The Piece that Almost Failed
A forgotten project, two photographs from my father, and a sewing machine on the deck of a sailboat. This is the story of how my first thread painting almost never came to be.
ARTIST JOURNEYINSPIRATIONSTORIES BEHIND THE ARTWORK
The first thread painting I ever started almost became the first one I never finished.
It sat rolled up in the corner of my sewing room for years. I had started working on the piece and reached a point where I simply couldn't continue. It was as if I'd hit a wall. Looking back, I realize I just didn't have the skills yet to finish it.
It all started with two large photographs that my father gave me. He had taken them while he was serving in the Navy stationed in Monterey, California. They were images of the coastline. They were old and yellowed, but they captured the rugged beauty of the coastline beautifully.
A few years later I was rummaging around in my sewing room and I came across the abandoned piece. I wondered if I could finish it now or if it would once again prove to be beyond my abilities. More importantly, I wondered whether I had grown enough as an artist.
In those days I spent a lot of time on boats. I used to take my sewing machine with me to sew boat covers. I remember sitting on the deck of our sailboat with an extension cord snaked down the hatch. I had one knee bent so that I could operate the sewing machine’s foot pedal. I was much more flexible in those days. I could contort myself into odd positions. So there I was, sewing away. Sewing on a sailboat wasn't exactly ideal, but surrounded by the boats and the water, it made for the perfect environment to start working on the piece again.
And I was able to finally finish it! Finishing that first piece gave me the confidence to keep exploring this new technique. I completed a couple of smaller pieces and gained a little more skill. After finishing the smaller ones, I was ready to tackle the second photograph. This time I created the piece entirely while at my art gallery surrounded by all of the beautiful artwork.
When I finished the second piece, I knew I had reached something I hadn't been able to achieve the first time. The realism, the color, and the detail were everything I'd hoped for when I first unrolled my father's photographs years earlier. The artist who had rolled up that unfinished first piece would never have believed she could create this. I even submitted it to Legacy Magazine. The editors chose it to feature on the cover. And not only was it the cover image, but the piece sold at an art show. The magazine came out the day after the lady purchased the piece. She came back to the art show the next day to tell me that she had gone to the bookstore to buy all of the copies of the magazine that were available.
Sometimes an artwork arrives almost effortlessly. The ideas flow, the techniques come naturally, and the finished piece seems to emerge on its own. Other times, the artwork asks us to become better artists before it allows itself to be finished. My first thread painting did exactly that. It waited patiently until I had the skills and the confidence to tell its story.
Looking back, I'm grateful I never threw it away.
It wasn't a failure.
It was simply waiting for me to catch up.
