Way out of my comfort zone

I’ve spent the day at a DoodleZenDotZ workshop run by quilt artist Bonnie Lyn McCaffery (http://bonniemccaffery.com/ ) –we doodled, designed, bobbin machine embroidered and then dotted with fabric paint. Sounds simple written like that but each element of the day took me to places that are rather scary for me .
I grew up thinking I was the one who couldn’t draw, let alone design so starting with doodling was fine … no need to plan, or try to represent, just pencil and paper and a line that could go where I took it. Design was a big step but  I do have one, and just now in the peace of my studio here at home I traced it ready for quilting, and have started to embroider it, its easier to grip the fabric now I’ve found the quilting gloves.
In the workshop I ‘borrowed’ one of Bonnie’s for my first try at Bobbin thread embroidery. Then, while everyone else was stitching professionally and so quickly I had a lesson in getting my machine ready for free motion stitching, checking the tension -then came the challenge. Feed dogs down, no pressure foot on, just me guiding the fabric and keeping the stitch length even. At least the threads behaved and eventually I produced an embroidered design ready for  paint, dots and a rainbow of colour.
So here it is ,,
   
….  small, imperfectly formed, but I learnt lots and now plan to use the dotting technique with fabric paint for the Merry Christmas wall hanging in place of  hand embroidery with thread … so its a good job I’m now well stocked with little pots of colour magic and various points and spikes to dot, dot, dot.