Wednesday, September 30, 2009

WEEKLY TEXTILE CONSTRUCTION UPDATE

Recently, due to a very busy schedule, I have not been able to spend as much time on my weekly experimentations as I would like. I have also not been posting them as I have focused my blog postings around COMPOSITIONAL CONVERSATION.

Today I thought I would 'catch up' and share the small pieces I have made.


TC #18 - This little piece is only 4" x 6" and I used scraps from two larger pieces I made using hand dyed fabric and some hand painted fabric. The piece in the sidebar entitled Corner Office is one of those pieces. I also applied the line across the composition with string that is machine couched.


TC #19

TC #19-#23 were made from scraps of fabric I had made previously. I often use a viewfind when working on my larger work as a way to isolate the composition from other things on my design wall but here I use a viewfinder to isolate tiny compositions. The thing I love the fact that except for the scale of the machine stitching, which tips the viewer off that they are small, these pieces could be huge. The proportions of the figures are beautiful and I felt the outline stitching was very effective.

TC #20


TC #21


TC #22

I often run the stitches across the entire surface but in this piece and the next piece, I left some areas unstitched which added variety and interest.

TC #23


TC #24

The color in this one is way off. In reality it is a lovely shade of mauve but I could not capture the color. I machine stitched in two colors over the entire surface and then hand stitched the swirling figure.


Tc #25

This little study is a bit larger than the others, it is 12" x 12". I had a large piece made in 2006 which I kept trying to include in a show but everytime I got it out I eventually put it away. I finally made peace with the fact that it would never be shown. It had some nice qualities but the composition was weak. With that in mind I first cut the piece into 5 panels and rearranged. It looked good but when I reassembled it I did not like the appearance of the seams. The piece then became fodder for a weekly TC. Using my viewfinder I isolated an area I wanted to work with, added some additional stitching in red, refined the size and done. Not wonderful but a good exercise.

Later this weekend I will be posting the newest version of COMPOSITIONAL CONVERSATION with Marcia DeCamp.