Play Time!

In the last 2-3 days, I read a book on living life wholeheartedly.  The book is titled "The Gifts of Imperfection" and is written by Brene Brown.  While doing her research for  the book, she discovered that people who live wholeheartedly make time for PLAY.   Now, that was one area that I didn't really need a lot of help in. Or do I?   Hmmmm.....
So many people think of "play" as a waste of time.  As adults we should be productive, right?  but what she discovered is that play, much like rest, is needed by the body and the mental processes.  If you watch children, especially very young ones, you will see that they learn  from play.  Guess what? As adults we do not know it all - and we can learn from play.

So my play time today was with scraps and the sewing machine.  I took some scrap strips of fabrics and just sewed them together into a strata.  Some were longer than others.  When I reached the end of the shorter strip, I cut the thread and moved on. I didn't trim the longer tail off, I just kept playing.
(I wish I had taken more photos!)
I cut that strata into three pieces, flipped them around and sewed them back together. Hmm..not crazy about that -so like a child I whacked off one of the pieces and sewed it back to the other side.
What if? I cut down the middle added a strip running through it. Cut a diagonal, added another -then repeated the diagonal.
Here it is before any trimming  with the added strips. (I did trim the first - pink strip..oops)

The sides are uneven, the strips don't line up and it is totally imperfect. And I love it. 

So I trimmed it

But what if? I cut it into quarters.  Moving quickly all the pieces were rotated 180 degrees.

Well.....that is boring!

I put them back in the original orientation when I saw that.

So how about leaving top left, and (going clockwise) turning the first one 1/4th turn, the next 1/2 and the last 3/4ths turn?

It is definitely  more interesting. But....I don't get a lot of inspiration from this. 

Each piece is 7.25" square....I can add borders and make potholders.  They will coordinate without matching exactly.  So, did my play turn into work?  Hmm....maybe I do have an issue with "just playing."  Of course, I may just toss them into the "orphan box" for use another day - perhaps for more play. 

Several comments yesterday on the post about sewing the vest reminded me that I have labels that I can sew into this item. I got them from Ikaprint on Etsy.  Here is the only photo I can find at the moment. 

 I need to sew the labels into all of my handwoven wearables. 

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