Wednesday, September 14, 2011

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.

6 comments:

Gerrie said...

Wow! This is awesome fun!! Love what you are doing.

Terry Grant said...

Beautiful! Very organic lookings.

Brenda said...

Wonderful shapes and texture.

Judy Rys said...

Great experiment. For whatever it is worth, I like the straight lines with the ovals.

MulticoloredPieces said...

Hi, Karen. Really like this piece, very interesting forms. I've been enjoying your blog, going backwards. Really like your textile work/play and your experiments.
best from Tunisia,
nadia

Linda A. Miller said...

Love the new work, Karen...striking forms!