I've been working on a new piece, inspired by the filtered light that falls on our kitchen wall. Shadows are notoriously difficult to capture in cloth, but I persist, bouyed by the image I have in my head of it finally hanging on a wall.
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This will be a layered, art quilt. The top layer, which is what I'm currently working on, being a piece of silk organza to which I've stitched (using my tiniest of stab stitches as ladder and running stitches puckered too much) a random pattern of paper pieced hexies.
That is as far as I've got with the actual piece, and yesterday I took the time to play with some little samples, approximately 5" x 5".
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I know I need to soften the edges of the hexies, as although they 'look' soft, the shadows cast are very hard and not what I'm trying to achieve. To begin with, I played around with the InkTense blocks I have to 'dapple' the organza and soften the edges of the hexies further, before stitching with a silvery grey, vintage rayon thread.
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I tried the 'feathery' stitch I've discovered recently but it felt too much like a coiled spring, so I experimented with a 'filler' stitch inside a stitched hexagon shape.
In the sunshine today I can see I am getting closer to the soft, shadowy forms I'm trying to replicate. Still need to experiment with both the stitch pattern and the thread itself. I have some fine, varigated quilting cotton in tones of grey, some vintage silk and my trusty DMC Perle Cotton size 8 still to experiment with.
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