New Finish for the month of November

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This is my latest finish!

I continue to experiment with the segmented shapes of a letter for composition ideas. This time I drew inspiration from this batik:

I liked the colors and the washy quality of this fabric. The lighter pink was pulled out for a greater contrast and a solid brown added to extend the design. Choosing the orientation was difficult for this piece. It seemed to have a heavy edge and a lighter edge because of the brown extension:


The orientation on the left feels grounded with the brown on the bottom. It also emphasizes the pink shapes over the dark shapes. Ultimately, I decided that the orientation on the right shows off the dark shapes more and I challenged myself to hand quilt textures to unify the composition.

What really had called to me was the pattern of "X's" in the batik. They vary in intensity and thickness so, in some areas, they fade into the background and an interesting pattern of crosses emerges. "X" became the theme for my hand quilting in this piece.


I decided to play with the scale of the "X's," enlarging the pattern in the solid pink areas. Then I wanted to see if there would be a way to transition the brown areas into the patterned fabric. I chose this cross stitch "X" executed in a variety of colors pulled from the inspiration fabric. Full disclosure, I have seen this treatment in the work of Jennifer Broemel (@jen.broemel) on several occasions and wondered if it could be incorporated it in my own work somehow. I do like the way this technique seemed to transform the brown solid. 

Now I'm looking forward to experimenting further with this idea of changing the nature of a color/shape with hand quilting alone.

Interesting possibilities.

Even the back side of this one is kinda cool:



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