Daily creative, sewing practice.

I've been steadily carrying on with my wool pennies over the last couple of months. 

I've tried to make sure I sewed at least a square a day, sometimes it's been quite a few more and other times I've skipped it completely. But it's been the closest thing I've had to a daily sewing ritual. 

Some squares have a very simply sewn circle, whilst others have something a little more elaborate or creative.

There's one in there which was influenced by the beautiful, starry nights we've had. And there's a not hugely effective butterfly down in the corner, as well as a sunshine circle.

I really like that they differ according to the mood I was in at the time, or any inspiration that I'd found around me.

Difficult to see here - but a smiley face up there, and top left was after time spent by the sea.

I think it's no surprise that those circles that are more elaborate or creative generally came further into my period of sewing. It felt like I was warming up creative muscles as I worked on these, I think I've got enough done now but by the end I had so many ideas for different stitching designs that I didn't get to use.

The feather in the centre is one of my favourites,  then there's an elephant up top and the little birdy to the side.

I've really enjoyed making them and reaching the end of the making left me wanting a new project along similar lines. A small, daily, creative exercise, ideally involving sewing, that would build into something bigger over time.  

There have also been a couple of very interesting blog posts I've read over this same period that have added to this itch to have some daily creative practice - Yvonne over at Quilting Jetgirl on Creativity and Time (great section on children and creativity in there too), and several posts over at Ann Wood Handmade. A few years ago Ann set herself the challenge of making a cardboard horse a day, until she had 100.

You can find her finishing post here, with more lovely photos and a video. 

You can also find her pattern and a tutorial for making them here.

As much as she herself wondered initially what she was going to do with them, I think they're gorgeous, and can completely understand how it became a very valuable daily, creative exercise. Just recently she's written an interesting post here about starting a daily practice of keeping a sketchbook.

So the stars were all aligned! I became set on finding my own version of a daily, creative practice. I'm hand sewing lots of yoyos at the moment, hopefully for a future quilt in my head, but I'm not finding that's getting any creative juices flowing. It is relaxing hand sewing however, so I began to think about my new creative practice being machine based instead. And what I've settled on is a fish a day!

I've cut out lots of small oblongs of sea coloured fabrics and stashed them in a little box.

And I'm going to sew a fish on to at least one a day (I'm not planning on beating myself up if I don't manage it for whatever reason every now and then, but the aim is very much daily). I'm thinking most of them will be simple, raw edge applique, with or without some machine embroidery, but that's completely open to change as I go along. When I feel like I have enough I'll sew them all together into a quilt (this is as much about the process of the daily making, but I do like it when there's an end purpose as well as process!). 

Here are my fish so far...

I haven't decided what to do about eyes yet - whether to use buttons, or machine embroidery or a mixture of the two. I think I'm swaying slightly towards the buttons, but we'll see.

It's also obviously a great way to use scraps, even tiny ones. These oblongs range from 12 to 15 cm by 8 cm.

So, do you have any kind of daily, creative practice? Whether it's drawing or sewing or something completely different? Or would you think about starting one maybe?

Sally.