Slow patterns, fast patterns

I’ve got all kinds of projects on the go. Perhaps you can relate?

Some of them (like my needlepoint tapestries) take incredibly long to finish, while others (like my quick carved-eraser patterns) are made in a flash.

I occasionally find it difficult to reconcile the two, because while I may start a needlepoint in response to other things I’m doing in the studio, by the time I do the last stitch, the design is old news. We’ve all moved on, and all that effort ends up getting forgotten in a drawer somewhere.

Recently, however, I appear to have managed to find a happy middle.

In April last year, I painted a tapestry canvas with a design inspired by a paper cutout I’d made about 5 years before.

I called the design Scandi Candy, because the little motifs looked like little midcentury sweeties!

6 months later, when I was just over halfway, I began exploring the pattern possibilities in each of the Scandi Candy motifs, making prints from carved erasers (as well as more tapestry).

Then I also started screenprinting the motifs onto linen too, using the funny, hack-handed masking tape printing technique I made up.

And what’s coming next?

Well, I’m still stitching away at the needlepoint, I’m turning the printed linen into a quilt and…. Skinny laMinx will be launching a brand new print called Scandi Candy at the end of June.

Watch this space!