Saturday, February 25, 2006

Whole Cloth Angst

To cut or not to cut? I'm leaning towards not cutting but am struggling with how to start into the piece. I guess I could just start stitching and see what happens? If I do stitch it it will be like my Blood River Canyon pieces, further down on the blog. There's that part of my brain that says it'll be alright and look great and the left side of my brain is fighting with that concept.

I have an idea that is perculating but there is also an intense fear that I will screw up the cloth, and this is a very good possibility I might add. While I have 10+ years of drawing, and painting,life sized people and animals, even taking a piece of fruit and freehand drawing it 10 times greater than life to exact detail and proportion, I have never done this on fabric before. And fabric does NOT behave like good quality drawing or print papers. My all time favorite paper is BFK Rives printing paper.

As for colors of quilting thread, the obvious choices would be those that fade into the background so that the background is the focal point. But there's just a very small hint of mauve to red here and there, if you know where to look. I'm thinking of playing this up a bit.

Meanwhile I'm trying to finish a piece, but it's not coming together, seems that I"m still missing an element. I believe I know what it is, I just need to go hiking in one of my favorite river beds.

The piece measures 42 x 36 inches, is cotton muslin, and was compost dyed under my favorite hackberry tree.

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