The 100 Day Project

It's already February and this year has been a blur! I am still here and still creating, but I am mostly active on Tumblr and Instagram due to the speed at which I can post there. Speed is ideal lately! I have been very busy moving (again) and my energy for writing has been low.

But I wanted to take a moment to post here about the 100 Day Project. This has been something I've been interested in since I heard about it from one of my very favorite crochet artists, Marianne Seiman (@heedelgab on Instagram). She has used the 100 Day Project to dive deeply into a theme and let her creativity explore freely. I have been so inspired by her work!

https://www.instagram.com/share/p/BAzu5dp-Bi

So when I heard that it was starting this past Sunday, I wanted to hop aboard. I had one restriction: I could not buy yarn for this. This entire year, I have been very aware of my stash (particularly because I had to move it... again). I am on a spending hold for the foreseeable future, unless I am buying yarn to meet yardage for a project.

That being my main consideration, I had another restriction: time. I work full time and teach crochet in my spare time. I needed a project that would be feasible to finish by working on it a little bit every day for 100 days.

Then I rediscovered a pattern I had seen ages ago, The Betted World Dress, by Kasia Osmólska (@sharkotea). The pattern is completely free BUT if you share it on social media, she asks that you make a donation to a cause that is close to your heart.

It all clicked into place. I had stashed a large amount of fingering weight cotton to make plushies and suncatchers with, and lost interest in both. Each ball only has 175yd, but I have dozens of them. The dress requires something like 2500yd. Challenge accepted.

I used a couple of color palette resources I have on my shelf to pick out a palette.

And this is what I came up with. The mint at the bottom was the most important part, as that is the color I have the most of. I wanted that to make up the bottom of the dress. The other colors, I wanted to be bold, but complimentary. I love the contrast of the purple and orange. And thankfully, I had yarn to match!

This is my first pass for the colors of the dress. I have edited the order and number of colors a couple of times since this photo, but you get the idea. It will look like a sunset on the ocean!

The dress itself is a huge project, so how am I keeping it manageable? I am only doing one round every day! It takes about 30-45min to finish a round, which is easy to fit into my morning or evening. So far, I enjoy walking on my walking pad while I work on it. This allows for easy checkpoints for my documentation process, which I am posting live on Instagram and Tumblr, and will post about here at certain intervals as I get closer to completion.

Finally, when all of this is said and done in June, for every day I was successfully able to work on this. I will be donating $2 to the Humane Society, as Kasia requested. I hope you will all cheer me on in this endeavor!! I have been so excited about this project and I'm looking forward to sharing the process!!

If I have time I will share thoughts on my creative process as part of the writing prompts provided by the 100 Day Project, but we will see. And if this project sounds interesting, I hope you explore it as well!! It is not just for fiber arts, but any kind of creativity you enjoy!

Thanks for reading!