There’s something about starting a new project that’s hard to put your finger on.
There’s a feeling. An emotion. A… something other.
It’s not quite anticipation, though obviously that’s in there. It’s not quite the excitement and enthusiasm you always have at the start either. It’s that wonderful moment when everything and anything is possible, and you have absolutely no idea how it will turn out.
From the first flicker of an idea, through finding the perfect pattern, fabrics and embellishments, right up until the scissors meet the cloth and the needle slides into the fabric, there’s all that possibility.
Now, with me, things will generally go tits up at least once or twice. There will be copious amounts of swearing. There may be a time out.
But sometimes you step back, look at what you’ve made and think:
Wow. I actually did that. All by myself.
And every time I plan something new, despite knowing perfectly well how often it goes wrong, I get that wonderful, exhilarating feeling.
What if this is one of those projects?
I really bloody hope this next one is.
The moment the email landed in my inbox announcing the release of the Cascades Cloak by Twig + Tale, I knew I needed to make it.
The timing was suspiciously perfect. The children have both chosen Halloween costumes that require no sewing from me, which has unexpectedly freed up a slot in the Department of Unreasonable Fabric Ambitions.
Then the craft lair offered up a solid 11.5 metres of green faux wool coating.
Eleven. And a half. Metres.
The most perfect deep green, somewhere between forest and petrol, and apparently a colour no camera on earth is willing to acknowledge. You’ll have to take my word for it. I have photographed it from several angles and achieved several entirely different fabrics.
Allegedly the same green. The camera and I are having creative differences.
Still. It was meant to be.
Now, obviously, I couldn’t possibly consider simply making the pattern as written.
That would be far too easy.
Almost immediately, I began dreaming and plotting a whimsical woodland creation. Plum lining against that rich green. A massive fairytale hood to disappear into. Trailing brambles and blackberries embroidered around the hem, up the front edges and around the hood, with the odd wee creature peeping out here and there.
A hedgehog has already made a fairly convincing case for inclusion….can you spot him?
The dream: a custom hood, plum lining and brambles everywhere. AI-assisted concept illustration; actual fabric is a deeper petrol green.
I could see it in my mind. And, thanks to the joys of technology, Rowan—as the feral folk have named ChatGPT—helped turn that picture into a concept sketch and a temporary mood board, complete with fabric swatches, pencil drawings and imagined embroidery samples.
They’re a way of gathering the ideas together while I make a proper board of my own. The embroidery is still firmly in the dreaming stage, and the enormous hood will involve some plotting because it isn’t part of the original pattern.
There is, as yet, no cloak.
There is a pattern, a frankly extravagant amount of fabric, and a woman getting dangerously attached to an embroidered hedgehog.
But I can already imagine wrapping myself in it. The weight of the fabric, the flash of plum lining, the little blackberries stitched along the edges. Spotting some tiny detail and knowing that I put it there.
There will almost certainly be swearing between here and there.
For now, though, I’m enjoying this bit. The dreaming, the gathering, the delicious possibility of it all.
What if this is one of those projects?
What was the last project that grabbed your imagination?
