Melanie MacNeil, a blogger I follow, had this to say the other day:

“…it’s hard to know where to start. I have lists of things done and lists of things doing and lists of things to do! I have a mess in my studio, the product of having several projects going at the same time. What should I do first? What should I write about first?….

It’s like that with the textile art pieces — where to start…in this case with an analysis of the photo and deciding what to include and what to leave out, how close a representation / how abstracted…then sketching the image outlines and proportions on the muslin, choosing fabrics (buying more when you don’t have exactly the right print for the job like I did yesterday), cutting pieces to fill the spaces, adding fusible web to the back and pressing them to the muslin using the underlying sketch as a guide…start stitching at the horizon to make sure those first lines of thread painting are horizontal, next moving more freely to give the stitching some flow.

On Deck

That’s as far as I got today. I didn’t add a fusible interfacing to the back of the muslin – that was intentional, but I can see already the little stitching I’ve done is tightening the fabric so the first thing when I resume will be to add a medium weight woven interfacing to the back of the muslin to provide some stability to the panel.

The women is not fused to the panel – adding her is the final step, but I wanted to see how my proportions were beginning to shape up and I think I’m in the ballpark. She’s a bit darker than I’d like but I will lighten her with the thread I use when I add detail to her. Also where she’s standing behind the windows of the deck is shaded and that will help with her colour tones.

So I’ve started….I have a running list in my head of how to proceed – I’ll carry on thread painting the water, then the sky (wouldn’t you know I gave away my spool of white/aqua variegated rayon embroidery thread — I’ll have to use some of both colours). Still haven’t worked out how I will construct the window frames — they were painted white but appear a rather dark grey/almost black with whitish highlights where the light hits the edges, they’re graduated top to bottom so I will need to use a lighter grey and create the ombre with crayon or markers or both. I’m going to have to play a bit with making the railing appear rounded at the top – single rows of thread in increasingly darker colour, perhaps?

On Deck – 2008

The piece is underway. It will start to move along now.