"Off The Wall" weaves together the many threads that were my process and experiences over this year of involvement with Inside The Dress. This includes doing the exercises and not doing the exercises, reading, taking notes, thinking, mulling things over, de-cluttering my house, working on art and not working on art and struggling to find a way how to work on art. This culminated in the clearing of a space in my busy life to work in my studio for 6 weeks.

At the beginning of the 6 weeks I knew:
1) the scale - my size - 5 feet 6 inches height x 18 inches wide
2) the format - moving from 2-D on the wall to 3-D off the wall
3) the materials - fabric that I had hand-dyed, hand-painted or discharge
printed

Over the 6 weeks, I progressed in quite a linear fashion, starting with
sewing the traditional 9-patch blocks that I know and love at the top of
the piece to being able to incorporate the "clutter" in a physical way in
the textured experimental 3-dimensional parts of the piece that flow across
the floor.

As I worked, I discovered many connections to the artwork on a number of
levels. My history as a quilter and the shift to textile artist shows in
the progression of techniques used across the piece. This shift from
traditional to experimental is not the only shift I uncovered along the
way. Some of these shifts are visible in the art process and manipulation
of materials such as shifts from seams hidden to seams showing. This also
shows in the shift from a smooth surface to a textured surface. Even the
shapes used shifted from geometric squares to organic lines and leaves.

Other shifts follow my personal process. I am a person who lives in a
whirlwind of activities in a rich full life as evidenced by a calendar of
chaos. I see that represented in the shift from organized to chaos. I see
a shift in the format from large calm squares to smaller and smaller busy
squares that stretch into elongated curved shapes that scatter apart. It
is just like my life. I aim to be organized and calm but take on so many
things in my enthusiasm and interest in learning new things that I become
too busy and I feel myself getting stretched too thin.

There was a shift from the known to the unknown as I went from following
the rules and matching corners to winging it with improvisational
piecework, frayed raw edges and problem solving with chicken wire. I want
to continue to explore in this direction and open myself to my artwork.

As I completed the piece with the quilting stitches, I noticed how
expressive the stitching lines were on the back. I realized that over the
year my interest in drawing had grown. To honour that growth, I added the
last layer - a life sized contour line self -portrait using a black running
stitch through all the layers. From the front, the running stitch blends in
and is camouflaged. So, in the spirit of "Inside the Dress" it is displayed
so that the viewer may also see the stitches from the back.