Are You Afraid To Take Scissors To a Finished Piece Of Work?

     Haven't we all made pieces that are just OK, but need some work to be better? I have several. I have this photo that my husband took in a night market in Laos on one of our trips.

Night market scenery

I wanted to use it in my art some day. I decided to experiment with it and make a small piece first. I focused on one umbrella and imagined it in puddles and ripples of water. I wasn't at all crazy about the outcome so I put away for several years.

Umbrella with ripples

One way to fix up works that don't work is to cut them up into smaller pieces. So recently I took out my mat board view finders and checked out what it might look out if it was cut into two pieces.

view of one half

view of other half

I thought it had promise so I took measurements, got out the rotary cutter and ruler, and sliced away. After I had the two pieces, I realized some extra embroidery was needed. Here are the results.

One piece finished (not named yet)

Second piece finished
"Ripples"

Here's the back of Ripples.

Reverse side of Ripples

I like the two pieces a lot better than the one I started with.

So what do you do with such small works? 

-use as bookmarks

-sew onto totebags

-sew onto bookcovers

-sew onto iPad or other tablet or laptop covers

-sew onto a Tshirt or tunic

-sew a poptop lid onto back and hang on the wall

-make into a nametag for meetings

-buy a nice desktop easel and display on a shelf

I'm linking this to Off The Wall Friday where you can find other art quilt blogs. Please make comments to let the artists know you stopped by. Thanks for visiting.

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