"Oh, I remember this fabric!", I exclaimed as we sifted through the scraps bag. It was just a fragment of browns, beiges and rusts in an abstract pattern. "What's it from? Where did we use it?" Mum looked up. "I really can't remember", she said. "Curtains? A cushion cover? We often made one of out of the other. The nineteen fifties, that I do know. I think it was from our first flat." The decade of my birth ...
Scraps of memory as small as the cloth: linoleum beneath my feet, a TV in a wooden surround with thin metal legs, and a Ladybird book on the table... It set me off on a hunt for designs and scraps from that decade: a mixture of organic and natural shapes alongside those suggested by discoveries and inventions in science and technology: molecules, space-flight, television sets, aerials, and pylons. At the same time, Himself and I have been working in visiting our bit of the allotment (another great 1950s stalwart of family life). Looking at the shapes of the potatoes, the curving lines of the poly tunnel and the watering can, the ladder propped up against the shed, shadowy ideas began to form in my head, wisps of thought coalesced and, eventually, were translated into my first foray into digital scrapbooking paper. And a layout, of course. :)
Although the papers have had to be designed and put together in little pockets of time, as and when, it has been great fun. Here's how they are looking so far ...
I'm hoping to put them together into a zipped file with a couple of plain ones too. I know that they won't be everyone's cup of tea and not all of you are into digital, but if you'd like a free download, do pop back on Wednesday.
Now, if only the allotment bugs could be as much fun to work with!
