You start out with an idea... maybe even a good idea - "I want to make a piece about trees.  Ordinary trees that grow long and tall and develop feet; because they need to walk away from our polluted water table. So the piece will be called 'Walking Tall' ."




And you want the trees to be autumnal, so you think that if you cut strings of fabric in autumnal colours, fuse them randomly to a background fabri:



And then cut those fused strings into "tree top" shapes, you could lay them on your beautifully prepared background, and add the walking feet and have this really cool, post-apocalyptic (or pseudo-post apocalyptic) tree scape. ('Cuz as you know, I have this fascination - borderline obsession with trees.)



and so you put it all together, and you end up with weird, multicoloured clouds and you can tell immediately that they cannot be saved.

(But you save the background, and after a few days of thinking about something else, and having the background hanging around pinned up on your design wall, you realize that it could become THIS. )

And because that's happened too many times to mention - I never worry about it when my first, or second, or even third attempt doesn't work.

The beginnings of something new in a couple of days.

'Til then...