I’ve completed 100 days projects before. 100 days of Faces, 100 days of Scissors, and 100 days of Surface Design. That last one wasn’t so successful – I learnt well that I need to keep things simple to be able to do it everyday.
Wait, let’s take a step back to what a 100 day project actually is. It’s simply doing one creative thing every day for 100 days. In the purest sense, you would repeat the same thing – such as complete a small painting, take a photograph, draw a portrait, write a poem etc, but there aren’t any real rules.
SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates), whom I’m a member of, run a 100 day project regularly and I thought I’d join in this year. It’s fun to do projects in a group; motivation, accountability, inspiration all come with the camaraderie. I initially thought I’d use the project to reignite my flagging sketchbook habit, but finally I came up with 100 Days of Elliot Bay. I would complete a small textile art work every 10 days using Elliot Bay (where I live) as inspiration. So there would be a sketchbook element to it as well as ending up with some finished works, which I need for various shows and exhibitions coming up.
So here is my first completed piece:

34cm x 56cm
I began this piece by looking at recent photos. The summer weather here has not been great. We have had long stretches of easterly winds and more rain than the farmer has ever seen for this time of year. Not so great for our campground, but giving me some extra inside time to stitch (if I’m forced to look for silver linings…)
The photo I chose was one of Elliot Bay from a distance. My husband and I went for an evening walk to blow out some cobwebs. Watching the storm swell roll in was impressive and quite cathartic.



I began by making a sketch and choosing a colour palette. I chose the last photograph above for my inspiration, loving the tree silhouettes in front of the seaspray fog, and the general moodiness of it all. It matched my own moodiness caused by the lack of summer sun!

I used my hand-dyed fabrics to free-hand cut the shapes of the hills and place them over a background of my hand-dyed silk. Once I had these fused and stitched in place, I used an old trick of mine to audition where to add trees and quilting lines. I took a photo of the composition, printed it out, placed it in a page protector and used an erasable marker to play.



Once I had a fair idea of how I wanted to proceed, I used my BERNINA Q20 to free-motion quilt the wind lines and the trees in. Having the 100 days project as a prod helped me not set it aside when it got to that ho-hum stage. EVERY piece always has a blah stage, a stage where you look at it and your mouth turns down at the corners, but if you push through it usually gets a whole heap better. This time it was when I had stitched a few trees and some of the texture lines on the foreground hills and I was thinking it was really mediocre. Thankfully I felt a whole lot better about it once I built up more layers of thread and detail.
Lastly, I stencilled on the birds. Birds feature so much in my work I was hesitant to add these in, thinking I was over doing it. But I’m very happy with the movement they add, the way they balance the weight of the texture on the hills and trees, and the way they lead your eye into the lighter spray fog area.

So there you have it. The first 10 days of 100 days of Elliot Bay done, and Moods of Elliot Bay 1 complete. I’m hoping it gives you stormy, windy, moody vibes. This place I live never does weather by halves.
If you wish to purchase this original textile art piece, please email me via the address on my contact page. $210NZD plus postage.