted during this process. DOH! Why hadn't I thought to tack/baste it down with push pins or something??
I'm not a perfectionist and there was no way I was going to remove ALL those staples and re-position the fabric.
I thought to myself: There has to be a way to make this work off-centered, making it look like I did this intentionally, so that it would be 'artistic'.
I stared at it for a while, contemplating my options. Suddenly I remembered the set of Jack pins that I had picked up on sale last summer which were living on a shelf in my closet while I decided what to do with them (do you see a theme here??) I put the pins in the lower right corner and up the right side. Now it looked perfect!!
My 'mistake' had not only made the piece better, but it also gave me a great new way to display my pins! It was a win-win. I hung up Jack in my studio...a constant reminder that mistakes, are not really mistakes. They are artistic creations coming to life.
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