Granted, this is an incredibly bad picture, but it is pretty close to reality. This is the piece that had the paint that was chipping off. I washed it (because I had nothing to lose) and that loose paint all went away. Along with all the interest. This piece lacks something, or several somethings. I'm going to throw some more paint at it in an attempt to revive it, but I fear that it's not going to be enough. An additional possibility is to use more paint to soften up that hard line between the pink and yellow area. And/or I can cut the whole thing up into sections and make some small pieces.
I've already nearly completed the next piece in this series using the same fabrics that I did for the above piece. They are all painted, not dyed, and I used various surface design techniques such as salt spatter, shibori around a pvc pipe, and crumpling. This second piece looks far better, partly because the accent paint is still there to accent. And the pinks and yellows are overall somewhat brighter.
The weather here sucks. It's cold and raining. Things are turning green, trees and flowers and blooming and it's too cold to be outside to really enjoy it. I'm still waiting for hummingbirds to show up in my yard. They've been sighted as far north as Massachusetts and I'm feeling left out.
