An Artist Retreat

As my vision of a perfect little Cape Cod getaway with my very overworked spouse started unraveling, I needed to come up with Plan B. I had rented a small one bedroom cottage within walking distance to a town beach, and it was too late to back out - and why would I want to?

I decided to go and spend the week on my own, something I had never in my life done before. Mixed feelings of excitement, nervousness, anticipation, but mostly giddy joy took over my mind and body.

It was a major bucket list item I never knew I had! Knowing myself as I do, I needed to build in some structure to each day, but not too much. Got to find that happy space of having an activity along with some time to “just be”.

Photography is my first love, so having the freedom to roam around the outer Cape towns of Eastham, Wellfleet and Provincetown would be my destinations. Having just learned a new stitch technique from a workshop I took, I thought that combining those two mediums would would be the perfect artistic exploration for my time alone.

I decided that I would choose my favorite photos from each day, trace them onto linen panels, and outline stitch in black thread. This fit in nicely with my goals of getting outside to enjoy the seaside scenery as well as quiet meditative work with my textiles.

I completed the 4x4” linen squares and had my photos curated and tagged and even managed to journal my experience - when it occurred to me that I had created a travel scrapbook. It took me a few days to figure out how to assemble the textile book, but finally arrived at printing the photo onto fabric and placing the stitched version side by side on each page. Add a bit of reference journaling and I had myself a unique, artistic and one of a kind treasure of my 1st Artist Retreat.