Ah, Fourth Gear

Now I'm cruisin'! I'm starting to get the feel I want for this piece and it's highly motivating. I realized that somehow the piece just wasn't "my voice." I needed to follow my instincts, even if that meant leaping off a cliff, so I took the "tea dye plunge"-- sorry Idaho reader who urged me not to -- first with my silk fabric, which I liked so well that I took all the elements off the work in progress and tea dyed the original pieced ground. Alas, not successful -- the piece looked dirty rather than aged. But the beauty of the tea dyed silk encouraged me to continue with the idea of aging the overall look of the piece.

So I tea dyed some plain cotton broadcloth, just enough to knock back the white -- which produced a creamy ivory. Very nice. Then I cut and pieced a new -- and larger --ground. Yesterday I took everything to my studio and put the basic surface together. I cut larger tea dyed squares for inside the black squares and burned their edges and added some holes in a few of them, then centered all the elements and fuse-tacked them to the ground fabric. I totally love softening the white with the tea dyeing-- and increasing the size to 45 1/2" will allow the letter forms to feel less crowded.
Next on yesterday's agenda was dyeing a wider range of red values for the letter forms that will dance again across this piece (hopefully today, but more likely tomorrow) I knew I wanted some darker and duller shades of red against the brilliant scarlet, so I dyed a bunch of small pieces and will experiment. I also dyed a gold-ish brown piece that may work if I decide I need to add another color contrast somehow. I'm considering whether to add that or possibly black as a border. Another choice for the Not Sure Yet category.Today's agenda. Bob's heading off skiing and I'm hunkering down to sandwich the piece and stitch it before I tackle making new letter forms and composing those on the surface again. Several ideas for stitching on the surface but no definitive answer yet. I'll do a few trials before I commit to one of the choices. I have a deadline and this piece MUST get done over the next three days...so I have to get to work!