Challanges

I'm working on a new piece for an invitational and I'm having so much fun with the process I wanted to share it. My original idea is to use black testfabric with wool felt for the batting.  I'm stitching using lines on part of the fabric, and a grid on the other part.  I wanted to end up with something 20 x 20, so I started at 30 x 30. I added a few buttons underneath to see if I like them. The image below is after two trips through the washer and dryer.  It is really wonky and measures about 22 x 22.

I blocked it and managed to get it to lay flat.  I know it's hard to see, black is hard to photograph. So far, so good.

Now I wanted to add some shapes, at first I thought circles, but decided circle shapes seem so perfect, to make them look right I would have to center them and space them really accurately, or else make them really off center, neither of which I wanted.  So I decided on ovals.

Since I used testfabric, I knew bleach would bring it to white ( In my case, off white, since I never leave it on long enough .  I haven't deided if I want black with white ovals or white with black ovals, and since this is a sample, I decided to do both. I used soy wax to preserve the black ovals, and a freezer paper stencil for the white circles. I mixed the bleach with print paste for the white circles, it was diluted, and I didn't get as much white as I wanted. So, I'm left deciding if I like the buttons I sewed in, if I like the line stitching or the grid, and if I like white/black or black/white, or both. I did find out after the third washing it had shrunk to 20 x 20, so next time I'll only wash it twice.